Perspective

Eban, Abba

ABBA BAN PBSHCTiVE In a number of recent speeches, President Navon has observed that "Israel is really much better than it looks." Is that a perception that you share? Why is it that Israel...

...We're part of the world...
...I remember, about eight or nine years ago, when a fire broke out in the holy shrine of the al-Aksa mosque, and no one could find out what on earth had caused such an event...
...I suppose that it's natural, therefore, for leaders to emphasize different things here, to take account of their audiences...
...Perhaps we can weave the two different questions together...
...It's therefore very paradoxical that on the morrow of such a vast achievement we should find ourselves in a predicament of morale...
...the general human condition affects us...
...Why is it that Israel doesn't "look" good...
...Another reason, of course, is the central political paradox of Israel...
...I agree with most of those things, but I don't think you can get anywhere with a negative consensus alone...
...First of all, there is the problem of leadership...
...Abba Eban, former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Israel, is a Contributing Editor of this magazine...
...We watch the same television, we see the same movies, we read the same papers, we get the same pop music and the same fashions, and the idea that you can have a little island completely immune from the nihilistic currents in contemporary culture is not very realistic...
...After all, many of our problems are not new problems, and the only new element in our situation is the revolutionary breakthrough of a peace treaty with Egypt...
...No, I really wish that that community would become more involved...
...And the feeling that many of our national policies are not well regarded anywhere in the world has its depressive effect on the country...
...Probably none of the ills to which society is exposed are not to be found in Israel as well, including psychopathic homicide...
...We are subject to the effects of the general human condition...
...I don't think we would find them all on one particular side of the barricade...
...we were no less isolated in world opinion after the Suez operation in 1956 than we are now...
...And therefore it's natural that they should be found on every side of the political gamut...
...Israel is the home of social democracy, and finds itself today being one of the last countries ruling what is virtually a foreign people...
...In general, the cultural life of the planet is now unified...
...For example, we were in much greater physical danger during the War of Independence than we have ever been since...
...I would hope, however, that will be minimized...
...Therefore I think you can only expect a part of our society to express the highest qualities that are inherent in the Zionist creed...
...Here, Rabin you know, insists that we have a consensus on four things—not to go back to June 4, 1967, not to negotiate with the PLO, not to have a Palestine state, and not to accept the redivision of Jerusalem...
...In that respect, it's rather like the early American revolution, with the very Biblical statements by the founding fathers of the United States—"Every day we witness the birth of a new heaven and a new earth"—I think that was Thomas Paine, or George Washington's statement about making America such a shining beacon that the "rays of it will dazzle the world...
...It's leadership that reminds the members of a free society of what its main points of destiny are...
...Has there not always been a tension between the doctrine, "ki mitziyon teitzei torah," on the one hand, and "goy k'chol hagoyim" on the other—between the Law going forth out of Zion and absolute normalcy...
...When Ordon Yarden was kidnapped, and tragically murdered, we were all struck by the extraordinary response of the entire society...
...It was a freak event, a member of a crazy religious sect...
...His reflections appear regularly in these pages...
...Well, I think the idea of being different is a very unrealistic idea...
...they're not very interesting to the news media...
...But some people have always thought it a bit pretentious for Ben Gurion to have spoken of us as "a light of nations...
...Now and again there is an eruption into the press, but on the whole I think they ought to be playing a bigger role...
...What is new is this: In previous generations, the greater our hardship, the more vital and spirited has been the Israeli response...
...Does it assert its views, whether on the "narrow" question of moderation in foreign affairs or on the "broad" questions of social health...
...And we are now in a position where the country is without leadership...
...If, for example, we talk about not going back to the June 4 lines, then you get a consensus between Geulah Cohen (ed...
...Is that reaction—so much of which focussed on a kind of "What has become of us...
...It's leadership that really defines the national condition...
...Incidentally, there's no such thing in the Bible as "a light unto the nations...
...its involvement is decidedly marginal...
...And with all the criticism that I have of our leadership, I still feel that Israeli society still has a greater measure of exhilaration and exaltation, of positive purpose, than does affluent Western society...
...The idea that the role of the intellectual is permanent opposition to the state is just as wrong as the idea that his duty is permanent docility...
...Minister, somebody from Australia set the mosque alight...
...And I'll never forget the day I was sitting in my office and someone came in and said, "Mr...
...Each of these ideas denies the diversity of the intellectual process...
...Such communications to the Israeli people as those made at the end of his life by J. L. Talmon, for example, which did have a very agitating effect, are quite important...
...What you can hope for is to preserve your own sanctuary of particular values...
