At second blush, it seems the work of a lunatic fringe. First blush, of course, is the actual explosion of the pipe bomb that lightly wounded Professor Ze’ev Sternhell, an internationally renowned political scientist and a winner this year of the Israel Prize. That happened around midnight on Thursday, September 25, just outside Sternhell’s home on Shai Agnon Street in Jerusalem.
The second blush: Nearby and also scattered throughout the neighborhood, a flier. “A prize of 1.1 million shekels is offered to anyone who kills a member of Peace Now,” the flier stated. “The State of Israel has turned into our enemy. The time has come to establish a Halachic state in Judea and Samaria! It is time for the Kingdom of Judea!”
The mind reels: The State of Israel is their enemy? A reward for dead Peace Now members? A halachic kingdom? Surely, then, a lunatic fringe.
Or maybe not. As the saying goes, to every blush there’s a context.
Shall we start with the pogrom of September 13? (“Pogrom” is not my word; it is Prime Minister Olmert’s.) On that Saturday morning, a series of confrontations began when a Palestinian man entered the Jewish settlement of Yitzhar, south of Nablus. He torched a Jewish home that was unoccupied at the time and then stabbed a 9-year-old child. Settlers responded by storming Asira al-Kabaliyahe, the nearby Arab village where the attacker was presumed to live. They stoned cars and windows and fired at passers-by, several of whom were wounded. A villager captured the rampage on a video that showed Israeli troops looking on without intervening.
Both the police and the army initially disclaimed responsibility and blamed each other. Olmert got it right at a Cabinet meeting the next day: “There will be no pogroms against non-Jewish residents in the State of Israel.”
Or shall we come forward, to the New York Times report of September 26? “Hard-core right-wing settlers have responded to limited army operations in recent weeks by blocking roads, rioting spontaneously, throwing stones at Palestinian vehicles and burning Palestinian orchards and fields all over the West Bank, a territory that Israel has occupied since 1967. They have also vandalized Israeli Army positions, equipment and cars.”
There have been hundreds of such incidents over the years, and they have become more frequent lately. The uprooting of ancient olive groves owned and worked by Palestinians, the creation of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, the maiming and killing of Palestinian villagers — and the very light reprimands and sentences given the small number of Jewish settlers who have been detained for taking the law into their own hands (and twisting it beyond recognition).
Or how about Rabbi Israel Rozen, who wrote back in August about the controversy regarding Migron? Migron is yet another Jewish settlement built on Palestinian land. According to Rabbi Rozen, the Palestinians themselves were unaware that the land was theirs until Peace Now’s “settlement watch” program so informed them. “Such tale-bearing,” the rabbi said, “is known in Hebrew as ‘moser’ [informer]… Individuals who have sunk to this lowest level of behavior were despised and shunned [in Jewish tradition]. They are considered worse than heretics or apostates.” According to Halacha, he observed, the punishment for such tale-bearing was death.
Some of us well remember the name Emil Grunzweig, a Peace Now activist who was killed by a hand grenade while attending a rally in 1983. Now we learn, according to Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s largest newspaper, that Emily Grunzweig, age 24, niece (and namesake) of Emil, has been receiving threatening phone calls. She is a law and political science student, and was until recently an organizer in Peace Now. “At first there were violent and threatening phone calls in the style of: ‘You are traitors and criminals,’” she told the paper. “When my full name appeared on the Peace Now statements, the phone calls became much more blatant, threatening and specific. The anonymous people who made the threats promised me that my end would be the same as Emil’s, if I don’t stop my activity in Peace Now. I receive a threat at least once every two days.”
In other words, the attempted murder of Professor Sternhell did not take place in a vacuum. It did, at least, elicit widespread condemnation from all sectors of the Israeli political echelon. Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, was especially eloquent: “We are returning to the dark spectacle of pipe bombs that are aimed at people, in this case against a very gifted person who never shies away from expressing his opinion. We won’t let any elements, from any dark corner of Israeli society, harass people who let their clear, lucid, unique voices, like that of Ze’ev Sternhell, be heard.” What makes this especially noteworthy is that Sternhell, a Holocaust survivor and a combat veteran of the Israel Defense Forces, is a very vocal critic of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and of its failure to act effectively against the settlements — in particular, the illegal settlements that Israel has repeatedly promised to remove.
But here is the problem: Ehud Barak has been minister of defense for 14 months now, and he is a central part of that failure. It is the IDF that is directly responsible for the safety of the Palestinians in the West Bank, to say nothing of confronting the thefts of Palestinian land. And it is Ehud Barak who is responsible for the actions — and the inactions — of the army.
