Yom Ha’Atzamaut (Israeli Independence Day) is upon us: this April 15-16th, the 5th of Iyaar, marks the State of Israel’s 65th anniversary. In Israel this date has entered the Jewish calendar, its commemoration embedded in the Jewish, lunar, year bringing a cyclical period of emotion and significance. Yom HaShoah (holocaust remembrance day); Yom HaZicharon (memorial day) & Yom Ha’Atzmaut, these are our Israeli Days of Awe. If the Jewish People were commanded in the times of the Temple to make the journey to Jerusalem on the 3 “foot” festivals, so should the Jewish People of today make the pilgrimage on this modern triumvirate to experience Jewish nationhood at its most powerful, even metaphysical.

Yom HaShoah has gained in momentum and precedence in recent years. No matter that no restaurants, bars and clubs may open, or that TV and radio only streams Holocaust content, there is a national awareness of Shoah more than ever before. Maybe it’s due to the fact that so many young Israelis visit Poland and the camps; maybe that we are acutely aware that in a generation we will be without survivors; and maybe that the oppressive weight of our history seems to only grow with time. For me it is as we move further from the Shoah, as we get older, as individuals, as a State, the Shoah gets younger. For the testimony that we heard in the 1960s, in the 70s and 80s, was that of people who had experienced, fought and survived these atrocities as adults. These survivors are no longer around to give testimony, and by default we hear each passing year from survivors who experienced the Shoah younger and younger in their lives. And I sat 3 years ago in my car, my heart breaking as I listened to the testimony of an old Hungarian woman who gave voice to herself as a young child desperately clinging to her bear as she wondered when she would see her parents again. And I turned to my window and saw a taxi driver in the car next to me, his face as tear-stained as my own.

We also cry on Yom HaZicharon (the 24 hours preceding Yom Ha’Atzmaut) standing silent and alone in a sea of togetherness as the 2 minute siren sounds across the whole country; uniting the pain of loss and sharing the burden across a whole nation. We walk past too many graves of soldiers who have remained young forever as their parents and loved ones age with one hand on their headstones. We wear a sticker charging us to “remember” above a picture of the Blood of the Maccabees, our national flower of mourning. And we do remember. Even those we never knew.

And through the catharsis of Yom HaZicharon we exhaust our endless tears and are able to raise the flag from half-mast and burst into the celebration of Yom Ha’Atzmaut. A celebration that is difficult to articulate as we have spent the preceding 354 days cursing every aspect of our precious country. “What’s good here? What’s good here?! Nothing’s good here! But its ours!”.  And its wonderful. So wonderful that it’s a shame to sully it with our reality. And so for a day we hike and party and grill and make no criticism and recognize no flaw, and raise no “if only…” or “but what about…”Because we have the rest of the year to do that, and we only have one day to come together and say “isn’t this wonderful?” And it is. Wonderful.

But if we do need help in deciding what we are actually celebrating, let it be this: the State of Israel’s greatest achievement. Im not referring to the blossoming of the desert, or the first Hebrew city of Tel Aviv, or the old-new land which integrates ancient and modern, but to the Israeli. The People who inhabit this almost uninhabitable place. For the creation of the State of Israel gave birth in turn to a new Jew for whom sovereignty is its mother tongue.

The Israeli, who curses in the language of the prophets, who barters in the currency of the Temple, who creates a world of associations that span millennia and who often has no awareness that there is anything remarkable about this at all. The Israeli, who shares a common narrative and an immediate heritage with compatriots from all 5 continents and every shade of skin color, despite having only been reunited for a few decades. The Israeli, who has soaked in Jewish metaphor until his Hamsa has pruned-up. Who believes himself to be the direct heir to King David, Bar Kochba and the Maccabees, despite not knowing the family history in the intervening years. The Israeli, who has made so many mistakes, yet holds the keys to the solution deep within. A resilient, aggressively tender people, so hard to like but easy to love; so weary and cynical, but in a second naïve and fresh faced again. A people that created the State of Israel so that they themselves could be created anew.

This Yom Ha’Atzmaut let’s celebrate Israel through our hearts and souls, and let’s celebrate her greatest achievement. Because for the last 65 years the most wonderful addition to the Jewish global family has been the Israeli.

One of the most remarkable features of the 18th Knesset is that over one third of its Members are new to their seats: 47 new Knesset members who, with great emotion and for the most part humility, gave their maiden speeches to the Knesset this week.

