| | As the Hush Falls: On the Eve of Yom HaShoah,
Reflections on the Road We Are Traveling
A Weekly Briefing on Israeli and Middle Eastern Affairs
April 24, 2006 Dr. Eran Lerman
Director Israel/Middle East Office Later today, a hush will fall upon most homes in Israel. Instead of the daily diet of inanities on television-with its surfeit of increasingly commercialized entertainment, unreal "reality" shows, and the prancing of celebrities-there will be somber documentaries, painful memories, ceremonies, and a powerful collective immersion into the culture of remembrance. The Holocaust is not yet a distant chapter: It is the deep scar just under the surface, the unspoken gaps in the lives of people, the little cousin my mother never had because she died in hiding in France in 1943. (Her parents were later caught; my mother's uncle, a violinist, survived Auschwitz. His wife did not.) It was my father's grandfather on his mother's side who was murdered-and I hail from a family most of which "left in time," or even much earlier. What of the thousands upon thousands in Israel and elsewhere who grew up never knowing a grandmotherly touch, or having to contemplate the thought that their siblings, parents, and grandparents were burned alive, gassed, shot? As our leaders and children join the March of the Living, a victory in itself over those who wanted us all dead (and those who still do), a long, grim line of irretrievable loss marches with them. It is almost inevitable, at this time, that we reflect not only on where we came from, but on how far we have gone. The helplessness of the Jews-which Rabbi "Yitz" Greenberg has defined as an immoral condition-in our time is a thing of the past; so much so that even so-called "serious" scholars (in a seriously flawed paper) saw fit to describe Israel and the Jews as over-powerful, at least in terms of their impact on U.S. policy. Apparently, Professors Stephen M. Walt and John Mearsheimer long for the bygone days when one Breckinridge Long was enough to ensure that the U.S. did not waste time and effort on saving Jews or on enabling Jews to save and defend themselves. Here in Israel, the reasons why we need to be what we are-a Jewish state, with a claim on Jewish solidarity; a democratic state; and yes, unapologetically, a strong state-are clear to us precisely as a negative copy of their reasoning. Yes, these blessings come with their own price tags. Next week we shall mark the most painful of all costs, at our military graveyards. There are other kinds of forfeits. The sadly politicized struggle to define what it is that we mean by a "Jewish" state is far from over, and perhaps we need to reconcile ourselves to the stubborn nature of this permanent feature of Israeli life. Our highly fragmented democratic process is about to give us a bloated cabinet (twice the number of U.S. cabinet-rank positions). Some of the most sensitive portfolios, certainly at a time of looming crises with Iran and Hamas, could be put in inexperienced hands-not that they might not yet prove themselves worthy of the challenge!-for reasons of political expediency. A sense of cynical frustration is coming into the public discourse, but voters who gave the two largest parties together only 40 percent of the vote can hardly blame others when the result is messy coalition bargaining. Meanwhile, the third attribute of what we have become-a powerful state, capable of deterring hostile neighbors in the region-is not without its pains and dilemmas. The IDF is able on short notice to inflict immense damage in Gaza. Those who hide behind Palestinian civilians, as they launch their rockets into Israel, know this: The only conclusion is that they are deliberately trying to provoke a massive retaliation. Thus, Israel faces again the challenge of doing neither too much nor too little-compounded further by the pressure of various NGOs to bring this issue before the courts (as if the only viable alternative to targeted strikes and artillery fire-namely, physical re-occupation-were not much more destructive than the practices that they now bemoan). And yet, and yet... Days like today remind us of the essentials: Having a state means that we are no longer to be tossed in other people's storms. Being democratic-we are reminded by watching our neighbors-is far superior to the sorry spectacle of totalitarian goons with guns vs. thieving thugs pretending to be a "movement," which is what the Hamas vs. Fatah confrontation amounts to. And given the neighborhood we live in, it helps if you carry a weapon for self-defense. It is not easy now, and we forget how difficult it was then, to wrap our minds around the proposition that there are people out there who actively seek our death. But it is easier to confront the reality of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's positions, or the appointment of a wanted murderer as inspector-general of the Palestinian "police," when you know you have some answers-and you know you are not alone. | |
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