Ze’ev Sternhell: He’s the subject of a fascinating recent interview by Ha’aretz’s Ari Shavit (just Google “Shavit on Sternhell”). It’s both heartbreaking and inspiring. And there is this, in a Ha’aretz interview on September 29, after Sternhell’s release from the hospital: “The politicians must declare war on the extreme right and occupation — that’s the swamp where those mosquitoes breed.” One hopes Barak et al will read it.
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The fanatics among the religious settlers and their supporters think that they are intimidating us into abandoning our ideas of justice and our need to provide a peaceful environment of opportunity to our children. What they are actually doing is convincing the many Jews who have been trying to find ways to welcome them into contemporary civilization that we have been on a fool’s errand, trying to accomplish an impossible task. These fanatics are the fools. They are attempting to force us to choose to steal land that belongs to others. They are attempting to force us to choose to murder and be murdered, to maim and be maimed. They are forcing us to choose between them and justice, between them and democracy, between them and a law abiding state, between them and our children. When they have forced us to choose, we will not choose them.
The fact that there are those who wish to have an halachic state should not come as a surprise. Religious Zionism defined the renewed State of Israel as "the beginning of redemption". In other words, in opposition to the ultra-orthodox who saw Zionism as a rebellion against tradition, religious Zionism intepreted the rise of Israel as an event that would lead to the realization of messianic times. Today, however, there is a crisis in religious Zionism. It has become clear to them that the non-religious majority views the birth of Israel has the fulfillment of our ancient aspirations. The new sovereign Jewish society calls itself "the Third Temple" only in a poetic sense. Moreover, this majority views the concept of self-determination as universal: The Jews are entitled to their own national home, just as other peoples are entitled to theirs. The conclusion, therefore, is partition of the Land of Israel. The religious Zionists see this trend, and they wish to foil it. The attack on Prof Ze’ev Sternhell is an expression of the extremists to act against those who speak of partition. We Jews are a people that thrives from self-criticism. A dramatic event such as the wounding of Prof Ze’ev Sternhell is naturally a moment for another examination of the trends in Israeli society. However, we shouldn't let our tendency for self-criticism blur the balanced picture of our reality: Israel is capable of making dramatic life-and-death decisions through a democratic process. As the evacuation of Gaza proved, the decision was made and then it was implemented. Those who disagreed were given the possibility to express their opposition and protest - but in the end all segments of Israeli society participated in the evacuation (even soldiers who lived in the settlements). It's clear, despite the violence of extremists, that also in the future dramatic decisions of determining borders and evacuation of territory will be made - and then implemented.
There is no genuine democracy in Israel, as witnessed by the illegal ban on Torah observant political parties and the constant harassment and infiltration of their ranks. The Sternhell affair is a classic Soviet-style provocation and pretext for political and cultural oppression of Torah observant Jews in Israel. The overwhelming majority of Jews here in Israel have never supported the Oslo appeasement policies being forced upon us by the bizarre multiculturalists and ontological anarchists who comprise The Left. More importantly, if Kach were on the ballot today, it would win a decisive majority, as it was about to do when the radical Left and their Islamic allies instituted the ban. What we're seeing today is more like another Altalena affair, with extremely secular and radical atheistic Jews (The Left) engaging in civil war against those whom they identify as their dialectical opponents (The Right). We need a total change in the structure of Israeli government, with a system that makes elected officials accountable to the electorate. A rational person would look at the past 40 years and conclude that the Left's policies of appeasement have been a total failure. But who among the Left will ever attain the kind of objectivity necessary to understand the facts? There should be an immediate recension of the ban on Kach and Kahane Chai, along with an open declaration that Oslo is abrogated. Failure to do these two things signals a willingness to accept a fake democracy where the majority are held captive to the whims of a malevolent and intolerant ideology currently managed by Qadima. And then there's the entire issue of the inherent anti-Semitic nature of the rhetoric against Settlers and Torah observant Jews. But that's a topic for another discussion. Shabbat Shalom from Israel....
The halacha is our greatest treasure. Informed by our elevated principles of proper relations ben adam l’haverot, the halacha is the record of the evolution of our long experience with dealing with the issues that daily confront humanity. If we ever lose sight of the halacha, we will have lost most of the value of being Jewish. However, there cannot be a state governed according to a body of halacha that nearly stopped growing with the publication of the Shulchan Aruk. Perhaps, if and when the messiah arrives, then we will have learned all the lessons to be learned and developed all the answers. But, this is not the case today. The world continues to unfold in all of its glorious complexity, and the halacha must continue to evolve. Only then can a halachic state endure.
