Dear Jaga,
Israeli people are different than the Polish jews, Dutch jews, German jews and American jews you, Kaima, Karl and I know. They are Israeli's. An Israeli told me in Amsterdam during a party, 'We are very different than your Dutch jews, some of them think they are the same as us, but they aren't, we are Israeli's and they are Europeans. We are from two different nations.'
A Sabra (Hebrew: צבר, tzabar) is an informal-turned-formal term that refers to any Jew born on Israeli territory. The term alludes to a tenacious, thorny desert plant, known in English as prickly pear, with a thick skin that conceals a sweet, softer interior. The cactus is compared to Israeli Jews, who are supposedly tough on the outside, but delicate and sweet on the inside.
In 2010, over 4,000,000 Israeli Jews (70%) were sabras, with an even greater percentage of Israeli Jewish youths falling into this category. In 2015, about 75% of Israel's Jewish population was native-born.
The term was used by the Zionist movement, to celebrate the "
New Jew" that emerged in
the Holy Land. Unlike
the bourgeois "
Old Jew" born in the diaspora, the "
New Jew" was
a kibbutz member or
a farmer. The "
Old Jew" often spoke
broken Hebrew with
a heavy accent, while
the sabra spoke
the language as a mother tongue. Unlike the "
Old Jew" who did not fight for his
self-defense,
the Sabra fought in
the Jewish resistance movements, in
the Palmach and after the establishment of
Israel in
the Israel Defense Forces.
A problem for
Israeli jews (both
Sabra and
new immigrants -
the olim [=new jewish immigrants] who make aliyah -the immigration to Israel-) is that many European and
American jews aren't particulary
Zionist and
have a different idenity. The
USA (
America) was seen as
the second Holy land by
many European jews, and so many
Polish Jews,
Russian jews,
German jews,
Austrian jews,
Ukrainian jews,
Lithuanian jews,
Latvian jews,
Estonian jews,
Belarussian jews,
Hungarian-,
Romanian-,
Belgian-,
Dutch-,
French-,
British-,
Italian- and
Greek jews moved to
the USA. There is some competition and rivalry between
Israel and
American Judaism today. The news only shows
the Pro-Israeli Jewish lobby,
AIPAC and
The Zionist Organization of America (
ZOA), but doesn't show the fact that you have a distinct American Jewish identity, which is seperate from Israel and Israeli's. Often these American jews are very American and have different opinions than the Israeli people who happen to have the same faith.
American Jews Less and less share the philosophical or cultural values of Israelis, quite simply because Israel's most astonishing achievement has been the creation of a completely new nation, language, and culture. A hundred years ago most Jews who went to America and Palestine were
Yiddish-speaking. Now two communities exist --
the American Jews who speak
English and
the Israeli Jews who speak
Hebrew -- and
remarkably few Jewish-Americans know Hebrew.
There are now, funnily enough, more Arabs than Jewish-Americans who speak Hebrew.
Another profound difference between
American Jews and
Israelis is the founding philosophies of their respective nations.
The United States is in its essence an absolute rejection of ethnic nationalism.
To be an American you do not have to be something by your origin.
You can become an American, as all Americans at some stage in their family history have done, almost by a political act of will.
Israel is not like that.
Israel is an outgrowth, or
Zionism is
an outgrowth, of
the European nationalism that America rejected.