The darling of the maiden speeches has clearly been Dr. Ruth Calderon, a secular academic who founded the Ellul and Alma  Jewish learning initiatives. Calderon fired a Talmud-driven, Aramaic-peppered, opening salvo into the Knesset which was received with some amused head-scratching by fellow secular Knesset Members and a number of Ultra-Orthodox dropped jaws who hadn’t realized that the Talmud could be read by anyone not under a black hat. Her speech went viral with over 170,000 views on youtube, numerous op-eds in the Jewish press around the World singing the praises of the “new” Israel that this speech was heralding; and some Haredi articles that proved that their gobs were still smacked. The reaction was summed up best by Elazar Stern, another rookie MK (kipa-wearing, IDF general, now in the ranks of Tzipi Livni’s HaTnua) who wrote a Facebook post to Calderon expressing that he did not at first think that the Knesset was the proper venue for such a text-oriented study session, but quickly realized that it absolutely was. Probably inspired by the popular support it immediately garnered. You can watch an English-subtitled version of the speech here. And we shall wait to see if Calderon’s legislation is as well received as her speech writing.

This Knesset is also remarkable as holding the highest percentage of female MKs to date, 23%, a trend that we can only hope continues until it reaches a more representative number, say… 50%. Pnina Tamano-Shata who holds the accolade as the first female Ethiopian-Israeli Member of Knesset spoke of her memories as a 3 year-old girl during Operation Moshe on a Hercules aircraft receiving water and candy from IDF soldiers. Yet, like the majority of the other maiden speeches, she did not come to praise the state of Israeli society and rallied against discrimination of Ethiopian-Israelis in educational establishments and beyond. She quoted from Parshat Yitro and used the Har Sinai experience as a unifying moment that should continue to remind her and her fellow legislators of their joint mission to unify society, rid the country of racism and bring true equality to Israel.

However it is not only bleeding-hearts that have been inducted into the Knesset and Tzipi Hotobeli of Likud made sure to stress this as she welcomed her controversial colleague Moshe Feiglin to the Knesset. Feiglin, who has a word named after him in Hebrew: Feiglinism – meaning the radicalization of the right wing, has for years tried to break into the Knesset and only now succeeded. Hotobeli implored Feiglin not to be alarmed by those who criticize him as being Messianic, don’t forget she said, Ben-Gurion called Zionism a Messianic movement, so we are all Messianists in here!

The two biggest winners of the elections, Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett (the heads of Yesh Atid and HaBayit HaYehudi) gave remarkably similar speeches. Both railed against the administration as ineffectual and unrepresentative of the needs of the population. Lapid claimed that Israeli society does not trust the Government to act fairly or responsibly, listing numerous examples from the last couple of years, including the situation of women being forced to sit in the back of certain bus lines in Jerusalem and that “the Government does not say “if this is the case, there won’t be buses”.” Lapid’s speech laid out the discrepancies he wishes to counter, but even more telling was his positioning within the Knesset, he made sure to be the first person to congratulate his fellow maiden speech makers, and took poll position below the podium to welcome them down, left and right, religious and secular alike. There is no doubt that Lapid is the Knesset’s Homecoming King and his talk show host demeanor is a new sight for our Parliament.

Naftali Bennett had to wait for a full minute-and-a-half while Lapid congratulated the previous speaker -hugging and hand-pumping like a pro. But when it finally came, Bennett’s speech mirrored much of what Lapid had said. He criticized politicians for caring more about their own interests and seats than the needs of the country. We may disagree about many issues, said Bennett, but “on 70% of the issues, 70% of the population is in agreement. So let’s for God’s sake, at least do the 70% we can agree on!”

These maiden speeches were a great window into a Knesset that seems fresher, younger and more hopeful than the one it replaced. The only question is what are the 70% of issues that we agree on? And isn’t it the remaining 30% that are the really defining questions?!

One of the most remarkable features of the 18th Knesset is that over one third of its Members are new to their seats: 47 new Knesset members who, with great emotion and for the most part humility, gave their maiden speeches to the Knesset this week.

