From Betar
Harkabi, Yehoshafat
FROM BETAR Lessons of the Bar Kochva Rebellion YEHOSHAFAT HARKABI It is difficult to accept that there can be any useful analogy between events that took place 1,850 years ago and the events of...
...Instead, they methodically destroyed one village after another...
...The minimum definition of what it means to love Israel is that it is incumbent on Jewish leaders to see to it that the Jews don't suffer needlessly...
...I mean by that the upgrading of the power of will to a point where it is thought to be the decisive factor in life...
...FROM BETAR Lessons of the Bar Kochva Rebellion YEHOSHAFAT HARKABI It is difficult to accept that there can be any useful analogy between events that took place 1,850 years ago and the events of our own time...
...But keeping the West Bank is also bad, will also lead to great problems...
...The rabbis understood this very well...
...But he came to the conclusion that for Egypt's sake, Egypt needs peace...
...It fostered what I call the "volun-taristic" element...
...Our extraordinary success in 1967 changed that way of thinking...
...I am all for a policy of activism, of exploiting targets of opportunity—but only for an activism that is self-conscious, that is based not on slogans and not on myths but on a sober analysis, that is controlled by an understanding of risks...
...That is why people can cling to fantasy for such a long time...
...To my mind, that is very important to us...
...Today, we are mesmerized by the dangers of a particular course of action, and as a result we fail to see the dangers involved in alternative courses...
...According to Dio Cassius, a Roman historian who wrote in about the year 200 CE, the Romans demolished 50 fortresses and 985 villages, killing 580,000 people in addition to those who died from hunger, disease and fire...
...Still, before you launch a revolt you have to consider the consequences, because if the result of your action is that the situation will get worse, not better, it's not worthwhile...
...But he was elected, and he would surely argue that his election and the things he has been able to achieve prove that what you call fantasies are, in fact, visions...
...Now we seem to be drawing the opposite lesson—and it is a dangerous lesson, in which we lose awareness of the distinction between benign risks and malignant risks...
...When he opposed the optimistic political commentators, whom he called "false prophets," he was charged with weakening the army and fostering pessimism among the people...
...there are more proximate causes...
...Well, it's still protracted, and the peace with Egypt does not mean that the struggle is over...
...The moderates wanted to stop the rebellion even though they knew there would be a heavy price to pay...
...But we can tell, even now, whether a particular policy is based on a pattern of sober thought and analysis or on a pattern of irrealism...
...Their actions sharpened the crisis, and that, in turn, gave their extremism a marked advantage...
...The Romans, of course, were experts in siegecraft, as they had proved again and again...
...There is also the United States, the USSR, Europe and so on...
...Their traditional attitude towards the rebellion was negative, perhaps in part because they knew that the rabbis of the time—especially Rabbi Akiva, it seems—had encouraged the rebellion...
...If your view is that Bar Kochva is to be admired, that's pretty good evidence that you don't take reality seriously...
...Nor is it even the case that if you bargain a lot, you will necessarily improve your position...
...Do you regard it that way...
...I prefer to think of the Bar Kochva rebellion as offering lessons, not analogies...
...For me, however, reality has an almost religious quality...
...That was, for example, the problem of the French in Algeria and of the Americans in Vietnam...
...Today, we have the view that the State of Israel was established in spite of the reality...
...Obviously, we don't know why they took that approach—but we can guess...
...That seems to me a realistic course, a proper course for us, taking all the factors into account...
...We ended up occupying more than was allotted us by the UN partition plan, and he was happy about that, but he was also cautious, because he understood that if we tried to overreach, we would invite rebuff...
...Such an event requires careful appraisal...
...But it wasn't that I was a hawk...
...I came to the view that it doesn't help to say that the Palestinians don't exist or that they have no history...
...It is hard to imagine anything more dangerous for a leader than that...
...Obviously, these were very great provocations...
...Everyone accepts that...
...Suppose that the Galileans had heeded Bar Kochva's call, and had joined the revolt...
...A national consensus on a position does not guarantee that the position is without flaw...
