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derstand that it is on the lowest rungs of the escalatory ladder that determines strategic initiative in the long run. On this level, Israel's conflict with some of its neighbors is not an immediate war for personal survival; it is a political fight. Yet, for Israel, strategic imagination is absent because there is no political objective around which to construct a strategy. Personal survival dictates running away.Thus, the IDF goes into battle to halt an immediate attack, but it fails to shape the strategic environment and maintain the strategic initiative, since doing so implied sacrifice on a level unsustainable in society without a political purpose, with only an aim of immediate survival.
The failure of Labor Zionism and its socialist political objectives have left a political void in Israel. Without a replacement, without a foundation for establishing any political objectives, Israel has no basis to formulate a strategy to employ force or diplomacy. It will remain resigned, defending itself ultimately through evasion and flight. The process whereby Israel no longer has the will to remain in Lebanon, let alone in Jerusalem, is the same process whereby Israelis personally will ultimately seek their private security by fleeing to New York. If Israel has no political purpose and all is reduced to personal survival, then there is no point to living in Tel Aviv other than inertia. One of Israel's leaders, Yossi Beilin, candidly admits this as he publicly asserts that if Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, were still alive today, he would not be a Zionist, but would assimilate in the West. Sadly, thus, on Zionism's centennial anniversary, Israel has returned to the shameful world of the Kishinev pogrom described by Haim Nahum Bialik in "The Killing City."
There is a hope, however. The founding myths of Labor Zionism are crumbling. But it was the socialist aspect and purpose of Labor Zionism that faltered; a different basis for Zionism would fare differently. As Labor Zionism collapses, the shape of the army's elite, those groups whose motivation are highest, hold the military's purpose in high esteem, and send their best and brightest into the military, has fundamentally changed. At the time of Israel's creation, the elite of Israel's military came from the Kibbutz movements. By the late 1990s, a disproportionate amount of the elite came from the religious-nationalist camp. Zionism was developing a new base.
However, until a powerful and energetic form of Zionism clearly establishes itself as a replacement for Labor Zionism and informs the political identity of the substantial majority of the nation, Israel's strategic drift will continue and its remarkable current strategic opportunity will be squandered.
David Wurmser is the author of Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein (AEI Press, 1999). This essay is based on his remarks at the Americans For a Safe Israel annual conference on March 14, 1999.
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