opinion
As Israel Turns 75, We Should Celebrate
by Fighting for it to Live Up to its Ideals
I Photo courtesy of Heather M. Ross
Rabbi Jill Jacobs
spent July 4, 2017, at Trump Tower protesting the
ban on travel from Muslim countries, enacted earlier
that year. For me, standing side by side with Muslim,
Christian and other faith leaders to fi ght discrimination
was the best possible way to celebrate America’s
independence. Last month, Israel marked the monumental occasion
of its 75th anniversary. There is much to celebrate: The
establishment of the state of Israel is, without doubt, one
of the greatest accomplishments of the Jewish people
in the last century. The country has provided safety for
millions of Jews fl eeing oppression, helped revive the
Hebrew language and culture and allowed Jews access
to our most sacred historical sites.

And there is much to mourn and protest, beginning
with the 56-year-old occupation that violates the human
rights of Palestinians every single day; the ongoing
discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel,
Mizrachi and Ethiopian Jews, asylum seekers and foreign
workers; and, this year, the all-out attack on democracy
perpetuated by the current government.

For the last four months, hundreds of thousands of
Israelis have been in the street every week protesting the
eff orts by the current government to eliminate the power
of the High Court to serve as a check on legislation that
violates Israel’s Basic Laws, the closest thing the country
has to a constitution.

And yet the response by too much of the American
Jewish community has been more or less business as
usual. While many legacy organizations have issued
tepid statements criticizing attempts to destroy the
judiciary, these groups have not rallied American Jews to
actively oppose this coup or taken actions that would put
direct pressure on the Israeli government.

Following President Donald Trump’s inauguration,
millions of Americans took to the street — many for
the fi rst time — to protest his administration’s attacks
on democratic institutions and on immigrants and
minorities. We did so not out of hatred for the United
States, but rather out of love, and out of a commitment
to build a multiracial, multifaith, multiethnic democracy
for the future.

Those of us who care about the future of Israel, and
who dream of a state rooted in democracy and human
rights, must mark this 75th anniversary by fi ghting for
that vision.

This anniversary came at an infl ection point for the
country’s democracy. What happens this year will
determine whether Israel has a chance at living up to
the values enshrined in its declaration of independence,
or whether it becomes a
fascist theocracy that codifi es
discrimination against women,
LGBTQ people, Palestinian
citizens and other minorities
and that permanently occupies
another people.

Many Jewish communities
announced Yom Haatzmaut
plans that pretend that nothing
is amiss — falafel, Israeli music
and dancing, and celebratory
visits to Israel. And in June,
the Celebrate Israel parade —
which bans any political signs
— will proceed down New
York City’s Fifth Avenue as
though nothing is amiss.

March protest
I also love a good falafel,
but this moment calls for
much more.

Since the new Israeli government took power, I have
stood on the street in New York and Washington, D.C.,
with hundreds of Israeli Americans and American Jews
who came out to protest Finance Minister Betzalel
Smotrich speaking at an Israel Bonds dinner, the
(temporary, as it turns out) fi ring of Defense Minister Yoav
Gallant and the ongoing attacks on the High Court. As
someone who has worked for human rights in Israel for
decades, I am thrilled to see more and more American
and Israeli Jews join these protests.

But we have not yet seen a call to the streets from
most of our legacy organizations or synagogues. Nor did
JFNA alter its regular General Assembly programming
to instead take 3,000 American Jews into the streets of
Tel Aviv — or even host protest organizers or civil society
leaders, rather than the leaders of the coup.

Why are American Jews so terrifi ed to protest Israeli
actions, even when the country is being taken over by
people whose values are anathema to most of ours?
Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an infl uential and prophetic
20th-century Jewish thinker, warned of the danger that
the nascent state of Israel would become an object of
worship. “The state fulfi lls an essential need of the
individual and the national community,” he wrote, “but
it does not thereby acquire intrinsic value — except
for a fascist who regards sovereignty, governmental
authority, and power as supreme values.” In a 1991
lecture, he went so far as to call any religious Jews who
supported occupation and settlement “descendants of
the worshippers of the Golden Calf, who proclaimed
‘this is your God, Israel.’ A calf doesn’t necessarily
need to be golden; it can also be a people, a land, or
a state.”
In Israel, the religious settler movement that
Leibowitz disparaged three decades ago now runs
the state, and — as he warned — its agenda puts
the occupation of land fi rst, and the treatment of
people second.

Many Jews in the United States fi nd it hard to see that
reality because the state of Israel has become an object
of worship, rather than a real country where real people
live, and where fascist-leaning politicians are working to
fundamentally change its government and culture into
something unrecognizable and dangerous. American
Jewish conversations about Israel too often become
conversations about Jewish identity, a slippery slope
that makes it easy for criticisms of the state of Israel —
a political entity subject to international human rights
standards — to be misinterpreted as attacks on Jews
more generally. It is easier to celebrate a fantasy with no
hard edges than deal with the reality of a beloved, but
fl awed state.

According to the Torah, Abraham was 75 when he
left his parents’ house and set out on his own. At 75,
Israel is a strong, modern country, more than able
to stand on its own on the international stage and
healthy enough for vibrant debate about its future.

A real celebration of Israel demands fi ghting for it to
live up to the highest ideals of democracy, dignity and
human rights for all. ■
Rabbi Jill Jacobs is the CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic
Call for Human Rights.

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