[(Continued from p.5)]
now return to the work that was left undone, reestablishing the idea of the Jewish state on solid foundations..."But if Labor Zionism is riddled with variants of the same utopianism as Buberian anti-Zionism, it seems highly doubtful--even putting aside the problem that time is fast running out--that a small fellowship of intellectuals can "reestablish the idea of the Jewish state on solid foundations." Twenty years before Oslo, in 1972, Israeli philosopher Jochanan Bloch noted the deep cultural roots--Bloch traced them to Biblical time--for the Jews' avoidance of political targets. In Bloch's words:
"As Agnon sees it, all the Jew wanted was to serve his God and make a decent living. More recently all he wanted was to nurture the community dedicated to the fostering of authentic human relationships and the settlement of the land. In any event, what he always wanted was to avoid the rough and tumble, the wretchedness and the glory of political life, and to reject sovereignty with its inextricable component of awfulness. Hence the Jew is reluctant to accept the consequences of his own strength; he moves over; he wants less; always less--and in his heart is the burning belief, which is also the arrogant presumption, that he is entitled to a morally better existence." (Die Unpolitische Politik der israelischen Regierung" In Evangelische Zeitstimmen, No. 61/2, Hamburg, p. 75)
Hazony avoids explicitly taking us to the very end of the road. He describes the Jewish state dissolving its ties to Judaism in order to become "a state for all its citizens," and leaves it there. But of course it will not be long thereafter that it becomes a state for its Arab citizens, who will have no qualms about making sure, by one means or another, that Jews become at best a small minority. The PLO Covenant vows to rid Palestine of all Jews who came "after the beginning of the Zionist invasion," which it does not define but would presumably start with the Second Aliyah of 1904-14. Clearly the PLO does not anticipate a large Jewish minority in the secular democratic state of Palestine. In practice, ironically, given the secular Israeli's furious scorn for the haredi inhabitants of Meah Shearim, it is precisely this community that is most likely to be permitted to remain. How better for the Arabs of Palestine to prove to the world that they have nothing against Jews as such?
To quote Jochanan Bloch again: "It is like the development of an ancient Greek tragedy. The warring forces are deeply embedded in the character of the actors. Even if they want to escape their fate, they cannot, because the fate is within themselves. The seed of the disaster that overtakes them is sown within their own souls."
Rael Jean Isaac is editor of Outpost and author of two books on Israeli politics, Israel Divided (Johns Hopkins University Press) and Parties and Politics of Israel (Longmans). Parts of the analysis in this article are drawn from "By What Right?" by Erich and Rael Jean Isaac, Judaism, Vol. XXVI, No. 2, Spring, 1977
The reason so many people have difficulty in understanding Israeli politics is that they make the mistake of looking upon the Oslo "peace process" as a form of diplomacy or politics, when in fact it is a cargo cult.
Let me explain.
Cargo cults were fascinating social phenomena that have occupied a central position in textbooks of anthropology for many decades. They refer to a phenomenon that occurred in some South Pacific Islands during World War II. American forces had taken possession of some islands on which there lived primitive aboriginal tribes, and built airfields for military and logistic purposes.
After the war was over and U.S. troops left, the aborigines adopted a bizarre religious cult. The savages had observed the planes landing and taking off in the airfields the Americans had built on the islands and understood them to have been sent by friendly gods as gifts to the American medicine men performing the correct rites. So the aborigines tried to induce the magical gods to send them planes of good things by copying the rites. They built their own "airfields" of sand and gravel. They built their own "air tower" of sticks. They even carved from wood what looked like a microphone and spoke the same magical conjuring words they had heard the Americans speak into the "microphone"--"Roger Over and Out"--to induce the gods to send the magic metal birds with gifts. In some cases the attempts to conjure the magic cargo angels lasted for years.
I mention this because it is impossible to comprehend Oslo without understanding that at its basis is a primitive belief in magic. The aborigines known as Israeli politicians have observed peace-making in other lands. They see how one country makes concessions and shows goodwill gestures and eventually peace breaks out. Like the aborigines on the islands of the South Pacific, they confuse substance for rite, procedure for magic, essence for form. They try to mimic the processes of peace-making they have seen, in the same way that the islanders built seeming "airfields." Just as the savages mistook the science of aviation for magic, so the savages of Israeli politics mistake the rites of peace for actual peace-making. The Israeli witch doctors give the Palestinians a state and agree to withdraw more or
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Outpost - 6 - May 2000