You’re wrong.
You recently called Israel an apartheid state.
It’s not.
Over the past several months, I have questioned my relationship to Israel in light of the country’s policies in Gaza. With the Palestinian viewpoint showcased front and center in the media, and Israel continuing its long tradition of ignoring the benefits of good public relations, I began to fear that the soul of the country had somehow been tarnished — that the Israel I have visited and admired for so long no longer existed, with the devil on one shoulder speaking more loudly than the angel on the other.
So last month — spent in Israel with my daughter’s family, who recently made aliyah and now live in a lovely town just south of Jerusalem — had the potential to be, well, difficult. It was not. Rather than having confrontations, we had conversations, and as she showed me some aspects of Israeli society I had not seen, several of my misconceptions assumed the status of fake news.
She showed me, for example, several modern and attractive apartment complexes, across the road from one another. The ones on the right, she said, were part of her town. The identical buildings on the other side were Palestinian. As we drove toward Jerusalem, she pointed out a bunch of dilapidated tin-roofed houses that are now uninhabited. Those, she said, are the ones shown to foreign journalists who report on the West Bank. Apparently, there are other such hovels scattered around the country for PR purposes.
As a PR practitioner myself, I was impressed. The next day we walked (and walked and walked) through the Mount Olive cemetery, which holds the graves of great Jewish spiritual leaders from biblical times through today — putting paid to the idea that Jews are in any way new to the area.
Exhausted by this excursion, I wanted to board one of the many white buses waiting alongside the site. Apparently, though, they are Arab buses on which Jews are not welcome. Yet the Israeli buses were packed with Jews and Arabs alike, all looking equally exhausted, none of them subject to harassment. I also learned that the dental and hospital technicians my grandson saw recently were all Arab, trained in Israel, as is the family pharmacist. Incidentally, none of this was told to me to convince me of anything. It simply came up in conversation.
All this having been said, I still disagree with many of the Israeli government’s policies, military and religious. But I saw the side of the country that tends to remain hidden because it is not “sexy.” I met wonderful people whose kids came back from Gaza with permanent injuries or PTSD but who remain totally committed to the defense of the nation. And, a not-inconsiderable bonus, it was sunny and in the 70s.
Lois Goldrich of Fair Lawn is, among other things, an editor emerita of the Jewish Standard.
