My wife and I were talking about our visit to Israel. I could relate to Israelis in a way that she could not. I wanted to write about my feelings, for instance, about seeing so many Israeli youths with guns, in the bus station, coming home for the holidays, in the Old City, guns bouncing against their sides. I said I had a secret feeling of pride in that that I believe many American Jews have; and we won’t make progress politically until that feeling is unpacked.
My wife frowned.
She’d felt uncomfortable around the kids with guns. I will tell you the analogy, she said. Little girls like to play with makeup. They grab anything they can get their hands on, you see them smearing lipstick on their faces. Well what if you saw a little girl applying makeup like Naomi Campbell, being that expert? It would be weird. You see these kids handling a real tool of their culture, and handling it expertly, and they’re 17 years old. It is weird and scary, it’s like Jon Benet Ramsey.
I said, There’s a reason for that. If you read S.Y. Agnon, all the Jews of eastern Europe at the turn of the century were trying to get out of the draft. They were faking sickness to get out of the draft. It wasn’t Jewish to be military. Then the Holocaust happened and half my people were slaughtered and it’s no wonder that in Israel they consecrate weapons. They draft all the Jews there. The Agnon malingering is over. And this is also why Jeffrey Goldberg is the most powerful Jewish journalist and maybe the most powerful print journalist in America. He has been granted power because he served in the military in Israel. American Jews are respectful of that. Even David Remnick was said to regard Goldberg as his id. He serves an important function for American Jews. You have to deal with those feelings.
My wife said, But are you going to deal with them thoughtfully?
Jews are insecure, the Israelis are terribly insecure, I said, and this is part of it.
It doesn’t make you more secure to have children who are competent with AK-47s, she said. It makes you less secure. A bully is an insecure person, using violent threats.
I said, But Jews have to deal with the trauma. The other night I was on this panel and a friend came up to me afterward and said, You can’t just point the finger at Israel and demonize Israel. You have to blame the Arab governments. And you have to do what Edward Said said, and deal with the Jewish trauma of the Holocaust, it has to be dealt with. Eyad Serraj of the Gaza Community Mental Health Center says the same thing. Why are the Israelis so crazy. I will make no progress here politically or spiritually till I come to terms with my own people, till I speak to that trauma that has caused so many American Jews to worship Israel.
I know, and this is why I respect the other narrative, my wife said, the Holocaust narrative. But dealing with it means you have to evolve, it doesn’t mean that you give children guns.