...But on those occasions, and also during periods of economic stress, we gave the impression that Israelis thrive under hardship...
...There are so many elements in our Jewish experience and character that emphasize the emotional, sentimental, passionate, mystical, metaphysical elements in human life and emotions that we really do need the intellectual community to contribute the balancing dimension of rationality...
...Here, there is still that sense of family solidarity, so that when something happens to somebody, the circles of identification and of sympathy flow really across the whole nation—we do become a family...
...Do you have a hypothesis...
...There is a certain tendency, which will undoubtedly be exaggerated in the next few months as we approach elections, for Israeli leaders to speak very moderately to the outside world and rather militantly to the Israeli electorate...
...And one should not draw any national conclusions from such a freak event...
...So that there are many reasons for this decline in morale...
...But it is true that the state of mind is much more depressed than the state of the nation, and we have to And why at such a time<?he national morale is so low...
...Normally, hard times are the best times from the point of view of Israel's spiritual health...
...After all, in a democratic society, it is leadership that articulates the national purpose...
...I think what is unique about Israel on the positive side is the degree of intimate association with the Yarden tragedy, and with the parents...
...Moreover, in spite of all the symptoms of a tormented society, uncertain of its future, there are still many manifestations of pioneering Zionist idealism...
...Well, now we've got the hardship, without the talent for thriving under it...
...Yet the Yarden tragedy does remind us that the things which once distinguished Israel from other nations are no longer valid...
...The interpretation of prophetic Judaism is simply not one of the things that the religious parties or the rabbinate undertakes...
...This sort of messianic rhetoric has accompanied both our nations in the early days...
...They're not always visible to the press...
...Precisely because so much of our predicament is psychological or moral or intellectual, the academic community and the scientific community really ought to get out of the libraries and the laboratories and involve themselves much more in the public dialogue...
...And then, although many people in Israel still speak very bravely in terms of national autarchy—"we don't have to think about anybody but ourselves"—the fact is that our people are very sensitive to world opinion and especially to Jewish opinion...
...Of course, Zionism has its Utopian quality...
...we had a far greater prospect of physical danger on the eve of the Six Day War than we do now...
...Those of us who follow the Israeli press have been struck this past week by the fact that both Mr...
...But in dozens of rural communities, in factories producing very high quality goods based on advanced technology, in educational institutions, institutes of science and higher learning, in hundreds of homes and in dozens of centers of habitation, there is still that traditional Israeli buoyance, resilience, optimism, a sense of mission, and I would still say that in spite of the dark days through which we are passing, there is still much more motivation for service and for social idealism than we find in many of the advanced countries of the West...
...Is it a galut notion, a notion born of Diaspora life, that suggests that one of the reasons for the reaction was the impact of the realization that Israel really is a goy k'chol hagoyim, a nation like all the others...
...But I did not draw any conclusions whatever about Australia...
...On the one hand, we had a kind of psychopathic episode that could have happened anywhere...
...note: a former supporter of Begin who recently set up her own political party because Begin was too dovish) and myself, with her meaning that we shouldn't give up any of it and my meaning that we shouldn't give up a hundred percent of it...
...And the more so because the religious leadership here is completely silent on human and social issues, interprets religion in a completely priestly, ceremonial, ritualistic fashion...
...I thought to myself, of all the things I might have imagined, this was surely the most unlikely...
...In my opinion, it's much more important to speak moderately to the Israeli people than it is to the Boston Globe, because it's to the Israeli people that we have to tell the truth about our condition, about the limitations of our power and about the realistic limits of our solution...
...And is it really better than it looks...
...There is a general sensation that the present tenure is expiring, while the new one has not yet come clearly into view...
...I think that though the situation is grave, it is not so grave as to justify such a crisis of morale...
...Peres and Rabin have given very dovish interviews to American newspapers, considerably more dovish, unless I'm mistaken, than the kind of thing they are saying back home...
...But they should be involved...
...You can't expect those qualities to flow with complete perfection throughout the society as a whole...
...Does the intellectual community in -Israel play a comparable role...
...I'm afraid that the domestic electorate is becoming rather more militant...
...the words or lagoyim never appear—it's always or goyim, a light of nations...
...In the United States, the intellectual community has assumed a special responsibility for telling people the truth about their condition, especially during the Vietnam period...
...mentality—relevant in this context...
...In the United States or in the European countries, such things are read as headlines and shrugged off...

Vol. 5 • July 1980 • No. 7


 
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