
The theme of identity is a fateful and
powerful motive force pervading the history of Zionism and of
the State of Israel. Its stamp can be felt in the pictures
we view viewed today of mass demonstrations, of streets
slicked with oil and strewn with nails, of dummy bombs placed
by “religious” soldiers in the Jerusalem bus station, or of
the ceremony of “pulsa denura” (Aramaic for “whips of flame”)
whereby 20 rabbis cursed Sharon and called to their God to
send him the Angel of Death. One of these State-supported
religious leaders then boasted on TV how, ten years ago, when
such a ritual had lead to the murder of Rabin, he had danced
for joy. Today we can see the increasing violence of settlers
and their young children against Israeli soldiers and
policemen, who since years are risking their lives to protect
them.
Theodore Herzl’s Motivation
Theodore Herzl,
accounted the founder of modern political Zionism, was
already steeped in the question of identity. He belonged to
that class of cultivated Western European intellectuals of the
second half of the nineteenth century, who had lost their
roots in traditional Judaism, and who, in the face of anti-Semitically-motivated
opposition from their non-Jewish surroundings, would accept no
further blows. As he was refused, as a Jew, unrestricted entry
into the world of German culture he so much admired, he
resolved to be the leader of his people, to lead them out of
their affliction, to renew them spiritually, and so to triumph
over anti-Semitism.
His near-obsessive dedication to the idea of a Jewish State
had to be understood as a desperate search for this new
identity. To this goal, he sacrificed his family, his fortune
and his health, dying in 1904, at the age of only 44. His
vehement disputes with Ahad Ha’am (Asher Ginsberg), the
spiritual leader of so-called cultural Zionism, who died in
1927, centered, ultimately, on the character of the Jewish
homeland then in the making. As against Herzl’s views on the
achievements of the Enlightenment and of modern civilization,
Ahad Ha’am posited the necessity of a “Jewish identity”,
which, however, he understood more spiritually than
religiously. This clash of beliefs continues today in Israel,
with increasing ferocity, and in the most manifold ways. It is
fragmenting a society in which mutually-hostile groups
incapable of dialog, are not bound together by common values,
not even recognizing national laws, as witness the open legal
defiance by the nationalistic and religious opponents of the
Gaza withdrawal. from Gaza and West Bank settlements.
Herein is reflected a history profoundly tragic, of
irreconcilable life-approaches and societal standards which
fail to converge on such higher-level humanistic values as
social benevolence, justice and peace. The inability to frame
a constitution, incomprehensible for a self-styled democratic
nation, is only one example of how Israeli society is breaking
apart on the identity question.
A socialist and an atheist, David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first
Prime Minister, was not less eagerly anxious to lend a special
identity in the form a “Jewish Character” to the State he had
proclaimed. This task he assigned to the exponents of
religious orthodoxy without accounting for the content of this
slogan, and without any sense that such a task was
non-delegable. Thus he took care that a numerically tiny
minority would be mantled with a plenitude of concessions and
privileges. Moreover, State functions calling for a
religion-neutral approach, such as matters having to do with
civil status and funerals, were vested exclusively in the
orthodox rabbinate.
Jewish Universalism Betrayed
To maintain and expand
this preferential status, the orthodox
aggressively defend their monopolistic claim upon
“Jewish Identity.” To this end, they are ever-anxious to force
their own doctrines and way of life upon inhabitants of a
secular orientation. Such developments come at the expense of
truly religious and humanistic values, as is illustrated by
the orthodox groups, and many of their rabbis, in their
militant opposition to withdrawal from the occupied
territories in the interests of peace and coexistence with the
Palestinians. They support themselves by citation to
scripture, according to which God is supposed to have
personally given to the Jews the land comprised in the
present-day West Bank.
The militant settler groups in the occupied territories also
invoke these archaic texts, becoming radicalized through a
surfeit of identification. They see themselves as the
descendents of the ancient, warlike Hebrew flock, carrying out
the sacred mission of their warlike God, to liberate the
Promised Land from the eternal enemies of the Jewish people,
whom the Palestinians recall, and thus to usher in the
messianic age. Their fundamentalism has assumed such
threatening forms that, to cite one instance, the former
chairman of the ideologically-aligned National Religious
Party, former Minister Effi Eitam, in an interview in the
daily Ha’aretz, could actually refer to Muslim control over
the Temple Mount as unacceptable, and suggest that this
problem will be solved, repeating the cry “the Temple Mount is
in our hands.”
Underlying the obsessive idea of erecting a Third Temple in
the place of the Muslim holy sites, which haunts an increasing
number of fanatics, is the heathenish principle of the
site-specificity of the divine encounter. This stands in
contradistinction to the universal Jewish – and also the
Hassidic – conception of the “Shechina,” the divine presence
that manifests itself in all times and in all places.
