I was a junior at the Ida Crown Jewish Academy during the height of the second Intifada in 2003 and I remember that for Israel’s memorial day that year our school put up a large banner across the stage, quoting the biblical verse, “And I said to you, ‘In your blood you shall live!’ And I said to you, ‘In your blood you shall live!'”
It inspired me. The death we witnessed in the land of Israel was also a reaffirmation of life, of those who went on living despite the terror. And the war also bound us to Israel, demanding our pride and devotion through one of the state’s toughest periods. I don’t know what it would have been like to go to school in an era of relative Israeli peace but I can’t imagine that we would have been so passionate.
So I identified with a woman, speaking at one of the J Street panels today, who said that she formed her Jewish identity around the conflict: when you have to navigate a war and you feel pressure to choose sides, you’re going to invest yourself more and pay more attention. You can research, dialogue, protest, write, change your mind, watch television footage, read articles and do any number of other things. The conflict is present, the conflict is real and the conflict is ongoing. Because you’re somehow connected, your opinion matters and the issues matter to you. The conflict is the focal point of your Judaism.
I got the same impression from the litany of other J Street events today. Akiva Eldar, a columnist for Haaretz, joked that he got paid by Peace Now because he speaks so much about the settlements’ injustice. Throughout the conference people were speaking about Israeli-Palestinian violence as if it were a negative but also with the assumption that it could continue for a long time. Rabbi Eric Yoffie and Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s founder, said as much in their debate this afternoon, asserting that the settlements may soon prove impossible to uproot, thereby perpetuating the conflict for years.
Yoffie’s speech, which was critical of some aspects of J Street’s policies, did not find favor with the crowd, some of which booed Yoffie and yelled at him for being too excusing of the IDF. The heckling, however inappropriate, gave the room a rush and participants were most attentive to that speech than at any other time during the day. These, remember, are the people that came to Washington because they, like me, are engrossed in the conflict. Now here is an internecine conflict in the liberal pro-Israel community. They will not hold back.
And there’s nothing wrong with feeling passionate about the violence, obsessing over the conflict or arguing about it. Care for Israelis and Palestinians can be at the core of a Jewish identity that is no less valid than one based in traditional Halakhic observance or social justice. A vested interest in the conflict leads those who hold that interest to involve themselves in a concrete way, much as J Street’s supporters are doing now.  Caring too much about the fighting–if that is possible–is better than not caring enough and sitting idly by while people die.
My one hope is that within this large interest in the conflict J Street’s supporters don’t lose their strong desire to end it. The woman who said that her identity developed around the conflict must find a new basis for her identity if she is indeed to realize her intentions of a peaceful region. It seems, too often, that more traditional groups engage in fear-mongering in order to guilt donors into giving and people into participating. Perpetuation of the causes of fear, then, serve the interests of those organizations.
J Street must not fall into that trap. The lobby must realize that with the end to the conflcit will come a sharp reduction in its influcence; it has to want that as much as possible and has to do everything in its power to make that happen. I believe that it will.
Living in our blood may make us passionate, but I hope that life itself will be inspiring enough.
