My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

by Ari Shavit

  Israel has never had a constitution. Its electoral system and political structure have always been shaky. But now there was no governing ethos and no governing elite. No one was in control and no one was in charge. Israel became impossible to rule. What made things worse was that the old ruling elites now turned their back on the state they felt they had lost, and the new, rebelling forces never bothered to create a dedicated, meritocratic elite of their own. The outcome was a gaping vacuum at the top, with no worthy leadership, no effective civil service, a weak public sector, and a disintegrating national ethos. The new political game was the blame game: Left blamed Right and Right blamed Left. But as this vicious circle went round and round, no political force took overall responsibility for running the nation in a mature and rational manner. Israel was out of its political mind.

  What enabled the charade to continue was a regional stroke of luck. The thirty-three years following the Yom Kippur War were Israel’s most peaceful. Few have noticed this because there was so much noise—Palestinian terrorism, Palestinian uprisings, a war in Lebanon, two Gulf wars. But in fact, from 1973 on, Israel was not once attacked by the military forces of a neighboring Arab nation. It was not even threatened. The impact of Dimona and Israel’s air superiority was overwhelming. But deterrence was not the only factor. Israel enjoyed the benefits of a rare period of corruption-fueled stability in the Arab world. Egypt and Jordan actually signed peace agreements with the Jewish state. Other, less conciliatory Arab nations did not want to pick a fight. The decline of the Soviet Union, the rise of America as the only superpower, and their own internal weakness convinced Arab dictators that war with Israel was not an option. Therefore, Israelis enjoyed an exceptionally long period of strategic stability, which allowed them to ignore the outside world and indulge in their fancies and follies.

  Reality first struck in October 2000, after the collapse of the Camp David talks. The wave of terrorism that rattled their cities for three years reminded Israelis where they lived and what they faced. But under the leadership of the old-time warrior Ariel Sharon, Israel rose to the challenge. After their initial surprise, the IDF and the Shin Bet waged a sophisticated and effective counteroffensive. Israeli society proved to be far more resilient than expected. By 2004, Israel managed to stop suicide terrorism. The result was euphoria, and a regained sense of security and self-assurance that led to an economic boom. The 2005 unilateral pullout from Gaza—the disengagement—was also initially perceived as a success and contributed to the general sense of safety. The generals agreed that our strategic position had never been better, and as Israel grew more and more prosperous, the nation was once again pleased with itself and intent on celebrating its dolce vita.

  On July 12, 2006, reality struck once again. The Second Lebanon War was not a major war. It lasted 33 days and took the lives of 165 Israeli soldiers and civilians and some 1,300 Lebanese, but it never really endangered Israel’s existence. Though the war was nothing like the Yom Kippur War, for the first time in its history, Israel was not able to defeat an enemy. And the enemy this time was no superpower; it was not even another state. The enemy was the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia, only eight thousand men strong. Israel’s inability to stop Hezbollah from launching rockets at its northern towns was shocking. Its vulnerability and its impotence were shocking. For over a month, more than a million Israelis lived under fire. Approximately half a million Israelis fled their homes. The nation was helpless and humiliated.

  Then came a moment of reckoning. The question that echoed throughout the country was what had happened to us. Had we lost it? Returning from a depressing tour in the half-deserted towns of the Galilee, I tried to answer this question in an essay I wrote for Haaretz:

  What has happened to us?

  First and foremost, we were blinded by political correctness. The politically correct discourse that reigned supreme over the last decade was disconnected from reality. It focused on the issue of occupation but did not address the fact that Israel is caught in an existential conflict fraught with religious and cultural land mines. It paid too much attention to Israel’s wrongdoing, and too little to the historical and geopolitical context within which Israel has to survive.

  Israeli political correctness also assumed that Israeli might is a given. Therefore, it was dismissive of the need to maintain this might. Because the army was perceived to be an occupying force, it was denounced. Anything military or national or Zionist was regarded with contempt. Collective values gave way to individualistic ones. Power was synonymous with fascism. Old-fashioned Israeli masculinity was castrated as we indulged ourselves in the pursuit of absolute justice and absolute pleasure. The old discourse of duty and commitment was replaced by a new discourse of protest and hedonism.