You could compare it to the Roman-Catholic world. Most Poles were victims of the Nazi's and fiercely anti-nazi, while many Slovakian, Hungarian, Austrian, Bavarian, Italian, Spanish, French, Walloon, Flemish and Dutch Roman-Catholics collaborated with the German and Austrian Nazi's, some evne being active members of the Waffen SS and serving on the Eastern-front and fighting until the bitter end for Hitler in Berlin until his suicide (the Walloon SS troops of Standartenführer Léon Degrelle of the SS-Freiwilligen Panzergrenadier-Division "Wallonien"). And in less extreme form, in the Days of Apartheid you had progressive Dutch Calvinist Dutch Reformed christians who opposed the racist Apartheids policies of the Calvinist Afrikaners in South-Africa. And in Poland you had fiere anti-semitic reactionary Roman-Catholic ultra-nationalists next to moderate Polish Catholic, Patriotic, Philosemitic (Pro-jewish) compatriots. There were for instance mixed Roman-Catholic/Jewish marriages. I know two examples in my Polish family. (By the way for the rest I know nothing about it, because the Polish family never talked about religion, Judaism or the past. They were living in the present and were trying to survive in the Polish Peoples republic with it's shortages, lack of freedom and lack of business opportunities. That's fair enough, so I never witnessed any anti-semitism or philosemitism in the family. They were just family, Poles, and happened to be Polish Roman-Catholics and Polish jews. -The latter I only found out later-)
Again I want to state that I know Pro-Palestinian, anti-zionist jews in the Netherlands next to Zionist, Pro-Israeli jews in the Netherlands and inbetween them I know moderate, humble and rather neutral jews who are not Pro-Israel or Pro-Palestine, but rather humanists, universalists and believe that both people should have a state or a just Federation in which both people can exist next to each other. Next to that Jaga, you have an opposition in Israel of Israeli jews who oppose the occupation of the West-Bank (Judea and Samaria), and Israeli Jewish dissidents who are Pro-Palestinian. People like Avraham Burg former Knesset (Israeli parliament)speaker and politcian of the the leftist Jewish-Arab Hadash Party, Uri Avnery, Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement, the leftwing Israeli journalist Amira Hass from the daily newspaper Haaretz, her colleague Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy, the expatriate Israeli historian and socialist activist Ilan Pappé, the mother and professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Nurit Peled-Elhanan, who critizes Israeli school textbooks, the Israeli authors David Grossman, Amos Oz, Israeli Professor Emeritus in philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Avishai Margalit, who served on the board of B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories and is a member of Peace Now, Peace Now and Peace Now Peace Now’s (Shalom Achshav) famous founders: Yuli Tamir, Avshalom Vilan, Amiram Goldbloom, Tzeli Reshef, Eran Shender, Yossi Ben-Artzi, Dedi Tzuker, Omri Padan, Motti Peri, Amos Arieli, Yaron Ben-Ari, Adi Ben-Ari, Yuval Neria, Amram Yerushalmi, Adi Ofir, Igal Serna, Orly Lubin, Orgad Varnimon, Gadi Brener, Giora Yakobovich, Michael Sultman.
Avnery with Yassir Arafat in Beirut, July 1982, when it was forbidden for Israeli's to have contacts with the PLO or Fatah groupsAvnery at a far left Hadash party rally against the 2006 Lebanon WarPersonally I agree with Avraham Burg who stated that Israel's future was a choice between becoming a fundamentalist Jewish state or as a binational Jewish-Arab confederation with open borders and part of a regional union.
I am maybe an idealist and also believe in the old dream of a Semitic union of Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon - a political and economic union similar to the EU. Lebanon has the same diversity Israel, Gaza and the West-Bank has with it's Ashkenazi Jewish, Sephardic Jewish, Middle eastern (Mizrachi) jewish, Sunni Muslim Palestinian Arab, Bedouin (Negev desert Bedouins), Christian Palestinian Arab, Druze, Bahai people and and smaller minorities of Assyrians and Armenians. Shimon Peres, not a dove in political terms, but a hawk Labour politician and Prime minister at times, had this dream of an Israeli-Arab Union, and so did and does Uri Avnery.
An Israeli-Palestinian Federation Is Still the WayIn the spring of 1949, just after the armistice agreements at the end of the War of Independence, a small group met to promote the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the new State of Israel, with an alliance formed between the two peoples. The group consisted of Rostam Bastuni, a Muslim Arab; Jabr Moade, a Druze Arab; and myself (= Uri Avnery). (All three of us were ultimately elected to the Knesset.) We didn't talk explicitly about a federation, but we agreed that the border between the two countries should be open to people and goods. (When it became obvious that we couldn’t form a political party, we disbanded.)
In 1956, after the Sinai Campaign, a new group got together that included Natan Yellin-Mor, a leader of the pre-state Lehi underground, writers Boaz Evron and Amos Kenan, and myself. About a year later, the group, Semitic Action, published its "Hebrew Manifesto," which presented an entirely different model for the State of Israel. It proposed a Palestinian state alongside Israel and a confederation of Israel, Palestine and Jordan. We referred to the federation as Ugdat Hayarden (the Jordan Corps), before the Israel Defense Forces adopted the Hebrew word ugda to mean a military division.
Immediately after the Six-Day War, many of the same people formed a group called the Israel-Palestine Federation. In the 1970s, Abba Eban promoted an approach similar to the Benelux federation. To my surprise, Yasser Arafat mentioned this idea when I met him in July 1982 in Beirut, which was under Israeli siege at the beginning of the first Lebanon war. He asked, why not a federation of Israel, Palestine, Jordan and maybe also Lebanon? He brought up the idea again during our last conversation, just before he died mysteriously in 2004.
