David
Yerushalmi on Erev Yom Kippur 2000
by
David Yerushalmi
It
is Erev Yom Kippur (the day before Yom Kippur), and as we prepare for the
holiest day of the year, those of us in Israel, especially those of us in
Yehuda and Shomron (“the Territories”) understand what it feels like to
put one’s faith in G-d Almighty and NOT in an army of Jews.
It seems like a harsh thing to say but there is little else to be
said.
The
young Israelis and the tired old Zionists were certain that If we just
pulled out of Lebanon, If we just gave them Hebron, Gaza, and Azariya, If we
just renamed parts of East Jerusalem and gave them control, If we just
pulled out of the Yeshiva built at the gravesite of Joseph in Shechem, the
Arabs would see that we meant to live in peace and they would reciprocate.
The
three Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbullah in a daring ambush executed
meticulously – kidnapped from the base of the Golan, not Lebanon; the dead
border guard killed as we prepared to evacuate from the embattled Yeshiva in
Shechem, the fires burning at the holy Jewish site moments after the
soldiers retreated; the absolute domination at the site of the Holy Temple
and the rocks that stream down on the Western Wall Plaza that prevent Jews
from praying there on Rosh Hashana; the roads closed off in Arab villages
INSIDE the Green Line; and the palpable fear and resignation in the eyes and
hearts of Israeli Jews as their country unravels, stuck in the muck and mire
of capitalist propaganda in a socialist reality all testify to the fact that
the country, if indeed it remains such, has little left to do but pray for
Salvation from On High.
My
young non-religious friends from Tel Aviv and Rishon, the young hi-tech,
high-flying Israelis who believe that technology can solve just about
everything, including the human condition, have been brought to their knees.
In email after email, telephone call after call, they have been
telling me these past 12 hours how naïve they were to believe that the
Peres-Rabin-Barak peace was possible. I
corrected them. It has been the Ben
Gurion-Begin-Peres-Rabin-Netanyahu-Sharon-Barak peace that has failed.
Our leaders have not failed us – neither of the Left nor of the
Right. What has failed us was
Zionism simply.
Zionism
was ill-conceived from the start. Predicated upon socialist principles and
carried out with a communist-like obsession for power and control, Zionism
turned out to be little more than racism sprinkled with convenient tidbits
of Judaism. When the Judaism
rotted under the pressure of government involvement (mostly through
budgetary allotments and appointments), what was left was racism on the part
of the Jabotinsky followers (now Likud) and abandonment by the Poalei
[“Workers” = Socialists] Zionists (now Labor/One Israel).
Tanks
roll up into Gilo (that’s inside the Green Line), residents of Haifa are
afraid to wander into Arab parts of the city, and everyone realizes that the
Zionist dream has turned into a nightmare.
No one denies that now. No one.
For some, they blame the Arabs. Others blame the Haredim. Still
others blame the Sephardim or the Russians, depending on their level of
disgust.
The
city where I live, Ma’aleh Adumim, a flourishing city of 30,000 almost
contiguous with Jerusalem, will soon also be abandoned. No one dare say it
yet, but it is on the list. So
too will the army abandon parts of the Galil and the Negev, they have no
choice. We’ve given the
Palestinians “guns for peace” and we’ve given Israeli Arabs room for
hope that their day will come. Indeed
it has.
From
the other side of the Green Line, let me re-emphasize what has been said
before: this is not the failure of the Left. This is the wholesale failure
of Zionism, which, having been sourced in the most wretched forms of
socialist ideology, has penetrated every aspect of life in Israel, including
the nationalist-rightist crowd of Sharon-Netanyahu, and even among the
anti-Zionist Haredim.
As
we pray this Yom Kippur, may we find the strength to know that the Jewish
People will survive. The
nation-state of Israel is what stands on the precipice of defeat.
