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Duration: 01:25:27
00:00:04:23 - 00:00:31:04
Speaker 1
Okay. Hello and welcome. I'm Dov Waxman. I'm the Rosalind and Arthur Gilbert, Foundation chair of Israel Studies at UCLA and the director of the UCLA, Eunice and Salinas Arian Center for Israel Studies. And it's my great pleasure to introduce this event. I want to first of all, thank you all for joining us this evening for the Nazarian Center's inaugural Eunice Nazarian Memorial Lecture.
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One year ago, Eunice Nazarian passed away at the age of 91. The center owes its very existence to the generosity and vision of Eunice and his wife, Soraya. Thank you. So I would say with us this evening to honor his memory and express our gratitude to him and his family. We've established this new lecture series in Israel Studies.
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In a moment, Eunice and survivors daughter Dr. Sharon Ansari. And we'll say a few words about her father and his amazing life. I will just say that given Eunice his many contributions to the state of Israel, I think it's particularly fitting to hold this inaugural lecture on this particular day, Yom Hotspot, Israel's Independence Day. 75 years ago today.
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According to the Hebrew calendar. David Ben-Gurion read aloud the Declaration of Independence officially establishing the state of Israel. Since that historic event, Israel has fought many wars, millions of Jewish immigrants from all over the world have emigrated to Israel and been integrated into Israeli society. Israel has developed an advanced economy and become a regional superpower, a high tech hub, a multicultural society, and a source of pride to many Jews, both in Israel and around the world.
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Of course, Israel, like any country, also has its flaws, and it faces many challenges, internal and external. And in recent months, as we all know, the country has been mired in a ferocious dispute over the government's proposed judicial overhaul. Exposing deep divisions among Israelis and fundamental disagreements about Israel's identity. Our distinguished speaker this evening, we'll discuss these divisions and disagreements.
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But now I'd like to welcome on to the stage Dr. Sharon Azaria, the president of the Zionist Nazarian Family Foundation, and the chair of the Nazarian Center's Community Advisory Board.
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Speaker 2
You know, much about Israel's day of independence was always this very special day in the Nazarian household. Our father, Eunice, who was born in Iran, made aliyah to Israel at the age of 17 in 1949 and joined the border Police mishmash of arrival as part of the military service. But more importantly, our father experienced freedom for the first time as an Iranian Jew born into a culture of prejudice and oppression.
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That sense of freedom stayed with him even as he returned to Iran in the mid-fifties. At the time of the oil boom in Iran, in pursuit of his business aspirations back in Iran, he knew that as a Jew he would not be treated as an equal citizen, nor would he be able to function as a businessman, to be privy to government tenders and to be able to really reach his zenith.
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But still, he felt that for his children they could feel more protected than he ever had. He raised his family steeped in Zionist pride. Emotionally and physically connected to his spiritual homeland by building a second home in Tel Aviv. And like so many Jews around the world, confident that Israel would remain a safe haven if and when needed, he achieved great business success in a short amount of time, only to have it taken away by a theocratic and oppressive regime that forced his family into exile.
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As a result of the 1979 revolution, largely because of his ties to Israel representing large manufacturing companies from Israel. Once moved to America. Here in Los Angeles, he built yet another successful business business enterprise. He beamed with pride every Yom had Samoud when he saw how modern, vibrant, diverse, creative and innovative the state of Israel had become fulfilling the generational dream of the Jewish people.
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He took every step possible in his own limited capacity as a businessman to help the Israeli people even agreeing to meet Yasser Arafat. I was no small feat getting him to meet him. Every peace accord signed was celebrated with greatest joy. The Abraham Accords were probably the culmination of his dream come true. Like so many Mizrahi Jews who yearned for the day when Israelis and Arabs could achieve true acceptance of one another.
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Not the cold peace of Jordan and Egypt. I think my mother and siblings would agree that the apex of my father's life and career was the day that he lit the torch called Messala on Israel's Independence Day in 2007 in Jerusalem, as part of the annual official Yom Hot Smoke celebration, where 12 Israeli citizens believed to have made an astounding, astounding, outstanding contribution to Israeli society, are asked to light the torch representing the 12 tribes of Israel on Mount Herzl.
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That day was forever etched in all of our hearts as the apex of his dream come true. And for us as a family, a day of true pride. In his final months with us, as his health deteriorated, the only topic I could raise with him that would garner his full attention was either an Israeli achievement or an Israeli crisis.
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He would sit up, look straight into my eyes, and listened intently as I would describe the latest news out of Jerusalem. This Yom had smote especial to our family as we mark the inaugural UCLA Eunice Nazarian Memorial Lecture in honor of our father, who passed away just a little over a year ago, the patriarch of our family was a strong Zionist who understood the need for Jewish self-determination and the necessity of a Jewish and democratic homeland.
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Units devoted his life and his philanthropic endeavors to ensuring the vibrancy of the state of Israel and its citizens. That is what led my mother, Soraya, and him to name and endow the Eunice and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. That brings us together today. It was because he understood how vital it was for UCLA students and the community to have a rich, deep and nuanced understanding of the modern state of Israel.
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In the past few months. I've often asked myself how my father would have reacted to the current crisis facing Israel as a diaspora Jew. Like so many who live in vulnerable communities around the world, in Europe and Latin America, in the Middle East and Africa. Would he have been hesitant to publicly call out the dangers posed by this government, by this current government, to the very democratic character of Israel?
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And would he have openly supported the citizens of Israel protesting week after week the undemocratic tactics of the coalition government? What I am sure about is that he would have been both heartbroken by the amount of pain being felt in Israel on this Independence Day and also deeply inspired by the commitment of Israel's citizens to its Jewish and democratic character.
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The Nazarian family would like to thank the Nazarian Center Professor Dov Waxman and the Center staff for honoring my father in this most distinguished annual commemoration. I would also like to show our deepest gratitude to Yossi Klein Halevy for making the long journey to be with us on this very important celebration and to share his wisdom and persistence, voice of reason, compassion and kindness with us.
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I know my father would have been deeply touched. So thank you all. Thank you for being with us tonight.
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Thank you, Sharon. Now it's time for me to introduce our speaker this evening, Yossi Klein Halevi. Born in Brooklyn, he moved to Israel in 1982 and now lives in Jerusalem, where he's a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, together with Imam Abdullah Tapley of Duke University. He co-directs the institute's Muslim Leadership Initiative, which teaches emerging young Muslim American leaders about Judaism, Jewish identity in Israel.
