Peace be upon you, Jews, you are free!

via Yad Vashem

These words were spoken by Rabbi Herschel Schacter shortly after he rode through the gates of the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945, together with the liberating American forces. Rabbi Schacter died in the Bronx on March 21, after a long career as one of the most prominent Modern Orthodox rabbis in the United States. And, as further reported by the NY Times on March 26, he cried “Shalom Aleichem, Yidden, as he ran from barracks to barracks, repeating those words: Peace be upon you, Jews, you are free! He was joined by those Jews who could walk, until a stream of people swelled behind him.”

His words still resonate in my head, and apparently won’t leave me in peace until I write this post and get it out of my system. Because, fellow Jews, it took me awhile to understand that they hold true today – though probably from a somewhat different angle – as they did 68 years ago. Not because Jews are not free. They are, in Israel and America (and most everywhere else), allowed to follow their dreams and live their lives as they please. And yet, and this is what bothers me the most, in Israel – and surly in some segments of American Jewry as well – some people, or better still some leaders, behave as if we are not yet free.

This is an oxymoron of sorts, which demands a careful examination. Let me have a crack at it then, here and now. What I keep hearing from Israeli leaders, and from some American Jews as well, is in what a dangerous neighborhood Israel exists. True enough. They keep stressing, also, that today, 65 years to the establishment of the Jewish state, Israel is still in a state of siege; still fighting for its survival, and still facing an “existential” threat to its existence. Oh, how much Mr. Netanyahu likes to use that old metaphor of comparing Israel’s struggle for survival with what we had suffered in the Holocaust. It is high time to put a stop to the constant, denigrating use of the Holocaust to justify false, cowardly policies.

Israel, after all, is the only unquestionable, unchallengeable superpower in the Middle East today. Furthermore, militarily and economically – with the support of America and American Jews squarely pushing and covering our back – one of the strongest nations on earth, possessing an amazingly strong army, with a large arsenal of nuclear weapons. (Which now we learn, thanks to WikiLeaks, Israel had vehemently refused to admit existed even to the American president and other leaders in 1975, refusing all attempts of inspection – remind you of something?…) So stop pretending as if Israel is not free. Stop pretending as if it faces a constant existential threat. Stop being such a militaristic, confrontational oriented society and realize – leaders and people alike – that only by making peace with your neighbors, far and foremost among them the Palestinians, the gaining of total freedom will be completed.

If there is an existential, external threat to Israel’s existence, it stems not from its neighboring countries, but from its refusal to compromise and make peace. The other existential threat is internally, and threatens the fabric of its society; i.e. the “The wars of the Jews.” It seems as if the gap between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem keeps widening, as is the gap between the liberal, largely secular Israel and the more fervent religious segments of its society. A gap like that, if not kept in check, can grow into an abyss. Tackling these issues at the core, and head on – like, for instance, allowing women to pray as they wish at the Western Wall, and not be pushed to sit at the back of the bus – is a step in the right direction. Hopefully, the rise of Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid party signal, at least on that front, a promising move forward.

It is therefore important – especially on this unique April 2013, in which Passover ended and Lag B’Omer begins, in which we honored the memory of all the victims of the Holocaust, and then stood silence in memory of our fallen soldiers, who fought and died for our freedom, to be followed by a celebration of their (and our) achievement of being a free, independent sate – to remember the words Rabbi Schacter cried upon the liberation of Buchenwald: “Peace be upon you, Jews, you are free!” This is a reminder that we are indeed free. And that we better behave like free people – free to choose war or peace – if we don’t want to lose that precious freedom.

* Appeared first on “The Times of Israel.”

Israel Today – Can You Believe?

Yes we can, you might want spontaneously to say. Or even shout. But wait a moment longer before you do that, and let me tell you why I’m asking you this question. And no, it’s not because of what happened last week in Jerusalem, the “lynch”—or attempted lynch of an Arab youth from East Jerusalem, who were attacked by a group of Israeli teenagers out to have some fun on a busy Jerusalem street and kill some Arabs for a good measure. They knocked Jamal Julani unconscious, while hundreds of Israeli bystanders stood ideally by without lifting a finger to help him. After the beating, one young Israeli man did give him a CPR, called an ambulance and may indeed saved his life. This racist incident, which exposed to the eyes of the world the kind of society the Israel of today is—is important enough for a separate article with the above title. And yet, so much has been written about it already that you probably don’t need me to hammer it home for you.

As it were, I’m here to tell you something else entirely. Something you probably were not even aware of—so was I, until lately—even though Israelis are aware of it very much. Here it is, then: The most read Israeli newspaper these days, according to the latest data, is a paper called “Israel Today.” Yes, very much in the vein—as a lot of things in Israel are—of the American paper “USA Today”. Here the big difference, though, and what makes this story so, well, unbelievable. This newspaper, which by all appearances resembles any old tabloid newspaper, is the most popular and read Israeli newspaper today (on weekdays). Yet it’s free! Can you believe?!… And the owner is none other than our dear old friend Sheldon Adelson—yes, the Las Vegas casino mogul who seems to be everywhere these days; buying politicians and opinion makers from the right—who is the financier of this vanity newspaper, to which the majority of Israelis are now exposed, mostly free of charge. Israelis such as my sister, for instance, who called it “Our Pravda;” or a woman friend of mine living in Tel Aviv who called it bluntly “Bibi’s Paper,” are apparently in the minority.

Another words, the newspaper from which most Israelis get their information, analysis and opinions these days is Netanyahu’s Shofar (horn). A right-wing newspaper, paying well enough—remember who own it!—so that even some known, respected Israeli journalist write in it daily. No diversity of opinions is allowed, as I understand—full disclosure: I never set my eyes on that paper—and as far as political coverage go, only what serves Netanyahu and his Likud party is allowed to be loudly heard. “A danger to democracy,” said the Israeli journalist Ben-Dror Yemini. And since a Jewish “Ropert Murdoch” finances it—it’s free! Read all about it, people of Israel, sports and culture and the economy if you like, but as far as politics are concerned, you better believe what we are telling you, even if it’s so one-sided.

No wonder, then, that Israeli teenagers are growing up the way they do. No wonder they believe that “a good Arab is a dead Arab.” Or, as the 15-year-old suspect standing outside court said (according to the NYT, 8/20/12), “for my part he can die, he’s an Arab.” Reflecting on that was Nimrod Aloni, head of the institute for educational at a Tel Aviv teachers college, who said, “… this is directly tied to national fundamentalism that is the same as the rhetoric of neo-Nazis, Taliban and K.K.K.” No wonder, therefore, that there are more and more signs that the enlightened, democratic, educated, tolerant Israel we knew and loved is a thing of the past, as it rapidly becoming “Israel Today:” a darkened, undemocratic, racist and ignorant. I don’t want to believe it, but it seems to be true.