Independence Day is not a holiday for Israeli Arabs. Sixtyfour years ago, they
lost their land and their national honor... [their aversion to] the
national anthem “Hatikva” – which talks of “a Jewish soul yearning” – should
serve as an incentive for devising symbols and events with which all Israeli
citizens can identify without being false to themselves. – Haaretz editorial,
April 27
And the two words that are the most important are “Nefesh Yehudi” [A
Jewish soul]”. When I hear those two words I know why I am here. I know what I
am doing here. – An oleh in an Independence Day interview on the significance of
“Hatikva” – April 26
It is not often that I find myself disagreeing with The
Jerusalem Post’s Caroline B. Glick. Indeed, for many years I have had nothing
but the highest regard for her intrepid and articulate defense of Israel and
Zionist ideals.
However, I am compelled to dispute the views articulated
in her last column, “Post-Zionism is so 1990s,” in which she appears to convey
the view that the threat of post-Zionism has waned into insignificance, or at
least receded into obsolescence.
Regrettably, this claim is misplaced and
misleading, and although I sincerely wish she were right, I fear that her
analysis is unrealistically optimistic and gravely underestimates the true
danger.
Post-Zionism more pervasive than ever
The advance of post-Zionism
is arguably the greatest menace confronting the Zionist endeavor today,
everything it stands for, everything it has accomplished and everything it
strives to accomplish. It is imperative not to be lulled into a false sense of
security.
I would, therefore, counsel caution before assigning any real
significance to the fact that public events in Israel are conducted with greater
decorum today relative to the 1990s when, as Glick points out, they tended to be
more frivolous, irreligious and disrespectful of Jewish history, culture and
heritage.
Despite deceptive appearances, post-Zionism is more pervasive
and pernicious than ever.
Seemingly impervious to reality that has
repeatedly refuted its doctrine, post-Zionism is hammering on the doors of the
mainstream Israeli establishment – and gaining increasingly frequent access.
What was unthinkably seditious – indeed legally punishable – barely a generation
ago is now fashionably avant garde.
Post-Zionism and the Left
Glick
writes: “Despite their best efforts, Netanyahu remains in power and the Left
can’t get any traction with the public....”
While this is accurate, the
crucial question is how has this affected the party platforms and the conduct of
policy?
Two things are worth noting. First, Glick appears to equate the Left and
“those who are interested in forcing Israel to make more concessions to the
Palestinians” with the phenomenon of post-Zionism.
Clearly, such a
“one-size-fits-all” categorization would raise howls of protest from many who
would object to branding as “post-Zionists” an array of prominent figures who
played central roles in forging the history of Zionism, yet advocated
territorial compromise.
However, while lumping all “left-wing” elements
into a monolithic ideo-political post-Zionist grouping may be going a little too
far, it must be recognized that there is a seamless symbiosis between the
self-professed Zionist- Left and the self-confessed post-Zionist
radicals.
This facilitates an almost “frictionless” migration and
cross-fertilization of political philosophies and policy proposals between these
groups.
In turn, this has generated a deceptive ambivalence that often
blurs the ideological distinction between the two, making the transition from
the one to the other almost imperceptible.
Ideological obliteration of
the ‘Right’
The repercussions of this “quasi-equivalence” have been profound and
pernicious, resulting in an overwhelming leftward deformation of the Israeli
polity and the ideological obliteration of the “Right” – which leads me to the
second thing I wish to note.
Glick’s observation regarding Binyamin
Netanyahu’s ability to stay prime minister, and the Left’s inability to gain
electoral traction – while seemingly true – obscures a far more ominous
reality.
For although Netanyahu has indeed managed to retain power, he
has adopted policies that are far more concessionary (i.e. leftish) than even
Oslo peace laureate Yitzhak Rabin, who was excoriated by the Right for betraying
the Zionist ethos, ever dreamed of offering the Palestinians.
Moreover,
while it is correct that in terms of parliamentary representation, parties
labeled “left-wing” may have been diminished, the parties labeled “right-wing”
have largely adopted their “left-wing” agenda.
An astonishing spectacle
is unfolding before us, with the ostensibly “right-wing” Likud exhorting the
Palestinians to enter into negotiations over a proposed settlement which it
itself vehemently rejected not long ago as excessively concessionary – this at a
time when all the Likud’s previous reservations are being proved
correct.
If that were not enough, the head of Kadima, the main opposition
party (established by once super-hawk Arik Sharon, together with once super-hawk
Tzachi Hanegbi), ex-Likud defense minister Shaul Mofaz, has declared, a priori,
that he would accede to 100% of the Palestinian territorial demands – all this
before engaging in negotiations with them.
So while the formal
party-affiliated representation of the Left in the Knesset has been reduced, the
substantive ideological representation of its dovish political doctrine has
acquired overwhelming dominance.
Apart from the marginal fringes of the
Right, almost all the parliamentary factions have platforms not only far more
dovish than the anti-Oslo Likud platform of the 1990s, but even more dovish than
the pro-Oslo Labor vision as laid out by Rabin in his last Knesset address in
1995.
Since the 1990s, the political system has, for all intents and
purposes, been gutted of any assertive Zionist party platforms that reject the
bogus Palestinian narrative – which is, in large measure, the sine non qua of
the post- Zionist credo.
Size doesn’t matter
A deeply disturbing trend is
emerging before our eyes: Almost the entire gamut of mainstream political
parties has – with varying degrees of reluctance/enthusiasm – accepted the basic
tenets of the Palestinian narrative, which negate the Zionist narrative. In
doing so, they have opened the door of respectability to post-Zionism, and laid
down a red carpet for its access to all the vestiges of the Israeli
establishment.
