Bediavad – in retrospect

Bediavad is one of my favorite Hebrew words.  Possibly because it’s the name of one of my favorite songs– a song I’ve been listening to on my iTunes for over a decade.

It means “in retrospect”.  Looking back.

After traveling in Europe for almost two months, I have some thoughts on Israel I didn’t have when I left.

When I left Israel, I was pretty angry.  After seeing my hopes for gay rights shrivel in the face of self-righteous rabbis, after seeing my government go after refugees and Druze and Arabs for being non-Jewish minorities, after seeing some particularly egregious and abusive behavior, I had had it.  I had had two different landlords try to steal money from me.  Israel sucked.  And it was time to get out.

I expected Europe to be much easier.  And I was wrong.  That’s Israeli humility- acknowledging when things aren’t what you expected.  When a new perspective helps you change course.

Europe is a really, really hard place to a Jew.  An ever harder place to be an Israeli.  While it is certainly relaxing to enjoy gorgeous nature, to reconnect with the concept of personal space, and to take the rocket alert apps off your phone, it is not as easy here as I expected.  Take a quick look at my posts from here and you’ll see there is a lot of hardship for Jews here.  A lot of irrational hatred of all things Israel.  Especially by people with fancy degrees, fashionable clothes, hipster attitude- far leftists.  Like the ones yesterday who chastised me for wanting to take a photo of leftist graffiti on their house.  I apologized, I didn’t understand it was their home.  And I said I wouldn’t take a picture.  One woman then told me it was “more radical” to graffiti churches, town hall, and banks.  Their fancy historic home in the Barcelona suburbs didn’t mean they were “rich”, it was the fruits of their hard work, and it was “rude” to desecrate it.  But to do so to other people’s property was totally acceptable- and encouraged.

When I suggested that damaging property is generally a bad thing all around, the woman grabbed my arm, twice.  Completely unprovoked.  After telling her not to after the first time.  She then laughed at me for asking not to be touched.  I doubt she’d feel the same if I violated her space.  As I walked away, they shouted things about me being American.  It’s a good thing I didn’t tell them I was Israeli.  To be an Israeli in Europe is to often live a closeted identity.

The psychology of the far left is the same as the far right in that they are abusive.  The only difference I can tell is the people they hate.  The far right hates gays, immigrants, Muslims, diversity.  The far left hates Israelis, banks, corporations, rich people, and quite often the religious.  And they both hate Jews.  Perhaps the only group they hold in common.  Both groups demand extreme sensitivity to their issues and evade empathy for anyone outside the purview of what they deem as morally acceptable.  It’s a childlike black-and-white thinking perhaps in some ways is meant to protect.  On some level, I understand it- certain groups of people are more likely to be a source of pain than others.

But this thinking alone is ineffective as it immediately renders millions of people off limits and condemned, creating more pain and suffering.  People who boycott Israel have this mentality- lumping together 8 million different people under the category of “wrong”.  While never bothering to consider whether their own countries are worthy of boycotts- or whether boycotting an entire country is ever really fair to the diverse people and perspectives residing within it.  Privilege can be a useful concept in understanding people’s power relative to one another.  But when it becomes weaponized as an entire ethical system, it falls short because nobody is wholly privileged or unprivileged.  And it just creates a lot of guilt instead of progress.  Perhaps not coincidentally, it is often wielded by ultra-wealthy highly educated people who are unwilling to acknowledge or grapple with the benefits they themselves enjoy.

So I’d like to return a moment to the story I shared above about the psychotic left-wing woman grabbing my arm at night in a suburb of Barcelona.  Ranting about how great it is to desecrate other people’s property, complaining about it being done to her, and invading my own space in the process.  This is all true- and important to share.  If you’re a Jew, if frankly you’re any kind of “undesirable” traveling through Europe, you need to be aware that certain types of people are more likely to hate you.  The far left is one of them.

At the same time, I’ve been looking over my writings from when I left Israel for this trip.  It’s clear to me the writings were therapeutic- my blog always is.  Which is why I love it.  And after seeing the depth of anti-Semitism camouflaged as anti-Zionism, I realize it’d be quite easy for someone to weaponize my words against me and my people.  I didn’t understand the intellectual vacuum some people on this continent live within- and how my genuine, heartfelt critiques of Israel could be used against the country as a whole.  Rather than seeing them for what I intended them to be- thoughtful, emotional, personal critiques of a place I love and want to make better.

