ISRAEL, OSLO AND THE DEATH OF TRAGEDY Louis Rene Beres Israel, after Oslo, awaits a tragic fate, perhaps even death and disappearance. Yet, the dramatic genre portraying this unhappy fate is certainly not tragedy. Rather, the true drama of Israel's post-Oslo self-destruction belongs entirely, like the minimalist poetics of Samuel Beckett, to the spheres of absurd irony and semantic farce. "High Tragedy," as it has evolved from fifth century Athens, is unequivocal on one crucial point: The victim is one whom "the gods kill for their sport, as wanton boys do flies." This wantonness, this caprice, is what makes tragedy unendurable to human reason and sensibility. But Israel's tragic fate is coldly self-inflicted; its drama without passion at best, is a distressing page from Beckett or Ionesco, not a cathartic one from Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides. At worst, Israel's tragic fate is torn from the pages of farce,a form of comedy that relies principally on contrivances of plot and on inherently low levels of credibility. In a farce, we should recall, matters often end badly but for a deus ex machina, a theatrical rescue device that does not await the State of Israel. In authentic tragedy, there can be no deus ex machina. In tragedy, the human spirit remains noble in the face of largely inescapable death. If there is anything remotely tragic in Israel's Oslo-afflicted condition, it lies only in the original Greek meaning of the term--"goat song"--from the dithyrambs sung by goatskin-clad worshippers of Dionysus. In every other sense, Israel now exhibits behavior that is best described literally as pathetic. Aristotle understood, in his Poetics, that a skillfully constructed tragedy must elicit pity and fear, but no pathos, a kind of suffering less heroic than what is to be expected of a truly tragic figure. Aristotle identified the tragic with "good" characters who suffer, in part, because they commit some error (hamartia) unknowingly. Israel's current leaders, on the other hand, have brought Israel to the brink of disaster not because of such error, or even because of wantonness or caprice, but because they are simply unexceptional and foolish. Israel's tragic fate, which is now being fashioned not by tragedy but by farce, will be the product not of leadership natures that are great, but of leadership natures that are clownish. Israel, of course, is currently in a tragic dilemma, a situation in which its leaders have to choose between altogether unappealing alternatives, each of which will lead the Jewish State to a more or less unhappy conclusion. Here, Israel is in the condition of Orestes. Commanded by the god Apollo, in The Libation Bearers of Aeschylus (458 BCE) to avenge his father's death by

murdering Clytemnestra, the slayer who is Orestes' mother, Orestes knows that--whatever he decides--he will be guilty of grave offense. Unlike Orestes, however, the current leaders of Israel have placed themselves directly in the path of misfortune. It is not a whim of the "gods" that has brought Israel to its present rendezvous with extinction; it is the stubborn and inexcusable self-delusion of its leadership. For now, the post-Zionist, post-Jewish leadership of Israel seeks, with religious zeal and determination, to ensure Yasser Arafat's benevolent rule over essential sectors of the Jewish State. "Arafat," as Gustav Hendrikksen, professor emeritus of Bible Studies at Sweden's Uppsala University, wrote (see the November Outpost) "is the heir of Hitler and the Palestinian Covenant is a more disgusting document than the Nuremberg laws." Significantly, when this self-described "aged and bitter Gentile" recalls his reactions to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to "one of the most despicable figures in our century," he sees in that event the drama not of tragedy, but of farce: "When I saw the Prime Minister of Israel and its Foreign Minister standing next to this murderous clown," says Prof. Hendrikksen, "I had to think again about the meaning of the term 'friend of Israel.' " Israel's tragic fate is coldly self-inflicted... A Christian for whom Israel had always been a "divine message," Hendrikksen confirms our understanding that Israel's impending destruction lacks even the stuff of tragedy. If, after all, "the Jewish people digs its grave with its own hand," it is a coming death without even a shred of dignity. "Even the devil that dances on its grave is of its own making." Ancient Troy, not ancient Jerusalem, is our metaphor of tragedy. The burning of Troy is tragic because it is spawned by destiny and unreason, not--as in the case of ancient Jerusalem--because it has defied God's will. The Homeric warrior fights in spite of a destiny that eludes his very best efforts. The soldier of Israel is now asked to prepare for battles that are not only avoidable, but are in fact mandated by willful Government surrenders, by the incomprehensibly concessionary "kings" of Israel. For the Greeks, as related by Thucydides, the fleet would always sail toward battle though everyone was fully aware that sometimes they sailed to ruin. For the Jews of present-day Israel, the IDF must stride toward disaster not to fulfill an historic inevitability, but because its leadership is too blind to understand where it is going. Fawning upon their own doom, Israel's warriors cannot recognize that the spheres of reason, order and justice are (Continued on p.6)

December 1995               - 5 -               Outpost