Friendship and disagreement over Israel 


I have spent most of my adult life trying to work towards reconciliation with Palestinians.  I believe that we need to put that same level of effort into reconciliation with our own, with our fellows in the Jewish refugee family and within the Jewish people.  As my husband says,  “Love your neighbour” can sometimes be more difficult than “Love your enemy”.   This is why I’m writing this, now.   


I would like to instigate a pandemic of peaceful coexistence between people who disagree.  That means building up bonds instead of barriers.   These bonds need to join us together within our peoples and between our peoples.  We need to create links between the “bubbles”: the echo-chambers.  


Over some years I became close with a charming lady who was born in Hungary and ended up in the UK after having experienced terrible things at the hands of the occupying Nazi regime.  


She had worked hard to put her life back together again after she arrived in England.    Only her close friends knew about the constant mental pain she suffered. 


I want to tell you about the time when she and I clashed over our beloved state of Israel, in which both she and I had family and friends.  I told her and some friends about the unjust treatment I felt was being meted out to Palestinians.  I told them about the work that is being done by Rabbi Arik Ascherman, former leader of Rabbis for Human Rights and now leading a new organisation called Torat Tzedek (Torah of Justice). Torat Tzedek enlist volunteers to accompany Palestinian farmers and protect them against violent harassment by Israeli people who are trying to pressure them to leave.  


Some Jewish people believe that the work of Torat Tzedek is treacherous and antagonistic to our people. They call these activists “antisemites” or “self-hating Jews”.  I discovered that my friend indeed believed that my criticism of Israel was antisemitic.  She was very angry with me.  She talked in glowing terms about the youth groups of which her grandsons had been members, in which they met Arab Israelis and developed friendships.  


I realised that it was futile to try to persuade my friend that I was justified in pointing out a glaring injustice perpetrated by “my people”.   I put my friendship with her above my campaign for justice.  I sensed her vulnerability and her inability to understand my perspective, so I put away my personal sense of hurt and instead apologised deeply to her for the hurt I had caused her.  


More recently, I have been reading a book called “Me and White Supremacy” by Layla Saad.  Layla describes a concept called “White Sensitivity”. This refers to the fact that, when someone tries to call out a white person for racist speech or action, which may be quite subtle in its nature, they are sometimes chastised for hurting the feelings of their white friend.  After all, nobody wants to think of themselves as racist.  


I can see that the Jewish equivalent of “White sensitivity” is a factor in the exchange I recounted to you, with my vulnerable and elderly friend.  


We as a group are all sensitive.  As Jews, or descendants of refugees, we are sensitised to the experiences of people who are persecuted.  But we are also sensitised to any language that points the finger at Jews - or, these days, Israel or Zionism. 


It is easy for us - the second generation - to hurt each other, because we each hold these values very deeply: the value of defending our own, and the value of defending justice.  We can reconcile these two values by affirming that Israel represents justice, that Judaism represents justice, that we are carriers of a tradition that teaches justice.  We can then declare that Israel - that bastion of democracy and free thought - must be defended “right or wrong”.  Or we can go all-out to support Israel-based groups such as Rabbis for Human Rights or Torat Tzedek. 


Some of us second-generation refugees from Nazism have chosen to shut down conversation about Israel because of the fear of hurting or of being hurt.  That is what I did, with my elderly survivor friend.  So Israel is the elephant in our chat-room.   We are sensitive, we’re sensitised, but we’re that bit distanced from the trauma.   Perhaps we can begin now to take the risk simply of saying “hello” to the elephant.