A Brief Reply to Marshall Berman
Yehoshua, A.B.
ED. NOTE: In the Summer 2004 issue of Dissent, in "Israel: No Souvenirs," Marshall Berman referred to a published interview with novelist A.B. Yehoshua in which, according to Berman, "Yehoshua...
...Therefore, it cannot be practically, morally responsible for the sum of an environment that is not Jewish in essence...
...Is this what Marshall Berman wants...
...Israeli identity is multifaceted, pluralistic, and rich...
...it is like a traveler moving from hotel to hotel while preserving its core identity at each stop...
...True, there are Palestinians who do not want a border between themselves and the Jewish state because they want to gradually infiltrate into Israel and ultimately make it part of Palestine...
...It is not only the chronicle of generations of assimilation that greatly reduced the number of Jews—from five million in the first century C.E...
...The integral structure of Jewish identity is borderless, flexible, wide-ranging, and able to incorporate different identities, thus allowing it to preserve itself even within the territory and life fabric of other nations...
...The Israelis were well aware that the world would not recognize such an annexation and also that, by incorporating millions of Palestinians, the state would soon end up with a Palestinian majority...
...The Settlers (mostly from the religious sector) did not see this settlement activity as an unnatural act...
...The emphasis is on action...
...Zionism established the fact that in the destructive interaction between the Jews and the world, change could not occur in the world alone—Jews also had to change and normalize their situation...
...That is exactly the recipe for the disappearance of the State of Israel...
...A country's safe borders, such as the very rigid borders of the United States today, benefit Jews together with the rest of the population...
...The fact that a state has borders does not mean that it has no contact with its environment, that its borders have no crossings or gateways...
...Mani, and Five Seasons...
...However, just as every house has a door that opens and closes, allowing nobody to enDISSENT / Winter 2005 n I 0 ARGUMENTS ter without permission, so the territorial boundaries of the state determine its sovereignty and responsibility...
...By adapting to other cultures and creating a symbiosis of one kind or another with them, Jewish identity remains intact...
...I doubt it...
...The evil is not in the Wall, it is in the Wall's invasive winding into Palestinian territory...
...Translated from the Hebrew by Riva Rubin...
...In Israel, Jewish identity is what withstands the test of action in reality...
...It is shared by Jews from various cultures as well as by Christians, Muslims, and Druze...
...Israel broke through that border for reasons of selfdefense, but afterward began sowing settlements among Palestinian villages and towns in Arab territory...
...After all, they have been a nation in exile, scattered to all corners of the world and there is no reason to close borders to them...
...The narrative of Jewish identity without borders and sovereignty is the core of Jewish history...
...The State of Israel came into existence precisely because the Jews wanted to change themselves and their situation without waiting for the anti-Semite to stop killing them...
...When the dangerous acts of terrorism began, Israel had to build a wall, which indeed drastically reduced the number of terrorist attacks...
...I have portrayed this identity in my stories and novels, relating to both the past and the present, and I will continue to describe it in my writing, in all its dangerous, complex interactions...
...However, even those who believed until a few years ago that under no circumstances should the doors to airline pilots' ARGUMENTS cabins be locked so as to maintain the free flow between pilot and crew, today realize that the doors should be securely locked owing to repeated traumatic incidents...
...In which case, instead of visiting Israel and recording his impressions in Dissent, Berman would have had to visit Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe and to write his impressions from there...
...to one million at the beginning of the eighteenth century, it is also the story of the greatest tragedy in Jewish history, the Holocaust...
...It is a new Jewish experience, coming after some two thousand years...
...These two words alone elucidate the profound connection between the Zionist revolution and the essence of Diaspora Jewry...
...if the framework of an obligatory identity does not exist, we can expect a hard fraternal war...
...Both the left and the right in Israel opposed the Wall at first—the right because of the religious conviction that fencing the Holy Land is a blasphemous act, the left in the hope of open borders and a free flow in both directions...
...This experience will face the severe test of national democracy in the coming months...
...Jews can individually participate in the responsibility of a foreign sovereignty, but their participation must be, at least theoretically and morally, in the general interest of the nation or country in which they live, rather than to serve Jewish interests or moral considerations...
