One of my great regrets is that I will never visit Eretz Zion. Make no mistake, I have never felt a great compulsion to visit the State of Israel, despite many opportunities. Part of the Diaspora Jewish experience is confronting, and often dodging, the offers of adventure, self-fulfillment, or whatever Zionism is selling in “The Promised Land” (always capitalized like a proper name). None of them ever appealed to me, however.

The best known of these programs, of course, is Taglit-Birthright, a ten-day junket meant to give young Diaspora Jews (aged 18-26) the opportunity to “find your belonging” in the State of Israel. About 20 percent of all American Jews between the ages of 18 and 46 have participated. And why not? It’s a free trip.

It’s propaganda, of course. One friend who went on Birthright described it as “Jewish Love Boat with sweaty sex in the desert,” as one might expect with that demographic. Lying in the afterglow in a desert wadi, the organizers no doubt expect the participants will get an oxytocin cuddle-buzz for the State of Israel and choose to make Aliyah. I’m sure many do.

In any event, I was already too old to qualify when Taglit-Birthright began thirty years ago. Nevertheless, the opportunities for a free trip to the State of Israel that did cross my path over the years, as an academic and as a journalist, never held much appeal. At a time when I was a technology reporter, writing for magazines like NetGuide, InternetWeek, and daily newspapers like the Montreal Gazette and the National Post, I was declining free trips to “Start-Up Nation” almost every week.

I was concerned, of course, about the conflict of interest in accepting largesse from people and companies about which I would be writing – although that was never really that much of an issue in the otherwise fast-and-loose world of technology magazines. But, more than that, I really didn’t want to have anything to do with the State of Israel. Even when there was a posting for an academic position at an Israeli university that fit me to a “T,” and for which I might even have had a bit of an inside line, I couldn’t bring myself to apply.

That might have been a bad career choice (one of the people on the search committee later asked why I didn’t apply for the position), but I just couldn’t imagine myself living in the State of Israel. The thought of that possible future was frankly nauseating.

I wanted nothing to do with the State of Israel then, and I want nothing to do with it now. There were a brief few moments a couple of years ago when I began a book project that needs Israeli sources, and I considered that it might not be so bad to consult some Israeli archives, but that idea passed quickly and, since the State of Israel began its brutal war on Gaza, the likelihood that I would allow myself to be complicit even by just visiting the Tel Aviv Hilton is pretty much nil. To set foot in the State of Israel would be a tacit endorsement of all that it is.

Yet, for all of that, it makes me sad. While I want nothing to do with the State of Israel – that militaristic, bloody, brutal state in the eastern Mediterranean – I would be lying if I said that, as a Jew, I did not feel some connection to Eretz Zion. And that is something different. This is the land of my distant ancestors, the place where the Temple stood and where Yohannan ben Zakkai convened the Council of Yavneh to reconfigure and reinvent Judaism.

My Zeyde said, when he traveled to the Holy Land for the one time in his life when he was over 80 years old, that all he wanted to do was to retrace the footsteps of the great sages, to stand on the Temple Mount as Maimonides did, and to see the olive groves of Judea. He didn’t want to live there, or to own it but, as a Jew, he wanted to see it with his own eyes, and I would be lying if I said that I did not understand that.

I don’t want to own Eretz Zion, or to settle it, or to occupy it. I only wish to see it. But the Holy Land is occupied by the State of Israel, a vicious, oppressive, brutal country that is blocking my way.

Not in my lifetime.

28 July 2024

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I really have nothing to say about Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress today. After following on his every move and hanging on his every word for more than nine months, waiting for something – anything – new, or a tiny bit of evidence that there could be some movement, shame, or even that he is reconsidering the obliteration of Gaza, I saw… Nothing. Just more of the same.

… The same blustering hate… The same indignation at the very idea that he, the Kohen Gadol of Zionism’s Third Temple, should be held to the standards of common mean… The fury that there are people – who must, after all be antisemites – who believe that murdering 40,000 civilians is just plain wrong… The outrage that he is not impotent. And this latter, I believe, is what most energizes Netanyahu’s rage.

There were no surprises; it was a fairly typical American political ritual, meant to signify consistency and reliability rather than vision and change. Congressional leaders did not invite Netanyahu to speak for any reason other than vaguely “showing support” without actually saying what they actually support. (Certainly not Jews, despite their rhetoric, if right-wing, pro-Israel antisemitism is any evidence. Perhaps they only support Jews when they are not in the United States?)

