Let's focus on our wins not our woes this Independence Day - opinion

This year, on Israel’s Independence Day, I was celebrating wholeheartedly. I won’t allow Hamas killers and kidnappers, or world opinion, let alone the Ivy League’s Rampaging Snowflakes, to rob me of my joy. I know when to mourn and when to rejoice, and Israel’s 76th birthday merits a big blowout.

When you shift from being a lifelong North American Zionist to an Israeli citizen, certain talking points come alive, while others misfire. Every day in Jerusalem, I live the miracle of Israel that I had admired from afar: Jews’ freedom, prosperity, dignity, and power. We don’t hurt our necks by constantly looking over our shoulders – neither for approval nor out of fear. And we feel history’s breeze on our backs, propelling us forward, noting how every decade in Israeli history was better than the previous one – and one of the most glorious decades ever in the Jewish people’s long history.

And yes, I get misty-eyed on Tu Bishvat, when I see the almond tree blooming, and on Independence Day, when I hear the squeak-squeak of those plastic hammers. Nevertheless, I confess that with each passing year, one long-mythologized Israeli moment gets harder and harder – that instant siren-escorted transition from Israel’s mourning on Remembrance Day to its Independence Day revelry.

We have no choice but to celebrate

In theory – and during some lecture – the abrupt shift sounds great: so Jewish, so brave, so resilient, and so very Israeli. After a day of mourning those who fell so that we could have a state, we celebrate the amazing state they gave us. In truth, many of my friends find the transition jarring, even violent. They wish the two days didn’t collide. This year, it will be particularly difficult, with dozens still held hostage and with tens of thousands of new mourners. Still, ein breira, we have no choice but to make merry.

THE WAR we are still fighting is not only against the sick mass-murdering perverts of Hamas and the looming threat of Iran and Hezbollah. Little Israel is at the center of much broader clashes that will determine the future of America, and of Western civilization.

The Poisoned Ivy League has made it clear. Just as Jew-hatred became the identity marker of the devout medieval Christian and the loyal German during the Nazi era, Zionophobia is the not-so-secret decoder ring uniting all those who fancy themselves “Social Justice Warriors.” Of course, their definition of “social justice” is not just selective but totalitarian, and these “warriors” always demand “humanitarian aid” when protesting, amnesty even after they vandalize, and gluten-free food wherever they go.

It’s bad enough that so many intelligent people have given the late Yasser Arafat a propaganda victory he didn’t deserve – making everything about Israel switch to being about him and his people, the Palestinians. The decades-long campaign – presenting the Palestinians as the world’s greatest victims who are never held responsible for any crime, no matter how vicious – has hit new heights and seduced millions, some well-meaning and some less so.

The anti-Israel, pro-Hamas mania has weaponized the anti-intellectual, overly-simplistic, Marxist oppressor-oppressed binary that conquered humanities and social sciences academics years ago but, after the George Floyd disturbances, went mainstream.

This is not a black-and-white situation

It’s stunning to see so many people assume that the Palestinian-Israel conflict is black-and-white and about blacks versus whites. It’s neither so simple nor about race. It’s similarly striking to see so many who benefit from American, Canadian, or British freedoms burn those flags at rallies that are as anti-American, anti-Canadian, and anti-British as they are anti-Israel and anti-Jewish. We should be asking, “Which side are you on? Do you really want to be a tool for anti-American totalitarians? Wouldn’t you prefer to redeem genuine liberalism?”

Most depressing has been the silence of the tenured lambs and the passivity of the silenced majority. Radicals will always do what they do – and try to pass off their doctrinaire truths as popular and true. Democracies and universities work when the decent, muscular majority in the middle resists – not by suppressing bad speech but by celebrating good ideas, not by quietly tolerating the bullies but by demanding decency.

That’s why we could not afford to mourn or mope this Independence Day. This Israel Independence Day must lead to an opportunity to negate the misleading, Palestinian-centered tale of woe, to return us to the Jewish story and the Zionist tale of redemption. It should be the moment when we broadcast our narrative and affirm our rights loudly and proudly, effectively and creatively. And it should be a moment when we go affirmative, transcending anti-anti-Zionism and anti-antisemitism, to celebrate the Zionist arc of history, Israel’s many achievements. The answer to so many lies about Israel is not Israel advocacy but Identity Zionism – not a defense, but a sweeping, inspiring, appealing vision.

Miriam Peretz, the amazing educator who lost two soldier-sons to terrorists, one in South Lebanon and one in Gaza, continues to celebrate holidays and to love life. She knows that beyond the narrative clash and the ideological clash, the Palestinians mount psychological warfare. Our enemies want to make us miserable, to make Israel unlivable, to make Independence Day uncelebrate-able. We cannot make that happen.

We should learn from the liberal-democrat Daniel P. Moynihan, who was told by his friend Mary McGrory after President John Kennedy’s assassination, “We’ll never laugh again.” 

Moynihan replied: “Mary, we’ll laugh again, but we’ll never be young again.”

On this Independence Day, we had to laugh and sing and dance, knowing things will never be the same but determining to make them even better.

The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist Thought at the JPPI, the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian and the editor of a three-volume set, Theodor Herzl: Zionist Writings, the inaugural publication of The Library of the Jewish People (www.theljp.org).