To Herbert Kaine - Your claim that Mr Fein is no friend of Israel (who supposedly never has anything positive to say about her) is simply not true. Our culture in Israel is one of self-criticism, and it seems at times that no one has anything positive to say about our society - but this is an incorrect impression. The criticism of Israel is an expression of caring and wishing her only the best. Mr Fein, too, criticizes out of concern for Israel. You might want to re-read his article from August 14, 2008, entitled "We Are All Implicated in the World's Repair". There Mr Fein stated in the clearest of terms to those who celebtrate American Jewish life (meaning himself as well) that it must be acknowledged "that Israel is by far the most important project of the Jewish people in our time". It's clear to him that Israel is quite something else - and that no other Jewish community life anywhere is comparable to the central Jewish drama in Israel. That, obviously, is the reason that Mr Fein expresses criticism about her: Israel is simply very, very important to him. My criticism of Mr Fein would be that he should at times give some serious insight about the American Jewish experience as well. Admittedly, there is no one to whom he could address his criticism (as opposed to the reality of Jewish life in Israel). There is no "minister of Jewish education", for example, who could be held accountable for the Hebrew illiteracy of American Jews. But still, it would be a sign of caring if a few words of concern would be expressed about the failings of Jewish life and culture in America.
To Herbert Kaine - Yes, it is absolutely true that self-critical Israel lives in the same neighborhood with others (Arabic society) who have no self-criticism. However, it is clear that the ability for such self-criticism is a sign of strength, a sign of a very confident society. It is equally clear that the lack of self-criticism is a sign of weakness, a sign of a lack of confidence. This is why Israel is such a successful state. Your picture of our society is very imbalanced and incorrect. Tremendously high percentage of Israelis are happy to be living in Israel, are proud to be Jews and wouldn't want to live anywhere else - despite decades of an ongoing emergency and despite even the Iranian atomic threat on the eastern horizon. And why doesn't the Forward ever give us a critical insight into the American Jewish experience? It could be that the staff doesn't really understand the severity of the crisis of Jewish life in America, assuming that all is as it should be, and as it has always been. It is more likely, however, that the reading public would not tolerate being told that Jewish life is such a failure and that Jewish identity is not even a shadow of its former self. In short, the lack of self-confidence leads to an absurd situation in which problems are not even defined and discussed. I grow tired at times from the exaggerated self-criticism of Israeli society, but it is nevertheless a healthy phenomenon. Real issues are discussed, and real proposals are placed on the agenda.
Dear Yehuda You have hit the nail on the head-Israel's culture of self criticism. The problem is that your culture has become exclusively of self criticism and you live next to cultures that have no self criticism. So while Palestinian schools preach that there is no Jewish connection to the land, your education minister plagiarized some of their criticism to indoctrinate Israelis that Jews have no claim to the land of Israel. Thus you believe yourself to be thieves and occupiers, and the entire world hates you. How can you blame the BBC and CNN for anti-Semitism when Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher could write a column for Haaretz. Your penchant for self-criticism has become so extreme that Israel has become a caricature. By the way, Len Fein has the conditional love for Israel that an investor has for his stocks. When they dont perform, he sells them
In 1996, the left wing set up "Eyal", a fake right wing underground group. Eitan Oren played a major role in publicizing this group. I cannot help wondering whether this attack was staged as well, for the following reasons 1) If this shadow group was against the state of Israel, as its fliers maintain, why did they attack a marginal leftist activist instead of the state itself? 2) If the right wing wanted to assassinated Sternhell, why didnt they use guns, which are widely available? 3) Who benefits from a "assassination attempt" of Sternehll I would love to know what Avishai Raviv's insight on this "attempt" By the way, Len Fein is no friend of the state of Israel. I have never read a positive word from him on Israel in at least two decades. Len Fein should get together with Avishai Raviv and have a hugathon.
It is more than obvious, Reuven, that "Torah observant political parties" are legitimate in Israel, and they participate in the political life of the country. "Degel ha-Torah" and "Agudath Yisrael" (now united as "Yahadut ha-Torah) together with Shas and others make up quite a fair portion of the Knesset (about one-sixth). The only parties in past elections that have been disqualified are those which negate the legitimacy of the state or have a racist platform. So, the el-Ard party which called for the dis-establishment of the State of Israel was not allowed to participate in the elections (the first case), and Rabbi Kahane was prevented from seeking re-election because of his anti-Arab agenda (the second case). It is absolutely absurd to claim that the Kach party (Rabbi Kahane) would win a majority today. His followers tried their luck in the last elections and didn't get enough votes to win even one seat in the Knesset. In sixty years of independence, the elections were always won by secular parties (Labor, Likud or Kadima) - and religious parties almost always joined the coalition government. If indeed you live in Israel as you claim (and you are aware of our sociological reality), then it should be obvious to you that the Israeli electorate will continue choosing coalition governments led by the secular parties.
