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November 28, 2011

Israel’s ‘Unmaking’

By Jonathan Kirsch

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No book review I’ve written for The Jewish Journal has prompted as much feedback as the one I wrote about “A New Voice for Israel” by Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder of J Street. His argument that Israel must make uncomfortable compromises and take dire risks in order to secure peace with the Palestinian Arabs is clearly unsettling to a great many Jews, both in Israel and America.

But Ben-Ami will find a kindred spirit in Gershom Gorenberg, an Israeli author (“The Accidental Empire”) and journalist who comes to some of the same conclusions in “The Unmaking of Israel” (HarperCollins: $25.99), which he describes as “a selective and personal journey through Israel’s past and present, for the purpose of presenting an argument: that Israel is unmaking itself, and must put itself back together.” Gorenberg provides a deft but penetrating and highly nuanced account of the recent history and current politics of Israel, and he offers a prescription for curing the ills that afflict the Jewish state.

“Zionism, understood from within, is the national liberation movement of the Jews,” Gorenberg begins. But the land on which a Jewish homeland was to be built was also the homeland of an Arab community. “Seen from the shores of Palestine, Zionism was a movement of foreigners coming to settle the land, to colonize it.” The struggle between these contending points of view must be put aside, he writes, if we hope to find a path to peace.

What’s at stake, according to Gorenberg, is nothing less than the character and destiny of Israel itself. “[A]t the moment of its triumph, Israel began to take itself apart,” he writes, referring to the history-changing victories of the Six-Day War. “Long-term rule of Palestinians was a retreat from the ideal of democracy. … The settlement enterprise was a multi-pronged assault on the rule of law. … [T]he government’s support of settlement has fostered the transformation of religious Zionism into a movement of the radical right.” Above all, Gorenberg insists, all of these trends “now threaten Israel’s democratic aspirations and its existence.”

The current crisis, as Gorenberg demonstrates, can be seen as an accident of history. He reminds us that the founders of Israel lived in a world where the exchange of populations was one of the tools of geopolitics, and “it should be no surprise that Zionist leaders thought about transfer.” Hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled from Israel during the War of Independence, a kind of de facto population transfer. By 1967, however, an even greater number of Arabs were back under Israeli rule. Thus began the “unmaking” of Israel, as Gor-enberg puts it.

The dilemma, of course, is that Israel cannot remain both Jewish and democratic for very long if its population includes a substantial and growing number of Arabs. Then, too, Gorenberg points out that Jewish settlement in the West Bank was undertaken by what he calls a “radical religious culture” that was itself a danger to democracy.

“A new generation of settlers has come of age, as radical or more in its theologized politics, alienated from the institutions of the state that have so assiduously fostered its growth,” he writes. “The meaning of these changes is a democracy in greater danger, a state that is weaker and less capable of ending the occupation.” Indeed, he puts it even more bluntly: The radical fringe of the settler movement “barbarized Judaism” by encouraging the kind of violence that ultimately took the life of Yitzhak Rabin.

Gorenberg warns that the growing role of observant Jews in the Israeli army is itself an obstacle to peacemaking. Only 9,000 settlers were removed from Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces, but no fewer than 65,000 Jews — and possibly many more — would need to be removed from the West Bank under even the most grudging version of an Israeli withdrawal. “The army would have to confront a young generation of settlers determined not to repeat the ‘shame’ of Gaza,” he points out. “Yet since 2005, the army’s dependence on soldiers coming out of the Orthodox academies … and other yeshivot aligned with the theological right has increased.”

Gorenberg is quick to characterize himself as “a religious Jew” and “an Israeli by choice.” He issues a heartfelt and heart-rending plea for the repair of the Jewish democracy: “I write from an Israel with a divided soul,” he writes. “It is not only defined by its contradictions; it is at risk of being torn apart by them.”

“For Israel to establish itself again as a liberal democracy, it must make three changes,” he concludes. “First, it must end the settlement enterprise, end the occupation, and find a peaceful way to partition the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Second, it must divorce state and synagogue. … Third and most basically, it must graduate from being an ethnic movement to being a democratic state in which all citizens enjoy equality.”

Gorenberg does not provide us with much reason for optimism that any of these things will happen soon, or at all. But he seems to embrace the old Zionist aphorism — If you will it, it is no dream — and he sees something uniquely Jewish in the argument that he hopes to provoke in Israel and throughout the Jewish world.

“This, perhaps, is the best definition of a Jewish state,” he concludes, “the place where Jews can argue with the least inhibition, in the most public way, about what it means to be Jews.”

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You’ll get plenty of backlash on this as well, from the fire-breathing, crazed Orthodox and the nationalist Jews in the US who cannot keep two conflicting ideas in their little heads at one time…that both Israelis, Jews and Arabs have a right to live in this place, and any effort restrict the rights of anyone is not productive.

The Israeli state is also being torn apart by the religious extremism that receives more attention and benefits than the 15% of the population who are so enamored of orthodoxy, they debase the word Jew by excluding the rest of the world Jewish and Arab from their sphere of importance.

