by Paul Usiskin
I’m an Israeli citizen and a Jerusalemite, resident in London. My mother was born in Palestine, her mother in Jerusalem. My father’s family were and are part of the Ussishkin Zionist family. I have spent most of my adult life as “a proud and obsessive supporter of Israel” as I described myself and 10 others in a letter to the Observer of 10th January 2009.
Nir Barket, Mayor of Jerusalem
I am confounded by the Mayor of Jerusalem (pictured left) flouting a Supreme Court order to evacuate and seal off a settler building in an Arab neighbourhood. The lack of any real Israeli answer to questions raised by the Goldstone report astounds me. Israel’s breach of its EU agreement on labelling settlement produce, Barak’s legitimizing Ariel College as a University neutralises both those who wish to boycott the former and those who wish to fight the academic boycott.
I am anxious about the country I love and I am not alone. I keep meeting people who express similar anxieties. Two examples stand out. One is a 70 year old –“Anthony” –living in a well to do suburb. I have yet to meet him, but he’s called me twice in the last few months, out of the blue. “Anthony” is desperate to know what’s happened to Israel. He has family there with whom he finds he can’t have a reasoned conversation about the occupation or the treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank. He insists, having lived in South Africa, that Israel is an apartheid state. I reject that, at least as it applies to Israel proper on the other side of the separation barrier. Anthony’s last question was “what happened in Cast Lead? Did Israel really use phosphor bombs against civilians?”
With “Danni”, born in an Arab country, I avoid the two state solution and queries about Israel. I saw him recently. He initiated an Israel conversation. I told him how I’d described myself, as per the Observer letter. He was surprised. He’d thought I was anti-Israeli. That stunned me. But the conclusion to our discussion stunned me even more. “Danni” agreed that if Israel wouldn’t be answerable to the UN for the Goldstone report, it owed accountability to both its citizens and Jews outside Israel who support it. Had his unconditional support for Israel become conditional? Yes. How had Cast Lead effected this? An Israeli he knew had served in Cast Lead and had raised serious questions about it, too similar to those in the UK media to ignore.
Granted these are not ideal samples of views on Israel, but they are indicative of a shift, and one that I’ve sensed here, in the USA and in Europe in the past year. Shift is an understatement. Cast Lead is a seminal moment in Israel’s history and in Israel-Diaspora relations. Israel needs to stop giving ammunition to its many delegitimizers. Jews within the whole House of Israel need to honestly share their anxieties in this moment. We need intensive efforts to stop “shift” becoming “rift”.
Paul Usiskin is co-Chair of Peace Now UK