The great Uri Avnery has published portions of a letter from an old Israeli friend who has renounced Zionism. Dov Yermiya offers a litany that is now somewhat familiar, but does so poetically:
“Therefore I, a 95 year old Sabra (native born Israeli Jew), who has plowed its fields, planted trees, built a house and fathered sons, grandsons and great-grandsons, and also shed his blood in the battle for the founding of the State of Israel,
“Declare herewith that I renounce my belief in the Zionism which has failed, that I shall not be loyal to the Jewish fascist state and its mad visions, that I shall not sing anymore its nationalist anthem, that I shall stand at attention only on the days of mourning for those fallen on both sides in the wars, and that I look with a broken heart at an Israel that is committing suicide and at the three generations of offspring that I have bred and raised in it…
"Over all this there is waving the black flag of the frightening contempt for the life and blood of the Palestinians. Israel will never be forgiven for the terrible toll of blood spilt, and especially the blood of children, in hair-raising quantities.”
Even more moving for me was Avnery’s response to Yermiya. He both echoes and challenges his friend, and dares to imagine that Israel can redeem itself:
Did we dream of a state that is an isolated and shunned ghetto in the region, lording it over an oppressed Palestinian ghetto-within-a-ghetto?
There were days when we could stand up anywhere in the world and proudly declare “I am an Israeli”. No one can do that now. The name of Israel has become mud. Since the Gaza War, in which our army poured molten lead onto men, women and children, many Israelis avoid speaking Hebrew in the streets of foreign cities and the IDF has ordered the faces of some of its officers – those whose rank equals yours – be obscured in pictures published in the media.
Why did this happen? When did this happen?…
You, Dov, have invested in this state much too much to turn your back on it in a gesture of anger and despair. The most hackneyed and worn-out slogan in Israel is also true: “We don’t have another state!”
Other states in the world have sunk to the depths of depravity and committed unspeakable crimes, far beyond our worst sins, and still brought themselves back to the family of nations and redeemed their souls.
I find this moving because much of what we are dealing with now is Jews waking up to what they have created in the Middle East. The waking up is crucial. Other societies have also given in to racism, other societies have committed atrocities against indigenous people. And other societies have transformed themselves through an acknowledgment of these calamities. An end to Jewish exceptionalism means making models of the U.S. and South Africa. (h/t to Helena Cobban, and Seham, for picking this up first)