...And though I am a secular man, I have an almost theological feeling about this: people who don't have pity on their own and on others evoke the wrath of God...
...I believe I described their positions accurately...
...If they don't accept our position, then our moderate proposals become tactical, since the onus shifts to them...
...When political or military leaders base their policy on a mistaken evaluation, the mistake becomes part of the charge sheet against them...
...Now let us come to the Bar Kochva rebellion...
...And I don't retract anything I wrote...
...We can't know beforehand...
...And we, in particular, are led in that direction by virtue of the history of Zionism, which appears to be a story of the triumph of will over circumstance, and is often portrayed in that way...
...I draw a distinction between vision and fantasy...
...And the problem is that when a national debate on such matters takes place, the extremists have a marked advantage, because they sound so idealistic, and because they are so unequivocal in their demands...
...Second, they had decided to enforce the law against self-mutilation...
...In what ways do we misunderstand Bar Kochva...
...But leaders are not entitled to the same indulgence...
...And so the question was how this inexperienced people would compensate for its inexperience in its dealings with other nations...
...So the real question is not how Bar Kochva erred, but how in modern times we have come to admire his error, and what that admiration says about our conception of reality today...
...An individual act of moral courage, of defiance, may be praiseworthy since the individual presumably understands the risks of his behavior and implicates only himself in the consequences...
...Hence peace is the beginning of a process, not its culmination...
...If it is possible, why not...
...That is not because I think the Arabs are such wonderful people...
...The historians mention two reasons...
...What happened...
...The most important lesson is the need to take account of reality in arriving at decisions...
...We can forgive the people for their reaction to the Roman provocation...
...The girls and women were sold to brothels, where there was always a high demand because Roman soldiers were not allowed to marry and their term of service in the army was 20 years...
...one has to consider whether it is feasible...
...That was Jabotinsky's approach...
...Even if you assume that only 200,000 were actually killed, you end up with somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 who perished, and very many more who were sold into slavery...
...When people make a mistake in evaluating their circumstances, and then proceed, on the basis of their mistaken evaluation, in a disastrous way, we regard their error as an extenuating circumstance...
...Back then, there was no need to describe the Israeli position or to recommend any new position, because the absolute refusal and rejection of the Arabs meant that we could not take any initiative...
...How do you determine whether idealism is a constructive and productive ingredient of reality or a misguided and destructive fantasy...
...And I believe that if you try to attain that which is unattainable you may not achieve what is achievable...
...Vision implies an effort to change reality, not to escape it...
...So our position cannot be solely a response to the Arab position...
...We have to take into account our position in the world, and sometimes our concern for our relations with other states must even take precedence over our direct relations with the Arabs...
...If they were to accept our proposal, then our moderation becomes strategic, and we make peace on that basis...
...It is not an extenuating circumstance...
...Living as you have through all the struggles, from the War of Independence to the present time, have you been surprised by the endlessness of the struggle...
...Let's get back to the issue of the present, and the causes of what you call "irrealism" later...
...I am not against a large Israel—if it is possible to have one...
...Why should we be a small state...
...Bar Kochva was required to understand that his action might lead to a national holocaust— which in fact it did...
...Humanity cannot start from scratch each morning...
...I am alive to their hostile intentions...
...As the Romans succeeded in suppressing the rebellion, the minority that was opposed to the war grew...
...It seems to me that the defeat of Bar Kochva was the most important defeat in Jewish history, and perhaps was even the most momentous event in Jewish history...
...And I believe we must restore realism as a value in our culture and in our political thinking...
...If they had been taken seriously, the opposition to Zionism would have been devastating...
...Then they, too, would have been destroyed—and then the Jewish nation itself would have ceased to exist, the Talmud would not have happened, Jewish history quite likely would have come to an end...
...The lesson of the Bar Kochva rebellion is, obviously, a lesson against excessive optimism, against vainglory—that is, against setting goals beyond one's power, disregard for obstacles, belief that strong willpower is enough...
...That may be historically correct, as the Palestinians don't have as long a history as we do, but the time has come to move away from such self-righteous perceptions and to put the onus on them...