Comment by The Logician on 11/28/11 at 6:38 pm

What an incredible collection of liars are these authors and reviewers! Defining honesty as theft. Never did the Zionists cease their appeals for Arab cooperation to grow the land together. Always did the Arabs reject them with violence that always left Israel on top of their necks. They need only agree that the Jews are a people who came from Judea with a right to their homeland.  Then everyone will have peace. It’s totally up to the Arabs alone to choose peace with prosperity or hostility and continued degradation. There is no reason, as these extreme leftists demand, for Jews to trade their birthright for an ephemeral ruddy bowl of peace soup.  Esaw did that already a long time ago.

Comment by Abbushuki on 11/28/11 at 7:26 pm

The review of Gershon brought tears to my eyes. He analyzed the internal dangers facing Israel much more eloquently than I could. A split country within the green line plus a virulent and growing settlement movement in West Bank which brings despair and crushing consequences to the Palestinians bodes ill. The implosion within Israel has much more potentially dire consequences to Israel and its future, than threats from Arabs and Persians ouside of Israel.
Jingoist responses and non-critical comments from American Jews at a time the Knesset itself may well strip the NGO’s here and the liberal religious movements within Israel, endanger all of Jewry .

Comment by gerald bubis on 11/28/11 at 9:20 pm

“...Second, it must divorce state and synagogue. … Third and most basically, it must graduate from being an ethnic movement to being a democratic state in which all citizens enjoy equality.”

What is this drivel?  The underlying purpose of the establishment of the state of Israel was to serve as a homeland for the Jewish people.  What happens when Arabs become a majority of the country, in numbers?  Do we functionally go back to the Turkish rule of the pre-war era?  Turn Israel into a non-Jewish state? 

What is this nonsense?!!!

Comment by Aharon on 11/29/11 at 12:23 am

“But the land on which a Jewish homeland was to be built was also the homeland of an Arab community. “Seen from the shores of Palestine, Zionism was a movement of foreigners coming to settle the land, to colonize it.”
A complete fallacy. The Arab community was very small and did not constitute a nation. The Arabs more than made up for any Jewish colonisation by ‘colonising’ the land and property of their Jewish citizens, most of whom shifted to Israel.

Comment by bataween on 11/29/11 at 12:48 am

I am not an Israeli; however, my children and many grandchildren are.  My stake in the survival of Israel is as great any other Jew.  To survive, Israel must promote liberty, unity among the Jews and G_d, all of the elements that have traditionally been significant in being a Jew, elements the first Zionists knew they could not ignore.  The Arabs created war and evicted close to one million Jews from throughout the middle east because the U.N. legally created Israel.  The Arabs have made it clear that no Jews may live in Arab Palestine or any other Arab Country.  That is the Gordian knot.  I submit that the Jews of J Street and their supporters do not get it.  Isreal is a sacred mission.

Comment by Aaron on 11/29/11 at 3:37 am

It’s sad when a Jew doesn’t believe he/she has the right to live in the land that Jews are indigenous to. Arabs are NOT indigenous to this part of the world. They are indigenous to Arabia. This poor man has blinders on, and has bought into the idea that Jews don’t have the right to live anywhere autonomously. The Arab Muslims want to get rid of the Jews, period. That is what has to be the stark reality from which Israel works. All the nice theories and ideas of how we can live with the Arabs would be great if there were a partner on the other side. The other side has made it clear that they don’t want to dance. Deal with it, and come up with something according to reality.

Comment by Rina on 11/29/11 at 7:37 am

Not one of the bleeding hearts for Arab domination seem to know about the great American democratic system for permitting non-citizens to live and work in their midst without certain rights.  It’s called a GREEN CARD. Yes, in the US we have more people that all the Palestinians combined who do not have voting rights, but have a right to live in the US. No one has accused the US of not being a democracy.  Israel can cancel Oslo, take over all the land, give the Arabs the responsibilities and rights as citizens if they will pledge allegiance to the Israeli flag, or they can have green cards.  Simple, peaceful and all can get on with their lives.

Comment by abbushuki on 11/29/11 at 1:32 pm

Logician: extremism in the face of extinction is a value to be cherished.

Comment by Honey Bee on 11/29/11 at 4:22 pm

We have come to a point where historical arguments are relatively meaningless.  Jews and Arabs must be accommodated on the land, since no one is willing to leave.  There are approximately, equal numbers of Jews and Arabs living on the land. The Arab population, given their birthrate, will eventually outnumber the Jews.
When harmony is impossible in a relationship, divorce is the only option.  Divide the land honestly and equitably and live in peace. The alternative is a state of endless war.

Comment by Jerry on 11/30/11 at 2:23 am

Jerry, I have several friends who are Amer. Indians, who will tell you that your solution will not work, especialy if there is oil on the land.

Comment by Honey Bee on 11/30/11 at 4:51 pm

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