My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (59 page)

I walk into Cinema City, a gaudy temple of twenty-six theaters that offer Rishon LeZion the California it wishes to be. Along the corridors stand wax figures of Superman, Batman, Charlie Chaplin, Humphrey Bogart. There is Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, Domino’s pizza, Coca-Cola. Youngsters wearing Diesel jeans and GAP sweatshirts and A&F jackets lug enormous vats of popcorn. Nothing remains of the initial promise of the unique beginning. And yet, seen through the prism of the horrors of the twentieth century, all that surrounds me evokes only sympathy. For Rishon LeZion is a life-saving project. Although it does not look or sound like one, it is a city of refugee rehabilitation.

From West Rishon, I travel to Ramleh. In 1897, Ramleh was an Arab town with a population of 6,000, known for its mosques, churches, inns, and markets. Its many hostels catered to pilgrims en route from Jaffa to Jerusalem. Today Ramleh is an unhappy Israeli city of 68,000: 50,000 Jews, 15,000 Muslims, 3,000 Christians. Almost all the descendants of the Muslim Arabs who lived here in 1897 were deported in 1948. The present-day Muslim population is made up mainly of Bedouins and Palestinians whose ancestors were transferred here from their villages in Israel’s first years.

The Jews who inherited Ramleh are mostly immigrants, of whom nearly 30 percent arrived in the 1990s and 2000s from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Ethiopia. Many of the inhabitants of the dreary housing projects are young and poor. One third subsist on welfare benefits. On a socioeconomic scale of one to ten, Ramleh is a dismal four.

There are a few fine Palestinian houses still standing. There are several spectacular historic sites that are dilapidated and run-down. The market is lively, and there are some good ethnic restaurants around it. By the old Muslim cemetery a new mall is being built alongside a new modern quarter that is designed to attract middle-class professionals.
But all in all, Ramleh is depressed and depressing. After losing its Arab identity, it never acquired a meaningful Israeli one. While Rishon LeZion gives its inhabitants the gloss of consumerism, Ramleh fails to do even that. This city never really recovered from the great cataclysm of 1948.

The Palestinians might say that when Herbert Bentwich arrived here in his Thomas Cook carriage he was carrying with him a virulent bacterium. Like the conquistadors, he wasn’t aware of it, but it devastated the Palestinian immune system and Palestinian civilization, and laid waste to old Ramleh. I would not argue, but I would add that eventually the same virulent bacterium attacked the original Zionist dream, too. In 1897 it was still possible to imagine a master plan that would turn the dream into reality, but by 1950 there was no feasibility for any such plan. Need chased need. Pressure chased pressure. Danger chased danger. The naïve conquistadors were caught up in the whirlwind of the consequences of their original deed. The historic imperative that had brought them from Europe to Ramleh wreaked a havoc that no one could control. First it demolished the indigenous culture, then it demolished the pioneer culture, then it uprooted the magical orange groves of my childhood and then it created faceless Israeli cities of discontent.

I climb up the 119 steps of the white tower. The panorama of coastal Israel is overwhelming. Town abuts town, neighborhood abuts neighborhood, building abuts building, apartment abuts apartment. Almost three million human beings are squeezed into the three thousand square kilometers surrounding Tel Aviv.

Perhaps there was no other way. To maintain secular Jewish existence in the modern era, we had to congregate in one place. Today, this concentration of people is not only a necessity but the essence of Israel. For it seems we Jews need to crowd together. We need to be with one another, even to fight with one another. It is as if we cannot live by ourselves as individuals, as if we are afraid that on our own we’ll vanish. So we do not acknowledge the private domain. We don’t distinguish the personal from the public. We warm ourselves against the big chill together, living communally, collectively in a kibbutz, in a moshav, in a housing estate, and in this crowded concentration of population that stretches from Hadera to Gedera and from West Rishon to East Ramleh.

From Ramleh, I travel to Lydda. The train station is still located in the same stone terminal that the French built for the Turks in 1891. Where the British-Jewish pilgrims waited for the train to Jerusalem in the spring of 1897 now stand smiling Israeli soldiers carrying Israeli-made assault rifles and holding Coke cans and chocolate bars. Two ultra-Orthodox men are fervently discussing current events. A young Russian-speaking couple argue in whispers. A beautiful young Muslim girl in tight jeans and a head scarf passes by.