...But it seems to me that sometimes we have to consider concessions, and even offer them, not because the Arabs "deserve" concessions but simply in order to improve our position in the international arena...
...It is not enough to determine whether a proposed action is desirable...
...They interpreted our liability as mainly psychological, and they sought to compensate by emphasizing our strength, our will, our demands...
...It was a calamity, of course...
...Unlike the Great Rebellion, which was the product of gradual deterioration rather than of a deliberate plan, the Bar Kochva rebellion was very carefully planned...
...Its leaders risked the very existence of the nation—and they lost...
...I have nothing against largeness as such...
...After we achieved our independence, it became clear that statehood had been bestowed on a people that had had no significant political experience for nearly 2,000 years...
...In Israel today, it is the first of these errors that is the more prevalent, and Begin is not the only one who makes the error...
...They did not, and it is almost as if God had said, "Because you didn't have pity on my children, because you allowed yourselves to be irritated by Hadrian and allowed your irritation to lead you to a calamitous war, I decree that this place will not be yours any more...
...In war, you can sacrifice a company, or even a battalion...
...They took a categorical position, which is more popular in times of crisis, whereas the position of the moderates was relative, qualified...
...They were committed to holding it, and they were prepared to commit very large forces to that end...
...Exactly...
...But it recognized, correctly, that brandishing the idea of the state too early would have adverse results...
...So we come now to the present, to our own time, to the "If you will it, it is no legend" problem...
...But that is a mistaken view...
...They adopted a defensive guerilla strategy, which makes a great deal of sense if the adversary you face differentiates between fighters and farmers...
...One cannot escape the need for a sober appraisal of the balance of forces, of the prospects and dangers of a particular course of action...
...the abstract perfect becomes the enemy of the realistic good...
...He made peace in order to acquire the support of the Americans...
...The moment you begin to believe that it is, you're in serious trouble...
...The simple slogan may amount to no more than a call to knock one's headVgainst a brick wall, but it has enormous appeal...
...Perhaps he thought that if we took Jerusalem there would be such an outcry that we would be forced back to the partition lines everywhere—whereas if we were to limit ourselves, our gains would be tolerated...
...Ideals and idealism are necessary, but things must be seen in their true scale...
...First, the Romans had decided to build a heathen temple on the Temple Mount...
...But at the same time, the Zealots became more and more extreme...
...To my mind, it will lead to an Arab-Jewish entity that simply won't be Israel, that will be much closer to what the PLO describes as a secular democratic state...
...In short, there was incredible suffering...
...I've already indicated that only our successors will be able to judge accurately whether or not a particular policy was reality-grounded or suffered from one excess or the other...
...While the event is happening, how do you know whether it's based on vision or fantasy...
...when others are not so ethical, I don't see that we have to be so ethical...
...It will lead to great problems...
...Lam concerned solely with how Israel can get the best deal—in the real world...
...Some Israelis, as you know, hold dovish positions, and they search for symmetry in human affairs, so they impute dovish positions to the Arabs as well...
...There is also the network of relationships with the big powers that must be taken into consideration...
...There is not a single state in the world that doesn't believe the world would be a nicer place if its adversaries ceased to exist...
...You are saying that qualities that may be admirable in an individual are not the same when they are displayed by leaders...
...But the Romans did not make such a differentiation...
...I want to use the Bar Kochva story as a way of doing that, as a way of restoring vision, of rejecting fantasy...
...One of the rabbis of the time, Joshua the son of Kalania, tried to explain to the people that in terms of power, the relation of the Jews to the Romans was like that of a bird to a lion...
...So if I take a dovish policy—and I do—it is motivated, as I've said, by hawkish considerations, even Machiavellian considerations...
...We have a tendency to ignore banal advice precisely when we need it most...
...To admire Bar Kochva means to adopt as your model a heroic deed entirely without attention to its consequences...
...And for a thousand years or so, our rabbis understood the Bar Kochva matter...
...Take, for example, the Egyptian case...
