Vox Humana Literary Journal

Michael Greenberg

On the Death of the Jewish State

Several times recently, I have found myself contemplating the death of the Jewish state. These may be temporary attacks of the blues—and yet, as I learned recently from the success of Lieberman’s party and his attempt to pass a law requiring loyalty to the state prior to citizenship, a democracy can slide into fascism, while the trains run, commercials dance merrily on our television screens, and the country seems to be perking in prosperity. Maybe, it’s the disillusion that comes with material wealth—Israel, at one time, was a far more idealistic place, and, as I knew since I came from the mass culture of America, the culture was unknowingly and fertilely elitist. As Bernard Avishai put it recently in a blog that lamented the passing of that era, it was a period when philosophers seemed to be part of the national discourse (he probably meant Yeshiyahu Leibowitz). The public discourse was indeed more elevated, there was less violence, and Israel seemed to be a far pleasanter place in which to live.

But I cannot shake away the provenance of gloom—not because it is derived from the disillusionment at what Israel has become, but because the death of Israel as a secular and therefore democratic Jewish state is not dependent on my emotional whims but on facts. Statistically, the two fastest growing populations in Israel are the ultra-orthodox (including those in the Occupied Territories) and Arabs; in several generations, secular Jews will be a minority between the two groups.

The orthodox have their different factions, but I am not interested in the relatively moderate ones who have integrated themselves within the general fabric of Israeli society, except to note that they, too, lean to the right, especially regarding retaining the Occupied Territories…The ultra-orthodox—and their companions, the religious settlers—are insidious to democracy for numerous reasons. They are not interested in democratic process, except to use it for their own sectarian ends. They have no respect for or understanding of pluralism. The State, if they believe in it, is only as a Jewish state, that is, run by Jewish law, and a state for Jews. They are a financial drain, since their men usually do not labor (only recently have their women begun entering the work force), and as a group, they are generally poor—Jerusalem is the poorest city in Israel. B’nei Brak, which is a much smaller city of haredim (ultra-orthodox) is also extremely poor. The haredim often don’t pay city taxes; they are subsidized by the State both in their studies and their monthly welfare, in addition to costs of infrastructure and urban maintenance to which they don’t contribute. And, in modern terms, they are ignorant; they may be experts in Talmud, but they will know nothing of math, history, or the world. In addition, the ultra-orthodox are the repository of the single note history of the persecution of the Jews; and, as a result, their bigotries are justified by nearly two millennia years of martyrdom. The world is divided into Jews and the rest, which is assumed to be intrinsically antagonistic; and mercy and love, which are the highest values in the religion, are directed only toward the circumscribed community.

In the long run, the growth of the ultra-orthodox community will have disastrous effects on the State. They will undermine respect toward the secular legal courts, which remains the diamond in the crown of Israel. They will resist any changes to the electoral system in Israel, which is intrinsically unstable, since modifications will necessarily weaken their clout. They will siphon public money to their own interests, try to divert education to Jewish subjects, and increase division within Israeli society—since between secular and they there can be no true dialogue. There is only the illusion of a dialogue, which works to their own advantage as, ultimately, they are interested in establishing a State based on Jewish law. Inevitably, the haredim will change the tenor of the public discourse. The ambitious secular young will simply up and leave, much as Christian Arabs have, so that one can expect an intelligence drain in higher education and universities.

In addition, as everyone knows, the ultra-orthodox do not serve in the army. They serve the armies of God – or as the King James Version would say, “the Lord’s hosts,” as the word “tzavah, host” is the modern Hebrew word for armies. For the religious, the word tsavah will always have that Godly resonance, whereas for a secular Jew, an army is something utterly different. Therefore, someone with a yarmulke, long sideburns and a fringed undergarment can claim with a straight face that by learning in a yeshiva he, too, serves the State, and another Jew, like my son-in-law Kobi, can look at him in utter disbelief.

Until fairly recently, the haredim were indifferent to the occupied territories. They were willing to compromise on the age old principle of not making waves: not giving goyim excuses for blaming the Jews. But that has changed. Several ultra-orthodox communities have been built in the West Bank, and therefore, the haredi community has invested interest in retaining the occupied land (which, of course, they do not regard has occupied at all).

Like most everyone in the Middle East—it is one of the region’s most damning characteristics in my opinion—for the haredim and the religious right, ethnic and gender roles are defining: one is first and foremost a Jew, an Arab, a Christian, a woman or a man. This is an intrinsic aspect of Judaism; it is, after all, why it is a religion that straddles both East and West, but in the West, it is happily modified. We have to realize that residency in the Middle East naturally emphasizes this trait, which is not, at least in the Middle East, regarded as bigotry or even bias—but it goes against the aspiration toward universalism that also characterized traditional Zionism.

