This article was originally published in Forward in 2019. Click here to get Forward's free email newsletter delivered to your inbox.
His face turned red. In my 37 years of relationship with his father, that is the only time I remember his father being extremely angry with me.
What did I do? He publicly criticized Israel.
My father, Victor, is a Holocaust survivor who lost his entire family except for his brother to the Nazis. For him, Israel was perhaps the only ray of hope in the deepest, darkest, most painful cloud imaginable.
And his beloved Israel could not have done anything wrong. He often said to me: “Israel is a very good country in a very bad area.'' He rarely expressed a flippant attitude about the Holy Land, but he did say that Moses “turned left instead of right'' and left the land of Saudi Arabia or Iraq for God's sake. I sometimes jokingly wondered if it might have been better to claim it as my home base. Jews because of their huge oil reserves.
For my father, like many Holocaust survivors, Israel was like a lifeboat in case things got worse again. Even though he had spent more than 40 years as an American, his father was always wary of new anti-Semitism, a threat that could spark a new Kristallnacht. He always listened to his trusty portable radio. He specifically remembers his father being transfixed by it during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. When Israel seemed to be losing in the first few days, his father's demeanor was downcast and nervous. When the powerful Israeli army fought back and ultimately won the war, I felt a great weight lifted from his shoulders.
I once asked my father why he didn't make aliyah after the war, and he said it was a practical and economic decision. He said his heart was always in Israel and it was his true home, but the opportunities were far greater in America in the early 1950s when my parents moved from Europe to New York. . My father was not the pioneer type. I could never imagine him working the land or fighting in the military. In fact, I think he was also influenced by Israel's universal military demands. After losing many loved ones in the Holocaust, he could not bear to send either of his sons to fight in the army, no matter how noble the cause.
As a teenager, I chose not to be rebellious. His father was suffering and I knew I didn't need a smart alec son to make his life difficult. I never questioned his politics or his enthusiastic support for leaders like Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon. I often heard him discuss Israel with his friends, and he always defended it, even when any good Jew would have been critical. He particularly liked Sharon because she represented a new generation of Sabras who were strong and tough and would never allow the Holocaust to happen again. When Israel developed its own nuclear bomb, his father felt like he had seen the Messiah. He will say that no country will touch the Jews anymore – we now have the ultimate weapon.
But, of course, I went to college in the early 1980s. At Cornell University, I was drawn to Hillel and ended up living in an off-campus Zionist cooperative. But I also joined the newspaper business. Criticism of Israel was commonplace there, even by some Jewish editors. In my junior year, I was a candidate for op-ed page editor at the Cornell Daily Sun. So, I had a one-week tryout to write a daily opinion piece for a newspaper.
I decided to write about the recent findings of the Beirut genocide investigation. The inquiry called for the resignation of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon for allowing Lebanese militia into refugee camps in Sabra and Chatila despite threats to massacre civilians.
They did it. The world was furious. Most Israelis and even American Jews were furious.
Except for one. my father.
When I sent my parents the editorial I had written, I was looking forward to hearing their usual rave reviews. There was only silence. The following week, when I went home for spring break, we had what I now call the “Beat Red Conversation.” After a few days, my father calmed down and we resumed our exemplary parent-child relationship.
Almost 40 years have passed. I'm sitting at the dinner table with one of my children right now. That child is the same age I was when I wrote the scathing Sharon editorial. Her daughter told me that she would not visit Israel again until “all occupied territory is returned to the Palestinians.”
“But imagine yourself living in a country surrounded by people who pray for your destruction,” I said, raising my voice a little. “And the Palestinians have no one to negotiate with. Hamas and Abbas will not even recognize Israel's right to exist.”
“Don’t you understand how difficult a situation this is for Israel and your relatives living there?” I yelled.
Suddenly, I raised my hand and touched my face. It was deep red.
I was becoming a father.
