By Rabbi Ben Kamin
SAN DIEGO — As a child living in Israel, I used to look out onto the horizon from my grandmother’s simple porch.
I vividly remember the dusty little village of Kfar-Saba, some fifteen miles east of Tel Aviv, nestled against a thick patch of orange groves and in the shadow of the steely Samarian Mountains. Just beyond the orchards were the minarets and huts of the then-Jordanian hamlet of Qalqilya—now a major Palestinian hub in the West Bank. Nobody really knew where the border was between our two villages. It was generally agreed that the old, abandoned British railway path that cut through the intervening valley was more or less the frontier between our two worlds.
We children didn’t think too much about the people living over in Qalqilya and we all lived in relative peace during those simpler days of Israel’s earlier existence. What we do all remember, without a doubt, was the sweet fragrance of the orange trees that came to us every time the wind blew down from the mountains. It was the smell of rebirth and renewal; Israel was young, still gathering in the exiles of Europe and the refugees from the Arab nations, still innocent and heroic and the stuff of legends.
In this new and unwelcome world of complexities, my elder daughter called me this morning and asked, “Dad, what did you think of Obama’s speech about Israel?” On her mind was the fact that her sister now lives and works and Tel Aviv; in her voice one could hear the tone of a gnawing anxiety about a place so long clear and exalted in our family history.
My daughter seemed surprised that I did not have a quick, reflexive answer—no one should. This conflict, our occupation, their terrorism—all break down one’s ability to offer a sure sense of who or what is right or smart or even effectual. I lament the extremism that appears to have seized both sides (to the incremental disadvantage of the region’s children) and has crippled the minds of men who want to prove to other men that they not soft or just want to hold onto power.
There were two peoples there in 1947, after Europe decimated its Jews, and the United Nations decided to create a Jewish homeland and a new Arab state in what was the British mandate of Palestine. The indigenous Jews, many of them survivors of the world’s most horrific genocide, agreed, celebrated, and prepared for war. Several external Arab nations invaded and obliterated the legitimate right of Arab Palestine to become sovereign. A refugee problem ensued, tragic and endless, that was exacerbated by Arab indifference or even manipulation. Wars followed wars and Israel became a modern little superpower and a global scientific titan.
President Obama did not say anything to Israel that I haven’t read, in even harsher terms, in Israeli newspapers. I don’t think he needed to admonish Israel to simply return to the “1967 borders” because those lines were never formalized and reduced the Jewish state to a permanent military vulnerability. I think he understands Israel’s powerful connection to American interests—even as those interests are corrupted by our terrible reliance on Arab oil. I think he’s trying to get us all past the murky waters of vengeance and religious fundamentalism and visceral hatred in both of these houses of Abraham.
And I wish the president and the prime minister could talk this over in the old orange groves near my grandmother’s porch.
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Rabbi Kamin is a freelance writer based in San Diego. He may be contacted at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com