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He also writes, as I'm sure we all know, four leading op ed pages in the United States, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and is a former contributing editor to The New Republic. He's the author of numerous acclaimed books. His first book, Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, tells the story of his teenage years as a follower of the militant rabbi, Rabbi Meir Kahane, and his subsequent disillusionment with Jewish radicalism.
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His 2001 book at the Entrance to the Garden of Eden, A Jewish search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land, was hailed by the New York Times as, quote, a book of burning importance. His 2013 book, Like Dreamers The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation, won the Jewish Book Council's Everett Book of the Year award, and his latest book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbors, is a New York Times Best seller.
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I'm sure we're all very happy to have him in our company this evening, and I'm delighted to welcome Yossi Klein Halevi.
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Speaker 3
Good evening, everyone, and thank you. Professor Waxman and Sharon, listening to your your beautiful words about your father, I thought you were talking about my father. And my father came from the opposite end of the diaspora as your father. He was a Holocaust survivor. But I think that our two fathers would have gotten along famously because exactly the same worldview, the same commitments, the same passions.
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And so I'm really honored to be here and to be delivering the first memorial lecture for Eunice Nazario. He's a crowbar. To me, his memory be a blessing.
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The first word that comes to my mind when I think about Israel, the emotion, the word that that that sums up my emotional relationship with Israel even more than pride and even more than love. It's gratitude. Gratitude, first of all, for being a Jew alive at this moment, at a moment of check, the honor of of blessing for for having reached this day and for having been privileged to be part of the generation that was born into the reality of a Jewish state.
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Gratitude to Israel for having created the largest and most heterogeneous Jewish community in the world. Gratitude to the state that took the Jewish people from the lowest point in our history, which I believe was 1945, to what I believe is the peak moment of Jewish history. Despite all of the problems we face, which is today gratitude to the Jewish state for teaching us how to defend ourselves and gratitude for having restored the Jewish people to the place we always thought we belong and which is at the center of world events, front and center stage.
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We have many, many wonderful qualities as a people. Modesty is not one of them.
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And gratitude to the State of Israel for embodying the values that the two flags on the bema of most American synagogues were meant to symbolize commitment to the Jewish people and commitment to democracy. And those two flags, which certainly when I was growing up in this country, I took for granted, are really an extraordinary phenomenon because these are two secular symbols, and yet they are placed at the most sacred spot in the synagogue.
00:13:51:18 - 00:14:22:13
They flank the Torah arc. And I think that the Jews, American Jews of the 1940s and fifties had an intuition, a very profound intuition, which is that these are the two symbols of the Jewish rebirth. These these are the symbols of the Jewish renaissance after the Holocaust and now these two flags and what they represent are in danger.
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The employment of these two flags are in danger. To be an Israeli liberal in these days is to experience in anguish that certainly I've never known in the 40 years that I've lived in Israel. This is my anniversary, my 40th anniversary. And these last 40 years, some of you might have noticed, were were a rollercoaster. Life in Israel throws everything possible at you, good and bad.
00:15:05:03 - 00:15:34:21
And yet I never recall losing sleep the way the way that I do now. If I wake up in the middle of the night and I suddenly remember, I remind myself what's happening and I wonder what is this government going to inflict on us in the morning? The night is over and this is very common. We've become at least in my camp in Israel, we've become a nation of insomniacs.
00:15:36:15 - 00:16:11:07
And the person I think, who most for me most summed up what the anguish of this moment really feels like was the Israeli novelist Eshkol Nevo, who wrote recently that he'll find himself sitting alone in his car in a traffic jam in Tel Aviv and weeping. And I don't think that that is is an unusual experience. What we're experiencing in Israel is a convergence of assaults.
00:16:12:10 - 00:17:01:11
This is the most corrupt, most political, extreme and most religiously fundamentalist government in Israel's history. Any one of those assaults would be a formidable challenge. Coming together has really brought us to the edge of what feels like the abyss. What was inconceivable, what was inconceivable six months ago has become routine for you're not smoked. And we're living a kind of inverse reality.
00:17:02:21 - 00:17:32:21
A prime minister on trial for corruption has arrogated for himself the right to impose the most far reaching transformations in Israel's judicial system in our history. A prime minister on trial who has no right to make even justify changes, let alone the kinds of changes that he has put on the table. And let's not call this a judicial reform.
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This is a revolution in the Supreme Court, which Alan Dershowitz has called and Alan Dershowitz. No, no. One suspects him of being a left winger. He was actually close, close to Netanyahu. Dershowitz called the Israeli Supreme Court the jewel in the Israeli crown. This government has targeted the Supreme Court as an enemy of Israel. One of the two justice ministers that Netanyahu was appointed.
00:18:09:17 - 00:18:39:21
And just think about that for a moment. We have two justice ministers because there were spoils that had to be distributed to to Netanyahu's loyalists. We have, in effect, two defense ministers. And I don't know I haven't been paying attention to other ministers. One of the two justice ministers to the Amsalem recently called for the head, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, to be placed on trial for treason.
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The justice minister of the state of Israel moving along to Ben-gvir Itamar Ben-gvir, whom the army would not draft because it considered him too dangerous to hold the gun. He is now in charge of our police and the government is appointing has, as us.
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Has.
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Budgeted a what is in effect, a private militia for Itamar. Ben Crear, this most militantly nationalist, most right wing, most hyper Zionist government in Israel's history is led by men, most of whom didn't serve in the army or who barely served. We've never had a government led by men, and they're all men who barely served in the IDF.
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And yet this is a government that speaks in the name of Zionism and defense. Now, government defenders will say that people like me are sore losers. We're out in the streets and I've been out on the streets every week religiously. We're sore losers. We can't wear we who supposedly are championing democracy can't accept the the legitimacy of our elections.
00:20:08:14 - 00:20:46:04
And yes, this government was elected, legitimate, legitimately. But I have had no problems in the 40 years of living and voting in Israel to accept governments from left, right and center. In fact, I have successively voted for left, right and center, as have many Israelis, many Israelis on the streets today. But a democratically elected government does not have the right to destroy democratic institutions and the democratic ethos.
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That's the red.
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Line.
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You know, Sharon, what you were talking about, how proud your father was about the success of modern Israel. What we're fighting for today is to preserve Israeli modernity. It's to preserve the success of startup nation, because that's what this government is threatening. This is the anti startup nation government, whether it's the ultra-Orthodox or the far right, who believe that we were meant to be an isolated and ghettoized people.
