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The New Patriots
Yossi Klein Halevi
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The tens of thousands of participants in Tel Aviv�s annual �Love Parade,� held during the festival of Sukkot, mill aimlessly along the beach promenade, searching for an elusive joy. Flatbed trucks carrying writhing dancers and broadcasting deafening trance music inch through the crowd; but only a handful of young people gather around and leap to the frenetic beat. By the standards of Berlin � which conceived of the Love Parade, as a hedonistic celebration of existence � Tel Aviv�s version is tame: hardly any nudity and only pretend decadence, like the gold-painted couple in bathing suits on one of the floats mimicking intercourse. Police and soldiers patrol the crowd and stand on rooftops. A row of ambulances is parked along the route.
A young man distributes stickers with the words, in English, �Made in Israel.� The stickers are promotions for a film by the same name, he explains. �It�s just a joke.� But for many of the young people who place it on their jeans or across their chests, it isn�t a joke at all but an affirmation of Israeliness. �I�m wearing it because I�m made in Israel,� says a 17-year-old boy with spiked hair and a T-shirt that reads, �Born to be bad.� His friends crowd around, and I ask them how they feel about their imminent military service. �The tougher the unit, the better,� one responds, shouting over the trance music. The others nod vigorously.
Mor and Noy, two teenage girls from Netanyah, wear bleached hair and skimpy shorts, pom poms on their legs and sparkles above their barely covered breasts. How do these party girls feel about living in a nation under siege? �Now all the Jews are united,� says Mor. �We love our country!� adds Noy, raising her hand in a fist. They sing the Beatles� anthem, �Love, Love, Love� and giggle � a spoof, but they also mean it.
I seek interviews with the most provocatively dressed people in the crowd � those who would seem to embody the �post-Zionist� spirit of the Love Parade. Yet I am continually surprised by the willingness, even eagerness, of young people here to allow a journalist to intrude on their revelry with heavy questions about patriotism and �the situation.� All those I approach acknowledge that events of the last year have heightened their attachment to Israel, their protective feelings toward their fragile home. In fact, most participants interviewed don�t perceive the parade as an escape but as a response to Israel�s crisis � a boost to the nation�s morale, as several here put it.
Ohad, a young white man with dreadlocks and a skullcap knit with the colors of the Ethiopian flag, moves through the crowd honking a horn. Does this parade, I ask him, signify a forlorn longing for Israeli normalcy? �We are a normal people,� he says. �But our situation isn�t normal. A few miles from here a war is being fought. I just came back from reserve duty in Gaza. We�re not aggressors; we don�t want to hurt anyone. But the world doesn�t understand what we live with.�
At the Dolphinarium, the seashore discoth�que bombed in June, people gather around the stone monument wreathed with bouquets of fresh flowers and etched with the names of the 21 young Israelis, mostly immigrants, killed in the suicide attack. �We have to find any excuse to celebrate,� says Oded, who has a shaved head and goa-tee and has just returned from a post-army trip to India. �Israel will never be a normal country, and I�m proud of that. We live in a reality different from other countries, in a state under constant threat to its existence. If we won�t protect it, no one will. Now when I do reserve duty I know I�m not wasting my time, and I don�t feel like a sucker.�
The new national sobriety couldn�t have come at a more propitious time. With America at war on the fringes of the Middle East and Israelis lining up at gas mask distribution stations, many here are convinced this country will soon find itself on the front line, however hard Washington tries to exclude it from the anti-terrorist coalition.
And many of those interviewed say that, for all its horror, Bin Laden�s atrocity and the subsequent American attack on Afgha-nistan have eased the Israeli torment of this last year, when the nation found itself alone and condemned in a war against terrorism.
Every decade or so, this country seems to fundamentally redefine itself into a �new Israel,� transformed by prosperity or war or mass immigration. The new Israel that has been coalescing over this past year of escalating terrorism and thwarted dreams is quietly patriotic and arguably more unified than at any time since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. According to a recent poll in the newspaper Ma�ariv, 61 percent believe that the Israeli public has greater staying power than the Palestinians � more than double those who believe that the Palestinians are more resilient under pressure. The army reports that its elite combat units are inundated with volunteers � unprecedented since the start of the Oslo process. �I should write a letter of thanks to Yasser Arafat,� one top-ranking officer says dryly.
