Rabbi Brad Artson
Repeat after me: Israel and the Israelis aren’t going away. Palestine and the Palestinians aren’t going away. There is no military solution. The only way forward is for us to work together.
The future flows from these four bedrock insights. Our job is to embrace this reality, embolden others to link their aspirations to this reality, to block their fears from blinding them, both to these four insights’ inevitability but also to their desirability. After all, don’t we want an Israel that is a bulwark for Jewish vitality, security, and thriving? And don’t we also want an Israel that is a light to the nations, not only those distant, but first to its closest neighbors?
The only way to be effectively pro-Israel today is to be pro-Palestinian. And only those who find their way to support these two dreams as compatible and reinforcing will align with the work of a sustainable peace.
The only way to be effectively pro-Israel today is to be pro-Palestinian.
It is my prayer that this year sees a growing number of Israelis plant their Zionism in hope, generosity of spirit, and courage. Not constricted and desiccated by inherited fear, not captive to the worst excesses of its most militant enemies, but rather a Zionism always in search of allies, one that fosters common interest, one excited to create, with Palestinians, a regional hub of vitality, creativity, and expansiveness. Two states for two people, sharing a love of a common land.
In this work, the pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian, pro-peace movement in the United States must advance a threefold agenda: asserting the right of the Jewish people to national self-determination in our ancestral homeland, affirming the Jewish love of an Israel that is democratic, pluralistic, and an incubator of the best of Jewish culture and creativity, and insisting that such a worthy Israel will best thrive when our Palestinian brothers and sisters can also express their own national self-determination in their own democratic, pluralistic framework.
Bradley Burston
My hope for the pro-Israel, pro-Palestine movement this year: That ways can be found to move from Jews And Arabs Refuse to be Enemies (in itself an extremely worthy and woefully under-realized goal), to Jews And Arabs Resolve to be Full Partners. On every level. Within Israel. Throughout the Holy Land. Around the world.
The one change I would like to see in Israel is already happening - a painful, unlikely, but hugely necessary transition from an authoritarian regime based on false messianism and exploitation of fear, loathing, bullying and bigotry, to the glimmers of a society in which all human beings are actually treated as such. Nothing in the Holy Land could be more radical. Nothing is more critically necessary.
A progressive pro-Israel movement in the U.S. faces a responsibility which has grown much more vital even as it has become much more harshly daunting: Continuing to demonstrate that honest criticism of hardline Israeli policy is not by definition anti-Semitism, while at the same time fiercely calling out all forms of genuine Jew-hatred in North America, whether perpetrated by white supremacists or ostensibly in support of Palestinians.
Noah Efron
Last May, during the worst of the violence in Israel and Gaza, I turned on the radio in the middle of an interview with the owner of a Judaica store in Ramle that was set on fire the night before. The interviewer said, “How does it feel to know that this awful thing was done by your neighbors, the people who see at the market, in the streets; they are your neighbors, your customers…”, and then he stopped himself and said, “Well, they are not your customers because you sell Judaica, and they are Muslim.” The store owner said, “But they are my customers. Before every Jewish holiday, my store fills with Muslims who want to buy something special for their Jewish friends.”
The interviewer, stammering, said, “I didn’t know,” and the shop owner said, “You expected me to say, ‘You can’t trust Arabs,’ but these people are my neighbors and they are my friends and they are my customers and I buy from them, too. What happened last night, this past week, is not what our relationship is. Our relationship is like what has happened day in day out for years. Our relationship is one of peace and respect.”
It was a shocking moment, because every one of us knew the script. The radio host, and the shop owner, and everyone listening, we all knew that a man with a kippah who owns a store for Mezuzot and Talitot, whose store was set on fire by rioting kids, will say, Arabs can’t be trusted. So it was a shock to hear that man, on that day, say the script is wrong. I know these people, and my faith in them cannot be undone by a rock and a lighter.
In the new year, we could all do to see what that shopkeeper already knows: that the wretched script by which Palestinians and Jews are inescapably enemies is wrong. There are signs everywhere that this is true, if only they would register. A few days after the violence in Ramle, I went to a huge Palestinian-Jewish peace demonstration, the biggest ever during wartime, under the banner: Jews and Arabs Refuse to be Enemies.
Rafi Ellenson
Listening to Naomi Shemer’s Al Kol Eleh - For All These Things - brings me to summer camp where my rabbi strummed a 12-string guitar singing:
For the honey, for the sting
For the bitter, for the sweet
For our infant daughter
My Sweet God, guard them
It was the first time I felt an anthem. Shimmering major and minor chords over a positively melancholy melody and words that inspire groups as diverse as settlers from Yamit in 1982 and nearly 4,000,000 viewers watching the song performed by Koolulam on Youtube.
In 5782, after a year of distance, may we be blessed with the gift of singing together.
Israelis and Palestinians deserve an anthem that serves them both. HaTikvah, while moving in its history, inherently demands exclusion in its lyrics.
As we count ways we have gone awry in Vidui this year, we would do wise to begin considering how Palestinians have been excluded de facto, discriminated against de jure, and how including Palestinians in national symbols can be a part of reparations.
In 5782, after a year of distance, may we be blessed with the gift of singing together.
And may we be blessed with the even greater gift of words to express our highest and necessary aspirations for shared society, mutual respect, and justice in a state that will honor all of its inhabitants.
In Al Kol Eleh’s chorus, Shemer writes: Do not forget the hope
May 5782 keep the hope of Hatikvah alive as well as forge an anthem that Israelis and Palestinians alike can celebrate - in all its sweetness and bitterness.
Don Futterman
I’ve always thought of the shofar as a wake-up call, literally meant to shake us alert. And we need to be shaken awake after being beaten down and beating ourselves up in recent years.
I want a renewed debate about what we think is just and fair and safe for Palestinians and for Israelis, whether that be the two-state solution I favor, a one-state solution with equal rights and status for all, or some other formulation.
I want Israeli Jews to feel that gut punch that says the status quo is not okay – regardless of who they blame – that “managing the conflict” means growing numb to oppression, to Palestinians shot while protesting, to manipulations in our courts used to steal land.
But this won’t happen by sounding the drumbeats of the past quarter century, because those messages are not heard anymore. We need new ideas and strategies.
The Pro-Israel movement in America must face legitimate criticism without blinking, without becoming defensive and without anger, to offer hope and a plan, and to bluntly call out as such attacks that seek Israel’s demise.
And we can’t vilify Jews who oppose taking risks for peace because the Palestinians are divided, Hamas seeks our destruction, or because they fear renewed terror or rocket attacks. These are reasonable responses by reasonable people. We have to create a reality in which it is reasonable to let go of those fears.
The Pro-Israel movement in America must face legitimate criticism without blinking, without becoming defensive and without anger, to offer hope and a plan, and to bluntly call out as such attacks that seek Israel’s demise.
We need our vision to be 20-20, to see the present moment in utmost clarity and to be able to look beyond this moment. There are so many Israeli Jews, Zionists around the world, Palestinians, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and friends who want justice for both Jews and Palestinians and who believe it is possible, even when leaders on both sides are not there. We must be heard and be counted.