December 31st, 2023 - 11th Report: Patriots

 

December 31st, 2023

Dear family and friends,

Report number 11: patriots

 

The idea that evil comes in shades has always seemed right to me. Dante’s seven circles of hell make sense even 700 years later, in a world that doubts the existence of eternal hell. Even the worst forms of evil, killing innocents or irreparably scaring souls, come in grades. Yet evil is always part of the human condition. Implacable and intractable, ruthless and remorseless. Sometimes it can be mitigated or eroded by better conditions or forgiveness, and prevented by understanding and defanging root causes. Sometimes, the only way is to confront and defeat it.

Or survive it. Or succumb to it. As its perpetrators, or its victims.

There’s enough evil for all sides around here these days. Some is more heinous than others, if that makes anyone feel better.

I just read Zalman Aran’s memoires. There isn’t one Israeli from a hundred who remembers him, but in his day (1899-1970) he was one of Israel’s most influential ministers of education. He really made a difference, though not everyone liked his policies.

He wrote his memoirs in the year between retiring and dying. Interesting, he only wrote about his  first 27 years, from early childhood until his arrival in Mandatory Palestine in 1926. Born on the outskirts of Bakhmut, (that Bakhmut), he survived his first pogrom at age four, and many before he was eight. Ten years later he survived the mass pogroms of the Russian civil war, when anywhere between 70-250,000 Jews were murdered. Perhaps the worst pogroms in Jewish history, erased from memory by the Shoah a generation later. The tone of his writing is sparse and matter of fact, but I lost track of the number of times when his violent death was the most obvious outcome. He was hanged, thrown from a moving train, and once spent a night wedged under a house full of Cossacks intent on killing Jews.

His politics grew from his experiences. “We were Zionists because we were Jews, and socialists because we wished to be fair”. His politics were dovish. My interest in him stems from his positions in the Cabinet discussions of 1967-69, when he disagreed with most of his colleagues and tried to limit Israel’s policies of occupation. In spite of his circumstances, he strove to improve the world, and not to be evil.

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These are days of heightened patriotism in Israel. There’s the jingoist sort which I’ve already alluded to, but there are also laudable expressions of patriotism, and none more important than being part of something larger than ourselves. The unhesitating commitment to saving strangers from evil on October 7^th, even at the cost of one’s own life. Still doing it, three months later. Parents of small children biting their lips and carrying on for months while their spouses are mobilized. Participating in the national effort, so that it survives and thrives. Even the simplest things, such as commiserating in solidarity with strangers about how we’re going to pull through together, as a community, because that’s who we are.

The other day President Isaack Herzog gave one of his speeches, reminding and motivating us to preserve this communal fellowship – which tells you that he’s got some doubts that we will. I’ve known Herzog for more than 20 years, and like him. Since his election to the largely ceremonial post of Head of State I’ve had far too many occasions to send him my support for his efforts to remind us that, contrary to our burning sentiments, we actually have much in common that’s worth preserving, even as our political strife has been tearing us apart. For a moment in October this message was so overwhelmingly obvious that we didn’t need him to remind us, and I think we all still agree – but less and less, as we slip out of the initial shock, and creep back towards our differences.

So here’s an attempt to describe our varying conceptions of what our patriotism means.

It’s Home: This is probably the most pervasive sort of patriotism. For all its many creaks cranks and cracks, this is where we feel at home. The smells and sounds. The heat. The crowds. The directness, as in the Arabic word “dugri” which epitomizes Israelis. It means saying what we think, without filters. “You’re wrong, and you’re an idiot”. When Israelis speak to one another they leave no room for doubts. You always know where you stand. And “chevre”, which is sort of like the Aussie term “mate” only more so (because of the dugri part). And irreverence as a fundamental world-view. And of course, Hebrew. And our common warped sense of humor. And until recently, the national past-time of loudly arguing about politics, before that became too radioactive. Family. Friends, and life-long friendships, sometimes between people who don’t obviously fit together. I’m on a very active WhatsApp list of men my age who were together in the army 45 years ago. We pretend our bond is rooted in our common interest in tanks, but honestly, who cares about tanks at our age?

A related strand is pride in our successes. Start-up nation. Booming economy. Occasional Nobel Prizes. World-class health system. (Mostly). First nation to be inoculated against Covid. Second to last place in international soccer championships. Israeli trekkers on every single mountain in the world.

