My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (2 page)

Only a few years ago did it suddenly dawn on me that my existential fear regarding my nation’s future and my moral outrage regarding my nation’s occupation policy are not unconnected. On the one hand, Israel is the only nation in the West that is occupying another people. On the other hand, Israel is the only nation in the West that is existentially threatened. Both occupation and intimidation make the Israeli condition unique. Intimidation and occupation have become the two pillars of our condition.

Most observers and analysts deny this duality. The ones on the left address occupation and overlook intimidation, while the ones on the right address intimidation and dismiss occupation. But the truth is that without incorporating both elements into one worldview, one cannot grasp Israel or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Any school of thought that does not relate seriously to these two fundamentals is bound to be flawed and futile. Only a third approach that internalizes both intimidation and occupation can be realistic and moral and get the Israel story right.

I was born in 1957 in the university town of Rehovot. My father was a scientist, my mother an artist, and some of my ancestors were among the founders of the Zionist enterprise. Conscripted to the army at eighteen, like most Israelis, I served as a paratrooper, and upon completion
of my service I studied philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where I joined the peace movement and later the human rights movement. Since 1995, I have been writing for Israel’s leading liberal newspaper,
Haaretz
. Although I always stood for peace and supported the two-state solution, I gradually became aware of the flaws and biases of the peace movement. My understanding of both occupation and intimidation made my voice somewhat different from those of others in the media. And as a columnist, I challenge both right-wing and left-wing dogmas. I have learned that there are no simple answers in the Middle East and no quick-fix solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I have realized that the Israeli condition is extremely complex, perhaps even tragic.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century Israel did well. Terror subsided, high tech boomed, everyday life was vibrant. Economically, Israel proved to be a tiger. Existentially, it proved to be a powerhouse of vitality, creativity, and sensuality. But under the glow of an extraordinary success story, anxiety was simmering. People started asking aloud the questions that I have been asking myself all my life. It was not just Left-Right politics anymore. It was not just secular versus religious. Something deeper was taking place. Many Israelis were not at ease with the new Israel that was emerging. They were asking themselves if they still belonged to the Jewish state. They had lost their belief in Israel’s ability to endure. Some obtained foreign passports; some sent their young to study abroad. The elite saw to it that alongside the Israeli option they would have an alternative one. Although most Israelis still loved their homeland and celebrated its blessings, many lost their unshaken faith in its future.

As the second decade of the twenty-first century has begun to unfold, five different apprehensions cast a shadow on Israel’s voracious appetite for life: the notion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might not end in the foreseeable future; the concern that Israel’s regional strategic hegemony is being challenged; the fear that the very legitimacy of the Jewish state is eroding; the concern that a deeply transformed Israeli society is now divided and polarized, its liberal-democratic foundation crumbling; and the realization that the dysfunctional governments of
Israel cannot deal seriously with such crucial challenges as occupation and social disintegration. Each one of these five apprehensions contains a significant threat, but their combined effect makes the overall threat dramatic. If peace is not feasible, how will we withstand a generation-long conflict as our strategic superiority is endangered and our legitimacy is fading and our democratic identity is fractured and our internal fissures tear us apart? While Israel remains innovative, seductive, and energetic, it has become a nation in doubt. Angst hovers above the land like the enormous shadow of an ominous volcano.

This is why I embarked on this journey. Sixty-five years after its founding, Israel has returned to its core questions. One hundred and sixteen years after it was launched, Zionism is confronted with its core contradictions. Now the challenge goes far beyond that of occupation, and much deeper than the issue of peace. What we all face is the threefold Israel question: Why Israel? What is Israel? Will Israel?

The Israel question cannot be answered with polemics. As complex as it is, it will not submit itself to arguments and counterarguments. The only way to wrestle with it is to tell the Israel story. That is what I have tried to do in this book. In my own idiosyncratic way and through my own prism I have tried to address our existence as a whole, as I understand it. This book is the personal odyssey of one Israeli who is bewildered by the historic drama engulfing his homeland. It is the journey in space and time of an Israeli-born individual exploring the wider narrative of his nation. Through family history, personal history, and in-depth interviews, I will try to tackle the larger Israel story and the deeper Israel question. What has happened in my homeland for over a century that has brought us to where we are now? What was achieved here and what went wrong here, and where are we heading? Is my deep sense of anxiety well founded? Is the Jewish state in real jeopardy? Are we Israelis caught in a hopeless tragedy, or might we yet revive ourselves and save ourselves and salvage the land we so love?

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photo credit 1.1
)

O
N THE NIGHT OF
A
PRIL
15
,
1897
, A SMALL, ELEGANT STEAMER IS EN
route from Egypt’s Port Said to Jaffa. Thirty passengers are on board, twenty-one of them Zionist pilgrims who have come from London via Paris, Marseille, and Alexandria. Leading the pilgrims is the Rt. Honorable Herbert Bentwich, my great-grandfather.

Bentwich is an unusual Zionist. At the end of the nineteenth century, most Zionists are Eastern European; Bentwich is a British subject. Most Zionists are poor; he is a gentleman of independent means. Most Zionists are secular, whereas he is a believer. For most Zionists of this time, Zionism is the only choice, but my great-grandfather chooses Zionism of his own free will. In the early 1890s, Herbert Bentwich makes up his mind that the Jews must settle again in their ancient homeland, Judea.

