Glimpses of a nation in crisis
How a trip to Israel inspired me to commit to dialogue.
A novelist I know recently went on tour in Europe. Nice work if you can get it, no? Except for one problem: some of the writers with whom he was supposed to appear withdrew from his events, resulting in their cancellation. (He’s an American Jew.)
One of those writers was Adania Shibli, whose novel Minor Detail many of you enjoyed reading a few months ago, at my suggestion.
Hearing this news, I felt my chest tighten. Here was a person I had “platformed”—who experienced the cancellation of her own award celebration shortly after October 7—boycotting another writer because he’s Jewish.
I heard about this last week at a literary conference in Israel, where I was a featured speaker. Some of you are now looking for the “Unsubscribe” button. To those who are still reading, I’ll just say that I don’t support boycotts of any kind. Regardless of what you think about the way the Israeli government has conducted the ongoing war—count me among those who are devastated both by the October 7 attack on Israelis and the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Gaza—it is perverse to withdraw support from artists and scholars, who tend to be the most left-leaning people in Israel. It is equally perverse to hold American Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government.
In deciding to visit Israel now, I was also eager to observe how Israelis are responding to “the situation,” as many of them call it. What I saw was a country in profound crisis. It seems impossible to overstate the level of national trauma that Israelis experienced on October 7. Many American Jews share in that trauma, but not in such a visceral, life-altering way.
From the moment you land at Ben-Gurion Airport, where the passage leading to passport control is lined with posters featuring the names and faces of the hostages, there’s no escaping the current political reality. The slogan “Bring them home now,” in Hebrew and English, is plastered everywhere—in shop windows, on lampposts, on the dog tags that many Israelis have taken to wearing around their necks.
The rage against Netanyahu and his government is palpable. I arrived in time for a major protest in Tel Aviv urging the prime minister to agree to the proposal offered last week by President Biden for an end to the war and the return of the hostages. Tens of thousands of demonstrators filled Kaplan Boulevard, where the IDF headquarters and other government buildings are located, and “Hostage Square,” the new name for the area in front of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Emotional speeches by hostages’ family members, projected on huge screens, were audible for blocks around. “Say yes to the deal!” speaker after speaker pleaded. (Hamas rejected the deal a few days later.) “Elections now!” was another motif.
More than anything else, this poster, spotted on the campus of Bar-Ilan University, summed up the mood for me. The white text beneath the reflective panel reads: “This could have been any one of us.”
What about the Palestinians? some of you are surely wondering. Coming from America, where both the news coverage and the protest movement have focused intensely on the civilian casualties, I was wondering about that too. At the protests and elsewhere, people expressed grief for Palestinian suffering. But many Israelis are primarily preoccupied with the safety of their children, friends, and neighbors, who are fighting a war that none of them wanted.
I ended my trip with a brief visit to Haifa, home to the Baha’i World Center, an enormous garden and pilgrimage site that occupies much of the steep hill anchoring the city. Most of the garden is off limits to non-Baha’is. The parts open to the public include a bright, sunny area featuring formal plantings of cacti and succulents, and another section filled with tall olive trees whose silvery leaves filter the sun, casting dappled shadows. The balance of the two sides, so different in mood but equally necessary, resonated with me.
If the peaceful setting makes it possible to forget the war for a moment, that ends when you try to find your way out. The IDF has scrambled GPS in northern Israel so that Hezbollah can’t use it to guide missiles and drones. No matter where I was, Google Maps located me at the Beirut airport, making navigation a little tricky.
I also visited the Stella Maris monastery, which houses a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary in which the altar sits atop a cave where the Prophet Elijah, a major figure in Judaism, is said to have lived. Haifa is just over 80 percent Jewish; Arabs, mainly Arab Christians, make up around 14 percent of the population, with Druze and Baha’i among the rest. The mix of religions and languages is evident everywhere—in the faces of those around you, in the shops, and in the geography of the city itself, which is literally built around the Baha’i pilgrimage site.
I don’t pretend to know how to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. That will require sacrifice on all sides as well as political creativity and good faith, both of which are sorely lacking at the moment. But what I do know is that the current trend in literary circles of insisting that there is only one valid side to certain arguments—including the argument that the Israeli government is committing genocide in Gaza—is detrimental to intellectual life. As Jeannie Suk Gersen wrote recently in The New Yorker, “The phenomenon of navigating the world of ideas by categorizing people, including teachers and writers, as friend or enemy, to be supported or shut out, is one symptom of how degraded and fearful our discourses and relationships have become.” The trend of communication via one-sided open letter, which Roxane Gay recently criticized in the New York Times, is another symptom.
This lovely city where multiple faiths and cultures coexist in harmony stirred me to commit to dialogue with people whose opinions I don’t share. I only hope I’m not talking to the wall.
Israeli/Palestinian reading group
Isabella Hammad probably wouldn’t appear at an event with the writer I mentioned above—or with me. But I’ve begun reading The Parisian, her first novel, and I hope you’ll join me. I plan to post my notes later this month.
As ever,
Ruth
Thank you, Ruth. I am always grateful for your writing.
Another thing that was so evident to me when I got home mid-war was the relief. No one rips signs of hostages, there's no fear in wearing the dog tags/yellow ribbon. It was immediate.