- (Avraham Burg was speaker of Israel's Knesset from 1999
to 2003 and is a former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. He is
currently a Labor Party Knesset member.)
-
- The Zionist revolution has always rested on two pillars:
a just path and an ethical leadership. Neither of these is operative any
longer. The Israeli nation today rests on a scaffolding of corruption,
and on foundations of oppression and injustice. As such, the end of the
Zionist enterprise is already on our doorstep. There is a real chance that
ours will be the last Zionist generation. There may yet be a Jewish state
here, but it will be a different sort, strange and ugly.
-
- There is time to change course, but not much. What is
needed is a new vision of a just society and the political will to implement
it. Nor is this merely an internal Israeli affair. Diaspora Jews for whom
Israel is a central pillar of their identity must pay heed and speak out.
If the pillar collapses, the upper floors will come crashing down.
-
- The opposition does not exist, and the coalition, with
Arik Sharon at its head, claims the right to remain silent. In a nation
of chatterboxes, everyone has suddenly fallen dumb, because there's nothing
left to say. We live in a thunderously failed reality. Yes, we have revived
the Hebrew language, created a marvelous theater and a strong national
currency. Our Jewish minds are as sharp as ever. We are traded on the Nasdaq.
But is this why we created a state? The Jewish people did not survive for
two millennia in order to pioneer new weaponry, computer security programs
or anti-missile missiles. We were supposed to be a light unto the nations.
In this we have failed.
-
- It turns out that the 2,000-year struggle for Jewish
survival comes down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique
of corrupt lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their
enemies. A state lacking justice cannot survive. More and more Israelis
are coming to understand this as they ask their children where they expect
to live in 25 years. Children who are honest admit, to their parents' shock,
that they do not know. The countdown to the end of Israeli society has
begun.
-
- It is very comfortable to be a Zionist in West Bank settlements
such as Beit El and Ofra. The biblical landscape is charming. From the
window you can gaze through the geraniums and bougainvilleas and not see
the occupation. Traveling on the fast highway "hat takes you from
Ramot on Jerusalem's northern edge to Gilo on the southern edge, a 12-minute
trip that skirts barely a half-mile west of the Palestinian roadblocks,
it's hard to comprehend the humiliating experience of the despised Arab
who must creep for hours along the pocked, blockaded roads assigned to
him. One road for the occupier, one road for the occupied.
-
- This cannot work. Even if the Arabs lower their heads
and swallow their shame and anger forever, it won't work. A structure built
on human callousness will inevitably collapse in on itself. Note this moment
well: Zionism's superstructure is already collapsing like a cheap Jerusalem
wedding hall. Only madmen continue dancing on the top floor while the pillars
below are collapsing.
-
- We have grown accustomed to ignoring the suffering of
the women at the roadblocks. No wonder we don't hear the cries of the abused
woman living next door or the single mother struggling to support her children
in dignity. We don't even bother to count the women murdered by their husbands.
-
- Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the
Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and
blow themselves up in the centers of Israeli escapism. They consign themselves
to Allah in our places of recreation, because their own lives are torture.
They spill their own blood in our restaurants in order to ruin our appetites,
because they have children and parents at home who are hungry and humiliated.
-
- We could kill a thousand ringleaders and engineers a
day and nothing will be solved, because the leaders come up from below
" from the wells of hatred and anger, from the "infrastructures"
of injustice and moral corruption.
-
- If all this were inevitable, divinely ordained and immutable,
I would be silent. But things could be different, and so crying out is
a moral imperative.
-
- Here is what the prime minister should say to the people:
-
- The time for illusions is over. The time for decisions
has arrived. We love the entire land of our forefathers and in some other
time we would have wanted to live here alone. But that will not happen.
The Arabs, too, have dreams and needs.
-
- Between the Jordan and the Mediterranean there is no
longer a clear Jewish majority. And so, fellow citizens, it is not possible
to keep the whole thing without paying a price. We cannot keep a Palestinian
majority under an Israeli boot and at the same time think ourselves the
only democracy in the Middle East. There cannot be democracy without equal
rights for all who live here, Arab as well as Jew. We cannot keep the territories
and preserve a Jewish majority in the world's only Jewish state "
not by means that are humane and moral and Jewish.
-
- Do you want the greater Land of Israel? No problem. Abandon
democracy. Let's institute an efficient system of racial separation here,
with prison camps and detention villages. Qalqilya Ghetto and Gulag Jenin.
-
- Do you want a Jewish majority? No problem. Either put
the Arabs on railway cars, buses, camels and donkeys and expel them en
masse " or separate ourselves from them absolutely, without tricks
and gimmicks. There is no middle path. We must remove all the settlements
" all of them " and draw an internationally recognized border
between the Jewish national home and the Palestinian national home. The
Jewish Law of Return will apply only within our national home, and their
right of return will apply only within the borders of the Palestinian state.
-
- Do you want democracy? No problem. Either abandon the
greater Land of Israel, to the last settlement and outpost, or give full
citizenship and voting rights to everyone, including Arabs. The result,
of course, will be that those who did not want a Palestinian state alongside
us will have one in our midst, via the ballot box.
-
- That's what the prime minister should say to the people.
He should present the choices forthrightly: Jewish racialism or democracy.
Settlements or hope for both peoples. False visions of barbed wire, roadblocks
and suicide bombers, or a recognized international border between two states
and a shared capital in Jerusalem.
-
- But there is no prime minister in Jerusalem. ... Polls
published last weekend showed that a majority of Israelis do not believe
in the personal integrity of the prime minister " yet they trust his
political leadership. In other words, Israel's current prime minister personally
embodies both halves of the curse: suspect personal morals and open disregard
for the law " combined with the brutality of occupation and the trampling
of any chance for peace. This is our nation, these its leaders. The inescapable
conclusion is that the Zionist revolution is dead.
-
- Why, then, is the opposition so quiet? Perhaps because
it's summer, or because they are tired, or because some would like to join
the government at any price, even the price of participating in the sickness.
But while they dither, the forces of good lose hope.
-
- This is the time for clear alternatives. Anyone who declines
to present a clear-cut position " black or white " is in effect
collaborating in the decline. It is not a matter of Labor versus Likud
or right versus left, but of right versus wrong, acceptable versus unacceptable.
The law-abiding versus the lawbreakers. What's needed is not a political
replacement for the Sharon government but a vision of hope, an alternative
to the destruction of Zionism and its values by the deaf, dumb and callous.
-
- Israel's friends abroad " Jewish and non-Jewish
alike, presidents and prime ministers, rabbis and lay people " should
choose as well. They must reach out and help Israel to navigate the road
map toward our national destiny as a light unto the nations and a society
of peace, justice and equality.
-
- Translated by J.J. Goldberg.
-
-
- Comment
-
- From Terry
-
- Jeff - This is the most powerful statement I have seen
anywhere, by anyone about the condition and the future of Israel. If he
is not assassinated, it will be a miracle. If the article appears in mainstream
US media, it will be a tour de force. Whatever happens, a senior and influential
Israeli has spoken the gospel truth. Hopefully, the Children will listen.
-
- Terry
|
