Writing in the Dark

by Grossman, David

  A survey conducted over the last Jewish New Year found that the majority of the public does not believe Israel can ensure its younger generation a better future. Approximately one-quarter of the respondents said they were seriously considering emigration. Hundreds of Israelis gather at the Polish embassy in Tel Aviv every week to obtain Polish citizenship. (Think of the terrible irony—Poland!) They want foreign passports so that it will be easier for themselves and their children to move to European Union countries, possibly for work reasons but also, certainly, to hold on to an option of refuge and escape from Israel.

  Because even after fifty-six years of independent sovereignty, still the earth trembles beneath Israelis’ feet. Israel has not yet managed to establish among its citizens the sense that this place is their home. They may feel that Israel is their fortress, but still not truly their home. The State of Israel has failed to assuage in the hearts of many of its citizens the urge—so Jewish, so human and understandable—to constantly examine alternate ways of existing and possible places of refuge.

  Of course the responsibility for this condition cannot be placed solely on Israel under any circumstances. Israeli fears are not merely the result of delusions or the fruit of Israeli mistakes alone. The Middle East has never internalized Israel as an integral component, as a state that exists there by right, not by grace. The Arab states have never demonstrated tolerance or understanding of Israel’s unique situation and the unique fate of the Jewish people, and they should not be absolved of responsibility for the tragedy of the Middle East. It is no wonder, then, that Israelis’ feeling of being at home among their neighbors, in their historical homeland, is deficient.

  The lyrics of a popular Israeli song lament, “I have no other country,” and many Israelis do feel this way. Yet it seems that after almost six decades, Israelis overwhelmingly feel that they are not truly living in their own natural home, where they can be safe and unquestioned. Rather, they are still people inhabiting a territory fiercely contested by their neighbors, who may indeed have certain rights to it. Their place is still a disputed area, and not infrequently a disaster zone. It is a territory that perhaps one day, in the unforeseeable future, will become a real home and provide them with everything a home should give its dwellers.

  Imagine how difficult such a feeling is. The primary purpose of Zionism—to say nothing of the religious and spiritual aspirations to Zion during the centuries preceding political Zionism—was that Jews could return home to create one place in the world where the Jewish individual and the Jewish nation would truly feel at home. It was to be a place where they would not be treated as guests or as strangers to be tolerated, and not as parasites, but as the inhabitants and the landlords of their home. And at this state of tranquillity and security we have not yet arrived.

  I do not mean to minimize all the enormous accomplishments Israel has made. Despite an almost impossible starting point, and while fighting an endless war for existence, Israel has created a democratic regime, absorbed millions of immigrants, developed a culture, renewed a language, produced some of the most advanced agriculture in the world, established one of the strongest militaries in the world (and in a world of war, and in light of the fact that throughout most of history the Jewish people had no defense force, even a military is a source of pride), and become a leader in information technology. In short, a country with huge achievements, and more than that—huge potential, which has not yet been fully realized, partly because of the reasons I am discussing here today.

  To elaborate further on the question of feeling at home, I believe that Israelis’ confidence in the definition of “home,” and in fact in the definition of their own national identity as Israelis, will be far greater after withdrawing from the Occupied Territories and separating from the occupied Palestinian people. I would like to clarify that I do not view the Occupation as the main reason for the Arab states’ hostility toward Israel. This hostility existed before the 1967 war, when the territories that are the subject of the conflict today were occupied, and even if the Occupation ends, I do not believe the conflict will be over quickly. But ending the Occupation may begin to unravel this knot of hostility and gradually diminish the flames of historical, national, and religious enmity toward Israel, consequently disentangling some of the imbroglios within Israeli society.

  I think the severe rift in Israeli society today results partly from the fact that in the minds of most Jews in Israel, the Occupied Territories do not correspond, intellectually or emotionally, to the borders of Israeli identity. Certainly these territories are part of a religious Jew’s identity because they were included in God’s promise to Abraham. The Cave of Machpelah, where the biblical forefathers are buried, is in Hebron; Rachel’s tomb is in Bethlehem; the Ark of the Covenant was in Shiloh; and on the fields of Bethlehem, Joseph tended his father Jacob’s flock. Still it seems that the “flare” of Israeli identity, and of the authentic sense of home, for most Israelis, reaches as far as the Green Line and not beyond it. There is straightforward evidence of this: The governments of Israel have showered hundreds of millions of dollars on settlements and settlers in the past decades. What is known as the “settlement enterprise” is the largest and most wasteful national project Israel has undertaken since its inception. A massive mechanism of propaganda, enticement, and persuasion—ideological, religious, and national—was launched by all the governments of Israel, left and right, to impel Israelis to move to the Occupied Territories en masse. Scandalously excessive financial incentives were offered. But still, after almost forty years, fewer than 250,000 Israelis live in the settlements, and the vast majority of them are children who were born there. In other words, the settler population is approximately the size of one midsize city in Israel.