...Let's go back to our first major defeat, to the destruction of the First Temple, back in 586 BCE...
...As many as a million Jews were killed, or died of hunger, or were sold into slavery...
...He was the first Arab to come to that perception...
...Here, too, my concern is how to get the most for Israel...
...Until Sadat, all Arab leaders had said that the Arab world would develop against Israel, not with Israel...
...Before the results are in, we're just groping in the darkness...
...To make the point entirely clear, I turn to our present major problem...
...Generally, the ratio of battle deaths to deaths from other causes in wartime, such as disease, is one to three or one to two...
...After 1970,1 began to think that it was time for us to use certain tactics so far as the Palestinians are concerned...
...When I started writing about the Arabs, I would describe the harshness of their position, and people therefore thought that I was a hawk...
...Bar Kochva and Rabbi Akiva sinned against ahavat yisrael, which should have been their primary concern...
...Judea had been a Roman imperial province for over a hundred years, and the Romans regarded it as a central link in their empire...
...Isn't that a very fine line you're trying to draw...
...Arabs...
...One might argue, for example, that the hostility of the Arabs should cause us to reject any possible agreement, should deter us from offering concessions...
...And that is why it is so important that the peace take root properly, that it should be so managed as to encourage the change in image...
...But what emerges in the world today is not what is desirable for one side...
...We have a state today because nobody took the Revisionists very seriously...
...Prime Minister Begin's visions were commonly dismissed as fantasies up until very recently...
...Yet that is what you suggest, is it not...
...The Zionist movement knew full well that the state was inherent in Zionism...
...But fantasy pays no attention to reality...
...I have believed that since 1970, and I wrote a book suggesting that we should adopt a moderate position, that we should acknowledge their right to self-determination provided they are ready to end the struggle once and for all...
...If they had introduced statehood as their slogan too early, as the Revisionists wanted them to, that would have been counterproductive...
...From that, we learn that if we had waited for Sadat to change his image of us, we would have waited a very long time...
...No, we cannot prevent all suffering—but a people should not be required to suffer for the sake of its leaders' fantasies...
...But you can't risk the existence of a whole people...
...The sages, for their part, focused not on political or military action, but on the moral regeneration of the people...
...Well, if they were justified in starting a rebellion because of that, then we ourselves are today in error, for the fact is that there is a Moslem temple, a mosque, on the Temple Mount...
...We actually know very little about the rebellion, but it seems that those who initiated it understood that they could not face the Romans in the open field, and they had learned from the Great Rebellion that to fortify a few key cities was to invite Roman siege...
...But what is the point of being an optimist if optimism leads to disaster...
...They denied that the rebellion had religious significance...
...And so his advice to the exiles in Babylonia was to be patient and forebearing...
...People say that a Palestinian state is bad...
...There was a national consensus in favor of rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar...
...A political leader cannot act as if he were a company commander...
...Jeremiah didn't believe that destruction was an inescapable punishment from above, but a matter that could be affected by the policy of a people and its leaders...
...Sometimes your bargaining will worsen your position...
...Reality demands the very first condition of religion, which is humility...
...I say that because it was the event that pushed the Jews to the margins of history...
...Don't overreach yourself...
...It was easier to mobilize the people under the simple slogan of "Roman rule must be rejected" than under the complex slogan, "A way must be found to coexist with Rome...
...Why did the Jews rebel...
...Furthermore, the Arab-Israeli system is not a closed system, a problem just between the Arabs and us...
...Yet we accept that...
...History offers us lessons—if we are open to learning from experience...
...Along the way, it also fostered the illusion that all national problems had been solved, and that people were therefore entitled to concentrate on their private lives, on making money and so forth...
...Ben-Gurion, for example, was a supreme realist...
...It is simply not the case that "if you will it, it is not a legend...
...But there is much more that needs to be said about it...
...Yes...
...One assumes that a battle of such dimensions must have been precipitated by very powerful considerations...
...I preach moderation because I think it would improve our position considerably, whether strategically or tactically...
...Still, if you downgrade reality— and that is what we are doing—then the chances of error are substantially increased...
