I know Facebook is not the place for essays but I have just got back from Israel and it is impossible not to write about it. I went to Israel for a wedding of a former student of mine. It was a strange mix of British and Israeli, secular and religious. A microcosm of the country and the conflict in a way, with a typically English Rabbi displeased at the locals for not listening. I enjoyed the wedding - although if the wine was that bad at Cana the guests must have preferred the water. I had a great trip and loved the country. If I was Jewish I would be - mostly - proud of the Israeli state. It is Jewish intelligence, dynamism and creativity made manifest. There is an energy and freshness in Israel which is breathtaking. I have lived in an Arab country - Sudan - for two years and I have visited several - Egypt (three times), Morocco, Tunisia and Quatar. I cant claim to know much after just six days but I dont believe there is anywhere in the Arab world that has the élan, zest and drive of the Jewish state/state for Jews - call it chutzpah if you want. When I saw some of the memorials to the achievement of independence I was moved, and I am not even Jewish. As Churchill said, the Jews made the desert bloom. Some Arabs back in 1917 realised the benefits Jewish energy and entrepreneurialism could bring to the region and that must still be true today. Peace would bring a dividend that would not only benefit Israel. A stable Israel/Palestine would be manna for tourism. Israel is the only genuine democracy in the region, surrounded by secular dictatorships such as Syria, absolute Monarchies such as Saudi, quasi Monarchial systems such as Jordan, theological dictatorships such as Iran, military autocracies such as Egypt and fragile confessional democracies such as Lebanon. One snapshot from the trip - todays Haaretz newspaper has a story of two Israeli soldiers convicted of beating a blindfolded Palestinian prisoner. An act of appalling Army arrogance certainly but they were demoted in rank and sentenced to prison. Where else in that region would/could that have happened, where else would justice have been done? However my pride would be qualified. A cliche, I know, an historic wrong was done to a people, the Palestinans and that wrong has not been redressed 65 years later, if anything it has intensified. The Zionist slogan of 1917, a people without a land, will live in a land without a people was wrong. There was a people living there. As a delegation of German Rabbis said at the time, having visited Palestine, the bride is fair but she is promised to another. Its no good blaming the British and the French for their geopolitical scheming - accurate though those accusations are - the Jewish state was bone of out of war and dispossession and militarism has corrupted the Zionist vision ever since. The Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 involved the creation of 700,000 Arab refugees. Whether that was the fault of the Arab authorities or the Israelis is of academic interest only - those lives were blighted and no recompense has ever been made. Of course the Jews of the Arab world were also treated appallingly and in many cases, such as Iraq, were expelled. Baghdad had been one of the greatest Jewish cities in the world. However two wrongs cannot make a right. The Jews, of all people, deserved a state. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 made it possible, the Holocaust made it imperative The pre-67 borders Israel is not going away. The rejectionist Arab world has done its people no favours by pretending otherwise. Just as the Arabs should not be punished for crimes committed on Jews by Europeans - the slaughter of Jews and Muslims perpetrated by the Crusaders, the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, the horrors of Nazism - so the Arab world should not be punished by Israel for the folly of its tyrannical rulers. It was the moderate, King Hussein, who expelled the Palestinians in 1970, hence Black September. That helped push Lebanon into a Civil War that lasted from 1975 to 1990 and might reignite again as the Syrian war spills over and Iran intervenes. The Palestinians have certainly been cruelly served, even by their fellow Arabs. The Arab people should not be permanently made to pay for mistakes made by their leaders - from the Grand Mufti of Jersualem’s support for Hitler, to the rejection of the UN partition plan in 1947 to the Khartoum Conference of 1967 with the infamous three negatives - no recognition, no peace, no negotiations - to Hamass Founding Charter of 1987 threatening to destroy Israel. and the PLOs misguided support for Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in in 1990. Equally just because Arab leaders have used Israel as an alibi for their own incompetence and have sought to divert criticism of their corruption by blaming everything on the Jews does not mean that Israel can or should act with impunity. One side has the power here and the outcome is the daily humiliation of Arabs. This might not count as Apartheid, as some critics of Israel claim, but it is a long way from the belief in dignity and liberty that is so central to Jewish culture. It is morally wrong but it is also self defeating. Humiliation