Israel’s Refugees
Perhaps I spend too much time linking to Gershom Gorenberg on this young blog, but I can’t resist another one today. In Hadassah Magazine, he writes about Israel’s muddled response to refugees coming from Sudan (via Egpyt) and other points in Africa, though he praises the response of Israeli civil society, who have embraced the lessons of Jewish History. The conflict between values and policies on this issue, as in so many issues in Israel, startling. But his prescription is inspired:
“So let us imagine an alternative policy. If the stream of refugees does become a flood, Israel should announce that it is convening an international conference on Yad Vashem’s spacious campus. There the representatives of the nations will be asked to stand to make commitments on how many refugees they will accept. Israel, which now has one-twentieth the population that the United States had in 1939, should agree to one-twentieth the number of Jews we think America should have accepted then. Let us make something heroic of our memory.”
We could spend forever reacting to the wrongs suffered by Jews throughout history, or we could, as this article suggests, ennact the values of care for strangers that our traditions command. It is not enough for us survive as a people; we must make our survival a blessing for others, lest all our suffering be for naught.