  And there was something else: Israelis were besotted with the illusion of normalcy. But on its most basic level, Israel is not a normal nation. It is a Jewish state in an Arab world, and a Western state in an Islamic world, and a democracy in a region of tyranny. It is at odds with its surroundings. There is a constant and inherent tension between Israel and the world it lives in. That means that Israel cannot lead the normal European life of any EU member. But because of its values, economic structure, and culture, Israel cannot but attempt to lead a normal life. This contradiction is substantial and perpetual. The only way to resolve it is to produce a unique, positive anomaly that will address the unique negative anomaly of Israeli life. This is what Zionism accomplished in the three decades leading to the founding of the state, by formulating unique social inventions such as the kibbutz and the Laborite social economy of the Histadrut. This is what Israel did in its first three decades, by striking a delicate balance between Israel’s unique national requirements and its inhabitants’ need for personal space and a degree of sanity. But after 1967, 1973, and 1977, this balance was lost. In the 1980s and 1990s, Israelis went wild. We bought into the illusion that this stormy port was actually a safe harbor. We deluded ourselves into thinking that we could live on this shore as other nations live on theirs. We squandered Israel’s unique positive anomaly, all the while chipping away at our defensive shield. Ironically, those who wished Israel to be normal brought about a chaotic state of affairs that could not but lead to the total loss of any normalcy whatsoever.

  Both political correctness and the illusion of normalcy were strictly phenomena of the elite. The public at large remained sober and strong. Middle Israel did not forget Israel’s existential challenge. In times of trouble, it was tough and resilient. But the Israeli elite detached themselves from historical reality. Business, the media, and academia dimmed Israel’s vision and weakened its spirit. They did not read the geostrategic map. They did not remember history or understand history. Their constant attacks on nationalism, the military, and the Zionist narrative consumed Israel’s existence from within. Business inculcated ad absurdum the illusion of normalcy by initiating sweeping privatization and establishing an aggressive capitalist regime that didn’t suit the needs of a nation in conflict. Academia instilled ad absurdum a rigid political correctness by turning the constructive means of self-criticism into an obsessive deconstructive end of its own. The media promoted a false consciousness that combined wild consumerism with hypocritical righteousness. Instead of purpose and promise, the Israeli elite embraced self-doubt and cynicism. Each sector undermined Zionism in its own way. They misled Israelis into believing that Tel Aviv was Manhattan, that the market is king, and that mammon is God. By doing so, they didn’t give young Israelis the normative tools needed to fight for their country. A nation with no equality, no solidarity, and no belief in its own cause is not a nation worth fighting for. It’s not a nation that a young woman or a young man will kill and get killed for. But in the Middle East, a nation whose youngsters are not willing to kill and get killed for it is a nation on borrowed time. It will not last for long.

  So what we see now, as rockets pound our cities and villages, is not only a failure of the Israeli Army to defend its cit
izens, but the grave outcome of the historic failure of the Israeli elite. This Israeli elite turned its back on reality, turned its back on the state, stopped leading Israel, and stopped holding Israel together. With every fiber of its being, Israel wished to be a modern-day Athens. But in this land and in this era there is no future for an Athens that doesn’t have in it a grain of Sparta. There is no hope here for a life-loving society that doesn’t know how to deal with the imminence of death. Now we must face reality. We must reconstruct our nation-state. We must restore the delicate balance between forcefulness and normalcy. And we must rebuild from scratch our defensive shield. After years of illusions, delusions, and recklessness, we must recognize our fate. We must live up to our life’s decree.

