State of Israel
Post-Zionism by Michel Warshawsky, Jerusalem
After Rabin
THE PARADOX IN THE DEATH OF ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER, Yitshak Rabin, is that he was shot a few minutes after singing, for the first time in his life, the "Song of Peace" which his subordinates have, for years, forbidden in the army and banned from public radio. It was as if Rabin wanted to become, in the last years of his life, the incarnation of everything his right-wing opponents accused him of. In any case, he now enters the history of Israel as Rabin-the-Hero-of Peace, shot down at the head of a peace demonstration, dead for peace. A role which contradicts completely with any honest evaluation of his character and politics. The combination of the lying, mystifying discourse of the far right, and the powerful images of the last hours of his life have turned more than one head. Israeli analysts who never used to have illusions in Rabin' objectives, his incoherence and his hesitations, now argue that, several weeks before his death, there was a qualitative shift in his political conceptions, even his personality. Maybe. Who can tell? What we can say is that one of Rabin's last political acts was to refuse to liberate the majority of the remaining Palestinian political detainees. And that days earlier he had authorised the assassination of [Islamic Fundamentalist leader] Sheikh Fathi Shkaki. Neither of these acts are a positive contribution to peace and reconciliation. Yitshak Rabin's life, even the last chapter, is no justification for the Nobel Peace Prize he received. Even if his death is very likely to become a kind of posthumous justification. For Rabin's death has provoked a major shock in the Israeli population, particularly among young people, and in what is left of the peace movement. The advocates of peace now, apparently, want to re-gain the initiative, and impose their, majority, views in the street. There is growing support in Israel for a new moderate, pacifist discourse. Since the Cairo agreements of Spring 1994, the government has been alone, faced with a rightist minority which dominated public spaces, and spread an increasingly "tough" and threatening message. The peace movement, after its moment of glory during the Intifada, stopped being a significant element in Israeli politics after the centre-left coalition took control of the government. The peaceniks effectively left the scene after the September 1993 signature of the Declaration of Principles. At the same time, the right, particularly the Zionist colonists [on the West Bank and in Gaza], overcame their disorientation in the face of the new Israelo-Palestinian accords, rapidly gaining confidence as the peace movement declined. Yitshak Rabin's own ambiguous discourse was a major encouragement for this growing rightist wave of public activism. After all, Rabin was always willing to stroke the colonists the right way. When the respectable right, like the Likud bloc, found themselves unable to increase their support beyond about 40% of the population, their leaders decided to reach out to the hard-line colonists and the extreme right, in an attempt to form a majority opposition to the Labour government. Likud and Tsomet party leaders began to associate themselves with arguments and slogans which were much to the right of their traditional programme and philosophy.
RABIN IS A TRAITOR TEA
ALL OF THE TERRITORIES AUST STAY JEWISH
RANSFER THE ARABS OUT Of ISRAEL NOW!
The government has rightly accused those who called Rabin a traitor to the country of contributing to the climate which led to his assassination. But the parties of the government coalition and the peace movement attached to them are just as responsible. As one young man commented, "where were we when they called Rabin a traitor, a sell out? We were happily looking towards the radiant future of the New Middle East which the government promised. And we abandoned the street to the colonists and the fascists."
