Blast Off

We moved here before we managed to decide about something pretty basic:  How should we feel about this country?

Some days we despair, which is easier.  Reading the headlines on Haaretz is kind of like “I’ll have the regular”: give me one feature article about something evil the army did to Palestinians, a side of corrupt politicians bickering over public resources, and a new survey revealing that the poor are getting poorer for dessert.  Mistreating foreign workers and refugees?  Settlement growth continuing unabated?  Lieberman more popular than the Beatles?  No surprises here.  We like this stuff so much we literally make a job of taking nice Zionists from abroad to south Tel Aviv to see that even the holy land has drug addicts and sex work.  If you want to arrange the tour for your Birthright group or family Bar Mitzva trip, shoot us an email.

Convincing ourselves that there’s no hope, that the currents of racism and social disintegration are overpowering, and that it’s pointless to try and fix anything, is simple and seductive.

But, on some days we hope.  It’s harder and a lot more precarious.  But it’s the point of everything we do, the choice to demand ourselves to take moral responsibility, and it might – maybe – have some basis in reality.  Once in a while we remember that Israel has deep roots of (imperfect, but important) social solidarity, and deeper roots into the spirit of the Jewish people (with tzedek, tikun olam, chevrat mofet, and all that jazz).  That it used to be one the most equal societies in the developed world, that it created a (flawed) democracy in a colonial authoritarian wilderness, that we have drip irrigation and Arab-Jewish dialogue and the revived Hebrew language and maybe even a few more things to bring the world.

Earlier this week Bradley Burston wrote in his Haaretz blog that despite the apparent surge in extreme right wing sentiment in Israel, a strong, revived social democratic movement is just around the corner. At the peak of his excitement Burston writes:

There was a time when, for Jews the world over, standing up for a democracy-minded Israel meant standing up for yourself, for what you, in your heart of hearts, believe.

That time is back… 

We read this article skeptically and doubted his case.  But we also stood in shocked disbelief at the demonstration that inspired Burston, unable to accept that more than 20,000 Jewish and Arab Israelis actually appeared on a cold rainy night in Tel Aviv for a last-minute rally in support of democracy (Yes, that is now a cause that needs supporting), listening to activists and MKs from Hadash to Kadima (Avoda being the notable exception), but cheering loudest for Nitzan Horowitz from Meretz when he said he is a Zionist because he believes in the Declaration of Independence and its promise of equality.  And it made us remember that maybe there is something to the old “hope” thing, התקווה as it’s known.  Maybe.

Reading the news, talking to monit sherut drivers, and just plain living in this country, we are constantly collecting news and opinions, trying to figure it out where this is all coming from and where we’re going. Are we really on the cusp of a new Zionist social-democratic revolution? Or are we about to fall off the hyper-nationalist / religious / fascist deep end? Or something boring in the middle?

No matter how it plays out, HaOsef is going to be trying to make some sense of it.