  Sadly, wars are a testament of Israel’s national strength. Israel’s remarkable victory in 1948 exemplified how determined and well-organized the society formed by Zionism in Palestine was in the twenty years prior to the War of Independence. Israel’s astonishing victory in 1967 showed how cohesive and modern the nation-state that Ben Gurion forged was in the twenty years prior to the Six Day War. And Israel’s alarming impotence in 2006 revealed how disoriented and dysfunctional the bizarre political entity that rose from the ashes of Old Israel in the twenty years prior to the Second Lebanon War was. Yes, occupation is killing us morally and politically, but occupation is not only the cause of the malaise but its outcome. In the twenty-first century, Israel’s immediate challenge is not an ideological one. It is not a choice between peace and war. The immediate challenge is the challenge of regaining national potency. An impotent Israel cannot make peace or wage war—or end occupation. The 2006 trauma provided Israelis with an accurate picture of the overall condition of their political body: an enfeebled national leadership, a barely functional government, a public sector in decay, an army consumed with rot, and a startling disconnect between metropolis and periphery.

  But the 2006 experience also provides a detailed panoramic picture of the world Israel lives in: Iran on the rise, Hezbollah building up in the north, Hamas building up in the south. Peace has failed. Occupation has failed. Unilateralism has failed. Any stretch of land from which Israel withdrew—in the north and in the south—was taken over by an Iranian-backed terrorist entity able to menace Israel with its rockets. As the threat of a nuclear Iran hovers above, the peril posed by tens of thousands of rockets encircling Israel is imminent. Faced with renewed existential danger, Israel has no relevant national strategy. It is confused and paralyzed.

  The combination of a grim new geostrategic reality with the inherent internal weakness of the state itself is overwhelming. True, the Second Lebanon War bought Israel time. For the next few years Hezbollah would think twice before launching a new attack. It would not want to see Lebanon devastated again as it was when it last provoked Israel. But when this lull ends, what Israel will face might be ten times worse than what it encountered in the traumatic summer of 2006. Next time Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion airport, and the Dimona nuclear reactor might be under fire. Hundreds or thousands of Israeli civilians might be killed as every site and every home in the Jewish state will be within reach of the rockets of those enraged by Israel’s very existence.

  In the first Zionist century, Jews proved to be vital and resourceful. They rose to every challenge. Great obstacles that endangered and nearly ended their national endeavor were surmounted. The Arab uprising of 1936–39 was overcome. The war of 1948 was won. By 1967, Dimona secured the existence of the tiny young state. In 1973, the fighting spirit of the Israeli rank and file rescued the nation from the jaws of defeat. So the question posed following the 2006 debacle is whether Israel still has what it takes. Whether in the second Zionist century Jews can rise up to the challenge and defend their national endeavor as they did in its first one hundred years.

  The fundamentals are good: we have a strong economy, a vibrant society, extremely talented individuals with impressive common sense and resilience. But the political structures and institutions of the Israeli republic are ailing. Malaise runs deep. The seven Israeli internal revolts have eroded the sovereign nation from below. The elite’s disaffection has eroded the sovereign nation from above. The binding Israeli narrative has fallen apart. As a result, there is no one to speak up for the silent and sane Israeli majority. There is no great idea or even a reasonable political platform to address Israel’s real challenges. In its seventh decade, Israel is much less of a solid nation-state than it was when it was ten years old.

  As war rages on in the north, I decide to revisit Tel Aviv’s night scene. By now Allenby 58 is closed, but Jerusalem’s Hauman 17 has turned a huge garage in southern Tel Aviv into the new mecca of dance, drugs, and casual encounters. As the Israeli army struggles desperately to push into the Hezbollah-held territory in southern Lebanon, I spend an evening in the sweaty, crowded club, then continue on to a Russian dance hall in Bat Yam, and then visit a new venue that has just opened next to the Ayalon highway on the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv. I end the night at a hip underground club in Tel Aviv located in a cellar, its walls painted black. Straight stuff, gay stuff, mixed stuff. A lot of dark stuff. “People really need it hard,” a twenty-five-year-old blond psychology student tells me as she offers me a tiny vial of cocaine, which I politely refuse. “Ecstasy was love-sex, coke is alienation-sex,” she continues. “After peace fell apart and suicide bombers struck, the naïve scene of the 1990s was replaced by hollow-eyed parties like the one you see all around us tonight. It’s hard-core, in your face, but there’s no love, no affection. No hope whatsoever.”

