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PDF FormatAt the conclusion of his report, he writes: “Stavsky and Rosenblatt, undoubtedly, had no part in the murder of Dr. Arlosoroff. Without question, the entire aim of the police investigation was to bury the truth. It is about cases such as this that the prophet laments: ‘And he hoped for justice, but behold, there was injustice.’”(Isaiah 5:7)
Berkovits, who passed away seven years later, was indeed a moral man. Just like Justices Bechor and Kenneth, and following in the footsteps of R. Abraham Isaac Kook, he drew his conclusions and expressed his opinion on the case not only on the basis of intuition and belief, but also on the basis of facts and their sound analysis. He is greatly to be credited for having taken part in the commission of inquiry and its unanimous verdict.
Yossi Ahimeir
Ramat Gan
Jewish Foreign Policy
TO THE EDITORS:
Ruth Wisse’s thought-provoking essay (“The Brilliant Failure of Jewish Foreign Policy,” AZURE 10, Winter 2001) is built on the following argument: The Jews of the diaspora historically engaged in political activity that was guided by a “politics of accommodation.” Although this strategy brought calamity upon Jewish life, it nonetheless enabled the Jews to survive and endure without a land, government, or means of self-defense.
Wisse, however, does not confine herself to a history of Jewish political life in exile; she also applies her theory to the policies of the State of Israel. The failure of the supporters of what Wisse calls the “fantasy of ‘peace’” stems from their attempt to apply the politics of accommodation in the context of Israeli foreign policy. They do not take into account the changing times, and so fail to pursue the “self-reliance” that ought to characterize the life of the sovereign Israel. Wisse, in effect, charges the peace movement in Israel with acting like the Jews of the ghetto.
This analogy is off the mark. Consider, for example, the fact of the current Intifada, universally recognized as a slap in the face to supporters of the Oslo accords—and one that eventually led to the collapse of the Oslo paradigm, spreading confusion among its proponents. Those who refused to let reality get in the way of ideology, continuing to profess their belief in Oslo, were forced to sharpen their arguments on the daggers of criticism leveled against them, not only from the Right, but most importantly from within their own camp. But this confusion, I suspect, shows just how different the Israeli Left is from the accommodating Jew in exile.
As Wisse astutely writes, the strategy of “accommodation” did not always succeed in preventing anti-Semitic violence. The rulers who offered the Jews protection often did so according to their changing interests; as Wisse writes, “Without protection from above, violence against the Jews was always profitable, and always without consequence.” But when Jews became open targets and their dependent relations with the non-Jewish rulers collapsed, the result was not confusion. Riots, expulsion, and destruction did not deter the leaders of the Jewish community from trying to reconstruct the same political arrangements elsewhere. This was not the confusion of the Israeli Left, but an ongoing dedication to a single strategy.
To appreciate this distinction, it is worth noticing the difference between the Left’s response to the current hostilities and that of the more dovish leaders of the haredi community in Israel (that is, the heads of the Lithuanian community and of the Shas movement, but not the Hasidic leaders). While the Left was thrown into disarray by the collapse of their worldview, it is hard to find evidence of similar confusion and helplessness among the haredim, many of whom had lent their support to the Oslo accords as well. Apparently, these religious leaders saw nothing particularly shocking in the contrast between their willingness to give up territory and Palestinian violence.
Throughout centuries of dispersion, the Jews regarded their “politics of accommodation” as a temporary thing, just as exile itself was temporary; the expectation of redemption and sovereignty in the land of Israel included the hope of realizing a form of politics closer to the sovereign independence depicted in the Bible. In other words, the politics of exile was the opposite of messianism.
The outlook of the peace activists, however, has been very different.
For them, Oslo was the dawn of a new era in Israeli life. The peace process was a new gospel, not only for the State of Israel, but no less so for the entire Middle East. Besides the peace and security that Oslo was supposed to bring Israel, it was also expected to herald the redemption of all the peoples of the region from their enslavement to the psychology of war and violence. In this, the peace movement greatly resembles many Jewish redemptive movements of the past century—such as Marxism and messianic Zionism—that strove to save the Jews and the entire world, and to fulfill the prophecy that “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” (Isaiah 2:4) The exilic survival technique was transformed from a pragmatic method of self-preservation into a means of redeeming the entire Middle East.
In addition to their messianic inclinations, there is a second key difference between the supporters of Oslo and the Jews in exile: Their attitude toward national uniqueness. The motivation for “accommodation” which prevailed in the diaspora stemmed from the desire to build impregnable walls between the Jewish community and its surroundings. Jews regarded themselves as spiritually and culturally distinct from, even superior to, the surrounding Gentiles, as having been singled out for a sublime mission in the service of humankind. Consequently, traditional Jewish thought could not regard assimilation, either individual or collective, as an acceptable solution. Accommodation, on the other hand, was at least tolerable. The politics of accommodation was a product of the Jews’ desire to preserve their unique way of life.
A completely different idea guides the Israeli Left’s accommodation. The idea of integrating Israel into a new Middle East, like the tendency to give almost exclusive weight to the second half of the formula that identifies Israel as a “Jewish and democratic” state, is part of a strategy of cultural assimilation. Its adherents look forward to a time when Israel and its neighbors will agree that, in the words of a popular Israeli song, “we are all a single human fabric,” to the extent that they will cease to recognize Israel as a link in the ongoing chain of Jewish civilization.
These two components of the Left’s vision—redemption and assimilation—led its activists to expect that a politics of accommodation would be adopted not only by Israel, but also by the Arab leaders: Terrorists would lay down their arms, Palestinian refugees would forgo their “right of return,” and Muslim clerics would recognize the Temple Mount’s importance to Judaism. It was their desperate faith in a human common denominator between Israel and the Arab states, and their messianic hope for the modern realization of Isaiah’s prophecy, that led to these fantastic beliefs. Diaspora Jewry may have adopted the strategy of accommodation, but they never had such expectations. Guided by pragmatic rather than ideological considerations, they understood the limits of accommodation and its inability to sweep along those Gentiles who had power over them. This sort of realism seems to characterize the modern haredim as well, who have consistently kept their distance from political messianism and have forcefully insisted on the uniqueness of Jewish identity.
Accommodation works as a tool for survival only when it is seen as a tool of political realism. But when it is tied up in messianic aspirations and the abandonment of a unique cultural identity, its prospects for success, especially in Israel, are bleak.
Benny Porat
Jerusalem
