Passports, Politics and the Search for Utopia

3 weeks ago I flew back to London for a long weekend for my cousins wedding. It was a great few days – dancing at the wedding, laughing with old friends (there’s always something special about hanging out with those you knew at 14). Generally being the guest that everyone wanted to see…In fact, the only annoying thing was waiting in line at Heathrow with all the Europeans at passport control – after all, surely the point of a British passport is to save you having to queue with the Greeks and French!

According to some Israelis, that’s not the only reason for valuing a foreign passport. Promoting his new book 'Defeating Hitler', former head of the Jewish agency and Knesset speaker, Avrum Burg, recently caused a stir in Israel when he described us as a frightened society, unable to trust the outside world and negatively influenced by the primal fear of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Claiming that Israel is sliding towards greater militarism and ultimate ruin, Burg advised anyone who could to get a foreign passport before its too late, bemoaning the fact Zionism had focused on Herzelian political Zionism rather than the gentler more spiritual Zionism of Ahad Haam.

Despite it being shocking coming from someone of Burg’s stature, I’m not convinced that his critique of Zionism actually broke any new ground. There's always been a strain among Jews idealizing pacifism and rejecting the idea of sovereignty and the ‘impurity’ that comes with it – those like George Steiner who posited the idea of the morally pure exilic Jew as the human conscience of the world, powerless to abuse the ‘other’ and dirty himself with realpolitik. Burg’s critique of our current predicament was hanging on the coat tails of previous ideologues. And to completely reject his argument in the name of patriotism would be like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Truth is, I also wish this country was different – that we lived without a Shoah complex with Scandinavian neighbours, comfortable in the fact we were always victims and never victimizers. I’d love to go to Friday night dinners without hearing the (erroneous) view of how the world hates us and that we can only rely on ourselves. I wish the early Zionist idealized dreams of a utopian island of peace and enlightenment hadn’t become an incomplete reality with poverty, violence, aggression and corruption.

Yet however great it may be to live in a postmodern ivory tower philosophizing about the perils of power and militarism and bemoaning how the dream went so badly astray; however artistic all of that may be, it’s simply so much less real. And just because moral ambiguity and complexity aren’t sexy doesn’t mean they should be ignored.

It’s easy to forget that we Jews didn’t do so well with powerlessness (or Statelessness), easy to minimize the challenge of being a people with the responsibility of wielding force for the first time in two millennium.

And that’s what Israel’s about – a place where Jewish culture is naturally imbibed, where we speak to the greengrocer in our ancient language, where secular kids dress up on Purim, and where policy makers need to weigh up how best to utilize force to ensure our continued existence in an area where most of our neighbours would rather we weren’t here.

Its to be in a place where ‘spiritual Zionism’ doesn’t just mean practicing non violence as Burg sees it but discussing what we should do about the environment, unemployment benefits, and democracy…where the realms of what is considered Judaism have been immeasurably expanded to include how we use power, or determine what a Jewish economic policy looks like.

Utopia for Burg may be closer to Brussels than Jerusalem. And life in London may sometimes be easier than Tel Aviv. But living here is about something more than just comfort and ease. Its about the challenge of leaving behind what writer A.B Yehoshua calls the ‘personal spice box’ of the Diaspora and diving in to the murky waters of a sovereign national reality...and continuing to believe that this idea is worth fighting for even when we sometimes come up short.

Jews and Conspiracy Theories

‘Once you’ve been here for longer you’ll become more right wing’ I was told 3 months into my Aliya by Roey, the neighbour of some close family friends. Sitting around the Shabbat table, I had been asking questions about Disengagement and Amona, but as has happened time and time again, the act of questioning itself was seen as betraying left wing tendencies.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been upset – after all, the moment someone can't see an underlying logic in someone else's opinion, the moment they believe that only their opinion is correct and legitimate, it follows that anyone with a dissenting view must be either irrational, stupid or naïve. Maybe I should have been thankful that I was getting the benefit of the doubt.

Last month I attended a conference in Bar Ilan on the future of US-Israel relations, part of which dealt with the article by two political realists, Walt and Mearsheimer who claim that US foreign policy has been unduly influenced by the Jewish lobby.

As one speaker said, this conspirational view became a mainstream accusation in Europe years ago. Because if, as the European thinking goes, Israel is clearly in the wrong, if (as Portuguese Nobel prize winner Jose Saramago stated) Ramallah is the equivalent of Auschwitz, then any policy supporting Israel must be irrational, must be unduly partial to some sinister group working behind the scenes.

The moment we convince ourselves of the absence of any other reasonable opinion is the day we embrace conspiracies. The moment we can't see that the war in Afghanistan and Iraq had something to do with genocidal regimes, or that disengagement was in some way influenced by demography or preventing international isolation, all we are left with are more indefinable factors 'explaining' the policy – that the US is on an anti Muslim crusade, that the Israeli government wants to screw over the religious.

