My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

by Ari Shavit

  “But in 1973 it all went wrong. After the trauma of the Yom Kippur War, the defense budget was doubled, growth slowed, and inflation spiraled out of control. Even when inflation was vanquished in 1985, growth per capita was a third of what it had been twenty years earlier. Now the burden on the nation’s economy was not defense spending but welfare benefits, which rose fivefold between 1972 and 2002. Rather than investing in human capital and essential infrastructure, Israel is transferring enormous sums of money to the poor and the ultra-Orthodox. The main reason for this is that the expanding ultra-Orthodox and Arab minorities are not fully participating in Israel’s economic and social life. Whereas in its first twenty-five years Israel grew rapidly while maintaining excellence, cohesion, and social justice, in the last twenty-five years it did the exact opposite. In recent years, growth has been high, but excellence, social cohesion, and social justice have been dangerously eroded. The high-tech boom is the fruit of the long-term investment in human capital made by a previous generation. But the high-tech boom creates a shiny bubble of prosperity that conceals the fact that today we are not making a similar investment in the human capital of the future. Budgetary policy is flawed, public policy is failing, Israeli society is sick. If Israel does not change course soon, even the high-tech miracle will eventually fade away.”

  Ben David grew up in the United States and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He is one of the few top-notch academic economists left in a brain-drained country that had an abundance of them only twenty years ago. As he talks to me in the spacious offices of the Taube Center, there is real angst in his eyes. “Look at this,” he says, motioning me toward his desk. He talks me through a series of multicolored graphs and charts on his computer screen.

  “What makes all this much worse are demographics,” he says. “As you can see in these charts, over the last thirty years Israel went through a demographic revolution. During these years, the percentage of school-aged children attending ultra-Orthodox schools has risen from 4 percent to nearly 20 percent. The percentage of school-aged children attending Arab schools has risen from 20 percent to 28 percent. So today, 48 percent of all school-aged children are enrolled in either ultra-Orthodox or Arab schools. An additional 14 percent are modern Orthodox. Only 38 percent are secular. That means that by 2030, Israel’s shrinking secular Jewish majority will become a minority. Israel’s cultural identity will change, and so will its socioeconomic profile. Secular Israelis are the ones working, producing, and paying taxes. Once they are outnumbered, Israel will be a backward nation that will not be able to meet the challenges of the third millennium.”

  “What you are showing me is a national disaster in the making,” I say. Ben David nods sadly. “If Israel had an effective Zionist government, it would fight this disastrous trend. It is not too late yet, but it might soon be too late. Meanwhile, successive dysfunctional Israeli governments are doing the very opposite: they reward the nonworking minorities and subsidize them and do not require them to take up modern and democratic education. As a result, nearly half of the population is not part of the national effort and does not shoulder responsibility for the nation’s future. The burden on the soldiers of the productive segment of the society is unbearable. Fewer and fewer Israelis work more and more to feed nonworking Israelis. Fewer and fewer Israelis run faster and faster to carry along the Israelis who don’t run at all. A flawed political system guarantees the special interests of the ultra-Orthodox, the settlers, and the megarich. But the productive middle class has been abandoned by the state. That’s why this exhausted middle class is growing bitter. It feels the nation has betrayed it. It sees the Israel it loves disintegrating.”

  The Shmuli story is also a hopeful story. Itzik Shmuli was born in Tel Aviv in February 1980. His father was a Jaffa-born restaurant owner and his mother a Kurdistan-born nanny. The five Shmulis lived in a one-and-a-half-bedroom apartment in Ramat Gan. Although life was not easy, their home was warm. The twin boys and their young sister were showered with love.

  Itzik Shmuli was a decent high school student, basketball player, and soldier. After completing military service, he worked alongside his father in their modest Tel Aviv restaurant. In 2004, he saw a television program about the homeless and hungry children in the streets of Buenos Aires. At the age of twenty-four, Shmuli got on a plane and opened an orphanage in Buenos Aires. When he returned to Israel, he studied special education at a small provincial college and was elected leader of its local students. Three years later he was the president of Israel’s national student union.