In a community center in the Galilee town of Upper Nazareth, two dozen teenagers are attending a seminar to prepare them for counseling work with local youth, many of them marginal and disaffected new immigrants. The future counselors are themselves representative of the town�s uneasy mix of Sephardim and Russians. All of them affirm that the last year has increased their motivation to serve in the army; one girl announces her intention of becoming the army�s first female chief of staff. I ask them to define what the word �Zionism� means to them. The responses are unequivocally positive: �to love the country,� �to do everything I can for the country,� �to be united.� Zionism, which Israelis invoked in recent years mostly to discuss its demise, is now embraced with enthusiasm � an all-purpose word for revived patriotic impulses.
The schisms tormenting Israeli Jewish society have been put on emotional hold. In the Ma�ariv poll, only two percent said the religious-secular divide should be central to the national agenda � an astonishing turnabout from pre-intifada Israel, which was dominated by that issue and whose two fastest growing parties were the ultra-Orthodox Shas and the ultra-secular Shinui. �I�d love to be fighting Shas tooth and nail, but everything has been superceded by security,� laments Zvi Korda, a Shinui activist and repairman from Mevasseret Zion, near Jerusalem.
Even the territorial debate has quietly abated. Most people interviewed � including Likud and Labor voters � agree that both greater Israel and peace with the Palestinians were fantasies. For a majority of Israelis, the left has won the argument over the occupation, while the right has won over the Oslo process. And amid the widely shared sense that, whatever your degree of readiness to compromise for peace, the other side isn�t interested, the debate is now largely confined to ideologues: Over Sukkot, when settlers dedicated several new neighborhoods and Peace Now activists protested, few Israelis even noticed.
In the Galilee village of Klil, near Nahariyah, handsome stone and wood houses are spread widely apart along a valley of olive groves and fields of boulders and thistles. Klil�s expanse is a conscious refutation of the standard model for Israeli rural communities, where houses are huddled together. Among Klil�s 40 families are artists, poets, cheesemakers and beekeepers. More than most Jewish communities, Klil has developed intimate relations with its Arab neighbors: Many residents have been activists for peace with the Palestinians and coexistence with Arab Israelis; in the mid-90s, Klil initiated a joint Arab-Jewish campaign against an ecological threat to the area.
Yet Klil�s premise � that it�s possible to find expanse and tranquillity in this cramped and overwrought land � has been severely tested by events of the last year. Hizballah�s new Katyusha rockets now place Klil, about 12 kilometers from the Lebanese border, well within range. And while Klil residents continue to shop in nearby Arab villages, there is unease: Last year, a Jew from the area was nearly lynched in the Arab village of Kfar Yasif. And the first Israeli Arab suicide bomber recently emerged from another neighboring village, Abu Snan.
Danny Schreier, a gardener and one of Klil�s first residents, is a veteran supporter of the peace camp. But, he says, �When the intifada broke out, I said to myself, �My God, I am Neville Chamberlain. I thought I�d bring peace in our time.� Since then I�ve jumped politically all over the place. There were moments when I felt, �Throw them out.� But I know we can�t do that. I still go to the Arab villages; I have close friends there, people I love. I was at an Arab wedding recently, the only Jew there. But I felt completely protected, totally at home in that culture.
�It�s clear now that the Palestinians want Haifa and Ramleh and Acre. But if we can�t annex and we can�t deport, the only other choice is to separate. In a sense I�ve come full circle. I still believe we have to withdraw from the territories and pull up the settlements. But now it�s for the opposite reason than what I once believed: not to bring peace but to create a border and fight them as a state.�
Schreier�s neighbor, Yosef Shai, a stoneworker and olive-grower with a gray beard and an earring, remains an optimist. Shai has lived among the Beduin and served in the army as a tracker � the only Jew, he says, to fill that role, otherwise assigned to Beduin recruits. Shai greets visitors to his sukkah � whose floor and walls are covered with oriental carpets � with traditional Middle Eastern hospitality, pouring water from a pitcher over their hands. He says, �To make peace with the Arabs, you have to do three things: bribe them, respect them and beat them when necessary. Like our father Jacob, when he went to greet Essau: He prepared one part of his camp to bribe his brother with gifts and prepared another part for war. With Oslo, we bribed the Palestinians with territory but we didn�t treat them with respect and we weren�t tough enough. But it�s not too late. Arabs are warm people; the human connection is essential for them. If we show both generosity and firmness, we�ll reach their hearts. Now, with the war in Afghanistan, we have a chance to try again. The Americans will impose a solution on everyone and that will end the conflict.�
An American-imposed solution is precisely the fear of the half-dozen neighbors gathered in a sukkah in Mitzpeh Navo, the a religious neighborhood of the West Bank town of Ma�aleh Adumim, overlooking the desert hills on the road to Jericho.
