maybe we’re not the diaspora. maybe we’re from kazakhstan. maybe everyone’s a diaspora from africa. maybe our diaspora–the scattering of seeds, per webster–is european, global, american…
Shimon Peres sends out a Rosh Hashanah message to the Diaspora and says we have to remain the Israel lobby from now till the end of time. The dude is obviously worried that the ties are breaking down. He says peace is right around the corner.
It is vital to build with our brethren in the Diaspora ties based on solid foundations of partnership and education. Indeed, the role of Jewish education in the Diaspora cannot be overestimated. It serves as the very building-blocks of the bridges that connect the Jewish communities abroad and Israel. It serves as the terms of engagement between the young generation of Jewish youth and our nation and as the stepping stones to a greater awareness of the significance of Israel-Diaspora relations. It will serve to preserve our rich heritage and traditions.
The spirit of partnership must be enhanced in every area of Israel-Diaspora relations. We face dramatic challenges, which again underscore the necessity to stand united in moments of trial, responsible one for the other, as dictated by our Prophets. Indeed, a threat to the well-being of Jewish communities in the world equates a threat to Israel itself, and the fate of Diaspora Jewry is at the very core of Israel’s heart.
And in the Forward, Jay Michaelson says the relationship is ending. About time the Forward published some common sense from a liberal:
you know, a Southerner in the 1950s or an Afrikaner in the 1980s might say similar things. Yes, living within Green Line Israel, it’s possible to forget the Occupation… I’ve begun to second-guess even my own love of the place, wondering how much of it is built upon a foundation of deliberately constructed ignorance, a result of years of selective education. I sip my limonana, and five miles away a mother is harassed at a checkpoint. Which is reality and which fantasy? [the checkpoint, honeybunny!]
Finally, I think my love of Israel is fading because I feel personally implicated by its injustices, even though I have chosen to live in America and have relinquished my right to have any say over Israeli policy. (If only some of my countrymen would feel similarly.) On a recent trip to Berlin, I remarked to a friend that I felt more relaxed there than in Jerusalem. Part of it was that Berlin is a liberal city, and part of it was that I didn’t have to be frisked every time I walked into a cafe….
[Yes I still love Israel, but] on this side of the ocean, more and more of those who feel similarly have politics, agendas and overall experiences of Israel very different from mine. What they love is not what I love, and how they love is terrifying.
