Chapter 6

Chapter 6 The Ultimate Contradiction There is an ultimate insoluble contradiction between the State of Israel that is the fulfillment of the 2,000-year-old Jewish-Zionist dream and the modern nation-state that sees all its citizens as possessing equal rights and privileges. There is an ultimately immutable clash between that part of Israel's Declaration of Independence that created the Jewish state and the part that promised "complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens," even though they be Arabs and not Jews. There is - let it be said once and for all - a potential confrontation between the JewishZionist state that was the millennial dream of the Jewish people and modern concepts of democracy and citizenship. We are pained, embarrassed, thrown into intellectual agony. We hasten to avoid such talk. It is unnecessary, dangerous, irresponsible, better left unspoken. Nonsense! Far better to meet the issue, deal with it boldly and courageously, explain it to our children and ourselves, than to have it explode in our faces tomorrow. There is nothing for which the Jew need apologize. A people that has suffered ecumenical agony and that has been deprived of the rights that other nations demand for themselves owes no one an explanation. The Middle East sees Islamic republics in which the Arabic quality and the Muslim character of the state are inscribed in the constitution; who shouts about Arabic "racism"? Africans insist upon the blackness of their state, and exclusiveness of culture and identity are the foundations of scores of nations. Who apologizes? The Zionist state is Judaism, the need for a land of the Jews where the people can escape Holocaust and build a distinctive Jewishness that will flourish. The very kernel of Jewish longing for a homeland through nearly 2,000 years of exile was the belief that the Jews were a separate and distinct people. In a world in which we recognize the right of selfdetermination for Papua, who will challenge Jewish rights? Moreover, the Jews constituted a unique people in that they were at one and the same time a religion and a nation, a religio-nation, which had lived as a unique society and culture in its own land - Eretz Yisrael. On the one hand they suffered unparalleled horrors and massacres in their wanderings in foreign lands. They knew no peace in any country in which their numbers grew large and their quality shone through. There was no society, religion, or economic or social system that gave them permanent haven and rest. Jews were burned to death, drowned, cut to pieces,
converted to death, Inquisitioned to death. Crusaded to death, Islamized to death, pogromed to death, and Auschwitzed to death. The Jews learned a bitter lesson in their twenty centuries of being strangers, of existing as a minority. The lesson? It is not good to be a stranger. Never be a minority. Never again! As impolite as it may sound, the Jews learned, after rivers of blood, not to trust to the tolerance and mercies and hospitality of others. They no longer wished to rely on the armies and the police and the swords of others to protect them from holocausts. Enough of being strangers. The Jews wanted to live. The Jews wanted their own armies, their own protection, their own home. And, of course, the Jews wished to preserve their unique spiritual identity. No minority culture can grow, normal and healthy and vibrant, in foreign soil. "How can we sing the song of the L-rd in a foreign land?" The Jew wanted a home of his own in which to be Jewish and not remain a hyphenated nonentity of Mosaic persuasion. The Jews were a separate and distinctive people seeking to live a separate and distinctive life in its own separate and distinctive state, a people that had tasted all the promises and guarantees and mercies of a hundred majorities. Never again. Determined not to be killed off, they came home to the land they had lost twice before. They would not lose it a third time -- through war or peace, through sword or "democracy.” It was on the basis of their uniqueness that the Jews founded political Zionism. It was on that basis that they approached Turkey and then Britain for help in allowing them to establish a national home. It was on that basis that the Bible Christian instantly understood the demand, and so too the League of Nations and later the United Nations. It was on the basis of being Jewish, the same Jewish people that had once lived in that same land, that the Jews demanded a land in which other people lived, trespassers. There could not have been any other moral or logical basis. And it was as the Jewish state that Israel came into being. The very assumption of a Jewish state guaranteed that it cannot permit the Arab minority to become a majority. The most fundamental law of the state is the linchpin in that effort. It is the Law of Return that grants automatic entry and Israeli citizenship to any Jew. That is the key to the insistence that Jews will be a majority that controls the Jewish sovereignty, political power, military might, and destiny of the country. Would Israel allow the Arabs through peaceful democracy to become a majority? If that question
can be asked, no Arab is really equal. If that question can be answered in the affirmative, there is no Jewish state. But it is more than that. It is the specific and unique atmosphere that is created by a Jewish state. The language, the religion, its holidays, the heroes, the ties to the outside Jewish world, the very air, become Jewish. The Jew in Boston or Rotterdam, Melbourne or Johannesburg, Moscow or Montreal, feels that Israel is "his," and his right to it is stated by the Declaration of Independence as being deeper than that of the Israeli-born Arab. It is not by material benefits alone that a man or woman lives. He, she, both, need to feel that the land is theirs, their political, cultural, spiritual home; that they belong. No Arab can say that about Israel as he sings the "Hatikva" or listens to the Jewish Agency, United Jewish Appeal, and World Zionist Organization speeches. "Oppression" need not be physical. It can be, and usually is, the atmosphere of living under someone else's majority rule, never being truly "home." That is the Arab plaint. If the Arab is unhappy about this, one can understand. It is never easy to be a lodger in someone else's home. But his unhappiness will not be resolved, for the Jew will not turn a lodger into an owner. If the Arab would rather live in his own home and atmosphere, he is welcome in any of the twenty-plus Arab states that exist. Israel cannot, and morally dare not, change its Jewish character. For Israel to change that Jewish character would be to turn those who created it on the basis of the Jewish historical right into liars and thieves. It would be more than admitting that "Jewishness" was used in the past only in order to take away Arab land. It would be a cynical slap in the face to world Jewry which gave of its energies, funds, and in many cases, lives for the dream of a Jewish state. It would be a despicable cutting off of all obligations to oppressed and persecuted Jews who see in today's Israel their trustee and defender. The Israeli who was once in need of a home and who found it in a state that was pledged to help him would now - no longer in need - selfishly cut the lifeline for others. The Jew has no moral right to an Israel that is a non-Jewish state. But in a Jewish state let no one insult the Arab by insisting that he is equal and that it is "his" state, too. It is this ultimate contradiction between the Jewish character of Israel and the democratic right of the Arab to aspire to all the rights that Jews have - including to have an Arab majority in the land - that will never give the Arab rest or allow him to accept the status quo.
