September 30, 2008

Perhaps it was four decades too late, but Paul McCartney’s performance before 40,000 fans in Tel Aviv was a lovely ending to a long and winding road. Disinvited in 1965 by a conservative (and, as some reports indicate, politically opportunistic) bureaucracy, Sir Paul is not one to bear a grudge and played his hits before an ecstatic crowd.

McCartney also defied pro-Palestinian activists who asked him not to come lest he buck up “the Occupation.” Islamists issued death threats. But McCartney came anyway, playing tourist and taking time to visit with student leaders of OneVoice, an organization of Israelis and Arabs, Jews and Muslims who support a “comprehensive agreement that will fulfill the hopes and aspirations of both the Palestinian and the Israeli people for a two-state solution.”

Millions of Israelis share that vision; many others do not. All Israel asks is that visitors appreciate the range of that debate and treat it as a country like any other, albeit with severe threats to its security and a conflict that has so far proved intractable. Visits by celebrities like McCartney are a rebuke to those who hold Israel to impossibly high double-standards — standards imposed by critics who would rather see Israel treated as a pariah than achieve a fair, comprehensive peace.

“Give peace a chance” is hardly a novel idea in Israel, although it has suffered in the execution. But it has no chance at all if Israel is to feel isolated and ostracized.

So thanks, Sir Paul. With friends like you, perhaps we can work it out.

Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com