Narrative, Shmarrative: Israel "As Is" Is Alive and Kicking and Very "Engaging"

Israel's Shalom Hartman Institute, which certain Jews in North America hold in high esteem, offers what it calls iEngage. It's a course funded by some unknown, unnamed benefactor (George Soros, perhaps?). Its aim: to rewrite the "narrative" that allegedly disenchanted and disengaged Diaspora Jews recount re Israel, because the current "narrative" (dreadful word)--an Israel that is capitalistic and under the influence of the hated, right-wing Netanyahu; an Israel that's "weak" and under existential threat and therefore in need of support by Diaspora Jews who may well need to seek haven there should Judenhass erupt at home--is apparently so out of date and distasteful for those of a tikkun olam-y, universalist bent, especially for the narcissistic young'uns in university, that they are turned off by and are turning away from an Israel that is not their mirror image.

Since I already feel engaged with Israel, I feel no need to rewrite the "narrative"; Canadian Jews as a whole are already far more engaged than their American counterparts, for whom this project appears to have been devised. Someone else who has no need for the revisionist exercise: David Solway. He writes that, like it or not--and there are indeed many who don't like it--Israel "as is" is here to stay:

[T]he international Left has long had it in for what it regards as a Zionist gadfly that has the temerity to assert a strong sense of national purpose in opposition to the post-democratic utopian doctrine of transnational progressivism and the chutzpah to resist the encroachment of the Left’s Islamic friends and allies. Many of the Protestant churches are busy divesting from companies that do business with Israel on the meretricious grounds that it is an apartheid state; indeed, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has added his authority to this latest cargo of anti-Israeli archrubbish, asserting that the Israeli security fence, built “ostensibly for keeping out the terrorists,” is contributing to the decline of the Christian community in the Holy Land” (italics mine). The mainstream media have done their utmost to render Israel a pariah state—“render” in both senses of the term—as has the corrupt and partisan United Nations. And then, of course, there is the rump Israeli Left, the so-called “peace parties,” the foreign funded NGOs, the activist Supreme Court, and the brain-dead academics that inhabit the festering swamps of institutional decrepitude like Ben-Gurion University, all of whom will not rest content until Henry Kissinger is proven right. 

This is a formidable axis of annihilationist forces that even a superpower might regard with trepidation. Additionally, Israel has made many crucial mistakes, such as being signatory to the Oslo Accords, which led to the repatriation and the terrorist initiatives of Yasser Arafat, the surrendering of the oil-rich and buffering Sinai Peninsula in the interests of a cold peace with Egypt that is now being piecemeal abrogated, and the disengagement from Lebanon and Gaza which resulted in over 10,000 rockets being launched against its civilian communities. 

Nevertheless, Israel is a tough, resilient and indefatigable little nation, able to withstand adversity and capable of triumphing in the long run. Admittedly, it must show more resolve in countering the subversive elements within its own population, for the gravest threat to the integrity of the Jewish state is its own fifth column. Israel’s democracy has been remarkably flexible in accommodating those who work against its sovereignty and strength; yet the political direction of the country has been gradually but tenaciously shifting toward a more realistic stance regarding the dissident agenda of its internal assailants. Indeed, Israel has the extraordinary capacity to survive itself, a considerable accomplishment when compared to the interior divisions afflicting most Western nations whose geopolitical situations are far less critical.

It will even, I suggest, survive those who seek to rewrite its "narrative" (for their own entirely selfless purposes, of course).