A Life To Live...

by Israel Kipen

  Altogether, I spent two weeks in Israel. During that time, I had experienced spiritual elevation, emotional excitement and national pride, as well as certain disappointments. Despite my Bialystok origins and command of the language which, theoretically, should have made me fit in with ease, I unexpectedly felt insufficiently attuned with Israeli culture. Perhaps my preceding fourteen years in Australia had their impact, or I was in a state of mind that was not accommodating.

  I left Israel for Athens and then travelled on to Italy. I had time to relax and enjoy visiting the treasure-houses of antiquity there. From there, I went to England on business matters, and then to the United States. It was there, in the U.S., while I was dining at the Park Avenue building of the Jewish Agency with Dr Emanuel Newman, the acknowledged leader of American Zionism, that which had been nebulous in my state of mind crystallised. I was relating to him my impressions of Israel when, without premeditation, I put a question to him. “Dr Newman,” I said, “how long can a one-sided love affair last?” I was startled by my own formulation of the question which, till then, I had not consciously articulated even to myself, but which had patently troubled me. He could not afford to comment. He did not know me sufficiently well to share his private thoughts on a subject that was, at the time, too exquisitely sensitive. We talked around it fully enough, however, for him to realise that my observations of Israeli reality and the extent to which it affected Zionism worldwide were not superficial.

  The political realities in the Middle East, Nasser’s intransigence, and his skilful game of playing off the West against the East to further his pan-Arabic and anti-Israel designs kept world attention focussed upon this part of the globe. The slow but unmistakable Russian penetration into the region, their construction of the Aswan Dam and their involvement in training, equipping and directing the Egyptian army became more ominous with each passing month. The apprehension amongst world Jewry about the fate of Israel in the wake of these circumstances continued to increase, leading to a concomitant strengthening of its commitment to the nation, expressed primarily through enhanced financial contributions. Nasser’s closure of the Straits of Tiran which aimed further to strangle Israel economically led to the 1967 Six Day War which wrote a new chapter into the history of warfare for nations large and small alike, as military academies the world over were to study the tactics and results of the campaign. More than this, however, the unprecedented swiftness of the operation, the totality of the destruction of the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian forces, and the occupation of the West Bank, the Sinai and the Golan Heights wrought a marked change in outlook both in Israel and among world Jewry beyond. What the war conveyed was the internal cohesiveness of Israeli society, the strength of its army, and the permanence of the Jewish nation as a geographical and political reality in the Middle East. It was also a turning point for Jews everywhere in that many who had long been mere observers, keeping their distance, became converted into active participants sharing both in the struggles of the reborn State and in the relief and euphoria that had attended Israel’s triumph.

  In this context, the Six Day War could not have come at a more auspicious time. The State of Israel had by then been in existence for nineteen years. The first impact of the modern-day re-establishment of the Jewish commonwealth had begun to be taken for granted. What was needed was some extraordinary event that would galvanise anew Jewish communities around the world to maintain their support for the State. The 1967 war succeeded in achieving this. Still more powerfully and profoundly did the ensuing liberation and unification of Jerusalem affect world Jewry. The return of the Old City to Jewish hands, permitting Jews to pray again at the Wailing Wall and Jewish tourists to lodge their deepest wishes on paper deposited in its crevices, had an unimaginable effect. It was tangible proof both of national liberation and of spiritual redemption and made all recognise the incontrovertible nexus that existed between the State of Israel and all Jewish communities large and small around the globe.

  It may be stated here that, in another sense, the Six Day War, having exceeded all expectations, the nation’s success was, in time, to prove to a degree counter-productive. Three successive victories against all odds could well intoxicate far stronger and larger nations than Israel. And Israel, too, began to believe in its own invincibility. This belief affected the individual citizen as it did the leadership, thereby affecting the government’s political judgement.

