TREASON (Continued from p.6) literary intelligentsia. This may sound facetious or flippant. It is not. The first sign of trouble appeared when it became a matter of some pride to the country's pioneer youth to identify the high-flown verbiage of their political leaders with something they referred to as "Tzionut." Any display of pomposity or bathos among them was almost certain to be greeted with the warning "Al t'daber Tzionut." -- don't talk Zionism. We found it amusing. Here were these marvelous kids, already precisely the new Jews that Zionism had existed to bring into being, already rooted and thus beyond Diaspora ambitions. We were proud and amused because we failed to understand that the contempt for Zionism was not the result of their heroism, which was both real and indispensible to the establishment of the country, but grew rather out of impiety toward the people and the history that gave them birth. It is as if the men that had endured God knows what hardships to settle the American West had taunted one another with the charge of sounding like Thomas Paine, or worse, George Washington. After all, like Israel, the United States grew out of an idea in people's minds. And although vast in riches and resources, and old by Israel's standards, and bloody as its history has at times been, the United States too has been in need of its own "Tzionut" and has seen much trouble when the young people on whom it depends decide to sneer at its declaratory principles. The legacy of that early swagger is a mind-set. This mind-set seems to run through all the major centers of Israeli culture: the universities, the press, the theatres, television, above all, the literary community. It is a transmutation of that early understandable but costly urge to disidentify with everything in the Galut, including the expression of the high sentiment that brought them to the Land in the first place. "Al t'daber Tzionut" has transmuted into the need of the children of the country's founding fathers to feel themselves above mere parochial considerations of national interest. They still serve when called upon to do so. But they have put their history on trial and found it guilty. Guilty of what? --of this, of that. The particular charge they bring against it at any particular moment does not matter. A country only half a century old is not supposed to have a full fledged accomplished literary intelligentsia. Technicians? Yes. Men of enterprise? Yes. Adventurers? Yes. Soldiers? Yes. Scientists? Indeed, yes. But writers worthy of meriting international fame and regard? This is an extravagance only an old and stable country should be allowed to indulge in. For the price of admission to international literary fame, particularly for writers from small and far-off countries, is the capacity to transcend one's own narrow interests and to expose the foibles of one's own small parish. There are times and places and circumstances in which Nobel prizes are just too costly. Alas, the Jews have been a civilized people for too long. Their country was bound to be sunk in extravagance. In the end, what their country is really guilty of in the eyes of Israel's upper intelligentsia is simply Zionism -- mere,

as they might put it, mere parochial nationalism. What a joke. What a fantastic, terrible, bitter joke. The idea that the Jews must be a transcendant people is an idea born precisely from Diaspora powerlessness. Thus, Israel's beautiful people have brought themselves from galut back to galut in less than 75 years. That is why the country is now suing for peace with those committed to wiping it out. It is because the disapproval and the dark looks of the world outside are too much to bear that the head of Israel's government pronounces grandly about something called a New Middle East. The powerless indulge in fantasies of escape. That is why Israelis daydream of peace with Syria, to be guaranteed, of all sad things, by American peacekeepers. It is because the obsequious seek an intercessor, what in the shtetl they used to call a shtadlan--someone to protect their interests from the hands of the mighty. The Israelis have been called upon to be brave beyond the imaginings of other nations. And they have responded and responded and are tired. They are entitled to be. But when they say they must have peace, for "what is the alternative?" they are speaking not the language of Zion but the language of those who have given up, or are in the process of giving up, on Zion. There will be no peace in these times except at the price of Zion. Perhaps, the present crisis will pass, and the unreality of Israel's present posture will perhaps right itself before the Israelis find themselves in another war, this time hand to hand, called upon to exercise a degree of courage greater than any before. It's hard to imagine that such sanity will return in time. But many things the Israelis have achieved were hard to imagine. One may be skeptical. Is all of Israel's present predicament vis a vis the "Palestinians" created by a bunch of professors and scribblers? One must remember something that has been either forgotten or overlooked that has put this power into the hands of the peace mongers, and that is that Israel only recently lost a war. One forgets that. Defeat is always demoralizing for a country and this particular war found Israel quite helpless--the intifada--in which the "Palestinians" sent their children to battle. The Israelis were quite incapable of dealing with such a force. True, it says something far from dishonorable about a society that cannot muster the will to do effective battle against young children. Nevetheless, lose they did, and like all losers in war are now reaping the social and political harvest of their defeat. That is why they are so especially vulnerable to galut style posturing, by which is meant finding in the troubles of the Jews the occasion for turning the blame and the shame inward. That is why perhaps the crisis will pass and sanity be restored. Should that happen we might see a renewed burst of energy for returning. For some, it will not be a return, but a maiden voyage to Zion. Midge Decter is a well-known author and editor.

May 1996               - 7 -               Outpost