The Unholy Land
Kim and I have traveled to Israel fairly extensively. It is certainly a fascinating ancient place with lots and lots of human cultural history and religious significance to at least three major religions representing the ideology of a majority of the world (57% by best estimates). Being one of the crossroad spots of human evolution, it is claimed as sacred by many and has been fought over for millennia by multiple constituencies. It has existed as a free state since declaring itself such in 1948 led by David Ben-Gurion and immediately endorsed and recognized by Harry Truman. Given that FDR was more circumspect about alienating the Arabs and the UK, who held a self-declared colonial mandate for Palestine for thirty years and was against an independent state for the Jewish community or for Arabs, preferring to keep Palestine non-denominational and non-partisan, it was an interesting cultural moment in world history. I can’t be sure of this, but it might have been one of those rare moments when injustice triumphed over economic interest given the recent and strong feeling about the Holocaust. Atrocities against Jews was recognized but not widely disseminated as early as 1941. I guess the backdrop of global war was enough to dampen concerns given the great number of bad things being perpetrated by man against man. But with the liberation of the Nazi death camps starting in mid-1944 and culminating in widespread horror and realization by 1945, the more complete tally and tales of the atrocities were hard to ignore and even harder not to recognize as disproportionately falling on one particular and relatively small sect. I presume this figured into Harry Truman’s decision to so quickly support the creation of a Jewish state of Israel as a token reparation for the harm inflicted on the Jewish people. Reparations are tricky things because they invariably get pronounced at the expense of otherwise unindicted bystanders and can be seen as collateral damage for the greater good and justice for the oppressed.
The U.S. has spent 75 years supporting Israel without pause because of the shared democratic values of the people of the two countries and this view has generally garnered strong bi-partisan support over the years. That whole premise is now being thrown into the proverbial cocked hat as the Israeli Knesset, or Congress/Parliament, acts to modify its judiciary governance in a way that many, including the U.S. administration, are viewing as less than democratic and a slippery slope towards autocracy.
I first traveled to Israel while working at Bear Stearns in 2006. I was a supporter of Israel and was in a funny position in what was largely a Jewish-led investment bank. As one of the most senior non-Jewish members of management, I was in the unusual position of working on and creating a partnership with an Israeli firm to have a money management business in Israel. Many of the firm’s other Jewish senior leaders, while also being largely poor-Israeli, were far less sanguine about doing business with Israelis based on their experience with the hard-edged approach that often characterizes many Israeli initiatives. I was told many times by faithful Jews that Israelis were understandably harsh, but that didn’t mean we had to bear the cost of doing business with them. I proceeded nonetheless with the partnership and no one in senior management stopped me. In fact, I think it helped my credibility of non-sectarian management and even my street cred as being willing to grapple with the Israelis. During those early years when Kim and I were first together, we very much enjoyed several trips to Israel. We felt the richness of history and culture in Israel even though we were seeing it all through Christian eyes, though admittedly non-religious Christian eyes. After all, Christians and Jews share plenty of common heritage.
Strangely enough, one of the other partnerships I was launching before I left Bear Stearns was one with a Saudi group. I think that made my senior management colleagues even more aware of and yet more uncomfortable with my lack of cultural or religious bias. After Bear Stearns, the same Israeli partner (strangely enough, a man of Turkish heritage, but still a Jew) asked me to take over the U.S. subsidiary of a large Israeli public company (Africa Israel) that was in distress. I did that and furthered my involvement with Israelis, including those that were of the hardest-edge since the majority owner was an Uzbeki Jew who promoted the building of settlements in the West Bank. While I suspect that to him it was just business, you can’t do that without some degree of strong political orientation in Israel. Kim and I even further visited and expanded our connections with Israelis in those two years, treading a bit more carefully and feeling the “uniqueness” of our position vis-a-vis our non-Jewish standing. Again, in a bizarre twist, I got into a dueling lawsuit with the Israelis over my departure over what else but a compensation issue. The hard-edge of the penny-pinching Israeli mentality came face to face with my righteous indignation of them breaching their word to me. We did settle eventually, but not without some torn relationships.
Also during those years, I accepted a position as a board member of the CARE Board of Directors. CARE was pretty much the leading NGO in the global relief and development world, and its causes were very consistent with my own beliefs and upbringing. After being on the board for a year or so, I was taken to task publicly by an activist Palestinian group who had scoured the CARE board profiles and deemed my affiliation with Africa Israel (based entirely on its Israeli settlement building activities) to be unacceptable for an otherwise non-political board like CARE. CARE did relief work in the West Bank and the CARE President took the issue seriously enough that I was asked to step down from the board even though I had no involvement in the offending activities. Guilt by association is always a bitch, so I won’t claim not to have been offended by the action. When I left the employ of Africa Israel I was asked to rejoin the board and after some borderline soul searching, I reluctantly agreed.
So I have a mixed and direct history with the State of Israel and some of its citizens and ideologies. I have been in the Israeli Knesset for a private visit with Mr. Netanyahu (Bibi himself) and found him a strong and forceful leader who seemed at the time to be quite just. His most recent actions, however, make him look and feel like a blend between the Donald Trump and the Kevin McCarthy of Israeli politics and history. Unlike Moshe Dayan and his controversial 1967 relinquishment of Temple Mount to the Muslims of Palestine (an act of extending an olive branch to garner peace and trust), Bibi’s hard-edge has no such inclination. It has ripped the Israeli fabric of state in two as he systematically dismantles the judiciary system at the behest of the extreme religious right forces that guide his moves in order to keep him in power and out of prison (sound familiar?).
As special as the Holy Land is to so many of us, I fear that this latest self-serving and short-sighted move by Netanyahu will damage the State of Israel which should have and largely has by now earned its right to exist. I fear that this rash and undemocratic move may well lead to far more bloodshed in the region and thereby make this the unholy land for years to come.