  The effect of these events on Jewry everywhere was profound. The stronger the identification of each Jew with Israel became, the more did the distinction between the Zionist organisation and the general community fade. When one compares the Zionist organisations in Germany of the 1920s which were a miniscule minority by contrast with the Jewish Centralvereins representing 90% of German Jewry, or Zionism in 1930s Poland fighting political battles against the Bund and the Aguda, or the Zionist countering of assimilationist tendencies in England and France before World War II, one may then appreciate the significance of this rapprochement between Zionism and the general temper in the Diaspora after 1967. The scales had tipped radically away from that which had pertained before. It is safe to say that Israel could claim the support of some 80-90% of the world’s Jews. This increased support of the Jewish State did not necessarily lead to a larger membership of the local Zionist organisations. The people knew where their sympathies lay and were content in that knowledge. Against these, there were the perennially inevitable few – in the main, assimilationists – who remained unmoved by events, or righteously stubborn in their doggedly-held contrary positions, no matter how refuted by reality.

  The years succeeding the Six Day War were times of internationally enhanced Jewish consciousness. In Australia, this expressed itself in the strengthening of organised Jewish life, in the proliferation of Jewish day-schools, and in the conscious effort by young Jewish parents to imbue their children with an awareness of their Jewish identity, culture and religion.

  Contributing to the enhancement of the individual Jew’s physical and mental identification with Israel has been the growth of international travel. Many people made Israel their sole destination; others included Israel in their itinerary. Such first-hand observation had its pitfalls no less than its positive aspects. Clearly, Israeli society was then a long way from solving its enormous social problems, and it is virtually human nature for the transitory visitor to notice those elements needing rectification than the day-to-day achievements so patently taken for granted. On balance, however, tourism has served to bring Israel and Diaspora closer in mutual understanding while contributing to the State’s economy.

  Diaspora identification with Israel, while positive, has not been without its traumas. For, just as the 1967 War roused world Jewry to enthusiasm, the Yom Kippur war of 1973, despite its ultimate success, left it with an unmistakable anxiety and despondency over the State’s vulnerability. The mental and emotional scare attending the early days of the war created a scar on the hitherto unblemished image of Israel’s might, not eradicated by the outstanding military prowess subsequently shown by the Israeli Army in wholly encircling and isolating the Egyptian Third Army. Where the 1967 War had stirred euphoria, the 1973 War was followed by gloom, and both Israel and Diaspora shared in them.

  One early respite from the post-1973 gloom was the Entebbe affair, in which the Israeli air force rescued a plane-load of Jews held hostage in Idi Amin’s Uganda. The event injected a dose of badly-needed self-reliance into Jewry, it enhanced the standing of Israel’s leadership, then in the hands of Yitzchak Rabin, and restored faith in the armed forces. In addition, it taught the world how to deal with self-appointed tyrants of Idi Amin’s ilk, and showed authorities elsewhere how one might deal with airways piracy, terror and blackmail.

  This respite was, however, temporary. The government itself had become subject to the same weaknesses and problems that beset the country at large; and, almost inevitably, one of the most direct consequences of the Yom Kippur War and the changed mood of the nation
was the accession of the opposition parties to government after 29 years of uninterrupted Labor rule.

  Another boost to the temper of the Jewish world was the visit of President Anwar Sadat of Egypt to Israel, then governed by Menachem Begin and his Likud Coalition, this being followed by negotiations culminating in the Camp David Accord of 1978. Israel and world Jewry alike hoped that events in the Middle East as a whole had turned a corner and that some accommodation between Israel and the other Arab nations could be reached. These hopes were roundly dashed with the total isolation of Egypt by the rest of the Arab world and with the assassination of President Sadat.

  With the increasing hold on Lebanon by the Palestine Liberation Organisation and that group’s increasing harassment of Jewish settlements in Israel’s north, the Israeli army, on the directive of Ariel (Arik) Sharon, mounted an invasion on its northern neighbour. Where Sharon, as the man who in 1973 had led the Israeli units across the Suez towards eventual victory, had been deemed a hero, the same Sharon, as Minister of Defence, embarked on an adventure that turned out to be an unmitigated disaster politically, financially, and in terms of human cost, diplomacy and public opinion. Israel’s continued practice of an open society in war as in peace proved an ill-affordable luxury such as few nations permit themselves in states of war. Israel made the mistake of letting world correspondents and cameramen accompany its forces and file eye-witness reports. The Western press, with few exceptions, was by then anti-Israel, and newscasts and film footage were presented with undisguised political bias with the intent of creating a picture of callous Israeli indifference to suffering. The massacre of Moslems in the Sabra and Shatila camps by Christian Arabs was blamed squarely on the Israelis and further inflamed world opinion. Those same visual telecasts were not without their effect on Jews as well.

