Why I will not live in Israel
Thursday, November 24th, 2011 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lethargic_manOne of the aims of my year-off group was to encourage participants to make aliyah afterwards. Some of the group members did indeed do that; I came back firmly convinced that this was my country, and that there was a valuable place and role for Jews to have living in the Diaspora.
Whilst I'd been living in Israel, I'd been reading The Jerusalem Post and innocuously swallowing its right-of-centre agenda. After I came back, my political outlook stabilised as left-of-centre, and I was appalled by the political views I'd been taken in by during my year off.
Later still, I would listen to Israelis, and be appalled by the views I'd often hear from them. "Palestinians are like animals," and "it's all right to kill them" are taken out of context, but stay in my mind as demonstrative of the attitudes I hear from some Israelis. Obviously, not all are like that; most Israelis want (or wanted, a dozen years ago) peace with the Palestinians and are frustrated with the leadership of both sides. However, this strengthened my resolution that I did not want to live in Israel: I did not want my children to grow up with Israeli attitudes, whether the like of the above, or more general Israeli aggressiveness, etc.
I forget who it was that said "You can take the Jews out of the Diaspora, but you can't take the Diaspora out of the Jews", but they were wrong. A look at Israel today shows all it takes is two generations, if that.
More recently still, reading the mailshots of the Israel Religious Action Center, which I have blogged about before, I've become ever more convinced that my decision was the right one. However, recently I've noticed a change in emphasis of the IRAC mailshots: no longer is the focus on Israel's kafkaesque bureaucracy and discrimination against non-Jews (and Jews deemed non-Jews), but it has shifted towards the increasing political and physical muscle shown by the growing Chareidi community in trampling over the rights of women.
If you want to know why I will not live in Israel, here's your answer (and if you only follow one link from this post, follow this one). It's enough to make one cry, what the state founded upon positive Jewish values we all had so much hope in is turning into.
To quote Haaretz:
Whilst I'd been living in Israel, I'd been reading The Jerusalem Post and innocuously swallowing its right-of-centre agenda. After I came back, my political outlook stabilised as left-of-centre, and I was appalled by the political views I'd been taken in by during my year off.
Later still, I would listen to Israelis, and be appalled by the views I'd often hear from them. "Palestinians are like animals," and "it's all right to kill them" are taken out of context, but stay in my mind as demonstrative of the attitudes I hear from some Israelis. Obviously, not all are like that; most Israelis want (or wanted, a dozen years ago) peace with the Palestinians and are frustrated with the leadership of both sides. However, this strengthened my resolution that I did not want to live in Israel: I did not want my children to grow up with Israeli attitudes, whether the like of the above, or more general Israeli aggressiveness, etc.
I forget who it was that said "You can take the Jews out of the Diaspora, but you can't take the Diaspora out of the Jews", but they were wrong. A look at Israel today shows all it takes is two generations, if that.
More recently still, reading the mailshots of the Israel Religious Action Center, which I have blogged about before, I've become ever more convinced that my decision was the right one. However, recently I've noticed a change in emphasis of the IRAC mailshots: no longer is the focus on Israel's kafkaesque bureaucracy and discrimination against non-Jews (and Jews deemed non-Jews), but it has shifted towards the increasing political and physical muscle shown by the growing Chareidi community in trampling over the rights of women.
If you want to know why I will not live in Israel, here's your answer (and if you only follow one link from this post, follow this one). It's enough to make one cry, what the state founded upon positive Jewish values we all had so much hope in is turning into.
To quote Haaretz:
We are turning [into] Iran. And every step we take toward that end, Iran wins.I am posting this here unlocked with trepidation. This blog post does not portray a balanced picture of Israel, the only genuine democracy in the Middle East, about which many positive things can be said; it concentrates on the things wrong with Israel, which need to be publicised so that they can be fixed. However, this article is not intended as an excuse for Israel-bashing; if I see this going on, I will disable comments.
Every time a bureaucrat in black—ostensibly, ostentatiously, a Rav, a rabbi, a man of greatness—can discriminate against women; every time he can deny them access to holy sites and relegate them to the backs of buses; every time he can prohibit the image of a woman's face in public advertising; every time he can decide when and where and if, as soldiers, as students, as worshippers, they may sing or dance or speak or stand or even be present in Jewish worship, Iran wins.
Every time a well-connected crackpot preacher holds up vital hospital construction, brandishing a voodoo ruling of his alone; every time he abrogates the religious rights of Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal and even fellow Orthodox Jews, even rabbis; every time he bars Ethiopian or Moroccan schoolgirls from studying with Ashkenazi schoolgirls, Iran wins.
Every time a self-styled pious Jew places an extremist holy man above the law and its commands; every time he desecrates a mosque, every time he destroys Palestinian-owned olive trees; every time he attacks Arabs with rocks; every time he threatens peace activists in their homes; and every time he gets away with it—which is every time—Iran wins.
Every time the cabinet and the Knesset advance anti-democratic bills meant to stifle dissent, suppress the Arabic language, demonize human rights workers, and curb freedoms of expression and the press, Iran wins.
Every time the pro-occupation minority, here and in the Diaspora, defines the illegal Migron settlement outpost as Zionism, equates Israel's vital strategic interests with the permanent, God-mandated, clergy-driven, Messiah-oriented occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem; and blackmails the government into shunning peace talks, Iran wins.
