"The countdown to the end of Israeli society has begun" -- Zionist leader

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

is assessment of the Israel and the state of the "Zionist project" is
extremely interesting, and I am not going to burden readers with my
disagreements. I think such critiques, and the deepening political and
social divisions they reflect, are an important contribution to the
fight to bring about the needed replacement of the inherently racist
and oppressive state of Israel (through whatever stages the struggle
for this proceeds) by a unitary democratic secular Palestine.

The Forward, originally the popular yiddish-language
left-social-democratic daily newspaper of the Jewish immigrant
community in the United States.   (I remember seeing it every day in
my paternal grandparents' home in the 1950s, where I read the photo
captions -- which were the only bilingual part.  My maternal
grandparents, who were Italian, got the Daily Worker. Now the Forward
has a complete English-language edition for the many "assimilados"
like myself.)  It is clear from the publication of this article that
the Forward, while it has moved to the right from its origins, has not
ended up in the neoconservative camp.
Fred Feldman


Forward     August 29, 2003

A failed Israeli society collapses while its leaders remain silent

By Avraham Burg

The Zionist revolution has always rested on two pillars: a just path
and an
ethical leadership. Neither of these is operative any longer. The
Israeli
nation today rests on a scaffolding of corruption, and on foundations
of
oppression and injustice. As such, the end of the Zionist enterprise
is
already on our doorstep. There is a real chance that ours will be the
last
Zionist generation. There may yet be a Jewish state here, but it will
be a
different sort, strange and ugly.

There is time to change course, but not much. What is needed is a new
vision
of a just society and the political will to implement it. Nor is this
merely
an internal Israeli affair. Diaspora Jews for whom Israel is a central
pillar of their identity must pay heed and speak out. If the pillar
collapses, the upper floors will come crashing down.

The opposition does not exist, and the coalition, with Arik Sharon at
its
head, claims the right to remain silent. In a nation of chatterboxes,
everyone has suddenly fallen dumb, because there's nothing left to
say. We
live in a thunderously failed reality. Yes, we have revived the Hebrew
language, created a marvelous theater and a strong national currency.
Our
Jewish minds are as sharp as ever. We are traded on the Nasdaq. But is
this
why we created a state? The Jewish people did not survive for two
millennia
in order to pioneer new weaponry, computer security programs or
anti-missile
missiles. We were supposed to be a light unto the nations. In this we
have
failed.

It turns out that the 2,000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes
down to
a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers
who
are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies. A state lacking
justice cannot survive. More and more Israelis are coming to
understand this
as they ask their children where they expect to live in 25 years.
Children
who are honest admit, to their parents' shock, that they do not know.
The
countdown to the end of Israeli society has begun.

It is very comfortable to be a Zionist in West Bank settlements such
as Beit
El and Ofra. The biblical landscape is charming. From the window you
can
gaze through the geraniums and bougainvilleas and not see the
occupation.
Traveling on the fast highway that takes you from Ramot on Jerusalem's
northern edge to Gilo on the southern edge, a 12-minute trip that
skirts
barely a half-mile west of the Palestinian roadblocks, it's hard to
comprehend the humiliating experience of the despised Arab who must
creep
for hours along the pocked, blockaded roads assigned to him. One road
for
the occupier, one road for the occupied.

This cannot work. Even if the Arabs lower their heads and swallow
their
shame and anger forever, it won't work. A structure built on human
callousness will inevitably collapse in on itself. Note this moment
well:
Zionism's superstructure is already collapsing like a cheap Jerusalem
wedding hall. Only madmen continue dancing on the top floor while the
pillars below are collapsing.

We have grown accustomed to ignoring the suffering of the women at the
roadblocks. No wonder we don't hear the cries of the abused woman
living
next door or the single mother struggling to support her children in
dignity. We don't even bother to count the women murdered by their
husbands.


Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians,
should
not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves
up in
the centers of Israeli escapism. They consign themselves to Allah in
our
places of recreation, because their own lives are torture. They spill
their
own blood in our restaurants in order to ruin our appetites, because
they
have children and parents at home who are hungry and humiliated.