00:21:34:01 - 00:22:25:22
That to me is the negation of Zionism. For me, this is an anti-Zionist government, precisely because it would undermine Israel's place in the world. And yet, for all the anguish that so many of us in Israel are experiencing, this is one of the most exhilarating moments that I've known as an Israeli to be out in the streets with literally hundreds of thousands of people who, you know, have been there for weeks before and, you know, will continue showing up until this crisis is resolved, until we have managed to defend definitively protect Israeli democracy is is almost almost a religious experience.
00:22:26:21 - 00:23:02:11
And when you look around and you've all seen the images of literally tens of thousands of Israeli flags flying in the streets all over Israel, the slogan of this movement is one word, one Hebrew word, bhutia Buckshot means shame or disgrace. And I'll find myself standing next to someone at a demonstration and suddenly they'll start shouting on their own.
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Bush bhutia with the sense of outrage. How could you be doing this to to Israel? How could you be doing this to us? And then suddenly everyone around will take up the chant. Sharp Russia. And it's I it is so heartfelt. It's coming from the deepest Israeli place of protectiveness for the country. And more than anger. What you experience on the streets of Israel today in the protests is love, deep love for Israel.
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And I think that Israelis have surprised themselves by how profoundly in love they are with their country. You know, it's right. Those of you who know Israelis, we can be a fairly cynical bunch. And yet what you feel on the streets is just unabashed pride in what we've accomplished and absolute determination to preserve what we've built. Let's let's I.
00:24:15:06 - 00:24:47:18
I love. APPLAUSE. Thank you. But let's let's not. But no, let's not have applause. Let's it's it's the issues I feel are too painful. And Tzipi Livni, who is a veteran, was one of the veteran leaders of the Likud, spoke at the Jerusalem demonstration last Saturday night. And she gave a very powerful speech and and talking about what the Likud was under, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir and what it has degenerated into today.
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And people started applauding and she said, please don't applaud. This is you're talking about my soul being torn apart. So so this is this is really I'm sharing with you the the the the deepest angst that that we feel in Israel today. And I wish this is not the talk that I had to give here, but what we're experiencing on the streets is an eruption of Israeli patriotism.
00:25:21:23 - 00:25:54:06
And we haven't seen anything like this in years, maybe never. The symbol, if the slogan is Bouchard, the symbol is the Israeli flag, which is really extraordinary, because think about your political divide here. And I think that one of the tragedies of the the of American political discourse is that the flag has been appropriated by one side. And in Israel, the flag belongs to everyone.
00:25:54:07 - 00:26:21:06
I just heard a story from someone the other day that a friend of hers was walking in Tel Aviv. She was leaving the the opposition demonstration and she saw coming to her someone with a right wing t shirt who was on his way to the pro-government demonstration. And he approaches her and she's tensing up and and he says to her, Can I have your flag?
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You know, you you don't need it. You've just finished demonstrating it now. And I think that that now, now I would be dishonest if I were to say that that is typical of the atmosphere in Israel today. It is not. There is deep, deep bitterness and suspicion. At the same time, we are still capable of those small gestures that that define us as a family.
00:26:51:11 - 00:27:30:05
However, dysfunctional, it's also interesting that what has happened on the streets is that the demonstrations grow from week to week, and they're also growing and expanding in terms of the kinds of Israelis who are being drawn in. When you go to the demonstration in Tel Aviv, it's fairly it's it's it's left wing, secular or centrist, secular for the most part in Jerusalem, half, half deport, half religious Jews.
00:27:30:17 - 00:28:01:08
In the last weeks, there have been demonstrations on a weekly basis in Efrat, the settlement of Efrat. They're not large, a few hundred people, but symbolically very important because this is not coming from the left, even though Netanyahu wants to portray it as such. It's coming from the center, from the strong center of the Israeli political map. And I'll have more to say in a little while about about the center.
00:28:03:22 - 00:28:54:11
This is a confusing moment because we're experiencing an overlapping of issues. What obviously triggered the demonstrations, it was the assault on the judiciary and the outrage at at the makeup of this government. But what is underlying the debate in Israel today is a profound divide over our fundamental identity as a country. And there is something moving about the fact that on our 75th anniversary, we're finally having the debate that we probably should have had in 1951 and then we might have had a constitution.
00:28:54:16 - 00:29:22:20
How did we have that debate? And the debate is really not a policy debate. You know, we're used to dividing along along policy issues, settlements, peace process. This is this is much more basic. This is about our identity. We call ourselves a Jewish state in a democratic state. What do we mean by each of those identities and what do we mean by the two of those identities together?
00:29:23:06 - 00:29:59:03
How do they actually work together? How should they work together? And this government is attempting to change both of those identities. The consensus, the majority understanding of what we mean by a democratic state in a Jewish state that I would argue has been a consensus issue from the founding of the state until Netanyahu, coincidentally or not, began to find himself in trouble with the law.
00:29:59:19 - 00:30:40:18
And then suddenly democracy and the Supreme Court became contentious issues. And there's something surreal about experiencing this deep debate over democracy, when for all these years this was a given. And, you know, when I used the term liberal liberal Israelis and I don't mean liberal in a left wing sense, liberal in an Israeli context. It's a very broad category that ranged from Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir as Likud through the center and to Labor, that is the Israeli liberal map.
00:30:41:06 - 00:31:17:20
Now, it may sound discordant to to an American sensibility, but in Israel, until the last few years, the Likud was a liberal nationalist party and an Israeli context. That's not an oxymoron. You can be a nationalist and a liberal. There was no greater liberal in Israeli political history than Menachem Begin, far more than Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion used the Shin Bet to spy on political on his political opponents.
00:31:18:06 - 00:31:53:11
Menachem Begin would have never done that. Menachem Begin, in the opposition in the 1960s, led the parliamentary campaign to end military rule over Israel's Arab citizens who were under military rule. Under the supposedly good old days of the Labor Party, which many American Jews have have a nostalgia for. But I would argue that, at least within the Green Line, Israel was a far more liberal country under the Likud, under the old Likud than it was under the Labor Party.
00:31:57:03 - 00:32:18:10
What has changed, of course, is that Netanyahu has now aligned the Likud with the far right. His first step was to empower the far right to bring them into his coalition. And ultimately he transformed the Likud itself from a liberal nationalist party into a populist far right party.
00:32:22:17 - 00:33:06:02
The debate that we're having today over democracy is how do you define majority rule? Does a majority have the right to do whatever it decides? If you if you win an election, as this government did, does winner take all this government is saying, yes, we won the election and to oppose us is to oppose the democratic process. The liberal understanding of democracy is that there's a delicate dance between the rights of the majority and the rights of a minority.