  On July 14, 2011, Shmuli is in New York. His friends call to tell him that something quite unusual is happening on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard. A twenty-four-year-old video editor by the name of Daphne Leef has pitched a tent in the middle of this prestigious thoroughfare as an act of protest against soaring residential rents. Within a day, hundreds have joined her. Within two days, thousands have joined her. Shmuli gets on a plane and returns to Tel Aviv to join the Rothschild protest. A few days later, he is the protest movement’s responsible adult.

  While many in the Leef circle lack experience and organizational skills, Shmuli has both. While many in the Leef circle are heavily influenced by Marxist and anarchist ideology, Shmuli is a sober social-democratic Zionist. He believes that in order not to lose public support, the revolt must not become sectarian or radical. He wants the movement to represent as many Israelis as possible. So he, too, pitches a tent on the boulevard. Two weeks later, Shmuli is the leader of a new Israeli generation demanding a new social order.

  On July 23, 30,000 youths march in the streets of Tel Aviv, chanting a new-old slogan: “The people demand social justice.” On July 30, they are 130,000 strong, on August 6, they are 300,000 strong. On September 3, 450,000 people take to the streets—6 percent of Israel’s population. Shmuli is the keynote speaker at the rally held in Tel Aviv’s Nation Square. “We are the new Israelis,” he calls out to the 330,000 cheering demonstrators. “We love our country and we are willing to die for our country. Let us live in the country we love.”

  In many respects the 2011 revolt is the most impressive of all Israeli revolts. Neither the settlement nor the peace nor the Oriental Shas movements was ever able to gather so many Israelis with such enthusiasm and broad-based support. Neither settlement nor peace nor Shas united the nation in such a civilized and constructive manner. The Israeli civic uprising of 2011 is far more peaceful than Cairo’s and far more effective than New York’s. The young people occupying Rothschild Boulevard are generally more moderate, resourceful, and coolheaded than the ones who will occupy Wall Street later this year. Of all of the world’s social-networks-to-social-protest movements, the Israeli one is the most benign. Moderate and nonviolent, it succeeds in winning the support of 80 percent of Israelis. For one summer, it unites Israelis again by giving them a sense of hope. And yet, just as the defiant wave appears, it disappears. So as I walk with Shmuli along Rothschild Boulevard in the late hours of a late autumn night, there is nothing here. There are no tents, no demonstrators, no social change. The carnival is over. It’s as if it was all a sweet midsummer night’s dream.

  Shmuli begs to differ. “I am a marathon man,” he says. “I run long distance. I know life has its rhythm, and I know revolutions don’t happen overnight. From the outset, I was aware that the summer of 2011 would only be the first leg. But I do believe we will have a second and a third leg. I don’t need daily demonstrations. I don’t expect ongoing protest. But I really think the summer of 2011 was a tipping point. It was much larger than housing prices or food prices or the debate over the rule of the rich. The summer of 2011 was about us being a people. For the first time in my lifetime, Israelis felt they are one people, not helpless individuals, not members of rival sects. And what the Israeli people said is that they want social justice. They want the state to be reformed so it can act as an agent of change. True, right now Rothschild is quiet. Everybody went back home. But the transformation we
underwent will not be taken away from us. We do not see ourselves anymore as cynical hedonists. Now our life as Israelis has meaning. This new sense of meaning is the great achievement of 2011. We love Israel again and believe in Israel and we are determined to reform it.”

