Israelis can learn a thing or two from Diaspora Jews (Haaretz - Israel News)
Diaspora Jews should be less tolerant of the usual Israeli brush-offs. Whether it's about the steps Israel needs to take in the peace process, or the laws it needs to pass to defend religious pluralism, or the battles it needs to fight against racism, Diaspora Jews must learn to challenge the excuse "what we see from here, you don't see from there."
No, the response must be, sometimes, it's the other way round. We see things differently, and if you were only to listen, maybe you would see things differently too. Maybe you Israelis could learn something from our outside-but-caring perspective.
We Israelis need to take these ideas to heart in our interactions with our friends abroad, both Jewish and non-Jewish. It's true that they don't pay taxes here, or serve in the army here, and so, both financially and physically, they have much less at stake than we Israelis do when it comes to the results of our policies.
But sometimes they can help us see things that we can't. We are so dizzy from the spinning turbulence of life here, we are so deafened by the noise of Israeli public "debate", that we can?t think straight.
It is true that we have sometimes been victims and experienced terrible events; but our national post-traumatic stress disorder prevents us from taking the course of action that is the best one for us to take in the long term. It might feel hard at first, but we Israelis have to practie, practice, and practice again saying: what you see from there, we don't see from here
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
No comments:
Post a Comment