From the panoramic windows of my air-conditioned train car, I look out at Ramleh, Lydda, and the Plain of Judea. East of the railroad is Tel Gezer. Here stood the ancient settlement of Gezer in 3400
B.C
. Here stood a rich and powerful Canaanite city in 1700
B.C
. Here stood an ancient Hebrew city in the tenth-century
B.C
. and a nineteenth-century Palestinian village named Abu Shusha. In 1923, great-grandfather Bentwich bought a stately home here. In 1948, the IDF’s Givati Brigade conquered the village of Abu Shusha, killing, expelling, and burning as it went. These days, on the mountain ridge south of Tel Gezer stands the Israeli community of Karmei Yosef, where Amos Yadlin and the grandchildren of Rehovot’s orange growers live a life of affluence. Theirs is Israel triumphant: lavish homes facing the ancient somber barrow.

F-16 bombers fly overhead, preparing for yet another war. Here is another tragic triumph: when blindness finally lifted and the Palestinian villages were at last seen, the Jews acknowledged the drama they were caught in and did not recoil. They didn’t panic, didn’t retreat or collapse. Rather, they built an iron wall. And within this iron wall, the Jews built their nation-state. Within this wall, they revived the Hebrew language and created a vibrant Israeli culture. Within this wall, they made music and theater, art and cinema. They loved and married and bore children. They looked fate in the eye and did what they had to do and stood guard for more than one hundred years.

Along the railway are plowed fields, grapevines, and row upon row of tightly tied bales of cotton. Beyond the mountain ridge is a secret missile base.

So if I were to address some imaginary ultimate Zionist congress, what would I say? I’d probably say that the need was real. The insight
was genius. The vision was impressive—ambitious but not mad. And the persistence was unique: for over a century, Zionism displayed extraordinary determination, imagination, and innovation. Its adaptability, flexibility, and resolve were outstanding. But as Zionism was late and the Holocaust preempted it, its premise of the mass immigration to this land of the Eastern European Jewish peoples turned out to be false. So was the premise regarding feeble Arab resistance. Therefore, the Zionist project did not become what it was supposed to be: a grand, well-planned engineering project like the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal or Dutch land reclamation from the sea. It did not become a grand enterprise of progress that solved in a rational manner one of humanity’s ugliest problems. It did not eradicate anti-Semitism in the way that modern medicine eradicated tuberculosis and polio, or solve the problem of the Jews in the way that modern medicine solved the problem of infant mortality. Rather, Zionism became an unruly process of improvising imperfect solutions to acute challenges, addressing new needs, adjusting to new conditions and creating new realities. It reinvented itself again and again, dealing in different ways with what is basically an impossible situation. This is how Zionism wended its way through the twentieth century and this is how it shaped the land. That’s why the landscape I see as the train approaches the Judean hills is that of a haphazard quilt, one patch over another, one improvised solution alongside another.

The train passes Beit Shemesh—a development town now turning ultra-Orthodox—and glides into the Soreq Gorge. On both sides of the tracks, rocky hills rise. Some slopes are bare; others are covered by a dense Zionist pine forest that hides within its thicket the ruins of some Palestinian villages.

The act of concentrating the Jews in one place was essential but dangerous. If another historic disaster were to strike here, it might be the last. The founding fathers and mothers of Zionism realized this. They knew they were leading one of the most miserable nations in the world to one of the most dangerous places in the world. That’s why they were so demanding of themselves and of others. That’s why they acted in such a shrewd and resourceful and disciplined manner. They knew that their mission was superhuman, as was the responsibility thrust upon them. But over the years, it was not possible to maintain such a
high level of revolutionary discipline. It wasn’t possible to maintain the devotion, precision, and commitment. The following generations lost the historical perspective and the sense of responsibility. They were fooled by the Zionist success story and they lost sight of the existential risk embodied in the Zionist deed. Gradually they lost the concentration and caution required of those walking a tightrope over the abyss. As resolve waned and wisdom dissipated, there was no longer a responsible adult to lead the children’s crusade. A movement that got most things right in its early days has gotten almost everything wrong in recent decades.