  After three years, the Israeli troops withdrew from Lebanon. Within the country, the invasion was roundly seen as a failure, and voices were loud in demanding an investigation into the origins and decision-making processes that led to it. For, while Israel had managed to administer a hard blow to the PLO infrastructure inside Lebanon, forcing the Palestinians’ evacuation in humiliation and defeat, it found itself in confrontation with the majority indigenous Shi’ite Arab population in place of the PLO.

  The condition of the nation after the Lebanon invasion was, and presently remains, one of political polarisation, manifested in parliament by a compromise arrangement of alternating leadership by the leaders of Likud and Labor joined in an uneasy coalition. The arrangement is precarious, while below the surface, Israeli society, too, is ominously and unpredictably cleaved. The nation’s economy, one of the casualties of the prolonged Lebanese invasion and occupation, does not permit society the luxury of internecine rifts. Internally, tension is high and simmers near to boiling-point. Whatever the mood in Israel, the Diaspora has closed ranks behind the State. Aside from personal feelings about the invasion and the personality of Arik Sharon and his claim to the leadership of Herut, world Jewry has remained silent and officially uninvolved in the country’s internal ferment. It is a sign of the maturity of world Jewry that it keeps its opinions to itself, even as it watches the political, economic and social developments of Israel and of the whole Middle East in every aspect touching upon the prospects of peace in the region. There was a time when the Diaspora was inclined to render advice to the leaders of the fledgling State, even if such advice was unsolicited. That time has passed. Israel’s political decisions are today perceived as being solely the prerogative of its citizens. Zionist congresses, too, recognise this, and, when they meet, do not deal with matters relating to the management of the State and to its policies, but with matters of information, education, aliyah and Zionist ideology in the many and separate Diaspora communities.

  The United Israel Appeal, which has for the past twenty years functioned independently, is not part of the Zionist Organization, even if it partakes in its activities. Looking back at the evolution of the United Israel Appeal and its fortunes, one is struck by the irrelevance of so many of the issues which, a generation ago, were the subjects of so much passionate debate, heartache and divisiveness. What happened to the Appeal in the United States in the ‘fifties and in Australia a decade later was based on a precedent set in the mid-’twenties. The Keren Hayesod was established in 1920 as the financial arm of the World Zionist Organization to facilitate the development of Jewish autonomous life in Palestine by financing the yishuv’s economic infrastructure in keeping with its requirements. This was the second national fund, the first being the Keren Kayemet Le’Israel (Jewish National Fund) which was concerned with the purchase of land and its preparation for agriculture. In the late ‘twenties in Germany, where the overwhelming majority of Jewry at that time was anti-Zionist, yet was the Keren Hayesod, under the skilful chairmanship of the banker Oscar Wasserman, keeping itself scrupulously independent of Zionist control (D.L. Niewyk: “The Jews in Weimar Germany”). The subsequent expansion of the Jewish Agency was prompted by the same wish to involve larger numbers of world Jewry in the building of the yishuv. In the early years of statehood, the United Israel Appeal was a major contributor of income and foreign currency to the fledgling State’s economy. The Jewish Agency could then ease the government’s burden in matters such as housing and education, leaving to it to deal more exclusively with matters that pertained predominantly to the State. The political power of the Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency was commensurate with the financial role each played in assisting the State. As, with the passage of time, State budgets grew and United Israel Appeal contributions remained relatively static, the proportion of these progressively diminished to represent today a mere 2-3% of total government outlays. Therefore the United Israel Appeal is in no position to continue to exercise its earlier political clout. With its contribution falling relative to the expansion of Israel’s budget, the Keren Hayesod can at best adapt itself to such projects as it deems urgent and fall within its financial capabilities. The major activity which currently involves the contributions and energies of Australian Jews is “Project Renewal”, the upgrading of housing for the less privileged strata of Israel’s population. The person most firmly identified with the work of the Keren Hayesod in Australia for the past 20 years has been Isador Magid, currently a member of the Executive of the Jewish Agency and the Chairman of the Immigration Department of the World Zionist Organization.

