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The Zionist reality: A euphoric, frustrating day at NYC’s Tel Aviv beach party (UPDATED WITH VIDEO)

By Ami Eden · June 22, 2009

So I decided to take the kids Sunday to the Tel Aviv beach party in Central Park.

Let's just say it was a typical Israel experience. In fact, I'll go even further: My emotional rollercoaster of a day was a perfect metaphor for the Jewish people's Zionist experience as a whole.

Like the early Zionist pioneers (though I'm not sure how many of the Halutzim wore skimpy bikinis), we found a bunch of sand and helped bring it to life.

Next came the equivalent of the partition plan: the announcement that five "vacations to Israel" were being given out to those who did the best boogying to the Israeli pop music bellowing from the speakers (live bands would come later). Yes, it was a tough road to climb, but the door had been opened, if only we had the will to turn a dream into a reality.

Then the euphoria of 1948 and 1967 all wrapped into one: the MCs declared that the Edens were the first winners!

And finally, the letdown: I opened the envelope only to discover that our prize was two free nights in a Prima Hotel.

We Jews hoped/believed that a Jewish state and the victory of 1967 would mean a change in the Jewish condition, an end to anti-Semitism, an end to anti-Jewish violence. We Edens thought a "free vacation to Israel" meant, well, a free vacation to Israel. As in, say, plane tickets.

Then again, who needs to actually go to Israel when you can just wander over to Central Park to experience that I-can't-believe-these-Israelis-think-I'm-the-crazy-one feeling. As in: When I tried to figure out why they were billing this as a free vacation but not covering the travel, several organizers didn't see the problem. Hey, these are very nice hotels, they said.

And, in the middle of it all, someone stole one of my kids' Crocs.

Of course, sometimes you need to take a step back from all the debates, fights, wars, terrorism, aggravations and say: If I had told the early Zionists a century ago that there would be a Jewish state in the Holy Land and this would be it, they would have considered it a miracle and a blessing. Similary, had my kids woke me up Sunday morning and said that for Father's Day they had won me a free two-night stay at a decent hotel in Israel, I would have been quite thrilled.

So ... I still say we should be looking at some free plane tickets (and we could have done without running to the shoe store for some replacement Crocs) but, all in all, a net plus.

UPDATE: Here's some video from the day (taken long after the Edens had departed the scene).

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Jews fit to print

By Uriel Heilman · June 22, 2009

There have been several interesting Jewish- or Israel-related items in The New York Times over the weekend. Here's a sampling:

Magazine contributor Joshua Hammer writes about how he got caught up in an effort by the U.S. Department of Justice to bring Palestinian terrorist Jihad Jaara to justice: "The Palestinian Terrorist and Me."
A section of a highway in Missouri has been renamed for Abraham Joshua Heschel -- and he has the local neo-Nazi chapter to thank for it.
William K. Rashbaum offers an insider look at Rabbi Leib Glanz, the Satmar power broker whose role in organizing a jailhouse bar mitzvah made headlines last week.
A campaign over the weekend in New York by an anti-Semitic group generated little interest -- by participants or bystanders.
Simon Romero writes about a group of Peruvians with Jewish roots who converted to Judaism and made their way to Israel. For a related story, see JTA correspondent Florenica Arbiser's story on the plight of a group of mass converts in Colombia, which we published last week.
David Adjmi has written a new play on the Syrian Jewish experience in Brooklyn. Felicia R. Lee has the review.
Punk is Jewish -- who knew? Ralph Blumenthal writes about the four New York godfathers of punk who packed an auditorium last week at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research to excavate the unlikely roots of the rebellious and stripped-down 1970s rock genre, replete with fascist trappings.
Op-Ed contributor Tony Judt takes aim at Israeli settlements.
Israeli journalist Ari Shavit, in an Op-Ed that appears online only, writes that most analysis failed to understand why Benjamin Netanyahu's acceptance of a Palestinian state was of historical importance: "On the one hand it seals Israel’s psychological and ideological conversion regarding the Palestinians; on the other hand it calls for a similar Palestinian conversion. It commits even the Israeli right to the need to establish a Palestinian state, but it demands an unequivocal Palestinian recognition of the Jewish state."
In response to demand from students, SAR Academy -- a yeshiva day school in the Riverdale section of the Bronx -- offers Arabic classes, Joseph Berger writes.

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Tony Judt takes aim at settlements

By Uriel Heilman · June 22, 2009

New York Times Op-Ed contributor Tony Judt, a British historian who is the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of European Studies at New York University, does not much like the idea of Jews living in the West Bank.

In an Op-Ed on Monday, he writes that Israel promotes the use of the word "settlements" to connote something positive, due to the word's association with the pioneering settlers of Israel's kibbutzim. But, he writes, in truth the settlements contravene the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the annexation of land conquered by force. (Actually, Israel has not annexed the West Bank, but why quibble?)

Judt also inflates the size and proportion of the settler population -- they number half a million, which exceeds the population of Tel Aviv by one-third, he writes. Judt fails to mention that the Jewish residents of eastern Jerusalem, whom he counts as settlers, are not considered as such by Israelis (or, generally speaking, by the U.S. government) or that metropolitan Tel Aviv actually has 3 million people -- it's just the municipal boundaries that are small.

Judt also makes Bar-Ilan University sound like a Taliban madrassa by calling it "the heartland of rabbinical intransigence" and the place where "Yigal Amir learned to hate Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin before heading off to assassinate him in 2005."

He concludes:

President Obama faces a choice. He can play along with the Israelis, pretending to believe their promises of good intentions and the significance of the distinctions they offer him. Such a pretense would buy him time and favor with Congress. But the Israelis would be playing him for a fool, and he would be seen as one in the Mideast and beyond.

Alternatively, the president could break with two decades of American compliance, acknowledge publicly that the emperor is indeed naked, dismiss Mr. Netanyahu for the cynic he is and remind Israelis that all their settlements are hostage to American goodwill. He could also remind Israelis that the illegal communities have nothing to do with Israel’s defense, much less its founding ideals of agrarian self-sufficiency and Jewish autonomy. They are nothing but a colonial takeover that the United States has no business subsidizing.

While Judt slams the American news media for taking Benjamin Netanyahu's "bait" of "honeyed cliches" on Palestinian statehood -- "On June 14 he gave a much-anticipated speech in which he artfully blew smoke in the eyes of his American interlocutors," Judt writes -- Israeli political commentator Ari Shavit counters in a Times Op-Ed (which appears only online) that most analysis of Bibi's speech failed to grasp what made it so historically important:

Many failed to see what was new in Netanyahu’s vision. For decades, peace professionals and activists believed that when peace comes, Palestine will be demilitarized and Israel will be Jewish. Americans, Europeans and Israelis involved in the peace process took this premise to be self-evident.

But the Palestinians never accepted this premise. They did not agree to limit the sovereignty of their future state so that Israel’s security would be guaranteed. They did not recognize the existence of a Jewish people which expresses its right of self-determination in the Jewish nation-state. They did not go through the profound ideological conversion required so that a real two-state peace could be achieved and sustained.

That is why Netanyahu’s new interpretation of the two-state solution is of historical importance.

Its significance is two-fold. On the one hand it seals Israel’s psychological and ideological conversion regarding the Palestinians; on the other hand it calls for a similar Palestinian conversion. It commits even the Israeli right to the need to establish a Palestinian state, but it demands an unequivocal Palestinian recognition of the Jewish state.