When his train pulled into Jerusalem, Herbert Bentwich rushed from the city’s old and charming train station to the most sacred Jewish site, the Western Wall (the remains of the Second Temple). When I arrive, I rush from Jerusalem’s new and charmless train station to the most sacred Israeli site: Yad Vashem, the museum of the history of the Holocaust.

At the entrance I lose my breath. On the walls, ghostly images of children in black and white play violin for a tutor. Lovers in black and white glide on snow. A Jewish shtetl in black and white, a tram. Youngsters dancing in a circle. A girl hugging a doll. Two girls in black and white waving goodbye.

The museum is a triangular structure of reinforced concrete that penetrates the mountain like a bunker. On both sides of the tunnel-like main hall are dark galleries that tell the story. Christian anti-Semitism, Nazi anti-Semitism, Kristallnacht. The burning of books, the burning of synagogues, the imprisonment of humans. The racial laws, the yellow star, ghettos. Murder by hanging, murder by shooting, murder by gas. Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, 5.7 million. And on both sides of the triangular tunnel Zionism’s ultimate arguments: Ponary, Babi Yar, Majdanek, Buchenwald, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Treblinka, Auschwitz. The unforgettable face of the Polish diplomat Jan Karski as he recalls Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who would not bomb Auschwitz in 1944. And the pale yellow map of Europe scattered with inconceivable numbers. Of the 140,000 Jews of Holland—102,000 dead. Of the 817,000 Jews of Romania—380,000
dead. Of the 825,000 Jews of Hungary—565,000 dead. Of the 3,020,000 Jews of the Soviet Union—995,000 dead. Of the 3,325,000 Jews of Poland—3,000,000 dead.

But the figure that strikes me most is the number of Jews killed at the massacre at Babi Yar. On the twenty-ninth and thirtieth of September 1941, 33,771 of the Jews of Kiev were taken to the forest, made to stand next to a ravine, and then shot by the ravine and buried in it. In the forty-eight hours of Babi Yar, more Jews were shot dead than in the first 120 years of the battle for Zion; more Jews were killed than in all of the wars of Israel. So there is a good reason for the fact that this tunnel of European devastation leads at its very end to a bright terrace overlooking the deep green of the Jerusalem mountain forests. And when I stand on the terrace of Yad Vashem I cannot help but feel proud of Israel. I was born an Israeli and I live as an Israeli and as an Israeli I shall die.

From Yad Vashem, I move on to Givat-Shaul. So that Zionism would not lose the war of 1948 and the Jews of Palestine would not end up in some Palestinian Babi Yar, Ben Gurion instructed the Haganah to go on the offensive in April of that year. He ordered the Jewish armed forces to conquer the Palestinian villages blocking the road to Jerusalem: Hulda, Deir-Muhsein, Bayt Mahsir, Saris, al-Qastal. In coordination with the Haganah, the nationalist Irgun and the Stern Gang went on their own village offensive. On April 9, 1948, at dawn, they attacked the west Jerusalem village of Deir Yassin. At least one hundred Palestinians were slaughtered. The bullet-ridden corpses were buried by a platoon of seventeen-year-olds who were sent in to clean up the mess. One of the youngsters was Herbert Bentwich’s grandson, who was haunted to the end of his days by the horror he witnessed. But the State of Israel dealt with the trauma in a practical manner: in 1951 it transformed the remains of the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin into the closed psychiatric facility of Kfar Shaul.

I approach the white metal gate and ask the guard if I might enter. She refuses. So I walk along the fence, find a breach in it, and sneak in. An old Palestinian stone house is now an occupational therapy carpentry shop. Another old Palestinian stone house is an open ward. Still more Palestinian stone houses are now closed wards for those who pose a danger to themselves and others. What strikes me is the large number
of religious patients. Many of the men wear white yarmulkes and many of the women cover their heads. Though here and there a modern clinic was added, all in all, the old village is still here. It’s ironic that while most Palestinian villages were demolished, one of the few to remain is the one that is the central symbol of the Palestinian catastrophe. Its silent stone houses still tell the tale: what was here and what happened here when the Jews went mad.