Diaspora Jews should stop trying to find Israel's flaws

Israel Harel
Haaretz


ZURICH - Every year, on the eve of Independence Day, opinion pieces are published abroad that cast doubt on Israel's ability to survive. An analysis of some of these sermons gives rise to the thought that the focus on Israel's blemishes serves as a way for the writers to distance themselves from it. t isn't only intellectuals in North America who allow themselves to educate us - something to which we have already become accustomed. Yves Kugelmann, a Jewish intellectual from Switzerland who edits the publication "Tachles," is worried, and rightly so, about the growing gap between the Jews of Israel and the Jews of the Diaspora, which he attributes to "a significant change in value systems."


In his opinion, the factors responsible for this widening gap include the attitude toward the Goldstone report (though the vast majority of Diaspora Jews reject this report as vehemently as Israelis do) and the attitude toward the New Israel Fund (whose front organizations provided a sizable portion of the material included in the Goldstone report and engage in overseas slander of cabinet ministers and Israel Defense Forces officers for "war crimes").

According to Kugelmann, two prophets foresaw these developments: Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Jacob Talmon. Luminaries, undoubtedly, in their academic fields, but hardly great visionaries, to put it mildly, as to the morality and future of the Jewish state.

Israel Prize laureate Leibowitz predicted that the IDF would become a Judeo-Nazi army, the state would become fascist, the settlers would emigrate from Israel and convert to Christianity and other equally well-founded prophecies, which made him the prophet, both in Israel and abroad, of the group that views Israel through similar lenses. Even Richard Goldstone, the person most afflicted with Otto Weininger syndrome, steered clear of Leibowitzian terminology.

Talmon's predictions are equally interesting (Kugelmann bases himself on the well-known historian's letter - his "testament," he called it - to Menachem Begin, titled "Homeland in Danger," which was published in Haaretz in March 1980). These predictions have also proven false prophecies, to put it mildly. And the reason is clear: Talmon and his ilk analyzed Israeli society according to a system of prejudices and unjustified fears that they developed toward those ("Begin!") whose opinions and way of life differed from theirs.

Talmon, for example, spoke about "the destruction of the rule of law." Given the way this rule has taken over just about everything in Israel, including its crude intervention in actions by the executive branch, what can be said about this prophecy? And what about "the mass emigration of the elite" that would leave Israel barren in the humanities, social sciences, science and technology? Prof. Zeev Tadmor, a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and one-time president of the Technion, has found that most of the knowledge created today by scientists of Jewish origin is created in Israel.

Another Talmonic prophecy: A civil war is at the gate. True, tensions between the political camps have risen over the past 30 years (though they remain lower than they were during the pre-state years and the early years of the state), but where's the civil war?

The expert on totalitarian democracy was too quick to extrapolate from events in world history to events in Jewish history and, especially, Jewish sociology. The difficult events we have experienced since he prophesied civil war, like the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the uprootings from Sinai and Gush Katif, prove just how little the man knew about his own people, which has internalized, almost genetically, the lessons of the destruction of the Second Temple.

If Kugelmann is sincere in his concern for the future of relations between the Diaspora and Israel, he must not, even if only as an intellectual, base himself solely on Israel's radical fringe or adopt Leibowitz and Talmon as latter-day prophets. An honest comparison of their vision with what is actually happening in Israel will easily reveal an entirely different picture. Israel today, contrary to their prophecies, is home to a majority of the Jewish people - and they are living here very happily, as all public opinion polls show.

In order for us to continue to be one people, it is vital to maintain a dialogue between the Diaspora and Israel. But those Diaspora Jews who rummage about only in order to find our flaws (perhaps to justify distancing themselves from Israel?) are not making a positive contribution to this essential dialogue.