WILL ISRAEL BE JUST A FOOTNOTE IN HISTORY? Irving Kett Years from now, perhaps when Israel may only be remembered as a footnote in the history of a once strange people called the Jews, social scientists will try to understand what led this tenacious race to commit national suicide. No nation in recorded history survived for so many centuries against such indomitable odds and then suddenly decided to surrender, at the very height of its miraculously resurgent economic and military power. It surrendered, moreover, to a brutal enemy vastly inferior to it in every conceivable parameter but demographics. Animal psychologists will try to understand the behavior of lemmings who plunge into the sea by the countless thousands in periodic frenzies of mass suicide by reference to what happened to the Jews at the end of the 20th century. After emerging victorious in five successive wars of national defense, they accept the fiat of their venal leaders who willingly give up their hard won national patrimony to a gang of international terrorists. One can only assume that many Jews in Israel, in the space of a few years, have become so degenerate and materialistic, so devoid of any semblance of national dignity, that they permit their defeated enemies to dictate the terms of their national existence. While the century-old Arab threat to the existence of the Jews in the Middle East remains a daily fact of life, a more ominous internal struggle has arisen that threatens the essential cohesion of the Jewish nation. For many decades, an often uneasy truce existed between a dominant secular Jewish nationalism and Jewish religious tradition. The crisis that we witness in the so-called "peace process" is dominated, in my opinion, by this latter factor and it is one that merits far more attention than it has received to date. Actually a change also has taken place in both the composition and relative strengths of the two groups. The secular Jewish nationalists who controlled the country through their power in Mapai (today's Labor Party) up to the Yom Kippur War, and for several years thereafter, possessed a vastly different perspective from the Labor/Meretz secularists of today. By the same token, the religious Zionist camp has immensely grown in size, in depth of commitment to the State, and is no longer on the periphery of Israeli society. Religious Zionists have replaced the socialist Zionist chalutzim to become the new dynamic elite, in the military, in pioneering settlement, and in other vital national areas. For example, while the other kibbutz movements are demoralized and losing members, have seen their idealism replaced by the grossest aspects of Western culture, are heavily in debt, and constantly kept afloat by huge government handouts, the religious kibbutz movement has maintained its

agricultural base, is not encumbered by debt, and does not have a morale problem. Secular Zionism reached the pinnacle of its achievements in the Six Day War of 1967. Unfortunately, the government of Israel was totally unprepared to exploit a victory of that magnitude for the long term security of the country. The Arabs never accepted the consequences of their overwhelming defeat and immediately made their position crystal clear in the Khartoum Conference of November 1967 when they enunciated the three famous "nos"; no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no peace with Israel. At the same time, many secular Jewish intellectuals, both in Israel and in the Diaspora, felt uncomfortable with that triumph, even though an Arab victory would surely have resulted in another holocaust for the Jews. In fact, these secularists have difficulty conditioning themselves to the concept that Jews have the same right as all other peoples to exercise military power in their own behalf and to benefit from that success. Jewish leftists (they call themselves "liberals") have always placed a very low priority on the interests of their own people. For almost thirty years now, a dangerous polarization has become increasingly apparent within the body Jewish leftists have always placed a very low priority on the interests of their own people. politic of the Jewish people, which the Arabs have quickly discerned and taken advantage of. It is between the growing liberal, humanist, internationalist tendencies in some segments of Israeli society and the rise of a stronger Jewish nationalism, based upon traditional Judaism that views the Jewish people from the kaleidoscope of history going back to Abraham. The so-called "peace process" as pursued by the Rabin-Peres-Meretz Government of Israel is as much an expression of the dimensions of the conflict over critical directions in Israeli society as it is an expression of the government's support to reach an accomodation with the Arabs. Nationalists --and this today increasingly means traditional Jews--perceive what is taking place as a threat to the basic tenets of Zionism and to the fundamental values of Judaism. They are shocked by the attempt to undermine the distinctive character of the Jewish State, the disregard, even hatred of religious tradition. Meretz and elements in the Labor Party press for the legalization and expansion of public transportation and entertainment on the Sabbath, homosexuality as a publicly-sanctioned lifestyle, the importation of non-kosher meat, elimination of the Jewish right of return, change of the national anthem so as not to offend Arab sensitivities, et cetera. Yael Dayan, a Labor Party Member of the Knesset, flaunts her contempt for Jewish (Continued on p.10)

November 1995               - 7 -               Outpost