‘As an Israeli Jew, I don’t want to be resilient anymore’

Israeli national resilience is supposed to be a highly-admired national quality. Our government tells us, the Diaspora tells us, and, sometimes, we even tell ourselves that we can get through pretty much anything.

Social psychology tells us that resilient individuals and communities focus on what is possible in a given situation rather than on the negative aspects. They understand that they must change themselves in order to survive.

But as an Israeli Jew, I don’t want to be resilient anymore.  I don’t want merely to survive or to change the values that I believe in. I want to rage against what is happening so that I will have the energy to change reality. 

And I don’t to allow Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and (perhaps unwittingly) the Jewish Diaspora to turn that purported resilience into a dangerous trap that fools us into believing that the situation is unchangeable.

We have seen horrors most of us never imagined. The Hamas attacks were savage and unforgivable, and their wounds — physical, emotional, national — are still open and raw. But the horror that we are creating will not heal our wounds. Entire families in Gaza have been erased. Cities have been turned to dust. Civilians cut off from food, water, and medicine and children are starving.

And in the name of resilience, we are told to look away. To feel and see nothing. To be strong. To live our lives, and to feel supported by the admiration of our government and much of the Diaspora.