My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

by Ari Shavit

  I walk on the deck and pass a trendy yoga club. A slim mother walks in wearing tight designer jeans and red All-Star sneakers. Once inside, she parks the orange pram she is pushing next to a dozen other prams and joins dozens of other new mothers in postdelivery Shavasana. Here is vitality. Here is the demography of hope. An almost extinguished species renewing itself. Unlike the free societies of Europe, the Israeli free society reproduces. Ours is not about disaffection and debauchery but about warmth and family. Ours loves children and brings into a harsh world these toddlers who are crawling on the colorful mats facing the sea. As I see it, Israelis are diamonds in the rough. And Israeliness is an iridescent kaleidoscope of broken identities that come together to form a unique human phenomenon. Somehow, something quite incredible emerged in this old-new country. That is why there is an extraordinary emotional quality to our life here. That is why we are not only creative and innovative but authentic and direct and warm and genuine and sexy. That is why personal relationships here are exceptional and human contact is remarkable. After all and despite all, Israeliness is familyness. As different as they are from one another, and although they belong to rival tribes, the men and women who gathered on this shore managed to form one big, strange, loud, and diverse family.

  Here are my own children approaching me: my twenty-two-year-old daughter Tamara bringing with her my nine-year-old Michael and my four-year-old Daniel. Two rowers in garish body suits are taking their boats out to sea and Daniel calls out to them. Michael waves. Tamara laughs. And as we walk back along the jetty, I suddenly realize, it is all here. The irrational project of building this port hurriedly in the wrong location and the inability to turn this shallow port into a deep-water harbor and the inability of a small artificial jetty to provide real protection from the breaking waves of winter. The whole thing should not have come to be in the first place. The project was geographically flawed and economically senseless and poorly planned. But because it captured the imagination, thousands invested capital they didn’t have in Tel Aviv Port shares. And because it responded to a deep psychological need, thousands built the port of Tel Aviv. Eventually, this gush of energy created something far larger than its flaws. So although the Tel Aviv port played its intended role for only three years, it became an icon of our independence and innovation and vitality. Every generation and every wave of immigration redefines it. And now it is such a carnival. Thousands of Israelis are celebrating life. Devouring life. Michael runs ahead of me fearlessly. Daniel tries to compete with his brother. Tamara joins her young brothers. And in the golden light now flooding the port, the grandchildren of Herbert Bentwich’s granddaughter run gleefully on the wooden deck. Without a care in the world. Without the burden of being Jewish. As if there was no persecution and there will be no persecution. As if there was no Holocaust and there will be no Holocaust. The land is solid under their feet. They are home.

  We Israelis face a Herculean mission. To live here we will have to redefine a nation and divide a land and come up with a new Jewish Israeli narrative. We will have to restore a rundown state and unify a shredded society and groom a trustworthy civilian leadership. After ending occupation, we’ll have to establish a new, firm, and legitimate iron wall on our postoccupation borders. Facing the regional tide of radical Islam, Israel will have to be an island of enlightenment. Facing seven circles of threat, Israel will have to be moral, progressive, cohesive, creative, and strong. There is no other way for us but to renew what we launched here when we founded a daring project of modernity on the Yarkon estuary. The battle for our existence rages on.

  After Tamara takes Michael and Daniel home, I move on to the port of Jaffa. In recent years, this port, too, was rehabilitated: galleries, restaurants, bars. A futuristic metal structure replaced the old Arab warehouses, but dozens of wooden fishing boats still bob on the quiet water behind the old jetty where Herbert Bentwich disembarked in April 1897.

  We probably had to come. And when we came here, we performed wonders. For better or worse, we did the unimaginable. Our play was the most extravagant of modern plays. The drama was breathtaking. But only the end will properly put the beginning into perspective. Only when we know what has become of the protagonists will we know whether they were right or wrong, whether they overcame the tragic decree or were overcome by it.

  There will be no utopia here. Israel will never be the ideal nation it set out to be, nor will it be Europe-away-from-Europe. There will be no London here, no Paris, no Vienna. But what has evolved in this land is not to be dismissed. A series of great revolts has created here a truly free society that is alive and kicking and fascinating. This free society is creative and passionate and frenzied. It gives the ones living here a unique quality of life: warmth, directness, openness. Yes, we are orphans. We have no king and no father. We have no coherent identity and no continuous past. In a sense, we have no civic culture. Our grace is the semibarbaric grace of the wild ones. It is the youthful grace of the unbound and the uncouth. We respect no past and no future and no authority. We are irreverent. We are deeply anarchic. And yet, because we are all alone in this world, we stick together. Because we are orphans, we are brothers in arms and in fate.

