Editor's Page
Cohen, Mitchell
In this issue of Dissent you will find, for the first time in an American publication, George Orwell's original preface to Animal Farm. This essay, a product of Orwell's difficulties in getting...
...Moreover, the Labor-led government, like Peace Now, grasped that endless occupation of the West Bank and Gaza would spell disaster for both Israelis and Palestinians...
...Indeed, when Rabin was premier in the 1970s he stated frankly that he was willing to visit Hebron with a passport, given the right conditions...
...Ask Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu: will you trade territory if it can be assured that no violence will again originate from the land you leave...
...One reason he could extend his hand to the Palestinians was that he knew something about Israeli military strength, unlike his critics, say, in Brooklyn...
...After Rabin's slaying, one Yoram Hazony, distorting history with Pravda-like aplomb, portrayed Israel's right as an innocent, long-suffering victim of leftist violence...
...So too for Rabin, a securityminded man who reinvented his politics when new political options opened...
...In our "American Questions" and "Arguments" sections, some of the American left's most thoughtful commentators address this difficult hour— one in which Republicans dominate, Bill Clinton "triangulates," Democrats are in disarray, and what's left of the left is encouraged by change in the AFL-CIO while agitated about the so-called "Million Man March...
...Since American conservatives have few qualms about dancing with right-wing extremism, particularly the religious variety, it is not surprising that the Weekly Standard, the new organ of Washington's "mini-cons," features apologetics for the Israeli right...
...Dissent thinks this is a good idea, especially in American affairs and those of the left...
...If he doesn't dodge it, he must answer "no," he'd yield nothing...
...But Labor always advocated territorial compromise...
...Mark Levinson scrutinizes the Standard's treatment of American affairs in this Dissent...
...For Israel's social democratic founders, land was not a fetish, but a means to reconstruct a people...
...WINTER • 1996 • 3...
...This is also a time to repeat loudly what the Israeli right and its American friends don't want people to hear...
...But then pose the question just as a thought experiment...
...This essay, a product of Orwell's difficulties in getting his anti-Stalinist novella into print, offers an axiom: tell people "what they don't want to hear...
...Ruth Wisse explained how Rabin brought "unprecedented political and moral confusion" to Israel...
...If Israel's government is for "strategic surrender" of land, it should say it—so opined, feverishly, this general of Yiddish literature at Harvard...
...Although Likud follows the rules of Israeli democracy and shouldn't be conflated with antiparliamentary forces, it cannot escape blame for an atmosphere of violence...
...M.C...
...Yitzhak Rabin's murder by a rightwing religious zealot throws into sharp relief long-standing differences between Zionism's left and right...
...Religious rightists educated the killer, but Likud's pre-assassination rhetoric was ferocious and demagogic...
...Likud's real bottom line is "historical rights" to land, not security...
...Political and moral confusion" comes from nationalist fundamentalists who speak of "strategy" when they really oppose territorial compromise under any conditions...
...And now they call for "unity" among Israelis and Jews when what they really want is a moral escape hatch from their own complicity in political extremism...
...Netanyahu branded Rabin "personally responsible" for Israeli deaths inArab terror attacks and showed few misgivings when zealots mobilized against the peace process...
...Dissent's Spring issue will carry Peace Now's Jonathan Frankel on Israeli developments...
...The Israeli right, secular and religious, seeks to confuse its nationalist fundamentalism with national security...
...The hatch should be shut and the peace process pursued with vigor...
...Such a guarantee, he'd probably retort, is impossible (which is true...
Vol. 43 • January 1996 • No. 1