00:33:07:01 - 00:34:02:01
When the government says that the court is it's an undemocratic institution, their right, that's its purpose. Its purpose is to be a check on runaway power of an elected majority. And so there's a profound disagreement of what we mean by democracy. Israeli democracy is a miracle. There's no democracy anywhere that was born in war and never knew effectively a day of peace that has been under such relentless security pressure not only from enemies who oppose it or who seek land, but who seek to destroy it.
00:34:03:18 - 00:34:36:09
And then when you bring in wave after wave of refugees from parts of the world, whether Eastern Europe or the Middle East, with little or no democratic experience into this permanent pressure cooker. And the result is not only that democracy holds, but that the democratic institutions actually got stronger over years. But when I say that Israeli democracy is a miracle.
00:34:37:16 - 00:35:09:20
I'm not only saying that in a celebratory sense with a certain anxiety because a miracle is a defiance of the laws of nature. A miracle has to be protected. And when you have your own democratically elected government assaulting democratic institutions and the country's democratic ethos, how durable can democracy be? Now, Israel is not a paragon of pure democracy and we never were.
00:35:10:18 - 00:35:55:04
We never were. Because we can't be a country that faces the kinds of security threats that we routinely deal with cannot be a rep or a representative, an embodiment of pure democracy. We're constantly mediating between democratic norms and security needs, but we are a paragon of the struggle for democracy under near impossible circumstances. What makes Israeli democracy so precious, and I would argue so important for the world is because this is the test case of democracy under extremity.
00:35:56:01 - 00:36:41:04
This is what happens when you subject a democracy to relentless pressure. And so in that sense, the fault lines of Israeli democracy, the places where we failed, are no less instructive than the places where we succeed. Israel is a laboratory, and that's what's so precious about about what we've created. And that is what I fear this government would upend precisely that delicate balance, that search for decency under conditions that I believe would have defeated almost any country in our place.
00:36:41:23 - 00:37:12:10
How long would would would any country in Europe have lasted having to deal with the kinds of security threats that we do? And so what we're fighting for today in Israel is to maintain that precious experiment in which Israel becomes a paragon of the balance. Balancing democratic norms with with overwhelming security threats.
00:37:19:11 - 00:37:50:04
The second identity issue that is on the table and I believe is going to become more and more prominent in the coming months is what do we mean by a Jewish state? Now, unlike the consensus that prevailed in Israel until the last few years on democracy, and when I say consensus, I mean a strong majority of Israelis took for granted the liberal definition of democracy.
00:37:50:16 - 00:38:52:12
The opponents of this liberal definition were the hard right and the ultra-Orthodox, and they have always been in the minority. The second issue, the Jewish identity of the state has been deeply argued, has been source of our deepest internal divide, not only from the founding of the state, but in the decades before the state was created in the yishuv in the pre-State Jewish community, we were always deeply divided over the question of whether Israel should be a the state of the Jewish people or in addition to the state of the Jewish people, the state of Judaism, and in particular one denomination of Judaism, Orthodox Judaism, the classical Zionist mainstream.
00:38:53:07 - 00:39:25:03
Answer to this question, going back to the founding of Zionism was that Israel was meant to be the state of the Jewish people. All of the Jewish people, the whole mess who we are, for better or for worse. That is the state of Israel. The great achievement of rabbinic Judaism was that it held the Jewish people together through the exile.
00:39:26:03 - 00:39:27:02
Speaker 4
For.
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1700 years until the 19th century. It gave us a shared identity and a shared language. A Jew could travel the length and breadth of the diaspora East and West, North and South in an in the Middle Ages and feel reasonably at home in almost any diaspora. Maybe the two exceptions that I can think of are the Ethiopian Jewish community and the Indian Jewish community where rabbinic Judaism didn't reach everywhere else.
00:40:01:07 - 00:40:43:19
This is an astonishing achievement and and the Jewish people owes rabbinic Judaism its life, its existence. But this achievement of uniting the Jewish people broke down irrevocably, irrevocably in the 19th century, and religion stopped being the uniting principle and became the most divisive part of our identity. We were blessed to have Zionism come along at precisely that point in the 19th century, to offer us an alternative vision of a unifying Jewish identity.
00:40:44:22 - 00:41:17:10
And this is an aspect of Zionism that has been, I think, to to to neglected. Zionism was not only about empowering the Jewish people, restoring only restoring sovereignty, recreating the Hebrew language, reestablishing Jewish. It was also about redefining how we unite as a people and the Zionist definition of who is a Jew is who is whoever is a Jew.
00:41:18:18 - 00:41:54:07
And without applying a microscope. And this was a revolutionary idea. And there's a there's good reason for why almost the entire ultra-Orthodox world in the pre Holocaust and pre Holocaust Europe opposed Zionism because they understood just how radical, how revolutionary Zionism was the embodiment of this revolutionary principle that what unites the Jewish people is the Jewish people. This is our unifying identity.
00:41:54:21 - 00:42:26:00
It's the law of return. The Law of Return is a far more radical principle of of defining who we are than the reform movement's patrilineal descent. The Law of Return offers Israeli citizenship to anyone with a single grandfather, single grandparent. And while the law of Return isn't technically a definition of who is a Jew, in practice, that is exactly what it has done.
00:42:26:20 - 00:42:58:15
And we see it with the Soviet immigration, where hundreds of thousands among the million plus came in under the grandfather clause and were absorbed into Jewish Israeli society. So it was under the grandfather clause that that part of the Jewish people that had been most estranged, forcibly kept from the Jewish people, was reunited in the most far reaching way, the most profound way.
00:43:02:13 - 00:43:49:02
Now, it's true that Zionism and the secular state went a long way to accommodating the camp that defines who is a Jew in classical rabbinic orthodoxy terms. And I would define Israel as a secular state with too many religious laws, something like maybe, maybe like Ireland or Italy of two generations ago, something like that. But Israel always remained insisted on defining itself at its core as a secular state.
00:43:49:23 - 00:44:21:18
That is the source of our success as a modern country. And there is we honor Judaism. We give Orthodox Judaism preeminence to my to my tastes far, far too far too much preeminence. Nevertheless, I think that the secular state has got a very long way to accommodating the camp that sees Israel as the state not only of the Jewish people, but of Orthodox Judaism.
