tl;dr Vote your conscience, vote your brain, vote for a party that is actually building a future for our children instead of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
===
“Only the right-wing can keep us safe!”
And they can’t even do that right?
“You have to vote for a party that will definitely cross the threshold!”
Who am I, Nostradamus?
“It’s not the right time to talk about Palestinian rights!”
Is it ever the right time?
…
My friends, I was born and raised a diehard Zionist.
I was given a then-popularish Israeli name in modern Hebrew – Gil Elon. (That’s what it says on my birth certificate, at least.)
I was taught from an early age, by my parents, Hebrew school teachers, and rabbis, that Israel is our home and that without the state we can never live as fully free and autonomous Jews. Our time and space and lives in America were good, but Not Quite Right. In America, we would always be outsiders, no matter how hard we waved the flag; people still called us “fcking kkes” and threw sht at us. In Israel – we were the people, and we didn’t even have to wave the flag to not be called fcking kkes.
Although you can be sure we waved that flag, because we were just grateful we had a home, at least in theory, somewhere out there across the ocean.
I was also taught from an early age, by every leader in my social world, including the above individuals, that the Israeli government and army have never done anything wrong and that everything Palestinians say is made up, including that they exist.
Accepting that a Palestinian existed as such would be tantamount to accepting the Israeli state had no right to exist, and volunteering to deport myself to Auschwitz.
Ad kedé kakh.
Coming to Israel for the first time on a Birthright trip was an astonishing experience. Not only had I never been in a place of people who were like me in all the ways I was different from every other American, never not felt like a complete outsider in a society of people who viewed my difference as a bizarre imposition on their world (try wearing a kippa in a NJ public school for a few formative years and let’s compare notes), but the land itself embraced me, enveloped me, became rooted in my bones in a way that I can only describe as a glove accepting a hand as its natural partner. I was in love. We were meant for each other. This was my homeland.
But directly interacting with a Palestinian for the first time in a Jerusalem hotel, while I was staffing another Birthright trip – for example, watching him decline a bribe an Israeli soldier offered him to sell them alcohol after hours – was a literally life-changing experience that burst my bubble, left me with a ton of questions, and put me on a path to come to my own reckoning with the state of Israel.
I returned to the States and got married a few years later. My then-wife (who had gone to graduate school in Beer Sheba) and I traveled through Israel on our honeymoon and the love was rekindled for us both. At the same time, we were both becoming politically active against the IAF’s bombings of Gaza and were actively pursuing Jewish-Islamic dialogue in the shadow of those wars. Our shared concerns for Palestinian civil rights and our criticisms of the state were jointly growing.
Returning the next year to Jerusalem, we both fell in love with the city and attended a few protests in defense of the residents of Sheikh Jarrah. I remember well the chants of “Lo Tignov, Lo Tirtsach, Tishcharru et Sheich Jarrach!” and explaining to confused Leftists why I was wearing a tallet to a political protest.
Holy work in the holy city drew me here, but what I could not have known (but should have obviously expected) was that my increasingly anti-state views would confronted, challenged, expanded, and developed by the realities of society between the river and the sea, the lived experience of both Israelis and Palestinians in this land.
Over the fifteen years that ensued, I’ve gradually both escaped my Americanism (though I’m somewhat convinced that it’s been stamped on my soul) and embraced my Israelism. I’m proud to say that my rougher edges have been softened, my black and white thinking has been filled with shades of many colors, and my appreciation for the contributions and sacrifices of flawed, messy human beings has become something that can withstand and rise above their flaws and their mess. Sharing the drama of terror and survival together shows you a side of the human story that can’t be reduced to only one angle or moral claim.
And at the same time, I’m proud to say I haven’t lost an ounce of my idealism. Sht, I’m turning forty next year and if anything I’ve become more critical of the status quo, with an additional appreciation for Marx and socialism that we’re unfortunately denied as Americans. I’ve also gained valuable perspective through the distance from the Orthodox world of my youth and its toxic politics, over the past two decades. I’m heading into my forties more committed than ever to the basic principle of equality. I refuse to believe that my freedom must come at the price of someone else’s unfreedom.