From the very beginning non-Jews understood this far more easily. Most Jews instinctively sensed the contradiction but could not give up the idea of a Jewish state, and so they repressed the reality. But Gentiles conversant with the problem had no such difficulties. Alvin Johnson, president emeritus of the New School for Social Research, discussed the "Palestine" problem in January 1947, one and a half years before the establishment of Israel. Writing in Commentary magazine, he stated: "It would be no simple matter to establish and maintain a Jewish majority in Palestine. ... It is entirely realistic to say that the Arabs of Palestine do not want to live as a minority under the Jews, no matter what formal guarantees are given of minority rights. ... A national minority must expect to be oppressed. Even if it is no more oppressed than the Sudeten Germans and Slovaks in Czechoslovakia, the minority will consider itself oppressed. ... I submit, the Arab-Jewish problem in Palestine cannot be solved under the scheme of majority-minority nationalism.” Thirty-two years after Johnson made his precise observations, the majority-minority situation he warned about was in existence - more than three decades of Jewish majority rule with formal guarantees to an Arab minority. In 1979 a survey of Israeli Arab thinking was undertaken by the ArabJewish center at Haifa University. In light of the "remarkable accomplishments" and "advances" made by Israeli Arabs, the results of the poll are of more than passing interest. No fewer than 50 percent of the Arab citizens of Israel queried openly admitted that they reject Israel's right to exist. Some 64 percent consider Zionism to be racism. The same proportion, 64 percent, called for abolition of the Law of Return. Finally, whereas 87 percent of Israel's Arabs demanded that Israel give up all the land liberated in 1967, an astounding 59 percent also called for a rollback to the 1947 boundaries. The head of the survey. Dr. Sami Samouha, stated that the results made it clear that the point of issue between Jews and Arabs in Israel has nothing to do with the pace of integration of Arabs into the life of the state. "The dispute centers above the Jewish-Zionist character of the State of Israel. Sooner or later the Israeli Arab will demand substantive changes in the character of the state.” 97 Dr. Samouha was saying that in a Jewish state, whose entire character and destiny are tied to Jewishness and Judaism, the Arab citizen can never feel equal or part of it. Dr. Samouha is, of course, absolutely correct. He, as an Arab, understands this. Would that the Israeli leaders were as perceptive. The Jew, like it or not, must choose: unswerving adherence to a Jewish state, or the democracy of the Western liberal world which gives the Arab the right to change the country into an Arab state. More and more Israelis are forced to face this reality as being at the heart of the Arab-Jewish conflict. And others, having realized how terrible the dilemma, cannot bear to choose a Jewish solution. They either flee reality and devise a patently evasive or absurd answer, or they make their choice: democracy! A growing number of Hellenized Israelis declare that if there is a conflict between Jewishness and democracy, they choose democracy and the end of the Jewish state. Of course, the evaders of reality still constitute the majority. They flee the reality of the Arab teacher in Araba. Araba, the Galilee Arab village. Na'ama Saud is a young Arab Sabra. He teaches school, teaches the young Arab generation of Israel. A reporter for Maariv, Yisrael Harel, asks him (May 28, 1976) whether he accepts the fact of Israel as a Jewish state with himself as a minority with equal rights but no national ones. Saud replies: "Today I am in the minority. The state is democratic. Who says that in the year 2000 we Arabs will still be the minority? We are today about half a million Arabs in Israel. Today, I accept the fact that this is a Jewish state with an Arab minority. But when we are the majority I will not accept the fact of a Jewish state with an Arab majority.” Who is listening? Who wishes to see the dual threat to Israel - demographic and democratic? Certainly not Israeli leaders. In 1976 all the blindness, deafness, and contradictions that characterize the problem were in evidence in the person of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. On April 14, 1973, Rabin was Israeli ambassador to the United States. In a press conference in Tel Aviv, he made the following significant statement: "The process of Jewish rejuvenation is based on the rise of a State whose great majority is Jewish and which will be founded on Jewish values. Therefore, I doubt if she could hold too large an element of nonJews.” Three years later, Rabin was prime minister of Israel and in an angry mood. The Land Day Rebellion (March 30, 1976) had left a shocked 98 country in its wake. Rabin, in a Knesset speech, furiously attacked the Rakah Communist Party, instigator of the Land Day riots, for attempting "to tear up the fabric of cooperation between Jews and Arabs built up over the past twenty-eight years." A prime minister whose view is based on Israel as a Jewish state that cannot accommodate "too large" a number of Arabs blames the Communist Party for destroying "a wonderful relationship"? What can we say? What can Rabin possibly take the Arabs for? Then, on May 6, 1976, Rabin spoke to the annual meeting of Tel Aviv senior high school students. There he proclaimed: "The majority of the people living in a Jewish state must be Jewish [sic]. We must prevent a situation of an insufficient Jewish majority and we dare not have a Jewish minority. ... "There is room for a non-Jewish minority on condition that it accept the destiny of the state vis-a-vis the Jewish people, culture, tradition, and belief. The minority is entitled to equal rights as individuals with respect for their distinct religion and culture but not more than that” Rabin did not elaborate on how one prevented an Arab minority from becoming too large or becoming a majority. Nor did he analyze what positive impact his words might have on the happy Arabs of Israel. On May 24, 1976, Rabin met with the heads of the Arab village and town councils to learn what was troubling