Every once in a while I do a great post! And I did one last night, exposing the truly weird religious- nationalist rhetoric of Michael Oren, the new Israeli ambassador to the US, in Commentary this month.
James North points out that Oren is from New Jersey and therefore in a long tradition of nationalists who are not from the heart of a place. Napoleon was from Corsica, but became the embodiment of French nationalism. Eamon de Valera was a half-Cuban, born in New York, but became a leading figure in Irish nationalism. Hitler was of course from Austria, but associated himself with German nationalism. North says that when Francophone Caribbean poets started a movement called "Negritude," a black African poet mocked them, saying that a real tiger doesn't have to study "tigritude."
"People whose sense of identity is contingent or possibly fragile often become more nationalistic than the people who live in a place," North says– then he wonders why Oren doesn't just write about New Jersey politics.
This is of course the problem built into the Law of Return. Any Jew with an active fantasy life about the bible and Jewish identity gets to go over there and play it out. The West Bank is filled with crazies from Brooklyn. Meanwhile the normal (and yes often secular) types are all dying to come over here and live in a diverse society.
Another reader landed on Oren's comments about Jerusalem. He speaks in his piece about the "loss of Jerusalem" and says that secular Jews are abandoning it. My friend concurs.
Given that Jerusalem is touted as the jewel in the crown of the unltranationalist Israeli agenda (Undivided Jerusalem the Eternal Capital of Only One Country), it is shocking to watch the decline of the city. It is dirty, broken down, unmaintained. They invest nothing in it (that is, in West Jerusalem), especially in the Arab neighborhoods (barely paved roads, no playgrounds, etc.). Culturally the city is dying for want of funds, and the drain of secular young Jerusalemites continues unabated. Within West Jerusalem, the primary housing that is being built is high-end stuff for foreigners. And of course there's plenty of subsidized new housing for younger families in the settlements/"neighborhoods" of East Jerusalem. So if you're interested in remaining in the city but need decent housing and have limited means, the message is clear: move to the settlements. Credit for this dismal situation goes to Ehud Olmert, beginning when he was mayor of the city, and to Benjamin Netanyahu, who was PM at the same time–and to all who have come on board since.
Myself, I remember meeting a Muslim shopkeeper in the Old City who said, If only this was an international city I'd have tons of business. Millions of Muslims making pilgrimages there, Christians too. Jerusalem is a great city of the Middle East. It is now supposed to be part of a western outpost, per Israel lobbyists in Washington, and Oren wants to force Jewish Israeli kids to visit it once every two years. What if they don't want to? When people project nationalist religious ideas onto places, they shrivel.
