Israel Needs A Shimon Perez Now More Than Ever

I miss Shimon Perez.  And I miss even more the Israel he helped to found, and so nobly represented for decades.

Perez, and his vision for Israel both as a Jewish homeland and as a member of the family of nations, are described in detail both in his recently--and posthumously--published autobiography, "No Room for Small Dreams, as well as in this recent New York Post article by Perez's son, Chemi, an Israeli venture capitalist.  Both the book and the article paint a portrait of a man who was always guided not by what he thought was possible, but by what he thought was right.  A man who was willing to think outside of the highly cliched "box" in order to make what was right possible, and ultimately even real.  Above all, a man who would have been more than willing to never enter public service--but who, once he did, always served the public, and not himself.

In a handful of words, he was not Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minster of Israel.

Netanyahu's Israel is not the multicultural, democratic miracle in the Holy Land that the founders of modern Israel sought to make it in 1948, and for decades after that.  It has become a kleptocratic nightmare in which the proverbial 1% control not only Israel's ecomony but Israel's government, and in which favors are traded like baseball cards.  Even worse, under Netanyahu, Israel has become a human rights pariah.  Not only has it "solved" the Palestinian issue by effectively jailing Palestinians behind a wall, but it has now decided that Reform and Conservative Jews are not Jews with the full rights of Jews.

Netanyahu's corruption is so blatant and so deep that he and his government are now being investigated by a grand jury.  In spite of this, he and his government still enjoy unquestioned support from our government.  Perhaps, considering who is currently leading our government, that should not be considered a surprise.  Rather, it is the complement one kleptocrat pays to another. But given Trump's own rampant, naked bigotry, it is a compliment Israelis--and Jews everywhere, for that matter, should reject without hesitation.  In fact, support among American Jews for the Israeli status quo has declined precipitously in the Netanyahu years.

Israel is no longer the vision of David Ben-Gurion, or Golda Meir, or even conservative Israeli leaders like Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon.  It is a corruption of that vision that is in critical danger of dying altogether.  The neshamas (souls) of these and other Israeli founders, including Perez, must surelly be shedding tears.  Where is there a modern-day Perez to deliver their dream from the fate that now threatens it?

All we can do is pray.  And I do.