Michael Zank

Today is May 14, 2018. By the Gregorian calendar, this is the day when, seventy years ago, the provisional government of Israel headed by David Ben Gurion declared Israel’s independence. As was pointed out in a post I recently saw on FB, the question of territory of the newly independent Jewish state was not defined at the time. The declaration of independence proceeded without a definition of the borders within which Israel would be a sovereign state. When the War of Independence was over, the boundaries of Israel, those that were not natural boundaries, such as the Mediterranean coast, were mere cease-fire lines. In the preemptive war of June 1967, Israel revised those borders once again. It was widely assumed at the time that this revision was going to be temporary, and that Israel had conquered territory only for the sake of trading land for peace. Then came the settlements. Advocated by left and right leaning governments alike, Israel consolidated its hold on the conquered territories by establishing military outposts, as well as by transferring civilian populations into the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank of Jordan. It started slowly, sometimes with, sometimes without the governments open support, but it took on a momentum of its own. Then came the 1973 war and its aftermath, the peace agreement with Egypt, which led to the first case of an evacuation of a modern Jewish settlement. The price for this peace agreement was high. It cost the life of Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat, who made a daring 1977 visit to Jerusalem where he gave a speech to the Knesset that effectively broke Israel’s isolation from the Arab world. It also presaged the hysterical scramble, triggered by the Oslo Process, to make the annexation of the West Bank irreversible.

What we see today started with Sadat’s visit: Israel is now an integral part in the strategic alliance of Sunni countries, led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, that opposes Iran’s growing influence across the Middle East, including in Iraq, which just elected a pro-Iranian majority in its parliamentary elections, Assad’s Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Huthi rebels in the Yemen, and elsewhere. Today Israel acts with virtual impunity, violently countering Palestinian protests in Gaza, flying missions against Iranian military installations in Syria, and courting the most right-wing, evangelical, unilateralist, and even anti-Semitic forces the US has seen since the 1930s.

On this day, the US embassy was moved to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is claimed by Israel as its eternally undivided capital. To Jews, this is muvan me-elav, a matter of course. Even at the time, nearly forty years ago, when the Basic Law on Jerusalem was debated in the Knesset, many people advised against it. Why make a law that states what everyone believes is already the case? Doesn’t it rather achieve the opposite effect and make it seem as if the matter stated in the law was not settled a long time ago? But Jerusalem’s status is contested today, as it was then. The UN Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947, declared the area of Jerusalem, including the Christian holy city of Bethlehem, an international body, to be governed neither by Jews, nor by Arabs (read: Muslims). This vision of Jerusalem as a shared city was reiterated today, in a statement penned by my long-time friend Sani Ibrahim Azar, now Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land, who states the opposition of the ELCJHL “to the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem.” Jerusalem, the Bishop continues, “is a very special city, holy to three religions, and therefore it should be a place of peace, justice, and reconciliation.” He calls for the ELCJHL’s partner churches to “urge their governments to respect the International Law concerning Jerusalem.”

This morning, I also received a note from a Jewish Israeli friend responding to a FB post I had posted yesterday, in which I said that “as a Jew” I was happy that Israel existed and that I “unapologetically love(d) Israel and my Israeli friends.” But I also expressed my “deepest sympathy to my beloved Arab friends, for whom Israeli policies mean unmitigated pain and humiliation on a daily basis.” I expressed confidence that there was a “better way” and that we all knew what that was. I ended by cursing those who are making Jerusalem their “toy.” (Also, at this time, Tel Aviv’s fun culture is celebrating Netta Barzilai’s win in the Eurovision Song Contest, with a song called “Toy.”)

Upon reading my note, my friend, who rarely posts on FB, copied and sent a note posted by someone earlier today. The post mentioned two American Jews who appreciated Jerusalem’s special status. One was Ivanka Trump who expressed her joy at being in Jerusalem at such an auspicious moment. The author of the post pointed out that sometimes it is people who come from the outside that need to remind those living in Jerusalem what a special privilege it is to live there. The other was my former colleague and friend, Elie Wiesel. The post quoted from a one-page ad in which Professor Wiesel had voiced what Jerusalem meant to the Jews. “For me as a Jew – Wiesel wrote – Jerusalem is beyond politics. It is mentioned over 600 times in the Bible, but not even once in the Qur’an. There is no prayer more emotionally stirring anywhere in the Jewish past than the one that expresses the yearning for a return to Jerusalem. (…) It is what connects one Jew to another in a way that is difficult to explain. When a Jew visits Jerusalem for the first time it is not the first time. It is a return home. I once heard it said in the name of one of the great Hasidic masters, R. Nahman of Bratslav, that everything in the world has a heart, and even the heart itself has a heart. Jerusalem is our heart of hearts.”

Another colleague reminded me today (without any connection to Wiesel or to Jerusalem) that Marx had called religion the heart of a heartless world, surely a backhanded compliment, considering the source.

Celebrating the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem on a day when dozens of Palestinian youths were mowed down by the live ammunition of Israeli snipers policing the Gaza border is the heart of heartlessness. Why could the ceremony not have been be paused, just for a minute, to pay at least a minimal amount of lip service to the humanity of those for whom today’s move adds insult to injury?

Today’s celebration reminded me of the time when Israel crossed the Red Sea on dry foot, while the Egyptian army drowned. When the angels in heaven were moved to join in with Israel’s shouts of triumphant jubilation, the Holy One, Blessed be He, commanded them to be still. “How can you celebrate, when my creatures are dying?” I wonder what sentiments were shared in Heaven today.