  There was hope for peace, but there will be no peace here. Not soon. There was hope for quiet, but there will be no quiet here. Not in this generation. The foundations of the home we founded are somewhat shaky, and repeating earthquakes rattle it. So what we really have in this land is an ongoing adventure. An odyssey. The Jewish state does not resemble any other nation. What this nation has to offer is not security or well-being or peace of mind. What it has to offer is the intensity of life on the edge. The adrenaline rush of living dangerously, living lustfully, living to the extreme. If a Vesuvius-like volcano were to erupt tonight and end our Pompeii, this is what it will petrify: a living people. People that have come from death and were surrounded by death but who nevertheless put up a spectacular spectacle of life. People who danced the dance of life to the very end.

  I walk into the very same bar I walked into some weeks ago. Once again I sit by the bar and sip my single malt. I see the ancient port through the windows, and I watch people sitting in restaurants and walking into galleries and wandering about the pier. Bottom line, I think, Zionism was about regenerating Jewish vitality. The Israel tale is the tale of vitality against all odds. So the duality is mind-boggling. We are the most prosaic and prickly people one can imagine. We cannot stand puritanism or sentimentality. We do not trust high words or lofty concepts. And yet we take part daily in a phenomenal historical vision. We participate in an event far greater than ourselves. We are a ragtag cast in an epic motion picture whose plot we do not understand and cannot grasp. The script writer went mad. The director ran away. The producer went bankrupt. But we are still here, on this biblical set. The camera is still rolling. And as the camera pans out and pulls up, it sees us converging on this shore and clinging to this shore and living on this shore. Come what may.

  To my love, Timna

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book would not have been written if it were not for Timna Rosenheimer—my wife, my love, and my inspiration. Writing it made me an absentee husband and father for five years, yet my life partner stood by me with courage, warmth, and grace. My debt to her is eternal.

  Galia Licht was my writing partner. She did much of the research and most of the initial editing, and she enlivened my writing. Whatever is worthy in this book is significantly hers.

  Cindy Spiegel is the benevolent Spiegel & Grau editor who made the daring decision to trust me, believing I could actually deliver the book about Israel she thought was needed. Cindy’s support and guidance led me throughout the journey, and her outstanding professionalism and sensitivity gave the raw text the shape and precision it needed.

  There were two other midwives who brought this child into the world. Tina Bennett is not only my beloved agent but also my guardian angel. In her gracious manner she saw the book and me through all the obstacl
es and hurdles we ran into. Judy Friedgut is not only my devoted secretary but also my feet on the ground. Having the discipline and good order I lack, she worked day and night to make all this real.

  My dear friend David Remnick went over the manuscript with his typical professionalism and contributed precious insights. He is the one who encouraged me to write this book, and he is the one who took care of the book graciously once written. My beloved brother-in-law Gili Rosenheimer stood by me in hard times and tough moments. So did my long-time friends Gabi Pikker and Avi Eliahu. I am deeply grateful to all three. The Natan Fund embraced the manuscript and granted it its first book prize before publication, for which I am deeply grateful. Ester Asherof did the final research, and my one and only Tamara Shavit contributed her share. It is of Tamara’s future and the future of her brothers—Michael and Daniel—that I thought of constantly while writing.

  My Promised Land is based on numerous interviews and discussions with hundreds of Israelis—Jews and Arabs, men and women. They all opened their homes and opened their hearts and shared their Israeli experience with me. As there were so many of them, I cannot mention all their names here, but I am deeply grateful to each and every one. The intimate and intense dialogue with my countrymen and countrywomen gave me unique insights regarding our beloved and tormented homeland whose story I tried to tell.

  SOURCE NOTES

  My Promised Land is not an academic work of history. Rather, it is a personal journey through contemporary and historic Israel, recounting the larger Israel saga by telling several dozen specific Israeli stories that are significant and poignant.

  The chapter “At First Sight” is based on Bentwich family documents, Herbert Bentwich’s own writings, some notes left by his fellow travelers, and articles describing the 1897 Maccabean pilgrimage published in the Jewish-English press and the Jewish-Hebrew press of the day.

  “Into the Valley” incorporates interviews with some of Yitzhak Tabenkin’s disciples and an enormous body of records and memoirs kept in the Ein Harod archives.

  “Orange Grove” was inspired by numerous conversations with Rehovot’s elderly orange growers, who were still alive in the late 2000s, and by the local records stored in the Rehovot archives.

  The trek and seminar in “Masada” are based on interviews I conducted with Shmaryahu Gutman in 1992 and on pieces published in the spring of 1942 in Labor Movement newspapers and periodicals.