00:44:22:23 - 00:45:14:10
The one the one law that most defines Israel as the state of the Jewish people. And not the state of Orthodox Judaism is the law of return. And that's precisely what this government intends to amend. So the next great fight that's heading our way is going to be over how we define admission into the state of Israel. If we define it in an expansive Zionist way, and I insist on calling this a Zionist definition or in a non Zionist way, which is reverting back to the basis of of Jewish unity, the religious basis that worked for us for 1700 years and broke down in modernity.
00:45:21:03 - 00:45:59:03
Some opponents of the protest movement have tried to define this moment as a clash between those who favor a post Jewish post Zionist, secular democratic state versus those who are upholding the integrity of Israel as a Jewish state. This, to my mind, is a profound distortion of what is happening this moment. What we are arguing about is not whether Israel should be a Jewish state, but what kind of Jewish state we should be, which.
00:46:04:17 - 00:46:41:23
And for me, the definition of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state is that, first of all, and I insist on this hierarchy of order, Israel is first of all, the state of every Jew in the world, whether or not they are citizens of Israel. And secondly, it is the state of all of its citizens, whether or not they are Jews, the state of all Jews, whether or not they are citizens, the state of all of its citizens, whether or not they are Jews.
00:46:45:00 - 00:47:18:07
How much time do I have left? I've lost total track. I have another 2 hours of material, I'm afraid. 10 minutes, he says. Ten or 15. I'm sorry. I'm taking 50. Okay. So the there are the nation state law, the Jewish nation state law that was passed in, I believe 2017 was right to define Israel as the state of the Jewish people.
00:47:18:14 - 00:47:42:06
But it was only half right because it didn't define Israel at the same time as a democracy. Now, those who supported the law say it wasn't necessary to define Israel as a democracy because we have a series of basic laws that define the rights of the individual. So far, we have a series of basic laws that are democratic.
00:47:43:00 - 00:48:13:00
But my argument is that what the nation state law does is define the essence, the identity of the state. And you can't define the state of Israel with only half of its identity, then it becomes dangerously incomplete. Now, there are unavoidable tensions in these two definitions, and I can't think of any other state in the world that's quite like that.
00:48:13:15 - 00:48:43:00
And in that sense, in our connection to world Jewry, we are an abnormal state. And as a democracy, we're a normal and we're going to have to balance. That is the essence of Israeli identity. Maintaining the tension between being a normal state like other states and being a unique state which is represented by our connection to a transnational people.
00:48:45:11 - 00:49:21:06
Now is the Zionism not only took responsibility for recreating the Jewish people, it also created a new people called the Israelis. Now, obviously there's a great deal of overlap between these two peoples, but they are not entirely identical. And it seems to me that that in the Religious-zionist community there's a great difficulty in understanding the difference between a state, a modern state and a people.
00:49:22:00 - 00:49:54:21
There is overlap, but they cannot be identical because then you are disenfranchizing citizens who don't belong to that people. By the same token, just as an aside, the haredim, the ultra-Orthodox have a separate problem. They confuse a community for a people. They look at the Jewish people and see a reflection of themselves and believe that they are not only the the heart of the Jewish people, but really in some ways the only authentic expression of the Jewish people.
00:49:55:10 - 00:50:40:13
And so the religious Zionists, by and large, are more expansive in their understanding of the Jewish people. To some extent, but don't don't have that sense of an expanse, don't have an expansive idea of a modern state. And so this, to my mind, is part of what's being played out in this clash, seeing Israel as a Jewish state, which means the state of the whole people, and not only a community within the Jewish people, not only the Orthodox community, and seeing the state of Israel as a modern construct that is not that doesn't only belong to the Jewish people, but belongs to all of its citizens.
00:50:42:19 - 00:51:16:23
Now there are deep tensions between Jewish and democratic and Arab citizen. We'll never be able to really identify with the founding ethos of the state, which is the ingathering of the exiles. That is antithetical to what Arab Israelis want. Let's be honest about it. That sense of alienation from the national identity is reinforced by the state symbols which are relentless elite Jewish.
00:51:17:15 - 00:51:46:04
It's hard really to think of neutral Israeli symbols. And I think as the state evolves, we're going to need to figure out how do we preserve the Jewish symbols of the state and expand and create some place for Israeli symbols and what will that mean? I believe that there are four indispensable elements to the Jewishness of a Jewish state.
00:51:47:11 - 00:52:25:17
Excuse me. The first, of course, is the law of return, and that is the most indispensable of all of the elements defining us as a Jewish state. The second is that Israel has created a public space that is defined by the Hebrew calendar, the Hebrew language by Jewish issues, a Jewish public space, not exclusively because we have minorities and we need to continue not just making place, but expanding the place within our public space for minorities.
00:52:28:01 - 00:53:01:22
The third is the symbols. The symbols of the state need to reflect our Jewish identity and finally, our connections with world Jewry. The sense of responsibility for the Jewish people of protectiveness toward the Jewish people, and of seeing ourselves as the continuity of the 4000 years story. We're not just 75 years old at the same time, and that's a lot.
00:53:02:14 - 00:53:31:02
That, to me is a very heavy load for a democratic state to carry. We have no choice. That's our essence. But at the same time, I think we need to be mindful of what a burden that that we impose on the Arab citizens of Israel. And we need to be thinking of ways not to expand the official Jewish imprint, but to contract it where we can.
00:53:32:00 - 00:53:59:01
This government's instincts are precisely the opposite. This government wants to expand and expand and expand the Jewishness of the state. And that seems to me, antithetical to Israel's best long term interests, which require the absorption to whatever extent is possible of Arab citizens into some sense of shared civic Israeli identity.
00:54:09:23 - 00:54:50:21
To sum up actually, not to sum up a new idea, but I'm concluding I'm moving toward the thought. This is potentially one of the most positive moments in Israeli history. And I say that because it has forced us not only to deal with identity issues that we must confront, but also to deal with long simmering distortions in the Israeli system.
00:54:52:15 - 00:55:33:09
I'm thinking, for example, of the ultra-Orthodox state within a state which is growing exponentially and which this government is substantial, actually strengthening. The previous government was beginning to make inroads into bringing parts of the country community into the mainstream, and this government has completely overturned those those achievements. And then there's the question of settler violence. Now, for years I was among those who dismissed this the seriousness of settler violence as a fringe.
00:55:34:15 - 00:56:11:15
So it's a few it's a few lunatics uprooting olive trees. Four of their Palestinian neighbors with this government, it's the that fringe has entered the heart of Israeli power. Smotrich and Ben-gvir are the patrons of the farthest fringe of the Israeli Israeli right. What happened a few weeks ago in Howrah, in the Palestinian village of Woollahra, where hundreds of settlers burned dozens of Palestinian homes, was not a fringe phenomenon.
