FOOTNOTE IN HISTORY (Continued from p.7) sensitivities by spending Yom Kippur on a Tel Aviv beach in a bikini. Shulamit Aloni of Meretz boasts of eating pork and scoffs at accepted tenets of the Bible. Yossi Beilin claims that he could not find a rationale for urging his children to marry within their faith. Jewish intellectuals such as Amos Oz berate nationalism as the "curse of humanity." However, they apply that stricture only to Jewish nationalism, not daring to do so to Arab or to any other Third World nationalism. Toward the patriotic Jews in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza they show absolute contempt precisely because they are devoted to Zionism and to traditional Judaism. The Hebrew-speaking Canaanites of Labor/Meretz tremble with fear at the growing power and numbers of traditional Jews who believe in the Torah and in the destiny of the Jewish people. (It is interesting to note that in the U.S., Jewish Jews are more The appeasement strain never long remains dormant among certain segments of Jews... comfortable with and have far more in common with the Christian Right than the pagan Jewish left.) Between these two groups there is an unbridgeable ideological chasm that time can seemingly only exacerbate. In the standoff between the secularists and the religionists, there is probably a much larger body of Jews who are in neither camp. However, they are fearful of what they perceive the secularists are doing to their special position as Jews in a supposedly Jewish country. They fear for their security after the creation of still another Arab state in the tiny postage stamp-sized area between the Jordan Rift and the Mediterranean Sea. The consequence can only be an immeasurably weakened and more vulnerable Israel that will invite aggression. The cosmopolitan Jews who control today's Israeli government welcome a strengthening of the Arab position in Israel, despite the security perils that it poses, as a counterweight to the religious Zionist position. The Jews at Israel's helm claim to advocate a liberal, Western-style democracy, free of rabbinic influence and devoid of the State's Zionist/Judaic character. Such an Israel, shorn of Jewish particularism, would move to nullify the Zionist dream of a distinctive Jewish homeland. In truth, its survival would become pointless and more difficult to defend intellectually and militarily. The only patriotism it could claim would be that of an amorphous, secular, humanism which has little relevance anywhere in the world and certainly not in the brutal, fundamentalist milieu of the Muslim Middle East. Many years ago, in fact shortly after the founding of Israel in 1948, people discussed and feared the

coming "kulturkampf" that they foresaw breaking out among the Jews. The clash between Jews is now erupting full blown in the framework of the so-called "peace process." But, in truth, the eruption that is now taking place has a significant history and a number of interesting antecedents. The Brith Shalom Movement was founded in 1925, soon after the Arab riots of the early 1920s. The society was founded in Jerusalem to foster Arab-Jewish friendship. It boasted some famous Jewish personages such as Arthur Ruppin, Gershom Scholem and individuals from both Mapai and Mapam. They advocated a democratic binational state composed of Jews and Arabs. The idea did not elicit the slightest echo from the Arabs and it was attacked by all Zionist groups, including Mapai (Labor). To prove that the appeasement strain never long remains dormant among certain segments of Jews, the Brith Shalom idea was revived in 1936, at the time of the murderous Arab riots in which hundreds of Jews were killed and wounded. The leftwing Zionist groups involved in this effort called their new organization the Society for Arab-Jewish Understanding. Those few Arabs who voiced sympathy with the aims of the Society were quickly killed in typically brutal fashion by other Arabs. Six years later, the Brith Shalom idea was revived and called Ihud, under the leadership of the distinguished American Reform rabbi and idealist, Judah Magnes, who was then president of the Hebrew University, and Ernst Simon. Strange to relate, when this latest effort at reaching out to the Arabs was taking place in 1942, the Arabs in the Middle East made no effort to mask their strong sympathies for Nazi Germany. In Europe, under aegis of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who found refuge during the war in Berlin, European Muslims from Bosnia were actively recruited to an all-Muslim unit of the SS. Ihud, which did not go out of existence until 1964, was likewise composed of that segment of Jewish intellectuals who were denounced by no less an authority than Josef Stalin, the virulently anti-Semitic dictator of Russia, as "rootless cosmopolitans." Obviously, the stark decades of Zionist struggle against indefatigable Arab hostility has not dampened the ardor for a binational state in certain 'progressive' circles. That formula, although not explicitly spelled out, now lives in the Rabin-Peres-Beilin initiative by which a Jewish government agrees to concession after concession to gain the acceptance and love of the Arabs. The Jews of Israel are promised peace and security if they surrender the heartland of their nation, the strategic military assets of Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, along with precious water resources, to the implacable PLO enemy. Just consider how much greater the prosperity and security of the Jews of Israel will be when they also surrender the Galilee. Transfer of the Galilee to the new "Palestinian" state is already very much on the political (Continued on p.11)

Outpost               - 10 -               November 1995