AMERICAN JEWS AND THE NEW ISRAEL Edward Alexander The New Middle East is the title of Shimon Peres's utopian romance published in 1994, a book in which he chides previous Israeli leaders for viewing the leaders of Syria and the PLO as the devil incarnate because of their "alleged desire to push us into the sea," and advocates abandoning Israel's outmoded strategy of deterrence in favor of his dream of regional cooperation and a policy based on "fewer weapons and more faith"--not faith in the Jewish people or religion, of course, but in Yasser Arafat. Peres also declared that Syria strongly desired peace and prosperity above all things. "Syrian youth are becoming democratic. Soon they will not tolerate a dictatorial government." By now it is all too evident that there is no new Middle East. Yes, Israel has exchanged commercial missions with the great Arab nations of Oman and Qattar, and Israelis who have never seen Avdat or Beit Shean are flocking to Jerash and Petra, unperturbed by the fact that there is no traffic in the other direction; Katyushas continue to rain on northern Israel from Syrian-controlled Lebanon; a second Lebanon has been established, thanks to the Oslo accords, by Arafat and his Hamas colleagues; and instead of the borderless New Middle East which Peres dreamed into existence in his book, we have the actuality of Peres building a ghetto-like wall around Israel to guarantee separation of Jews and Palestinian Arabs. His great hope (expressed in a speech at the Islamic College in Western Galilee in December 1994) that Israel would be admitted to the Arab League has not yet been realized; indeed, his belief in its imminence (a belief worthy of an inhabitant of Chelm) suggests he would be a likely customer for some choice real estate in downtown Beirut. On April 24, in the nick of time to help ensure Peres's election in May, the PLO convened in Gaza to convey the impression that it was revoking its long-standing demand for destruction of the Jewish state. What Arafat and his followers concocted was an ambiguous formula which committed the Palestine National Council to amend its covenant by canceling clauses--unspecified --that contradict the letters exchanged between the PLO and the Israeli government, and to draft a new charter within six months (that is to say, well after the Israeli elections). Despite the fact that mountains of evidence of the PLO's continued commitment to reduce Israel to sandy wastes have accumulated since the Oslo accords, Peres was quick to describe this charade in Gaza as "the most important ideological change of the past one hundred years." But the events leading up to the PLO conference showed that what has really changed is not the PLO or the Middle East, but Israel. Since Arafat insisted that all members of the Palestine National Council must be physically present at the Gaza meeting, Peres admitted into the country for the occasion Abu Abbas, the organizer of

the Achille Lauro hijacking of 1985, wanted in this country for the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, Abu Daoud, organizer of the massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972, Leila Khaled, stellar airplane hijacker, and similar worthies. One may surmise that Arafat insisted on their presence not because he never heard of telephones or fax machines, but because he wanted to show that Israel has become a country lacking in honor, self-respect, even normal human emotions. The whole episode was yet another demonstration that what has changed is not "the Middle East" but Israel; and this Israeli newness presents a hard dilemma for many American Jews. In 1977, as we all know, the Israeli Labor party lost control of what it had come to consider its rightful ownership of government to people it viewed as cultural inferiors. During its fifteen years in the wilderness of opposition, the Israeli left built up a terrific energy of resentment against the state, against religious Jews, very often against Zionism itself. The Dayan of Israeli politics is no longer Moshe, who could still speak passionately of Jerusalem and of Eretz Yisrael, but his daughter, the novelist and Knesset member Yael, who regularly throws herself at the feet of Arafat to signal her support for his attacks on her own country, or else busies herself demonstrating that David and Jonathan were homosexual lovers. The Benvenisti of Israeli culture is no longer the What has really changed is not the PLO or the Middle East, but Israel. proud historian of Eretz Yisrael, David, but his son, the sociologist Meron, who prior to 1992 travelled the world to tell receptive audiences that Israel is "the master-race democracy," and who, even after the Labor-Meretz coalition came to power, published a book (Intimate Enemies, 1995) calling for dissolution of the state (a book prefaced and praised by that great friend of Israel, Thomas Friedman). The Burg of Israeli politics is no longer Yosef, a highly cultivated religious Jew who could quote Robert Browning one minute and Sholom Aleichem the next, but his arrogant and boorish son, Avraham, a spiritual follower of the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who used to regale American Jewish audiences with references to Palestinian Arab refugee camps in Israeli-occupied territory as "Nazi concentration camps." Now, as Jewish Agency chairman, Burg aspires to bring about the "spiritual rescue" of Diaspora Jewry. The Eban of Israeli public life is still Abba Eban, but only in his physical embodiment. The Eban who in 1980 could mockingly congratulate the antisemitic George Ball, former undersecretary of state, for appearing on a TV program for six minutes "without blaming Israel for whatever he was talking about" would in 1990 feel no qualms about accepting an appointment as George Ball Lecturer at Princeton University. People we once (rather naively) casually referred to as "extremists" have moved to the centers of power in Israeli government and policy formation. Dedi Zucker, who used to accuse Jewish "settlers" of drinking blood on Passover, and Yossi Sarid, who once shocked Israelis (Continued on p.4)

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