them. Angry Arabs left the meeting after Rabin had again limited them to the sphere of a religious and cultural group. And then, on June 6, the same group - widely regarded as the "moderate" leadership of the Arabs in Israel - drafted a memorandum in which they challenged Rabin's definition of Israel as a "Jewish-Zionist state in which lives an Arab minority with distinctive culture and religion.” Not at all, said the moderate Arab leaders: "The State of Israel is a bi national state [Dawie Thunaiya Kawmiya] with a Jewish majority and Arab minority." The implication was clear. Tomorrow, it could be an Arab majority and a Jewish minority. The Arabs were openly resenting the Jewish-Zionist foundation of Israel, to the "shock" of such as the pathetic Jerusalem Post. One gets a stunning insight into the confused minds of the Jewish liberal, reading the June 9 editorial of a paper that prides itself on its progressive struggle on behalf of Israel's Arabs. It is a mix of classic southern-plantation paternalism and confusion: "In response to grievances harbored by the Arab community the government has opted for a policy which would encourage far-going Arab integration 99 into Israel and close the gaps between the two communities. This is an enlightened minorities policy [sic]. ... "Israel was established in accordance with the 1947 UN partition decision as a Jewish state. ... It may therefore be essential to reiterate to Israel's Arab citizens that while they have the inalienable right to fight for greater equality and more opportunities - a fight in which many Jews will enlist on their side - Israel is and will remain irrevocably Jewish.” Pity the confused liberals. "Israel will remain irrevocably Jewish. "And suppose the Arabs become a majority? Can the liberal leopard change its spots? Will the Jerusalem Post and all its ilk refuse to allow them to vote? Would this be any way for a liberal to behave? And so, in ideological panic, the Jerusalem Post refused to think about it and, in the best tradition of southern paternalism or British colonialism, offered the Arab an "enlightened minorities policy.” What may be most significant about the Arab memorandum was the fact that its four drafters were all "moderate" Arabs linked to the Israeli Labor Party. They were Hana Muwiz, council head of Rama; Tark Rafik Abdul Hai, head of Tira; Jamil D'raba, head of Sakhnin; and Ahmed Msaiha of Daburiya. For years these men had been "loyal" Israelis, dutifully following the Zionist line. What caused them to change? Had they changed? The answer is no, they had not. The longtime Israeli expert on Arab affairs Tzvi El-Peleg wrote, after the Land Day Rebellion: "They [the Arabs] knew how to conceal the enmity and at the proper time to allow it to burst forth. As long as the time had not yet arrived for the enmity to come into the open, everything went peacefully. Correct relations, elaborate hospitality. ...” But now the time had come, and the real Israeli Arab stood up to proclaim partially his true desires. Of course, Rabin learned nothing. In June 1976 he stood at the well-publicized Labor Party symposium, and after, again, going through a litany of self-praise ("Israel can be proud of her attitude toward the Arabs of Israel in the practical conditions in which she finds herself"), and after reciting the compulsory "head-and-stomach" figures that proved how much progress the Arabs had made in Israel, Rabin proceeded to state yet again the two important pillars of his policy. Said the prime minister: "Israel is a Jewish state" with "full equality of rights for all non-Jewish citizens with respect to their separate cultural and religious identities.” Of course the Arab wanted more. Of course the Arab resented, hated, the fact that a Jewish state doomed him to perpetual minority status, 100 never able to control his homeland. Of course, the right to have babies and vote gave him the right in a democracy to become a majority and change the character of the state. Did not Rabin understand that? How did he propose to prevent such a situation: Does "full equality" for the Arabs mean that they have no right to bear as many children as they wish, who will then elect enough Arabs to the Knesset to change "Israel" to "Palestine"? Or does "full equality" perhaps imply "with limitation on their rights to vote"? No one dealt with any of this at the meaningless symposium. The Jews frantically avoided thinking about it as they tried desperately to persuade the Arabs how good things were for them. One incident, however, underlined the real situation. Said one of the Arabs present, attorney Jamil Jalhoubi: "If everything is so good, why are things so bad? We must recognize the rights of the Palestine Arab nation that lives in the land. There has been economic progress, but not by bread alone does man live.” The basic impossibility of Arab integration in a Jewish state and the fundamental reasons for an Arab-Jewish conflict that are insoluble are recognized every so often by various Israelis who can never bring themselves to come up with the solution. Thus, Moshe Sharon, former adviser on Arab affairs to Menachem Begin, stated (June 22, 1979): "... The Arabs of Israel feel they belong wholly to the Arab nation, which opposes Israel, and yet live in a Jewish state with whose political goals they cannot identify and whose social and cultural values they do not share. ... "To identify with this state means regarding its Zionist character, its Jewish culture, and its political and Jewish national goals as their own. No Arab in Israel can do so. ... The preference is to see some radical change in the character of the state ... in which the roles would be reversed: a Palestinian Arab majority would rule over a Jewish minority. ... In the present state of affairs, integration cannot work in this country. II And, in a personal viewpoint, Sarah Hoenig wrote, following the Land Day Rebellion (Jerusalem Post, April 5, 1976): "We should see last week's Arab riots for what they were - outbreaks of hostility against the Jewish state, pure and simple. ... Unless we come to grips with the fact that the basic cause for the riots is Arab unwillingness to accept the Jewish state despite its nearly 28 years of independence, we shall be deliberately beclouding our vision.