  Shmuli fascinates me. He is slim, brown-eyed, of medium height. He has a good heart and a diffident smile. As he walks down the boulevard after midnight in jeans, T-shirt, and a backpack, young people walk up to him and high-five him and ask him not to quit. “Fight on,” they tell him. “Show them, give it to them.” The student leader is no intellectual and no ideologue; he is neither charismatic nor authoritative. But there is a promise in the sanity and decency that he projects. His non-macho style of leadership is inspiring. No doubt, he has a political future. He will be a member of Parliament and the young generation he represents will shape future Israeli politics. The conceptual revolution of 2011 would change the Israeli state of mind and the Israeli political landscape, so perhaps Shmuli is right in arguing for hope. I so wish he is right. Our future depends on whether the revolt of 2011 is institutionalized in a benign and constructive manner.

  After Shmuli leaves, I walk by myself along the boulevard. It is back to what it was before: a pickup promenade. Boys with dogs, girls with dogs, boys with girls with dogs. So I now assemble the different pieces of the puzzle in my head—all I have learned from Strauss, Richter, Fischer, Ben David, and Shmuli. What I come up with is the following: the Israeli Labor hegemony began its decline after the 1973 war and totally disintegrated in the late 1980s. The fall of the ancien régime liberated tremendous energy. New Israeli individualism turned new Israeli capitalism into a roaring success. The free market enabled Israeli talent and initiative to burst forth and create a booming modern economy. Successive cuts in public expenditures and military spending accelerated the process. So did privatization, deregulation, and monetary liberalization. But while the private sector flourished, the public sector faltered.

  An uninspired national leadership and petty politics didn’t allow the state to act as a counterweight to the ills of the emerging free market. Antitrust law and enforcement were weak. Privatization was carried out in a slapdash and hurried fashion. No protective measures were taken for the middle class, the working class, and the welfare state. Public education and public health were in decline. There was no housing policy. Almost anything that was private boomed while almost anything that was public went bust. If in the 1950s Israel had too much state, in the 2000s it had no state to speak of. If half a century ago Israel hardly had capitalism, now it was all capitalism. In this setting, Michael Strauss turned a provincial dairy into an international empire, and Kobi Richter produced a billion-dollar enterprise from his unique insights. But in this setting, wealth was concentrated in the hands of a select few and social gaps expanded. Some of Israel’s magnates took over much of the nation’s resources and many of its assets. The underlying malaise that troubled Stanley Fischer and Dan Ben David spread and festered. The unjust regime that Itzik Shmuli stood up against took hold. The illusion that the market is a good enough substitute for the state left Israelis with no state that can represent them and serve them and promote the common good. There was no government to restrain market forces or deal with the challenges of the ultra-Orthodox minority and Arab minority. There was no political body to rein in the settlers and the rapacious rich, to represent the Israeli majority and stand for the hardworking, constructive middle class.

  For a long time this cardinal problem was denied. The twenty powerful commercial groups that rule over the Israeli economy also ruled over the media and public discourse. But in recent years, a critical awareness has begun to simmer under the surface of Israeli political life. So when Daphne Leef set up camp in Rothschild Boulevard, the nation took notice. And when Itzik Shmuli led the civic uprising, the public responded. After twenty-five years of neoliberal hegemony, a new social-democratic discourse has surfaced. But it is not yet clear if the conceptual revolution of 2011 will become a political reality, whether there is a leadership and a platform that will turn what the new Israelis want into a new Israeli reality.

  On both sides of Rothschild Boulevard, expensive new condominium developments and International-style buildings are illuminated from below with spotlights. Israeli affluence is still very much on display. Market forces have not waned. Along the central promenade, young men wander in torn jeans; end-of-the-night clubbers look on with chemically induced gleams in their eyes; a beautiful girl rides her fashionable bike. As dawn approaches and the boulevard empties, I try to weigh success and failure, risk and reward, hope and despair. And it seems to me now that many of our virtues and many of our flaws come from the very same source. The very same gene that makes us also endangers us.

