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Divided We Stand
Gershom Gorenberg

The unity fad is the wrong answer to what ails us

PERMIT ME TO DISAGREE.Agreement is in fashion these days in Israel. Partly that's a result of the conflict with the Palestinians. Under attack, people want to unite to face the danger. Partly, it's the lingering shock of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, which showed how a shouting match could turn into a war of the Jews. By popular demand, Ariel Sharon leads a "unity government." The public mood defines dispute and divisiveness as bad taste. I humbly dispute that mood.

The latest product of the unity fashion is the Kinneret Compact, a 10-point document hammered together by several dozen prominent Israelis under the aegis of the Yitzhak Rabin Center. The Compact is intended as an update of Israel's Declaration of Independence, defining how Israel can be both democratic and Jewish. The signatories include right-wingers and left; ultra-Orthodox, Orthodox and secular Jews and even a Reform rabbi. The proposition is that if these people can agree to a statement of what this country is, then we really do share common ground.

Even before zillions of copies were stuck into weekend newspapers, the Compact aroused public interest. Since then, says Miri Mass, coordinator of the forum that produced the Compact, her office is flooded with requests for copies. Jurists, says Mass, have discussed using it as the basis for the constitution that Israel still lacks.

At the first half-glance, the Kinneret Compact is inspiring. "We believe there is a supreme existential necessity and a full moral justification for the Jewish people to have its own national home," it says (and the ultra-Orthodox signed). "Israel is committed to freedom of religion and conscience," it proclaims. Israel will express its Jewishness in its holidays, symbols and anthem, says the document � and the secularists signed. In the section on the Arab minority, the Compact insists that the state must act immediately to end inequality. It stresses Israel's right to self-defense � and its lack of desire to rule another people.

At a full glance, the Compact should raise questions. Firstly, among the people who gathered to create it, there was not one Israeli Arab. For a discussion among Jews about what it means to be both Jewish and democratic, perhaps that's passable. For defining the state, it's not. For consideration as the basis of the constitution, it's an affront.

But the army was represented. The people who sat long hours designing a civil contract included four serving generals, though only one � Uzi Dayan, head of the National Security Council � signed the mass-distributed text. In a democracy, generals are not supposed to participate in debate about the shape of civilian society. The army is not a sector to be represented, but the servant of all sectors. Break that rule, and we are sliding down the slope toward junta rule.

Three of the 56 signatories are Russian immigrants � though the last 12 years' immigrants from the former Soviet Union constitute about a sixth of Israeli Jewish society. The list appears overwhelmingly Ashkenazi, even if a few prominent Sephardi activists and intellectuals were included. We used to call that "tokenism." Just over a fourth of the signatories are women. One is Noah Ben-Artzi, Rabin's granddaughter and a law student, apparently there to show that Israel does have royalty. I don't know how real representation of women, Sepharadim, or Russian-speakers would have changed the final description of what Israel should aspire to be. But as one Sephardi social critic describes the Compact, "It's the establishment talking to itself again" � again saying "we are the state."

After a hard second look, the Compact demonstrates that the unity fad is the wrong answer to what ails us. Much of the language shows why the word "Zionism" is defined in a dictionary of Israeli slang as "nonsense, grandiose words devoid of content, preaching." To reach phrasing on the relation of state and religion that both a Reform rabbi and an ultra-Orthodox politician can accept, you need to go for the vague. If both pro-occupation rightist Efi Eitam and Peace Now veteran Yuli Tamir agree that Israel must maintain a Jewish majority "by moral means alone," the lesson is only that words can be chosen that can mean anything to anyone.

Look away from the bright shining phrases. The differences between right and left, secularists and Orthodox are real. They matter. If we should learn one thing from the Oslo experience, it's that artful language, which each side interprets as it wishes, can paper over disputes, but not end them.

This is where Judaism has a lesson for democracy. In the Jewish tradition of debate, argument is positive. It sharpens understanding. As for agreement, it's necessary on points of law, not on ideas. There's no reason to agree on what "Jewish state" means. There is need to reach a livable compromise on civil marriage, or on what kind of business can open on the Sabbath. It's also much harder, because the words in the law will have practical impact.

The real message of the Rabin assassination is not that we must agree. It's that we must know how to disagree. It's encouraging that all those people could get together and talk politely to create the Kinneret Compact. A compact among politicians to refrain from personal and nationalist invective, in the Knesset and on the airwaves, would be worth much more. Even an accord among talk-show hosts to leave only one mike open at a time � to end the prime-time shouting matches � would be more valuable. We need reasoned debate, not false unity.