Lost that loving feeling for Israel?
In his column at the Forward, Jay Michaelson explains why he's losing his love for Israel:
To paraphrase a recent Jewish organizational tagline, I’ve “hugged and wrestled with Israel” for 20 years now. At first, it was all embrace: Zionist songs and culture nourished me like mother’s milk, and on my first trip to Israel I kissed the tarmac at Ben Gurion, as did the other USY (United Synagogue Youth) kids.
Eventually, the wrestling came to the fore, particularly as I became more conscious of Palestinians, settlements and religious-secular divides. In 2002, I wrote about being “a leftist and a Zionist” and how difficult it was to maintain those dual political identities. And for several years, I’ve argued for a more nuanced approach to Israel advocacy and education than the hail of falafel balls and the bludgeon of Taglit-Birthright.
But lately I’ve noticed that I’m becoming a candidate for advocacy myself. I’ve loved Israel for decades, lived there for three years, and studied in detail the subtleties of its society and conflicts. And so it is with the sadness that accompanies the end of any affair that I notice my love is starting to wane.
Michaelson offers four reasons, with plenty of explanation. But, for now, here are the bullet points:
1) "First, I admit, it has become simply exhausting to maintain the ambivalence, the hugging and the wrestling, the endless fence sitting."
2) "The second reason for my waning love of Israel is that the Israel I love is increasingly disappearing. It started in Jerusalem, with the exodus of the secular left and the slow, agonizing demise of the culture they created."
3) "The third way in which my love for Israel is waning is that I’ve started to second-guess the love itself."
4) "Finally, I think my love of Israel is fading because I feel personally implicated by its injustices, even though I have chosen to live in America and have relinquished my right to have any say over Israeli policy."
As luck would have it, in the very same issue of the Forward, Michael Kaminer has just what the doctor ordered: a feature story on the first all-Israeli gay porn film. Michael Lucas, the man behind “Men of Israel," explains that he's simply trying to boost Israel's image.
Lucas claims that his motivation behind “Men of Israel” was not just titillation, but also a counterbalance to lopsided portrayals of Israel in mainstream media. “It’s free PR for Israel, and it’s much better than the PR they’re getting on the news,” he said during a tour of the company’s expansive second-floor offices, with views of the New York Times building across the street. “The reality is that Israel has only one face to people on the street, and that’s the West Bank and Gaza. All people see in the media is a country of disaster. They get images of a blown-up bus.”
By contrast, Lucas said, the images in “Men of Israel” -- filmed in telegenic Tel Aviv, Haifa and desert locations by Israeli fashion photographer Ronen Akerman -- amount to a pornographic stimulus campaign for gay tourism.
“Nobody goes to Israel for Golda Meir, I’m so sorry,” Lucas said in heavily Russian-accented English. “People don’t care that you have a great orchestra, and they’re not particularly interested in the Holocaust museum. Gay people, and straight people, want beautiful beaches, beautiful nature, beautiful men and women, good food, good hotels. Israel shouldn’t be mistaken about why people go there. They need me.” Neither the Israeli Consulate nor the Israel Ministry of Tourism office in New York returned calls or e-mails for comment.
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Mr. Michaelson,
Since your love is conditional then what do you expect. Come to Israel and change her. Live here and be a part of the solution and not the problem from a far. As President Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country”?
Think about it a little. Stop pouting like a child and have the B..ls to live here and fight for the change you believe in. Otherwise, your love or now hate has little value for us living here in Israel.
To the moderators: How you can leave up a comment such as Thoroughly Disgusting’s, using the term Zionazis to describe Zionists (or perhaps Jews?) is simply beyond me. At the very least the comment should be edited.
To Mr. Michaelson, a love that is dependent on something - in this case Israel behaving as you would wish rather than how she feels is necessary for her survival - is not a true love, and we Israelis are far better off without your “love”, which would strangle her or cause her to commit suicide.
Of course, “TD” contaminates this site with repulsive filth such as “Zionazis” because he’s baiting JTA to throw him out of here. Sadly, JTA seems to have a comments’ policy of enabling anti-Semitism. Why else would a Jewish Web site tolerate the never-ending flood of Jew hate which plagues these pages every day? But it is fruitless for a mere mortal to inquire as to said policy, since JTA also has a policy of never responding to its online readers. So Jew haters get deliberately overlooked here, while Jews themselves are held to a much stricter standard of blogging conduct. Go figure!
I have now several times made the challenge to the Israel baiters to define Zionism and how it impacts modern Israel. None have done so because they follow the Muslim media tact of using the word Zionist to mean a dirty Jew in standard lexicon.
But Dawg and TD and Marilyn Shepherd and David and Evans and a growing host of others just keep tossing garbage on Israel. Those d@#$d Jews! Killing and brutalizing those helpless Palestinians - and all for no reason whatsoever.
Let’s start by seeing if any of you know what Zionism is and how it impacts current Israel. Let this be a pop quiz to test your knowledge.
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Rob Brownstein
09/22/09 01:01 PM
I disagree totally with Michaelson. My love for Israel has not waned even as it has changed. Who am I to judge the transformation from kibbutzim to a country that is a major player in global high technology? Before there was “occupied territory,” the belligerent neighboring states and the Arab League was still trying to destroy Israel. Nothing has changed except the reasons for wanting to destroy it. I see Israel the way, I think, a parent should see their child. I see the flaws but I still love him/her unconditionally. And, please don’t offend me by accusing me of being an “Israel right or wrong” proponent. Perhaps if the nation embraced a political system that was really analogous to facism, I could be persuaded to disown it. But, come on, America’s flirting with domestic phone taps is a greater threat to freedom than anything Israel has done. In what other Middle Eastern country are the peace marches? Where are the Sudanese activists protesting what has been going on in Darfur? In Egypt opposition is routinely quashed with no regard for human rights. So, Israel has still not crossed any of my lines in the sand; and continues to get my unconditional love.