In my youth we used to sing:
We came to Israel to build the land
And reinvent ourselves
Regretfully, we realized
only the first part

Hugo S. Bergman

I don’t know the current whereabouts of Clio, the lyre-playing muse of history. However, I can tell you that last night she visited me in my dream. A very beautiful woman, blond hair, deep blue eyes, small and delightful breasts, with Nordic complexions and a Mona Lisa smile on her seductive lips. As I have been a student of history I assume she had been checking what her retired lovers have been doing in their free time. When I told her these days I’m in a continuous state of confusion and bewilderment, trying to understand the politics and conduct of the State of Israel, she burst into such a loud laugh that then and there I knew that she liked me. As a rule, women like those who make them laugh. As the traveling aunt in Graham Green’s novel explained: women need something to entertain them between one love making to another. Now, knowing that she liked me, I dared ask her what has been veiled behind her Mona Lisa smile and what was it that turned a grin into a loud laugh. I am now going to share with you what I remember and learned from her answers in my dream.

First she pointed out that laughter is an involuntary reflex that happens when there is a clash in the direction of two modes of thought, when we are expecting a certain effect and the outcome is completely different and unexpected. That of course is the way of a joke. We both read a paragraph from the Israeli Declaration of Independence that was issued in 1948 and is still relevant to in order to understand what Israel (isra – el i.e. the one who confronts God) has been practicing today:

The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

She reminded me that the funny aspect is that in spite of the promises and expectations, most of these features have never materialized. Just the contrary. So much so, that while receiving in the Knesset the Wolf Prize for the Arts, the Israeli musician Daniel Barenboim read this and similar paragraphs from the Declaration and he was rebuked on the spot by the then (2004) Minister of Education, Limor Livnat, for criticizing the State of Israel. It is likely, that like many Knesset members, Mrs Livnat has never read the Declaration and clearly has never intended to follow it. The irony is that Livnat is the daughter of Azriel Livnat who was a member of the Lehi, i.e. the Stern Group, the same Abraham (Yair) Stern who during the Second World War offered to help the Nazi German army fight the British in order to “liberate” Palestine from the British Mandate. In the same way, the Palestinians, with even more justification, are now fighting to liberate their land from the Israeli occupation. The parents of the current prime minister, Ehud Olmart, and the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, were in the Etzel, the Begin underground, and also fought the British for exactly the same reasons that the Palestinians are now fighting Israel. Only, the British were much more lenient and humane in their conduct towards the Jews than are the Israeli Jews towards the Palestinians and the Israeli Arabs. Thus, the children of the then terrorists are now attributing the same title of terrorists to the Palestinian freedom fighters for doing exactly what their and Livnat's parents had done. What’s more, even though they presumably are very proud of the actions of their parents, by their current policy they, matter of fact, prove either how wrong were the parents, or how wrong they themselves are today. That was one of the secrets behinds Clio’s smile when she looked at Israel – she was aware of the furtive facts to which most Israeli citizens where never exposed.

In 1985 the Knesset changed a proposal meant to forbid the election of members who negate the existence of the state as expressed in the Declaration, to the negation of Israel as the state of the Jewish people. (Amendment No. 9, section 7A).

The signature validating the amendment is that of Simon Peres, then the prime minister and currently Israel’s President. Now, many people have different opinions about Peres but none ever said that he is stupid. It seems that he has an impressive mind of a statesman and a character of a very small and wily politician. His influence on Israel’s history is significant. As general manager of the Ministry of Defence he played an important part in building the Israeli atomic reactor. As defence minister he approved and supported in 1975, against the wish of the then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, the settlement of the messianic sect Gush Emunim in the occupied territory of the West Bank. He became thus the father of the settlements in the Occupied Territories, settlements that are clearly against the International Law and the Charter of the United Nations. Yet, his signature on that amendment was much more significant than anything else he had ever done. He drastically changed the nature of Israel from that which was decreed in the first version of the law as signed in 1948 by the Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, and also as expressed in the 1950 Law of Return. This law granted the right to give a visa to any person of Jewish descent, meaning that as Israeli citizens they were entitled to equality of social and political rights, same as all other inhabitants, irrespective of religion, race or sex, but different from the rights of Jews who were citizens of other states. With one stroke of the pen Peres changed the nature of Israel to “the state of the Jewish people,” without even granting to all Jews the right to vote, but enabling the denial of the right to vote and be elected to any group that may demand complete equality of social and political rights to all inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex. The irony is that this racist par excellence amendment also states that the right to vote and be elected should be denied to people who incite racism. According to this, it should have been denied to Peres and all Knesset members who voted for the approval of the amendment.

