Israeli Memories. The Price for Supporting Israel Grows Higher by the Minute

Dear Readers:

Greetings! I am recovering rather slowly from a non-life threatening surgical procedure but will begin posting new material together with the ongoing retrospective of some of my writing.

The distinguished editor and author, Leo Haber, asked me to contribute an article about my memories of Israel for the venerable magazine Midstream’s lead section “Israel at Sixty: Reminiscences and Reflections.” I joined Elie Wiesel, Itamar Rabinovich, Edward I. Koch, Ram Belinkin, Vera Stern and Leo Haber. Here is part of what I said. The entire issue will appear online in the near future at www.midstreamthf.com.

ISRAELI MEMORIES. THE PRICE FOR SUPPORTING ISRAEL GROWS HIGHER BY THE MINUTE. By Phyllis Chesler

I can’t remember a time when Israel was not central to my imagination both as a model for heroism and as a transcendent, miraculous, reality. From childhood on, Zionism was an ever-evolving example of political, theological, historical, and personal liberation.

I was born in 1940 and grew up in an Orthodox family in Borough Park. In 1946, I started learning Hebrew. And, in 1948, I “rebelled.” I joined Hashomer Ha’Tzair, a left-wing socialist Zionist youth group. Within a few years, I joined Ain Harod, a group to the left of Hashomer. In the early 1950s, I packed machine gun parts for Israel. Both Hashomer and Ain Harod shared a vision of Jews and Arabs living together in the Holy Land. This utopian, agrarian vision, this defiant form of idealism, got me embroiled in dangerous adventures in the Islamic world but in Israel too.

In 1972, after having wrestled with anti-Semitism on the left and among feminists, I traveled to Israel for a long overdue, first-time visit. I was newly famous-and I needed to go “home,” live anonymously, without having to give a speech or an interview. I instantly loved the land. I reveled in the beaches and cafes of Tel Aviv, the mountain-down-to-the-sea views of Haifa, the mystical desert of the Negev, the hot coral colors of Eilat, the radiantly golden Jerusalem.

At first glance, “everyone” (bus drivers, prime ministers, police officers, soldiers, farmers, physicians) were Jewish. Jews seemed to occupy all the niches. Certainly, I saw Christians and Muslims too, (I also saw Arab Jews); what I mean is that, in Israel, Jews had crashed through all the occupational restrictions of exile and this consoled and uplifted me. It also struck me as funny. Oh, how I did not want to return to America! My dear friend, Molly Oren, who worked at the Weizmann Institute, persuaded me to leave the night before I was due to teach my university classes.

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