ISRAEL: ON BEING HONEST ABOUT OUR OWN HISTORY

I’ve become convinced as a Jew, and a Zionist, that we have a hefty measure self-repairing to do. We can’t perform tikkun olam without coming to grips with our own shortcomings. We, ourselves, have some history to answer for and if we continue to live by the myths that admittedly have sustained us in the past, they are going to swallow us. We share much in common with the Palestinians in that way. For a long time, many Zionists, and I include myself, have gone on the assumption that we weren’t part of the problem – we wanted to make peace and it was only a matter of the other side coming around. But too much has been written in the last 20 years to justify that premise any longer. There is simply too much evidence that the early Israeli leadership had its eye on more than our fair share of the land. The gleam in that collective eye became a reality with the spectacular victory of the Six Day War and the advent of the settler movement. We need to be willing to put ourselves in the shoes of the Palestinians and imagine, if we can, what the course of Zionist history, especially starting with the Balfour Declaration, looked like from the other side. If we as a People could do that, the intransigence of the Palestinians might be more understandable and the generous positions we’ve convinced ourselves that we’ve taken might not look quite as generous in retrospect. None of this is to exonerate the murderous tactics that our adversaries have resorted to in this conflict or their failure to negotiate in good faith at certain crucial points. But what about the occupation? Hasn’t that been terribly brutal too? Doesn’t it continue to be? And what of our own missteps in the world of diplomacy? Sometimes we’ve had to employ less than palatable measures in defense of ourselves, but too often it seems to have been in defense of the status quo, meaning our ongoing land grab on the West Bank. The bottom line for me is that both sides have to be a lot more honest with themselves before they can make peace with each other. It takes humility to recognize that the truth is unflattering to oneself. The question is whether we really want to? I’m not sure.