"Why, after all, should the Arab nationalists acquiesce in the continuation of Israeli sovereignty as an irreversible fact when they have just succeeded in destroying the Lebanese state as it had been for over 40 years?” Back in December 1951, Judo L. Teller wrote a perceptive article in Commentary in which he pointed out "It must be remembered that the Arabs in Israel are not just a minority in the usual sense of the word. They are a defeated enemy with all that this signifies in mutual fear, resentment and suspicion. ... "In Haifa, a Jewish teacher exerted his pupils to be 'good citizens of Israel and loyal sons of the Arab people.' Michael Assaf, writing in Hamizrach Hachadash, branded this a doctrine of incompatibility. In the context of current events, Assaf said, a 'loyal Arab' must wish to drive the Jews unto the sea. ... "They cannot consider themselves simply Israelis, differing only in religion and language from the Jewish majority of their co-nationals -- for that state in its very lineament is the expression of the desire of that majority to create a land that should be its own. ...” This is the heart of the problem, and as long as Israelis refuse to betray the raison d'etre of the state, its Jewish character, there is no solution. Dr. Subhi Abu Ghosh, an Arab official in the Ministry of Religions, was quoted in an article in Present Tense (Spring 1975): "Israel has to decide whether its Israeli or its Jewish aspect predominates. I am an Israeli, but I cannot be a Jew. The problem of the Arab minority is one for the Israeli establishment, not one for the Arabs themselves.” The anti-Zionist publication Israel and Palestine, published in Paris, understood all too well the contradictions in general Israeli thinking as well as the particular confusion in Prime Minister Rabin's statements. In referring to the persistent "head-and-stomach" declaration as well as Rabin's insistence that Israel is a Jewish-Zionist state, the May 1976 issue stated: "It was proved once more that a full belly is no substitute for freedom. ... Israel's Arabs consider themselves now to belong to the Palestinian people which lives in the occupied territories and in the Arab countries. ... Rabin's speech amounts to a statement that the present oppression is an attribute of this state's roots and character. ...” It is the Jewish character of Israel which the Arabs will never accept, and it is the Jewish character of Israel which is threatened by the political rights given to the Arabs by a schizophrenic Declaration of Independence and the ideologically torn and confused Israeli liberal leaders. Writing in
Midstream magazine (January 1968), Joel Carmichael reasoned: "And if the Arab community within Israel achieves parity and is democratically represented in the organs of government, it is hard to see how an Israeli government could avoid the curbing of two rights that it is bound to regard as fundamental, and that have always been so regarded by the historic Zionist movement - the right to control both immigration and land development. If an Israeli Arab community roughly the size of the Israeli Jewish community were to be fairly represented in government, there is, of course, no reason to think it would tolerate the promotion of these two cardinal goals of the Zionist movement." Mr. Carmichael was being charitable. The Arabs would not tolerate the Zionist movement and the Jewish state. A brief glimpse of what the Arabs have in mind can be garnered from a disingenuous proposal by an Israeli Arab leader. On June 28, 1976, Rashad Salah Slim, head of the Israeli village of Eiblin, drafted a memorandum in which he suggested that the name of the state be changed to "Israel-Palestine" and cover all the territory on both sides of the Jordan, including the country of Jordan. Free immigration would be given to all Jews and Arabs (including, of course, the Arabs who fled their homes in 1948). Voting would be based on one person, one vote. Of course, this is little more than a more cynical version of the PLO's call for a "democratic, secular Palestine," which translates into an Arab state. Slim's unique contribution is the name. Such a state would by its population automatically become the twenty-second Arab state, but the name "Israel" would remain in a hyphenated version (for at least the first six months). Of course, the Arabs want "democracy." Their numbers mean the end of the one Jewish state in the world. The mad Jewish insistence that Israel is committed to this "democracy" is but the latest in Jewish tendencies toward suicide. The Jew must decide whether he is prepared to sacrifice the Jewish state on the altar of "democracy" that is a cynical weapon in the hands of Arabs who have trampled on its banner a hundred times over in the past. The Jew must recognize that no Arab wishes to live in a Jewish state and that "democracy" is his weapon in putting an end to that state. There are, of course, those Israeli Arabs who say that they do recognize the State of Israel and do see it as their country. Let no one rejoice prematurely. The Arabs who say this are simply accepting what they see as a realistic position. Israel exists, and they live there. The fact does not make them happy, for there are not two Arabs in the country
who would not prefer to see a miracle occur and Jewish rule be displaced by Palestinian rule. But although they would prefer a Palestinian state in what is now Israel, they believe that this will not occur in the forseeable future. They are not prepared to jeopardize themselves by saying the things that so many students do. But this is so, not because they differ with the sentiments expressed by the "radicals"; they are simply more "practical." Every Arab reserves for himself the right to work toward that glorious day when he will be the majority and at least by democratic, legal means will make his "Israel" an Arab state. And so, the Arab who proclaims Israel's right to exist and his acceptance of citizenship and belonging to Israel is playing the same game that has been played for some time in regard to Jerusalem. Sadat or Carter or some other gentile world statesman proclaims his fealty to the concept of "one Jerusalem," and Jews rejoice. For Jews also proclaim their demand for one, unified Jerusalem, and if the Egyptian and American