...By and large, the Bar Kochva rebellion is taught as an example of Jewish heroism, as a desperate battle for freedom against overwhelming odds...
...No, we cannot avoid risks—but you have to be aware of what it is you are risking...
...Did it foster the illusion that Israel was not merely the subject of history, as you put it, but the exclusive author of its own history—this in an era when no nation, not even the most powerful, can be the sole author of its history...
...But obviously you could not remove the state from its analagous environment...
...I take a dovish position for hawkish reasons...
...As I have said, I am quite aware of the hostile intentions of the Arabs...
...But more than that—it was a calamity brought about by the irrealism of our own leaders, and that is what makes it a folly, and worse...
...But the Zealots knew what they were doing...
...It is time for us to recognize the Palestinians and to acknowledge that they deserve self-determination—provided, of course, that they would do the same, that there would be reciprocal acceptance...
...But a leader implicates the people he leads...
...They argued that the price would be much heavier—as, indeed, it proved to be—if the war escalated...
...Zionism taught that the problem of the Jew at the individual level was in his relations with his gentile neighbors, and that the way to solve the problem was to remove the individual from his environment...
...I don't preach moderation for moral reasons...
...Obviously, there is something sublime in Herzl's famous sentence...
...The prophet Jeremiah was opposed to that position, not because he thought that Nebuchadnezzar was a decent man— he had no illusions regarding the goodness or morality of enemies—but because of political necessity...
...They believed that our lack of experience would prevent us from understanding what is possible and what is not possible, and they sought to compensate for this liability by emphasizing the need for sober appraisal...
...But we must recognize our limitations...
...The Jews, for their part, had no central leadership...
...But afterwards, the main historical decisions, even those affecting us, were made without our own participation...
...it sounds proud and heroic...
...In 1948, during our War of Independence, he knew what we could accomplish...
...I do believe that the way in which we have come to understand and admire Bar Kochva is a symptom of the myth, and also that it is sometimes easier to recognize the danger of your perceptions of current problems if you begin from a critical analysis of your perceptions of distant matters...
...But Sadat realized that Egypt needs the United States, and that the road from Cairo to Washington leads through Jerusalem...
...Now, such a lesson may seem banal, but I'm afraid that sometimes people have to be reminded even of the banal...
...In Israel today, there has developed a myth of irreality, a temper that holds that you can safely ignore reality, that it is truly the case that nothing matters more than the strength of your own will...
...By which I take it you mean the most security, not the most land...
...But most often you can't tell that difference at the time...
...That is why politics is such a delicate enterprise...
...instead, what emerges is what is tolerable for all sides...
...And not long after the destruction of the Temple, the exiles were allowed to return and the Temple was rebuilt, national life was renewed...
...But his advice was ignored...
...There is, of course, a different error that states can make—the error of timidity, lack of resolve, hesitation...
...But it was seen by the Jews as prohibiting circumcision...
...Incidentally, one way we know about the number of slaves isthat we know there was a dramatic drop in the price of slaves during that time...
...I want the best for Israel...
...They were bitter that a heathen temple was being built on the Temple Mount...
...He counselled against provoking the lion...
...Not that I don't acknowledge that morality has its importance...
...We cannot afford to limit ourselves, to perceive the Arab-Israeli conflict strictly in terms of Jews vs...
...Either way, on the order of half the Jews perished or disappeared...
...I was simply describing the Arab positions, and they were hawkish positions...
...But you are forbidden to risk the existence of the nation, and the Bar Kochva rebellion risked exactly that...
...That was Ben-Gurion's approach...
...Zionism had not prepared us for that...
...it was a way of preventing castration...
...If I come with dovish perceptions, then, it is not because I view the Arabs as doves...
...And what are the principal lessons we can learn from the particular event of the Bar Kochva rebellion...
...The long bickering on the autonomy plan has been counterproductive because it has prevented the precarious peace from taking root in Egyptian society...
...you can follow a wrong course for years without any convincing evidence that it's wrong—and by the time you realize your error, the damage may be considerable...