Working in politics in a country in which everyone fancies themselves as a political analyst is not always easy. And I am still surprised that Ichud HaLeumi seems to be the default mainstream national religious position or that a two state solution remains controversial in some quarters.

Yet what really bothers me is the inability of so many people to understand the logic behind another person’s views, to grasp the subtlety of positions, to understand that an opinion can be legitimate even if you think it's wrong. As I wrote last year, what I can't get used to is that anyone who thinks differently is automatically considered to be irrational or mistaken – something the Netziv argues led to the destruction of the temple.

Or maybe Roey was right; maybe I just I haven’t been here long enough…

Jerusalem Post op ed - The Hamas Victory

This article of mine based on our work at Reut was published in the Jerusalem Post (14/6). Hopefully my blog readers will think more of it than the Talkback writers did :) (its amazing how subtetly goes out the window when talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict)

Despite Israel’s natural inclination to view Hamas’ military victory over Fatah forces in Gaza with despair, the movement's complete control over Gaza may not be as bad as we fear. In fact, its consequences may offer the best opportunity in years to break the political stalemate by assisting in the creation of an effective address in the West Bank with which Israel can promote a political process.

The biggest obstacle to any progress between Israel and the Palestinians since 2000 has been the absence of either a partner or an ‘address’ on the Palestinian side. The reform of the Palestinian Basic Law in the context of the Roadmap was supposed to alleviate this by creating the role of Prime Minister to bypass Arafat. Yet the reform became an even greater constitutional millstone round the Palestinian political system’s neck after Arafat’s death and Hamas’ victory in the elections. This led to constitutional dysfunction due to the overlap of powers and authorities between the position of Chairman, controlled by Fatah, and the government, controlled by Hamas.

With no legal way out of this crisis until new Palestinian elections in 2010, Israel was forced to bide its time hoping that its boycott policy would somehow change Hamas’ spots. As international support slowly eroded, and a humanitarian disaster in the PA looked on the cards, Israel’s choices were beginning to grow thin.

Yet Hamas’ disregard for the PA’s constitution by carrying out a military coup can work in Israel's favor. With a clear Fatah majority in the PLO, Abu Mazen could theoretically use the fighting as an opportunity to break the constitutional Gordian knot tying Palestinian hands by annulling the Basic Law and centralizing power and authority in the West Bank under his leadership. This new scenario would in effect create two separate political-territorial units alongside Israel – a Gaza Hamastan and a West Bank Fatah-land.

Instead of Israel being faced with no Palestinian address, it would suddenly be able to deal with two.

While no one celebrates the official presence of a Hamastan a few miles from Sderot, the new situation provides opportunities. The de-facto division between Gaza and the West Bank would allow Israel to maintain its boycott of Hamas in Gaza while utilizing the situation in the West Bank under the leadership of a potential partner. In this context, Israel should consider strengthening Abu Mazen through transferring funds, renewing the free movement of trade and lifting all constraints on cooperation with Fatah members.

For its part, Hamas may find that its victory over Fatah is only the beginning, not the end of its problems. It will need to deal with a hostile international community, tension with Egypt, internal ideological divisions and provision of services to Gaza’s civilian population. Similar to King Pyrrhus of Epirus' men whose victory over the Romans was so costly that they were subsequently defeated the next time around, Hamas may find that though it won the battle, it will ultimately lose the war.

We shouldn’t think the way ahead is easy or we’re on the verge of a Switzerland style utopian peace. Hamas isn’t disappearing any time soon, Fatah hasn’t suddenly turned into card carrying Zionists and Israeli society’s ability for large scale territorial compromise is yet to be fully tested.

But if we want to maintain Israel as a Jewish democratic State and prevent the inevitable slide towards anarchy and increased international isolation continued occupation would lead to, we need to find a Palestinian address to coordinate the establishment of a two state solution.

Recent events in Gaza may provide our best opportunity for some time to come.

12 Spies and a Man from Laos

In the summer of 2001, Ilan and I were preparing for Shabbat in a beautiful town in northern Laos called Vang Vieng. Cooking frantically in our little pot late Friday afternoon, and trying to explain to the hotel manager how we don’t turn on lights, cook, use money etc because it’s a special religious day (anyone whose ever done this can imagine the scene) I was shocked when he responded; AHHH, YOM SHABBAT.

Astonished, I looked at him, and he repeated, YOM SHABBAT. As it turns out, he, along with many other people from the developing world came to Israel in the 60's and 70's on scholarships to the Weitzman Institute to study agricultural techniques. 30 years later, he still looked back fondly on his time in Rehovot.

