July 5, 2005

Alison on Aliyah:  Disengagement:  An Existential Struggle

            About a week ago, I found myself in the proverbial “right place at the right time” to have quite a profound experience.  It was one of those times that I have found myself believing that everything really does happen for a reason.  I had come in from Be’er Sheva to Jerusalem for the weekend to reunite with an aunt on my father’s side of the family, whom I hadn’t seen in at least seven years and who was on her first trip to Israel.  She was with a group on one of those famous ten-day missions, staying in fancy hotels and running around like headless chickens trying to cram everything in.  I joined the group for most of that Saturday, walking around the city and visiting a museum or two.

We were both enjoying getting reacquainted, and when the day was nearing its end, she asked if I would be able to come back the next day.  I hemmed and hawed, not because I didn’t want to spend more time with her, but mainly because I had tons of work to do back in Be’er Sheva and was planning on returning fairly early in the day.  And then, thankfully, what I now refer to as my “little Israeli voice” chimed in, reminding me that relationships and human contact are what makes life so special, and the rest of it must be secondary.  I have always had that voice in my head, and it has always driven my behavior and my priority choices, but only since coming here have I felt that I have finally found other people who truly believe in this value and live their lives accordingly.

So I cancelled most of my plans for Sunday in order to have dinner with my aunt and her group.  What I didn’t know was that there was an added bonus:  in between the appetizers and the main course, the group was scheduled to hear a short speech by a highly respected professor of political science from Hebrew University.  What I also didn’t know, until we had already entered into a fairly heated political debate, was that he was sitting right next to me during the appetizers.  Not until he had looked me straight in the eye and told me that my orange bracelet (signifying opposition to the disengagement plan) represented a racist and ignorant perspective, did I realize who I was up against.

As he approached the front of the room to give his talk, declaring that much of what he was about to say would probably not please some of us, he eyed me expectantly.  I had already crossed my arms across my chest, determined to be disgusted with and strongly oppose whatever came out of his mouth in the next twenty minutes.  To my utter surprise, I had a profoundly different experience indeed.

He began with two central assertions:  1) the Israel of today is stronger and more able to defend herself than she has ever been, regarding her external enemies; and 2) the situation within Israel is nearing catastrophic dimensions and may very well cause her destruction, from the inside out.  Listing the “enemies without” one by one—Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon—he systematically explained why they no longer pose any real threat to Israel and how she would, in any case, be able to successfully defend herself against them in the unlikely event of an attack.  And then, just when I was starting to feel the return of that “warm, fuzzy feeling” (an odd mixture of pride and a totally unwarranted sense of security), he launched into a discussion of why Israel is on the brink of cataclysm.

The “demographic disaster” is a fairly well-known problem, one that seems to cause endless worry to sociologists and average Israelis alike.  But this professor presented it in a way I’d never thought about.  He began by telling us that it is a mathematical certainty that Arabs will soon (if they don’t already) outnumber Jews within the current borders, which include the “occupied territories.”  Nothing can stop this from happening, he argued—not North American immigration, not the fact that the religious community is popping out children as fast as they can make them, not the latest concerted efforts to entice Israelis to stay here or to return if they have already left.

Moreover, the professor asserted, he has taken notice of an ever-so-slight but undeniable shift in Arab politics, away from the “two-state solution” and back to the desire for a single state.  Why would they return to a political opinion that had neither merit nor possibility of success fifteen years ago?  Because, he declared with chilling candor, they are slowly starting to realize that they will, in fact, have the upper hand in a matter of years.  “What I am terrified to see,” the professor continued, “and what may be very close at hand, is the day when the Palestinian leaders will be able to hold a press conference and declare that they are willing to have one state, and live within the borders of Israel, as long as we will give them equal rights as citizens.  That is all they will ask.”

This is, indeed, the most frightening state of affairs, and will cut to the heart of our national crisis and endanger the very existence of Israel.  Why?  “Because,” he argued, “Israel will then be forced to choose between the two fundamental constitutional values on which this country rests:  being a democracy, and being a Jewish state.”  In essence, if the gauntlet is thrown down as such by the Palestinians, Israel will then be faced with two options that are equally dangerous to her continued survival.

The first option would entail widening the official borders to include Gaza and the West Bank within the sovereign state, giving the entire Palestinian population full equal citizenship as Israelis, and watching as the Arab population within the country quickly gains power, status, and seats in the Knesset, changing policies and laws left and right.  The second alternative would involve either refusing the Palestinians’ “offer” outright and remaining in the status quo (occupying these territories and not allowing them any real rights), or absorbing the lands into the boundaries of the state while continuing to treat the Arab population within us as second-class citizens.  This would be, in essence, apartheid.  Indeed, as the professor asserted bitterly, “How ironic it is that only a few short years after apartheid was abolished in South Africa, it may rise up again in Israel.”