  Surveys and polls taken regularly over the last eleven years, since the Oslo accords, show that some 70 percent of Israelis accept the need to partition the country into two states. They may not be enthusiastic about it, but they understand that there is no other choice. Moreover, every reasonable Israeli understands that the approval of Ariel Sharon’s “disengagement” plan in the Knesset last October was tantamount to the right wing’s admitting the failure of their ideology, which held that it was possible to control all areas of the biblical “Land of Israel.” And so I say once again that the “flare” of Israeli identity today, among the majority of Israelis, reaches as far as the Green Line and no farther. Beyond this line, the nature of the blaze changes: it either cools and melts away indifferently, alienated from what is occurring there, or becomes an exaggerated frenzy, among the settlers and the various messianic Jews.

  In other words, an absurd and destructive state has emerged whereby a vast share of Israel’s national energies, financial and emotional and human assets, and political and national enthusiasm have been invested by the state’s official bodies, for almost four decades, in a territory that most Israelis do not feel belongs to them in any full, natural, or harmonious sense.

  I would like to hope that relinquishing the Territories and ending the Occupation, with all these entail, will restore most Israelis to the authentic emotions of their identity. Then, for the first time in years, perhaps since the beginning of political Zionism, since the various borders were drawn for the soon-to-be state and then for the State of Israel, there will be an overlap between the geographical borders and the borders of identity.

  This feeling is extremely elusive, and perhaps I find it difficult to put into words because it is one I have never experienced and can only dream of. It is the way a nation can feel itself, feel its identity, like a healthy body that maintains an emotional, “neural” connection to all its parts, all its areas, all its borders, after being released from the difficult conflicts, the dilemmas, and the struggles that related to its different limbs and organs, struggles that made its life such a misery that they threatened its very existence.

  There is also the immense relief we will feel once we are released from the state of occupation itself. I b
elieve that even most of the Israelis who wish to control “Greater Israel” do not want to be occupiers. They want the land, but they do not want the state of occupation, certainly not the contact with the occupied people, which arouses in any normal person—even one with extreme opinions—a sense of injustice and guilt. I have no doubt that most Israelis, even if their political views align them with the center or right, are aware of the moral dilemmas posed by the Occupation. Even if they justify the Occupation with sophisticated arguments, even if they efficiently sweep it under the rug of their awareness, they still feel the unease of the moral dilemma. They live in a continued state of conflict, not only with their enemy but also with themselves and their own values.

  Because somewhere deep inside, every person knows when he is committing or colluding with an injustice. Somewhere deep in the heart of any “reasonable person” of sound mind, there is a place where he cannot delude himself regarding his acts and their implications. The burden created by the injustice—even if it is repressed—is there, and it has effects and it has a price. And what a relief, what a feeling of repair—of tikkun, in its deepest spiritual sense—there must be in a release from the state of occupation and from the open and hidden conflicts it engenders.

  Perhaps it is pertinent to recall some of the disruptions not often mentioned when discussing the price Israel pays in its current state of occupation, with no peace and no hope for peace. There is a huge sense of missed opportunity, which is becoming increasingly widespread among those for whom Israel was a dream, those who had hoped to build a moral and just society, a society with a humanistic, spiritual vision, a society that would manage to integrate modern life with the ethics of the prophets and the finest Jewish values. I should also mention the disappointment with the fact that we, the Jews, who have always regarded power with suspicion, have become intoxicated with power ever since it was given us. Intoxicated with power and with authority, and afflicted with all the diseases that limitless power has brought to nations far stronger and more stable than Israel. Unlimited power brings unlimited authority and a virtually unhindered temptation to hurt the helpless, to exploit them economically, to humiliate them culturally, and to scorn them personally.

  I must also talk of the price of life without hope. Of the rise of a fatalistic, defeatist frame of mind that has caused many Israelis to feel that the situation will never improve, that the sword shall devour forever, and that there is some sort of “divine decree” that dooms us to kill and be killed for eternity. Fifty or sixty years ago, the new Jewish settlement movement (the yishuv) in young Israel was prepared to make any sacrifice, because it felt that its purpose was singularly just. Whereas now, for significant components in Israel, the purpose no longer seems just; at times, it is not even clear what the purpose is. This lack of meaning, this lack of faith in our leadership and its ways, slowly gnaws at the heart of the matter: at the faith in the just existence of the State of Israel. This internal loss of faith strengthens the view, among certain circles, that the entire State of Israel—not only the settlements—is an act of colonial, capitalist injustice, carried out by an apartheid regime, detached from historical, national, and cultural motives, and therefore illegitimate.

