ISRAEL AND THE END OF ZIONISM Mordechai Nisan The implementation of the "Palestinian Grand strategy" would not have come about were it not for the death of Zionism in Israel. Ironically, the ZIonist ideal was abandoned with its fulfillment in 1948, and treated with growing hostility by the extreme left after 1967. Indeed, for many Israelis, this once uplifting ideology has become a virtual embarrassment, as they yearn for "normalcy" and a cosmopolitan identity. For others, there is uncertainty about the Jews' right to the Promised Land. An insidious fatigue and crippling loss of will now afflicts an otherwise dynamic, successful Jewish national enterprise. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, speaking on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, represented the war-weariness of a people which had made peace the focus of policy. This was not grand strategy, nor even strategy at all. His address was a wailful plea for peace, with past suffering and death providing the leitmotif for his future hopes. Rabin did not radiate strength and his words evinced more melancholy than self-confidence. He said: We have come from an anguished and grieving land. We have come from a people, a home, a family, that has not known a single year--not a single month-- in which mothers have not wept for their sons... Rabin went on to ask the "Palestinians" to make peace with Israel. The PLO condescended to answer the tired man in the affirmative, and went on to apply the phased strategy for Israel's demise. The astute Liddell Hart, military historian and student of strategy, has learned much from the fate of nations. He wrote: The experience of history brings ample evidence that the downfall of civilized states tends to come not from the direct assaults of foes but from internal decay, combined with the consequences of exhaustion in war. A state of suspense is trying--it has often led nations as well as individuals to commit suicide because they were unable to bear it. Rabin's plaintive "enough of blood and tears" reflected, it would seem, Liddell Hart's notion of "exhaustion in war." After winning every military encounter with the Arabs, after stretching Israel's military reach in war to Damascus and Cairo, Beirut and Baghdad, Israeli politicians have betrayed the victories of a great army and, no less significant, the fortitude of a diligent people.

The Zionist vision was gone. Foreign Minister Peres exemplified this when he used a classic Zionist theme, but applied it to the "Palestinians." In Washington he proclaimed: "We shall offer you our help in making Gaza prosper and Jericho blossom again." Making "Palestinian" history had, for Peres, come to replace making Jewish history in Eretz Yisrael. It was the same Peres who said of the mass aliya of Soviet Jewry to Israel, "We are absorbing as much as we can of the new immigration." This formulation, mean in spirit, was reminiscent of the British mandatory policy towards pre-state Jewish immigration. The Labor government, after coming to power in 1992, in fact reduced funds available for new immigrants. Freezing Jewish settlement construction in Judea and Samaria, along with promoting "Palestinian" economic and social development, was just part of a Labor policy that had abandoned the traditional tenets of Zionism. For many on the left, Zionism, i.e. modern Jewish nationalism, was a burden, if not worse. Amos Oz wrote in 1983 that "Nationalism is, in my eyes, the curse of mankind." The individual person, rather than the nation, was the centerpiece of his political philosophy. A decade later, and with the Israeli-PLO accord now a fact of history, author David Grossman added his contribution to the ideological shipwreck in the leftist camp. It was high time, he felt, to confront the problematic Law of Return which guarantees the right of all Jews --but only Jews---to come live in the State of Israel. This quintessential Zionist piece of legislation was inconsistent with the principle of equality for all. Grossman considered that in the era of peace, Israel could no longer ignore the claim of its Arab citizens for equality, perhaps cultural autonomy, maybe a state in the Galilee. The Israeli left had little use for Judaism as the spiritual and ideological faith of the Jewish people and struck harshly at the sanctity of the Torah and Eretz Yisrael. Any sign of reverence for ancient ideas and hallowed ways was regarded as anti-progressive. To realize the final political settlement with the "Palestinians," Israel's current government now prepares to lay Jerusalem on the altar of peace in the new era of mutual recognition of two peoples and their rights to the Holy City. The Labor government's recognition of the PLO and its withdrawal from Gaza and Jericho, and from significant parts of Judea and Samaria, demonstrated the virtual "Palestinization" of Israeli national policy. Jewish-Arab cooperation, paid for in the currency of one-sided Israeli concessions, was to completely replace Zionism. The left would cooperate with the "Palestinians" to counter the Jewish nationalists who were committed to building the land of Israel and sustaining the Jewish State. This is the strategy of the Left which converges devastatingly with the "Palestinian Grand Strategy." Thus, the Israeli left not only betrays Israel but lies about its aims. Since the capture of the Arab-inhabited territories in the 1967 war, the left has argued that annexation would ensure that Israel would cease to be a (Continued on p.9)

Outpost               - 8 -               February 1996