blog 16-two walls, innumerable opinions- emanuelle sippy

By any measure, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict gets more coverage in the western media than almost any other. According to research conducted by Shalevbrims and published in both The Economist and Haaretz, a simple Google News search indicates that, on average, the media publishes one story, 

for every 50,000 Chinese or Indians, 20,000 Bangladeshis, 8,000 Pakistanis, 5,000 Russians, 3,400 Egyptians (in the midst of horrific soccer riots) or 1200 Syrians.... But it takes only 300 Israelis for each Google News item on Israel (Shalevbrims).

People who know about little else with respect to international news, know something, however little it may be, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the most part, though, when people talk or write about the conflict, it is presented as a struggle between two parties: Jews and Palestinians. The reality, however, is much, much messier than that. There isn’t a single Jewish, or even Israeli, side, nor is there a single Palestinian one. Our failure to recognize the complexities of sentiments, allegiances, histories, and experiences is—in my mind—part of what makes this conflict seem so intractable. But it isn’t only the world at large that fails to see the nuance of perspective, it is within Jewish and Palestinian communities that the blindspots are often the most profound. I know this, not only because of what scholars have argued but also because of my own experiences in navigating complex relationships to Israel and Israel politics within the Jewish community.

In his piece, “Young Anti-Zionists: Be Uncomfortable, Like I Am With My Zionism,” Peter Beinart, a leading scholar on the region, urges Gen-Z to be less black and white with our understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not only in our outward rhetoric but also in our conceptual understanding of the terrain, something which the preponderance of extreme and knee-jerk opinions often hinders. He begins by claiming that young Jews, who tend to be more left-wing than older genderations, rightfully want to engage in dialogue with and support Palestinian rights but he argues that we must also entertain and engage with other Jews’ perspectives if we are going to move the needle and make real political change (Beinart).  

  Beinhart asks my generation of Jews to imagine what Israel meant in the aftermath of genocide. He asks us to ponder what it would mean to us if we had lived in countries without rights to religious freedom, or were in need of refuge. Beinart also argues that Zionism, like other forms of Nationalism, was initiated with a plethora of intents and he reminds us that many of those who identify with “Cultural Zionism” see the rift between ethno-religious superiority and democratic ideals.  Just as America’s founding was the liberation of some, the genocide, colonization, and enslavement of others, Israel’s founding encompassed more than one reality, and its present does as well. 

Israeli independence in 1948 is a profound example of how one people’s triumph can come at the expense of another’s trauma. (What Israelis call, Yom Ha’atzmaut, Independence day, Palestinians call, Al Nakba, the catastrophe.) But even that distinction—between triumph and trauma—isn’t so simple; both Jewish and Palestinian stories are inextricably linked to trauma. A key tenant of Israel’s truth-claim is that the Jewish people have been subjected to centuries oppression culminating in the Holocaust, the destruction of 50% of European Jewry, over Six Million Jewish people. To live in the modern state of Israel is to inherit a litany of traumas before and after independence. Israel’s wars, experiences of terrorist attacks, and realities of compulsory military service have created a state obsessed with its own security. So too, do Palestinians have legitimate historical claims not only to land but to generational poverty, refugee status, and inherited trauma. And today, many live without clean water, basic health care, and education. In order to understand the conflict, we have to hold and reconcile the paradoxes between Palestinians and Israelis. 

And for me, and my generation of young, progressive Jews, this matter becomes more complicated because we have to wrestle with divisions within our own communities, as well as with our own, often competing, concerns and desires. The increased rise in antisemitism throughout the world is, according to the Anti-Defamation League, not unconnected to the way in which people perceive of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. An extensive study conducted in 2019 in 18 countries, the ADL found a marked rise in anti-Semitic attitudes, with “about one in four Europeans polled harbor[ing] pernicious and pervasive attitudes toward Jews” and between 40-70 percent of respondents “believ[ing that] Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own country” (ADL).

For centuries, the phenomenon of disloyalty has been used to justify antisemitism and fuel persecution. Concerns about antisemitism are real, a shooting last week in a kosher market and the desecration of a synagogue in Beverly Hills and cemeteries in Europe are just two small reminders. In recent years, however, antisemitic hatred and false critiques of disloyalty have become intertwined with valid critiques of the Israeli government and the occupation, making the debate and sentiments all the more muddy in myriad ways. 

In an era when antisemitism is on the rise, I share a desire to ensure that 46.2% of the world’s Jews, who live in Israel, have a home; however, I also believe that that home cannot be sustained while Palestinians remain under-occupation, stateless and oppressed.  Along with that tension, however, I came to feel another with respect to my relationship to Israel. 

In August, I traveled with my family to Israel for the first time. On our first morning in Jerusalem, my mother and I went to the Western Wall for a progressive women’s prayer service. Above us, on the other side of the wall, is the Al-Aksa Mosque but that was not the source of conflict. When state-sponsored antisemitism and sexism were leveled at me by teenage Jewish women who recite most of the same prayers that I do, who enact many of the same rituals as me, but who embody the antithesis of what I think it means to be Jewish, I was stunned. They shushed and screamed over the words of our ancestors, while I wondered if the Anti-Defamation League denounces the treatment of progressive Jews at the Western Wall, the way they denounced it in the 18 other countries surveyed. That morning it felt like the cognitive dissonance of those who claimed to be pious outnumbered the prayers shoved in the crevasses of Jerusalem stone.

In Israel, I thought would feel like a part of the religious majority, even though I knew I would be in the political minority. Yet, as I walked away from the Western Wall, rather than experiencing a sense of unity, I found myself wrestling with the extent of our polarization. At the same time, I found it illuminating. If Orthodox Israelis have no regard for the rights of Progressive Jews, it’s no surprise that they are also indoctrinated with utter intolerance for Palestinians. While some Jews restrict my freedom to be at the “holy” wall as a Jew, there is another wall–the separation or barrier wall—that restricts the freedom of Palestinians to move beyond the boundaries of the occupied territories.

I visited that wall on my trip as well. It is a wall, constructed by Israelis, to ensure their safety from attacks by terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah. It is now covered with Banksy’s artwork, juxtaposing play and plight. Through murals, it depicts the fact that Palestinian children aren’t unscathed by barbed wire, conflict, and strife. In graffiti, it speaks hopes and prayers for peace, Salam and Shalom. Yet the wall is also riddled with swastikas and antisemitic tropes. Opinions are spray painted over and under each other. Calls for justice, for Palestinian reparations are wrapped up in Anti-Jewish, not merely anti-Israeli sentiments. The realities of Palestinian oppression, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism co-exist, as they do in the muddled layers of paint.