The darling of the maiden speeches has clearly been Dr. Ruth Calderon, a secular academic who founded the Ellul and Alma  Jewish learning initiatives. Calderon fired a Talmud-driven, Aramaic-peppered, opening salvo into the Knesset which was received with some amused head-scratching by fellow secular Knesset Members and a number of Ultra-Orthodox dropped jaws who hadn’t realized that the Talmud could be read by anyone not under a black hat. Her speech went viral with over 170,000 views on youtube, numerous op-eds in the Jewish press around the World singing the praises of the “new” Israel that this speech was heralding; and some Haredi articles that proved that their gobs were still smacked. The reaction was summed up best by Elazar Stern, another rookie MK (kipa-wearing, IDF general, now in the ranks of Tzipi Livni’s HaTnua) who wrote a Facebook post to Calderon expressing that he did not at first think that the Knesset was the proper venue for such a text-oriented study session, but quickly realized that it absolutely was. Probably inspired by the popular support it immediately garnered. You can watch an English-subtitled version of the speech here. And we shall wait to see if Calderon’s legislation is as well received as her speech writing.

This Knesset is also remarkable as holding the highest percentage of female MKs to date, 23%, a trend that we can only hope continues until it reaches a more representative number, say… 50%. Pnina Tamano-Shata who holds the accolade as the first female Ethiopian-Israeli Member of Knesset spoke of her memories as a 3 year-old girl during Operation Moshe on a Hercules aircraft receiving water and candy from IDF soldiers. Yet, like the majority of the other maiden speeches, she did not come to praise the state of Israeli society and rallied against discrimination of Ethiopian-Israelis in educational establishments and beyond. She quoted from Parshat Yitro and used the Har Sinai experience as a unifying moment that should continue to remind her and her fellow legislators of their joint mission to unify society, rid the country of racism and bring true equality to Israel.

However it is only bleeding-hearts that have been inducted into the Knesset and Tzipi Hotobeli of Likud made sure to stress this as she welcomed her controversial colleague Moshe Feiglin to the Knesset. Feiglin, who has a word named after him in Hebrew: Feiglinism – meaning the radicalization of the right wing, has for years tried to break into the Knesset and only now succeeded. Hotobeli implored Feiglin not to be alarmed by those who criticize him as being Messianic, don’t forget she said, Ben-Gurion called Zionism a Messianic movement, so we are all Messianists in here!

The two biggest winners of the elections, Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett (the heads of Yesh Atid and HaBayit HaYehudi) gave remarkably similar speeches. Both railed against the administration as ineffectual and unrepresentative of the needs of the population. Lapid claimed that Israeli society does not trust the Government to act fairly or responsibly, listing numerous examples from the last couple of years, including the situation of women being forced to sit in the back of certain bus lines in Jerusalem and that “the Government does not say “if this is the case, there won’t be buses”.” Lapid’s speech laid out the discrepancies he wishes to counter, but even more telling was his positioning within the Knesset, he made sure to be the first person to congratulate his fellow maiden speech makers, and took poll position below the podium to welcome them down, left and right, religious and secular alike. There is no doubt that Lapid is the Knesset’s Homecoming King and his talk show host demeanor is a new sight for our Parliament.

Naftali Bennett had to wait for a full minute-and-a-half while Lapid congratulated the previous speaker -hugging and hand-pumping like a pro. But when it finally came, Bennett’s speech mirrored much of what Lapid had said. He criticized politicians for caring more about their own interests and seats than the needs of the country. We may disagree about many issues, said Bennett, but “on 70% of the issues, 70% of the population is in agreement. So let’s for God’s sake, at least do the 70% we can agree on!”

These maiden speeches were a great window into a Knesset that seems fresher, younger and more hopeful than the one it replaced. The only question is what are the 70% of issues that we agree on? And isn’t it the remaining 30% that are the really defining questions?!

We live in a World obsessed with social media. Facebook, twitter, youtube, instagram. If you’re not there then you don’t exist, sure you might only have a Facebook group of 20 likes, a youtube channel with 30 views and only one of your mother’s friends following you on twitter, but now you have a presence, a cyber footprint. And it’s addictive, when the Israel Engagement youtube channel for the Israeli election ads captioned in English went viral and we got around 30,000 views in 2 weeks, I was buzzing. But had we achieved our intended goal of providing a resource for educators to learn and share thoughts about Israel’s political parties? To some degree, but the media rush had skewed our perspective.

We’re not the only ones with skewed perspectives, and there is an unfortunate move towards seeing social media as the goal rather than a vehicle. How many “shares” and “likes” has become more important than what those shares and likes are for. I shared this sentiment with a colleague at Makom, the thinktank of the Jewish agency, who seem to have dumbed-down their content in an attempt to gain more traffic. Maybe they should just put photos of cats up. Actually they did go the cat route as well.

