Letter From Jerusalem By Paul Gottfried

Paul Gottfried, who was kind enough to offer Advance Praise for my book, is one of Barely a Blog’s A-List guest writers. Paul is Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College, and author of The Conservative Movement, Carl Schmitt: Politics and Theory, After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy. Professor Gottfried’s new book is The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millennium. The following vignettes from Israel are accompanied by Paul’s signature penetrating insights —the kind absent in the flat, ideological rants dished out by the anti-Semitic far left, the hard right, and their far-out libertarian allies.—ILANA

LETTER FROM JERUSALEM

BY PAUL GOTTFRIED

Having spent most of last January touring Israel or recovering in the U.S. from the subsequent jet lag, it may be appropriate to list here some of my impressions. The Jewish population was markedly different from anything I had expected. If there are Israeli counterparts to Abe Foxman and Midge Decter, I’m delighted I didn’t encounter them. The vast majority of Jews I did meet were Moroccan and Levantine, whereas most of the security police in the entrances to shopping malls and on the road between East Jerusalem and the Dead Sea are dark-skinned Jewish Ethiopians. These Falashim (which is their disparaging Ethiopian name) are usually polite to a fault but known to be tough on suspected terrorists. They are now moving into a vocational-ethnic niche that resembles that of the Irish police in the U.S.

Most of the Israeli Jewish population seems oblivious to Christian anti-Semitism and comes from societies that did not suffer in the Holocaust. They do not echo the fear found in ADL publications; nor do they celebrate or lament Jewish marginality in the manner of New York literati. But they are inordinately fond of the American Religious Right, whose silliness they ignore because Robertson and Falwell are working night and day on behalf of Israel. They are also importing from Poland and the Philippines a predominantly Catholic work force, to take the place of the West Bank Palestinians. A cheap labor source, the West Bankers now reside behind a long, impenetrable wall (hachomah), which the Israeli government put up about ten miles west of the Mediterranean. Inhabitants of the town of Netanya, north of Tel Aviv, where my brother and I stayed, expressed relief that the wall had gone up. Only last year, suicide bombers had hiked from the West Bank, a distance of nine miles, to a by now reconstructed shopping mall, where they had blown up the shops and the customers. Note the Israelis make this point while emphasizing the obvious: It seems wise to keep those who threaten you at a safe distance and so high walls make for peaceful neighbors.

My niece who was spending the year in Israel, at a horse-breeding farm near Tel Aviv, was struck by the international work force at her communal settlement. Although originally a quasi-Marxist enterprise, this Moshav now includes seasonal European workers who look after the Arabian steeds and tend to the citrus groves. One of my niece’s friends, a Polish guest worker, who conversed with us in a curious combination of Hebrew, Polish, and English, was intent on staying. But afterwards she informed us that Israeli security forces had sent him home because “his papers were not in order.” When my brother asked if anyone had objected, my niece explained that her bosses accepted this “as part of life.” After all, “security means that you can’t have people stay if their visa has expired.”

Two aspects of Israeli life struck me with particular force. One is the narrowness of the country’s width, which in its populous central region extends about ten miles, between the Mediterranean and the wall; two is the approximately one million Israeli Palestinians who coexist with Jews, Filipinos and European guest workers. Traveling north from Tel Aviv toward the Galilee we drove from one Arab Muslim village to the next; and none of the towns, with the possible exception of Nazareth, is known for religious or ethnic diversity. For the non-Muslim population, this concentration poses a security problem, given the fact that the Arab Muslims in Jerusalem support Hamas overwhelmingly. Although little love exists between the Jews and Israeli Palestinians, or so my interlocutors kept reminding me in Hebrew, French and English, the two sides have established a modus vivendi. One can see them eating, albeit at separate tables, in the same McDonalds (kosher) restaurants. Extended Arab families frequent Moroccan Jewish eateries, where the food and language are essentially Arab. In Jerusalem, despite the generally tense relations between Orthodox Jews, many imported from the U.S., and East Jerusalem Arabs, the same kind of commercial coexistence prevails. The hotels, which cater heavily to Jewish tourists from the U.S. and the former British Empire, reveal Palestinian, Filipino, and Jewish employees working side by side.

Military security in Israel, necessitated by West Bank Palestinians and concern about their Israeli cousins, drives other arrangements. It accounts for the omnipresent check- points and the helicopters flying overhead at the beach in Tel Aviv and at the excavation sites at Caesarea and Capernaum. The same pressure explains the apparently relaxed manner in which Israelis stretch their institutions, particularly the military, to include those unlike themselves. While they do not draft Palestinians, their army does include the Druze, who are deviationist Shiites, Bedouins, and Maronite Christians. Non-Orthodox Israelis will contrast the swarthy “patriotic” Yemenites and Ethiopians, who serve in border units, to the Orthodox, who have lots of children and often live on welfare but are exempt from military duty.
¼br /> Since the Orthodox, who are often resettled from Western countries, are usually the most outspoken annexationists, a complaint made about them is that they exacerbate strife without bearing responsibility for their actions. But this complaint does not apply to the “modern Orthodox,” who wear Rabbinically-prescribed head coverings (kipoth) but also serve disproportionately in military operations. I never learned, by the way, whether the military responsibility that applies to young women and young men equally, affects the “modern Orthodox” as well.

Living in a siege situation explains other things that I noticed in Israel. Unlike FOX and CNN, the average Israeli did not agonize over Ariel Sharon’s failing health. Although admired for his military prowess and coalition building, Sharon was not thought to be indispensable for the peace process. If the Palestinians will recognize us and cease their violence, is the refrain, whoever will then be on hand will sign the resulting peace. Another consequence in Israel of being surrounded by enemies is a relatively laid-back approach to immigration. In Netanya “Russian Jews” have arrived in droves claiming that they are exercising the Jewish “law of return.” These immigrants from the former Soviet Union look mostly like ethnic Russians, who might have discovered or invented a Jewish grandmother. Their inventiveness reminded me of some Americans, who in quest of casino money on Indian reservation land, create for themselves Pequot relatives. Unlike the orthodox Rabbinate, who willingly do genealogical checkups to determine someone’s Jewish identity, most Israelis, who need more arms-bearing settlers, seem to care little about bloodlines. But unfortunately for the Israelis, the Russian immigrants have brought with them unwelcome habits, particularly heavy drinking and malingering. Unlike other immigrant groups, the Russians may be hard for the Israelis to absorb.

From the foregoing remarks, written last January, it is apparent that I regard the siege situation in which the Israelis find themselves as the most critical side of their national existence. Not only are the effects of this problem unrelenting. It is also one that does not lend itself to any ready solution that will leave Israel in a relatively secure position. The victory of Hamas in the Palestinian territories does not bode well for Israel. The victorious party is still committed to the destruction of its neighbor, but, perhaps even worse, is not able to establish its own functioning state. So far this invertebrate condition has been ascribed to temporary difficulties, e.g., the cutting off of international funding, until Hamas renounces terrorism, and the opposition to Hamas posed by the formerly ruling party of Palestinian President Abbas. Meanwhile there is no political entity on the other side that is ready or able to subdue violence in its territory, and which can therefore enforce treaties. Such are the preconditions for a lasting peace even if a Palestinian government were willing to recognize Israel outright. This means for the Israelis that the present siege situation, marked by narrow borders and multiple check-points, will continue to be part of their daily life. Those inhabitants who can relocate to better conditions in Europe, Canada or the U.S. will frequently do so, and even the Russians of dubious Jewish parentage will depart if they can find better material opportunities elsewhere. These may be the long-range, inescapable effects of Israel’s beleaguered existence.