And there was the usual division-bell vote, where members of Congress demonstrated, with their feet, how much bullshit they were willing to stand. About one hundred Democrats and no Republicans walked out, which seems like an accurate straw poll of where the State of Israel’s support lies in America today. There were no surprises.

I did, however, come away with the impression that this man, red faced and frothing at the mouth, pointing fingers and hurling accusations from the rostrum against any and all who do not agree with him (apparently, I am a tool of Iran, who knew?) demanding unearned respect and veneration, seemed very small. His speech was, after all, nothing more than a tantrum by a toddler who cannot get his way; it was apoplexy more than rhetoric, let alone a reasoned case for the State of Israel.

Netanyahu was on full display as a man who has already lost, and knows it, and has puffed up his chest with incel fantasies of being a great war leader on the side of all that is good and holy, while privately knowing that he is, indeed, no such thing. It was the spectacle of a bully who knows well how he will be remembered by history.

Yet, the tragedy is that history has not yet caught up.

25 July 2024

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The State of Israel will come to an end. There is nothing particularly controversial about this eventuality, or there shouldn’t be; states come and go through history. Even the mighty Roman Empire, which obliterated what remained of the Judean polity, destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, and exiled (well, sort of) the Jewish people in 71 CE came to an end, even if it is hard to exactly pin down when that end actually was. In any event, there is no Roman Empire today, so we can be pretty sure it’s gone.

Few states last as long as the Roman Empire, of course – according to the traditional estimate, that was 500 years, give or take – and even if some contemporary states have made it to somewhere near half that longevity, they are, in fact, showing their age. The United States, as currently constituted, is 235 years old, the United Kingdom is, charitably, 317 years old, and the Fifth French Republic is 79-year-old Baby Boomer.

Few states last even than long. The vast majority of the world’s sovereign states were born in the last century, or so, and more than half after 1945. The ancient traditions of the states can, of course, be misleading. There was a recognizable country called Spain in 1492, but the contemporary Spanish state, a constitutional monarchy, was only created in 1978 (46 years ago, if you’re keeping track), after being interrupted by fascism in 1939, by republicanism in 1931, by a monarchical restoration in 1874, more republicanism in 1873, and Napoleon in 1808.

On average, the lifespan of a state seems to be something less than 200 years, with larger, wealthier states typically lasting longer than smaller, poorer ones. But even large, wealthy states often have very brief existences. Today’s thriving German Federal Republic is 34 years old and, even if we were generous enough to overlook its turbulent, violent history and frequent transformations from monarchy to republic to dictatorship to republic again, there has only been a German state since 1871. It is doing pretty well for a 153-year-old, but who knows what we might find 50 years down the road.

 So, it should be hardly controversial to say that the State of Israel will someday cease to exist. On the contrary, the belief among Zionists and Israelis that the State of Israel is some kind of permanent geopolitical reality that will never and, more importantly, should never change is an absurd delusion. It has its roots in the messianic promise of Zionism, of course, even if few Zionists, either now or in the movement’s early years.

Herzl himself promised that it would be a permanent and enduring solution to what he called “the Jewish question.” Writing at the birth of the State of Israel, the philosopher Simon Rawidowicz was skeptical, noting that the point of Zionism was nothing less than the “end of history.” Indeed, in The Necessity of Exile, Shaul Magid observes that Zionism’s goal is the end of Jewish life through its transformation into Israeli life.

One can, I suppose forgive Zionists and Israelis for believing that the State of Israel is eternal, since that is the basic ideological premise of Zionism. Indeed, most states imagine themselves as existing out of time; as the historian Alexei Yurchak’s great monograph on the ends of the Soviet Union declared it is title, Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More.

Looking at all of the defunct states of human history, from Alexander the Great’s empire, to Czechoslovakia, to Rome of course, it boggles the mind that anyone could reasonably believe that their state will be the exception. Yet, to suggest that the State of Israel, like all states, will someday come to an end is to invite controversy. The great delusion of Zionism is that the State of Israel is somehow both historically necessary and historically transcendent. The State of Israel is special.

It is not, of course. It is just another geopolitical arrangement, as sordid and tawdry as all the others, and just as temporary. And with that being the case, it should not be beyond the boundaries of legitimate discussion to speculate about how it will end – because it will.

And, because it will end, we should be able to ask how it will end. By this, I don’t mean by what means or forces the State of Israel will die, but rather how it will meet the inevitability of its demise with grace, dignity, and leaving behind a better world. I mean something akin to asking how I will die – not what disease or accident will bring me to my deathbed, but rather with how I face my end and leave behind a better world.

24 July 2024

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