Governments come and go - Israel remains

Relief must have been the dominant feeling for those following developments in Israel over the past week. After months of discussion, during which Israeli society fought with unprecedented fierceness about a comprehensive draft law, the political dispute culminated last Monday, including large demonstrations and a general strike. The situation only calmed down when the government promised to postpone the legislative package and renegotiate its content with the opposition.

Anyone who started reading this text in the hope of finding out my personal opinion on judicial reform will be disappointed. Israel has a permanent place in my life, not least because one of my daughters lives in the country with her children and grandchildren. But like the overwhelming majority of Jewish people in Germany, I do not have an Israeli passport, and even my knowledge of Hebrew is limited to the level necessary for prayers. I'm Jewish, I'm German. No buts.

And: I am firmly convinced that it is not the task of the president of a Jewish community in Germany to give the people in Israel guidelines for their legislation.

In the almost 75 years of their existence as a state, the Israelis have sufficiently demonstrated that they know how to master existential crises themselves, and they have developed a healthy skepticism about intelligent advice from outside. Parts of the Jewish diaspora in Europe are making the painful experience that, when in doubt, they are not exempt from this rule.

What I believe I can contribute to the debate in Germany - yes, I have to - is an inner-Jewish view of the special significance of Israel for Jewish people. In other words, I would like to remind you that debates about Israel do not take place in a vacuum, especially not in this country.

Longtime Chief Rabbi of Great Britain Jonathan Sacks sel A, who died in 2020, once remarked that Israel made all Jews, within and beyond its borders, feel safer in this world. This security is the expression and basis of a special bond between the worldwide Jewish community and the Jewish state.

It is difficult to finally explain this bond, because it is virtually unique: it transcends origin, gender, social and, of course, political positions. It affects religious and secular people, supporters and opponents of the current government, Jews from Germany as well as those from Finland, Australia or Uruguay.

The uninformed or malicious often distort this connection into a kind of conflict of loyalties, which it is not, because the mere conflation of the terms "Israeli" and "Jewish" is a gross error. (I too can no longer count how many letters to the "Israeli religious community" I have had to open.) Anyone who has also ever seen the inside of a Jewish community knows how completely wrong it would be to derive a specific one from this general connection wanting to derive political support.

On the contrary, Jewish people in the diaspora can be infected in private by the passion of the Israelis to criticize their country's politics with harsh words; some have recently even begun to take their criticism into the public arena, which I feel has not been helpful either for the debate in Israel or for the Jewish community in this country.

The question of who you would elect to the Knesset at the earliest opportunity if you were an Israeli goes miles beyond the core of your personal connection to the country. For the Jewish community of the diaspora, politics has never been the focal point when looking at the Jewish state, because everyone knows: governments come and go - Israel stays. As much as opinions differ in day-to-day political business, the Jewish community stands by Israel unequivocally and unequivocally, not only in Germany but throughout the diaspora. I emphasize: the state.

The political discourse on Israel therefore only becomes threatening when it is no longer individual sections of the law that are in question, but the secure continued existence of the Jewish state. This is why the BDS boycott campaign, for example, is so dangerous, and why the expanded definition of antisemitism by the International Alliance for Holocaust Remembrance, which the German government uses as a guide, expressly points out that Israel as a “Jewish collective” could be the target of antisemitic attacks.

The certainty that Rabbi Sacks spoke of vanishes for Jewish people as soon as they get the feeling that the criticism becomes fundamental and that Israel as a whole becomes negotiable. This limit is crossed more quickly than many outside commentators seem to realize. For example, when there were isolated calls recently to uninvite the Israeli prime minister before his visit to Berlin, many alarm bells went off.

Looking at all of these points together is certainly not an easy task, but one that can certainly be expected of society here - especially when it has a legitimate desire to comment on Israeli politics. Conducting a respectful discourse with knowledge and inclusion of the views of the Jewish community must continue to be possible even in politically heated times.