So in that spirit, first off, I’m going to say that I’m going to try to keep in mind my experiences here when writing about Israel in the future.  Not because I intend to shy away from critiquing my government or society- I think it’s important to do so.  I’m not a voice for conformity or silence in the face of barbarity, nor is outside hatred an excuse to paper over real problems.  What I will say is I’m worried about people taking my words out of context.  I do not under any circumstances want them to be construed as supporting boycotts- which are definitionally anti-Semitic in only targeting the Jewish State.  While dozens of other states do the same or far worse- even in Europe.  Where Jewish cemeteries are regularly desecrated, where synagogues have been turned into casinos, and anti-Semitism is at levels not seen since the Holocaust.  With little public outcry.

If you are only boycotting Israel, you are engaging in anti-Semitism, whether you realize it or not.  And after seeing the psychology of boycotters here in Europe, I understand that better than I did while in Israel.  A stressful place where it can be hard to remember the very real problems occurring outside the country.  The bigotry and hatred that lives in other corners of the planet.  Sometimes shrouded in a soft-spoken “please” and “thank you”, but at its core, sometimes as vicious as anything I’ve seen in the Middle East.

At the same time, I want to take this lesson and apply it to this very post.  I’ve shared with you my experiences with anti-Semitism here in Europe.  It is very difficult to be a Jew or Israeli here and my posts these two months show that.  It’s also important to remember not to deny and not to feed the flames.

In other words, it is equally abusive to deny the existence of hatred as it is to suggest it is the only thing out there.  So I’m concerned about extremist Israeli Jews targeting minorities.  And about Europeans hating, boycotting, and attacking Israelis and Jews.  And I’m inspired by Israeli Jews who show compassion and kindness.  Who care about their neighbors of all backgrounds.  Jews who learn Arabic, who see nuance in spite of conflict.  Who have their own pain to digest.  And I’m inspired by European non-Jews who preserve our heritage and care about us.  I also like people like Greg, the Polish neuroscientist who wants to visit Israel and made my bus ride to Slovenia one of the best conversations of my life.  Like Marko, the Slovenian cell phone salesman who now wants to visit his city’s Jewish museum after chatting with me.  Like Amira, the queer Jordanian girl who went to her first gay club with me, knowing I was Israeli.  I even met a Romanian girl who wants to learn Yiddish!

In the end, I will not claim, as some do, that most people are good people.  And not to fear.  Because there are scary people out there and anti-Semitism dressed as anti-Zionism is very much a real thing.  There is also Arab anti-Semitism here in Europe that has nothing to do with Israeli policy.

I will also not fuel the flames that suggest everyone hates us.  Because not everyone does.  There are non-Jews I’ve met here who are open-minded, who are even actively engaged in keeping our heritage alive.  A heritage sometimes painful for us Jews to connect to, but one that has deeply enlightened me as to my place in the world.  A tough trip at times, but well worth it.

I would wish this same nuance for my friends on the far left.  To see that Israelis are not as simple as black and white.  That we come in all shapes and sizes, with different ideologies and identities.  Some perhaps to be feared or condemned.  And others not.  And a whole lot of people in-between.  Perhaps what I wish more than anything is for Europeans to understand us.  And to understand the Jewish history under their very feet.  Not to necessarily love or hate us, just to actually know something that might prevent them from jumping on us, from thumping us.  To be less like Jeremy Corbyn and more like Josep, the gay Valencian left-winger with a Hebrew tattoo and a nuanced passion for Israel.

As an Israeli, I’m offering you my ideas.  Not to wholly agree or disagree with them, but simply to share my perspective and hope you’ll consider my experiences.  That my stories will give you insight and inspire kindness and understanding.

Because when you live in the middle space, you realize that it’s detrimental to always categorize people.  And that sometimes, to protect yourself, it’s wise to.

An eerie and scary space where reality can be as hard to manage as the rigid ideologies that separate us from it.  In a time of increasing polarization, a space I believe is worth fighting for.

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My cover photo is a picture I took in Blanes, Catalonia.  A surprising pro-Israel graffiti that says “am yisrael chai”, the people Israel lives.  In a place where no living Jewish community exists.  Our hope sprouts even in the most arid soil 🙂