By Eugene Lipitz, Special to The Jewish Sound
When my daughter Sophie went to Israel, one moment for her seemed a profoundly transformational experience. It wasn’t seeing the Western Wall or the huge variety of Jewish people so different from her own experience. It wasn’t even going to a venture capital meeting with her father to learn about the incredible ideas and actions coming from Israelis to make this a better planet. It was seeing some scrawled graffiti on a wall in the old port of Tel Aviv. It read, “Am Yisrael chai.” She asked Israeli friends what this meant.
“Oh, it’s just some punks making a mess.”
Yes,” she persisted, “but what does it mean?”
“Well, it sort of means, ‘Israel lives’ or ‘Israel is life.’”
My friend told her this as if a fundamental belief in one’s own country by young people were the most ordinary occurrence.
Sophie knew otherwise. Her own friends are almost always predictably against their own country’s actions, nearly always take the other side in a conflict between their own country and another — especially so when one party is perceived as weak.
This response began a long journey for her philosophically, ethically and as a human being. I think she ultimately decided it was better, stronger, happier, and more effective to be for something than against it.
Earlier this year, several Jewish organizations sponsored a discussion of the boycott, divest and sanction campaign, a campaign that is against something, that something being Israel. BDS seeks the destruction of Israel and is indifferent to the awful fate of its inhabitants should that occur. Norman Finkelstein, a profoundly anti-Zionist thinker and activist, calls BDS intellectually dishonest because, while they try to frame their campaign as defending justice for Palestinians, it is clear that their policies seek the destruction of Israel.
The hatred is so transparent that most on the left and right both at a large, recent, local community co-sponsored by such diverse organizations as J Street, New Israel Fund, Federation and AIPAC said that BDS did not have a place at our community table. Nearly concurrently, an overwhelming vote at the UW student senate to reject divestment of Israel as a recommended policy of student government and an even stronger action taken by Western Washington University and the University of Oregon within states considered very critical of Israel, emphasized that BDS is outside our community’s values.
It did not signal that criticism of Israel is illegitimate — hardly. The debate here of Israeli governmental policy may not approach the fervor within Israel itself, but there are many viewpoints, few of which go unexpressed — and rightly so.
Nevertheless, it is easy to imagine viewpoints that have no place in our community. Indeed, the revival of the blood libel recently seen (and the event even praised by certain city council members) in weekly demonstrations in downtown Seattle sadly make it unnecessary to use one’s imagination. The darkness is here in our fair city.
The Jewish community that is part of the greater community must therefore decide: Does any group that seeks the destruction of the State of Israel and the almost certain death or expulsion of many millions of our Jewish brother and sisters who call Israel home, belong as part of our dialogue, our values?
If not, then be on the lookout for attempts in the future to rehabilitate BDS’s reputation in our community. While there are some who are angered that their friends and congregants who are BDS supporters now may feel like outsiders, it is right to say to them that we can love the sinner and hate the sin — words of hateful fratricide will not be tolerated.
I think this community recently reaffirmed what even the hoodlums of Tel Aviv know: “Israel is life.” I am proud to be part of the community that has so stridently proclaimed that simple, beautiful principle.
Eugene Lipitz is a member of Temple Beth Am and a parent of students at Seattle Jewish Community School.