by Avraham Burg
It is difficult for me to write and read these things. It is sad to think of what might have been. On that path, I reached the top of some of the loftiest hills. I had the privilege of standing in high places and seeing long distances. I can’t complain about my “career,” but I also can’t ignore some of my blind spots back then, and some inappropriate compromises I made with myself, between my politician self and the part of me that is a believer, between my progressive self and the part allied with the conservatives. The narrow crack between these two worlds was revealed to me by coincidence.
In 2002, I was sitting at home, lost in thought after one of the worst defeats I had suffered in my life—the race for leadership of the Labor Party. I had won the internal elections, and then the corrupt establishments, led by the best of the thuggish party hacks, stole the victory from my voters and me. The millimeter of Malta had grown to a meter. Those were sad days. I knew that I had to decide about my future, but I couldn’t identify the alternatives I had to choose from. I felt that something essential was changing in public life, that a deep corruption of democratic processes had been expressed in this ugly struggle. I already felt the earthquakes and saw cracks in structures that seemed eternally stable. Though I didn’t know the precise nature of the ugliness descending upon us, I knew that it was coming and I knew that it was bad. The thoughts, the soul-searching, and the turning inward for renewal went on for many days. Outwardly everything went on normally. I smiled when necessary, stung and bit when I could—business as usual. But inside everything was at a boil.
“Dad, I know why you lost,” my dear firstborn son said, suddenly slicing through my tangled threads of thought. We were both sitting at the kitchen table, eating breakfast and preparing for a day that had just begun. He was still sleepy, and I had been awake for a few hours after another restless night. He was staring at the cereal box, and I was browsing the morning paper.
“I didn’t lose,” I snapped at him without thinking.
“Who cares?” he replied, cutting through the curtains of words. “I know why.”
“So why?”
“Because you didn’t want it,” he said and left the table.
For many days, I carried around that thought in my head. His arrow pierced the center of the target, right in my forehead. How could he say I didn’t want it? I had invested so much time and energy, lost family time, and made personal concessions. I had poured so much into my career—is someone who doesn’t want it ready to pay such a price? I asked myself the most banal of rhetorical questions and in the end, I honed my answer. I had wanted, but not that. I wanted something else. And he, who came from my heart, knew me from the inside better than myself. In retrospect, it was a terrible but also wonderful moment. My boy, “my strength and first fruit of my vigor,” revealed to me the flagrant violation of my internal balance. For half of my life, until then, I had fled public service, refused it, and was hostile to it. In midlife I was swept into it out of a commitment to high and lofty values and aspirations that were entirely pure and worthy. And there I was at dawn next to my adolescent son, who told me with adolescent bluntness, “Dad, you’re not what you wanted to be, what you could have been, what you should be.”
THIS THOUGHT BECAME A PART OF MY BODY. THERE wasn’t a place where I didn’t encounter it. Everything was accompanied by the question, Do I want it? Want it enough? Really want it? Is this what I want? Is this me at all? This is a profound question that forces you to jump high over the hurdle of desire, the immediate need for achievement. To transcend the childish inability of many of us, living in the consumer era of the modern world, to delay gratification. This is the real question that activates the internal compass, time and again. At first I thought of desire as part of the ego. Yes, I had wanted strength and power “in order to have an influence and bring change,” I reassured myself. I’m no stranger to strength and I understand the importance of power. But very deep inside I wanted recognition and status. I wanted to show Mom—who never stopped telling me, “they won’t let you”—how wrong she was. And besides, what political person doesn’t need those two assets, recognition and status, as his constant companions? Slowly the meanings of this desire changed. From desire for self-gratification to another desire, more measured and much more reflective. The desire, and with it the readiness to live according to my beliefs as they are. Today I am what I am by virtue of what my eldest son, and later the rest of my children, brought out in me.
Obviously, this required me to examine deeply what those beliefs are. It’s difficult to be inside a political system and live fully according to your convictions. For thinking people, for perfectionists, politics is a kind of jail. The constant compromise, the necessary caution, the endless tradeoffs, and living at the whim of others are prison bars that are difficult to breach. When you’re inside, you’re so accustomed to the schedule, way of life, the wardens, and the menu, that it’s not clear to you at all that you’re confined. I gained these first insights in the very early stages, but I didn’t know how to decipher them.
Once, in the early 1990s, I spoke from the Knesset podium about the ideas of Yeshayahu Leibowitz. When I came down from the podium after my remarks, the plenum was almost empty except for a few of the plenum regulars. Who cares about the ideas of an annoying philosopher? One of the veteran parliament members from the Labor Party came over to me and said, “You spoke so well, well done, but what an extremist!” She was a case study of surviving in the system. A model parliamentarian, industrious and hardworking. A typical example of the perpetual Knesset member. Always in the exact middle of the center. “Not extreme right, and not extreme left.” She symbolized responsible discretion and always managed to get elected time and again, though no one knew what her real views were, as if she didn’t have any at all.
