Advertisement
September 23, 2009
Looking for a good role model as you head into the Day of Atonement? Try Jane Fonda.
Seriously. Two weeks ago, the actress angered many friends of Israel by signing a letter protesting a showcase of Tel Aviv cinema during the Toronto International Film Festival. As I complained in a previous column, the protest letter questioned the very legitimacy of Tel Aviv, accused festival organizers of bowing to Israel’s “propaganda machine,” and reduced Israel’s war on Hamas terrorists in Gaza to an act of aggression by a mighty military against a defenseless civilian population.
But as criticism of her participation grew, Jane did something unusual for a public figure: She did teshuva. And not in that begrudging, Serena-like, “I apologize if anybody took offense” kind of way. No, Ms. Fonda issued a thoughtful statement to the Huffington Post admitting she made a mistake. “I signed the letter without reading it carefully enough, without asking myself if some of the wording wouldn’t exacerbate the situation rather than bring about constructive dialogue,” she writes.
She goes on to admit that the letter contained a “simplistic depiction of Tel Aviv” as a city “built on destroyed Palestinian villages.” And she laments that the letter omitted any mention of Hamas’ rocket attacks on Sderot and the western Negev, “to which Israel was responding when it launched its war on Gaza.”
And she even uses the word teshuva, quoting Los Angeles Rabbi Shlomo Schwartz, who taught her that teshuva means “to fix things you have done incorrectly, not just by never doing them again but by ‘coming with a sincere heart.’”
It’s a good statement. It shows the possibility that in an increasingly polarized political climate, in which people cling to their opinions and would rather be wrong than admit their critics have a valid point, a thoughtful person is able to change his or her mind.
Her statement also draws distinctions between the Anti-Israel Left, and the Pro-Israel Left.
The Toronto letter was maddeningly one-sided, historically disingenuous, and filled with icky double standards.
Worse, it both implicated and undermined the genuinely pro-Israel Left, whose members care deeply about Israel but differ with others in the Pro-Israel camp over issues like settlements, the pace of peace talks, and the borders of a viable Palestinian state.
And do you know where you find members of the Pro-Israel Left? In the Israeli film industry. And in the streets and cafes of Tel Aviv. But the original protest letter essentially said to those Israelis, who have been willing to critique their own national narratives and acknowledge the aspirations of the Palestinians, “We members of the artistic community have reached a consensus, and that consensus is that Israel is war-like. Works by other artists, even those on the Left, that suggest the picture in Israel might be more complicated than that detract from this consensus, and thus do not deserve to be seen by a public that is not as discerning as we.”
In its methods and tone, the Toronto letter wasn’t much different from the Goldstone Report, the UN investigation of the war in Gaza. It too was maddeningly one-sided, historically disingenuous, and filled with icky double standards. And like the Toronto letter, it managed to undermine those who support a complex understanding of the dynamics on both sides of the Mideast divide, the good and the bad, the saints and sinners.
As former Ha’aretz editor David Landau wrote in The New York Times, the report could have led to a necessary and honest debate over avoiding civilian casualties when waging war against cynical urban terrorists. Instead, the report accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilians.
“Judge Goldstone has thwarted any such honest debate — within Israel or concerning Israel,” wrote Landau. “His fundamental premise, that the Israelis went after civilians, shut down the argument before it began.”
That’s what the Anti-Israel Left doesn’t get. The more they demonize Israel, the more they call for boycotts, the more they cast the Mideast conflict in terms of black and white, the further they get from achieving a solution, not closer. For two decades now, Israel’s Middle has been willing to compromise, in exchange for security and legitimacy. If Israel has turned to the right in recent years, it is because terrorists undermined that security, and much of the world denied that legitimacy. And while Israel’s critics can point proudly to their boycotts and protests, they can’t point to a single Israeli or Palestinian whose life has been made any better by their actions (that is, if you exclude the extremists on both sides).
Someone once said, “The Israeli-Palestinian story cannot be reduced to a simplistic aggressor-victim relationship. In order to fully understand this, one must be willing to come together with an open heart and really hear the narratives of both sides. One narrative sees 1948 as the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land. Another sees it as the birth of a nation. Conceivably it was both. Neither narrative can be erased, both must be heard.”
Actually, it was Jane Fonda. Good for her, and good for the Left.
Andrew Silow-Carroll is Editor-in-Chief of the New Jersey Jewish News. Between columns you can read his writing at the JustASC blog.
Reader Discussion
Comment on this article
--TOP--
Irving Salzman
September 23, 2009
Good Andrew. Good that you can recognize Teshuvah in others. So when are you going to do your own teshuvah?