WHEN an American presidential candidate visits Israel
and his key message is to encourage us to pursue a misguided war with
Iran, declaring it “a solemn duty and a moral imperative” for America to
stand with our warmongering prime minister, we know that something
profound and basic has changed in the relationship between Israel and
the United States.
My generation, born in the ’50s, grew up with the deep, almost religious
belief that the two countries shared basic values and principles. Back
then, Americans and Israelis talked about democracy, human rights,
respect for other nations and human solidarity. It was an age of
dreamers and builders who sought to create a new world, one without
prejudice, racism or discrimination.
Listening to today’s political discourse, one can’t help but notice the
radical change in tone. My children have watched their prime minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu, kowtow to a fundamentalist coalition in Israel. They
are convinced that what ties Israel and America today is not a covenant
of humanistic values but rather a new set of mutual interests: war,
bombs, threats, fear and trauma. How did this happen? Where is that
righteous America? Whatever happened to the good old Israel?
Mr. Netanyahu’s great political “achievement” has been to make Israel a
partisan issue and push American Jews into a corner. He has forced them
to make political decisions based on calculations that go against what
they perceive to be American interests. The emotional extortion compels
Jews to pressure the Obama administration, a government with which they
actually share values and worldviews, when those who love Israel should
be doing the opposite: helping the American government to intervene and
save Israel from itself.
Israel arose as a secular, social democratic country inspired by Western
European democracies. With time, however, its core values have become
entirely different. Israel today is a religious, capitalist state. Its
religiosity is defined by the most extreme Orthodox interpretations. Its
capitalism has erased much of the social solidarity of the past, with
the exception of a few remaining vestiges of a welfare state. Israel
defines itself as a “Jewish and democratic state.” However, because
Israel has never created a system of checks and balances between these
two sources of authority, they are closer than ever to a terrible clash.
In the early years of statehood, the meaning of the term “Jewish” was
national and secular. In the eyes of Israel’s founding fathers, to be a
Jew was exactly like being an Italian, Frenchman or American. Over the
years, this elusive concept has changed; today, the meaning of “Jewish”
in Israel is mainly ethnic and religious. With the elevation of
religious solidarity over and above democratic authority, Israel has
become more fundamentalist and less modern, more separatist and less
open to the outside world. I see the transformation in my own family. My
father, one of the founders of the state of Israel and of the National
Religious Party, was an enlightened rabbi and philosopher. Many of the
younger generation are far less open, however; some are ultra-Orthodox
or ultranationalist settlers.
This extremism was not the purpose of creating a Jewish state.
Immigrants from all over the world dreamed of a government that would be
humane and safe for Jews. The founders believed that democracy was the
only way to regulate the interests of many contradictory voices. Jewish
culture, consolidated through Halakha, the religious Jewish legal
tradition, created a civilization that has devoted itself to an unending
conversation among different viewpoints and the coexistence of
contradictory attitudes toward the fulfillment of the good.
The modern combination between democracy and Judaism was supposed to
give birth to a spectacular, pluralistic kaleidoscope. The state would
be a great, robust democracy that would protect Jews against persecution
and victimhood. Jewish culture, on the other hand, with its
uncompromising moral standards, would guard against our becoming
persecutors and victimizers of others.
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