�We�re alone again, just like at Durban,� says Ari Abramowitz, who is studying management at Bar-Ilan University � referring to the recent U.N. anti-racism conference.
Says Shachar Lushinsky, who directs the English department at Hebrew University�s School for Overseas Students: �I used to find the notion of �the whole world is against us� provincial and distasteful. But Durban showed us that even after we played according to the world�s rules, they still hate us. Durban came after Barak�s concessions over Jerusalem. We did what the world demanded, and we thought everyone would love us. The lesson is that we should only do what�s good for us.�
�I think that Durban actually showed how much progress we�ve made,� counters Charlie Levine, a Jerusalem public relations executive. �Twenty years ago, Zionism was declared racism, and we were facing an Arab-Soviet bloc. This time, Zionism-racism didn�t pass.�
Abramowitz: �The more injustice there is against us, the more my faith grows. I think we�re getting closer to the time of the Messiah.�
That same evening, on the more secular side of town, Moshe Sicron, a food distributor and veteran Ma�aleh Adumim resident, drops by his neighbor, Sam Reizer, a hairstylist, to discuss the situation and to have a beer.
�I�m afraid that America doesn�t have what it takes to win the war against terror,� says Reizer. �They think they can feed Israel to the Arabs and appease terrorism. What Sharon said was brilliant� � a reference to Prime Minister Sharon�s statement that Israel wouldn�t allow itself to be sacrificed like Czechoslovakia in 1938.
�I�m glad Sharon said it, and I�m glad he withdrew it,� says Sicron.
Reizer: �If the Americans push us and the government decides to pull out of the territories, I won�t say no. Just don�t leave us here as an island surrounded by Palestine.�
Sicron: �All the little settlements will be evacuated. The only solution is separation. Yeshayahu Leibowitz [the late left-wing Orthodox philosopher] was right about the dangers of the occupation, just as people like Benny Begin were right about the dangers of Oslo.�
Reizer: �Separation is a fantasy. What about a million Arab Israelis? My fear is that soon they�ll be the balance of power in the Knesset and they�ll set the agenda.�
Sicron: �You know how much I love my home. But I�m ready to leave here � on one condition: that the Arab Israelis move to Palestine. That�s a deal I can live with.�
The growing convergence among Israeli Jews is in stark counterpoint to the widening abyss between Israel�s Jews and Arabs. According to a recent study released by the Givat Havivah center for Arab-Jewish coexistence, only 27 percent of Israel�s Arab population now call themselves �Arab Israelis� or �Israelis� � down from 46 percent in 1995. Instead, most now identify as �Palestinians in Israel� or simply as �Arabs.� Less than 17 percent are ready to accept Israel as a Jewish state, even if it provided full equality to Arabs; the majority want a bi-national state, and 12 percent an Islamic one.