...To take a contemporary example: American Jews may support or oppose America's war in Iraq solely for American reasons and not to serve Jewish interests, because the war is being fought mainly by non-Jewish Americans...
...Among A. B. YEHOSHUA'S many novels are A Late Divorce, Open Heart, The Liberated Bride, Mr...
...Berman writes, "Where all that is solid melts into air,' Jews find themselves at home...
...Below, A.B...
...Jews were used to settling among gentiles, carrying their Jewish identity like a knapsack...
...This distorted Jewish perception of "no borders" is, in my opinion, the basis of the unfortunate breakdown of the Israeli border after the Six Day War—not by chance called Israel's "Jewish War" and regarded as the Dawn of Redemption by many religious Jews...
...Yehoshua 1 F ASKED TO DEFINE the concept of Zionism in one word, I would choose "borders...
...Israel and Syria...
...If all Jews at the beginning of the twentieth century had thought like Marshall Berman—"When anti-Semites don't kill them [Jews], Jews know how to be fully alive"—neither Zionism nor the State of Israel would have come into being...
...After all, thinking about changing humankind and humankind's ability to change is basically liberal...
...Yet, for themselves, Jews demand the right to free access everywhere...
...Why not settle among Palestinians, this time under the protection of the Israel Defense Forces rather than the gentile squire...
...It is the story of annihilation for the sake of annihilation—not for territory, or ideology, or property...
...But there is a difference between literary descriptions of prevailing reality and the demand for a common nationality in a state whose very foundations are still shaky...
...Israel's 1967 border was recognized by most countries as the established international border between Israel and Egypt...
...On the contrary, it would have helped the moderates among them to control the terrorists on their side of the border...
...Yehoshua responds...
...Therefore, reality demands that we quickly restore the border we destroyed with our own hands and rebuild it as a rigid border capable of repelling suicide terrorists who can wreak great destruction and death single-handedly...
...Like other Americans, they surely appreciate the fact that the border with Mexico is not wide open to a flood of millions of hungry people from the South...
...Yehoshua in which, according to Berman, "Yehoshua seemed skeptical about the Wall as security policy, but drawn to it as a foundation for a hard identity politics...
...In the Diaspora the Jew was free to interpret his Judaism as he wished and no Jew had ruling power over another Jew, but in Israel the rule of Jews by Jews finally exists...
...If the border had been established on the Green Line, the internationally recognized '67 line, the Wall would not have bothered Palestinians...
...The challenge of clear identity is a moral life stance, expressed through action for and against the surrounding reality...
...This existential lack of borders deprives Jewish identity of sovereignty...
...American Jews act in terms of their reality as Americans, not as Jews...
...This is true moral responsibility expressed in everyday actions and not only in synagogue sermons about "Jewish Morality...
...The terrible malaise and bloodshed we see today have come into being because we have linked our political and existential life circumstances here to that of another people, the Palestinians, with the absolute irresponsibility that stems from life in the diaspora...
...allowed one more word, I would add "sovereignty...
...Therefore the shrewd, unZionistic, iniquitous solution was found: Jews who settled in Palestinian territory under Israeli Army protection would receive preferential treatment in everything to do with water, land, and transport, while the Palestinian population would remain in their homeland without citizen rights or identity cards...
...For the sake of a Jewish 'clear identity,' he was giving the Wall an ontological kosher seal...
...Jewish identity is self-sustaining solely by imagination and self-awareness...
...When I speak of clear identity, I mean iden102 n DISSENT / Winter 2005 tity defined by borders within which the people bear responsibility for everything that happens, just as they are responsible for what happens in their own houses...
...and, mainly, between the Israelis and the Palestinians...
...However, because Israel, actively supported by the United States, is not evacuating the settlements, the wall has begun to wind its way into Palestinian territory, adding to the suffering in the lives of many Palestinians...
...In this way, Israel could avoid officially annexing the territory and having to assume sovereignty and responsibility for its population in accordance with the classical Zionist concept...
Vol. 52 • January 2005 • No. 1
