Some 20 years ago, when I was a sixth-former, I had a long and fractious debate with my A-level English teacher. Why, he wondered, given our school was avowedly and in fact constitutionally atheist, did the students have a Jewish society? Well, I pointed out, the school’s charter doesn’t prohibit the formation of religious clubs, it merely excludes religion from the curriculum of the school.
Fine, he said, but it’s against the spirit of the school. What about this actually bothers you, I wondered. What’s the real problem here? “Well,” he said, “you never invite any pro-Palestinian speakers.”
It had been a good 10 minutes since we’d stopped discussing themes of classical decay in The Wasteland, but we’d finally reached the nub of the matter. I pointed out that it was a Jewish society not an Israel society. Most of our events involved eating bagels and discussing culture and history. Only a minority of them focused on Israel. At which he point he huffed and took the conversation back to Tiresias.
I thought about Mr Walsh recently, when a pro-Palestinian friend of mine messaged me to express his frustration and anger towards me. Why hadn’t I criticised Israel’s aid blockade in Gaza? Given I write about Israel regularly, why hadn’t I spoken out?
Josh Glancy
He was correct that I hadn’t said much about Israel in recent months, but wrong that I opine on Israel regularly. For obvious reasons, I take a close interest in what happens in Israel, but it is not an area of expertise and I write about it sparingly. It’s a difficult subject to master and one on which I hold myself to a high standard. The stakes are exceptionally high and the information we receive is often muddled. I don’t speak Hebrew or Arabic and haven’t spent more than a few weeks in Israel since I was a teenager.
On the few occasions that I have written about Israel directly, I usually regret it afterwards, because I have that nagging sense that I’m just not quite under the skin of it all. I rarely tweet or post about Israel for similar reasons. (And also, I think, to protect my sanity.)
There’s more going on than just journalistic practicalities though. What I mostly write about in this column is Jewish life in Britain, which in the past two years has mostly focused on the repercussions of the war over here. The distinction may seem small, writing about Israel versus writing about how Israel’s war is affecting British Jews, but to me it’s important.
I have a profound and indissoluble connection to the world’s only Jewish state, but it is not my country, I do not vote there and its wars are not my wars, though they affect me deeply. Increasingly I find myself shying away from conversation about it and resenting others who bring it all up, particularly when they demand my opinion in order to make a judgement about where I am.
Why is this, I wonder. Despair, yes. Mental exhaustion. Social discomfort. Fear. Perhaps a hint of shame too. As I told my frustrated friend, I do vehemently oppose what Israel has done with aid in Gaza. I find the strategic rationale dubious and the moral calculation reprehensible. I think it’s wrong. I think the human cost to Palestinians has been tragic and unacceptable. And I’m sad that a country I care for deeply has put itself in this situation.
But as I also told him, I resist the demand that, as a vaguely prominent British Jewish writer, I am morally obliged to repeatedly and publicly criticise Israel if it does terrible things. I don’t go around demanding that the many pro-Palestinians I know condemn October 7 or Hamas’s many war crimes. I hope they do, but that’s up to them. I don’t think this is a healthy path for any of us to go down.
Increasingly I cherish opportunities to be Jewish in ways that have nothing to do with Israel or this war
Increasingly I find myself quietly resenting how totalising this war is, the way the discourse around it insinuates itself into every aspect of life, from Glastonbury to the British Medical Association, demanding fealty, demanding positions are taken and sides chosen.
This, to be clear, is not a request for sympathy. Lord knows others need that more than I. Rather it is an attempt to convey the strange discomfort of being expected to opine passionately and be minutely well-informed about something you feel increasingly distant from and confused by.
Some British Jewish commentators have stepped forward during this war as Israel experts, seeking to act as tribunes for the Jewish state. I’ve mostly (though not exclusively) taken the opposite path. Because what this war has brought home to me is just how little I really understand Israel anymore, if indeed I ever truly did. I feel rather left behind by this radical new direction in my people’s history. Honestly, I’m still struggling to get my head around it all.
Increasingly I cherish opportunities to be Jewish in ways that have nothing to do with Israel or this war: the familiar solace of seder night; hearing gossip from school friends about the people we grew up with; reading about Jewish history in Salonica or Mayfair.
I don’t seek to disavow Israel, even as it blunders around cruelly in Gaza. I support its right to self-defence and to destroy those who seek its own destruction in turn. I’m excited to visit again and I long for peace there more than I perhaps even realise.
But I also find myself drifting into ambivalence and uncertainty. And resenting those who wish to make me a soldier on their digital battlefield. Because as the peevish Mr Walsh misunderstood all those years ago, what I live in is a Jewish society, not an Israel society.
The lines may be blurred, impossibly so at times, but the difference is important.
• Josh Glancy is News Review editor at The Sunday Times. You can read more of his Jewish News columns HERE