  “Lydda” assembles numerous accounts of the traumatic events recounted to me in the early 1990s by Mula Cohen, Shmaryahu Gutman, Yisrael Goralnik, Gabriel Cohen, Yael Degani, Ottman Abu Hammed, and some of the other protagonists of the 1948 tragedy.

  “Housing Estate” tells the life stories of Holocaust (and farhud) survivors I interviewed—among them Ze’ev Sternhell, Aharon Appelfeld, Aharon Barak, Louise Aynachi, Anna Spiegel, Arie Belldegrun, Yehudit Fischer, Shlomo Teicher, and some of the other residents of the Bitzaron estate.

  At the core of “The Project” is a unique encounter I had in 2009 with Yosef Tulipman, who was the director general of the Dimona nuclear reactor in the critical years 1965–1973.

  “Settlement” is a reconstruction of the founding of the pivotal settlement of Ofra, based on interviews with Yoel Bin Nun, Pinchas Wallerstein, Yehuda Etzion, Israel Harel, and other Ofra founders in 2009–2011.

  “Gaza Beach” was first published in Haaretz and in The New York Review of Books in 1991, shortly after I completed military reserve duty in the notorious detention camp.

  “Peace” contains interviews with Yossi Sarid, Yossi Beilin, Avishai Margalit, Menachem Brinker, and Amos Oz (conducted in 2008–2011), and an older interview with Jamal Munheir (conducted in 1993).

  “J’Accuse” is first and foremost the life story of Aryeh Deri as told to me at great length by him and his mother and as described in his biography and in Israeli magazine pieces written about him over two decades.

  “Sex, Drugs, and the Israeli Condition” is an updated version of a comprehensive Tel-Aviv night-life piece that I published in Haaretz as the previous millennium was drawing to a close.

  “Up the Galilee,” too, was first published in Haaretz, in January 2003.

  “Reality Shock” embodies some of the insights I had in real time during the Second Lebanon War of 2006.

  “Occupy Rothschild” is based on in-depth interviews with Michael Strauss, Kobi Richter, and Itzik Shmuli (2007–2011) and on conversations with Stanley Fischer and Dan Ben David (2011).

  “Existential Challenge” gives Amos Yadlin’s interpretation of the Iranian saga as he described it to me in 2012–2013, along with my own insights.

  “By the Sea” contains a small portion of the observations I had while touring my homeland as my years-long journey was coming to an end.

  Pursuing my tour of Israel, old and new, I read hundreds of books and thousands of documents that have inspired me and enriched my experience. To make sure all details are correct, oral histories were checked and double-checked against Israel’s written history. The exciting process of interviewing significant individuals was interwoven with a meticulous process of data gathering and fact checking. And yet, at the end of the day, My Promised Land is all about people. The book I have written is the story of Israel as it is seen by individual Israelis, of whom I am one.

  PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS

  col1.1: Courtesy of Micha Bar-Am/Magnum Photos

  1.1: American Colony/Matson collection, courtesy of the Library of Congress

  2.1: Avraham Soskin/Lavon Institute Archive, Tel Aviv

  3.1: American Colony/Matson Collection, courtesy of the Library of Congress

  4.1: Courtesy of Azaria Alon

  5.1: Beno Rothenberg. The copyright of the photograph of Beno Rothenberg belongs solely to Meitar Collection Ltd., Israel.

  6.1: Courtesy of Robert Capa/Magnum Photos

  7.1: The Times/NI Syndication

  8.1: Courtesy of Micha Bar-Am/Magnum Photos

  9.1: Photographer unknown/Archive: GPO, Jerusalem

  10.1: Courtesy of Boaz Lanir

  11.1: Moshe Milner/Archive: GPO, Jerusalem

  12.1: Courtesy of Pavel Walberg

  13.1: Amr El-Abari / Zochrot Organization, Tel Aviv

  14.1: Courtesy of David Tartakover

  15.1: Courtesy of Eldad Rafaeli

  16.1: Dalia Amotz, courtesy of the Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv

  17.1: Courtesy of Ziv Koren

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ARI SHAVIT is a leading Israeli columnist and writer. Born in Rehovot, Israel, Shavit served as a paratrooper in the IDF and studied philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In the 1980s he wrote for the progressive weekly Koteret Rashit, in the early 1990s he was chairperson of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and in 1995 he joined Haaretz, where he became one of its leading journalists. Shavit is also a leading commentator on Israeli public television. He is married, has a daughter and two sons, and lives in Kfar Shmariahu.