I can relate to Yossi Klein Halevi when he says that he is no longer a "guilty Israeli". Like Halevi, I supported the peace process in the 1990s in the hope that I would see peace in my lifetime. I realized that this was a gamble, but when I argued with friends who were more skeptical and less trusting, I would always trumped them by saying, "You make peace with enemies, not with friends."
Yet eight years ago, after the start of the second Intifada I could no longer pretend that among our enemies there was anyone who was sincerely interested in being a peace partner. Admitting that I was wrong was not easy and in retrospect it was a long time coming. Clearly it has taken Mr. Halevi even longer to reach this point.
For those of you who might think that I am happy about Mr. Halevi joining the ranks of the disenchanted and betrayed, nothing could be farther from the truth. Rather, I have long thought that one of the biggest tragedies of the conflict is that the Palestinian single-minded determination to choose violence and incitement over dialogue and concessions has alienated those of us who would be natural allies in finding a just solution and lasting peace.
Several weeks ago, I had an e-mail exchange with a friend who is a member of the ancient religion of Jainism. For those who are unfamiliar with this religion, it is "militantly" non-violent to the point where its adherents cover their mouth and sweep the ground in front of them in order to prevent the possibility of killing any living thing.
When she pressed me on the need for non-violence, I agreed with her in principle that non-violence is always better than violence. In fact, I told her that non-violence must always be the first, second and third choice. Yet at the same time, I noted that it should never be the only choice.
I think that the Talmud best expressed this in the axiom that, "Those who are kind to the cruel, end up being cruel to the kind." (Kohelet Rabah 7:16)
For anyone interested in
social trends in Israel the article is a must read. Here are some excerpts:
In the early 1990s, while serving as a reservist soldier in Gaza, I became a guilty Israeli. ... More policemen than soldiers, we found ourselves enforcing an occupation whose threat to Israel's Jewish and democratic values had become unbearable.
Those were the years of the first intifada, the Palestinian uprising, and its great victory was the creation of a substantial bloc of guilt-ridden Israelis ready to take almost any risk for peace. As the Oslo peace process came into being under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the guilty Israeli became the most potent source of Palestinian empowerment. Many Israelis tried to understand for the first time how Palestinians experienced the conflict, in effect borrowing Palestinian eyes and incorporating elements of the Palestinian narrative into our own understanding of history.
By the end of the 1990s, a majority of Israelis were considering previously unthinkable concessions such as uprooting Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and redividing the city of Jerusalem. We moved in this direction anxiously. The Palestinians were already beginning to lose the goodwill of guilty Israelis by then. Under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, their media, schools and mosques inculcated a culture of denial that rejects the most basic truths of Jewish history, from our ancient roots in the land of Israel to the veracity of the Holocaust.
... The result of all this is that today the guilty Israeli has become nearly extinct. Just as we came to realize during the first intifada that the occupation was untenable, so we have now come to realize that peace is impossible with Palestinian leaders for whom reconciliation is a one-way process.
So far, the rockets aimed at Israel have been primitive and mostly terrorize and wound rather than slaughter. But it is only a matter of time before Hamas' allies in Iran and Hezbollah upgrade the rockets' lethal effect. Meanwhile, the psychological damage has been profound: Israelis perceive their government's failure to defend southern Israel as a collapse of national sovereignty. The political fallout has been no less intense: Gaza was a test case for Israeli withdrawal, and the experiment was a disaster. How, Israelis wonder, can we evacuate the West Bank and risk rocket attacks on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem?
Gaza's people are being held hostage to a political fantasy. And the international community is abetting the tragedy. The U.N. actually considers Palestinians to be permanent refugees, to be protected in squalid but subsidized camps even though they live in their own homeland of Gaza, under their own government.
And so we move toward the next terrible round of conflict. This time, though, for all our anguish, we will feel a lot less remorse. Because even guilty Israelis realize that, until our neighbors care more about building their state than undermining ours, the misery of Gaza will persist.
