Reconciling Jewishness with Israeliness

After his 1996 electoral defeat, Shimon Peres pronounced the result a loss for "Israelis." Asked who, then, had won, Peres had a short answer: the "Jews." The irony of our current situation is that the greatest threat to the physical survival of the state of Israel today comes from the Israelis, not the Jews.

"Israelis" are defined by apathy to their Judaism, at best, and active hostility at worst. They view Jewish identity, not as a quality to be cultivated, but as the greatest threat to the development of a sane society.

In Ha'aretz, the Israelis' paper, Jewish identity is the root of nationalism, and nationalism, in turn, the root of all evil. If Jews and Palestinians could but shed their national identities, peace and prosperity would prevail in our region forever. Even in the absence of any sign of Palestinian willingness to cast off their own national identity, for all its recent vintage, the Israelis are all too willing to cast aside theirs.

For Israelis giving away the Temple Mount is not a bitter necessity, but an opportunity eagerly seized to throw off the dead hand of the past by removing the most potent symbol of Jewish national identity and history.

Arafat seeks our abasement: an admission by Jews that the Temple Mount is more important to Arabs than it is to Jews. Sovereignty has nothing to do with day-to-day arrangements on the Temple Mount, and everything to do with demonstrating to the world that the Palestinians will not compromise one iota on the Temple Mount while Jews are prepared to do so in pursuit of ephemera and unenforceable will-of-the-wisp agreements. And Israelis are only too willing to comply with his agenda.

Ironically, it was Prime Minister Barak who this past May most eloquently described the estrangement from all connection to oneself as a Jew and as a member of a people with a past that is a precondition for a willingness to give away the Temple Mount:

"Only one who does not understand the depth of the soul-connection between the Jewish nation and Jerusalem, and who is totally estranged from the legacy of Jewish history, and from the Jewish vision and life-song . . . could even begin to consider an Israeli concession on any part of Jerusalem . . . . {Jerusalem is] the focus of our nation's yearning, the secret of its strength and existence . . . ."

At their most extreme, the Israelis seek not just a to reverse 1967, but 1948 as well. Yossi Beilin, chief architect of Oslo, recently declared that the Zionist Congress should have accepted the Uganda Plan. And for some, reversing 1948 would still be inadequate. It is symbolic that Jericho, the first city conquered by Joshua when the children of Israel first entered the Land, was the first one returned to Arafat..

Lack of connection to any sense of one's past or present as a Jew destroys all sense of identification with one's fellow Jews. Last week, Israel TV interviewed a member of Peace Now who eagerly described a joint Jewish-Palestinian Channukah candle lighting to commemorate Palestinian children killed in the intifada. The interviewer asked her whether they had also commemorated Jewish children killed.

She initially denied the existence of any such murdered Jewish children. And when pressed, she replied angrily, ``Of what interest is that to me?"

That alienation from any sense of national purpose, of any bond to the Land or one's fellow Jews has sapped the national will and with it Israel's long-term prospects. Long before the current intifada, even before the flight from Lebanon, Daniel Pipes wrote ominously: "Israel today has weapons and money the Arabs have will . . . Israel has high capabilities and low morale; the Arabs have low capabilities and high morale. . . . Again and again, the record of history shows, victory goes not to the side with greater fire power, but to the side with greater determination."