Critical but optimisitc

Hirsh Goodman’s new book is a grab bag of the most pressing issues facing the country.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
Settler Children 521 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Settler Children 521
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Hirsh Goodman is optimistic about Israel.
“Israel could be a light unto the nations if the nations would allow it to happen,” he writes in The Anatomy of Israel’s Survival. “It could help push the desert back and feed a hungry world, and contribute in medicine and space, alternative energy and water conservation.”
However, he is also realistic: “Money put into [the large Jerusalem-area settlement of] Ma’aleh Adumim is good money after bad. Iran, with all its problems, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda, the Islamic Jihad, English anti-Israel academics, unions in Norway – all wish Israel away. Investing one more cent... is like dealing them the hand to achieve their goal.”
Goodman has been a long-term observer and expert on the Jewish state. The South African-born writer arrived in the country in 1965, served in the army and worked in journalism, becoming the first editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Report and at Tel Aviv University’s Institute of National Security Studies. In his book, he relates often how he rubbed shoulders with Israeli military and political elites, gaining inside knowledge about what was happening. Anatomy is not a plodding history of Israel, but a grab bag of the most pressing issues facing the country, combined with a fastpaced narrative discussing the general trends in its history since 1948.
The strongest sections are those dealing with events the author personally recalls, which means primarily the period from 1967 to the present. His explanation of the chaotic period that led to the election of Ariel Sharon in 2000 is emotive: “[Yasser] Arafat had mauled Israel’s young leaders – [Binyamin] Netanyahu and [Ehud] Barak – as if they were cubs. It was time for experience. Israel needed a bastard of its own. In the minds of many, the Arabs were getting the Israeli leadership they deserved.”
Goodman narrates how Sharon made the choice to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, “his most significant legacy,” explaining that unfortunately “the evacuees were treated very poorly.... Many live in temporary homes to this day.”
The author is hard on the methods of the settlers and religious nationalists. “By 2005 they were the de facto masters of the land, carrying out their every whim and wish by creating new facts on the ground while the bureaucrats turned a convenient blind eye to the steady encroachment on West Bank Palestinian land.” In Jerusalem, he writes, they combine “an unhealthy mix of history, religion, politics, real estate, rich Jews with Mad Hatter ideas.”
As an example of other problems he sees in the “occupation,” he talks about going for a walk in the Arab side of his neighborhood, Abu Tor: “It’s like entering a different world. The neat, tree-lined streets with recycling bins for plastic bottles and newspapers give way to mayhem and chaos with children running across roads with no regard for traffic.”
There are elements of the book that could use improvement. As a popular text aimed at a large audience, the need for academic-style footnotes is abrogated, but Goodman has decided not to provide any references. For example, he argues that “Bashar Assad made overtures toward peace... but in the background he has been preparing for war.” In talking about the Mavi Marmara incident, the book asserts that the ship was “heavily loaded with Turkish thugs, Syrian intelligence agents, Hamas operatives and many Palestinian supporters.”The veracity of these two claims about Syria would be greatly aided by a source.
Goodman claims that prior to 1967, “the Syrians had their hands on Israel’s main [water] tap and could close it at will.” In fact, despite attempts to divert the headwaters of the Jordan, the Syrians would only have reduced Israel’s water supply by 11 percent. The author also claims that “160,000 additional [Arabs] left their homes [in 1948] for what they thought would be temporary safe havens in the Galilee. Their exile became permanent, however, when the areas to which they fled fell back into Israeli territory under the 1949 armistice... to this day they have not been allowed back and are classified as ‘present absentees.’” In fact, only around 46,000 Arabs became present absentees (internal refugees) as a result of the war; most of the country’s Arab community lives in the same villages today as they did before 1948.
Nonetheless, Goodman is adamant that despite all the hardships – the terrorism of the 1990s and the second intifada, the politicians who, he argues, are “opportunists” – there are many silver linings. He asserts that Jerusalem could be a model for peace, that the haredim “will find a way to adapt,” that Israel “has much to offer in many fields,” as well as “significant natural gas deposits,” and that it can and will defeat its enemies. Interestingly the author strongly supports national service for all Israelis – Arabs and the Orthodox included.
In the end, this book makes a number of good observations, among them the summation that “looking at Israel is a bit like going to an impressionist exhibition. If you stand close up and read the headlines each day, all you see are the individual incidents – the daubs of paint. It takes some distance to see the picture, or at least gain some clarity.