I stopped using the term federation when I realized it was scaring both sides. The Israelis saw a federation as infringing on Israel's independence, and the Palestinians were afraid that this was a Zionist tactic to continue the occupation by other means. Still, it’s clear that in a small country like ours, two states cannot exist side by side over time without a strong link between them. Even the 1947 UN partition plan included a federation, though it didn’t explicitly use the term. The plan provided for an economic union between the Jewish state and the Arab state.
Text (quotes) Uri AvneryOften Peace, reconciliation, forgiveness, understanding, mutualism, synergy, coexistence, negotiations and a Peace process must come not from people who are like angels or innocent sheep, but from people who are former enemies, battle hardened (Israeli) generals, officers and soldiers and guerrilla fighters (Palestinians), former terrorists (both Israeli's and Palestinians) and thus people with blood on their hands and decades of experience in war with the enemy and civil war or internal strive in their own community and people (the Palestinians; for instance the war of the camps in Lebanon, the war between Pro- and Anti Yassir Arafat factions in the Lebanese Civil war [1975-1990]). Peace often is made by hawks and not doves. The former enemies Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin made peace in 1979 , and the signing of the Oslo Accords on 13 September 1993 by Yasser Arafat, the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. And the signing of the "Treaty of Peace Between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan" by Jordan's King Hussein and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in July 1994 one year before the assasination of
Yitzhak Rabin by the Jewish extremist Yigal Amir. Yitzhak Rabin was extremely tough on the Palestinians as a leader. When the first Intifada broke out, Rabin, Minister of Defense at that time, adopted harsh measures to stop the demonstrations, even authorizing the use of "Force, might and beatings," on the demonstrators. Rabin the "bone breaker" was used as an International image.
Israel, deploying some 80,000 soldiers and initially firing live rounds, killed a large number of Palestinians. In the first 13 months, 332 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed. Given the high proportion of children, youths and civilians killed, it then adopted a policy of 'might, power, and beatings,' namely "
breaking Palestinians' bones". The global diffusion of images of soldiers beating adolescents with clubs then led to the adoption of firing semi-lethal plastic bullets.
I knew a Dutch Jewish writer of German Jewish descent, Hajo Meyer, a Holocaust survivor, Jaga, he was a hardened anti-Zionist, Pro-Palestinian activist, and wrote the very controversial novel "The End of Judaism" (Het einde van het Jodendom), which accuses Israel of abusing the Holocaust to justify crimes against the Palestinians. He was a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. Meyer spoke in favor of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. Meyer was a member of the Dutch GreenLeft (GroenLinks). He was to extreme in his anti-Zionist and anti-Israel stance for me, but he respected me. He was called a self hating jew, traitor by other Dutch jews, and isolated in the Dutch jewish community, which has close ties with Israeli familymembers, the state of Israel and the Israeli embassy in the Hague and the Israeli expat community in Israel. It was good to know Hajo Meyer, and I learned a lot of him in the one very long evening and early night (morning) I spend in his house in a small town in North-Holland. I was with a radio colleague over there to do a radio interview with him. He told us of his proudness of being of German Jewish heritage, being part of the German Jewish enlightenment, Haskalah, with German Jewish family with roots in the Jewish Reform movement, about his teenage Highschool years in Nazi Germany, his time in a labour camp for German jewish refugees in the late thirties, the Nazi occupation, his time in Auschwitz concentration camp, and about his initial support and Zionist idealism, until he found out about the treatment of the Palestinians, after which he became an advocate of the Palestinian cause, an anti-Zionist and a man who became friends with Palestinians and Pro-Palestinian activists of the 'Free Palestine' movement. In the Netherlands and in the Dutch, European and International press I have followed both the Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestine media and press for decades and I saw many research journalist documentaries, books and expositions of photojournalists from the West-bank, Gaza, the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, and about Palestinians in Iraq, Syria, the Gulf states and in other countries. I read Palestinian authors, saw Movies which show the Palestinian narrative and knew Free-Palestine or Pro-Palestinian activists in the Netherlands, raging from idealistic artists, leftwing activists, Christian activists, to moderate Pro-Palestinian Muslim activists in the Netherlands. I don't know extremists from both sides, anti-semites, Islamophobes, extreme left, far right, Islamist and Christian and Jewish fundamentalist radicals. But I have met the latter too and spoken with these people too. You have to hear all sides if you are truely interested in the problems, in the two peoples and in solutions for the conflict. I am not a diplomatic, not a politician, not a philosopher, not a therapist, not a priest, but just a local journalist, cameraman, editor and someone with an interest in history, foreign politics and different culturers and religions.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajo_MeyerWatch from 14:32 ; Hayo Meyers posotion on Israel and ZionismThis video shows how he stayed human and that same mentality and aim he used in his activism for the Palestinian cause.Cheers,
Pieter