Should we care about Israeli elections?

GEOFF SIFRIN

TAKING ISSUE 

Where Jews and Muslims do business together, there is generally tacit agreement not to bring up the Middle East; each side knows their sentiments are contradictory.

The elections might have slightly more political significance. A new Israeli government assertively seeking peace with the Palestinians could lessen anti-Israel groups’ effectiveness and give Jewish students ammunition to counter Israel Apartheid Week at universities – sadly, Benjamin Netanyahu gave them little help. The South African government might also show more enthusiasm towards warming diplomatic ties with Israel.

But these are more irritants than actual threats. Many Jews prefer an Israeli government which prioritises security – as Netanyahu has done.

Israelis are as much concerned today with bread and butter issues – skyrocketing costs of housing and food – as with solving the Palestinian struggle. Most Israelis and Palestinians see no solution for the conflict, which remains the proverbial elephant in the room while attention goes elsewhere.

The elections won’t affect Jews in most parts of the Diaspora. Their circumstances possess an inherent tension deriving from centuries of Jewish life in Christian – and today, increasingly Muslim – societies. Whatever new Israeli government emerges, it may affect that tension somewhat, but will not fundamentally eliminate it, particularly in Europe.

This is a great disappointment. After the Second World War and the Holocaust, it was naively believed Israel would solve the Diaspora Jewish problem. A flourishing Jewish state would signal triumph over Hitler; anti-Semitism would disappear. But it hasn’t gone that way. Recent news from Denmark – the latest in a string of such items worldwide – illustrates this.

The country’s Jewish broadcast station Radio Shalom has stopped airing on the advice of the security services due to terrorist threats. The police offered protection, but the station director did not want to work under such conditions.

“We will not have police standing outside the door. We would rather close down until it is quiet again. I do not know how long that will take.” This comes after terrorist shootings of Jews at Copenhagen’s synagogue, and in Paris and elsewhere. And fearful French Jews wanting to leave en masse.

For those who have believed in the Zionist dream, the fact that Israel didn’t resolve the Diaspora Jewish problem is hard to swallow. Israel has been a crucial chapter in Jewish history, but Jewish life continues elsewhere, sometimes thriving and sometimes threatened; the Jewish state’s existence is not necessarily the determining factor.

The issue of its centrality among Jews has evoked heated arguments. For example, is the singing of the Israeli national anthem Hatikvah appropriate at the culmination of the annual March of the Living in Poland?

The international event, established in 1988 and intended to demonstrate that the Jewish people are alive and well despite Hitler’s plots, attracts thousands of Jewish participants from all over the world – including school kids and adults – who do the 3km march between Auschwitz and Birkenau – an inversion of the notorious death marches that took place along the same path some 70 years ago, between Birkenau and Auschwitz.

Some say the Jewish state – symbolised by Hatikvah – should not be seen as the single answer to Jew-hatred, and that Jews should rather sing the anthems of their home countries in the Diaspora. A similar argument arose some years ago when Israeli air force jets flew over Auschwitz to thumb their nose at Hitler. Is displaying Israeli military might the appropriate answer? Or is it equally the flourishing of Diaspora Jewish life?

Israel is indeed thriving, including the democracy which produces its government. But Jews in Sandton or Copenhagen must deal with their local situation on its own terms, and insist on their right to be safe as citizens of their home countries regardless of what happens in Israel or who becomes its prime minister. 

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