Make Aliyah Because of Safety?
(This is an expanded version of an article published in The Jewish Press on January 4, 2019.)
On July 6, 1989, Abed al-Hadi Ganaim grabbed the steering wheel of an Egged bus and drove it off the road, murdering 16 people including an American and two Canadians. After the massacre, Rabbi Meir Kahane wrote:
“More Jewish victims of the Hillul Hashem, the desecration of the Name, that the State of Israel has become. More Jewish victims within the State of Israel, who make a mockery of the lie and fraud emanating from the Ministry of Tourism, travel bureaus and cynically deceitful Jewish leaders who babble about how much safer it is in Israel than in Harlem.”
(In 2011, Israel freed Ganaim and many other murderers in exchange for abducted soldier Gilad Shalit.)
Rabbi Kahane’s assessment is often timely both in light of Israeli events and claims made by certain olim who are the Zionist equivalent to being plus royaliste que le roi. Along these lines, Professor Moshe Koppel of Bar-Ilan University has written of how “many religious Zionists have evolved into what seem to be earnest caricatures: more Zionist than the Zionists or more loyal to the ruling class than the ruling class itself.”
Two forms of that caricature are bashing Jews who live in Chutz La’aretz and misrepresenting the degree of security in Israel. On the former, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein referred to “the rejoicing you encounter among certain staunch advocates of aliyah every time they read about a murder in Brooklyn or Long Beach; they make sure to republish it in their newspaper in large type.”
Replace “newspaper” with “Facebook page” for today’s version of that obnoxiousness. Rabbi Lichtenstein wrote elsewhere in a related vein:
“I hope and trust that I am neither so vain nor so foolish as to fantasize, personally, presumed superiority to peers who have chosen to serve the Ribbono Shel Olam and to service Knesset Israel within the context of continued residence in the Diaspora.”
The same people who post with scornful frequency about anti-Semitic crimes in diaspora countries also tend to falsely portray Israeli conditions. “Come…to a land that is safe for Jews,” one such blogger addressed French Jews in January 2015 while telling them to “get the hell out NOW.” This was soon after a mother in Lod described Jewish children “attacked with curses and physical violence…cases that sound like they were taken from 1939 Austria.” (Few olim from Teaneck or Boca Raton may live in Lod, but it’s still part of Eretz Yisrael.)
Within two weeks of the blog to French Jews, a terrorist committed a stabbing rampage on a bus in Tel Aviv. Last August, the same blogger recounted the following experience:
“As I drove to the gas station, I saw a balloon floating in the air. Normal people would think, ‘oh, that poor child lost his/her balloon.’ In Israel, the heart races just a bit. Instead of turning right to enter the gas station, I drove forward and made a left. Careful to drive on the road and not off it, I kept looking at the floating balloon, and more, at the string dangling from it.”
Yet despite a region traumatized by chronic terrorism from incendiary balloons and rockets, some olim act as if these Israelis do not exist. “Much safer in Israel than the US,” someone wrote on August 8 before the cancellation in affected areas of summer camp activities and other events due to increased attacks.
Contrast that claim about safety with a mother from Kibbutz Kissufim on life there:
“Normal life is not being afraid to go out. It is not for my child to be afraid of leaving our home. A normal life isn’t being afraid to go to the swimming pool.”
Contrast that claim with a neighbor of the Salomon family on the massacre in Neve Tzuf during Shabbat dinner in July 2017:
“…within about 10 minutes the yishuv’s warning siren started going off. This meant we all had to be inside our homes on complete lockdown: Lock all your doors and windows. Put down the trisim (hard plastic shades which block out any light) and turn on your phones to follow security procedures and directions.”
Furthermore, it’s at best clueless to assert greater safety in a country where anti-Semites commit rock attacks against Jewish motorists and buses on what seems to be a daily basis:
How many Jews have been murdered, injured, and psychologically damaged by this ongoing violence? Have names been forgotten like Asher and Yonatan Palmer, Hy”d?
Rabbi Yitzchak HaCohen Kook observes in Orot:
“Anything that has to do with Israel is not limited to it, but is just concentrated in Israel, and this core influences the rest.”
Therefore, if advocates of aliyah are truly outraged about anti-Semitic violence in the diaspora, their primary focus should be on ending its numerous domestic forms, from the preceding examples to Nazi graffiti and desecrated memorials:
In a sicha to overseas students in 1998, Rabbi Lichtenstein remarked about aliyah:
“Historically, Klal Yisrael has always been bound up with Eretz Yisrael. These are our roots, and ultimately, this is our future.”
That is the ethical case for aliyah — not a safer life, a higher standard of living, or other misrepresentations.