It is inconceivable that Peres was not aware of the revolutionary character of his signature on the amendment. The Zionist pioneers immigrated to Palestine and laboured to establish a state that will replace the debilitating religion with healthy way of life and national identity, a state that later would be a shelter to the survivors of the Holocaust. Now, with this signature, the “debilitated” and lowered Jews were granted the right to take revenge on their “masters” by adopting the laws and the conduct of the German Nazis in the “state of the Arian people.” It also resembles the demeanour of Isabella and Ferdinand who, in 1498 expelled from Spain all the Jews who did not convert to Christianity. Portugal, by the way, followed suit a short time later. The Nazis, however, did not spare those who converted to Christianity or any other religion. Thus Peres, with not much ado and deliberation, imported to Israel the laws that caused some of the worst catastrophes in Jewish History.

Of course, Peres did not do it alone. The passing of the amendment needed the votes of more than a half of the Knesset members present at the time of voting, and in a coalition government there were enough Knesset members to sustain the government and its amendments. The question is: how do you decide who is a Jew and who should decide it?

While dealing with such question we have to understand that in Israel there cropped up a completely new brand of Judaism. The Declaration of Independence of 1948 states that: The land of Israel [Palestine] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. “Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped.” Historically that statement is not very accurate. Even according to the Bible, when the Hebrew tribes, led by Joshua, occupied the land of Canaan, they already were Jewish. Also, their spiritual and religious identity later was shaped in Babylon (now Iraq), not in Palestine or Israel. The Jews whose spiritual and religious identity was shaped in what is now Israel, are now called Christians and, theologically, they still believe themselves to be the real Jews (verus Israel). However, the declared assumption that Israel is the birthplace of a spiritual, religious and political entity is true only in relation to present-day Orthodox sects that like the Christians and the people of the Dead Sea Scrolls in antiquity, consider themselves to be the only “real” Jews. They form a unique Israeli phenomena and the bizarre aspect of this is that these sects are the product of political activity by people that most of whom are clearly not religious. That probably was the main cause of Clio's laughter.

It all started in 1948 when the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, granted to a few yeshiva students the right not to take active part in the ongoing Israel’s battle for independence. (They refused then even a request to help remove a few dead bodies from the streets of Jerusalem, claiming that Torah study is more important). He also granted the Orthodox rabbis the sole right to marry and divorce, thus making Orthodoxy the official religion of the state. Taking advantage of the Israeli peculiar political system that necessitate coalition governments, the small Orthodox sector rapidly inflated, puffed up and, like Gregor in Kafka's The Metamorphosis, have been transformed into a gigantic monster that has been slowly gnawing and devouring bigger and bigger parts of the whole Israeli social fabric. At first the religious sects pretended that they were not politically dangerous, because they presumably did not take sides regarding controversies between right and left parties. However, as no political party ever secured a majority of Knesset members, all government depended upon the vote of one more party and commonly they chose one or the other of the religious parties. Feeding upon their own greed and the bare ambition and power seeking politicians, they not only immensely expanded the scope and scale of their influence and control but, especially after 1967, became the most influential political (right wing) power in the state. Interestingly enough, Ben Gurion, who initially paved the way to their domination, wrote in 1968 (in a letter to Adam Doron) : Personally I don’t belong to any congregation, not Reform, Conservative or Orthodoxy, but I think that the existence and control of the Israeli Orthodox congregation is catastrophe and perversion. Only because of lack of initiative of non-Orthodox [secular] people they were able to take charge. What facilitated it was the perverse Israeli electoral system that grants a small minority undeserved strength. But, the blame is also on those Jews who require a synagogue, even if only once a year.

