With respect to Israel, mourning replaced activism while we were at college. First we publicly mourned the innocent victims of bombings with flickering candles and a solemn reading of the names. Then we mourned Rabin. Then more innocent victims—more candles, more names. The mourning was cathartic, if painful. It allowed us to channel our confusion and anger into an all-consuming sadness. And we got good at it—too good. Instead of raising our voices in support of peace, we began mourning the peace process itself. Five years after Oslo, the prospects for real peace seem grim. The collective excitement shared by Americans and Israelis alike as Rabin and Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn is no longer palpable. But we’ve mourned for long enough. Catharsis wears thin after a while, leaving nothing but a debilitating grief. With the Clinton Administration’s attention increasingly diverted and Netanyahu continuing to stall, it’s time for us to snap out of our pathos and actively promote peace.
Why is it up to students to deliver this message? Because when it comes to thinking about the peace process, history has given us an advantage over our parents. The Israel we know is the Middle East’s major military player, no longer the region’s victim struggling to avoid total destruction. To us, 1967 was a date to memorize in Hebrew school; to our parents, 1967 is the indelible memory of a tiny country triumphing against all odds. Their image is of heroic soldiers praying at the recaptured Western Wall. We grew up with a different television picture, that of well-armed Israel soldiers fighting stone-throwing Palestinian youth. In the 1980s and 1990s, Israel achieved unprecedented physical strength, but it sacrificed its claim to be the heroic, morally superior, underdog. With survival against external enemies no longer the primary concern, we have seen Israel’s ugly internal conflicts played for public view. We have also watched as Israel has begun to move—slowly, often reluctantly, but definitely—towards permanent peace with its neighbors. Too young to even remember the signing of the 1979 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, we have witnessed the lasting power of that agreement, forged between once-bitter foes. Much more than a cease-fire, peace with Jordan has encouraged real economic cooperation between the two nations and was, before Rabin’s murder, beginning to erode half a century of mutual mistrust. And despite the considerable human costs which have accompanied the attempts to reach a final settlement with the Palestinians, a recent poll conducted by Tel Aviv University found that a solid majority of Israelis still support continuing that process.
Israel has never been without crises, but the Israel of our experience has seen a shift from a crisis of security to a crisis of morality. A security crisis creates vulnerability. People cannot make peace because they cannot let down their guard. A moral crisis creates guilt and introspection. People are forced to make peace because they cannot escape the internal consequences of keeping their guard up.
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The times have indeed changed, but too many American Jews cannot, or will not, see the Israel that stands before them. After so many wars, with the danger they posed to Israel’s survival, it is understandable that middle aged and elderly American Jews and Israelis are more wary of trusting the strangers sitting on the other side of the negotiating table. Perhaps our idealism—or at least our measured optimism—appears to them as nothing more than political naiveté. Yet the struggle for peace cannot be abandoned to those who are still clinging to fear, vulnerability, and cynicism.
It is our responsibility to let our parents know that we cannot afford to let the peace die, that although Israel still faces some military threats, the greatest threat is not to the country’s survival, but to its democratic and moral values. A rally for peace took place in Washington this month in honor of Oslo’s fifth anniversary. There was no organized group of college students present to raise its voice. Let’s use the next school year to make up for our absence.
Sam Apple and Shira Schnitzer are respectively the Editor and Associate Editor of New Voices