Act and Comprehend

By Ofir Haivry

Both Judaism and Zionism were predicated on the idea that human fulfillment can only come of correct action. Today’s confusion is the result of the exaltation of principle over deed.

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No public can withstand continuous brainwashing by its leaders forever. And yet up until now there has been a surprising degree of popular loyalty to regions whose future is in doubt—such as the Golan and western Samaria—but in which the familiar sense of an Israeli “reality” has already been consolidated. It seems that if only there were time to turn the other politically controversial regions of the country into part of the Israeli experience, the Israeli public would demonstrate a readiness to stick by them also—as has happened on past occasions when the leadership forgot the proper path, but the people clung tenaciously to the right course. In the words of the Talmud: “Leave it to Israel; if they are not prophets, they are the descendants of prophets.”³⁴

XI. A Reality Which Fashions Imagination

On the way to Damascus, Saul of Tarsus experienced a mystic messianic vision. As a result of this vision he began to believe in a new covenant which had altered the natural order and canceled everything that had existed before it, and was thereby transformed from a Jew (who had even persecuted the followers of the Nazarite) into a Christian. “The road to Damascus” has since become a byword denoting direct revelation of a gospel, in the wake of which one experiences a sudden and extreme conversion from an old way of belief to a new faith.³⁵

Today, the road to Damascuspasses through Oslo, which represents the moment of decision with regard to the future path of Israel. It should be emphasized that no particular territorial or security arrangements constitute the essence of the process in which Israel is involved. These are merely details deriving from a deeper transformation which has taken place. The essence lies in the messianic vision which the Oslo process embodies, and according to which not the path but faith is what must stand at the center of our existence, in accordance with the outlook of the process’ architect, Shimon Peres: “In my eyes Judaism is above all, a faith, more even than a religion.”³⁶

Though the diplomatic process is to a large degree a reflection of the worldviews of former Prime Minister Peres and his adherents—as well as those of many of the political and cultural leaders of the Jewish people who have made themselves partners in the Oslo process—the unbearable lightness with which every obstacle standing in the way of the present messianic peace has simply been tossed aside requires a larger understanding of the nature of the reality that is present-day Israel. This is a reality of Israel which has for many become an end in itself, the end of the road—and this despite the fact that it is also a reality in which still only a small, and in many ways marginal, segment of the Jewish people resides in the heart of its land; in which large parts of the Jewish public lack any meaningful connection—geographical, political or cultural—to Judaism; and in which there is no sign of Jewish immigration in significant numbers from the prosperous countries where most of world Jewry resides. It is natural that such a reality should engender a perspective as to what is normal and possible, such that the large majority of citizens have no desire to fight to preserve their heartland; that its social elite is totally alienated from Judaism; and that the country has reconciled itself to the bulk of the Jewish people remaining abroad indefinitely.

Most of the Jewish people, in Israel and worldwide, has become reconciled to the Oslo agreement because it appears to suit the reality of Israel. Even among the religious and Haredi populations, where there is traditionally a greater devotion to the symbolic connection with the land, there are not a few who are somehow willing to resign themselves to the state’s political course, out of what they consider to be “accepting reality.”

Most astounding of all has been the desolation that has gripped most of those who were supposed to lead the political and cultural opposition to this course. Many of the opposition leaders are themselves steeped in the concepts, perspective and symbols of the process’ promoters. And indeed, in the months following the signing of the agreement, only a very few did not give in to the atmosphere of despair, in which one heard explicit, lunatic statements about the end of the road and the hopelessness of continuing to fight. Thus it was that amid the loss of equilibrium and the confusion, there was no leadership capable of mounting an effective campaign to stop the process, and the public’s reservations, lacking in appropriate spokesmen, proved unable to influence the course of events.

In a twinkling, everything that had taken root in the consciousness of the Jewish people from its inception had melted away. Four thousand years of ties to the land, two thousand years of fervent longing for the return to Zion, one hundred years of Zionist history—all these became insubstantial in a moment, and in the end only one sole barrier remained in the way of an immediate and complete retreat, and still remains: Jewish settlement. Neither values, nor beliefs, nor principles, nor perspectives are for the time being delaying the collapse, but rather the commonplace and trivial difficulties presented by visible, material things: Houses, children, dunams and goats. The practical difficulty of uprooting settlements does surprising things to a government of the left. And wherever there is a settlement, even in the heart of the Gaza strip, an Israeli presence is still preserved in spite of everything.

These are not, of course, insurmountable obstacles, and one can assume that sooner or later, if the same course is maintained, the government will make attempts to uproot settlers. One cannot know whether the first such attempt will be in Netzarim or Hebron, but what is important here is how the physical reality, and the expected complications involved in any act of uprooting, constitute a unique barrier before the flame of faith, and bring even the supporters of the establishment of a PLO state, such as former Environment Minister Yossi Sarid, to propose to the government a map in which areas populated by Jewish settlers, like Gush Etzion and western Samaria, would remain in Israeli hands.

The meaning of these observations is this: Despite the manifest helplessness of opponents of the Oslo process, and the messianic fervor of its proponents, there is still considerable difficulty in forcing imaginary conditions upon reality. There are obviously ways of changing this reality—such as ensuring the attrition of the population in the settlements by making life in them unlivable—but the need to take such measures only underscores once more the truth that deeds are what matter most, not intentions.

These facts also allow us to point the way back to the proper path. For if the present 250,000 Israelis living over the pre-1967 frontier can so greatly hamper the retreat from the Jewish heartland, then a few more residents would gradually render such an abandonment impossible. The issue here is not merely one of numerical growth, although this is also important, but first and foremost the importance of turning these places into part of the experience of Israeli existence. When, thanks to the Burger Ranch and the strike across from the municipal office building, Hebron becomes be like Afula and Hadera, it will no longer be possible to even consider dismissing it from the course of our lives.

But the reality of massive settlement in the heartland would have much more far-reaching consequences than the effective closing of the road to Damascus. For it would begin to refashion the Israeli consciousness, which is still so far from mature. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish inhabitants in cities such as Hebron, Eli and Shamir would make these places part of the Israeli everyday, like Hadera, Rehovot and Afula. And indeed such a powerful reality would refashion the collective imagination of Israel in ways which we cannot yet fathom.

XII. The Shortcut and the Ways of the World

Everything that has befallen the State of Israel in the last three years is the negative consequence of the necessary connection between the form of things and their content—a disordered reality creating a disordered consciousness in the minds of men. A rectification of the situation demands, before anything else, the renunciation in principle of the shortcut to the orchard. In the words of the Chinese sage Kung-Kiu (Confucius): “Who expects to be able to go out of a house except by means of the door? How is it then that no one follows this Way of ours?”³⁷ There is an ineluctable path which one must follow in order to reach the orchard: One must give things form, and then they will become filled with content.

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