Secular politicians, also, and many of their supporters cling,
in the quest for identity, to the concept of a State with a
“Jewish character,” though they understand this more in a
demographic sense. The difficulty that follows from this is
the exclusion of the Palestinians living within Israel, as a
threat to this State character. Thus long-time residents, a
group amounting to 20% of the population, would be rendered
vulnerable to discrimination. “Jewish character,” understood
demographically, is inconsistent with principles of equal
justice and democracy, leads to permanent social tensions,
impairs relations with Arab and other States, and provides
arguments to anti-Semites throughout the world. The price for
a demographically realized “Jewish character” is naturally to
be paid by the non-Jewish population. One finds this
chauvinistic spirit today among extreme right-wing groups,
immigrants from the former-Soviet Union, and members of the
ruling Likud party, who see themselves as the descendents of
the Revisionist Zionism that emerged in the twenties of the
last century.
This spirit, however, justifies not at all the
characterization of Zionism as an efflux of European
nationalism. The pioneers of Zionism acted on the assumptions
of Jewish homelessness and of unalterable anti-Semitism as
fixed realities. They were steeped in the idea of establishing
a just society in the homeland they were creating.
Intellectuals with the visionary instinct for the dynamic of
the historical process such as Martin Buber, and above all,
Judah Magnes, a co-founder and leader of the Hebrew University
in Jerusalem, saw in Arab-Jewish cooperation the right Zionist
strategy, the sole possibility of a balance between the
inarguable human rights of the Palestinians and the historical
claims of the Jews.
Such cooperation between former victims of imperialism and a
people with no colonial past would have been wiser, in the
long run, than always seeking to rely on the great powers.
Thus the nationalistic currents could have been comprehended
in the newly proclaimed State of Israel, which, however,
provided the setting for the grim threats of annihilation from
the neighboring Arab states, and the 1939 British White Paper,
which restricted immigration into Palestine by the
existentially-menaced and uprooted Jews, notwithstanding their
existing plight. Thus arose the problematic situation of a
nation-state in the midst of a region of vital interest to the
world economy, supporting itself with its own, and with
America’s military might.
But Zionism also engendered creative identifications. They
sprang, in part, from the search for a new self, often in
reaction against the trauma of the misery of existence in the
eastern European ghettos and shtetls. They arose, in the time
before and after the founding of the State, so meaningfully in
the collective agricultural settlements, the Kibbutzim, out of
the endeavor for a new identity, for self-realization in the
spirit of the best traditions of Judaism: justice,
selflessness and equality. Out of it grew an alternate society
and form of property, the “only realized Utopia” (Martin Buber),
sustained by a new model of humanity represented by selfless
pioneers, bound to the soil. The kibbutzniks were not defined
by the currents of nationalism, stood for an understanding
with the Arabs, and directed their energies toward personal
and social self-actualization. Nothing reveals more clearly
the change of direction of Israeli society than the decline of
the Kibbutz movement.
Against Fictions
The missing
clarification of the Zionist identity thematic may be
seen in the 1948 Declaration of Statehood, whose grounding
concept was insufficiently thought through and insufficiently
defined. Certain statements of intent in the Declaration, such
as the promise of a constitution, and of equal treatment for
Arab fellow-citizens, remain so vague that politicians to this
day cannot come up with the institutions for their
fulfillment. For a deeper inner conflict will have been
pre-programmed: a conflict between humanistic values, such as
the Jewish people had developed over millennia, projected and
also handed on, and the new impulses in the wake of the
founding of the State.
And so it is that in the six decades after the founding of the
State of Israel, the founding goals of political Zionism,
namely: the creation of a secure homeland for the Jews, with
firmly recognized borders, and with a just society, are
nowhere near fulfillment. Thus, the nearly ten years since the
murder of the peace-seeking Prime Minister Rabin must be
counted as lost. As the Palestinians’ partner-in-conflict is
incomparably stronger, with a far greater room for
maneuvering, it might be expected that Israel, in its own self
interest, would call a halt to this senseless circle of blame,
and clear the ground for constructive dialog. This, however,
can only come to pass when the themes of identity and of the
character of the State are no longer held in thrall by
emotionally super-charged and irrational fictions.
Ernest Goldberger grew up in Switzerland and lived
for 13 years in Israel. His book, The Soul of Israel,
was published in 2004 by NZZ-Verlag. This article originally
appeared in the Swiss daily, Neue Zürcher
Zeitung and was translated from the German by Jeff Miller.
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