00:56:12:14 - 00:56:58:07
And so we are now beginning to face some a disgraceful phenomenon that we have allowed to to fester under successive Israeli governments left, right and center. What we're experience seeing today on the streets is the rise of a passionate center. Now, the problem with a political center is a kind of amorphous quality. The Center usually lacks passion, as the poet told us, and the passion usually belongs to the extremes.
00:56:59:12 - 00:57:48:17
That's finished the center in Israel today is no less passionate, no less militant than the extremes. This is an extraordinary moment in Israeli history. What the center and I speak as somebody who is who is is a passionate, militant centrist. The center has moved from a mood to an ideology. And that ideology is what I've tried to lay lay out here a commitment to a liberal understanding, a classical Zionist understanding of Israel as a Jewish state and a democratic state, and insisting on the non negotiable and alignment of these two identities.
00:57:49:17 - 00:58:08:04
On the left there is a wavering about a Jewish state. On the right, we're seeing the erosion of support for a democratic state. It's the center that will fight and preserve. I believe the the integrity of these two identities.
00:58:13:00 - 00:58:44:12
If we'd waited too long, if we'd waited another ten years or 20 years to begin confronting issues like settler violence, like the ultra-Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox separatism, it might have been too late. And the good news is the potential good news is that I believe it's not too late. And I think that this movement has arisen just at the moment when it's still possible to salvage the Israel that we've known for 75 years.
00:58:48:08 - 00:59:06:07
How will Israeli society be healed after this traumatic schism, the deepest schism that we've ever known and deeper even? I would argue from the Rabin assassination, because that was over policy. This is over identity. This is over the foundation.
00:59:08:15 - 00:59:41:17
I believe that we'll have to wait for the post Netanyahu era for real healing to begin to reestablish the broad Zionist center which reflects still reflects a majority of the Israeli public. And I say that based on the polls that we're seeing, this government in the last four or five months has gone down in the polls from 64 seats to 48.
00:59:42:17 - 01:00:18:03
I have never seen that kind of decline in so short a time in 40 years of of observing Israeli politics. Something extraordinary is happening and I believe that what's happening is that the democratic right that votes for the Likud is saying, wait a minute, this isn't really what we signed up for. We vote for the Likud because you promised security and now security is worse, far worse than it was under the last government, which was supposedly a muslim Brotherhood government, as Netanyahu characterized it.
01:00:19:11 - 01:00:44:20
And instead, we're seeing an agenda that you Netanyahu, didn't reveal during the election campaign. You didn't tell us that this was coming. The far right was candid. Netanyahu was very cagey. We need be. So what is your plan for the judicial system? We're going to proceed responsibly. We're going to look for consensus. Don't worry. You know where we're responsible.
01:00:45:22 - 01:01:27:15
And so many Israeli voters today feel this isn't what we what we signed up for. And I believe that we will reestablish that broad Zionist center, the broad the broad liberal camp that includes large parts of the Likud. And we will restore the far right to its natural place on the fringes of Israeli politics. There's a deeper discussion here about how we renew our capacity as a society for mutual empathy.
01:01:28:07 - 01:01:52:05
Right now, very few Israelis are able, and I include myself in this category, able to really listen to the arguments of the other side. And that's a very dangerous well, you know, that's a very dangerous place for a country to be in. And we can't afford to be there because we happen to have Hezbollah and Hamas on our borders.
01:01:52:17 - 01:02:26:10
And Iran is in Syria all and this is the Iranian. And we all know that war could break out at any moment, which would make everything that I've just said here in some ways irrelevant until it becomes relevant again. And so we can't afford to indulge in the kinds of contemptuous politics that really now defines American discourse as as angry as I as I am at the government and their supporters.
01:02:26:17 - 01:03:01:10
I cannot call my fellow Israelis deplorables. Then there's no there's no basis for four for solidarity any longer. And so we're going to have to start figuring out how do we renew our capacity for conversation. My last words really last is, is that we're going to win. And I'm saying it not out of bravado, but based on the mood in the streets.
01:03:01:19 - 01:03:46:18
What began as an outpouring of despair in those first weeks has turned into a celebration. And look at go look at some of the clips of the Independence Day celebration in Tel Aviv last night with several hundred thousand protesters celebrating the victory of their Israel. This for this this person at our family say to we, we we dedicated the theme of Beirut, of freedom to imagining that we've already won in Israel and the say there became a celebration for the endurance of Israeli democracy.
01:03:47:02 - 01:04:11:17
And that's the spirit that you find in Israel today. And I believe that we are going to be more determined than this government. And the moments when I in retrospect, the moment when I realized that this was true was the very first big demonstrate. Some of you may recall there was a downpour in Tel Aviv and 90,000 people came.
01:04:12:03 - 01:04:41:04
I have never been more drenched in my life under an umbrella. And yet nobody moved. Nobody. Nobody even commented about how how what we were actually experiencing. We were just determined. That same determination with which Israelis have defended the country from external threat was being expressed in the streets. And that's why I believe that we're going to win.
01:04:42:01 - 01:04:55:05
And I think that one day we're going look back at this moment and say, this is the time when liberal Israel reasserted itself and Israeli democracy was renewed. Thank you very much.
01:05:05:01 - 01:05:06:12
Speaker 5
But we have to analyze.
01:05:11:08 - 01:05:31:18
Okay. Well, first of all, I just want to thank you for, you know, speaking from the heart that impassioned words. And I know I'm sure I speak on behalf of many people here who are worried and alarmed by everything we've seen happening in Israel over these last few months. And your words have actually, I think, been uplifting, troubling, but also uplifting.
01:05:31:18 - 01:05:35:10
So I really want to thank you for some of the hope that we.
01:05:39:07 - 01:05:40:02
So we have.
01:05:40:08 - 01:06:02:03
We have a little bit of time, not much for questions. I want to ask those if you have a question. We have microphones on the side there. So if you would line up and I will alternate. And if you can, please ask a question rather than make a statement, that would be wonderful because we don't have a whole lot of time.
01:06:02:13 - 01:06:03:13
So let's.
01:06:03:20 - 01:06:05:15
It an audience of Jews.
01:06:06:01 - 01:06:10:21
State. This might be a challenge, but this might be a challenge. So let's begin with you, sir.
