THE NEW ISRAELinsisting, in a single speech, that "I won't agree to there being any school without a program teaching... democracy," that educators who express right-wing views should be suspended, and that pupils, parents, and teachers should inform the proper authorities about those who express such views. (Who knows? Policies of this sort might get Israel into the Arab League after all.)The new Israel has changed not only the official attitude towards the PLO and Syria, but the unofficial one towards us, American Jews. In January of 1994, Yossi Beilin, chief designer of the Oslo process, told Zionist fund-raisers at a Hadassah meeting that Israel, being "a rich country," had no need for charitable contributions from American and other Diaspora Jews. His exact words were: "You want me to be the beggar and say we need money for the poor people. Israel is a rich country, I'm sorry to tell you." Beilin did not go so far as to say that Israel did not want money from American Jews: he was at that time running the ministry mainly responsible for raising $75 million for the PLO, much of which was expected to come from American Jews, who were soon to be told that anybody opposing American help for the PLO, which included funding for nearly 50,000 men under arms, was no friend of Israel. In the past, of course, numerous Israelis, including people far more intelligent than Beilin, had scorned the Israeli practice of telling American Jews: "your money or your life--preferably your money." But Beilin's outburst seemed designed not at all to encourage aliyah, but rather to tell American Jews that they were not wanted. This message was conveyed far more explicitly by A. B. Yehoshua, the popular Israeli novelist, in January 1996. "We don't need you any more," said Yehoshua to the World Jewish Congress, meeting in Jerusalem. "We do not need either the money ... or the political support." Neither, he added, did most Israelis want more Jewish immigrants. But they would accept immigrants who could speak good Hebrew. The implication of his outburst was that the people who rule the new Israel, culturally as well as politically, are Hebrew-speaking gentiles who would be happy to welcome more of their own kind, but are not interested in Jewish immigrants who lack Hebrew (and who are not enamored of the "peace process"). For Yehoshua and his fellow-novelist Amos Oz--who refers to traditional Jews as "filth"--and for a considerable number of people in the Israeli cabinet, the idea of Israel's Jewish identity (and resultant Diaspora ties) is an anachronism which keeps the country from developing a sense of unity and shared history with other peoples in the Middle East. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that a very large sector of what passes for the intelligentsia in Israel is far more convinced of the need for a Palestinian Arab state than of the need for a Jewish one. Where does all this leave us? American Jews who for decades, regardless of which party ruled in Israel, had been active and passionate on behalf of Israel, and for whom Israel virtually constituted their Jewishness, suddenly, after the Oslo accords, found themselves |
puzzled, deprived, abandoned, even spurned, in the way that lovers often are. There arose in Israel a new king, which knew not Joseph. Shimon Peres seemed to turn up every other week at the festive gatherings of the very groups--American Near East Refugee Aid, National Association of Arab-Americans, Institute for Policy Studies,
that had predicated their existence on the premise that Israel should not exist. Israeli consular officials in this country were now ingratiating themselves with Jews who had always done their very best to depict Israel as the devil's own experiment station, a monster that should
The people who rule the new Israel, culturally as well as politically, are Hebrew-speaking gentiles.have been aborted in the womb; and the Jews who had always come to Israel's defense were now persona non grata if they rejected the new dispensation according to Beilin and Arafat. The transforming effect upon American Jewry of the new Israel is particularly evident now, when the presidential campaign is under way. Once upon a time, the approach of an American presidential election would prompt keen inquiry into the records of the candidates with respect to Israel. A few months ago, laggard that I am, I remarked to a friend that I was leery of Senator Dole because of his frequent expressions of hostility to Israel. "What are you talking about?" she retorted. "Are the positions of Dole or of any candidate, with the possible exception of Buchanan, more 'anti-Israel' than those of the Israeli government itself?" Of course, she was right, just as was Yehoshua when he said that the new Israel no longer needs American Jewish political support. Another friend of mine, a distinguished academic figure who had for decades come to the defense of an Israel under attack by its countless ideological enemies, wrote me a poignant letter in which he said that he would have to find "a new love object." The Israel he had long loved was now ruled, both politically and spiritually, by Hebrew-speaking pagans whose greatest desire was to turn the country into a second Los Angeles, and their leader was a prime minister who did not blush to boast that he was in spirit "a Bavarian" or to acknowledge Bruno Kreisky as his great mentor and hero. My files are by now bursting with outcries of this kind, as well as still grimmer ones which say--I quote from a uniquely heroic writer who has long stood with Israel when she was abandoned by virtually all Jewish intellectuals--"But you know...one can really relax these days. It's over. It's a fait accompli. There's nothing to do now but sit back and observe the workings-out of dread. Or call it a freak show: the victors as defeated supplicants, the Jewish State as deaf-mute: you don't hear Arafat praise the 'Engineer' as a 'martyr,' and you say nothing--not having heard it." Still, we cannot blink the fact that a large crisis looms. Some will say that it is high time that American |
May 1996 - 5 - Outpost