“What is Israel?” Elie Wiesel asked the packed crowd in Welsh-Ryan Arena. “It is, to all of us, a question mark.” He was referring to Israel’s timeline, not poking at the inner workings of the country’s existential crisis. But the issue that Wiesel inadvertently raised is the one that Jews should have been asking, yet were not, at the Thursday night celebration of the country’s founding.
Wiesel — a Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize winner, activist, and author of more than 40 books, most famously Night — was the highlighted speaker at the Israel @ 60 Gala, a sold-out commemoration of Israel’s independence. I and about 8,000 other people attended the event, which included music and speakers, including Wiesel, comedian Jeff Garlin and Barukh Binah, Consul General of Israel to the Midwest.
The audience included prominent Illinois and Chicago politicians, as well as representatives and consul-generals from 20 nations, ranging from Bolivia to Jordan to Australia. Most received enthusiastic applause — except France and Germany, which were met with claps and boos. The event’s tone was congratulatory and hopeful, a celebration of Israel’s 60-year history as a nation and its longer history as a Jewish land.
Despite the hopeful overtones, many of the speakers’ messages were clearly political. Barukh Binah, in his opening remarks, praised Israel’s achievements in the arts and sciences. “I promise you today: We will never cease to astonish the world,” he said.
Nevertheless, he warned that those accomplishments would not come without a price. “I humbly suggest to you that Israel is unique in just about everything, but it is most unique in that it is a country that must still be fought for. We may take Israel for granted, but unfortunately, some of her neighbors do not.” And when Wiesel called for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, one of the most outspoken Holocaust deniers, to be thrown out of the United Nations, he was met with enthusiastic applause.
Optimism is to be expected at the birthday celebration of a nation that many fought so hard for. But the steady self-assurance troubled me slightly. In a video celebrating four Chicagoans who fought for Israel, one man, who was in the audience, spoke about learning to throw Molotov cocktails at tanks, and how it was the most exciting time in his life. And when the audience stood to clap for him, it did not seem to recognize that the tanks he destroyed were filled with people trying to regain the land that had been taken away from them.
I do not mean to make a political statement about Israel one way or the other — enough has already been said about the injustices and cruelties committed on both sides of the debate. But when Wiesel proudly stated, “Israel rejected hatred as a principle. Anger, sometimes, but hatred is on the other side,” I felt a stirring in my stomach that was not of pride, but of shame. If, 60 years later, young Americans can boo when Germany is mentioned as a supporter, but cheer for Turkey, which still denies the Armenian genocide, then perhaps hatred has not been rejected by all.
The creation of Israel was a major, long-fought-for accomplishment for the Jewish people, and I do not begrudge a celebration by a people whose history is full of such hardship and overwhelming resilience. But when, even at this occasion, that pride threatens to turn to arrogance, when that celebration loses sight of the complexities and contradictions that fill the history of Israel’s formation, we Jews momentarily lose sight of the reality of our position. We must keep in mind that although Israel came at a large price, that price was not paid only by Jews.
But in the end, I do say “we.” Because sitting in that audience, surrounded by people who look like me and share my past, there was no question that I was a Jew. In the middle of an audience dotted heavily with yarmulkes, waving white-and-blue glow sticks, and singing along to the Israeli national anthem, Wiesel’s words struck me: “We shall never speak of Israel as ‘them,’ but as we — for after all, we are one people.”