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I want to travel further into the realms of psyche and implication, into those of mindset and devastating aftereffect, because when facts kill, they kill for them.
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Dana Olmert, Yigal Arens, Avraham Burg and Avinadav Begin do not seal my last post as petty taunts. I do not float their names to state the very obvious: that dissent in Israel has reached the progeny of even its fiercest keepers. I am not embracing their rebellion the way I, in my younger college years in the US, latched on to Ahad Ha’am’s reservations about Herzel’s political zeal or marveled at Martin Buber’s spiritualism as evidence of a once tentative, self-questioning Zionism—if not self-questioning of its rights, then self-questioning of their impact on the rights and lives of others.
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I mention these angry children of Israel because 59 years ago, when political Zionism declared itself triumphant over its spiritual and cultural adversaries and Arab enemies, Israeli euphoria would give in only to the seduction of happy dreams. The naggings of nightmares were for the losers. I mention them because 59 years ago, when Israel became flesh and blood and thought it had finally laid to rest that ageless “Jewish Question,” Palestinian exodus seemed—even for those Zionists who acknowledged the injustice of it--a reasonable sacrifice for “Jewish Return.” There was no room then for qualms and foresight. The horror of the Holocaust was too recent, the righteousness of the Cause was too intoxicating and the opportunity in Palestine too compelling. Fifty-nine years ago the future of a messianic, exultant Zionism was intangible, but now it has become the real past, and on its surface yesterday’s dire predictions have bloomed into these children’s scathing verdicts. That is why I mention them.
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In protesting thus, are they not pleading with their country for more meaningful conversations about the possibilities of salvation for them and for this worn-out Middle East? Have we all not lived in this quagmire long enough to know that the misfortune of one people is not necessarily a windfall for the other?
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But there stands a flummoxed Israel, so mighty and yet so frightened, still hanging on to the promise in hellish scenarios. Shall it be yet another Palestinian transfer, as Avigador Lieberman demands, or shall it be permanent dominion over them? Shall it be 50 little Bantustans or one quadriplegic, deaf and mute, tiny Palestine? Dare we ponder the comeback of the Jordanian flag over a mutilated West Bank and Egyptian care for a destitute and seething Gazan Hammastan?
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Does Israel not see that Ze’ev Jabotinsky, that most fervent of Zionists, was right when he said of the Palestinians, “…they are not a rabble but a living people?” Do the raging fires of the past 60 years not tell it how wrong he was when he found his answer for Palestinian acquiescence written on an “Iron Wall?” Do they not understand that they cannot be in the Middle East but not of it? If a thriving IT sector, a robust economy and a healthy stock exchange brighten up the picture for Israel, don’t the people’s anxieties about the longevity of the state that permeate every poll and the fading sheen of military power as panacea make it a tad bit darker?
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Not a history replete with damning evidence, not the voices within and not the clamor without seem to be making a dent as Israel’s leaders, politicians and generals alike, go about their business of audaciously dressing up bigotry and cruelty as workable solutions for their people and ours.
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I am writing this as news trickles in about the killing of five UNIFEL Spanish soldiers in Southern Lebanon. Here’s one murderous act that exposes the mindsets meeting across divides to bring this country down. In identifying the guilty hands, one is at a loss between an Israel that has been agitating for another round to reclaim for the Israeli military its fading luster and help Lebanon and Hezbollah sink deeper into their morass; extremist Palestinian elements hitting in the South to spread the turmoil in the North; a Syria anxious to make the summer a very hot season for all of us.
Allah Yustur (God shield us). But I doubt he will.
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More conversations with Israel, the Arabs and Palestinians in my next post.
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