A decade later, I defended in the plenum an article I had published in the international press entitled “Zionism Is Dead.” Knesset members from the right attacked me, and I teased them joyfully. How many times in life is the Knesset agenda devoted to a polemic against your values and ideology? And again, as was customary, I stepped down from the podium expecting feedback from my colleagues. And again, one of the Labor Party Knesset members, the heir of the previous one (who finally retired at an old age) and much blunter, warned me, “With opinions like those you won’t be elected again to the Knesset.” She gave me credit, and spoke with a kind of collegial responsibility as she understood it. She too had spent many years in public service and had reached high-level positions. And her opinions were also not exactly known. Because according to the rules of our politics, the less the voters know about your opinions, the greater the chances that many will vote for you.
The high point was inside me, in the plenum of the heart. Early one morning in 2004, like every morning, I sat alone in my corner at home and wrote. In those mornings, I tried to understand, for myself, what would be the quid pro quo for which Israel would be prepared to give up its denied atomic bombs. The bombs from Dimona, which became a highly important asset during the years of existential threat to Israel, and are becoming a growing burden in the Middle East and internationally before our very eyes. At dawn I thought and wrote, testing my limits. Later the sun shone and evicted me from my desk. I went to the Knesset—my place of work at the time. I was a member of the Knesset’s constitutional committee, and with perfect timing the topic on the committee’s agenda was “the terms of release of Mordechai Vanunu.” Vanunu is a former nuclear technician and peace activist who was accused of exposing the details of Israel’s nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986 and was ultimately convicted and sentenced to eighteen years in prison. Near his release date in 2004, members of the security and intelligence establishment presented members of the committee with the terms under which “the atomic spy” would be released. It wasn’t the first time, nor the last, when I found it hard to escape the feeling that these people don’t really understand what law is, what punishment is, and what they can and cannot do
. Apparently, a country without defined and recognized borders cultivates such people, without inhibitions or limits, and makes them responsible for guarding its non-borders. As they spoke about the draconian, Soviet-like conditions they planned to impose on Vanunu as he returned to civilian life after serving his full sentence, I was stewing in my thoughts.
The truth is, I had to admit to myself, Vanunu and I wanted the same thing, at least in theory. A Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction. I think about it as a fairly patriotic political intellectual, and he was involved in real treason, for which he was convicted and sent to prison. A genuine division on the surface—but at bottom, no difference. Like in many cases in my life, the opposites meet at their roots. Then came the operative thought: can I say this here, in the committee room? Should I share my ruminations with my colleagues and cause them to think differently? And the obvious answer was—no. Don’t you dare, I warned myself in silence. It was doubtful that I would have been able to explain myself, doubtful if they would be able to understand me or the content of my remarks. One thing was clear—the angry shouts would cut me off before I would be able to express the logical sequence of my position. So, I kept quiet. Because in the open prison that is called Israeli public politics there is no room for such thoughts. And perhaps there is no room for free thinking at all. That was the moment in which I effectively began making my way out of the political system. I understood that I can’t write, represent, and express my convictions and still be a member of such a party and the kind of parliament we have today. I wasn’t yet familiar with the areas outside formal politics. I felt that I didn’t belong anymore, without knowing where I would next find a better way to express myself and have an influence.
And maybe it’s deeper. Political life in Israel is one of the most intense in the world, both regarding the issues on one’s agenda as a public figure, and because of the complete lack of personal intimacy in the Israeli public domain. The issues often touch upon life and death, war and peace. And even if they don’t, we make them that way with our utterances: “I’m willing to kill myself for this”; “Death to the leftists”; “It is good to die for our country”; “You can’t capture the mountain without a grave on the slope”; and “A good Arab is a dead Arab.” These are common expressions here, because death is a companion even in our verbal distraction. Not only wars but also traffic accidents, not only security but also cases of profound neglect, with the resulting constant Israeli wait for a tragedy.
Sometimes I can’t help feeling that only when the most terrible thing happens do we experience momentary calm. Then comes the great despair that always accompanies such a human event, and with it the start of the countdowns and wait for the next shattering upheaval. There’s not a moment to stop, think, ponder, plan. All of life is a long series of continuous tactics, and the accumulation of local tactics creates the illusion of strategy. But real planning, long-term sustainability, does not exist here at all, not even in the prime minister’s office, as someone reported to me.
During all my years as a member of parliament (1988–2004), Ariel Sharon served in the Israeli parliament as well. During those years, I never said hello to him, and he never even so much as gave me a nod. I considered him a war criminal. He probably viewed me and my comrades as people who had mortally harmed his political career and maliciously sabotaged our national strategy, the new order he wanted to impose on the Middle East. In the midst of my term as Knesset speaker, in 2001, he was elected prime minister. “Avrum,” my good friend Reuven Rivlin told me, “you can’t be Speaker of the Knesset and not talk to the prime minister, you must meet him.” After many years of political frost, we met. He was warm and friendly and made a great effort to open up to me, at least during the meeting. I asked him to tell me about his political outlook.
“I believe in the Lego system,” he surprised me.
“Meaning?”
