AMA with Rabbi David Mivasair

[u/Mivasair]

Hello, friends! I'm looking forward to our AMA, starting in ~10 minutes. Never done anything like this before, so it'll be a new experience. Thank you for inviting me. https://x.com/Mivasair/status/1822855344684458400

[u/ArmyOfMemories]

Hi David,

I was wondering if you could describe any inflection point in your journey, that led you to your current views on Israel/Palestine?

For some of us it was Cast Lead (or some other 'operation') or maybe seeing things in-person on-the-ground.

[u/Mivasair → u/ArmyOfMemories]

Again, what a great question -- an inflection point in my journey . . .

To be honest, my journey from being a liberal or progressive Zionist for most of my life, well into my 50's, to now very clearly being an anti-Zionist was a very incremental journey. There were many inflection points, or maybe better to say points of change.

From my very first days on the ground in the real ירושלים של מטה -- the eathly Jerusalem -- I saw things in front of my eyes that contradicted the vision that I had had of what Israel was supposed to be. So, from the very beginning, when I was a 19-year-old going to spend a year abroad at the Hebrew U, I had my somewhat-fantasy of Israel pretty severely challenged.

It took years and years, actually decades, before I could overcome the cognitive dissonance and clearly pivot away from the ideal, romantic vision of Israel that I had been so attached to.

[u/Mivasair → u/Mivasair]

I'll give you a couple of specifics of pretty powerful inflection points for me.

One was when Israel brutally attacked the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara -- look it up -- and murdered nonviolent activists trying to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza which even then was under siege back in May, 2010.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_flotilla_raid

[u/Mivasair → u/Mivasair]

Until that night, as a synagogue rabbi in Vancouver, I always wanted to maintain my "place at the table". I always repressed and consciously self-censored about 90% of what I knew about Israel and Palestine. I held back a lot. And, I had a place at the table.

That night, I said to myself, "No more!" I knew I had to metaphorically take off my gloves and stop silencing myself. The very next morning, I joined a massive demo in Vancouver, intentionally wearing a coat and tie and my kippah. I spoke publicly on TV and was quoted. I knew in that moment that I would lose relationships (which were never actually real relationships, but pretending) and would become more openly persona non grata in the so-called Jewish community ("so-called" because it is not representative of most the Jews I know. In fact, it is only the "legacy" Jewish organizations, all of which are held captive by Zionism).

While I knew in that moment that those changes to my status in "the community" would come immediately and fiercely, I felt very free for the first time in decades and I felt that I was serving a far higher purpose and deploying myself in the way that I was most needed.

[u/Mivasair → u/Mivasair]

Another set of inflection points for me is reading two books that amazingly changed my views. This was after I had been deeply involved with all this for years. I had lived in Israel for years. I had studied the history of Zionism, graduated rabbinicial school, etc, etc. -- and these two books really shifted my views:

Ilan Pappe's "Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" totally demolished the falsehood that I had believed in which was that Jews never stole land from Palestinians until the Arabs attacked "us" the morning after the state of Israel was founded, "we" had to fight back and -- whoops! -- when it all calmed down, "we" ended up with a lot of their land. I used to argue vociferously that Zionists never took a millimeter of land without legally buying it from its proper owners before May 15, 1948. So, suffice ti to say that Pappe's book totally blew that fallacy away. If anyone here has not yet read it, I encourage you to do so.

[u/Mivasair → u/Mivasair]

The other book -- actually two books -- that also blew away some myths that I had always believed were Prof. Shlomo Sand's "The Invention of the Jewish People" and "The Invention of the Land of Israel".

Again, after roughly fifty years of my own deep, committed personal involvement, reading those two books was a huge eye-opener.

The hard part for me -- and I assume for many, many others -- is to actually be willing to let go of the stories that we have been told and that we have adopted into our own worldview and our own perception of ourselves. Those stories are part of our identity. Even when we read entire books of facts or we see events unfolding right before our eyes that contradict those closely-held views, it is hard to let go of them.

I think a lot of people are experiencing that right now.