Dear Shmuel,
Well, you certainly haven’t wasted time identifying the crucial, but not entirely obvious, theme of my book, which is the question of Israel’s survival as a Jewish state. I grapple with this issue (one that is obviously of paramount importance to you, perhaps even more than it is to me, because, as you deduced, I failed miserably in my youthful quest to remake myself into an Israeli, whereas you, from what I know, are highly successful at being Israeli) by exploring the possibility of reconciliation between the two tribes that have been warring over our beloved strip of Mediterranean beachfront for the last hundred years.
Your synopsis of my book was accurate (except for the fact that I’m more dirty-blond than redhead, though I suppose that long-term exposure to the desert sun did strange things to my hair, as well as to my head), but I would take issue with your analysis of the passage you highlighted.
In it, I recount a particular conversation I had with Rafiq, the Palestinian who was once my prisoner, in which I declare, apropos, seemingly, of nothing, that I still considered myself to be a Zionist. You believe that I did this as a way of reassuring myself that I was, in fact, still a part of the great drama of Israel, still a participant in the struggle, when, by all outward signs, I had left Israel behind and embraced my Americanness fully, even ostentatiously.
Maybe you’re right—maybe this was autotherapy of some sort—but on a more conscious level, what I was doing, I think, was rebelling against the expectations of the traditional Middle East dialogue group. You are obviously familiar with the pitfalls of these dialogues, and I’m quite ambivalent about the way Jewish-Arab encounter groups tend to be organized.
By this, I mean that many of these groups, in my experience, don’t actually wrestle with the hardest questions for a couple of reasons: One might be that the hardest questions tend to be so hard that a raw vetting of them could lead to the quick disintegration of the dialogue. But sometimes a different phenomenon takes hold: These dialogue groups tend to take place between the more rational, forgiving members of our two groups, and so the intractable problems don’t get a full airing simply because the Jewish participants are incapable of arguing the hard Likud line, for instance, and the Palestinians tend to be secularists who find the mystical anti-Semitism of Hamas nearly as nutty as I find it.
The third reason I’m ambivalent—and this, I think, is the reason I proclaimed my Zionism to Rafiq that day—is that the Jews who participate in these groups sometimes seem so guilt-ridden that they forget to take their own side in the argument. If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s the gauzy, kvetchy kumbaya-ness some of the Jews bring to these encounters. It’s not a crime, of course, for Jews to criticize Israel, even in front of Arabs (part of my book is a Jewish critique of Israel’s behavior during the first uprising), and I myself have been called a self-hater by the hall monitors of Jewish tribal loyalty. But I’m opposed to self-abasement, and I believe, through it all, that Israel is a moral and historical necessity. So, at that particular moment in my fraught relationship with Rafiq, maybe I felt that it was a matter of pride that I assert my Jewish identity to him, even if—especially if—it bothered him.
I’ve always found, when talking to true Islamist terrorists, whether in Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, or any other compass point on the Muslim map, that it’s better for the conversation—and better, actually, for my own physical safety—to assert vigorously what I believe to be true. I once gave a talk on the morality of Israel’s existence at a madrasah in Pakistan.
Some very excellent arguments have emerged from these encounters, precisely because they’re so frank. This, among other things, is what I’m arguing for in my book—brutal frankness as a way of figuring out whether reconciliation is possible.
And you’re right, of course, and we should talk about this tomorrow—an Arab and a Jew talking in a Starbucks in Washington, D.C, isn’t the same thing as an Arab and a Jew talking in Jerusalem. But it’s not nothing, either.
Before I forget, I should thank you for your kind words, and I should ask you why you apparently don’t believe that reconciliation is possible. Perhaps I do extrapolate too much out of my relationship with Rafiq, but when I was last in Gaza, in August, I found cause for optimism. I know that makes me sound insane, but I met a good-sized number of people there who, at this late date, believe in an imperfect compromise with Israel. Maybe I’m still just the naive American you read about in my book, but some of these compromise-seekers I actually think were sincere.
Best,
Jeffrey
