An Open Letter to My Fellow Jews

Dear Friends,

        Like you I am grief stricken by recent tragic events in Israel and Gaza.  Our community is as distressed as I have seen it in my adult memory, and rightfully so. There is a sense that we have entered a moment of significant crisis.  Though strife in and around Israel is something we have come to accept as virtually inevitable, the current troubles seem to constitute a turning point, and not for the better.

        At this time of turmoil I have one plea to make to our community at large. We must support Israel. We must work toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

        Note that I say “one plea,” for that is precisely what I mean. As a Jew and a Zionist, I firmly believe that the most important, perhaps the only way that we can support Israel in the long term is to work toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Israel is losing in the struggle to preserve the Zionist mission, and the only way to set the deteriorating situation on a new course is the fulfillment of a two-state solution.

        Why do I say that Israel is losing? In the short term Israel is not in existential danger. The Israeli state and military are very powerful and very secure. But every conflict has two dimensions: the tactical and the political. For the moment the Israelis enjoy substantial tactical superiority, both with respect to the Palestinians and in terms of the region as a whole.

        But in the political realm a crossroads has been reached. World opinion is turning against Israel, and this downhill slide will continue indefinitely if it is not redressed. The effects of this shift will not be felt immediately, but over years and decades it will begin to sap the political and economic energies of Israeli state and society, undermining Israel’s strategic security. If nothing is done, generations to come will mark the current crisis as the starting point of a long process that led to the disintegration of the Jewish state.

      Why is world opinion turning against Israel? Anti-Semitism accounts for some of the anger and condemnation that is being expressed in the international media, but we would be foolish to imagine that this is the whole of the matter. Nor can ignorance be assumed to account for whatever anti-Israeli feeling does not stem from anti-Semitism. The world is aware that Hamas is an evil and depraved organization. The nihilistically genocidal nature of its charter and ideology has been well publicized, and everyone can see the deliberate and malignant manner in which Hamas uses innocent civilians as human shields.

        Why, then, would current events erode Israel’s position in global politics?  It is because the issue of Palestinian statehood remains unresolved. As much as world opinion generally (with some exceptions) acknowledges the right of Israel to exist and defend itself, it also affirms the right of the Palestinian people to a sovereign state of their own. As the fiftieth anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank draws nigh, the patience of the world to see this problem settled grows thin. With each passing year, the argument that Israel is fighting to defend itself is undermined by the appearance that Israel is fighting to block the establishment of a Palestinian state. The more this situation persists, the less attention the global public will pay to the particulars of Hamas’s doctrine or strategy, and the more they will focus upon images of the destruction produced by Israel’s military, no matter how restrained the Israelis may be in the exercise of force.

        Continued protests about the very real villainy of Hamas will progressively lose effect in the face of this reality. Almost no winning cause in history would have done so if it was required that its proponents all be moral paragons. Without ardent Stalinists, Hitler would not have been beaten; without fervent slave owners, the American Revolution would have gone down to defeat. It does not matter that Hamas’s methods are evil or that their ultimate goal extends far beyond Palestinian nationalism. In the short term they derive political capital from fighting for a cause that is generally acknowledged as justified.

      This may seem unfair, but it is a brute fact that cannot be escaped. Nor are arguments over whether anyone is right to support Palestinian statehood sensible or productive. If Israel annexed the West Bank and Gaza today and made all of its inhabitants citizens, it would no longer be a demographically Jewish state. The only alternatives left to Zionists are thus either ethnic cleansing or a two-state solution. Since the former option is both immoral and impossible, the establishment of a Palestinian state is the only way to end the military occupation soon to enter its sixth decade, and the world knows that.

        One might protest that the establishment of a Palestinian state would give Hamas what it wants. To this one can only answer that if it is so, Hamas should be careful what it wishes for. Of course the creation of a Palestinian nation would not make all of Israel’s problems go away. Strife and violence would continue. The nightly news might look very much the same in the wake of Palestinian sovereignty as it does today. There would be a very real difference, however. If Hamas launched rockets from sovereign Palestinian territory, there could be no pretence that it was anything other than aggression bent on the destruction of Israel. In that situation, all of the facts about Hamas’s perversion and malevolence would regain the currency that they have gradually lost in recent years.

        In that new political climate, much of the anti-Israeli activism in Europe and America would evaporate. Organizations like BDS would find fewer and fewer supporters. Mainstream citizens who have joined anti-Israeli protests in recent years would move on to other issues, leaving only the most diehard anti-Zionists to fight from the margins.

        In the Middle East the effects could likewise be significant. Hamas might find that it not only has fewer supporters abroad, but at home as well. Once sovereignty is achieved, Palestinians’ tolerance for Hamas’s rocket attacks and the destruction they bring in retaliation would quickly run dry. A people given a proprietary stake in their own nation might show little enthusiasm for the fight to establish an imaginary future caliphate.

        For all of these reasons, as a people we should unite in focusing our political energies on the achievement of a two-state solution. If we care about Israel and want to see its future secure, our congregations, our civic groups, our rabbinical leaders, and we ourselves as individuals should take up the cry in ways big and small. Write letters to political leaders in Israel and abroad. Reach out to Palestinian groups that support peace. Donate money to organizations like the Israel Policy Forum that are working toward a two-state solution.

        As Jews we believe that the world is not going to fix itself, we must put our hands to the work. If we want Israel to remain a vital piece of the global tapestry, a new piece must be added. Whether there has ever been a state such as Palestine is an academic question that is ultimately of little consequence. One thing, however, is for certain: without Palestine, eventually there will be no Israel. We can not let that come to pass. We must support Israel. We must work toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

                                            Shalom,

                                            Andrew Meyer