presidents also do -- why, there is proof that they support the Jewish position! Nonsense. It is a game, the kind of Middle Eastern game of semantics in which men of deception, duplicity, and evasion are experts. Of course Sadat is for "one Jerusalem." But his concept is that of one unified Arab Jerusalem. Of course the Americans say they support a unified city. But if that unified city is an Arab one, they will support that. Jews are fearful of demanding precise and exact definitions lest their worst fears be realized, and so they join the game. "One Jerusalem" -- all things to all people. It is the same with the "Israel" that Arabs in the country claim to recognize and accept. "Israel" to the Jew means the Jewish state, irrevocably, permanently. Not so to the Arab. Yes, he recognizes a state called "Israel," which today is a Jewish state. But the "best" of the Arabs, the most "moderate," the most willing to accept the right of Israel, the Jewish state of today, to exist, do not recognize that right as absolute. They recognize the right of Israel, the Jewish state, to exist as long as a majority of its citizens prefer an "Israel" as the "Jewish state." But the most "moderate" and good Arabs are not Zionists. Should there eventually emerge an Arab majority in the country, every one of them -- swearing loyalty to "Israel" -- will go to the polls and vote out its Jewish character. They will, undoubtedly, vote to change its name too, but that is not really relevant. Every Arab in Israel reserves for himself the right, as a democratic majority, to abolish the Jewish-Zionist nature of the country that he would now dominate. Every Arab demands the right at least to
work peacefully toward the day when the Law of Return is abolished and Israel will be a de facto Arab state. The almost hysterical obeisances to "democracy" on the part of Israelis and their frantic insistence that Arabs enjoy democracy in an Israel that is committed to democracy are simply astounding. Clearly, the more they pledge themselves to "democracy, " the more bound they are to their commitment; the more impossible it will be for them to deny the Arab the right to put an end democratically to the Jewish state. The Western-influenced Jewish Hellenists of our time dig their own pit of doom. Thus Labor Party Secretary-General Haim Bar-Lev, visiting South Africa in June 1980, was asked to compare the minority situations in South Africa and Israel. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (June 10, 1980): "Bar-Lev observed that while he was not familiar with the South African situation, he felt that there was no comparison. In Israel, where there was equality before the law, both Arabs and Jews had to vote and sat in the same Knesset.” Is Bar-Lev a fool or a knave? The thought of a comparison with the pariah of the Western World - South Africa - turns him into a defender of democracy and of the rights of Arabs to do away with Zionism, as they sit "in the same Knesset" with the future Jewish minority. And so, in the end, he digs his own pit. He deceives not one Arab but contributes to the dismal Jewish self-delusion that will explode in our faces one day in the not terribly distant future. On June 27, 1980, the former Labor Party director-general of the Foreign Ministry, Gideon Rafael, wrote an impassioned defense of democracy in Israel. But, more important, he blistered the "fanatics" and "extremists" with their "anti-democratic virus." Rafael is a firm believer in democratic rights for the Arabs of Israel. He calls on "the supporters of the democratic way of life" to be "on constant alert to weed out the growth of antidemocratic tendencies. They must warn against cheap slogans and deceptive shortcuts. They must strengthen the understanding that democracy, with all its shortcomings, outshines the deceptive glitter of autocracy.” Rafael is guilty of the worst of cheap slogans. His bitter condemnation of honest "extremists" is a cover for his fear of facing the frightening question: Would he allow the Arabs of Israel to exercise their glorious democratic rights in order to put an end to Zionism? Will that democratic "shortcoming" also outshine "autocracy"? The inherent contradiction of the Rafaels is not lost on the Arabs. What they
fail to understand, however, is the genuine confusion of soul in those modern-day Hellenists who are really gentilized creatures of the West. The very real conflict between the Jewish values and Western ones unifies them. They are truly troubled souls, and so they attempt to avoid thinking about the real question, all the while hysterically waving high the banner of total democracy they hope they will never have to test. The promises they make to the Arabs are really anesthetics for their own troubled consciences. In the end they will be forced to choose, when, thanks to their own previous moral cowardice, they will have brought Israel to the very brink of tragedy. A Jewish state versus the Western, gentilized one of total equality for Arabs and Jews. A growing Arab population that uses democracy to turn Israel into "Palestine." One cannot emphasize too often or too strongly that this is the core of the problem. But the tragic dwarfs who guide Israeli policy are too terrified to see. And so they choose to avoid reality. Teddy Koliek, the greatest proponent of the illusion of "one Jerusalem," appoints mini-advisers on Arab affairs. One of them, Aharon Sarig, described his task (February 28, 1978) as being to "close the enormous gap" between East (Arab) and West (Jewish) Jerusalem "in everything connected with educational facilities, housing, and cultural institutions as well as the entire infrastructure, including roads, water, and sewerage pipelines, street paving, and lighting." This, he hopes, will "increase ttie feeling of Jerusalem Arabs that they are part of the city.” Koliek, himself, in San Francisco in June 1980, ruled out, naturally, any Arab control of even part of the city, as well as joint rule of the city by Jews and Arabs. How, then, does the former Viennese, now Jerusalem, burgomaster propose to make the Arabs happy in a city that will never be theirs? The answer: "boroughs." "Large cities must be divided up into smaller districts to give people more feelings of identity and responsibility. This would give the Arabs the feeling of running their own affairs.” Is it possible Koliek actually believes this plan? The Arabs will not have sovereignty; they will never be allowed even joint rule with Jews -- but he will give them "the feeling of running their own affairs." What can one say concerning such contempt for the Arab mentality? The Arabs deserve better. They deserve our recognition as a people who cannot be bought with sewerage lines or "feelings." At a celebration of Jerusalem writers commemorating the eleventh anniversary of "Unified
