-Caveat Lector-
Zionist incompetence
JPOST
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By Yehezkel Dror August, 21 2001
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(August 21) - The State of Israel is one of the heroic successes of
collective human endeavor to build a new future. However, it is too early to
evaluate Zionism as a success. The main danger is not a physical one, but
concerns the nature of Israel as the Jewish-Zionist state of the Jewish
people, which is on a slippery slope towards dilution and dissipation.
The demographic dynamics poses the likelihood of Jews becoming too small a
majority to maintain Israel as a Jewish-Zionist and democratic state. Parts
of the North and South of the country are abandoned to illegal takeover by
minorities. The position of Israel as the core state of Judaism is being
eroded.
The Israeli regime does not function as the state of the Jewish people,
lacking any participation of representatives of the Diaspora in Israeli
decisions of critical importance for the future of the Jewish people and
Judaism. Israeli social policies and non-policies clearly ignore basic
Jewish and Zionist values of justice and equity.
Even worse, the education system of Israel has de facto abandoned its
mission of strengthening, in pluralistic and open-ended ways, the
Jewish-Zionist selfhood of the youth, notwithstanding efforts by the present
minister of education.
These are but a few of the domains in which the Jewish-Zionist nature of
Israel as a whole is in decline. This decline, coldly looked at, is a
fascinating phenomenon, with failure built into success as a kind of irony
of history. Looked at from the hot perspective of Judaism and Zionism, the
decline is a tragedy, all the more so as, if continuing, it is likely to
lead to the decay of all of Judaism and the Jewish people.
The fundamental drivers of the decline make effective counteraction very
difficult, but not impossible.. The very nature of being a state propels
towards normalization , as against the exceptionalism of being the
Jewish-Zionist state of the Jewish people. Globalization and post-modernity
reinforce this process. Therefore, maintaining and strengthening the
Jewish-Zionist nature of Israel require counter-natural , though possible,
interventions with historic processes.
Incompetence in not understanding these processes and therefore not taking
effective measures while it was still relatively easy to do so are among the
more fateful Israeli mistakes. Israeli intellectuals are preoccupied with
issues of democracy and peace. The debate on the peace process monopolizes
public discourse. Vested interests inhibit the creative destruction
necessary to adjust Zionist ideas to new realities. Fragmentation of the
political map encourages ignoring of delicate issues. The primitive
structure of the government prevents coping simultaneously with burning
issues and long-term processes, however crucial the latter are for shaping
the future. And much more.
However, there are deeper failures at work, namely what I diagnose as a
syndrome of loss of compass, failure of nerves, creativity deficit and lack
of decisiveness, adding up to Zionist incompetence .
What is missing, first of all, is a guiding image and realistic vision,
however pluralistic and in debate, of Israel as the Jewish-Zionist state of
the Jewish people, to serve as a policy compass. This lack is largely the
result of a failure of nerves on the justifications of Zionism and the
unavoidability of some dirty hands in realizing it.
Moreover, thinkers and intellectuals are overwhelmed by global values, ideas
and opinions which oppose the particularism, exceptionalism and uniqueness
involved in being a Jewish-Zionist state of the Jewish people.
Also missing is creativity in refounding the values and meanings of Zionism
to the realities of having a state.
Even more crucial is the lack of decisiveness. Israel is moving through
crossroads into the future, leading towards becoming more of a normal or
more of a Jewish-Zionist state of the Jewish people.
At present, Israel is sliding, by mistaken policies and by default, more
into the non-Jewish-Zionist direction. This momentum can still be
redirected. But this requires that Israel, its thinkers, and governments
overcome their lack of decisiveness and choose increasingly to be unique as
the Jewish-Zionist state of the Jewish people, while also being democratic
and modern and taking part in shaping a new human world in the making.
Such a choice should be clearly presented to others, inter alia as a
normative principled response to the efforts to condemn Israel at the Durban
UN World Conference against Racism. But, the decision is primarily one by us
for ourselves and for generations to come - to choose and build our destiny,
rather than drifting into what, from the perspective of Judaism and Zionism,
may become a moral calamity.
(The writer is a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem.)
"If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candelight,
moonlight, no light.
If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls
I will write always
I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you."
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