This past June, I graduated from the oldest pluralistic Jewish day school in America. At Akiba Hebrew Academy, we were taught time and again that all Jews, American and Israeli, bear responsibility for one another—in the words of Pirkei Avot [Ethics of the Fathers], “kol yisrael arevim ze bazeh.” Particularly now, as Israel finds itself in a state of ongoing emergency, it is important that Jews publicly demonstrate their support.
My high school featured an extensive program to prepare me to take that role in college. Five “Israel Advocacy” seminars later, I’m still unsure of how to fulfill my obligation, come this September. What does it really mean to “support Israel” in a democratic society?
The instructors at those advocacy seminars offered a straightforward answer: “support for Israel” means stalwart defense of the current and past Israeli governments’ choices. But the thousands who have died in the ongoing violence, including more than 600 victims who were my age or younger, demonstrate with gruesome clarity that the status quo is not something I can conscience supporting. If Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has contributed to the suffering, I owe it to the past and future terror victims to point that out.
Inherent in our responsibility to fellows Jews is an obligation to cry out when Israel’s policies are self-destructive or contradict fundamental Jewish values. I was often taught that, “If we don’t support Israel, nobody will.” But if we Jews don’t also criticize Israel, too few will—and what criticism remains will too easily be discredited with often hollow allegations of anti-Semitism. Because non-Jews who criticize Israel are written off as anti-Semites, the bulk of the obligation to admonish the Israeli government falls on us.
Many Jews who take a critical perspective on Israeli policy are attacked as disloyal. But vocal advocates of change in Israeli attitudes and policies are no more anti-Israel or “self-hating” than anti-war activists in the 1960’s were anti-American. We see retrospectively that the Vietnam era anti-war movement was one of the most fundamentally American undertakings in our history, but we should also take note of the fact that, at the time, participants were condemned in much the same way that Jewish critics of Israel now are.
Some argue that while dissent is important, it’s a job for the Israeli public and not for American Jews. But for better or worse, American interference is already a fact of Israel’s democracy. When Israeli leaders can rely on unwavering economic, ideological and diplomatic support from America, a cocoon is constructed around them, immunizing political elites from the domestic pressure that is the very foundation of democracy and depriving the many Israeli dissenters of any real influence over their own country.
Israel Advocacy need not and should not entail absolute support for current Israeli policy. When I arrive on campus this fall, I will strive to support Israel by advocating the principles set out so clearly and deliberately in Israel’s Declaration of Independence: “liberty, justice and peace as conceived by the Prophets of Israel.” I will vocally protest any Israeli decision contrary to these principles, because I know that, since ancient times, the survival of the nation of Israel has always depended on the willingness of committed individuals to take stances that, though unpopular in the Jewish community, they know to be in Israel’s long-term interests—I will do so not only publicly, but proudly.