Jerusalem," an Arab writer spoiled the evening for Teddy Koliek by deviating from the script. Said Muhmad Abu Shalabay: "This will be another Belfast. We must divide the city into two parts and have the eastern city be the capital of the Palestinian state.” The Arabs and their leftist Jewish comrades know better. Dr. Ismail Sabri Abdullah, an Egyptian university professor, wrote a book in 1969 called Fi Muwajahat Isra'il [Confronting Israel] in which he pointed to the fact that there was not an Israeli nationality but a Jewish one, and this was the cornerstone of the state: "The main obstacle in the way of forming a distinct Israeli nation is the Zionist [read: Jewish] link. For Israel cannot become a nation unless she finally ceases to consider herself the homeland of the Jews. The concept of an Israeli nationality inevitably negates Jewish nationalism.” What the Arab was saying was that the Jewish foundation and character of Israel prevented the Israelis - the Arabs of the state and the Jews - from creating a common, equal Israeli nationality. That, of course, is true. For the Arab of Israel to feel equal, the state, as the first and basic step, would have to give up its specific Jewish character. Is that what Jews want? How important it is to understand that the Israeli Hellenists are troubled people, torn by their essential Western concepts and the desire to hold onto the Jewish state. They are upset when an Elmer Berger, renegade Jew and one of the key Jewish lobbyists against Israel, says: "This exclusive Zionist nationality concept has always been the source of conflict in Palestine and it remains so today. By definition, the State of Israel's Zionist 'Jewish people' nationality base cannot accommodate any number of 'non-Jewish people,' nationals who might, in normal democratic procedures, threaten the 'Jewish character' of the state.” There are, of course, Jews who have no problems with such statements. Ironically, they are the Jews over whom Koliek and Rafael and Bar-Lev and Rabin turn apoplectic. They are the Jews who see not the slightest problem in choosing. When confronted with the choice of Jewish survival through the Jewish state or a democracy that would turn it into an Arab one, they naturally and quite Jewishly opt for Jewishness. Of course, they say, we insist upon a Jewish state with a Jewish majority and Jewish sovereignty and Jewish control of its own destiny. Of course we have learned our lessons of the exile well. Of course we do not trust the Arabs to be kind to us and protect us. Of course we know what they did to us in the past and would do tomorrow, again, if they could. Of
course we will never agree to be a minority again. Of course we have learned our Holocausts well. Of course Judaism demands a Jewish state - Jewish in spirit, culture, identity, and destiny. Of course there is no room for an Arab who is not prepared to accept the permanent limitations of a minority. So speak those whose Jewish consciences are clear and who do not quake at the cry of "racism.” In 1933 David Ben-Gurion debated, with British Labor M.P. Josiah Wedgwood, the question of Zionism versus democracy in Palestine. BenGurion, hardly a paragon of consistency, told Wedgwood: "When we are faced on the one hand with democratic formulas and on the other with the vital concerns of masses of workers, we give priority to the practical problems.” One suggests that the Ben-Gurion challenge be rephrased and made our national statement: "When we are faced on the one hand with a democratic demand to allow our enemies to take from us our state, and on the other wish to build that magnificent Jewish land that will be a haven for the Jewish body and a home for the soul, we choose Zionism; we choose the Jewish state; we choose Judaism.” The Arab Report, a propaganda sheet published by the Arab Information Center in the United States, wrote on November 15, 1975: "The essence of the political doctrine of Zionism is the concept that Jews are one people and the corollary that Jews must have a state of their own. ... In a country in which there is a law called the Law of Return, permitting a Jew who has never been to Palestine to return, and a policy prohibiting a Palestinian from actually returning to his home ... how can a country like that be described as a democracy?” How amusing to read this and then to contemplate such Arab "democracies" as Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, ad infinitum. But that is not really relevant. The real issue is whether the Jew will accept the stark reality of the ultimate and insoluble contradiction or whether he will choose the Jewish state over democracy or fall victim to the Hellenism and guilt born of assimilated Western concepts. The frantic pangs of assimilated conscience bode ill for the Jewish state. In an article for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (June 10, 1976), Uzi Benziman wrote: "Israelis nowadays find themselves forced to face up to issues which were swept under the carpet for many years. ... Israel was created to enable the Jews to have their own independent state where they
