Adding Nuance To The Israel Conversation - Rosh Hashanah Day Sermon

I remember the first time I was ever made to answer for Israel. Newly back from living in Jerusalem during my first year in Rabbinical school, I ventured out to a friend’s birthday party at a nearby bar in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. It was a fun evening since I had gone to college with this particular friend and I knew many acquaintances there from Tufts. One of them, upon realizing that I had just gotten back from Israel cornered me. With drink in hand, back up against the wall, I was asked to defend the embargo on Gaza, the military presence in the West Bank, even decisions the Israeli army made during the 1948 War of Independence. It was less a conversation than a barrage.  

If you know me, you know I’m a pretty liberal person and that outlook includes the way I see Israel. I was willing to cede her some points, hoping to add nuance to others, and ready to disagree about the remainder. But her goal that night was less to engage than to humiliate, less to dialogue than to conquer. She had no stake in the debate. It actually felt like an intellectual exercise. 

I’m a rabbi so conversations like what I experienced that night is what I signed up. But my experience isn’t innate to my crazy ilk who choose to make Judaism a profession. I bet, if I polled our current college students (and even High School students) most would have had the experience I did at that party. And, unlike me, they did not sign up for this.  

This past May was a trying time for so many of us, in part because we felt like we lost control of the conversation. I heard from teens (and their parents) who felt attacked in online forums. They knew that the tweets and soundbites leveled against them were unfair, but they did not have the knowhow or tools to navigate the conversation. One member, who is very involved in social justice, told me about spaces where she is asked to denounce Israel as a sort of litmus test for involvement, even though their mission does not involve international advocacy. Another, who posted prayers for family members running to bomb shelters in Israel, was dismissed. They were told that their fears were nothing compared to a mother living in Gaza. 

The climate that surrounds discussions of Israel is not new. These conversations are a microcosm, a symptom, of the general brokenness in our society. We lack the ability to engage in meaningful discourse. People in our society are generally not great at listening. We are strident and absolute in our views. We lack the patience for subtlety. We crusaders and prophets, zealots and ideologs. In a world that is actually blurry, nuanced, and multi-valiant, we expect well-packaged, easy answers to questions that defy lucidity. The world is just not as simple and clear as we want it to be. 

Israel is that problem on steroids. There is plenty wrong in Israel. But it’s impossible to engage with those things when others cede you no space in the dialogue. This, by the way, is a problem for both defenders and detractors of Israel. When it comes to questions of Israel’s security or the rights of Palestinians, there is usually little middle ground.  

The question, then, is what can we do about the toxic environment surrounding Israel, often on both sides of the aisle? How do we engage in meaningful, and real conversations about the complexities on the ground, when so many do have the patience or open-mindedness to do so? Today, I want to talk about four ways we can shift the conversation to make it more productive. 

The first thing solution is a pragmatic one. Figure out who to engage and who to ignore. Much of the time, we think the people we have to confront after a hateful, harmful, or unfair thing is posted is the person doing the posting. That’s often a recipe for disaster. Online forums are the least productive places to have meaningful dialogue and most people who post provocative things, welcome a provocation.   

That doesn’t mean there is nothing you can do when someone is being hateful or unfair. If someone is abusing a platform you have a right to question their ability to use it in the first place. Which is more effective: arguing with someone who posts something inflammatory about Israel on a parenting Facebook group or questioning the place of that comment in the group in the first place?  

Then, instead, of engaging with the person posting, look to see who their audience is. You likely know many of them. It’s these bystanders who are the ones who would benefit from a conversation. Call them up or text them and let them know that you want to talk, that what they saw online is more complicated than an angry soundbite, meme, or cartoon. Be patient and compassionate. And hear them out. And if you don’t have the answers, then offer to explore the question together. I’m always happy to recommend books or articles that give nuanced understandings of the conflict.  

The second way we can help promote complex and sensitive dialogue is to set up expectations and hold people accountable for the language they use. Since platforms like Twitter only also 240 characters to get our point across, most people will choose words that pack the greatest punch, even if they misleading or dangerous. Words like genocide, Nazi, and apartheid are useful to these detractors because they are sensational and provocative. But they also carry a history that is harmful to the discourse.  

Let’s take genocide as an example. Let’s leave aside the fact that the term is deeply offensive to Jews. When it is employed against us it evokes our painful past as a sort of linguistic cheap shot meant to put us on the defensive and prove how we are different than our greatest enemy. Instead, let’s ask, how anyone could look at the events of Israel and think of genocide in the first place.  

The answer comes in one very broad reading of the definition of genocide by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide who first defined the term after World War II. Their definition includes what one would expect like the presence of mass killings. But it also includes some more opaque phrases, “Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” Detractors of Israel, especially in academia, unfairly look at Israel’s actions since 1948, and employing an overly broad reading of these phrases explain that any action that destroys not the physical body of a people, but that imperils its culture might also be liable for genocide. If a group of people are kept in poverty, if they lack access to education, if their lack of healthcare raises infant mortality, these might be considered genocidal acts.  

Terms change. I get that. But the most dangerous thing about the approach I just outlined, is that in the popular imagination, genocide still means what most people think it does – mass murder. When we hear it, we think of Nazis, of Rwanda, of Darfur. Just because a small group of scholars view it differently doesn’t mean the rest of us do. Even if someone cites the scholarly debate about the definition of genocide after they are confronted about using the term, we shouldn’t stand for it. It is, to use Jewish language, genivat da’at, deception and dishonest representation.  