I would be happy if someone like Len Fein took on American Jewish culture-for the most part superficial and meaningless. We who care about Israel have our job complicated by vocal Israelis who hate Israel and newspapers like Haaretz, which cross the border into raw anti-semitism at times. The Kadima party has forgotten the mission statement of the state of Israel, and it is hard for us to be more Israeli than the state of Israel. Len Fein compounds it with his "tough love" approach, and probably feels about Israel as if it were AIG stock. Israel is a place where miracles take place on a daily basis, and it would be nice if people noticed and said thank you. The current Israeli government sounds an awful like the 10 spies who defamed the land of Israel.
I agree with you, Herbert Kaine, that anti-Israel Israelis complicate any effort to present the State of Israel in her true light. Their unreasonable "criticism" is often interpreted as legitimate since they themselves are Israelis. Similarly, there are some high-profile Diaspora Jews who "as Jews" defame Israel. I place the word "criticism" in quotation marks because generally it is not really criticism. The comments of a person who negates the legitimacy of Israel's existence are not criticism since there can never be an alternative policy of Israel that such a person would accept. An "illegitimate entity" could never have a legitimate policy, nor does it have the right to self-defense. Similarly, I placed "as Jews" in quotation marks when mentioning the high-profile Diaspora Jews who similarly negate Israel's legitimacy. Generally, these intellectuals have no Jewish identity, and they wouldn't deal with any issue in life "as Jews". Only when it comes to the condemnation of Israel do they suddenly have a "Jewish identity" which seems to give legitimacy to their point of view. However, you are getting carried away when you describe Ha-Aretz or the Kadima government. With all its criticism of Israeli society, Ha-Aretz obviously sees itself as part of this society and as its servant. Ha-Aretz treasures and promotes Hebrew culture which is the very heart of the Zionist project. The Kadima government sees itself as serving the interests of our public. Obviously, we all can debate about the definition of national interests and the ways to serve them - but there is no doubt that every government of Israel only wishes to strengthen our society in this historic struggle for Jewish continuity. By comparing the government of Israel with the ten spies from the Book of Numbers, you are actually expressing unreasonably harsh criticism - which is what you are accusing Ha-Aretz of. However, in essence both you (Mr Kaine) and Ha-Aretz have the exact same political culture. You wish only the very best for Israel, and your harsh criticism is the tool for indicating the better direction that you believe should be taken. It was nice to read your comment that the American Jewish experience also deserves some comments in this newspaper. It's cute to see in the Forward that this or that Jewish baseball player wouldn't play on Yom Kippur back in the 1940's or the 1960's. But here and there I would find it interesting to know why the synagogues are so empty, or why an "educated" Jew wouldn't recognize his own name in Hebrew script, etc.
To Yehuda and Mr. Kaine -- The long-term vitality and evolution of Judaism in America is certainly problematic, but the reason that so many of us focus on Israel is that we believe that Israel is in danger of imminent destruction, and that this destruction will result in large measure from Israel’s own intransigence.
reason that so many of us focus on Israel is that we believe that Israel is in danger of imminent destruction...I have these concerns as well, but I believe that Israel has gotten to this point not because of intransigence, but because it has lost national pride. I miss the Israel that violated Uganda's sovereignty to rescue hijacked hostages in 1976, and that slowly picked off one by one the murderers of the 1972 Israeli Olympic team. Todays, Israel would not do that because it would look bad to the BBC, al Jazeera, and CNN. I say that Kadima has forgotten the mission statement because his definition of Israel should be a "fun" place. I dont remember Bilaam blessing Israel as a "fun nation". I am struck by the contrast between the people of Israel, who are a wonderful people, the land of Israel, which is beautiful, and the leadership of Israel, who doesnt possess a leader of the caliber of Bashir Assad or Mahmoud Abbas. In my opinion, the function of Haaretz and other EU funded NGOs is to undermine Israeli sovereingty to form a "borderless" middle east. I have been long confused by Israel's attempts to gain the favorable opinion of Europe. Europe made its feelings about Jews quite clear 60 years ago, and is quite happy about the results. I respect the rights of Europeans to live in a Jew free environment, and wish that Israel would tend more to its self-esteem, which should not be dependent on Europe A shana tova to Yehuda and Joel