Haaretz
Cheshvan 12, 5765
On the bridge connecting Bnei Brak with the
campus of Bar-Ilan University a new slogan was brandished last month:
"Commander, we are Jews. I cannot do that."
It is clear what the
author of the slogan cannot do: he cannot evacuate settlements. But the
refusal itself is less interesting than the reasoning. The soldier
referred to in the slogan cannot carry out the order, not because his
heart is broken at the site of families uprooted from their homes and not
even because he is convinced in his right-wing worldview that the
evacuation of Gaza is a calamity. All his reasons for refusal boil down to
the loaded expression: "We are Jews."
This expression is a code
that differentiates, as in the pre-Zionist Diaspora, between a Jew and a
"goy" and permits Jews everything by virtue of their status as victims.
This is also the code that led complete communities of Jews away from the
families of nations due to their messianic faith, shut them off in
ghettos, led them to turn their backs on modernity and humanism, and
subjected them to an exclusive fate determined by the hands of God,
stripping man of the freedom to choose and responsibility for his
fate.
It is no coincidence that the settlers are using the word
"Jews" in their current struggle. It is not a battle for Gaza, nor a fight
for democracy or the rule of law. This struggle, over a limited and
problematic unilateral disengagement, brings to the fore - like a
spotlight focusing its blinding light on a single hidden spot - the big
question that has simmered underneath the surface of the society and State
of Israel since 1967.
The question, which the moderate secular
public tried to skirt from every side, is that of the clash between
Jewishness and Israeliness. Or, to be more precise, between Judaism and
Zionism. Zionism posed a challenge to the "We are Jews" of Rabbi Avraham
Shapira and his disciples because it stated that the fate of the Jewish
people is a matter for human action, not divine action. It is precisely
along this fault line that Orthodox rabbis disengaged from Zionism. The
religious Zionist movement tore itself away from messianism when it joined
the Zionist normalization. But not for long.
This "Jewish"
existence that the settlers are now trying to sustain defines life, in the
framework of messianic thought, as being constantly shadowed by
catastrophe. In this way, the pogroms and harsh edicts were eternal proof
of Jewish fate. When this shadow of catastrophe fades, or when a chance
appears to dispel this shadow - by means of diplomatic accords or other
normal measures - the "Jewish" settlers take pains to recreate it via
refusal, a national rift, blowing up mosques and murdering a prime
minister.
Zionism sought to bring the Jews back into history, that
is, to a modern and democratic regime that operates according to the
majority's decision and takes changing circumstances into consideration.
The overwhelming majority of the citizens of Israel do not understand,
perhaps, what the settlers feel down to their very bones: that Sharon's
unglamorous plan - like the pre-state partition plan, the return of the
Sinai after the 1956 campaign and the Oslo accords - resounds with the
Zionist aspiration for normality, for adopting universal values, and for
rejecting again the destructive and messianic attitude of "We are
Jews."
The vote on disengagement, therefore, is a watershed for the
settlers. Until 1967, in the shadow of the Holocaust that brought
additional parts of the Jewish people onto the Zionist wagon, messianism
was relegated to a corner. The victory and occupation in 1967 granted it a
new launching pad. The confused secular public has long forgotten that
Zionism always regarded territory as a means to achieve normalization for
a wandering people. This is the absolute opposite of turning land into a
sacred value.
Thus, it is also a watershed for Israelis. If the "We
are Jews" argument gains the upper hand again over the aspiration for
normal life, it will be the moment signifying the final tragic surrender
of Zionism to Jewish messianic madness.