This pilgrimage is unusual, too. It is the first such journey of upper-middle-class British Jews to the Land of Israel. This is why the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, attributes such importance to these twenty-one travelers. He expects Bentwich and his colleagues to write a comprehensive report about the Land. Herzl is especially interested in the inhabitants of Palestine and the prospects for colonizing it. He expects the report to be presented at the end of the summer to the
first Zionist Congress that is to be held in Basel. But my great-grandfather is somewhat less ambitious. His Zionism, which preceded Herzl’s, is essentially romantic. Yet he, too, was carried away by the English translation of Herzl’s prophetic manifesto
Der Judenstaat
, or
The State of the Jews
. He personally invited Herzl to appear at his prestigious London club, and he was bowled over by the charisma of the visionary leader. Like Herzl, he believes that Jews must return to Palestine. But as the flat-bottomed steamer
Oxus
carves the black water of the Mediterranean, Bentwich is still an innocent. My great-grandfather does not wish to take a country and to establish a state; he wishes to face God.

I remain on deck for a moment. I want to understand why the
Oxus
is making its way across the sea. Who exactly is this ancestor of mine, and why has he come here?

As the twentieth century is about to begin there are more than 11 million Jews in the world, of whom nearly 7 million live in Eastern Europe, 2 million live in Central and Western Europe, and 1.5 million live in North America. Asian, North African, and Middle Eastern Jewry total less than one million.

Only in North America and Western Europe are Jews emancipated. In Russia they are persecuted. In Poland they are discriminated against. In Islamic countries they are a “protected people” living as second-class citizens. Even in the United States, France, and Britain, emancipation is merely a legality. Anti-Semitism is on the rise. In 1897, Christendom is not yet at peace with its ultimate other. Many find it difficult to address Jews as free, proud, and equal.

In the eastern parts of Europe, Jewish distress is acute. A new breed of ethnic-based anti-Semitism is superseding the old religious-based anti-Semitism. Waves of pogroms befall Jewish towns and townships in Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Romania, and Poland. Most shtetl Jews realize that there is no future for the shtetl. Hundreds of thousands sail to Ellis Island. The Jewish Diaspora experiences once again the cataclysmic phenomenon of mass migration.

Worse than the past is what the future holds. In the next half century,
a third of all Jews will be murdered. Two-thirds of European Jewry will be wiped out. The worst catastrophe in the history of the Jewish people is about to occur. So as the
Oxus
approaches the shores of the Holy Land, the need to give Palestine to the Jews feels almost palpable. If the Jews won’t disembark here, they will have no future. This emerging coastline may be their only salvation.

There is another need. In the millennium preceding 1897, Jewish survival was guaranteed by the two great
g
’s: God and ghetto. What enabled Jews to maintain their identity and their civilization was their closeness to God and their detachment from the surrounding non-Jewish world. Jews had no territory and no kingdom. They had no liberty and no sovereignty. What held them together as a people were religious belief, religious practice, and a powerful religious narrative, as well as the high walls of isolation built around them by gentiles. But in the hundred years prior to 1897, God drifted away and the ghetto walls collapsed. Secularization and emancipation—limited as they were—eroded the old formula of Jewish survival. There was nothing to maintain the Jewish people as a people living among others. Even if Jews were not to be slaughtered by Russian Cossacks or to be persecuted by French anti-Semites, they were faced with collective mortal danger. Their ability to maintain a non-Orthodox Jewish civilization in the Diaspora was now in question.

There was a need for revolution. If it was to survive, the Jewish people had to be transformed from a people of the Diaspora to a people of sovereignty. In this sense the Zionism that emerges in 1897 is a stroke of genius. Its founders, led by Dr. Herzl, are both prophetic and heroic. All in all, the nineteenth century was the golden age of Western Europe’s Jewry. Yet the Herzl Zionists see what is coming. True, they do not know that the twentieth century will conjure up such places as Auschwitz and Treblinka. But in their own way they act in the 1890s in order to preempt the 1940s. They realize they are faced with a radical problem: the coming extinction of the Jews. And they realize that a radical
problem calls for a radical solution: the transformation of the Jews, a transformation that can take place only in Palestine, the Jews’ ancient homeland.

Herbert Bentwich does not see things as lucidly as Theodor Herzl does. He doesn’t know that the century about to begin will be the most dramatic in Jewish history. But his intuition tells him that it’s time for radical action. He knows that the distress in Eastern Europe is intolerable and that in the West, assimilation is unavoidable; in the East, Jews are in danger, while in the West, Judaism is in trouble. My great-grandfather understands that the Jewish people desperately need a new place, a new beginning, a new mode of existence. If they are to survive, the Jewish people need the Holy Land.

Bentwich was born in 1856 in the Whitechapel district of London. His father was a Russian-Jewish immigrant who made his living as a traveling salesman, peddling jewelry in Birmingham and Cambridge. But the salesman wanted more for his beloved son. He sent Herbert to fine grammar schools where the boy did well. Knowing that all his parents’ hopes were invested in him, the disciplined youngster worked hard to prove himself. In his thirties he was already a successful solicitor living in St. John’s Wood.

Before traveling to Palestine, my great-grandfather was a leading figure in the Anglo-Jewish community. His professional expertise was copyright law. In his social life he was one of the founders of the prominent dining and debating Maccabean Club. In his private life he was married to a beautiful, artistic wife who was raising nine children in their magisterial Avenue Road home. Another two would be born in the coming years.

A self-made man, Herbert Bentwich is rigid and pedantic. His dominant traits are arrogance, determination, self-assurance, self-reliance, and nonconformity. Yet he is very much a romantic, with a soft spot for mysticism. Bentwich is a Victorian. He feels deeply indebted to the British Empire for opening its gates to the immigrant’s son he once was. When Bentwich was two years old, the first Jew was elected to British Parliament. When he was fifteen, the first Jew was admitted to Oxford. When he turned twenty-nine, the first Jew entered the House of Lords.
For Bentwich these milestones are wonders. He does not look upon emancipation as a belated fulfillment of a natural right but as an act of grace carried out by Queen Victoria’s Great Britain.