A vocal minority of the religious right in the occupied territories are violent toward Arabs. This group is fundamentally racist: dogmatic colonialists in the worst sense of the word. In their language, Arabs are the avatars of Amalek, a people of whom it is said in the Bible that they will rise up against the Hebrews in every generation and must be exterminated. According to tradition and the Book of Esther, Haman was a descendant of Amalek. Baruch Goldstein slaughtered 29 Arabs while praying in a mosque in the cave of the machpelah (the burial site of Abraham) on Purim, as a sign to those who understood that he was getting his revenge on Amalek.

The growth of the religious right in the territories will only acerbate the relations between Arabs and Jews there; but the chief danger is of an insurrection if Israel should finally withdraw. The greater the number of the religious right in the territories, the greater the danger. Israel has allowed an increase in an armed group of Jews that often regards itself as above the law and is sure of its territorial aims to realize the will of God and a higher Zionism, nobler than that of a petty government cowardly in its attempts at practical maneuvering.

There are several possible scenarios for the impact of a larger Arab population on Israel, but I am going to assume that Israeli Jews will continue in its myopic ways toward Arabs, in which case the interaction between Arabs and Jews is easier to imagine.

A larger Arab population will, like the larger haredi population, draw on the nation’s resources, since one can assume that mostly village and religious Moslem Arabs will have many children, and like the haredim, Arabs often do not pay their civic taxes. But the greatest effect will be a large population that is essentially disaffected from the national government, beginning with its national anthem, its flag and continuing through the inequality that has been a given in Israeli society for these 60 years.

One of the major changes that has taken place in Israeli society since I moved here over 30 years ago is that what was a truism when I arrived, “Arabs are afraid of Jews; Jews are afraid of Arabs,” has often changed. The Jews still remain afraid of Arabs, but not all Arabs today are afraid of Jews. This is a gift, perhaps an ironic one for the Jews, of democracy: the Arab population is far surer of itself with an intellectual class that regards itself as part of the greater Arab world but has no desire to relinquish the democracy of which it would like to be a recognized part. One can expect an explosion—or a long struggle for equality in a country that is suspicious of every Arab as a terrorist in the making. As would be expected in every other similar national situation, with time and no integration of Arabs in the general population or a general rising of their economic standard, more and more Arabs will identify with their beleaguered Palestinian brothers and tend to reject any Israeli allegiance as a betrayal. So the Arabs will realize Jewish Israeli suspicions: they will become a fifth column, and every struggle for equality will be regarded as an attempt to undermine the state.

The occupation, which is the crux of the matter, has many aspects. There is the international one: the longer we occupy the less likely peace in the region. This can be argued ad nauseum—and it is. The right would strongly disagree and claim that the occupation is not one (Palestinians are not a people) and the so-called occupation is used as an excuse by Arab leaders and nations for endemic problems the Arabs are incapable of solving. I disagree. The Palestinians are a people, if, admittedly, a fragile one, whose national identification was largely created by the catastrophe of the expulsion from Palestine, and the occupation, while it is may be used as an excuse (most notably in the case of Hamas) is also real. The right might also claim that there is no solution; peace with Arabs is a mirage. But then there is no hope. What I have realized recently is that, as it tends to view events within a static history, the Israeli right can postulate no long-term solutions..

Again, as with the haredim and the Arabs, the occupied territories drain enormous sums of money from the State, and not only because of the number of soldiers that are necessary to maintain peace. In classic colonialist style à la Franz Fanon, beautiful new roads are built leading from one beautiful new settlement to another while skillfully bypassing Arab villages in such a way that they vanish from sight. But, as with both the ultra-orthodox and the Arabs, the monetary drain is not the chief problem.

Once, when I commented to my son Yochai about the terrible way in which many Israelis drive, as there seem to be no rules, neither of custom nor of law, he replied, “What do you expect, Abba, they learned to drive in the territories.” And he was right. In the territories, they are the law; and, I think it would be fair to say that that detrimental effect of master without any restraint has penetrated into the fabric of Israeli society. There is also the dehumanizing factor implicit in holding the territories—both to our own young men and the Arabs who encounter our soldiers. Occupation is an evil, and it makes both the occupier and the occupied do evil things (witness Gaza).

But, again, these, in the long run, are not the damning factors (although by themselves they are damning enough). A friend of mine, who is originally from South Africa and was familiar with Apartheid, belongs to a group in Facebook called, “Israel is not Apartheid.” When I commented to her that Israel without the territories is not apartheid but with the territories might be considered as such, she answered that when she thinks of Israel she doesn’t include the territories. The longer we hold the occupied territories, the harder it will be to ignore them demographically. Arafat knew this; he realized toward the end of his life that there was no need to fight Israel. With time, Israel would succumb to its own greed, and the Jewish state would devolve as well into a two-nation state, since Israel cannot morally sustain apartheid, while the lives of the Arabs in the West Bank and the Jews would be so entwined as to make two separate states an impossibility. The grim irony of those who settle the West Bank in the name of a greater Zionism is that they are probably hastening its demise.

These, unfortunately, are the facts—and thus, the insistent gloom in the prognosis.