PERSPECTIVES ON HATE
Keep the Guards at the Door, and Well-Armed
For Israelis, protecting themselves against madmen is a way of life that Americans are just learning.
By YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI
JERUSALEM--My neighbor's reaction to the shooting
rampage inside the North Valley Jewish Community
Center in Granada Hills was uniquely Israeli. Where was
the guard when the attack happened? In a country where
kindergartens and supermarkets and shopping malls routinely
place armed guards at the entrance and search all who enter for
weapons, it was the obvious question. A public building, a
summer camp, left unprotected? For Israelis, that is the
definition of criminal irresponsibility.
It is strange for Israelis to watch American Jews experience
something of the terrorist assault we here have long taken for
granted. America is the fantasy haven to which many Israelis
imagine fleeing from the violence that has defined our national
existence from the moment we became a state. Eskimos have
snow, Israelis used to say, and we have terrorism. The very day
of the Los Angeles incident, 10 Israelis were struck by a
terrorist hit-and-run driver.
At a rock concert in the Israeli coastal town of Ashkelon the
night of the Los Angeles attack, a performer called out from the
stage, "When are all the Jews going to finally come home?" He
meant home to Israel. There was something touching about his
concern for the safety of American Jews but also something a
little ludicrous. Most Israelis understand that American Jews
aren't going to flee their homes because of a few violent
anti-Semitic attacks. And they will certainly not seek safety
among us here in the Middle East.
If we want to attract American Jewish immigrants, we've got
to come up with more convincing incentives, like participating in
the adventure of recreating Jewish civilization.
One sign of the maturing of the Israeli-American Jewish
relationship is how few Israelis in the wake of the Los Angeles
shooting resorted to the old Zionist cliche that Jews can
ultimately be safe only in a Jewish state. Zionism's gift to the
Jews wasn't physical safety but the ability to defend ourselves,
to post our own guards outside our schools and community
centers. But Israelis watching the televised scenes of Los
Angeles policemen tracking down the gunman and bringing the
children at the community center to safety understood that
America has given its Jews a different kind of gift: the full
protection of the law. Paradoxically, it was precisely those
violent images that reminded Israelis that American Jews aren't
an endangered minority but equal citizens in a democracy.
Especially now, when Jews are tempted again by pessimism
about their place in the world, we should recall how far we have
come as a people in the mere five decades since the Holocaust.
Thanks largely to the mass immigration to Israel of Jews from
endangered communities in Eastern Europe and the Muslim world,
nearly all of the world's estimated 13 million Jews now live
under benign regimes. Only one Jewish community can still be
called oppressed: the 15,000 Jews of Iran, 13 of whom have been
jailed on trumped-up espionage charges and await possible
hanging.
Still, for Israelis, the anti-Semitic violence against our
prosperous cousins in America is an uneasy reminder that the
dangers we face here don't come from isolated and ultimately
powerless madmen like Buford O. Furrow but from lunatics like
Saddam Hussein who control entire countries, including missiles
and chemical weapons.
The message from Los Angeles for us has a Middle Eastern
twist, which is implied in my neighbor's reaction to the
shooting: Keep the guards at the door and keep them well-armed,
because not everyone who approaches comes in the name of
peace.
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Yossi Klein Halevi Is a Senior Writer for the Jerusalem Report
