The Heavy Week

It’s interesting that the first full week of Spring weather often coincides with the “heaviest” week on the Israeli national calendar.

Last Sunday was Holocaust Remembrance Day, and this year’s news “hook” was the fact that 70,000 of the country’s quarter-million Holocaust survivors are living in poverty. As I write this, the annual memorial ceremony for fallen soldiers is taking place at the Western Wall. More than 100 families are mourning loved ones killed in last summer’s Second Lebanon War.

Fitting to the split-personality, schizophrenic Israeli mentality, in 24-hours starts the biggest party of the year, Independence Day. The line between the Holocaust, personal sacrifice and national independence is clearly drawn during this long Spring week. There is absolutely no escaping the meaning of these somber days in Israel. Almost every Jewish Israeli family has suffered one or more losses in either the Holocaust, half a century of wars or a terror attack (these victims are honored tomorrow as well). The country is too small not to feel the pain of these days.

A great irony is that the Jewish state as conceived by many Zionist thinkers was meant to “normalize” the Jews by providing an antidote to anti-Semitism. Instead, Israel has become the “Jew” of the nations, unfairly singled out for defending itself against a state-sponsored network of terrorism and a slew of countries ready to annihilate the Jewish state as soon as they gain battlefield parity.

Israel both is and is not the “safe haven” envisioned by its founders. A Jewish army protects the citizenry and has rescued imperiled Jews around the world; however, where else in the world have Jews been relentlessly targeted in suicide bombings, rocket attacks, and several “conventional” wars during the past six decades?

I have little hope there will be “peace” during this or the next generation. The concept of “peace” based on concepts like negotiation and co-existence is quite Western and has little connection to the culture and norms in this part of the world. During the past decade, it has become clear that Jewish Israelis want a Palestinian state more than the Arab world itself. This makes sense when one considers that the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict – supported by Islamist extremists throughout the region – is the most potent weapon in the war against Israel.

As Anne Frank wrote, I believe people really are good at heart; however, where there’s no freedom of expression or respect for human rights and dignity, much less an appreciation of pluralism, it’s difficult for that alleged “silent majority” in the region to make itself heard without getting shot. Coming to terms with Israel’s existence would force Israel’s neighbors to point fingers at the real causes of the region’s disastrous state of affairs. Needless to say, this abysmal situation has nothing to do with an oil-less Jewish state the size of New Jersey.

Recognizing the dire reality of Islamist extremism and a region largely trapped in the Dark Age does not free Israel from its responsibility to serve as “a light unto the nations.” This “light” means working toward greater inclusion of Israel-Arabs in the collective, and lifting the stain of 70,000 Holocaust survivors in poverty. It means lessening the ultra-Orthodox establishment’s excessive control over religions freedom and civic affairs, and expanding the framework for all Israelis to serve their country in the army or through national service. It means building living bridges in a society becoming increasingly polarized and paralyzed along ethnic and religious lines, not to mention political.

The most fitting memorial to Israel’s 22,305 fallen soldiers would be to continue working toward the half-fulfilled Zionist dream - to build a country infused with the Jewish values that have become a guiding light for so much of the world.

(I took the photo above during a visit to Yad Vashem two weeks ago, as soldiers rehearsed for the natiional ceremony opening Holocaust Remembrance Day.)