“I learn from my grandchildren; all their Lego pieces are collected in a big box. They’re always missing some small piece, a shmichik, that can’t be found. So, they dig and rummage and search, and this tiny piece defiantly remains hidden. Do you know what they do then? They throw all the Lego pieces in the air, everything scatters, and suddenly the piece is found. I believe in the politics of Lego. When everything is stuck, sometimes you have to throw everything up in the air and hope that the longed-for piece will be found.”
In the war in Lebanon, I had been Sharon’s shmichik. He threw me and my comrades up to the sky as he tried to construct an illusory tower in the image of his sick, megalomaniacal dreams. After eighteen years, that war was concluded with a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. We left behind us a trail of 1,200 Israelis killed, and 18,000 dead on the Arab sides that were involved—some of them innocent civilians. We had all become the price of the deception and thuggery. Human fragments scattered on the floor of history like so many game pieces in the hands of an evil player. And one more price in addition to all these—the young and promising agreement with Egypt was dealt a mortal blow and turned from warm potential into a cold peace.
Arik Sharon of the first war in Lebanon in the 1980s was the model of a total politician who did not take into any consideration other positions, criticism, or necessary public agreement. A complete contrast with the outlook of Levi Eshkol—the Israeli prime minister from 1963 to 1969, whom I loved and respected, who characterized his path this way: “I compromise and compromise and compromise, until my position is accepted.”
I don’t know if Sharon really changed over the years. I definitely went through a transformation. From a harsh and caustic protest leader, I grew much more moderate. I persuaded myself that in the Knesset—or, more precisely, in a society with such powerful currents as Israel—there’s no place for absolute positions. So, I too became a good swimmer in the middle of the current. I was as official and representative as I could be, and I avoided as much as possible expressing my views accurately and in full. Until one day I read a quote from Malcolm Muggeridge: “Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.” I had never felt so lifeless as I did in that moment.
WHEN THE WALLS COMPLETELY CLOSED IN ON ME, TO the point of suffocation, I embarked, in late 2001, on a personal journey on the Appalachian Trail, the over 2,000-mile-long hiking trail that requires half a year of constant walking to cross the United States from Georgia to Maine. I was swallowed up in it. I walked on foot with a backpack, sleeping bag, and a little food. Few people, with no Jews. Just me and Creation. After a few days, you completely lose your sense of direction. Kilometers upon kilometers of ferns, trees, and creeks. A “green desert” that very much dulls thought, blurs detail, and compels you to stick with generalizations and the big patches of color. When I came off the trail, after several weeks, only one statement resounded in me, an imprecise patch of understanding that with time became an insight: “Avrum, your rhythm is off.” For many months, years, this statement still echoed inside me.
In the meantime, my term as Knesset speaker was up in 2003, and I returned to the back benches of the opposition, as effective, active, and loud as before. My status in public life had changed, but that flashing light refused to die out and fall silent. On one of the Sabbaths during my parliamentary term, I went out for a run as usual, but I couldn’t control my thoughts or discipline my consciousness. The thoughts ran amok in my head, playing by their own rules. And all those thoughts had to say to me was, “The rhythm is really off! You don’t want to run five or six kilometers anymore, you want to run marathons. You’ve had enough of the quick, confused, instant gratifications of rewarding politics. You want to work for the slow and distant bigger meaning: reorienting Israeli society and its communities. You don’t want to express yourself anymore in a minute-long speech in the plenum or in a hundred-word press release. You want to write books that will contain your searches for your ideas and outlooks.”
When I understood that, and the two lies I had told myself and my constituents, I couldn’t stay there f
or even one more minute. I decided to live and express my internal self externally as well, and my career came to a screeching, sudden halt. Barely a week later, those words—“your rhythm is off”—took practical form and pierced the threshold of my consciousness: I left the Knesset. Because the time had come. I moved from the plenum and the committees to writing, reading, and social activism.
LEARNING
CHAPTER SEVEN
RUNNING AND WRITING WITH A KIPPAH
BOOKS HAVE BEEN MY COMPANIONS FOR AS LONG AS I can remember. Adventure books and biblical philosophy, theology and politics. My library is an eclectic collection of thousands of books. From the old Jewish texts through the classics of world and Hebrew literature to the complex suspense thrillers of Jo Nesbø and John Le Carré. Hidden among them are all kinds of finds from used bookstores. Old articles by leaders of the Jewish community in pre-state Palestine, whose leadership has long expired, works by long-forgotten writers, original publications from the days that we were the people of the book and read books, items found in trash cans before they were to be collected by the big green garbage truck.
My library is a constant free association. A kaleidoscope that always surprises me anew. I had looked for Eli Amir on Iraqi Jewry and found Yehoyada Amir on Franz Rosenzweig. Staring at the poetry shelf in search of a nice passage from Wisława Szymborska, I was suddenly greeted with open arms by Hannah Arendt with The Jewish Writings. So it goes every day. In our home the difference between a young scholar studying a Talmud problem and an uneducated person was diagnosed thus: “The young scholar sits down to study. The uneducated person comes for bargains,” or metzies, as my father would say with his clever Yiddishist smile. In my library I am a wandering bargain-hunter, like the early risers who go down to the beach with metal detectors. I never despair of finding the treasure that may not be there at all, or that someone has lost and given up on, and was meant just for me. A find.