...I don't dispute that...
...It is simply not true that one's will is the exclusive formula for success...
...I believe that if we could have penetrated his soul we would have found that his image of us was the old image...
...we depend, both as individuals and as member of groups, on our ability to learn from the past, and the way we do that is not by comparing one event to another event, but by distilling the lessons of a particular event and applying those lessons where they have relevance to other events...
...I used to write about "the protracted conflict," and people would quarrel with me...
...They did not cherish Bar Kochva's memory...
...Was '67 a watershed...
...Prior to the revolt, we were the subjects of history, not its object...
...To put it simply, he was guilty of inflicting a terrible national disaster on his people...
...Jeremiah explained that we can only tell for sure what is realistic and what is unrealistic after the fact, with hindsight...
...One school of thought held that the major problem we had to be aware of was that we would be too timid in our aspirations and demands...
...Back then, the lesson the Jews derived from the Bar Kochva calamity was the virtue of political passivism, quietism...
...I think, for example, that the commandment of ahavatyisrael—the love of Israel— is central here...
...In fact, the reverse is true: Peace leads to a change in image...
...History provides broad lessons, not detailed guides...
...My guess is that they considered the revolt an act of national folly...
...But at the heart of the matter, other considerations come into play...
...The feedback loop in the world of politics is wholly inadequate...
...The individual Jew might now live with other Jews, rather than with gentiles, but the Jewish State had to live with other states...
...The most security, and even the most land...
...But you have to examine it, and, when you do, you realize that it is the meeting place between the sublime and the stupid...
...Of course, your will is one element of reality, but it is not the only element...
...In order to mobilize the whole nation, for example, they burnt the food reserves, thus assuring a catastrophic end...
...So we had to learn how to behave with other states, with other nations...
...Actually, that law had been promulgated for humanitarian reasons throughout the Roman Empire...
...We tend to ignore that, to think that because we are powerful we are therefore omnipotent...
...It brought a victory to what I call the psychological school, to the Jabotinsky school—which, of course, came to political power in 1977...
...During the Talmudic period, which followed immediately after the revolt, they tried to consign it to oblivion, to help the Jews to forget it...
...I don't like the word "analogy...
...By doing that, they destroy the credibility of their own policies...
...So the organizers decided to fortify the whole country, to fortify every village...
...it gives force to a nation...
...The slave market in the Roman Empire was huge, and only a very large increase in supply could lead to a reduction in the price...
...Now compare that to the Great Rebellion that took place between 66 and 70 of the Common Era...
...And what is desirable for one side is not the same as what is tolerable for all sides...
...If we can personalize what you are saying, don't we run into a problem...
...The popular perception which holds that the way to reach peace is to change the image is wrong...
...They sought to bring about a situation in which the moderate option would be foreclosed...
...Specifically, the Zealots argued that the removal of Roman rule was a religious duty, in effect claiming that considerations of realism were irrelevant...
...The second school of thought saw our principal liability as cognitive...
...Obviously, I don't contend that this dangerous myth comes to us as a legacy of the Bar Kochva rebellion...
...The point here is that devotion and idealism are not in themselves enough to assure success and victory...
...Even if these figures are substantially exaggerated, we are talking about an enormous number of casualties...
...It is left for the historians to judge, and they can simply say that any failure was based on fantasy, every success based on vision...
...If he'd not been elected in 1977 and again in 1981, it's quite likely that history would have recorded him as a prisoner of his fantasies...
...He was alive to the great principle of our sages: tafasta meruba lo tafasta—if you try for too much, you will come up with nothing...
...We must understand that we are inevitably limited, that we labor under certain constraints...
...They were torn by internal feuds and vendettas...
...We should remember that Sadat didn't make peace with us because he changed his image of the Jews or of Israel...
...Take into account that the Jewish population before the rebellion was somewhere between 1.3 million and 2.5 million...
...It is obvious to me that we cannot control the West Bank forever...
...I don't dispute that in making policy you have to take risks...
...It combines idealism and realism...
Vol. 7 • June 1982 • No. 6