would implement the Zionist vision of a restoration of sovereign national life. But relations between the Arab inhabitants and the Jews living in and immigrating to Israel were never sufficiently defined and clarified. ... "The real problem, after all, is rooted in the very definition of the state as a Jewish country which allows the Arab minority to have its own life. ... Relations between Jews and Arabs are complicated because the majority represents a unique entity that embodies a religion and a nationhood, while the minority belongs to a larger, supranational entity. ... A new definition of the Israeli nation is needed.” What does Benziman mean by a new definition of the Israeli nation? Is he saying that in order to bring peace to Israel, the state must "deJudaize" itself, throw off the Zionist definition of Israel as a Jewish state? Is he calling for the cutting of ties between Israel and Jewishness, Jewish people and Jewish tradition and culture? Is he saying that all people who live in Israel now be looked upon as Israeli nationals, regardless of whether they are Jews or Arabs, and the "Israeliness" now be measured in the same way "Britishness" is? There are not a few Israeli Jews who say yes. They are the ones who see not the slightest reason to be Jewish, since the term holds absolutely no religious or national meaning or value for them. They are the Sabras or near-Sabras (along with the usual sprinkling of Jewish self-haters), the Hellenists of our time. They are the people to whom Judaism as a religion means nothing, and so the most fundamental pillar of Jewishness collapses. But neither do they have even the superficial reasons to be Jewish that are the staffs of the Jews of the Exile and of certain elements in Israel. These latter, though having thrown off religion, remain Jews for one or two other fascinating reasons: goyim and chulent. Goyim -- gentiles. Vast numbers of Jews in the world remain Jewish only because the Gentile does not permit them to do otherwise. "What forty-eight prophets and seven prophetesses could not do - turn the Jews to penitence - Haman's ring did," say the rabbis. Anti-semitism, the bloody, murderous, ironic reason that millions of Jews remain so. Chulent-- the Sabbath concoction of potatoes, beans, and meat that cooks all night on the stove. It is the symbol of the Jewish culinary and other social traditions that millions of Jews who have left tradition still remember. Nostalgia! I remember Zayde; I remember the Friday-night candles and wine. Nostalgia, a weapon of conscience that binds and holds the Jew to a people in which he would otherwise not see the slightest unique value.

Goyim and chulent hardly logical or deep reasons to remain Jewish, but powerful, nevertheless, and effective. But what do we say to hundreds of thousands of Sabras who have never lived as a minority and who do not know the lesson of goyim, the Gentiles? And what of all those who do not have chulent or nostalgia to grip them and make Jewishness important, for whatever reason? What of all the dry bones of Israel who have neither Jewish skin nor flesh nor veins nor spirit? What of all the gentilized Hebrews, products of a secular Zionism, socialist or otherwise, who aimed at creating a nation exactly like all other nations and succeeded so magnificently, of which the universal crime, social upheaval, and permissiveness that now grip the state are eloquent proof? For these people there is not the slightest relevance to being Jewish, and their "Israeliness" means exactly as much or as little to them as "Danishness" or "Swedishness" or "Uraguayness" to citizens of those countries. To the gentilized Hebrews there is only one major imperative: to live, and as much as possible without problems. And if "Zionism," that link between Israel and Jewishness, is the cause of so much grief - annual reserve duty, high taxes, terrorist threats, inflation, insecurity - why, who needs it? And so thousands who can, leave the country, and the Uzi Benzimans suggest "a change in the definition" of the state. There are scores of variations on the theme of de-Zionizing and deJudaizing Israel. Each of them involves making the state less Jewish, in the absurd hope that that will satisfy the Arabs. Thus, a group called Shutafut ("Partnership") is established by a Jewish intellectual as a "union for creating conditions of partnership between Arabs and Jews." Question: How does one create a "partnership" in which one of the partners insists that he be the senior one? Surely by making both equal co-owners in the business - and there goes Zionism. Is that what Shutafut wishes? Of course, the true absurdity in this is that the Arabs do not want partnership in the land they sincerely believe is theirs, especially when they believe that time and conditions are on their side. Why, the very rise of such a group convinces them that the Jews are fearful for the future, for otherwise why should they -- who control the state -- bother to try to make the Arabs "partners"? Certainly they, the Arabs, would never do such an insane thing if they were a majority. The Arabs do not want

shutafut, partnership; they wish to control the land they will call "Palestine.” In reality, Shutafut's political program is vague or nonexistent. For all practical purposes, it reverts to the old "head-and-stomach" philosophy of helping Arabs to a better life as a means of having both sides reach "goodwill" and "coexistence." Nevertheless, although its "program" is politically vague and meandering, its entire spirit breathes "deZionization." Almost instinctively, the group seems to understand that a Zionist Jewish state and Arab-Jewish "love" are contradictions. And so, while its practical projects are those of "head-and-stomach," the real goal is the surrender of the exclusively Jewish state in favor of an "equal" partnership in which Arabs will love the Jews. Shutafut is one more in a long chain of liberal Jewish efforts to give up their own rights in hope of winning the love of others. The inevitable failure of the effort will stem from the fundamental contempt that the Gentile has for a Jew who, having no self-respect, can clearly never respect him. Among the love and coexistence projects that are the first steps toward the de-Zionizing of Israel, Shutafut started a shaggy commune of a sort near Latrun, to be known as Neve Shalom. (Among the leading lights were one Bruno Hassar, an Egyptian Jew turned Catholic, described as "the prophet" of the commune, and Reconstructionist rabbi Jack Cohen.) There, in August 1977, as part of a week-long program to train counselors for joint Jewish-Arab children's summer camps, a Jewish-Arab poetry reading was held on the theme of "love of homeland." The Jews, naturally, spoke of love and peace. Fawzi Abdullah, an Arab poet, had other things in mind. His love of homeland was sincere - he wanted his land. And so the poem he read was called "Land Day," in which he condemned the Jews for taking Arab land. The Arab poet, he decided, had a national task; the writing of "historical documents." That meant describing the "wounded homeland" in which the Arabs were divided into "a minority within it and refugees without.” Partnership, indeed. Shutafut will never bring peace to Israel, but it is doing two things quite successfully. It is helping to weaken and eventually will poison the concepts of Zionism and Jewish nationalism, especially in its effects on young Jewish students and liberals in the United States. Their simplistic and intellectually questionable approach, based on the magic words love,
