Israeli journalist, Ari Shavit, visited the University of Maryland on Thursday with the mission of creating a dialogue on the current and future state of Israel in the midst of the violence the country has been experiencing.
Shavit said how impressive the American-Jewish community is and added that those who are a part of it should be grateful for the culture their parents and grandparents worked to create.
Addressing these community members, he said the fundamentals of the problems Israel is facing are rooted in the demographic being a minority.
“This minority is an amazing thing built on voluntary values,” Shavit said. “We should be an example to other minority groups in this country.”
Shavit recognizes this great achievement is now challenged. He said the failure of Israel to talk to young people in relevant terms is what creates such a disconnect.
On talking with students, Shavit says it is good to disagree and the benefit comes from finding the right ways to discuss the differences in opinion and view.
He says there is a terrible distortion with Israel right now.
“Even I don’t get Israel anymore,” he said. “Many people think Israel is either angel or demon…We are not angels, we are not demons…We are humans with a remarkable human story.”
This is the goal of Shavit’s book, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel.
“I was able to see what a wonder Israel is,” Shavit said. “Israel in my mind is a miracle.”
He said Israel is a miracle for three distinct reasons: Israeli people did what no other people did and built a national home after 2,000 years of oppression; It was built on a volcano and has both survived and thrived; and it is a democracy where 95 percent of its people came from non-democracy.
The volcano is not a literal geographic landform, but a metaphor for the possibility, and now reality, of political eruption.
“If people did not see the volcano before, they see it now,” Shavit said.
Shavit says there is a spirit of freedom in Israel and that is what is so endearing about it. The original makeup of people could have made for a perfect fascist nation, yet it has turned into a working, although reasonably flawed, democracy.
“Israel is an amazing celebration of life,” Shavit says. He credits much of Israel’s strengths to it’s depth. “Tel Aviv parties have a depth that South Beach (Miami) parties don’t.”
Shavit said the greatest challenge facing Israel today is not ISIS or Palestine, but the danger that it will lose the college-age generation in America. He says this is “more dangerous than a nuclear Iran.” The battle, he says, is on American campuses.
Shavit says there are people who speak passionately about Israel and there are people who speak the language of the 21st century. He says what Israel needs to do is combine those people to create 20-somethings who are passionate about the country and everything that comes with it.
He said the way to begin fixing the problem in Israel is to educate more people about why there is a problem in the first place.
Shavit said the debates in the past had become too divided between left wing and right wing so the solution was to just ignore it all together.
“We’ll make a nation that is cherry tomatoes and falafel,” he said.
While ignoring the problem has only caused further turmoil, the next steps Israel must take are ones toward educating and motivating American campuses.
