ISRAELI DEMOCRACY (Continued from p.7) democratic freedoms and rights. The Israeli left has never been quite able to make up its mind about whether its ambition is for Israel to join the industrialized democratic West or to join the "progressive statist" Third World. Israeli economic and social policy strongly reflects the latter preference and sentiment. Israel has never developed any checks or balances on the powers of its government, constitutional or otherwise. Power is more centralized in Israel than in any other democratic country. Hopefully, the assault on Israeli democracy that emerged following the trauma of the Rabin assassination will turn out to be a passing and temporary loss of reason by grieving members of the Israeli political system. There are bases for concern, however, that this may turn out not to be the case. The readiness and glee with which the tragedy has been exploited by Israeli demagogues in order to rake in windfall political capital gains has been a frightening episode to observe. The Labor-Meretz coalition has used the most

dubious and unethical parliamentary tactics to impose the Oslo "peace process" on Israel.* The weights and contents of the arguments against the "process" did not change one iota on the night Rabin was assassinated. The ability to debate those arguments in Israel did. If democracy ever really dies in Israel, the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin will be largely to blame. In assaulting Israeli democracy, however, he has had countless accomplices from the very heart of the Israeli political establishment, from the leadership of the Israeli Labor Party and its Meretz partner. If any group in Israel truly needs to rethink its behavior and priorities, it is this one. Steven Plaut teaches business administration and economics at the University of Haifa. * The worst of these involved what can only be described as political prostitution. Three renegade Knesset Members from Tzomet, who had been elected because of their platform opposing any compromise at all with the PLO, were literally purchased, betraying their constituents, by the Labor Party. Without their votes Oslo II would not have passed the Knesset.

DISAPPEARANCE (Continued from p.10) persistent merriment along Tel Aviv's beachfront. But listen more attentively! Today's sounds of happiness in Israel are largely the canned reverberations of a methodically-rehearsed gaiety, of a dreadfully false communion, of shrill, dried voices calling only for conformity. This triumphant reign of vulgarity flows from an increasingly fearful collection of outer persons, a mimicking collection that may still call itself a nation, yet is internally decayed, externally weak, soon forced by itself to disappear. Hope for Israel? It must exist, to be sure, but it must now sing softly, in a calculated undertone. The great emptiness of Israel creates a terrifying noise, but it is still possible to listen for real music. Tuning out the shrieks and mutterings of the politicians, of the generals, of the "experts"--of the whole faceless herd whose well-varnished nonsense about "peace" now passes for insight--we may still find, like an old master violin discovered beneath a layer of dirt, the majestic structure and full broad bowing of the strings. Caught up in a war of extermination against the individual Israeli (a war foreshadowing a Final Solution to the Israel Question) the murdered and murderous sounds ooze on and on, but the original spirit of music need not be destroyed. While life in Israel's dominant herd seeks to strip this music of its most wonderous tones, spoiling, scratching and degrading it, for those who learn to listen even the most ghastly of disguises can give way to life. How shall Israel listen? To begin, the People of Israel must pay close attention to their private feelings of

anxiety, restlessness and despair. For Israel, the time for "science," "progress," "confidence building" and "peace agreements" is over. To listen, and therefore to survive, the individual Israeli must rediscover life by conscious separation from the pitiable herd, by total detachment from contrived optimism, and--above all, by coming face-to-face with the inexpressible prospect of death as a nation. In this spirit of Third Temple impermanence, they may still learn that agony is infinitely more important than economics, that cries of pain are always more revealing than the expansion of celebrated technologies, that anguish counts for much more than recrimination and that tears always have far more substantial roots than public smiles. As for the New Middle East, let us recall, from Thomas More, that utopia means nowhere. The great existential dangers to Israel cannot be undone or halted entirely by elections, by the coming of a new political leadership. This is, in the first instance, a non-political task that can be accomplished only by Israelis acting as individuals, not as herds. At the most telling level, Israel lacks a future not merely because its people have been selecting the wrong leadership, but more importantly because they have steadfastly refused, as Jews, to become persons. Israel is now kept distant from survival in the world not because its people have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but because they have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. Louis Rene Beres is Professor of International Law at Purdue University and a frequent contributor to Outpost.

February 1996               - 11 -               Outpost