peace, and coexistence, finds fertile soil in the minds of young people, themselves victims of rootlessness and intellectual shallowness. Second, Shutafut helps prepare the way for the breaking down of the barriers that, until now, mostly prevented intermarriage and assimilation. Without any kind of plan to prevent the Arabs from politically taking over the Jewish state, the Hellenists of Shutafut, through de-Zionization, work vigorously on programs that destroy the uniqueness and separateness of the Jew. This must inevitably duplicate the intermarriage and assimilation that decimated Jews in Germany, from where the founder of Shutafut stems. The truth is that even without groups such as Shutafut, assimilation has begun to grow in Israel. Held back for decades by Arab-Israeli conflict, by strict geographical separation between Jews and Arabs, and by strong traditional as well as anti-Arab feelings, it has begun to spread in recent years, those reasons having begun to weaken. Intermarriage and the breakdown of uniqueness have risen. This in itself makes the growing Arab population a threat to the spiritual existence of ever-growing numbers of Jews. But the work of Shutafut and other groups of its kind will surely escalate the process. Surely, the joint Jewish-Arab workshops, summer camps, retreats, clubhouses, and visits to homes will do precisely what such things did during the eternal Jewish struggle for minority rights in every land of the Exile. Jewish youngsters with no Jewish education will see no difference between themselves and Arab youngsters. Friends will become lovers. Jewish women will find coexistence with Arab men in bedroom retreats, and the already nonexistent intellectual reasons not to intermarry will be reinforced in the name of "brotherhood" and "goodwill." Shutafut and other groups such as Interns for Peace (an organization with much money and support from the U.S. Reform Jewish movement, the American Jewish Committee, and other Establishment giants) all nourish the myth of "head-and-stomach" coexistence as well as moving toward the de-Zionizing of Israel. But most of all they are the prime drivers on the road to Jewish-Arab assimilation. For intermarriage and assimilation cannot thrive through separation. The first need is to break down barriers and to intermingle. That is being done by Shutafut and Interns. There are indeed many who see nothing wrong with this. They are the masters of illogic who call for a "solution" to the Jewish problem of assimilation in the Exile by struggling heroically to create a Jewish state in which Arab-Jewish mixing will lead to Jewish disappearance in a joint

"Israeli" identity. Black humor aside, they are people who are faced with a Jewish value versus a universal one; being essentially gentilized Hebrews, they opt for universalism. Jewishness versus universalism. A Jewish state versus a Western, liberal, equal one. Zionism or open democracy. Ultimately Israel will have to choose. In an offhand remark in June 1976, Prime Minister Rabin wondered how much longer "will we be able to prevent Nazareth Arabs from settling in [Jewish] Upper Nazareth?" Immediately, angry residents of the Jewish town signed a petition that stated: "We came here to provide our children with a Jewish education and to raise them in a Jewish - not Arab - atmosphere." The Jewish residents, all immigrants, were making the eminently logical point: to live next to Arabs in a mixed atmosphere, they could have remained in Morocco. Veteran Veteran Yediot Aharonot writer Shlomo Shamgar found his liberal instincts repelled by the Jewish reaction. On June 27, 1976, he angrily wrote: "I cannot understand how Jews who know what happened to our people because of such reactionary views can so arrogantly reject neighbors of this or that nationality or religion. ... The Arab is tolerated at best, as a neighbor in the country but not in the neighborhood.” Shamgar, of course, revels in his self-righteousness. Will he tell us what he thinks of a state that by law is Jewish and what he thinks of European states that call themselves Christian? What would Shamgar say to a state whose law of immigration applies only to non-Jews? Will Shamgar agree to a democratically elected Palestinian state in place of Israel? Shamgar is one of those whose terror of thinking about the contradiction between democracy and Zionism forces his feelings of guilt to erupt on behalf of Arabs in Upper Nazareth housing projects. The Arab-Jewish problem in Israel has nothing to do with lack of integration, jobs, education, or toilets. It has nothing to do with stomachs or heads. It is the desire of a minority (once a majority) that was humiliatingly defeated to be sovereign in what it considers its own land. It is the problem of a Jewish state that says nothing emotionally, spiritually, nationally, or culturally to the non-Jewish Arabs. It is a question of a state with a bewildered Declaration of Independence drafted by confused and bewildered men - whose universal values clashed with their Jewish ones, leaving them troubled and guilt-ridden. It is the problem of a democratic option that can eliminate the Jewish state at the ballot box.

It is a question of democracy. It is a question of demography. It is a question we must ask ourselves: Are we prepared to commit national suicide. No two peoples so different in every way can possibly share the same country. The world is filled with examples of the rise of nationalism and separation that promise for Israel the horrors that today are international realities. We need only look at a world torn by particularism to realize the folly of the belief that Jews and Arabs can coexist in Eretz Yisrael.