I will talk to anyone about Israel, but I will not engage in conversations where this type of loaded language is present. True, academics who are using terms like genocide are trying to say something about underlying issues in the Palestinian community, be they education inequalities, infant mortality, or widespread poverty. And I don’t disagree with those critiques, though I may differ on what Israel’s role is in helpful to fix it. But isn’t it a lot more productive to talk directly about these problems than to use provocative, coded language?  The more specific our conversation can be, the more we can find common ground and the more fertile and rich will be our discourse. 

The third way we can help promote complex and sensitive dialogue is to make sure you and your conversation partner having the same conversation. One of the best books written in recent decades on the Arab-Israeli conflict is a book called Catch-67 by Micah Goodman, which was actually a run-away bestseller a few years back in Israel. In it, he speaks about any number of tensions and paradoxes inherent in the Middle East debate, especially among Israelis on the political left and political right.  

In one masterful example, he deconstructs the word occupation. I likely don’t have to tell you that this term is loaded in our community. For some, it explains clearly what is happening in places like the West Bank. For others, it is anathema and shuts down further conversation. However, what many don’t realize is that people mean many things when they use the word occupation. 

Goodman explains that when the political right uses the term, they are talking about the status of the land of the West Bank. They point to the fact that the land traded hands for generations, moving from the Ottomans to the British to the Jordanians, and eventually to the Israelis in 1967, where they won it in a defensive war for their survival. How, they ask, can land be occupied with a history like that?  

The left on the other hand doesn’t talk about occupied land. They talk about occupied people. They speak about the experience of Palestinians who cannot freely travel from city to city without checkpoints or whose house can be commandeered by soldiers if a suspected terrorist is living next door. They acknowledge that Israel has a right to defend herself and, at the same time, understand that a people cannot be free and thrive with a military presence in their backyard.  

The problem with our modern discourse, says Goodman, is that we are having two different conversations. The Israeli left tends to speak about the Palestinian people and the right answers with a claim about the Palestinian land. Both may technically be correct, but since they are always talking past one another, they will never actually talk to one another. The conversation becomes circular, even rehearsed. The debate is less rich than ritualistic. When we speak about hard topics, we have to make sure we are on the same wavelength.  

The final way you can help promote complex and sensitive dialogue is to make sure you understand why you are having the conversation in the first place. Victor Frankel, quoting Nitzsche, famously wrote, “Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.” We each come at the “why” of Israel in our own way. Some of see Israel as the fulfillment of a two-thousand-year-old yearning to come back home. Others see Israel as a safe-haven for the Jewish people, should things ever get dangerous for us. Still others see Israel as the hallmark of living Jewish values. Israel’s mission is to be the best example of our tradition and ethics, though sometimes it might falter. 

Knowing why Israel matters to you will help you navigate the complexities on the ground, the “how” of Israel. Knowing why you care will help you understand where you should stand firm when challenged and what your non-negotiables are. They will also help you understand what you might compromise. If, for example, you are proud that Israel is a beacon of democracy in the middle east and that it is a Jewish state, it will help you better articulate why two a two-state solution is so critical, since only a two-state solution will preserve both values. If Israel exists to safeguard the Jewish people, should threats ever emerge, you will want Israel’s government to be one that will make sacrifices to save Jews in far flung places, even if it means attracting worldwide ire. 

If you start with looking at the complexity first, you will be mired in it. The details and nuance will cripple you. If you start with the question “why does Israel matter to me, to the Jewish people, to the world” this will give you guidance to sift through the mess, and choose principled sides and positions in any debate.  

I want to help you do this. This past summer so many people came forward looking for tools for how best to talk about Israel. I want to make it my mission to give you those. For our students, we spent the summer figuring out how to insert Israel into select grades of our religious school, so we can have nuanced, age-appropriate conversations. For adults, we will continue to bring in speakers and have programming as we have always done about Israeli politics and culture. But we will add to those things three elements: (1) A weekly class on the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on Weds mornings (2) a trip to Israel this summer, pending COVID and variants; and (3) a series of giving circles, where you and a group of 10-15 other congregants will pool a pot of money, study non-profits in Israel, and decide where it will go. I’m especially excited about this initiative because it will force you to ask the foundational question “what about Israel matters to me.” Often when someone asks you “tell me about Israel” you jump right to politics. But maybe Israel actually matters to you because of the culture or the rich religious texture of society and when you seek to give money you will direct it there. This initiate will help you wrestle with the bigger questions of the Jewish state. 

When I first wrote to you this past summer about the war with Gaza, a young, adult congregant replied to me. She was upset that throughout her life people had been telling her that Israel is too complicated to talk about. I was saddened by her email.  

Israel is complicated, no doubt. And the conversation is made even harder by so many voices, on all sides of the debates, who are deaf to nuance, zealous in their opinions, absolute in their stances.  But sitting out the conversation means your voice is silenced and that is unacceptable. 

Within the complexities of Israel dwell some of our most important moral tensions: between care for the self and care for the other, between justice and mercy, between trust and fear.  

Roll up your sleeves and get involved. Get engaged. Read everything. Watch nuanced videos online. One great place to start is the website, ispeacepossible.com. Think deeply. Don't run from discussing Israel. Many of us will find ourselves in a position when someone will ask us about Israel. Even if you disagree, even if it’s hard, even if what they say seems unfair, even it makes your blood boil, engage. The world needs more thoughtful, nuanced people like you.  

Israel is too complex not to have you in the conversation.