Implications of French terror – Israel must embrace the Diaspora

GEOFF SIFRIN

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the supermarket attack: “To all the Jews of France, all the Jews of Europe, I would like to say that Israel is not just the place in whose direction you pray; the State of Israel is your home.”

The French prime minister, however, said something else: “France without its Jews would not be France.”

Two long-standing tenets of Zionism have been negation of the Diaspora, namely that Jews must leave it and move to Israel and offering a refuge to endangered Jews from all over the world.

This approach is inadequate today. It is appropriate that Israel continues promoting aliyah, but it must also embrace the Diaspora and help protect Jewish communities there, rather than see them only as sources for money and olim.

A furore erupted among South African  Jewry in November 2013 when Israeli MK Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Yisrael Beytenu coalition party, warned South African Jews of a looming “pogrom” incited by their government, urging them to leave before it was too late.

He accused Pretoria of being “anti-Semitic” in response to harsh anti-Israel rhetoric by a government minister. Many SA Jews who are strongly Zionistic but also passionately South African, were deeply offended. How dare he? South Africa too, would be a poorer place without its Jews.

France should never become Judenrein. Nor any country where Jews’ roles have earned them the right to call themselves French, Italian, British, American and whatever else.

Fortunately in South Africa we have experienced nothing like the anti-Semitism historically rooted in Europe. But there are ominous signs.

Protests against Israel have morphed too easily into demos against Jews – witness the pigs’ heads placed recently alongside kosher food at Woolworths store by Cosas and students singing “Kill the Jew” to protest against an Israeli jazz musician performing at Wits University. Jewish institutions have reacted with alarm at this trend.

We also had our own small taste of the Charlie Hebdo epic here in May 2010, when the satirist Jonathan Shapiro (aka Zapiro), depicted the Prophet Muhammad in a cartoon, showing him lying on a couch complaining to a psychiatrist: “Other prophets have followers with a sense of humour!” 

After a meeting between the Mail and Guardian newspaper that published the cartoon and Muslim community members, the editor said the newspaper regretted the offence caused and would review its editorial policy on religion, particularly concerning the Prophet Muhammad.

Fortunately, the challenge was conducted respectfully rather than with violence. The incident posed questions about our own red lines between freedom of speech and hate speech – must South African cartoonists self-censor through fear for their lives?

Later, Zapiro published another cartoon with himself on the therapist’s couch bemoaning the difficulties of censorship on religious grounds. Let’s hope the murderous jihadists never become active in South Africa.

The SAJBD produced a slogan some years ago to link its South African patriotism with its Zionism: “Stay home or go home”. Two choices: stay in South Africa and help develop this exciting country, or go on aliyah. But what about the many South African Jews who headed instead for Australia or Canada? The traditional view has been that Israel has no responsibility for them.

The new view says Israel, as a guardian of world Jewry, does indeed have a responsibility – to Australian Jewry, SA Jewry, and Diaspora communities wherever they exist. The days are gone when Israel was a struggling pioneering society desperately in need of money and other help from the Diaspora. Today it’s a powerhouse – a strong economy, technologically super-advanced, its population with an average life span matching the most developed countries.

Israel can afford to reverse the old pattern when necessary. Rather than taking from the Diaspora, it can use its strength and influence to help Diaspora communities be safe and grow their involvement in their countries, while still offering them another home to which they are welcome. Israel needs the Diaspora to flourish, as much as the Diaspora needs Israel to flourish.

World Jewry has long made generous, necessary contributions to building up the Jewish State; Israel must be willing to give in return now by helping protect local Jews’ interests wherever they are.

If money is required to ensure their security, Israel must give what it can as a matter of policy. Some of Israel’s most passionate Jewish supporters have no intention of living there. They should be embraced, not seen as temporary sojourners in the Diaspora.  

Some 7 000 French Jews out of a total Jewish population of 500 000, made aliyah in 2014. Israel provides a haven for those who want to come – the chance for a new start, a new life away from the fear of being Jewish in France. But it must also use what power it has to make France safe for Jews, including those who have no intention of making aliyah.

Geoff Sifrin is former editor of the SA Jewish Report. He writes this column in his personal capacity.