Anyway all this is rather banal until the need for social media presence meets controversial and nuanced Israel topics. This week J Street U (the college branch of they-who-must-not-be-named) launched a social media competition between all their college chapters. The competition took the form of who could get the most shares of the following meme:

“Sometimes you get drunk and forget where the green line is...

It's not about the barrier its about the route”

I was not alone in feeling that using this media to discuss a topic so nuanced, so integrated in security concerns in such a shallow way that it cheapened the conversation. And so, in the long tradition of social pioneers and revolutionaries, I wrote a letter. I expressed my distaste at the shallowness of using such a complex topic just to create a social media buzz, and also shared that many Israelis find it offensive to deal lightly with security decisions that impact us on a very real level.

The response I received was enlightening, because yes, this was indeed the intention. J Street U has decided to use memes which “are hugely popular on social media platforms, and meant in most circumstances to be ironic and humorous” and this one was used as “the first of a number of contests” and has succeeded as “traffic on our Facebook page has gone up dramatically in the last few weeks”.

Individual J Street U facebook pages typical have less than 50 likes, so they do not have a significant cyber footprint, and the fact that I am mentioning them here probably gives them more positioning. Remember: no publicity is bad publicity.

And yet I am left with a strong feeling that we have a responsibility to be aware of depth of content, nuance of message and sensitivity towards those intimately involved in this conversation. Israel engagement needs to be delicate and appropriate, even if that doesn’t get us 1000 shares.

Social media can often define the message rather than just carry it. J Street U have shown how damaging that can be, to you and your message, when discussing Israel.

Izhar Ashdot is an Israeli rock legend, a founding member of Tislam, the most successful Israeli band of all time, and a solo performer in his own right. He has long been a left-wing activist and often performs at Meretz (left-wing social democratic political party) rallies. Generally an adored musician, Ashdot has found himself in the center of a controversy that is rocking Israeli society in a different way than he is used to.

This week the Director of Galatz גל"צ, one of the two nationwide radio stations operated by the IDF, ruled that Ashdot’s latest song עניין של הרגל “A Matter of Habit” could not be performed or played on the station. While Galatz is an army radio station run by the Ministry of Defense, this has not stopped it being a voice of free expression and a lynchpin in the cultural development of the State of Israel. For Galatz to censor or ban a song is almost unheard of. And banning an Izhar Ashdot song… unthinkable.

I had already heard rumors on the blogosphere as to the problematic nature of the song including a couple of open letters from would-be politicians/minor celebrities questioning Ashdot’s thinking; but until Galatz banned the song I hadn’t taken the time to listen to it. With a fellow Israeli in my office I pulled the song up on YouTube and we watched the official music video. You can find it here.

There is no doubt this is a painful song which sets its sights on Israeli society and in particular the Army for creating a culture of fear and hatred which make killing “a matter of habit”. This exaggerated and one-sided criticism tempers a deeper message in the song, as Ashdot really seems to be saying that we have backed ourselves into a corner, convinced ourselves that it is us against the World and placed our existential threats on a pedestal that has become identity defining.

Ashdot claimed in an interview that, “A song becomes political when it is treated in that way.” But some might argue that a song becomes political when it contains the line, “Patrolling all night in the Kasbah of Shechem. Hey what here is ours and what is yours?”

We have a habit in Israel of making valid points in such strong words, sometimes even extremist, that the original message is lost. (As an aside, in America I have found the exact opposite: valid points made in such weak, consensual language that I can no longer identify the original message.) Peace Now is against Settling the West Bank, a legitimate opinion, yet they often portray Settlers as the enemy and use overly painful terms in describing their opponents. Likud often questions the validity of biased human rights organizations run by Israelis who are funded by foreign governments, again a legitimate opinion, but by framing these organizations as traitors, the argument loses its own validity.

Ashdot has fallen in this trap. He ends the song with the words, “To learn how to love, is a matter of delicacy.”, and it’s a shame that he hasn’t heeded his own advice. For, with all the delicacy of a hammer Ashdot has saddened and angered mainstream Israel with an apparent attack on the most beloved institution (the IDF), when he could have artistically side-stepped naming names and had a deeper effect. We can’t really blame him, it’s all a matter of habit.