The Israeli Orthodoxy is a special phenomenon, unique to Israel. Orthodoxy in general is a 19th century creation based upon a 19th century rabbinic proscription that anything new is forbidden by the Torah. The establishment of Israel in 1948 was something new and therefore considered forbidden by Ultra Orthodoxy, especially as it was founded by secular Jews who strived to replace the religious with national identity. Indeed, Reform Judaism has been based on the opposing principle, i.e. adopting the religious practices to changing environments, but Reform has not been recognized in Israel as a legitimate form of Judaism. The Orthodox practiced the laws of the Talmud – a codex of laws designed for Jewish life in exile. However, once Israel was established the Israeli Orthodoxy had the choice between changing or abolishing the Talmudic law - adopting the law to the reality of the Jewish, albeit secular, state; or to continue living as if they were still in exile, in a Europe like reality as it was before the French Revolution (when the Jews formed a special class in a class society, subject to its own judicial system). And like the Mennonites, symbolize this similar wish by continuing to wear eighteenth and seventeenth century style apparel. While in other countries, all over the world, Orthodox Jews have to abide by the state’s law, in Israel, it was the state that facilitated their ability to choose the second option by allowing them to have a separate education system and legalized the separate existence of rabbinic courts, both removed from the Israeli code, mode and reality.

But for a very short time in the fifties, the Ministry of the Interior that has jurisdiction over the status of all Israelis, was held by one or the other of the religious parties. The result has and been a systematic persecution of people who, according to the ministry’s beurocratic interpretation of the Orthodox law, were doubtfully Jewish. Thus, following the Nazi practice of purity of blood lines, the Israeli ministerial office has been checking the Jewish heritage including grand and great-grand mothers of people who are suspected of only pretending to be Jewish. Graves of those whose fathers, not mothers, were Jewish, were dug out and the corpses removed from the cemeteries in order not to “contaminate” the other ‘pure” graves. Women who immigrated to Israel with Jewish husbands whose lives they saved during the Holocaust were victimized, cancelling their citizenship and their right to stay in Israel, even after living there for decades. The children of such families were declared non-Jews and their names were added to the rabbinic lists of those who were “pretending” to be Jews.” In 1970 an amendment to the Law of Return stated that a Jew is only a person whose mother was Jewish or who had converted to Judaism. However, just lately, the Chief Rabbis declared that they will not recognize conversions done abroad, not only by Reform, but also by Orthodox rabbis. The 1970 amendment signed by Golda Meir and the one signed by Peres in 1985 gave the Israeli brand of Orthodoxy full authority to emulate the Nazis in their racist practices.[1]

Orthodoxy entered the Israeli reality as a dead or dying body with no soul. In order to find rationale for its existence it endowed its rituals and its rabbis with supernatural and magical powers. However, the 1967 occupation of the West Bank gave them a new life, although, not necessarily a new soul. For the first time since 1948 their aspirations fully coincided with those of the state, or at least with those politicians who desired to attach the occupied territories to Israel. Driven by messianic aspirations (or delusions), they started settling the same territory on which in antiquity (2000-3000 years ago), hosted the two Jewish kingdoms, Israel and Judea. Assuming that in messianic times the laws of the Talmud would “again” be valid in the Jewish state, they stayed attached to these laws under the leadership of rabbis who gave the laws extreme right wing and religious interpretations. Even though the rest of the population did not follow their conduct and way of life, they not only got the full support of all government departments and the army, but they were almost in complete control of the army’s and the government’s policy, at least in those years when their goals coincided with those of the government. Once the policy of the government seemed to change a bit they basically formed a separate and independent, parasite or cancer like, entity in the West Bank -- no longer recognizing the laws of the secular state of Israel as legitimate, but continuing to rely on its government’s money and the army’s protection.

