Demographics may determine Israel’s political future. The humanistic and universal values proclaimed in the Israeli Declaration of Independence seem of a bygone era, though they continue to inform the attitudes of much of non-Orthodox Diaspora toward the Jewish state. The Ashkenazi elite who were the early Zionists have become an increasing smaller component of the Israeli Jewish population, replaced by multitudes of arrivals from Arab lands and almost a million former Soviet exiles. Neither of these populations were socialized to democratic values, and the human rights culture does not come to them naturally, if at all. Hence, the demographic base sustaining Israel’s stark illiberal turn.
However Israeli politics veers to the right internally, there is one value it must not forsake. It is a value that is tagged to the Jewish state’s very raison d’etre. It is also deeply woven into Jewish history and holds a central place in Judaic texts and rabbinic commentary.
The identity of the Jew as exile is a deeply felt aspect of Jewish interiority. From the Babylonian exile to the medieval expulsions from England, France, and most of all Spain, to the flights occasioned in the twentieth century by pogroms and Nazi persecution,the millennial history of the Jew is that of having been expelled from one place to take up residence in another. To this day, I have friends who make sure that their passports are up to date in case a new wave of antisemitism makes flight necessary. A very basis for the Zionist enterprise was to end Jewish vulnerability and build a secure home which would put an end to the condition of perennial exile. Former Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, recognized this history and the obligations it places on the Jewish state when he opened the door to a number of Vietnamese boat people, inviting them to settle in Israel.
Religiously, the most often cited commandment in the Torah is some variant of “When you come into the land do not oppress the stranger, for remember that you yourselves were strangers in Egypt.” The Bible depicts Abraham running toward the stranger to give him special welcome. By providing respect to the stranger, indeed embracing “the other,” Judaism arguably has anointed the central value of the human rights program; that is protection for the powerless, who otherwise are not protected by law or custom.
These powerful values, both historical and biblical, are at the moment put to the test as Israel confronts approximately 60,000 Africans in its midst. Fleeing war-torn Sudan and Eritrea, they have made their way across Egypt and the Sinai to take up residence.
Despite the fact that Israel is a signatory to the 1951 Convention on Refugees that forbids “refoulment” or the forcible return of those fleeing danger, it is preparing to deport them all, without the benefit of a mechanism to determine their status. If indeed they are fleeing “a well-founded fear of persecution” (which today is understood to include generalized war situations) as the Convention specifies, then they are entitled to seek and receive political asylum. But Israel’s impulse is to expel.
The summary return of these African sojourners is not only a negation of the principles on which Israel was founded, but a denial, as noted, of a central principle of Judaic faith. It renders the cry of “never again” to mean “never again for the Jews only. Let others do what they can.” Why, we can ask, should the world care to listen again to Jewish moral claims at the hands of persecutors, if, as the current circumstance reveals, there is little compassion for the plight of others? In the denial of the religious claim to love the stranger, we witness the overcoming of Judaism’s ethical character by an obsession with the ritualistic commandments that serve to strengthen a sense of tribalism and narrow parochial interests. Though many may disagree, we can ask of what value is religion if it does not ultimately conduce toward the ethical? And the ethical must by definition turn outwardly toward the other.
True, not all Israelis feel this way. There are efforts by a minority of activists to protest on behalf of African refugees and to set up mechanisms of support. For those who care deeply about Israel, one would hope that their efforts are vindicated. In regard to this issue more than any other rests the character of Israel’s soul.
joe chuman 