01:06:10:22 - 01:06:32:16
Speaker 6
Yes. Since there's been some talk about trying to find a compromise over the judiciary, what kind of changes do you think could be possible that would enable Israel to retain its democratic legitimacy? For example, in the U.S., the president appoints nominees to the court. The current court plays no role in their approval. And you have doctrines like standing and just a just disability that limit its reach.
01:06:33:00 - 01:06:38:14
Do you think there are any kind of changes that could be satisfactory to the government and yet enable Israel to retain its democracy?
01:06:38:17 - 01:07:03:09
Yes, with two conditions. One is that Netanyahu is not prime minister, that we don't have a prime minister who is on trial. No, that that's that's number one, because the two don't go together. And the second is that we have a constitution that it's yes, in the U.S., the president appoints the judges, but you have a whole system here that we don't have.
01:07:03:19 - 01:07:35:20
And so it's it's disingenuous as Netanyahu's part to to compare the reforms that he's intending, the revolution that he's intending to to the American system. So there look, there's lots of there are there's lots that needs to be improved in the in the judicial system. I deliberately did not go there because I don't believe that this is the the moment where those changes necessary changes are going to happen because it requires goodwill.
01:07:36:02 - 01:08:03:00
This government is is in it. This is this government is going for broke. And so I don't believe I hope I'm wrong. I don't believe that there will be a a workable compromise coming out of the negotiations. I think the government is buying time. I want to see some way in which there more conservative judges on the court because Israel is basically a conservative society.
01:08:03:07 - 01:08:31:09
And I think that even even if that isn't my own personal inclination, I, I think that we need we need more input there. We certainly need more ethnic diversity. To Mizrahi judges in a country of a Mizrahi majority is is a scandal. So there are there really is room for for for judicial change, but not with a government that's planning judicial revolution.
01:08:33:02 - 01:08:35:02
Okay. Yes.
01:08:35:23 - 01:09:01:00
Hi. Am I have you spoke a little bit about the change in in Likud and it's not sort of the party that it used to be. Why do you think that everyone who's now part of Likud, but how come no one stepped away from the coalition? What would cause the coalition to fall apart? So there'd have to be a new election, which I would think would maybe be the solution here.
01:09:01:14 - 01:09:29:21
That that has been in some ways the most important question of the Israeli political system. Where are five sided? Kim Beside. I won't translate that and where where where are the responsible patriotic members of the Likud without mentioning names?
01:09:29:21 - 01:09:31:22
Whereas you said that later.
01:09:32:03 - 01:09:59:22
But yes, you know, and and galant. Galant, who I would have said was the miss misnamed Galant, did in the end make some stand, which was which was important. Not enough, far as I'm concerned, but nevertheless, a lone voice. And there still are some people from the old Likud I can think of, of a very fine people there.
01:10:00:09 - 01:10:05:10
Danny Danon, others, where are they? So I don't have an answer.
01:10:07:03 - 01:10:28:22
Sir. Yeah. First of all, always wonderful to hear you speak and I applaud your optimism. But when I look at the demographics of the religious, the Haredi, it's only going to get worse. And when I look at the writings of the Knesset, no one's predicting this government is going to fall. So how can you be optimistic when you look at those things?
01:10:29:16 - 01:11:16:12
It's a it's it's a very important question. And I'm optimistic because when I look at the Jewish world that my family came from the world of Eastern and Central Europe up until 19th, mid-19th century, everyone was already. What happened? What happened was modernity. Haredim are living in a modern Jewish state, which has a great deal of charisma. If you look at the the the history of Israel, it's about drawing in successive waves of immigrants, of refugees into an Israeli identity.
01:11:17:12 - 01:11:44:13
There are many, many haredim who are restless. I heard a statistic recently that about 4000 Haredim leave the community every year. That's a drop in the demographic bucket. Nevertheless, if 4000 have the courage to leave and it's extremely difficult to leave the world for each one who leaves, I imagine there are at least several who wish they could.
01:11:46:15 - 01:12:35:18
This the karate community is not static. There is there's a great deal of dynamism happening there. And and let's the state of Israel some credit that there really is something powerful that can attract young haredim. And I'm not interested in them giving up their way of life. That was the old labor, secular Israel, the new Israel. And again, I credit the Likud for this is more pluralistic culturally, ethnically it's it's it's a different Israel and in that Israel there is a place for main stream affiliated haredim for haredim who are part of the Israeli mainstream and who still keep their there their way life.
01:12:35:23 - 01:13:06:04
Now, obviously, there will need to be some give and take on both sides, and that's a process that needs to happen. And it and it began under the last government. So the problem is not the authority. The problem is the rest of us, because we've allowed this this distorted relationship to to to grow to to what I consider to be an existential threat to the Israeli economy.
01:13:07:04 - 01:13:38:10
And so I don't think that what is is what's going to be provided and here is where I also feel a great deal of encouragement about this movement on the streets. It has placed the issue of integration a central to its agenda. This is the first time that we're seeing this. There were there were big demonstrations in Bnei Brak, in the main, the city of non Haredim going into Bnei Brak to protest.
01:13:38:23 - 01:13:50:02
We've never seen that before. And the current political leadership is very nervous because they realize they may have overstepped and now the attention is focusing on them.
01:13:52:04 - 01:13:52:22
This ritual.
01:13:54:07 - 01:14:16:23
Okay. Sorry, I'm really short. Hi, I'm Rachel. I'm a student here. I want to ask you about the bloc in the protests. Like, what role do you think they have in the anti judicial overhaul movement? And, like, how do you think their presence has impacted, like, the discussion about the movement overall?
01:14:17:15 - 01:14:53:19
They have no role. They have virtually no presence except on the fringes of the demonstrations. And that's and that's right. Initially, they were much more prominent. They would bring palace big Palestinian flags. Netanyahu loved that. He tweeted. He tweeted the images out. This is who opposes me traitors. And the response of the mainstream centrist demonstrators who are the overwhelming majority wants to bring giant Israeli flags to the protest.
01:14:54:04 - 01:15:25:12
This is a demonstration that is not against the Israeli Zionist ethos. It is affirming. It is not an op as it is not an opposition to to to to what Israel is, what We're saying is this government is a distortion, is a betrayal of what Israel is. And so this is a deeply Zionist demonstration and the the far left has been completely marginalized as it needs to be.
01:15:26:02 - 01:15:51:18
Now, there are very serious questions about our long term relationship with 3 million Palestinians. What's going to happen? I, I have made my own position clear as clear as I could on support for a two state solution. This is not the moment to conflate the two issues. And I understand the argument on the left that Israeli can't have Israeli democracy just within the green line.
