“Jews Are Not Expelling Jews from Gaza”

There are a number of legitimate arguments against or questions about Ariel Sharon’s plan to disengage from Gaza. Is Israel encouraging terrorism by making such a huge unilateral concession after a period of the most intense violence? Will the terror now be closer to Israel itself? Will there not be expectations that what Israel did in Gaza should now be followed-up with a similar move in the West Bank? Are the settlers in Gaza being given enough time and options to reorder their lives after years building lives in Gaza?

These and other matters are the subject of much discussion in Israel and are worthy of serious consideration and responses. There is, however, one theme which carries with it powerful emotions that is, in fact, unworthy of the attention it has received. This is the claim, articulated by many who oppose the disengagement, that “Jews don’t expel Jews.”

The power of this charge, particularly at a time of a resurgence of anti-Semitism around the world, rests on the idea that for centuries Jew-haters – in Spain during the Inquisition, in Christian Europe through the Middle Ages, in Tsarist Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries, and in Arab countries after the creation of Israel – time and again evicted Jews from their homes. The memories of such expulsions conjure up all that was bad about Jewish life for millennia, the irrational bigotry toward the Jew and the helplessness of the Jew in the face of this hatred.

Now it is being charged that the Jewish government of Israel is behaving just like those anti-Semites who made our lives so miserable for so long. The purpose of the Jewish state, it is reasoned, was to end all this and here we have history repeating itself from the most unlikely of sources, the Jewish state itself.

In fact, the very opposite is true. What is happening in Gaza, whether one agrees with the decision or not, is exactly what Jewish sovereignty is about. It is diametrically opposite to those repeated horrors where Jewish communities were uprooted. The motives behind those actions were anti-Semitic, not wanting the Jew around, blaming all of society’s problems on the Jew, seeing the Jews as Christ-killers and poisoners of the wells. And the Jew had no say about his destiny, no arms to defend himself, no role in the decision-making.

The Jewish state was set up to end that history where decisions were made about Jews on the basis of hatred against them. The Jewish state was also established so that Jews will make decisions about their own destiny rather than having them determined by others.

These fundamental points are very much at work in the disengagement process. It is laughable to suggest that Ariel Sharon, the cabinet, and the Knesset are motivated by anti-Semitism in their decision to leave Gaza. What they are doing is fulfilling the Zionist dream of Jewish sovereignty through its institutions of democratic government deciding the future of the Jewish people. No one said that controlling one’s own destiny would be pretty or easy, particularly when confronted with issues of terrorism, individual rights, different readings of history and theology, etc. But that was the understanding of Israel’s leaders and its people: that no matter how difficult and sometimes painful (and sometimes even wrong) decisions were, it was far better to have the opportunity to make those decisions.

The slogan “Jews don’t expel Jews” is therefore a complete distortion of the concepts underlying what is taking place. It is no accident that, since the concepts underlying this action are fundamentally different from what took place for centuries, the action itself is so different as well. As has been noted, the settlers in Gaza, as much as their lives are being disrupted and they are undergoing personal trauma, are not being expelled from the country in which they live. On the contrary, they will be welcomed to other parts of Israel, welcomed because they are Jews.

The assault on the good name of Israel by this accusation is bad enough. Worse than that, however, is the rationalization it potentially gives to the worst kind of behavior. After all, if the government of Israel is no different than Ferdinand and Isabella or Nicholas I or the Arab dictators in the 40’s, then anything goes. This is dangerous for the state of Israel and undermines the very thing that makes Jewish life so different from the horrible days of the past, the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty.

There will always be extremists who are indifferent to such logic. But for the vast majority of the settlers and those who support them, who care deeply about the future of Israel, it is critical that they stand up against this demagoguery. Continue to exercise your democratic right to express opposition to disengagement. Continue to press that your needs as a community be further addressed. But reject the gross accusation that Israel is now doing what Jew-haters have done; for your own sakes, for the sake of Israel and for the sake of the Jewish people.

This article originally appeared in Haaretz on July 8, 2005