  The secret of Israeli high-tech is bucking authority, ignoring conventional wisdom, and flouting the rules of the game. The weakness of the Israeli state is bucking authority, ignoring conventional wisdom, and flouting the rules of the game. The Jewish Talmudist, the Jewish merchant, the Jewish anarchist, and the Jewish immigrant gave birth to a restless Israeli citizen. This unpredictable citizen creates an unbridled energy that doesn’t allow the state to function as a sovereign body. Ben Gurion’s bureaucratic tyranny harnessed this energy for half a century and founded a state. But after Ben Gurion’s death in 1973, the state he forged began to disintegrate. It could no longer rule over its tribes and sects and individuals. It could no longer contain its diversified minorities and contradicting identities. The body politic stopped dealing with Israel’s real challenges and stopped acting rationally. Instead of being a commando boat advancing toward its target, Israel became a captainless pleasure ship lost at sea with no compass and no sense of direction.

  What happened here, on Rothschild Boulevard in the summer of 2011, was a wake-up call. Afraid of losing their nation-state, the Israelis tried to reclaim it. As a new day rises over the old Tel Aviv museum building at the end of the boulevard, where Ben Gurion called the Israeli state into being, I so wish the wake-up call will truly awaken us. It’s high time. This start-up nation must restart itself. This immature political entity must grow up. Out of disintegration and despair we must rise to the challenge of the most ambitious project of all: nation rebuilding. The resurrection of the Israeli republic.

  (photo credit 16.1)

  SIXTEEN

  Existential Challenge, 2013

  I FIRST PERCEIVED THE THREAT POSED BY IRAN IN 2002. AT THE TIME, A fierce debate was raging in America concerning whether to invade Iraq. At the time, Israel was struggling to thwart the suicide bombing offensive of the second intifada. But like a few other Israelis, I realized that the regional power America must endeavor to restrain was not Iraq but Iran. The real existential threat Israel was facing was not Palestinian but Iranian. If Iran went nuclear, the Middle East would go nuclear, the world order would collapse, and Israel’s existence would be in jeopardy.

  Three years later I began to write about Iran in an intensive, almost obsessive manner. But even in 2006, 2007, and 2008, few listened to me as I wrote about the whirling centrifuges enriching uranium in Iran. Only a few agreed that the Iranian nuclear challenge was the most dramatic Israel had faced since its founding. To me the task seemed clear: the international community and the State of Israel had to act swiftly so that they would not soon face the horrific dilemma of (an Iranian) bomb or (an Israeli) bombing. But both at work and at home, many regarded me as an alarmist spreading fear and anxiety for no good reason. The prominent Israelis I am surrounded by and the Israeli media I work for paid lip service to Iran but refused to grasp Iran. So did the international community and the international media. Although it was known that the Iranian threat was there—and getting closer—few acknowledged it, and still fewer tried in earnest to do what had to be done to fend it off.

  The Iranian nuclear challenge has a global context. Since 1945, the international community has managed to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons in an impress
ive way. But if Iran goes nuclear it will bring about a nuclear globalization that might eventually endanger the post-Nagasaki miracle.

  The Iranian nuclear challenge has an American context, too. After invading Iraq and after retreating from Iraq, the United States is perceived in the Middle East as a declining power. After it lost some of its old Arab allies due to the Arab awakening, America’s influence in the Arab world is waning. If Washington loses the strategic battle against Tehran, it might lose whatever respect it still has in the Middle East. A nuclear Iran will become the new dominant power in a crucial part of the world and would turn it against the American Empire.

  The Iranian nuclear challenge also has an Israeli context. True, Israel is said to be a nuclear power. But Israel has never taken advantage of its unique weapon. Although it is constantly threatened by its neighbors, it has never threatened to wipe them out. In the nuclear sphere, Israel has acted in an admirably responsible and restrained manner. Iran is different. Its ayatollahs seek regional hegemony and want to see Israel decimated. If they acquire the bomb they might actually use it or pass it on to others who might do so. A nuclear Iran will force Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey to go nuclear and will surround the Jewish state with an unstable multipolar nuclear system that will make its strategic positioning impossible and will turn the life of its citizens to an ongoing nightmare.