I teach my daughters that they are the equals of any man on this planet, and call me an idealist but I fckin BELIEVE it.
Which brings me to the point of this post.
I am a Zionist until the day the good lord calls me to the next world – and I have watched this country, which I will forever call my home, suffer three decades of incompetent, self-serving, ignorant and prejudiced leadership.
Three fcken decades.
The problems I’ve watched eat this country alive for thirty years did not start in the nineties – no my friends, they Go Way Back. But the past three decades, most of them under the premiership of one particularly corrupt and smooth-talking bastard, have seen so many of these problems turn into full-blown existential, moral, and spiritual crises, that I honestly wonder how future historians will fully explain this Historical Moment.
It’s beyond clear to me, and anyone with an operational brain who has been watching the news for the past twenty years, that Bibi must go.
He needs to go to jail and the corrupt, racist bastards he brought into the government need to find entirely new lines of work. Preferably something without access to guns or power and far away from children.
But the alternatives to Bibi’s Likud – as good and reasonable as some of them are, as electoral options – have a really low bar to meet. Some of them barely scrape by – they’re Not Bibi and/or have some kind of successes to point to – and some of them actually have a plan for tackling some of the bigger issues facing Israeli society today.
With the exception of a single party, none of them – each with their own excuses – is willing to deal with the single issue underpinning all other issues besetting Israeli society:
Palestinian civil rights.
Particularly in – but unfortunately, in no way limited to – the West Bank and Gaza.
Now, I understand how fully charged this issue is, on an emotional and even physiological level, for most Israelis. For alllll the reasons.
But – and hear me out – I humbly suggest that it’s just as fully charged, emotionally and bodily, for the Palestinians whose civil rights are violated so routinely that most Israelis don’t even think they exist.
Yes it’s a hell of an issue to tackle.
But just because this issue is a big one – I might say THE big one – that hits us in the feels and makes us afraid and angry… doesn’t mean we can endlessly pass the buck forward until someone rides in a white donkey to save us from ourselves.
It’s the biggest issue…. and in how it structures, shapes, warps, and justifies our society and its power imbalances, it affects, underpins, even sustains all the other issues we face together.
That’s my honest conclusion, after having continuously thought about this issue in some way, shape, or form for thirty years, and having continuously lived it for fifteen.
And almost none of the alternatives to the Likud are willing to voice a plan for, let alone take concrete steps towards, tackling this issue.
Honestly? I like both Bennet and Golan. They seem like nice guys, and hey, they’re not Bibi.
But we’ve had 78 years of disenfranchisement and some kind of military occupation or another, that culminated in the absolute worst massacre and war in Israeli history, and after watching the worst government in Israeli history turn an inherently broken system into an actual fcking dystopia for too many people, I’ve come to the considered conclusion that my vote, in this election, will be going to the party actually pledging to work for the people, fight for all our civil rights, end the endless wars, and lead us in building the country that we all deserve:
“A Place for Us All,” formed by the well-known group Standing Together.
I went tonight to hear several of their candidates speak, and I think they have their heads on straight and their hearts in the right place – and the courage to take on a broken system, a country filled with broken people, and build something great out of it.
Will having this conversation with millions of disillusioned Israelis and Palestinians be easy?
No.
Will “A Place for Us All” definitely pass the threshold and definitely get seats, instead of possibly siphoning votes away from more established and better funded parties opposing Bibi’s Likud?
No.
Will all our security problems be automatically solved by voting by our principles and our consciences, instead of playing false strategy games to give our effort an outsized halo of efficacy?
No.
Nothing is fcking guaranteed in this life.
But I said it before and I’ll say it again:
Palestinian civil rights is the biggest issue facing Israeli society today, and solving this issue will directly impact all our other issues, for the better.
After thirty years, I really think it’s that simple.
I’ve got one vote to cast.
The rest is in the good lord’s capable hands.