Jewish nation. In 1948 the occupying British forces left, and we declared a Jewish state under UN auspices. In 1949, after the Arabs had attacked and been defeated, we had an actual country—not very big, less than the full biblical promise, but it was in Zion and had part of Jerusalem, and its space sufficed for the absorption of the remainder of world Jewry after the Holocaust and for any future development. The Arabs opposed us—I will not get into who owns the rights to this land, nor to who began the violence. I don’t think these questions have any answers. But they attacked us, so we defended ourselves. In short, the efforts of three generations bore a new Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Then came the fourth generation, my generation, and we screwed it up.
What confused us was the victory in the Six-Day War. First, we forgot the goal—saving the nation—and changed it to saving the land. Second, we ceased to be realistic.
WHEN THE ORIGINAL GOAL—the establishment of a Jewish state—was forgotten, we became passive, reactive. From creators we turned into mere watchdogs guarding a “treasure” (by “treasure” I mean the conquered areas that fell into our hands as a result of the Six-Day War, totally unintentionally and with no plan, with their large population of Palestinian Arabs). To this was added a measure of arrogance: after the “miracle” of 1967 we were caught up in a cycle of superciliousness and mysticism, creating our own reality that ignored existing factors. In this way we became caught up in a vortex of events that led nowhere, and our wars just “happened” with no rhyme or reason.
IN “EVENTS THAT LED NOWHERE” I am talking about more than wars per se. Clear goals, realistic orientation, and strategy are necessary also in economy, education, international relations, building of infrastructure, law and order, and all systems of government and state organization. In all of them we began to falter, because everything derives from the goal; he who has no goal, scatters in place. Perhaps other states, older, larger, and richer than we, not surrounded by enemies, can use their inertia and have it all—capitalism and social justice, Western culture and equality to immigrants, etc. (and perhaps even they can’t), but this definitely is not within the reach of Israel. With our limited resources we don’t have this luxury.
In the past, we had a single, clear national goal. Since 1967 we have been playing with several alternatives, some of which are mutually exclusive. We have no other choice but to decide on one primary goal and reduce the others in importance or even give some of them up entirely. If your supreme goal is a Jewish state, you have to leave the occupied territories to exclude their non-Jewish population. If your topmost goal is the whole biblical land of Israel, you have to give up the dream of an exclusively Jewish state and establish a binational state. And if the goal is just “security” (an unrealistic target, like a war that “brings the boys home”)—you must realize that you are opting for military governance. And the same with every other goal you choose. But if you pursue this, this, and that, you may end up with nothing.
We suppress such deliberation, since we fear polarizing the nation (in other words, civil war). Instead of thinking, we prefer to compromise, speak in lofty language, and hope “it all works out somehow.” Such behavior was called by Benny Peled, a man of few words, “chicken shit.”
AND SO, WITH NO NATIONAL GOAL, we have been muddling through for forty-one years with no coherent policy or strategy, careening from one crisis to the next as things degenerate. First, the system of principles rots, then the hierarchy of command, and after a while soldiering and readiness for national service. I am talking about more than military matters. Without a national goal all the values and capabilities that enable public life wither gradually, from top to bottom. Even clarity of thought and language degenerates; concepts intermingle and become tools in the hands of cheats to deceive the politically immature. Was the aim of our “disengagement from Gaza” to advance us toward a Jewish state and thus an achievement? Or was it intended to improve our security and thus a failure?
Each proclaims his own different understanding, and it all becomes chicken shit.
THE PILOTS’ LETTER didn’t deal with all this. It was just a protest against one aspect of degeneration in the Israeli Defense Force in the fields of law and morality. Not one of the signatories, me included, ever believed that the killing of children in Gaza was done intentionally. It certainly was done by mistake. But that’s not so with the statements of Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz, who declared publicly that the killing of innocents was not important to him. His words require an answer.
I had a closed-door, face-to-face meeting with him after that failed attack. He took off his insignia and gave me a speech full of high moral tone. I was amazed at the cognitive dissonance, but only after I had seen the pilots’ letter did I realize that the speech in his office was directed at men like me, and the “small bang and it’s over” speech to his superiors, serving to quiet their doubts about themselves and their responsibility by his impudence. It served also to ingratiate him with some in the Israeli street who simply wanted revenge on the Arabs.
But this interview did one other, even worse thing. It proposed a deal to the soldiers of the IDF: “I’ll cover for you if you commit immoral, unlawful acts in the occupied territories.”
For officers and soldiers involved in a complicated war, this was much nicer to hear than a loud and clear demand that they fight lawfully.
This was a case when an officer was trying to buy personal popularity, and promotion, in exchange for national assets that had been entrusted to him. I, too, could have been “nice” had I ignored indiscriminate firing of the First’s air-to-air missiles. There were similar opportunities in the Orange Tails, in Ramat-David, Tel Nof, and in every position of command. But the education I had received taught me that buying leadership and comradeship cheaply is not just immoral and unlawful, but also has heavy operational costs at the end. Good commanders are busy preparing for war, and not buying and selling. In short, we are not rich enough to afford cheap things as leaders.
IN THE WAKE OF THE STORM that battered me after the pilots’ letter I began thinking, reading, listening, and talking. I realized that our existence here, and indeed the existence of the Jewish nation all over the world, are still far from secure, and that we can’t sit still and avoid decisions, because nondecision is a decision in itself. And I found to my amazement that during all those years and wars, when I thought I was defending my motherland, all I did was buy time. I had been serving the status quo, helping unknowingly a series of governments to postpone the need to set national goals. And time spilled, like milk.
Thus—and here I take the risk of being called naive—I concluded that the future of Israel depends on a renewed decision to build a Jewish state. And please don’t ask me what a Jew is. For me, a Jew is everyone who sees himself as a Jew and whose community sees him as one, even if his name is Tatar. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew.
No doubt the renewed commitment to a Jewish state would not be easy. It requires the postponing, or even renouncing, of several less important aspirations. Let it be said clearly, I propose to give up the occupied territories and their non-Jewish population, because not doing so contradicts our national goal. The evacuation of those areas is not to placate the Arabs, nor does it promise security or peace, certainly not now. I propose only one thing: a Jewish state.
People say that Arabs do not agree that we have a right to exist whatever we do, so what’s the point in negotiations, unilateral withdrawals, establishment of a Palestinian state—these things only work against us! My answer is that we should do this not because of anyone else, but because these things help us secure a Jewish state for our children and ourselves. Negotiations, unilateral withdrawals, and the establishment of a Palestinian state are tools that get us to our goal, and the question of security and peace should be managed in parallel, but is secondary. No one vows to solve it soon—we may have to manage this conflict for a long time to come—but we can do it only as a Jewish state. And the very existence of the Jewish state will make it clearer where the Palestinians should live and who is really responsible for their situation, for better or for worse. Then the Israeli Defense Force could renew its true mission, to defend our state, as a decent army should do, rather than dulling its edge occupying others.
The Israeli Arab minority’s position in our Jewish state would be defined, together with the meaning of citizenship. National economic priorities would change, investing development in the now-neglected Galilee and the Negev, not wasting itself on new Jewish settlements in Palestine. When our borders become clearly defined, many of our internal problems will ease significantly. Israel’s standing in the world will be moral and clear. And security and peace can be sought better from a clear position, rather than from inside the tumult of a boiling pot. And Israeli