So while Glick is correct in asserting that “the Left” and
its post-Zionist affiliates have garnered only marginal public support, this is
one instance in which “size doesn’t matter.” For they do not need to win
elections to effectively impose their rule on the country – or at least to
prevent their ideological rivals from implementing theirs.
No matter what
the results at the polls, the Left and its more radical ideological co-travelers
can promote their agenda and impede that of their pro-Zionist adversaries
through their dominance of the legal establishment, the media and much of
academia.
Recent decades are replete with infuriating examples of how an
insignificant minority view has been imposed on the nation by means of an
ideologically biased judiciary, ruling in favor of PC (Palestinian-compliant)
petitions, brought before it by radical left-wing NGOs, generously funded by
foreign sovereign sources, and accompanied by massive media
hype.
Attempts by the parliamentary majority to redress this deformation
of the democratic process have been met with furious – and largely successful –
resistance.
Legislative initiatives designed to enhance financial
transparency of tax-exempt NGOs, and to address accelerating erosion of the
credibility of the judiciary were foiled – almost incredibly with Likud-led
government complicity – because they would – wait for it... undermine democratic
governance.
The voice of post-Zionism
Having eviscerated the Zionist
political parties of any resolve and self-confidence, and emboldened by the
reticent response of their adversaries, the post-Zionists have set their sights
on the symbols of Jewish sovereignty. They have turned the focus of their
assault away from the political front lines to the conceptual hinterland and to
the spiritual roots of the Zionist movement.
In this sinister enterprise,
their lack of electoral support should not be taken as a measure of their reach.
They have other means to amplify the volume of their voice and the efficacy of
their message.
A major element of this assault is being conducted via
Haaretz. In a string of recent editorials and a barrage of opinion columns, it
has sallied forth with an overt drive to eradicate references to the Jewish
character of the foundational ethos of Israel.
Consider the following
editorial headlines:
• “Israel should consider altering its anthem to include
non-Jews” (March 2)
• “Israel needs an anthem that represents Arabs and Jews”
(March 12)
• “Israel needs national symbols all citizens can identify with”
(April 27)
Ostensibly, the objective is to redraft the trappings of public life
to allow the Arab minority to identify with, and participate in, state-related
activities, ceremonies and celebrations. However, it takes little
analytical effort to discover that this is but a flimsy veneer concealing a
unambiguous campaign for the conversion of Israel from the “nation-state of the
Jews” to “a-state-of-all-its-citizens.”
Assuaging Arab regret
The current
focus of attack is the wording of the national anthem, “Hatikva,” which Haaretz
tells us, “ignore[s] the existence of an Arab minority in the State of Israel –
a minority for whom this land is also their land.”
According to the
paper, “No Arab citizen who had any self-respect, political awareness or
national consciousness could sing these words without committing the sins of
hypocrisy and falsehood.”
Elsewhere, we are told why this is so:
“Independence Day is not a holiday for Israeli Arabs. Sixty-four years ago, they
lost their land and their national honor.”
I am trying to get my head
around this. Is one of the nation’s major newspapers really calling on the
public not only to understand the sorrow the Arab minority feels that the
genocidal attempt of its ethnic-kinfolk to obliterate the Jewish population
failed, but to take far-reaching steps to accommodate this
sadness?
Really?
How are we to assuage their melancholy at having “lost
their land and national honor” in their failed Judeocidal effort? Are Jews
really expected to forgo the victory and to suppress the expression of their
national identity to alleviate the discomfort of the defeated? One cannot but
wonder what the consequences would have been had the fortunes of war been
reversed? And how are we to restore their “national honor” (much less their
‘land”) – or to compensate them for their loss – without de-Judaizing Israel and
deconstructing the Zionist ethos.
But that is what the post-Zionists are
really aiming at. However, to achieve this goal of dismantling the status
of Israel as the nation-state of the Jews, they first have to achieve an
intermediate goal: to decouple Israel from its Jewishness, to denude, and then
break, the bond of kinship between the State of Israel and the Jewish
people.
Hence the assault on the Jewish emblems – first the anthem, next
the flag, then the Law of Return. After all, why should the Jewish Diaspora have
unfettered access to the country and not the Palestinian diaspora?
This is a
question the post-Zionists – and Haaretz – will doubtless be raising soon in
editorials.
The nature of nations
Nations are not a mere amalgam of
people who happen to inhabit a piece of real estate. As the liberal philosopher
John Stuart Mill observes, to function as a nation populations need to feel
“united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them
and any others.... The strongest of all [these common sympathies] is identity of
political antecedents; the possession of a national history, and consequent
community of recollections; collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and
regret, connected with the same incidents in the past.”
So how do
post-Zionists propose to generate a new sense of "pan-Israeli" nationality when one
segment of the population sees in the 1948 Jewish victory a reason for pride and
pleasure while another segment sees it as a source of regret and humiliation?
The members of the Arab community in Israel made a call in 1948. They elected to
throw their lot in with a Jewish – repeat Jewish – state. They could have left,
as did many of their kin. They can leave today if they feel they cannot identify
with the fabric of national life here.
They can follow the example of
many Israeli citizens who came here from economically developed nations,
precisely because they felt their national affiliation was not with their
country of birth, but with the Jewish homeland.
Arabs in Israel who feel
their national identity is incompatible with political realities and the conduct
of public life have many options. Demanding that the victors relinquish their
ethos to accommodate the defeated is not one.
This must be made clear –
for any ambiguity will herald great tragedy.
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