You know, I really do think the
alliance that has emerged over the last generation between the American right
and the State of Israel is a good thing. Having been born a dual
Israel-American, and having spent the last two decades living there and speaking
Hebrew, I can understand the Israelis' need to build alliances with people who
share their commitment to democracy and the Bible, and who have influence in
the halls of high politics.
But sometimes an Israeli must
take exception to the way his country is used in American domestic debates. One
big recent example concerned gun control.
Surely you recall when Wayne
LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association and a man
who rarely chooses his words carefully, spun the following yarn after the
Newtown catastrophe. “Israel had a whole lot of school shootings,” he
buttercupped on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “until they did one thing. They said
we’re going to stop it, and they put armed security in every school and they
have not had a problem since then.”
LaPierre was rightfully chrenked by Israeli officials who pointed
out that (a) Israel never did suffer from “a whole lot of school shootings,”
but rather a tiny number of very high-profile terror attacks on schools; (b)
they did not do “one thing,” but rather a vast array of anti-terror measures of
which the posting of armed guards was far from central. “We’re fighting
terrorism, which comes under very specific geopolitical and military
circumstances,” rebutted Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal
Palmor. “This is not something that compares with the situation in the U.S.”
Yet these responses did not get
at the heart of how wrong LaPrierre was — or how grand is the canyon between
the culture he promotes and Israel’s.
There are three deep differences
between Israel and America when it comes to guns — differences that have
nothing to do with terror and random school shootings, and which should lead
American supporters of the Second Amendment to wish LaPierre had held his
tongue.
First: Generally speaking,
Israelis do not like gun sports, especially hunting. Just like their fellow
Jews around the world, Israelis feel that all life is precious, and even if
most are happy to wear leather goods or eat meat, the idea of killing creatures
for fun simply crosses an unspoken line of cruelty that reminds them too much
of the persecutors the Jews fled in Europe or Arab lands. Judaism always taught
us to avoid cruelty to animals even when slaughtering them—so how can killing
be a part of leisure?
A second, perhaps corollary
point is that Israelis do not “collect” guns. I have probably lived among the
most gun-friendly parts of Israeli society—I’m referring to some pretty
die-hard roughneck West Bank settler types. Even they, during the early Oslo
years when they imagined a massive conflagration between themselves and the
Palestinians about to engulf them, and accumulated weapons in preparation for
such a day — even they never described themselves as “collectors” of firearms.
In my seven years living in a
settlement, I encountered plenty of those stereotypical gun-toters, Orthodox
Jews of messianic temperament who would never think twice before opening fire
in the general direction of stone-throwing Palestinians if they felt their life
was vaguely in danger. But none of them ever really loved their guns, collected
weapons, or even wore them in an overtly public way — none, that is, except for
the Americans, whom the sabras routinely dismissed as kooks.
But the most important
conceptual difference--and this gets to the heart of the matter—is that
Israelis do not believe they have a "right" to bear arms. Israel has
no Second Amendment, and would never dream of introducing one. Part of this is,
of course, historical: While America was created through the federation of
sovereign states which, in turn, were built on a loose confederation of
individualistic pioneering communities, Israel started out as a tiny besieged
state in desperate need of centralized mobilization to keep everyone alive,
where government was first of all the protector of the citizens.
But alongside the history, there
is a deeper reason why Israelis don’t believe in a right to bear arms. Guns are
not seen by Israelis as a good thing. At best they are a necessary work tool:
Seeing an armed soldier walking around in Tel Aviv is neither more alarming nor
more inspiring than seeing a repairman with a hammer in his belt. More often,
however, guns signal a societal imperfection, a failure in the national
enterprise that necessitates the security and deterrence that come with guns.
There is nothing good, in the Israeli mindset, about having to wear our
prowess—and our implicit vulnerability—on our sleeves.
The settlement I lived in had no
security fence around it. When I asked why, I was told that a fence signals
insecurity and invites attacks. “Better to keep the terrorists wondering how
far out we can see them.” It’s true for the flaunting of firearms as well. Even
at their most muscularly militant, Israelis have never celebrated their guns
the way Americans do.
To read the piece as originally published at the Forward, click here.