And so, he argued, disengagement is absolutely critical to our survival as Jews, as a democracy, and as the state of Israel as we have come to know and respect her.  The only way to prevent such a gauntlet being thrown down is to never allow ourselves to be put into that position, and the only way to do that is to reverse the numbers.  Indeed, the only chance we have to keep “Israel proper” a considerable Jewish minority is to pull back her borders so that she does not include these majority-Arab areas.  And this, he asserted, will be the only means to preserve our so cherished Western values, the very values that make us a bastion of democracy in the otherwise quite “non-Western” Middle East.

            “And so,” the professor proclaimed, “come August 15^th, the Israeli army will be marching into Gaza, unarmed, to protect these values that are our only means of salvation.  Come August 15^th, you will be sitting at home, safe in your living rooms in America, and we will come to you.  Live and in color, you are going to see Israel’s existential struggle, and it will be apocalyptic.  You will see soldier against settler, military might against ‘crazy rebels.’  You will see women barricading themselves in their homes, clutching babies to their chests, sobbing and screaming as soldiers drag them away.  Twenty-four hours a day, the media will be attempting to show what animals, what maniacs we are over here.  And people will start to wonder why America is trying so hard to assist and protect such an “uncivilized” country and such a crazy people.  And you will have to explain to them that we are, indeed, fighting the deepest and most dangerous threat to our survival since Israel became a state 57 years ago.”

            As he described the state of affairs and the scenes awaiting all of us in less than a month, I sat in front of my chicken kabob, tears welling up in my eyes, biting my lip and digging my fingernails into my arm to keep from breaking down crying.  Every day that passes, and the closer we come to this scenario (there is, in fact, a running caption on Ha’aretz online counting down the days), the more terrified I feel and the more deeply I dread what is to come.  I feel viscerally connected to this struggle, as one who chose to uproot her life and immigrate to Israel as part of my own private effort to see her succeed.  I watch the news and read the reports constantly, each day bringing with it more protests, more tires burning on main interstates, more begging of the Knesset to delay or call it off, more desperation, more hopelessness.

The professor’s (and my) assumption that I would vehemently oppose his contentions was, to my surprise, absolutely unfounded.  While I honestly cannot say that I disagree with a single thing he said, I nonetheless continue to find myself at a crossroads while trying to form my own opinion on the matter.  My main concerns, as I told him later, are the personal, emotional, and individual dimensions; indeed, the issues he did not address at all.  Even if, as I conceded, the long-term effects of the disengagement are critically important to our future as a state, what about the present and what will happen to us as a direct and immediate result of this “well-meaning” plan?  What about the civil war that will inevitably take place during, and perhaps for decades after, the pullout itself?  Indeed, some would say it has already begun.  And what about the short-term increase in terror that will be unavoidable, and much more difficult to protect against without those “buffer zones”?  There could be thousands of lives lost in the short term, while we are trying desperately to protect our long-term interests.

And finally, what about the families that will be uprooted and taken to what are already shaping up to be, for all intents and purposes, refugee camps?  While Sharon has been pushing his plan to the Israeli government and the international community, no one has been thinking about the individual lives involved, and how to at least make an attempt to treat them with dignity and respect.  Instead, those who “agree” to the plan will be given a tiny trailer in an undeveloped area and promised a “real” community and permanent house within three years (the relocating to which, will then require a second uprooting).  Where is the focus on the actual people whose lives and futures will be utterly transformed by this wholly political decision?  Clearly, Israel must be forced to choose her future over her present, and what is hoped to be the best solution for the greatest amount of people, while overlooking the individuals, the unfortunate souls on the other side of the coin.  This is a terrible position to be in.

            I looked around the dining room as the professor concluded his remarks, and was not surprised to see that none of the others had had a similarly emotional reaction.  The group clapped and dug into their dinners.  End of story.  I don’t know what any of them were thinking or feeling, or whether or not the speech had made an impact on them.  The only indication I had heard—an exclamation of “I’m getting out of here!” when the professor had mentioned the date of the disengagement—was not terribly encouraging.

I hope that we will continue to have allies in America when this all begins, in spite of the biased media reports that will surely come in droves.  I hope that we will continue to have tourist support even in all of the uproar.  I hope that we get through this crisis without an unnecessary amount of national trauma and individual heartbreak.  Most of all, I hope desperately that Israel will remain a country that I can continue to be proud of supporting, and in which I can continue to be proud of living.