International Viewpoint n° 272 7
* State of Israel A little self-accusation and guilt may do us no harm. But the main responsibility, of course, is with those leaders of the Zionist left who, rather than trying to conserve and increase the initially quite strong public support for the accords, tried to convince the colonists and the right that Rabin was carrying out THEIR policies more effectively than anyone else could, and that the colonists had never been so well served and protected as under the Labour-bloc government. This Zionist left has still not understood that the consensual discourse is out of step with events. Israel faced opposing choices, between alternatives which contradict each other. Preparing for celebrations as the Israeli army withdraws from West bank town. For some years now the Israeli left has been playing with the concept of "post-Zionism". But if such a thing exists anywhere, then it is a section of the right which is developing it. The left is still desperately trying to spread beauty cream on the ugly old face of Zionism. This kind of "Post-Zionism" isn't "post-" at all. Classical Zionism is being replaced, on the right, by messianic, terrorist Jewish fundamentalism. "By the year 2,000, the Palestinian national movement will be led by fundamentalists", these new rightists declared eighteen months ago. "The same will be true of the Israeli right!" The traditional Zionist right is slowly disappearing from the political scene. You see it in all the demonstrations against the Israelo-Palestinian accords. The immense majority of the participants are religious colonists. Their ideology is one of terrorist messianism. And their references are rabbinical exegesis, not the myths of Zionism's founding fathers. The right wing parties will now be obliged to distance themselves from the far right, under the pressure of an electorate horrified by the assassination, and in the "national interest". The respectable right will try to recreate a consensual climate, with respect for the democratic rules, moderation of the terms of the political debate. Maybe even a tacit acceptation of the Israelo-Palestinian accords, which, after all, do not contradict Likud's original position. Shimon Peres' new government will have an easier task than Rabin's. The new Minister faces an opposition which is extremely confused, and public opinion now associates Rabin and the Rabin myth with the peace process as such. And Peres totally supports the objectives, mechanism and timetable of the agreements signed in Oslo two years ago. 8 December 1995
More than could have been said for Rabin. The Palestinian Authority has no reason to worry about the change in PM. Rabin's assassination was a bigger shock for the Palestinian population than the Israelis. Palestinians in the occupied territories have absorbed into their consciousness an image of Israel as a stable, unified society, which, on the domestic scene, respects the rules of the democratic game. And, for obvious reasons, any destabilisation in Israel provokes deep feelings of insecurity among the Palestinians. And most of all for the ruling circles in Gaza and Ramallah. In fact, the assassination is more of an indication of a process already under way than the catalyst of any new reality. The sacred union which had dominated Jewish society in Israel since the establishment of the Jewish state has been wearing away ever since the early 1980s. The fundamental myths, conditioned reflexes, unconditional and acritical respect for the institutions and basic values of Zionism are not as easily and as widely accepted as they used to be. Soldiers refuse to follow orders, the army is no longer sacred, history is being re-written, and the so-called national interest is no longer the only element which is taken in to account in writing it. This challenge to the old consensus started when Labour came back to power. But now the right wing of society is also being affected. For the first time since 1948, a minority current, inspiring itself from spiritual fathers even the Labour establishment respects, is questioning the supremacy of the Jewish state and its institutions. This current refuses uncritical loyalty to the state, replacing it by uncritical respect for Jewish Law, as interpreted by fundamentalist rabbis. This would have been impossible, or much more difficult, if the government had been able to trace a clear line of demarcation between the old Zionist consensus and this new climate, where religion has a stronger and stronger influence in the dominant ideology, the education system, and the official media. Rabin accepted the need to run after the Rabbis for their advice and support, and the government allowed people to say "Death to the Arabs" in public. Once it became possible to carry out this slogan with only a minimal threat of police and legal intervention, there was no longer any real barrier to the acceptance of the natural legitimacy of a Jewish fundamentalist discourse. The shock wave which has just shaken Israel was produced in a society which is no longer consensual, but doesn't yet realise it, and refuses to accept the consequences. The assassination confirms that Israel is different from what our politicians thought it was, and still think it is. This murder demonstrates, in a very dramatic way, that the transition of Israel from an atypical consensual system to a "normal" system of plurality and conflict is virtually complete. This is not necessarily a bad thing. There is a possibility that the young people who, in recent weeks, have demonstrated their angers and their hopes, will decide to take up their responsibilities, and to confront not only the militant extreme right, but the whole packet of values, concepts, institutions and ways of behaviour which have, inevitably, created this country's rightist rabble. This isn't an easy task. It will take years. But the massive, explosive re-emergence of democratic and pacifist sentiments these last few days give us reason to look forward with hope. *
Ukraine