  I look around me. The kids are good-looking all right, as sexy as ever. Lustful and provocative. But there is war up north tonight. Young soldiers are struggling in the bush at this very moment, stifling the fear in their hearts, smelling death close by. And the distance between what the soldiers are enduring in Lebanon and what the clubbers of Tel Aviv are doing in the black-walled cellar is incomprehensible. They are nearly the same age, same background, same education. But they are worlds apart. Planets apart. They are playing out Israel’s schizophrenia.

  All of Israel’s wars had this sort of tension. In 1948, while citizens were being shot on the road to Jerusalem, others were flirting in Tel Aviv cafés. In 1969, while soldiers were taking fire in Suez Canal outposts, other Israelis were having a ball in Tel Aviv’s discotheques. This duality was part of Israel’s health and strength. It was as if there was a covenant between us: today I will stand on guard while you party; tomorrow I’ll party while you stand on guard. This way we don’t turn our nation into a barracks where life is not really worth living. This way we continue to live while we defend our right to life.

  But now it is different; now there is a complete disconnect. This is what is so eerie about the war of 2006. Soldiers are fighting, and northern civilians are refugees in their own country, but many others just go on not really caring. Many of the rich are vacationing on their yachts, while the upper middle class is finding refuge in Eilat. There are summer cruises and summer parties and summer drugs. It is as if the nation were not at war, as if it were not being challenged. And that is the real threat—that is what is so scary. There is no Israeli togetherness. The state cannot defend its citizens, and its citizens don’t go out of their way to stand by their state. There is no glue holding everything together.

  This time we survived. It was only a preview of what might happen in coming years. But what will happen when it’s not just a small Shiite militia that’s attacking us? What will happen to these beautiful dancers and to this sexy Tel Aviv when some of our really powerful rivals decide to strike? Returning from a quick encounter, the twenty-five-year-old blonde rejoins me at the bar. Looking around with glazed eyes and a bewildered smile, she says to no one in particular, “It’s a bubble. It’s an amazing bubble. It won’t last.”

  (photo credit 15.1)

  FIFTEEN

  Occupy Rothschild, 2011

  THE STRAUSS STORY IS A HOPEFUL ONE. IT IS NOT ONLY A STORY OF A SUC
CESSFUL family and how it made its money, but a story of Israel’s industrious capitalism. It is not only the story of one family, but the story of what has flourished in Israel—and how it flourished.

  Richard and Hilda Strauss married in Ulm, Germany, shortly after Adolf Hitler rose to power. On May 1, 1934, Michael-Peter was born. A year later, as Hilda was holding her firstborn in her arms, she heard Goebbels speak over the wireless. When the Nazi propaganda minister vilified the Jews, she felt a sharp pain in her body: she knew that disaster was imminent. In April 1936, the Strauss family loaded their belongings into their car and left for Switzerland. In her diary Hilda wrote, “We are emigrating. Where to? To the land of our ancestors, to our homeland, to the Land of Israel. Why? Because we are no longer wanted in the land we were born in, the land we loved. We want to stay proud, as we should be, so our children can rejoice that their parents are Jews not only in their religious persuasion but in their soul. That’s why we are leaving for a new homeland.”

  On June 18, 1936, the Strausses arrived at the port of Haifa. Their disembarkation is documented in a crisp black-and-white photograph: Richard in wide, white linen shorts, a white shirt, and a white cap; Hilda in a long, checkered summer dress, holding a rambunctious Michael-Peter, who is wearing shorts and no shirt. At first the family lived in the moshav village of Ramot Hashavim, then they moved to the southern colony of Be’er Tuvia, and then to the northern colony of Nahariya. The climate was hot, conditions were harsh, and the 1936–39 war with the Arabs was brutal. Richard, who held a Ph.D. in economics, felt lost in his chosen land. He found it difficult to relinquish his academic dreams and adjust to his new life as a taxi driver in a remote Mediterranean province. “Disappointment seeps in slowly, like the venom of a snake,” Hilda wrote in her diary. “Disappointment is 77 times greater in a new land in which we do not yet have a home. The days are very long and full of suffering. Only the boy’s cheerful laughter keeps the soul alive.”