Matti Friedman spoke at an AJC fundraising event in Seattle on April 24, 2023. This note recaps his remarks at a reception before the event and during the main program.

Matti grew up in the Bathurst and Lawrence area of Toronto, which has long been the heart of the city's Jewish community. Now in his mid-40's, he remembers wearing a kipa to school as a kid but blending in easily enough in its very multi-ethnic, mixed-race environment. Canada's big cities have long had large, diverse immigrant communities that while very distinct, had few physical boundaries. He thought that was the norm in life when he made aliyah at age 17 in 1994 but he learned soon enough that it's a much different world in the Middle East.

Matti did his military service in an IDF unit stationed in southern Lebanon and wrote about his experiences in articles in [The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/05/military-jargon-idf/481092/) and Tablet. He continues to [write extensively for Tablet](https://www.tabletmag.com/contributors/matti-friedman) and other magazines and journals, as highlighted on his [website](https://mattifriedman.com/). He has published four books, and his most recent (*Who by Fire*) will be turned into a mini-series by the company that produced *Shtisel.* He'd be happy to play Leonard Cohen, showing up at the front in the 1973 war in pursuit of a "mystical vision," but the producers have no interest in casting him or having him involved in anything else about the production (they just bought the story). His second book, [*PumpkinFlowers*](https://mattifriedman.com/pumpkinflowers/) (2016), was a memoir of his experiences in the IDF. Matti returned to Lebanon after his IDF service using his Canadian passport to do research for the book, but he soon realized how wrong he was in his earlier assumption of being friendly and wearing a smile resulting in easily traversable boundaries outside of Canada.

While he's seen vast changes in Israel over the nearly 30 years he's lived there, Matti said he never plans to live anywhere else. Most notably, he sees Israel's demographic composition as now decisively middle-eastern; it is no longer - if it ever was - an "outpost" of Europe and hasn't been for a long time, even though many Israelis of Ashkenazi descent (a term he does not like) still seem to view it as such (through such things as the Eurovision song contest). But these days, everything about Israel as an environment - its food, music, cultural norms and traditional attitudes - reflects its deep roots in Arab (or Muslim-dominated; i.e., Iran) societies. This is obvious to anyone by "walking around" but it's still news to many people outside the country and comes as a shock to many people visiting for the first time.

The latest internal crisis has been very difficult. Matti has proudly been in the streets every Saturday for the past 12-14 weeks (which he described as uplifting, peaceful and respectful - Israeli flags are everywhere) and said he is still optimistic for Israel's future because it has always been a country that runs on "amazing" - not "regular" - fuel. After starting out as a massive refugee camp where everyone was poor and shell-shocked - both European and Arab countries (including Jews who came from Iraq and other Arab countries in the early 1950s) - it is now a prosperous, fascinating society. But Israel's population influxes from Europe and MENA created a "fault line" that continues to this day. The current political crisis is an inflection point that makes this clear and in 10-12 years, people may recognize it as having been a major fork in the road. So we should ask, what did we do to help the country choose the right way forward? The decision lies with Israelis of course but American Jews can still have an influence in being clear on what they are willing to support. In any case, this crisis represents in some ways a more powerful and unsettling challenge than the external threats historically posed by hostile neighbors. So, even with a blending of cultures through intermarriage and deep integration in state institutions (such as the military), and a popular culture that now has a Middle Eastern identity, the split in mentailities between "left and right" now seems all but irreconcilable.

The meaning of "left" vs. "right" is different in Israel than in the U.S. but when transposed, that easily gets lost in translation. Netanyahu is widely described as on the right which he is, but on social and domestic issues, he would be considered a Democrat if he were to move to the U.S. and become a public figure here (Matti said that would "fine" with him). Most Israelis have absolutely no issues with abortion (in fact, it's government funded) or gun control (yes, there are plenty of firearms but they are strictly controlled, individually issued and assigned by serial number per recipient). Such issues simply don't get airtime in Israel. So in Israel, "left" means willing to engage in a dialogue with Palestinians on how to ultimately achieve peace and "right" means having no real interest in that anymore. The left, or "liberal" Zionists, are a shrinking tribe who are increasingly marginalized and feel less comfortable within the national culture. To that extent, the current political crisis is not so much about judicial reform as it is about how the current far-right coalition represents a tipping point where claiming otherwise is no longer possible.

Still, if there was ever a time for American Jews with a liberal Zionist outlook to weigh in, now would be it, because a year from now may be too late. True, the current government did not quite get a majority of votes but it has solid control over the Knesset and is determined to take advantage of it. The efect of the many changes it has proposed could remove any limit on the majoritarian power that brooks no opposition, which is now accomplished primarily in challenges brought through the judicial system.

In western Europe and North America, what happens in Israel and the territories gets massive attention but in terms of what's happening overall in the Middle East, it's "really a sideshow." Still, the major media conglomerates cover it intensively because their audiences are very interested. Journalists nowadays consider themselves activists more than ever before, not simply unbiased purveyors of news. This is true on both sides of the political spectrum. When he was at AP, Matti recalled how its correspondents were told they needed to cover what he described as being called "Is-Pal" stories - and a new one almost every day. But they lacked nuance because most of the journalists (and their managers) don't speak the language and they simply wanted to tell "the Dragon vs. the Princess" stories. In left-leaning media, the Dragon is the settler movement and IDF presence; in right-leaning media, it's the Palestinian terrorists.

Matti believes it's important to recognized there are extremists on both sides. The day-to-day situation in the West Bank is intolerable for the vast majority of people living there. Still, the very convoluted causes of that are simply not deeply explored. Most Israelis believe that if they simply left, they could very easily end up with a Syria-like crisis situation within a few miles of their borders. But that danger does not get explored in the media because the journalists whose stories are published in Western media are "gold miners", not geologists. They look for shiny objects that their readers will have a visceral reaction toward and don't try to explain what is really happening in the "substrata" of society.

There is also the growing problem that since social media burst on the scene in the mid-2010s, the economics of news gathering fundamentally changed and newsrooms have become hollowed out. Those still employed no longer have the time to do in-depth reporting so they rely heavily on "reputable NGOs" to deliver detailed, well-polished reports on what they see as happening. In effect, "they report on the report." This also results in a divide between "who you quote and who you cover." Journalists on location quote UN sources or NGOs they agree with - e.g., Amnesty Int'l or Human Rights Watch - and thus deliver a second-hand version of the story. But they don't "cover" these organizations - that is, they don't question their bona fides or bias in their angles. They are mainly interested in validating their viewpoints, which they believe is what their readerships want them to do.

Matti described how people who visit Israel for the first time are often amazed because unlike what they are led to believe by the stories they have read, "safety" is not that big a deal. They assume they will see signs of a rampant conflict that simply are not there. As an example, he noted that Jerusalem, which is roughly equivalent in size to Jacksonville, FL or Indianapolis, IN, has in comparison to them far fewer violent fatalities. Even so, the perceptions are perpetuated because the news media has thrived on telling the story as an epic clash between two civilizations when in fact, the vast majority of Israelis would tell you that what goes on in the territories is of far less existential significance to them than many other aspects of their situation in a volatile region with plenty of other bad actors - most notably Iran but also many others.

Overall, Matti delivered a very interesting and balanced overview of the gap between perception and reality in Israel and clearly spoke candidly and from the heart in a way that reflected his reputation as a writer who is both a deeply thoughtful and nuanced storyteller.

4/26/2023
David Witus