Keep it personal. Three words that mean a lot.
I continue to try to share my personal experiences and observations as the war continues into its fifth month and the traumas do not end. These months have been incredible. It’s hard to communicate how bad they’ve felt for me. On October 7 there was a seismic shift. Threats, lies, false narratives and hatred had been met by me and I think most American Jews with indifference. We woke up on October 7 to news that was as incomprehensible as it was awful. Israel had been invaded by thousands of terrorists. And in the days that followed, and as it turns out, in the months that continue to roll along, THE WORLD HAS CHEERED THEM ON!
So how can people feel in Israel, where I just spent two weeks on a personal and public mission?
How does a soldier feel?
Or a parent or sibling, child or spouse?
How do millions of people in Israel feel?
How do millions of Jews outside Israel feel?
The permutations are too numerous. The math is anything but simple because we are all part of the math. Like electrons that have heated up too much and keep ricocheting off one another. Don’t get me wrong. No one is in a state of panic, regardless of how we felt in the first days and weeks after October 7. Where there is understanding of the situation, where we have reflected and seen clearly the threats around us, THERE IS RESOLVE. More on that resolve and the subsequent actions in further posts…
But when I talk to people……..
“But what about the Israeli government?” is the most frequent question I hear.
Friends say that they pray for peace (I didn’t know people prayed that much!!) but then immediately start in on their distaste for, dislike of, questioning of Israel’s ruling coalition. As if they had any personal reason for this distaste. They refer to Prime Minister Netanyahu by the nickname Bibi as if that gives their concern more legitimacy. After all, they know him so personally they can call him by his nickname.
Readers, I never hear similar comments about Abbas or Sinwar or the other Hamas leaders enjoying life in Doha. Do you???? Why do you suppose not???? Think it over.
Instead I hear about Bibi’s corruption scandals.
Can you see how this is part of the lie that’s been promulgated about Israel? Unfortunately it was fanned into monstrous proportion by our own friends in Israel, proud as they rightly are about total freedom of speech. And the worldwide media ran with it, inflamed it, highlighted it, focused on it, and made reams of copy with it.
Even before October 7 some of us took a step back and wondered. Is the “deep divide” in Israel, one that in many ways reflects our “culture wars” here in the United States, as real as the media would like us to believe? And was it a prudent thing to blare our horns over? Turns out it was not. Not only did our enemies perceive us as weak (and they certainly acted on it!) our friends came to focus on the singular peculiarities of Israeli politics as though it was something they actually could grasp. My friends, do you grasp American politics? Be honest. Now tell me how much you grasp about how any other country is governed. Go ahead.
״Love For The Land Is In My Hands״ Pretty personal I’d say
So I have to ask a question that’s been asked a million times. Why is Israel held to a higher standard than any other country in the world?
Is this a way of blaming Israel as being corrupt? Are there no corrupt politicians in other countries?
Is this a way to delegitimize the existence of Israel as a sovereign state? Is evidence of government corruption another jab of the thousand knives toward delegitimization?
Does any other country need to prove its government is worthy to be deserving of safety and security within its borders?
If Hamas “governed” Gaza or ‘from the river to the sea’ would there be a democracy? What a ridiculous question. Autocracy or theocracy but never a democracy.
If the question is “what about Bibi? Is this really about his personality or the corruption charges, or the nature of Israeli reality?
So in the end I guess I’m asking, wouldn’t “keeping it personal” lead one to a more balanced view of Israel. Out of scores of friends and acquaintances there were only a few, and I mean very very few, who risked getting in touch with me (or responded to my frantic reaching out) by saying “Janet, I know you and Sam were in Israel in May and the experience meant so much to you. You must be taking this disaster personally.”
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