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This week we read about the 12 spies, sent to check out the land, 10 of whom brought back a bad report causing a 40 year exile in the desert. The Torah reports they returned saying;

'We came to the land you sent us to, and it certainly is a land flowing with milk and honey...

But the people that dwell there are fierce, and the cities are fortified, and very great… And Calev stilled the people and said: 'We should go up at once, and possess it; for we can surely do it.' But the men that went up with him responded: 'We are not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than us…The land through which we passed is a land that eats up its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw there are men of great stature.’

To mark the Torah portion, Nefesh BeNefesh asked Olim to write 12 things they most love about being in Israel. The request has been going round the blogosphere and has led to some great answers here, here, here and my favorite one here.

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I was also tagged to comment, but realized that most of my answers had already been written. There are so many things I love about this place – Hatikva with 40,000 fans in Ramat Gan, Shabbat Shalom wishes in the supermarket, not being the geek with his harmolis meal when going out with work, a day off by the beach instead of at Brent Cross or Primark… the fact that THIS is where Jewish history is being played out.

But there's something that makes me prouder than all of those things – and that’s meeting a Lao hotel manager from a small village who loves Israel and the Jewish people due to an experience he had 30 years ago. That Israel gave the chance to others less fortunate to improve their life and education, and bring that expertise back to their own countries. There must be tens of thousands of people all over the world who have benefited from Israeli kindness, something Israel bashers don’t even have the faintest idea about.

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Yet that’s only one side to this country. Strange as it may seem, the 10 spies didn’t lie about the land. As they said, it is a land of milk and honey. Yet it’s also a land that 'Ochelet Yoshveha' that eats up its inhabitants. It’s a land of wonder, but also one that desensitizes us to suffering of others, of what David Grossman describes as shrinking the “surface area” of the soul. It’s a land where a stranger will drive out of their way to help you, yet another might drive out of their way to cut you up; a land that can invite Lao farmers to study but whose religious leaders can refuse asylum to Sudanese Refugees because 'we have enough problems of our own'.

As the 10 conclude, the people that dwell in this region are tough, and living won’t be easy.

But the other two spies were also right. Despite this we should go up, we should move here; it may be difficult, it may sometimes be painful; but with a little faith, and a little courage we will ultimately be able to overcome everything.

Shabbat Shalom

The 6 Day War - 40 years on...

Last week, I was asked by a journalist from Al Jazeera to write some thoughts on the 6 Day War and the future from an Israeli perspective....

For those who view Israel as a regional military superpower with a healthy economy, it's difficult to imagine a time in June 1967 in which the citizens of a country 9 miles wide heard the threats of destruction from their neighbours, the deafening silence from the international community, and dug mass graves in local parks in preparation for a second Holocaust.

The 6 day war is in many ways the catalyst for this remarkable change of Israel's image, yet it raises dialectical feelings. On the one hand, it commemorates a great military victory, the fulfilment of our 2000 year old dream to pray at the Western wall and access the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site. Yet at the same it also marks our control over a large Palestinian population, an issue that has slowly undermined our moral and international legitimacy.


The war marked a new stage in Israel’s short history – making us more confident of our future in this region yet also forcing us to recognize the legitimacy of another people’s rights to this land, forcing us to compromise on our dreams. It liberated us from annihilation yet simultaneously left us as occupiers of another people. It saved us from existential danger yet now threatens the future of a Jewish democratic state.

Israel may have won the war in 6 days but we have waited for 40 years to win the peace.

Most Israelis understand and accept the need for a negotiated two state solution (including East Jerusalem). But they have fears – that territory we withdraw from will not form the base of a peaceful Palestinian state but of rocket attacks against our civilian population. We hear statements from our neighbours and fear that deep down, they still haven’t come to terms with the legitimacy of Jewish sovereign presence.

On one level, peace to me simply means the absence of personal fear – that my bus won't blow up, that my child's school won't be hit by a rocket or that one day a mushroom cloud won't appear above Tel Aviv (it may seem counterintuitive, but Israelis do have a deep seated fear of being annihilated). It means Palestinians being able to travel freely and not being obstructed by checkpoints or Israeli soldiers –in short, a 'negative' type of peace (to paraphrase Isaiah Berlin).

There was a time when I had hoped for much more - Israelis visiting Damascus for the weekend to shop or Saudis thronging to Tel Aviv to party. Yet 40 years on from those historic days in June, from the war that in many ways still hasn’t ended, Israelis and Palestinians may not only have to accept something less than we all wanted, but even something less than we thought we could live with.