01:15:51:23 - 01:16:16:10
I understand that right now we're fighting to preserve the Supreme Court. If we lose that God, then we've lost everything. And in terms of the the debate over the future of the territories, that's an issue that we need to put on the agenda. But it's not going to be determined by the left. There is no left left in Israel.
01:16:16:23 - 01:16:48:16
It's it's so marginal. And and the Labor Party, which is mainstream left, is the smallest party in the Knesset, four seats out of 120. This is the party that founded the state of Israel that governed uncontested for the first three decades. It's now the smallest party in Israel. So the left was fatally discredited during the second intifada, the four years of suicide bombings and never recovered.
01:16:49:13 - 01:17:19:16
And so the the and this is something that I think American Jews need to internalize is that the Israeli political system today is not left versus right. It's right versus center. It's the center that is the main opposition to the right. And it's the center which is very skeptical of the Palestinian national movement, which doesn't trust Palestinian leaders, but which knows it is in Israel's existential interest to extricate ourselves from occupying another people.
01:17:20:09 - 01:17:34:06
And so it's not the same move as the left, but this is where it's the center that in the end is going to to put this issue on the table with a very different sensibility than the left.
01:17:35:10 - 01:17:54:22
So I'm afraid we are out of time. I know there are some more people asking questions. I'm sure you'll see. Would be happy to if you if you're happy to stay for a few more minutes. Well, okay. We'll take. We'll take. I'm not going to ask questions.
01:17:54:23 - 01:17:57:00
I'm staying upstairs in the hotel.
01:17:57:08 - 01:18:02:16
Okay. So we'll we'll stay until they kick us out for a little bit. The lady over that?
01:18:02:16 - 01:18:34:22
Yes, I will. Thank you briefly for sharing your perspective with us. Very meaningful for those of us who live here, who are not Israeli citizens, but who are deeply Zionist and who care deeply about the future of Israel as a liberal democracy. What are the three or four major actions that you would like to see us take at this pivotal moment in support of the center and the demonstrations?
01:18:34:22 - 01:18:37:07
I'm So glad you asked that question.
01:18:38:03 - 01:18:40:19
Because I'm so glad to hear your answer.
01:18:42:04 - 01:19:23:16
Because I have a large part of the talk that I didn't give was about that and about resetting the Israeli diaspora relationship. And I this moment as an opportunity for us to begin treating each other as grown ups. By that I mean that we share responsibility for the nature of Israel. Now, I understand Israelis who say that Diaspora Jews don't bear the consequences of our security issues and therefore should not get involved in our security issues.
01:19:23:17 - 01:19:56:21
I personally feel that if we call ourselves the state of the Jewish people, that comes not only with privileges of what we get from the diaspora, but also responsibilities. And one of the responsibilities is to at least listen to diaspora concerns, including on security issues, even if it's painful for us. But on this issue in particular, the question of Israel's identity as a Jewish and democratic state, the diaspora not only has the right to speak up, but the responsibility.
01:19:57:06 - 01:20:23:16
This issue will directly affect your well-being. First of all, if Israel forbid, stops being a democracy, it will affect the way your children and grandchildren relate to Israel. It will affect the way American society perceives American Jews. With your two flags on the bima, you're what are you doing there with the flag of Erdogan's Turkey or, you know, or Orban's Hungary?
01:20:24:03 - 01:20:55:07
It will have direct impact on the well-being of American Jewry and as well how we define ourselves as a Jewish state. If we narrow the entry point to and do away with this definition of the law of return, the more expansive definition that's going to directly impact the diaspora, it'll have direct impact more on Jews from the former Soviet Union or descendants of Jews.
01:20:55:17 - 01:21:24:13
But it will affect the entire diaspora. So the first that my first point is we need to define first principles here. And the first principle is Diaspora Israel partnership is not limited to uncritical support. I want you more involved because if we continue to maintain this relationship of just uncritical support, it's not going to be sustainable in the long term.
01:21:24:16 - 01:22:03:23
We're already losing large parts of American Jewry, so I want American Jews to be more deeply involved in Israel's issues. And, you know, Israelis play a very they play a certain game where we say we don't want diaspora intervention in our internal affairs unless you're supporting my camp and the right and the left both to this and the right and the left and the center, we all were thrilled when Diaspora Jews support our political camp.
01:22:04:10 - 01:22:29:11
But if you dare support the how dare you? You're intervening in our internal affairs. So the first principle is that Jews of the right, American Jews of the right of the center of the left all have a responsibility to get involved. So what should you first of all, study the issues, but study it deeply. Not not a slogans.
01:22:29:11 - 01:22:54:21
Not, not. Don't take my word for it. Study the issues. Until five months ago, I knew nothing about the Israeli legal system. I didn't know how many Supreme Court justices there are today. I can tell you how New Zealand the point Supreme Court justices, as opposed to Germany and how both of them are different from the United States and how that's not appropriate for Israel.
01:22:55:05 - 01:23:34:14
We've all we've all become amateur experts on the law. And I want I ask Americans know the issues, get involved. What are the issues? Start studying them and then draw your own conclusions. But if you conclude that Netanyahu is proceeding in the right way, then support that position, but get involved. Secondly, this may sound heretical, but I would love to see thousands of American Jews outside of Israeli consulates in major cities with, giant Israeli flags.
01:23:36:08 - 01:24:03:12
There was a demonstration at the Israeli consulate in New York a few weeks ago by left wing Jewish groups, which an anti demonstration and looking for pro demonstration in the same way that our demonstrations in the streets in Israel are not just against the government but are affirming the Israel we love. What I missed in that demonstration in New York was an affirmation of the Israel that they love.
01:24:03:14 - 01:24:32:07
There was no love for Israel. And so what I want to hear is an outpouring of love for Israel. This is an opportunity for the Jewish community to publicly re-embrace Jewish, democratic Israel. And so rather than look at this as as as a as a as a moment when we're going to risk even more alienation on the part of American Jews, let's draw them closer.
01:24:32:19 - 01:24:56:15
So those are just some and, you know, I'm really very reluctant to tell American Jews what to do when when the American Jewish community decides that an issue is important, it knows what to do. And I trust I trust the capabilities of this community. So thank you. All right. You could applaud for that.
01:24:57:12 - 01:25:07:08
So I think I know we would all love to stay on and I would encourage people who still have questions to stay behind and ask those questions. I think this is a good moment to thank you.
01:25:07:23 - 01:25:19:01
And to all of you in the audience. Thank you all for coming. I know.