Books on New Israeli History
Dear Tom,
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StumbleUponWhat I actually wrote about today's Israeli high-school students in my Commentary article that you misquoted was: "Many of them have older brothers who are fighting in Lebanon; nearly all of them will soon be serving in the army themselves; nor is there any guarantee that they will not have to fight one day, too." A small but great difference from your version, which was: "Nearly all of them will soon be fighting in the army themselves."
Why do I make a point of this? Because unlike the "new historians" and much of the Israeli left, which thinks it knows not only where history has been but also where it is going, I have no idea what the future will bring. I don't know whether, once the promised Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon is carried out, Israelis will have to fight Arabs again or not. The only sure thing we know about the future is that, as always, it will surprise us. One has to be prepared for all eventualities--including, I'm sorry to say, the possibility that the current peace process will not bring permanent peace.
This is psychologically difficult for many Israelis to accept. Indeed, I suspect that one reason some Israelis prefer to blame Israel for the failure to achieve an Israeli-Arab peace in the past is that such self-accusation at least provides the illusion of being in control. If the Arab-Israeli conflict has been prolonged because of Israel--if it were true, for example (as you now acknowledge it is not), that "in the early 1950s Israel deliberately ignored possibilities of reaching agreements with its Arab neighbors"--then Israel has the power to put an end to this conflict. There is a paradoxical comfort in such a notion.
But in general, as you quite correctly observed in your first letter, "most Israelis no longer live for the sake of the past or the future. More Israelis than ever before live today for the sake of life itself." You refer to this as a process of "Americanization," although "Westernization" might be a better word, since contemporary Europe is no different in this respect from America--and Israelis of all backgrounds identify today with Western culture and see themselves as an integral part of it. This is, on the one hand, a great boon, since it is only by following the liberal political and economic model of America and Europe that Israel can remain a country worth living in. But it is also a great danger, because geographically this country is in the Middle East. The Arab states have not yet reached the stage of the post-collectivist, post-nationalist, personal-fulfilment-oriented society that Israel is now rapidly becoming, and they are not about to reach it in the foreseeable future--and as the psychological disparity between them and Israel grows, the chances that Israeli attitudes will become increasingly dysfunctional for Middle East survival grow, too.
We need to be honest about this. If the great majority of Israelis, and particularly younger Israelis, should come to the conclusion that their own personal lives are all that matter; that a nation or a people is not a meaningful concept, much less one worth fighting and possibly dying for; and that war is therefore the greatest possible evil and must be avoided at all costs, they would get along famously with their neighbors if these were French, German, Belgian, or Dutch. But if one's neighbors happen to think differently--if they think that wars are worth fighting for national and religious goals and that their neighbors are cowards who are afraid to fight--then one may be heading for very bad trouble.
As I say, Israelis find this difficult to accept. Many, in fact, find it intolerable. It fills them with frustration and even rage to have to think the private life they feel so entitled to--a life unmolested by collective demands and national emergencies--may elude them. And because they cannot take out their anger at being cheated on the Arab world around them, whose mentality is the real reason they cannot live in the security that Americans and Europeans take for granted, they take it out on their fellow Israelis. It is your fault! If it weren't for your chauvinism, or your reactionary politics, or your archaic religious values, or your complacency and inertia, we could have had peace with the Arabs long ago! Translate this feeling into academic language, and put it in the mouths of a generation of young historians, and you have a good deal of what the "new history" is about.
Am I oversimplifying? Perhaps. The realities of Israel, and of Israeli-Arab and Israeli- Palestinian relations, are complex, and I am certainly not suggesting that Israel shares no responsibility for anything. I am saying that the automatic assumption that if only we Israelis were nicer to the Arabs, the Arabs would be nicer to us strikes me as both psychologically and historically dubious--and this goes for the events of and after 1967 as well. (What on earth does it mean when you say, "Israel should have never occupied the West Bank" then? That immediately after the fighting had ceased, without asking for a single abatement of Arab hostility, much less for a formal peace agreement, and without knowing who was going to take possession of the territory we evacuated, we should have withdrawn unilaterally to the prewar lines, including those running through the middle of Jerusalem?) The truth is that from the moment the first Zionists arrived in Palestine with a national Jewish agenda in the 1880s, a chain of Arab and Jewish actions and reactions was set in motion that has continued to this day. I do not blame the Arabs for not wanting us in their midst then or now--if I were an Arab, I would no doubt feel the same way. But I happen to be a Jew, and when Arab and Jewish interests clash tragically, it is my own interests that come first with me. The "new historians" would like me to feel guilty for this. I don't.
Hillel
This week, a discussion of Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall (click here to buy it) and Benny Morris' Righteous Victims (click here to buy it). Hillel Halkin is an American-born author and translator who has been living in Israel since 1970. He is the author of, among other works, Grand Things To Write a Poem On (click here to buy it). Tom Segev is an Israeli journalist and historian. He writes a weekly column for Ha'aretz and is the author of 1949: The First Israelis (click here to buy it). 
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As a descendant of Arabs who left Palestine to avoid being drafted into the Ottoman army, I believe that what we're seeing here is a positive trend: states and wars are not made in a clean manner only. History does not deliver "justice", it is a set of human circumstances. I think that the most important thing is to expose pupils and students to the subjective materials of BOTH sides. Israel will not cease to exist because of people like Morris and Segev. It will be more open, eloquent and serious. I hope Arafat's Palestine can afford people like them sometime. I still feel, as a Palestinian living in the West, that I would never live under his rule and feel safe and free to write a book like those by Segev and Morris.
--Odeh Nasrallah
(To reply, click here.)
The problem with the "normalization" of Israeli society - the fulfillment of the 19th century secular Zionist dream - is that it is uniquely unfulfilling for Jews. By this I do not mean that modern and post-modern Western society is empty. The real difficulty stems from the fact that dressing Jewish existence in the mantle of secular nationalism creates a hybrid form of Jewish life which seems to satisfy fewer and fewer Israelis. History may have forced Jews to seek quick solutions rather than develop better solutions over time but modern Zionism was a synthetic rather than organic solution and the forced marriage was bound to have problems.
If there is a navigable course, it might first require acknowledging that the "Jewish Question" cannot be answered with simplicities and slogans. It places the burden for the Jewish future squarely on our own shoulders. Not as victims without rights, quite the reverse, as a collective who whether by choice or fate or history or faith are traveling a slightly different path. We share much in common with the Western Culture of which we perceive ourselves to be a part, but on the other hand there are differences, also, in a concern for our past, an emphasis on group values and an acknowledgement that there is a spiritual/religious aspect to Jewish/Israeli existence.
When children are faced with the reality that sometimes others may get things that they cannot, they seem to have the capacity to acknowledge that there are differences among people. They may claim the situation is not fair but ultimately, they understand that not everyone is treated identically without their feeling ultimately deprived. I think it may be a good starting point for adults.
--Ed Prince
(To reply, click here.)
(2/11)