We could kill a thousand ringleaders and engineers a day and nothing
will be
solved, because the leaders come up from below ? from the wells of
hatred
and anger, from the "infrastructures" of injustice and moral
corruption.

If all this were inevitable, divinely ordained and immutable, I would
be
silent. But things could be different, and so crying out is a moral
imperative.

Here is what the prime minister should say to the people:

The time for illusions is over. The time for decisions has arrived. We
love
the entire land of our forefathers and in some other time we would
have
wanted to live here alone. But that will not happen. The Arabs, too,
have
dreams and needs.

Between the Jordan and the Mediterranean there is no longer a clear
Jewish
majority. And so, fellow citizens, it is not possible to keep the
whole
thing without paying a price. We cannot keep a Palestinian majority
under an
Israeli boot and at the same time think ourselves the only democracy
in the
Middle East. There cannot be democracy without equal rights for all
who live
here, Arab as well as Jew. We cannot keep the territories and preserve
a
Jewish majority in the world's only Jewish state ? not by means that
are
humane and moral and Jewish.

Do you want the greater Land of Israel? No problem. Abandon democracy.
Let's
institute an efficient system of racial separation here, with prison
camps
and detention villages. Qalqilya Ghetto and Gulag Jenin.

Do you want a Jewish majority? No problem. Either put the Arabs on
railway
cars, buses, camels and donkeys and expel them en masse ? or separate
ourselves from them absolutely, without tricks and gimmicks. There is
no
middle path. We must remove all the settlements ? all of them ? and
draw an
internationally recognized border between the Jewish national home and
the
Palestinian national home. The Jewish Law of Return will apply only
within
our national home, and their right of return will apply only within
the
borders of the Palestinian state.

Do you want democracy? No problem. Either abandon the greater Land of
Israel, to the last settlement and outpost, or give full citizenship
and
voting rights to everyone, including Arabs. The result, of course,
will be
that those who did not want a Palestinian state alongside us will have
one
in our midst, via the ballot box.

That's what the prime minister should say to the people. He should
present
the choices forthrightly: Jewish racialism or democracy. Settlements
or hope
for both peoples. False visions of barbed wire, roadblocks and suicide
bombers, or a recognized international border between two states and a
shared capital in Jerusalem.

But there is no prime minister in Jerusalem. The disease eating away
at the
body of Zionism has already attacked the head. David Ben-Gurion
sometimes
erred, but he remained straight as an arrow. When Menachem Begin was
wrong,
nobody impugned his motives. No longer. Polls published last weekend
showed
that a majority of Israelis do not believe in the personal integrity
of the
prime minister ? yet they trust his political leadership. In other
words,
Israel's current prime minister personally embodies both halves of the
curse: suspect personal morals and open disregard for the law ?
combined
with the brutality of occupation and the trampling of any chance for
peace.
This is our nation, these its leaders. The inescapable conclusion is
that
the Zionist revolution is dead.

Why, then, is the opposition so quiet? Perhaps because it's summer, or
because they are tired, or because some would like to join the
government at
any price, even the price of participating in the sickness. But while
they
dither, the forces of good lose hope.

This is the time for clear alternatives. Anyone who declines to
present a
clear-cut position ? black or white ? is in effect collaborating in
the
decline. It is not a matter of Labor versus Likud or right versus
left, but
of right versus wrong, acceptable versus unacceptable. The law-abiding
versus the lawbreakers. What's needed is not a political replacement
for the
Sharon government but a vision of hope, an alternative to the
destruction of
Zionism and its values by the deaf, dumb and callous.

Israel's friends abroad ? Jewish and non-Jewish alike, presidents and
prime
ministers, rabbis and lay people ? should choose as well. They must
reach
out and help Israel to navigate the road map toward our national
destiny as
a light unto the nations and a society of peace, justice and equality.

Translated by J.J. Goldberg, editor of Forward.
(www.forward.com/history.html)

Avraham Burg was speaker of Israel's Knesset from 1999 to 2003 and is
a
former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. He is currently a
Labor
Party Knesset member. This essay is adapted by the author from an
article
that appeared in Yediot Aharonot.




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