  Ending the Occupation could begin to heal some of these internal wounds. I do not believe that a decisive change will happen quickly, but even if it occurs in a generation or two, it can start to bring Israel back from the digressions it has taken from its own ethos. If this happens, there may also emerge a new possibility for the creation of a fascinating synthesis between two fundamental models of the Jewish people: on the one hand, the Jewish Israeli living in his own land, embedded in the earth and the landscapes, the rooted man whose daily reality encompasses all the contradictory layers of reality; and on the other hand, the universal, cosmopolitan Jew who aspires to fulfill a spiritual, moral mission, to be “a light unto the nations,” to be the voice of the weak and the oppressed everywhere, to represent a clear, firm value system that derives its strength from ideas, from contemplation, from ethical commitment, who sees in every person a great creation, unique and unrepeated, in the spirit of Isaiah’s prophecy and the prophecies of modern thinkers such as Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and George Steiner.

  Think for a moment of the possible merging of these two models! Think of an Israel that manages to create for itself a new, unique place in the family of nations, becoming a self-confident sovereign state whose identity, heritage, and power derive from a universal human commitment, participation in the troubles of the world, and an insistence on taking a moral stand on questions of society, policy, and economics—an Israel that offers humanitarian aid anywhere it is needed. In other words, a State of Israel that fulfills the Jewish people’s historical and moral destiny within human history.

  Sometimes a thought steals into one’s heart: What would have happened had Israel been able to emerge and live on as a unique national creation rather than, with remarkable speed, turn into a clumsy and awkward imitation of Western countries? What would have happened if Israel had made a national and social choice far more daring and far-reaching than the one in which it is currently stagnating? A choice that combined what is often called “the Jewish genius” with the loftiest universal and Jewish ideals, together with a humane economic and social system that centers on people and not on capital and competitiveness; a choice that had some unique, even genius spark—as did, for example, the kibbutz idea at its inception, before it eroded and crumbled, and as did the contributions of Judaism to many varied areas of human existence, in science and economics, in art and moral philosophy.

  I know that these ideas sound utopian, perhaps even naive. But there is a shred of utopian thought and wishful thinking in everything I have said. It is certainly possible that part of my own private healing process—perhaps not only my own—from the almost-chronic disease of the “situation” is to once again believe that it is possible to escape from the shackling, desperate day-to-day, from the great mistake that looms over our every step and gradually stifles our souls, from the cynicism that tramples every hope.

  I must also admit that I am a great believer in “acquired naïveté,” by which I mean a conscious and determined decision to be somewhat naive, precisely in a situation that is all but rotting away with sobriety and cynicism, that for years has been leading us astray. It is a naïveté that knows full well what it faces and what it contends with, but it also knows that despair creates more despair, hatred, and violence, while hope—even if it is the product of this “acquired naïveté”—may very slowly bring about the mechanisms of prospect, of faith in the possibility of change, of extricating oneself from an eternal victim mentality.

  I have mentioned the sense of identity, and of being at home, which Israelis might derive from a peace agreement. But one cannot talk of a home without mentioning its walls, the borders. In the fifty-six years of Israel’s existence, there has not been a single decade during which the country had permanent and stable borders. In 1947 an international border was established, and immediately moved as a result of the 1948 war. In 1956 the southern border was altered following the war with Egypt and the occupation of the Sinai Peninsula, and its subsequent evacuation. The Six-Day War in 1967 expanded Israel’s area fivefold, unrecognizably altering its borders to the north, east, and south. The war of 1973 and peace with Egypt in 1977 once again redrew Israel’s borders, severing it from the Sinai Peninsula. The 1982 Lebanon War brought the Israeli army deep into Lebanese territory, and essentially pushed the border a few dozen kilometers to the north for eighteen years. The Oslo accords in 1993, and peace with Jordan in 1994, changed Israel’s eastern border with Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. This eastern border is utterly breached, illusory even, because of the massive presence of settlements in the heart of the Palestinian areas.

  Incidentally, the only border that Israelis find instinctively clear and concrete is their western one—the sea. If I were to say this in Israel, everyone would nod under
standingly, although the notion may not be very politically correct. (It is interesting that the sea, the most unstable, fluid, and deceptive natural element, is the one that in our perception is the only stable border.)

  The citizens of Israel have no clear concept of a border. Living this way means living in a home where all the walls are constantly moving and open to invasion. A person whose home has no solid walls finds it very difficult to know where it “ends” and where the next home “begins.” The result of this ambiguity is that such a person’s identity is always on the defense, always “contra” to those who threaten him. This condition provokes in his neighbors a constant temptation to invade, and his own behavior is characterized by a tendency to be overly defensive—meaning aggressive. The choices he makes in moments of distress or doubt are virtually doomed to be hasty and belligerent. The lessons he is capable of learning from his own history are bound to be the most extreme, and therefore often the most simplistic, the least nuanced—lessons that often damage his perception of reality.

  In a certain sense, the State of Israel is replaying one of the most problematic anomalies of the Jewish people in the Diaspora, and the root of its tragic existence over the past two thousand years: it is a nation living among other nations, most of whom are hostile, with no clearly defined borders. This means that every contact may be experienced, by both parties, as a dangerous infiltration into sensitive, loaded identity regions.