Demonstrators block streets and clash with police during a protest against the government's plan to overhaul the judicial system, in Tel Aviv, Israel, on March 27.Oded Balilty
If you are a Jewish Canadian who is concerned about social justice, believes in the State of Israel and understands that its existence before the Second World War could have dramatically changed the history of our people, this is a difficult moment. It’s painful to watch the current government, spurred on by its extremist coalition partners, advance its agenda, which includes harmful policies on the treatment of Palestinians and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alarming judicial overhaul. But it is also an excellent moment to speak up. Something some of us have been wary to do, as the writer Andrew Cohen pointed out recently.
For Jewish people in the diaspora, our relationship with Israel can be complicated. Even if we vehemently disagree with some of its actions and policies, we can still care deeply for the place and feel, to some degree – even if it’s subconscious – a reliance on its existence.
The State was established, following a resolution by the United Nations, only three years after the end of the Second World War, which saw six million of us murdered simply for being Jewish.
Even when it became clear in the 1930s what was going on over there in Hitler’s Europe, countries around the world, including Canada, kept their doors shut pretty tightly to Jewish refugees. If an Israel had existed then, its doors would have been open.
You can love a country and hate what it’s doing. And yet. Even if we disagree with Israel’s policies or trajectory – as I do – it can feel difficult to speak up, even dangerous. Beyond the concern that your own community will vilify you for saying such things out loud, there is fear that valid criticism will be co-opted by antisemites. Or by people who believe that Israel should be wiped off the map.
So the stakes of criticizing Israel publicly are high, particularly if you feel protective about the place.
Which is the reason to speak up. To protect it.
The government has introduced a bill that would effectively limit the independence of Israel’s Supreme Court.
This has triggered massive protests. They hit a new level Sunday after Mr. Netanyahu fired his Defence Minister, who had proposed a delay, warning of potential implications for state security.
When the firing became public, Israelis, in the middle of the night, flooded into the streets across the country. In Tel Aviv, they shut down a major highway. A general strike followed. Flights were suspended, hospital procedures delayed, classes cancelled.
The protesters were not just the usual suspects, but everyday moderate citizens who felt compelled to take a stand.
On Monday, to “avoid civil war,” Mr. Netanyahu said that he would put off discussion of the bill until next month. But this is a delay, not a retreat.
Mr. Netanyahu’s Minister of National Security is Itamar Ben-Gvir, who leads an extremist political party and is a partner in the coalition government. This is a man whose views are so abhorrent that in his home, he hung a picture of the Jewish terrorist who killed 29 Palestinians at a 1994 massacre in Hebron. (He finally took it down to aid his political career.) A man – convicted on charges that include racist incitement against Arabs – who on election night last November, declared that it was time for “us” to be the landlords of the country. The implication being that others would be the tenants, at best.
When I heard that, I wanted to yell, “hands off my country.”
But of course, it is not my country.
Like many North American Jews, I made a seminal trip to Israel in my late teens. I worked on a kibbutz, visited the Holocaust remembrance museum Yad Vashem, shopped in the vast, rambling Arab market in Jerusalem. This was before the first intifada. Young and naïve, I did not know the facts of the displacement of Palestinians from their homes in 1948 during what they call the Nakba, the Catastrophe.
Though Canadian, the members of my group (all Jewish) were made to feel at home; we understood that Israel was a place that would open its doors to us, should Nazi-like trouble ever rise again. Despite the fact that that summer was only 40 years after the end of the Second World War, that possibility felt so far away.
So much has changed since then.
The government could cause irreparable damage to this tiny country that is so beloved, and so despised. And if this goes through, what’s next?
The idea that Jews everywhere should be made to answer for Israel’s actions is in itself racist. But I feel a responsibility to speak up.