Nowhere is the divide more tangible than between the adjacent towns of Upper Nazareth and Nazareth. The densely built apartment blocks of the Jewish town overlook the densely built private houses of Arab Nazareth, an architecture of suspicion bisected by a single road. Until the Arab- Israeli riots last fall, residents of Upper Nazareth had routinely shopped and dined in Nazareth; but the riots, which briefly blocked all roads out of the Jewish town, created a sense of siege among Jews, who�ve responded with a near-total boycott, motivated partly by anger, partly by fear. There is even talk here of building a bypass road around Nazareth, as though Upper Nazareth were a settlement. �I recently took a bus by mistake into Nazareth,� recounts a teenage girl. �Everyone stared at me; I felt like I was in an enemy country.�
Even local liberals have been affected by the rupture between the two communities. Following last year�s riots, Ronen Kovalsky, who heads the town�s network of seven community centers, formed a dialogue group between Jews and Arabs that confronted issues of national identity. As the group�s Arab members proclaimed their Palestinian loyalties, Kovalsky was forced to examine his own Jewish identity. �I am prepared to give up territory and even holy places,� he says. �But I realized that I wasn�t ready to forfeit the Jewish identity of the state, not even for the sake of coexistence. I�m still committed to dialogue. Even more so than before. I�m constantly creating dialogue groups, trying to bring together the community centers here and in Nazareth. But I feel like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke.�
In an Arab bakery in downtown Nazareth, owner Hisham Motan waits for customers who don�t come. Until the riots, most of his customers had been Jews. He says, �What is this boycott of Nazareth? In Upper Nazareth they speak about us as if we�re animals, walking around with long knives. We didn�t learn anything about each other in the last 40 years? Don�t we know that a good Jew is better than a bad Arab, and a good Arab is better than a bad Jew? I�ve always considered myself an Israeli. If you want to be a Palestinian, go live in Palestine. I have a shop in Tel Aviv; I�ve lived in Bat Yam. My closest friends have been Jews. But now? Everything is ruined.�
In a lot across from Motan�s bakery is the tent camp of the Islamic Movement, the fundamentalist group seeking to build a mosque here at the tomb of Shihab al-Din, a hero of the war against the Crusaders. The government has agreed to the construction of a modest mosque, but the Islamic Movement wants a massive structure that will tower above the adjacent Church of the Annunciation, Nazareth�s main Christian shrine.
Here, among the young men shutting their cell phones as they rush to join a prayer line forming in the tent, there is only contempt for Israeli identity. I ask a big, bearded young man named Karam, who runs a local felafel shop, about his reaction to Bin Laden�s war against America. He repeats the conspiracy theory, widespread in the Muslim world, that �the Jews� were responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center. �Why were so few Jews killed there?� he asks rhetorically (and falsely), implying that the buildings� Jewish workers had been tipped off before the attack.
Karam says that America and Israel are trying to resist an inevitable historical process. �Everyone knows that in the end the whole world is going to become Muslim.�
�And what will happen to the state of Israel?� I ask.
A bearded young man, listening to our conversation, intrudes. �Israel?� he says, and laughs quietly. �Israel will be the world capital of Islam.�
The handsome white house of Rafi and Hedvah Cohen in the little village of Matat overlooks the barbed wire fence dividing northern Israel from southern Lebanon, a front line of the Islamic revolution. Often they can see Hizballah gunmen lingering just across the border, their presence itself the point.
Rafi, a homoeopath, and Hedvah, an accountant and a Reiki healer, see their role as helping bring a calming presence to the border, through meditating and a refusal to yield to fear. Both are reluctant to place the entire blame for the conflict on the Arabs; we too, they insist, bear our share. �We like to think of ourselves as the good guys, the good occupiers,� says Rafi, whose graying hair is tied in a ponytail. �We don�t want to know the suffering of the other side.�
Still, concedes Rafi, something basic in his worldview has shifted. �I used to say that if Israel made a serious offer and it�s rejected then I�ll have the motivation to fight. Now we�ve tried. I�m past army age, but if my reserve unit would call me up, I�d go in a minute.�
�If they call you up, then we know it�s time to pack our bags,� says Hedvah.
They laugh.
�There�s no left or right anymore,� continues Rafi. �Now it�s a situation of ein breirah� � no alternative, the phrase from the state�s first years which few Israelis outside of the hard right have since invoked. �I�m ready again to die for my country.�
�I�m ready to pack up for a year and go to Thailand,� says Hedvah.
�Listen to the quiet here,� says Rafi. �Before the pullout from Lebanon there was an Israeli helicopter base just across the border. The noise was unbelievable. Now, for the first time in years, we have peace.� He looks toward the fields of southern Lebanon and benignly smiles. �At least for today.�
(November 5, 2001)
Israel
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