By Steve Kramer
ALFE MENASHE, Israel–Avi Shavit is a native-born Israeli Zionist and peace activist. He is also a respected columnist for Ha’aretz newspaper, Israel’s most left wing newspaper. A leading Israeli author, Shavit published his best-selling My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel in 2013. It has become a bestseller.
Here’s an excerpt from the NY Times review by Leon Wieseltier (the literary editor of the liberal journal, The New Republic): “This is the least tendentious [argumentative] book about Israel I have ever read. It is a Zionist book unblinkered by Zionism. It is about the entirety of the Israeli experience. Shavit is immersed in all of the history of his country. While some of it offends him, none of it is alien to him.”
I read the book at the request of my brother. This article is my critique on some of the most upsetting points made by Shavit. Let me say at the outset that My Promised Land is a well-written but uneven book. Several chapters were outstanding reportage, while others were self-indulgent twaddle. Some chapters were biographical, both of himself and his English forebears. Some sang Israel’s praises while others denigrated it.
Shavit wrote: “Zionism became an unruly process of improvising imperfect solutions to acute challenges, addressing new needs, adjusting to new conditions and creating new realities. It reinvented itself again and again, dealing in different ways with what is basically an impossible situation. This is how Zionism wended its way through the twentieth century and this is how it shaped the land.”
I recommend the book for those who are familiar with Israel’s history. I loved the parts which described the Jews’ return to the land (there were always Jews there, but they were predominantly religious Jews living in Jerusalem); the agricultural and “start-up” revolutions; and Israel’s vibrant life style. However, for those not so well-informed, or even hostile to Israel, I fear that there is much which presents a slanted, unfavorable view of Israel, with descriptions that can easily add fuel to the fire of anti-Zionism/Semitism.
Below are a few of Shavit’s comments which I most object to, with my comments:
“Why was I [as a soldier in the IDF] defending my homeland by tyrannizing civilians [beyond the 1949 armistice lines] who were deprived of their rights and freedom? Why was my Israel occupying and oppressing another people?”
The simple answer is because those “civilians” would overrun us otherwise. As to their rights and freedom, it is highly unlikely that Arab leadership would provide more of either, based on current human rights in existing Arab countries.
“But Herbert Bentwich [Shavit’s ancestor] did not see [the Arab villagers], and Zionism chose not to know. For half a century it succeeded in hiding from itself the substantial contradiction between the Jewish national movement and Lydda [an Arab city taken in the War of Independence].”
Jews intent on building a homeland in Palestine were fixated on their Zionist project. The Arabs living there, most often in relatively backward communities, were of little interest, even as cheap labor. Initially, the Jews were intent on building for themselves. Arab aggression against the Jews brought out countervailing militant Zionism in self defense. The Arabs were happy with the money they made from Jewish immigration, attracting Arab immigrants from all over the Middle East. Quickly, that turned to resentment and then to terror.
“[Arab] DIGNITARIES: What will become of the prisoners detained in the mosque [in Lydda during the War of Independence]?
[Israeli officer] GUTMAN: We shall do to the prisoners what you would do had you imprisoned us.
DIGNITARIES: No, no, please don’t do that.
GUTMAN: Why, what did I say? All I said is that we will do to you what you would do to us.
DIGNITARIES: Please no, master. We beg you not to do such a thing.
GUTMAN: No, we shall not do that. Ten minutes from now the prisoners will be free to leave the mosque and leave their homes and leave Lydda along with all of you and the entire population of Lydda.
DIGNITARIES: Thank you, master. God bless you.”
Shavit castigated Israeli soldiers’ conduct even as he reported this revealing dialogue. Arabs feared being treated the way they would have treated Jewish victims. In almost all circumstances, the Arabs were treated much better than they deserved.
“But the miracle [modern Israel] is based on denial. The nation I am born into has erased Palestine from the face of the earth. Bulldozers razed Palestinian villages, warrants confiscated Palestinian land, laws revoked Palestinians’ citizenship and annulled their homeland.”
The 1947 United Nations Partition Plan called for a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Arabs totally rejected a state for the Jews and declared war. They lost. Those Arab communities which didn’t fight the Jews became citizens of the new state and continued to live in their villages or cities.
“And yet this denial [of an Arab Right of Return to Israel] is astonishing. The fact that seven hundred thousand human beings have lost their homes and their homeland is simply dismissed.”
Many Arab refugees were relocated just miles away from their homes. Others went to nearby Arab countries, where they have always been treated as second class citizens, or worse. (The 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands, called Mizrahim, were forced out with nothing from their homes. They settled in Israel or other Western countries.)
“But after the Arab uprising of 1936, mainstream Zionism wanted more and more land, more and more power.”
The murderous Arab riots taught the Jews that more security was needed against the Arabs. This proved to be correct, as the Arabs joined the Nazis in the attempt to destroy us. There has been no “manifest destiny” to expand Israel’s borders beyond the land recovered in 1967. Israel even withdrew from Gaza in 2005 with disastrous consequences.
“True, Jerusalem is not Israel. But throughout the country, demography is turning against the Jews. Today 46 percent of all of the inhabitants of greater Israel are Palestinians. Their share of the overall population is expected to rise to 50 percent by 2020 and 55 percent by 2040. If present trends persist, the future of Zion will be non-Zionist.”
Shavit ignores the trends, declining Arab fertility and rising Jewish fertility, which are currently about equal. The demographic bogeyman is a mainstay of the left. There is much research contesting the left’s statistics.
“There are only four paths from this junction [current situation]: Israel as a criminal state that carries out ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories; Israel as an apartheid state; Israel as a binational state; or Israel as a Jewish-democratic state retreating with much anguish to a border dividing the land.”
There are more than four possibilities. During this period of Arab upheaval and fratricide, with no end in sight, giving up land for peace is worse than continuing the status quo. Each instance of Israel “trading” land for peace has failed, except with Egypt, when the land returned was not part of the biblical Land of Israel.
“In the twenty-first century there is no other nation that is occupying another people as we do, and there is no other nation that is intimidated as we are.”
The second clause may be true, but the first clause is nonsense. Shavit ignores China (Tibet) as well as Turkey (Cyprus), Morocco (Western Sahara), etc. But even then, there is no equivalency. The “occupation” is necessary for our protection. The land itself is disputed, as is its legal status.
“The State of Israel refuses to see its Arab citizens. It has not yet found a way to integrate properly one-fifth of its population. The Arabs who were not driven away in 1948 have been oppressed by Zionism for decades.”
The Israeli Arab status is similar to large minorities elsewhere, including in America. But Israeli Arabs have better lives in Israel than in Arab countries. That’s why they would refuse to give up Israeli citizenship for Palestinian citizenship.
“The implicit acceptance of ongoing occupation is troubling. The [Israeli] lack of interest in the Arab world is alarming.”
Not true. These subjects are fiercely debated on a daily basis,especially in Shavit’s own newspaper, Ha’aretz, in which Israel is always at fault.
I don’t want to end my commentary with another negative comment. Instead, here is just one of Shavit’s affirmations of life in the Zionist State of Israel:
“So what we really have in this land is an ongoing adventure. An odyssey. The Jewish state does not resemble any other nation. What this nation has to offer is not security or well-being or peace of mind. What it has to offer is the intensity of life on the edge. The adrenaline rush of living dangerously, living lustfully, living to the extreme.”
*
Steve Kramer is a freelance writer based in Alfe Menashe, Israel. His works may also be read on the website, www.encounteringisrael.com This article was previously published by the Jewish Times of South Jersey.