breeds resentment. The refugee camps, the treatment of Arabs as second class citizens and the blockade of Gaza make more militants than Bin Laden ever could. After the failure of the Evian Conference of 1938 - an attempt to get states to accept Jews from Nazi Germany - Golda Meir said that she was determined that her people should not need expressions of sympathy any more. I saw in the photographs of Tel Aviv in 1948 how proud those people were, to have created their own state and to have defeated their Arab enemies. I saw the Western Wall in Jerusalem and can understand how Jews felt to be able to pray there after 19 years of occupation by Jordan. I heard, at a wedding, the lament about lost Jerusalem and the smashing of the glass to signify the destruction of The Temple. But now the humiliation and exclusion is felt by the other side. Jews are not unique in wanting to live on their own land and control their own destiny. As an atheist the notion that God gave the land to one people alone does not convince. One of the guides in Jerusalem told his customers, Jerusalem is about faith not facts. Here are some facts. Israel is the same size as Wales. The short coach journey from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem shows how small and potentially vulnerable Israel is. There are many Arab States. A resolution of the Israel-Palestine problem would not bring peace to the wider region - the rifts between Sunni and Shia and between secular and Islamist are so deep that they may result in a Civil War within the Arab/Muslim world with Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi fighting it out for supremacy. Here is an opinion - resolution of the Palestinian issue is the only long term guarantee of a Jewish state living at peace with its neighbours and with itself. I heard the measured words of the - British - Rabbi at the wedding that Jews should rejoice in their own state, their own government 2,000 years after the Diaspora. He said they should guard against complacency but surely they should also guard against arrogance? As he stressed to the bride and groom, neither is perfect. Nor is any state. No people have a monopoly of righteousness or of suffering. Contempt for a people will surely bring hubris. The Israeli left always wanted security through peace, the right wanted peace through security. Jabotinsky wanted an Iron Wall, Netanyahu wants his Security fence, or separation barrier, but walls dont work. The wedding Chuppa is a better model - openness. Israel is backed - to the hilt - by the most powerful state in the world. Every American President guarantees Israel security in its pre-67 incarnation. This is not 1938. Israel is a powerful state it can afford to negotiate from a position of strength. There must be a two state solution. Israel in its pre-67 borders, alongside a Palestinian state. The provocative settlement policy, especially in East Jerusalem, must stop. Israel cannot continue to occupy the Territories - 46 years is too long to ignore Resolution 242 which calls for withdrawal. Even ardent Zionists understand that if Israel absorbs the Territories then Jews become a minority within Israel, so that is not an option either. Eretz Israel has to have a Jewish majority. The Arab Spring - however derailed by Asad - has shown an Arab world desperate for jobs, an end to corruption and kleptocracy in government. The Arab world is young, a substantial proportion of the population is under 25. They must move on from the obduracy of their elites. Israels right to exist must be recognised. Resolution 242 states that as well but Israels enemies conveniently forget that, as they forget Resolution 338 from 1973. Jerusalem should be internationalised, recognition of its unique history and significance. What better way to safeguard the centre of the world for the three Abrahamic faiths. The Mother of one of my Jewish students once asked me - where are our partners for peace? Israel has to find them or it will continue to be a garrison state at war with its neighbours, for another 65 years or more.One abiding memory of Jerusalem is of so many young Israelis, they could be my former students, in uniform. They had guns but they also had iPods and smart phones and looked like my own kids but in fatigues. I prefer teenagers to be wearing mufti. I dont believe in walls, they create ghettoes. Just as I dont believe in separation screens at weddings. Neither do I believe in rule by men with beards. They tend to be intolerant. I preferred the garish, garrulous, gay of Tel Aviv to some - not all - of the chauvinist, committed conformists of Jerusalem. In Mea Shearim the Jews are so ultra orthodox they speak Yiddish and have attacked Israeli soldiers; the various Christian sects dispute control of the ‘Holy Places; some Muslim demonstrators chant ‘we will sacrifice our blood and souls for you, Jerusalem.’ Israel is a pluralist liberal democracy; its partner for peace can be found, but not from behind an Iron Wall. Meanwhile back at the wedding the walls came down and everyone had a great time. Shame the Peace Process is a little more complex.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 23:36:36 +0000
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