In retrospect, the Israeli victory in 1967 tilted Israel into a completely new direction, changing its whole nature and the rational for its existence. It was as if all the institutions of the state, including the army, were blowing with all their might into the balloon that comprised the Orthodox sectors, blowing it to grotesque and gruesome dimensions and feeding the monster with their own flesh and blood. What is most interesting is the fact that immediately after the 1967 war, central figures in the army’s Intelligence Brunch (including radical right wingers like Professor Yuval Neeman and General Zeevi (Gandi), suggested a kind of federation or similar arrangement with a Palestinian state. Others suggested a federation that will include Israel, Palestine and Jordan. Analogous suggestions were expressed by leading Palestinian leaders. A most interesting suggestion was proposed by another high ranking officer in the army’s intelligence, Shlomo Gazit, the general that for the next seven years served as the governor of the occupied territories. Even while the fighting was going on he suggested establishing an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and turning Jerusalem into “an open city,” Vatican style. Moshe Dayan then the Defence Minister decided otherwise. Gazit, after his retirement described the Israeli policy in the occupied territories in a book under the title “Suckers Snared in a Trap.” The accent shifted then to taking advantage of the occupation and settling the West Bank. Even though all government departments significantly supported the settlements, one example of a high ranking (Orthodox) lawyer in the Justice Department may suffice to show the magnitude of the new approach. Pelia Nebentzahl was for 24 years in charge of deciding the status of lands in the West Bank. Applying an 1858 Ottoman law she declared a significant segment of it as State Land and as such dispensed it among over one hundred new settlements. As an example of her “justice” - she represented the state in a suit by a Palestinian who lost his wife to a bullet of an Israeli soldier and claimed that the plaintiff should be thankful to Israel, as now he is saving money by having one less mouth to feed. In a case of a Palestinian who lost his two arms and argued that now he couldn’t attend to his falafel business she answered that he still can talk and therefore his business shouldn’t suffer. She was not alone among lawyers and judges in this approach. The legal situation reminds me of the judicial system in the Weimar Republic just before the rise of Hitler.

I think of the smiling, and laughing Clio and cannot make up my mind – whether to laugh with her or cry. It’s not a nice sight to see an entity you care about committing suicide, but when a situation becomes so desperate that crying can no longer help, laughing may be the only choice. I no longer live in Israel, and I have to admit that it’s also painful to watch American Jews who are enthusiastically clapping any time the name of Israel is mentioned, in spite of its obvious policy of self destruction and the fading away of the Zionist dream to create a just and healthy society. The Orthodox sector in its Israeli version is a death trap for its members and, what is worse, maybe even to Israel proper. Israel is experiencing now what the kingdom of Judea experienced two thousand years ago when the militants drove it to destruction, including burning the Temple, to two thousand years of exile, and to the creation of a new brand of Talmudic Judaism that replaced the Temple sacrifices with prayers. (The Pauline Christian brand replaced it with the Eucharist). Are we facing now a similar process? I am afraid that it is so. I believe that there is a good likelihood that each of the current messianic sects , the Settlers, Habad, the Breslav and maybe other Hassidic sects, will branch into different brands like the Christians, each of which will most likely claim that they represent the “true Judaism.” The Age of Aquarius is upon us also in Judaism in the form of popular “Kabbalah” studying, but even when it is taught by Habad rabbis, their version has nothing to do with the authentic schools of the Kabbalah. Personally, I believe that it’s a trendy fashion and it is not likely to survive, clearly not in Judaism, but again, its followers might well call themselves Jews. Who then is a Jew? At this point in history, probably whoever considers himself a Jew.

Clio smiles. If she knows the answers, she is not telling.

[1] See Gershom Gorenberg’s “How Do You Prove You’re a Jew,” The NY Times Magazine, 3.2. 2008