The It’s Home patriotism is the broadest of all, and over the past 25 years has come to include most of Israel’s Arab citizens. We kvetch endlessly about our country, and are committed to it until death. Most of us know, most of the time, that most of us care, as we do, about this crazy country and strive for its best. Even those of us with far-fetched agendas and strange ideas, they also are truly patriots. (Though misguided).

It’s Jewish: Put simply, this is the only place where Jews are a majority. Where they don’t spend the first minute of a conversation with someone new wondering if they’re also Jewish, or if they know that we are. And do they care. There are complex strands to this sort of patriotism, and they focus on the definition of Jewish and what it’s for, and I’ll get to them, but this top-tier Jewish patriotism isn’t complex, and is mostly benign. “They tried to kill us, we came here, let’s eat with the family and friends and crack insider jokes”. Fania Oz once wrote about a group of young secular Israelis sharing a meal with two similarly-aged Germans. “Pass the baguettes. Do you think they had baguettes in the ghetto?” (bagetim bageto) – and the confusion of the German guests, and the nonchalant laughs of the Israelis.

From here down, the types of Israeli patriotism are narrower, and lack consensus.

Us Against Them: 50 or 60 years ago there was a popular ditty that went “The entire world is against us, don’t worry we’ll be fine”. 40 years ago there was another one: “We survived Pharaoh, we’ll survive this, too”. The songwriter, Meir Ariel, died young a few years later, but the song lives on. Sometimes this is a background sort of patriotism; These days, it’s front and center with a vengeance. There’s nothing light about it, nothing to banter about. From the bestial rapists and murderers of Hamas to the useful idiots on American campuses, the world is against us and we’re going to smash them. We’re going to kill as many Palestinians as it takes to beat their collective into the ground. Remember Winston Churchill in July 1941:

If tonight the people of London were asked to cast their vote whether a convention should be entered into to stop the bombing of all cities…the people of London with one voice would say to Hitler: ‘You have committed every crime under the sun. Where you have been the least resisted there you have been the most brutal…. We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst—and we will do our best.`

That’s the state of mind of most Israelis these days. In order for there to be a viable Israel, Hamas must be destroyed, and if two million Palestinians need to be made homeless and hungry, so be it. Hopefully the rest of the Palestinians, and everyone else in the neighborhood, is paying close attention.

It’s an ugly mood, but it’s human. It’s also temporary, or at least I hope so. There are millions of Israelis who normally wouldn’t talk this way but now do; their memories of these times will not disappear, not in 50 years, but the urgency of meting out violence will. In months, or a year, or two. Until then, make no mistake: these sentiments are shared from the right end of the political spectrum well into the left.

On the far right, however, there’s a group for whom doing some degree of violence against Palestinians is the center of their patriotism. Their political leader is 47-year-old Itamar Ben-Gvir of the “Jewish Power” party (a better translation would be Jewish Brawn). Ben-Gvir is a sophisticated disciple of the racist Rabbi Meir Kahana. Since the 1980s we’ve had a law that prohibits racists from running for elected office, and Ben-Gvir has figured out how to sail as close to the wind as possible without stalling. He used to have a mere 50-70,000 voters, but a few years back Netanyahu gave him a major boost, so as not to waste any votes on the political right. Nowadays Ben-Gvir’s charisma and malevolent policies give him 5-6% of the votes in the polls. In reality, his ideas have more appeal than that, since parts of Likud and some of its voters agree with him. No less than 10% of Israelis, and perhaps more, agree that the only way for Israel to thrive is by killing some Palestinians and perpetually brow-beating the rest.

The Us Against Them camp is actually two: the very broad camp is motivated by fear. The purpose of Israel is to protect us. The narrow one, by contempt: the purpose of Israel is to ensure our dominance.

The Messiah Will Live in a Settlement: If you believe in liberal democracy and eventual potential peace with the Palestinians, the messianic settlers are the most dangerous group in Israel. They’re currently led by 43-year-old Bezalel Smotrich, who may be the second most intelligent and canny Israeli politician after Netanyahu; unlike Netanyahu whose sole motivation is power, Smotrich is an idealist. He’s the product of the messianic strand of Modern Orthodoxy that was invented about 60 years ago by Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook and his students. The way they see it, after centuries of not intervening in history, in the 20^th century God set in motion the process of Redemption. His intention is that sometime soon Israel will become his Holy People in the Holy Land, living according to his Holy Torah. The Palestinians, if they stubbornly insist on not moving elsewhere, will be well-treated second-class citizens, so long as they behave. If they don’t behave, they’ll be killed or cowed into behaving. Smotrich expounded on this in a long article he published in 2017, which is still online. He’s proud of it.

