What American Liberals Can Learn From Israel’s Protests
Every visit I’ve ever made to Israel has included a screaming match with my relatives there. I know: They’re Israelis. It’s to be expected. It’s how they show love. But the fights always resulted from the gentlest of prodding on my part—about the occupation, about the expanding role of religious authorities, about why Israeli taxi drivers can seem so obnoxious. They would respond with disproportionate defensiveness, even when I knew that my family of Tel Aviv centrists basically agreed with me. The questioning itself, especially from someone who didn’t live there, was the problem. I would be reminded that only two paths were open to me—pro-Israel or anti-Israel—and that simply by opening my mouth I hadto criticize the embattled Jewish state, I was told, and that was doubly true for me, an outsider, an American.