Yom Yerushalayim - A Heart of Many Rooms

(to hear a radio recording of IDF troops entering the Old City in 1967 click here )


Last year during Ulpan, we were taken on a guided tour of the Western Wall tunnels. Now I’m not the sort of person that gets excited by seeing the closest point to the Holy of Holies but I was still amazed; after all what we believed was the Temple’s Western wall was actually only 10% of it…and now we've discovered the rest! But at the same time I felt uneasy, after all, the opening of the tunnels in 1996 had resulted in bloodshed and riots. We may have been enjoying a spiritual journey in ancient Jerusalem, but there was a political and security price to pay for it.


It is that mixture of simultaneous amazement and uneasiness that pervades me on Yom Yerushalayim. On the one hand is the joy at the liberation of the Old City, the shiver when I hear the words Har Habayit BeYadeinu, the Temple Mount is in our hands, the emotion of seeing paratroopers dancing by the wall, the memory of unadulterated joy by Israelis of all stripes over the miracle that took place 40 years ago, when our people went from digging mass graves to celebrating the liberation of our historical biblical homeland. In short, the amazement of 'seeing' God's hand in history.

But at the same time, its difficult to divorce all that from the political consequences of the war; The fact that for all the rhetoric to the contrary, no viable regional deal can be reached here without compromising on Jerusalem. Or how we talk about our eternal indivisible capital yet most Jerusalemites would never want to even set foot in the Shuafat Refugee Camp (many are too scared to even walk through the Muslim quarter of the Old City).

It’s a day that through no fault of its own somehow turned from being national to nationalist, from being about our ability to pray at the Western wall to banging on Arabs’ doors in the old city.

I haven’t resolved this yet, but it reminds me of my favourite Tosefta text (it didn’t have much competition) that Rabbi David Hartman mentions in the introduction to one of his books.

The Tosefta explains that a person might ask, ‘Since the House of Shammai declare unclean and the House of Hillel clean, this one prohibits and that one permits, how then can I learn Torah?’ The Rabbis answer by advising someone to create ‘a heart of many rooms' into which they should bring the words of the House of Shammai and the words of the House of Hillel, the words of those who declare unclean and the words of those who declare clean.

Similarly today one may ask 'Since Yom Yerushalayim moved from thanking God for saving His people to convincing the police to allow Rabbis onto the Temple Mount how can I celebrate? Since the war marks our liberation yet another people’s occupation how can I take part?'

It’s not easy to hold the idea that our eternal indivisible capital jars with the political and demographic reality that many of our leaders refuse to see. But maybe we all need to build ourselves a heart of many rooms where we can hold all of these things, even if they contradict one another.

Chag Sameach (and don’t forget to say Hallel with a bracha).


and thanks to everyone who spent time voting for this blog in the JIB Blog Awards

Yom Hazikaron - Of Three or Four in a Room

3 months into my Hachshara, I told my parents I wanted to stay in Israel for another year and do the army. It wasn’t some sort of opening tactical gambit that would ultimately allow me to continue learning in yeshiva. It was a well thought out position from an ideological eighteen year old who felt that his shared commitment and obligation to Israel shouldn’t allow him to return to a life of parties and socializing in Leeds while his friends were hunkering down in the mud of South Lebanon, to be downing Tequilas as they were downing Hezbollah…

Partly due to my parents wishes (how can an only child give his mother a year of sleepless nights?) and partly to do with my own fears (If even my Israeli friends are telling me I am crazy, do I really need to be chasing danger?) I returned to England 9 months later. Most of the time I try not to think that August ’99 to Aug 2000 was the safest year to be in the IDF or how an extra year in Israel at that age would have changed me. I like to feel like I did some sort of service – that I was active on campus, taught youth about Zionism, worked for the Israeli Embassy, that I made my own sacrifices for things I believe are right.

But as all roads in life not taken, the shadow of the decision sometimes weighs on me.

As Yom Hazikaron approaches, I always feel a tinge of regret.

Its not that I mourn the fact that I don’t have someone close to mourn– in fact I’m thankful for it.

It’s not that I don’t find meaning in the ceremonies; I do.

Its not that I don’t have those to remember; Unfortunately I do.

It’s more that I feel that there’s something missing from my experience of living here – like most people are part of a club whose entrance may be prohibitive, but if you’re not in you don’t really belong.

Yehuda Amichai wrote that

‘Of three or four in a room,
there is always one who stands beside the window.
He must see the evil among thorns…
And how people who went out of their houses whole
are given back in the evening like small change.’

I don’t want to be the person who always stands beside the window and sees evil among thorns. Yet for one day a year, when Israelis unite to remember the fallen – like the kid from high school caught up in the café bombing or the inspirational madrich heroically killed saving others or the friend’s older brother killed from friendly fire or the neighbor’s first husband shot in the early hours of the Yom Kippur War – people who went out of their houses whole yet never returned, or saw the horrors of war and came back like small change…I remember too – but my memory is not that of someone in the inner circle.

And what does one do when the country you have tied your destiny in with turns into one big room, and you find yourself looking in from the outside?