  The true problems of post-State Zionism are neither organisational nor related to matters of influence. It is one of the ironies of history that the ideological vindication of Zionism and its practical realisation through the establishment of the Jewish State actually brought about a new philosophical and ideological crisis.

  The original idea of Zionism – which propounded the principle of physical national statehood, as distinct from a purely religious construct – had two cardinal proponents. Theodore Herzl, regarded as the father of political Zionism, saw in the establishment of an independent Jewish state, preferably in ancient Palestine, the panacea for the problems and sufferings endured by the Jews through their long history of statelessness and wanderings. He assumed that statehood would both lead to an ingathering of Jews from the Diaspora and also bring about an end to anti-Semitism. His vision was thus a materialistic and political conceptualisation of Jewish rebirth which would in time be followed by a wide-ranging national intellectual, artistic, spiritual renaissance.

  Parallel with Herd’s program, there evolved a different thesis of Zionism, this being propounded by the Hebrew writer-philosopher Asher Ginsberg, known as Ahad Ha’am. His concern was with the nation’s mind and spirit, especially in Eastern Europe where the Jewish masses predominantly lived. He questioned Herzl’s assumption that the trappings of statehood would suffice to cleanse the Jewish mentality of two millennia of oppression and subjugation. To him, statehood alone was not the be-all-and-end-all in solving the Jewish problem. His concern was the nature of the new society that would emerge in the ancient l
and, actual statecraft being, to him, secondary to the moral and spiritual values which were to underpin such a state. He further questioned Herzl’s basic assumption that the existence of a Jewish state would, ipso facto, lead to a return of Diaspora Jewry to its ancient homeland and thereby resolve all difficulties that had plagued Jewry for so long. Indeed, he deemed Herzl’s expectation of such a mass return as unrealistic, arguing that if the new proposed autonomous entity would attract a number equal to only the annual natural increase of the 12 million Jews the world over, this would be a major success. In other words, the liquidation of the Diaspora was both unrealistic and Utopian. What Ahad Ha’am advocated instead was that Zionism should concentrate on creating a society in Palestine which would serve as a national-spiritual centre for the millions of Jews who would continue to remain in Europe, exposed, as time passed, to the increasing pressures of assimilation which would decimate them both nationally and spiritually.

  Official Zionism, in the event, opted for Herzl’s line and aimed for Jewish statehood, which ultimately came into being fifty years after Herzl first proposed his plan. The realisation of Herzl’s vision through the establishment of the Jewish State was a watershed, both ideologically and philosophically, for Zionism, even if statehood did not come about in the way that Herzl had envisaged. The circumstances which pertained at the time of the State’s creation were vastly different from those in which Herzl propounded it. By 1948, when Herzlian Zionism saw the establishment of the Jewish State, millions of the European Jews whom Herzl had sought to repatriate had perished in Hitler’s crematoria. World Jewry had been reduced from 18 million in 1939 to 12 million. Some of the remnants of European Jewry did go to Israel. These were joined by Sephardi Jews from Arab lands fleeing for fear of retribution from their Arab hosts angered by the creation of the State. But these still represented a minority of Jews in the world. Three million more lived in Soviet Russia who were unable to leave even if they wished to; while the remaining millions continued, of their own free will, to live in the West, predominantly in North America, but also in South America, Europe and many other smaller countries. According to Herzlian theory, these latter Jews ought to have uprooted themselves and migrated to Israel. The reality is that the majority did not. These Jews have watched with fascination the unfolding of events in Israel, they have opened their hearts and pockets to the State, and they have also travelled there to see the country for themselves. But in the end, they have stayed at home. Herzlian Zionism, put to the test, has been found wanting. The voluntary ingathering of Jews has not taken place; nor has anti-Semitism disappeared with the advent of statehood. What has more clearly emerged is that Israel has become a focal point for world Jewry, the central magnet of its collective emotion, even if not quite the spiritual centre that Ahad Ha’am, arguing against Herzl, had envisaged.