The recent period has been like a crossroads for Israeli society regarding the character and character of the state. Amid the question of identity hovering over our heads, it's hard to avoid the comparison to our big sister, the United States. Israelis have a tendency to want to be "like in America." Micha Shitrit wrote a poem about it, but this is a wrong and sinful tendency.
I say this as someone who lives on the Israel-US line and is very familiar with the differences between the different cultures.
The American flag is engraved with the words "individual freedoms" as a supreme value, which is a catalyst for the disintegration of American society. Americans live without any connection between the many different groups, and without a common scale of values around which to unite. We have clearly seen the implications of this approach during the COVID-19 pandemic: American social cohesion has been shattered in the face of the global crisis. The American model does not connect the different groups. There, the existing order is built mainly from corrupt mechanisms based on financial interests, and solutions are created without a connecting line or shared values.
In the American order, everyone lives in his own bubble, so as not to depend on anyone. I can't imagine a lifestyle more different from that of Israelis.
With us, there is no doubt that fate is shared. Arguing together, winning and losing together, fighting politics and the people's army together. A concept that is an essential part of Israeliness. Light years away from the professional army in America, where they fight for the country for a fee and a career, not out of a sense of solidarity and partnership.
The United States is a wonder, but Israel is another wonder entirely. Here, when we fight for the future of the state, each person from his own perspective, it is supported by the perception of Israeli and Jewish identity and out of responsibility for the future of the collective. Social solidarity and friendship are an inseparable part of the vision of the state – and it must remain so. But there, in a country built on a capitalist model, working for the individual, on these foundations the American nation was built. Woe unto us if we reach a place where that solidarity is pushed aside in the name of "individual liberty."
Finding common values is challenging, we must fight together to preserve values and a sense of identity. That's what we need to learn when we look at America. In its beginning, shared values led its establishment, but over the years the essence was emptied when the values were not preserved. We must fight for this not to happen here in Israel as well. There are different types of democracies, and here there is tension between democratic and Jewish, but the tension is not negative, it is what builds our value scale.
I do not take lightly the depth of the political rift that is rife in us; the present time is a time of deep crisis in Israeliness. But I want to ask you: Don't look to America, where the solutions won't be found. Let us concentrate on the search for our common values based on friendship and shared destiny, from which our unity will be found. It is Israeliness and Judaism, collective responsibility and democracy that will save us from destruction that will take twenty generations to repair.
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