Why is it that the "new Israeli” is returning to his roots for all the wrong reasons? Like his forefathers in the 'shtetl' or the 'mellah,' he is seized with panic at the slightest hint of danger.
By MICHAEL BAR-ZOHAREgypt israel peace cartoon 521(photo credit: Avi Katz)
One could say this is a conspiracy. Secret, undercover forces have banded together with one goal in mind: to scare the wits out of Israelis. To sow panic and fear into the collective mind of that small nation till it becomes incapable of acting or thinking straight.Last weekend, it was Cairo. The images from the assault on the embassy by a violent, fanatic mob were shocking indeed. In Israel, people already saw this as the fulfillment of some dark prophecy marking the end of our peace treaty with Egypt and the prelude to a new regional war.But not so fast: Egypt is not going to go to war with Israel anytime soon. First, it needs the peace treaty far more than Israel does. It needs things to be quiet on its border with Israel. It also needs gas revenues, needs its relations with the US and Europe to remain intact, and certainly needs the billions of dollars of US aid it receives annually.Second, the gulf between the IDF and the Egyptian army has exponentially expanded in the last 33 years. The Egyptians are not looking for another embarrassing defeat ending with Israeli tanks lining the banks of the Suez Canal.But reading the local paper and listening to the media hype, one could be forgiven for thinking that Israel is on the verge of extinction. (And it would all be entirely our own fault if one were to believe one leading Israeli paper that recently accused Israel of being the one to cause the deterioration of its relations with Egypt…)And Egypt is not the only problem. A not-very-bright Israeli general recently gave a public speech in which he warned that an all-out war with an Arab coalition armed with non-conventional weapons looks ever more likely. In past years such remarks would have made the general's immediate retirement a sure thing; today there was only a smattering of faint declarations made by government spokesmen that his warnings were exaggerated.But who can blame him? After all, the papers are telling everyone that after the last terrorist attacks in the Negev the IDF had initially wanted to attack Gaza but hesitated when it figured out just how many missiles might be fired on Tel Aviv as a result. It seems that with every surge of tension with Hamas or Hezbollah, we hear more rhetoric about the 50,000 + rockets that those baddies have lined up to destroy us.The prophets of doom are at work.To add to the drama, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan makes a public appearance and scares us again. The Turkish Navy is going to patrol the east Mediterranean! They'll escort the IHH flotillas headed for Gaza! The Turks will prevent us from pumping our gas! Turkey is going to war with Israel! (The aforementioned Israeli newspaper once again holds Israel to blame for causing the rift with Turkey, and complete disregards the fact that Erdogan's moves against Israel started long before the Mavi Marmara incident or the fact that the prime minister is attempting to systematically turn Turkey into an Islamic nation.)But it would be remiss of me not to also mention the “calamity” that lurks on New York's horizon when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will ask the UN to recognize the State of Palestine. Once again the Israeli media heralds this event as being the end of the world for us. The sky is going to fall on our heads! The Palestinians are going to march on Tel Aviv! The trade unions in Europe are going to boycott us! The International Criminal Court in The Hague will vociferously condemn us! Even Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned us that the Palestinian initiative is going to cause a diplomatic tsunami in the Middle East.
We forget of course, that Israel has been isolated in the past, and been in worse dire straits before; not to mention the fact that the Palestinian bid for independence would harm the Palestinians’ interests much more than it would harm us. (The prophets of doom, of course, would have us believe that Israel's lack of compromise are what caused the Palestinians to embark on this initiative, once again ignoring Israel's oft-repeated plea for the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table.)There's also a few other unmentionables which are worthy of mention: the Iranian A-bomb; US President Barack Obama’s cold shoulder; the economic disaster if the tent protests of summer 2011 result in unbridled spending and printing of money; the danger of an earthquake, grimly predicted by geologists…I can only thank God that these fear-mongering media campaigns and collective fits of panic did not take place in 1948. The State of Israel would never have been created if the perils of its existence had been so feverishly discussed, analyzed, and dissected in such a wildly exaggerated manner.Or perhaps it is simply that the "new Israeli” is returning to his roots. And like his forefathers in the shtetl or the mellah, he is seized with panic as soon as anyone so much as hints that a new danger may be looming ahead.But who will remind him that he is not in the shtetl or the mellah anymore? He is no longer helpless. He can defend himself.After all, apart from his deep yearning for Zion, isn't that the reason he returned to Israel?The writer is a former Labor Party MK and the official biographer of David Ben-Gurion and Shimon Peres.
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