For his camp, the purpose of Israel is to bring their version of the Messiah. Since they tend to be highly educated – at least in the fields that interest them – they’re an elite. A generation ago they decided they needed the power of an elite, and purposefully sent their sons into the ranks of the combat career officers of the IDF, where they’re now over-represented up to the ranks of division commanders. They’re also over-represented in parts of the media, civil service, and parts of the legal establishment – including on the Supreme Court. They regard the current war as a culmination of their efforts. They’re over-represented among the casualties, and there are indications their ideas have permeated the ethos of the military, though I state this more as a question than as a certainty.

To their credit, the more numerous ultraorthodox think this messianism is nonsense, as do secular Israelis. Smotrich is currently polling at about 3-3.5%, which is crucial because the cutoff for getting into the Knesset is 3.25%.  Yet there’s a messianic settler strand in the Likud, and some of them are Ben-Gvir voters. In the current Knesset Smotrich has seven MKs from 120. Their hard-core believers aren’t more than 5% of the voters, but there are another 5-10% who like them and support them some of the time. Since Netanyahu can’t survive the week without them, their political power is tremendous.

Chunks of both Ben-Gvir’s followers and Smotrich’s are demanding the Israeli settlements of Gaza, which were dismantled in 2005, now be re-built. They won’t, because 90% of Israelis think that’s sheer idiocy, but never underestimate charismatic and intelligent lunatics who understand politics.

I’m going to skip the Ultra-orthodox (Haredim) and Israeli Arabs, because both camps are sitting out the war, for different reasons. Which leaves us with the political left, and the center.

The Patriotic Peacenicks: Israel’s left has been dead for 23 years. When the Palestinians responded to Ehud Barak’s peace proposals of July 2000 with widespread violence in September, they knocked the bottom out of Israel’s peace camp, and it never revived. You can still find remnants of them on the pages of Haaretz, in parts of academia, scattered about Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem; some of the murdered Kibbutzniks of October 7^th were peace activists.  Their party, Meretz, isn’t even in the Knesset, though the polls say it will scrape in next time. Their most important political trait is that they don’t have the faintest idea – nor perhaps the will – to wield political power. If there are 5% of Israelis who are hard-core settlers, there may be 3-4% peaceniks. But the settlers wield power with passion and vehemence. The peaceniks bemoan their uselessness.

The liberal democrats: This is probably the largest group of Israeli patriots, and no one knew they existed until a year ago; since the beginning of the war they’ve gone dormant again. These are the people who think Israel’s purpose is to create a forward-looking open society based on the principles of the Enlightenment, tolerance, rationalism, and the practice of democracy in its contemporary form. Similar to the mainstream of Western Europe democracies, without the supra-national layers of the EU, but with a strong national patriotism. Similar to mainstream America, before the US went off a cliff and descended into social and political partisan warfare.

These are the Israelis who astonished themselves and everyone else in January 2023, when they realized their government was motivated by hostility to them, and they took to the streets in their hundreds of thousands to defend their country and remained there for nine months without respite. There are sprinklings of Arabs and Haredi among them; there’s a small but noticeable group of modern orthodox and even settlers in their ranks. Mostly, however, they’re secular, they tend to be better educated than the national mean, and politically they feel at home from the secular right all the way towards the peaceniks. On the continuum of wielding power, they’ve mostly been absent for decades, but unlike the useless peaceniks, the liberal democrats have mostly been distracted and otherwise engaged. They can live with a peaceful Palestinian state, but since 2000 they don’t think it’s likely, and have turned their attention elsewhere. The booming economy? Startup Nation? The world-class health system? High-class academia? That’s them. The military? The civil service? Government in general? That’s not them.

I’ve been skirting the story of the protests of 2023 since the beginning of this series , though it’s a gigantic and important tale. I’ll carry on skirting it now. But I’ll close this report with a speculation, or uncertainty, about the near future. There’s a degree of overlap between the liberal democrats and the broad camp of us against them which I described above. In the coming month or two we’re going to learn the answer to what’s yet an open question: Which is the stronger theme? The fear of the Palestinians, or the determination to expunge Netanyahu’s government and all it stands for. If commitment to liberal democracy, there’s an unprecedented tsunami of protest approaching. If fear of the Palestinians, we’ve got a very long slog ahead of us.

Yaacov