About Jewishness

Israel is paranoid about the world, and the world is paranoid about Israel
Israeli policy is driven by two fears. The first, quite justified, is that the country is mostly surrounded by hostile states, some of which host terrorist attacks against its civilians. The second, unjustified, is that criticism from any quarter includes an implicit question of the legitimacy of the Jewish state. That paranoia leads to constant reliance on isolationist militarism which, as well as creating terrible injustice for the Palestinians, has consistently failed to provide the security that Israelis crave.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be convinced that the media are after him, that his aides are leaking information against him and that the American administration wants him out of office. Two months after his visit to Washington, he is still finding it difficult to communicate normally with the White House. To appreciate the depth of his paranoia, it is enough to hear how he refers to Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, Obama's senior aides: as "self-hating Jews."
In August 2003 France's new ambassador to Israel caused a diplomatic rift with his hosts after he was reported to have described the Jewish state as "paranoid" and called its prime minister, Ariel Sharon, "a lout."

If you, as a nation, are convinced of the fact that your neighboring nations want to kill you, no matter what you do, then you won't be afraid to upset them, because they want to kill you anyway. And if you, as a nation, strongly believe that the whole world is against you, no matter what you do, then you won't be afraid to upset the world.
This mechanism of paranoia in its pure form is a self fulfilling prophecy. It stifles all efforts to reason, while at the same time it gives you an excuse for any unacceptable behaviour.

If you want peace, you need to solve your conflicts. There are five different styles to handle conflicts:

• Competing (assertive, uncooperative)
• Avoiding (unassertive, uncooperative)
• Accommodating (unassertive, cooperative)
• Collaborating (assertive, cooperative)
• Compromising (intermediate assertiveness and cooperativeness)

It seems to me that both Israel and the Palestinians are focusing too much on the competing and avoiding elements, and too little on the accommodating and collaborating elements. We have seen some compromising, but this has little effect if you take with one hand what you gave with the other.

There is a stream of Israeli Jews - perhaps not the widest one, but I believe quite significant - who care deeply for Israel and understand even why its government felt compelled to launch the devastating Operation Cast Lead, but they are extremely disturbed and hurt by the level of civilian deaths and destruction that almost seems part and parcel of the action. Surely, they say, there must, there has to be another way of doing this. And they live with those doubts, often unexpressed, even among families and close friends because the worst thing they find is that others around them don't seem to discern between the different nuances, and can't find in themselves compassion for the dead and wounded on the other side. They begin asking themselves very awkward questions: Are they surrounded by latent racists, or is there something wrong with them that denies the feelings of certainty of those around them? Or does everyone have similar doubts but are simply afraid to express them?
An explanation for this phenomenon is a mechanism called "interpersonal needs for inclusion". You want to be part of a group, you want to be accepted by that group. In the United States, or in the Western world in general, you are, up to a point, able to express deviant thoughts without the risk of being expelled from the group you (want to) belong to. In Israel it's far more complicated. Israel's paranoia sees to it that people are divided in two groups: those who are for us and those who are against us. This makes any nuancing a risky business, because before you know it you will be out of your group. In a society where matters are so black or white as in Israel, this is a difficult choice. You certainly don't want to be called a "self-hating Jew", just because your political views are somewhat more to the left than those of your colleagues, your neighbors, or your family.
In a purely black-or-white society, without the thousands of beautiful grey shades in between black and white, there is no room for constructive criticism, as all criticism is regarded as hostile.
The only solution to this problem is respect for other people's opinions, and this can only be created by secular educational systems, in which students are stimulated to become free thinking people who's opinions are formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, instead of being influenced by authority, tradition, religion, ethnicity or any other dogma. (So far I have seen very few freethinkers operating in the field of Israeli and Palestinian politics, military decision making and national and international strategy.) In a modern secular educational system would be room for an existentialist approach: if you try to establish safety and stability at the cost of your neighbor, who thus will not have safety and stability, then there will not be any safety and stability.

In a poll by Ma'agar Mochot, an Israeli research institution, under the supervision of Prof. Yitzhak Katz, significant and scary differences were found between students from religious Israeli schools and students from secular Israeli schools.
In response to the question of whether Arab citizens should be granted rights equal to that of Jews, 49.5 percent of all students answered in the negative. The issue highlighted the deep fault lines separating religious and secular youths, with 82 percent of religious students saying they opposed equal rights for Arabs while just 39 percent of secular students echoed that sentiment. The secular-religious gap was also present when students were faced with the question of whether Arabs should be eligible to run for office in the Knesset. While 82 percent of those with religious tendencies answered in the negative, 47 percent of secular teens agreed. In total, 56 percent said Arabs should be denied this right altogether. The survey also delved into the issue of military service and following orders that are deemed politically divisive. While an overwhelming majority (91 percent) expressed a desire to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces, 48 percent said they would not obey an order to evacuate outposts and settlements in the West Bank. Here, too, researchers note the religious nexus. Of those who would refuse evacuation orders, 81 percent categorize themselves as religious as opposed to 36 percent who are secular.

Why is the world paranoid when it comes to Israel?
As I said before, Israeli policy is driven by two fears. The first (Israel is mostly surrounded by hostile states) is justified, the second (any criticism questions the legitimacy of the Jewish state) is unjustified. While the international world in general seems to be perfectly able to sum up all the unjustified Israeli fears and disqualify the actions that were a result of those fears, it seems to be rather hesitating when it comes to support the actions that were a result of the justified fears. The paranoia part is that (part of) the international world thinks that all Israeli fears are unjustified, and that this is "international opinion". In other words, the poor international world has to deal with a completely unreliable, paranoid, and extremely dangerous state, that feels threatened by terrorists all the time, without any reason whatsoever, and how do we, the ever so decent international world, keep this hypochondriac ally of us within the borders of international law?
To be able to see where contemporary Israel is coming from, you need to put yourselves in their position. It's easy to say, "If you would have been more cooperative with the Assyrians, they wouldn't have thrown you out of Israel, if you would have been more cooperative with the Romans, they wouldn't have made you their slaves and scattered you all over the Roman Empire, if you would have believed in that fairy tale of Jesus being the son of God you wouldn't have been expelled from the countries you were living in, if you would have cancelled the debts of the Germans, the Romans, the Brits, the Russians, the Arabs, the Americans, the Poles, the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the French, your life would have been so much easier, if you wouldn't have returned to the Middle East there would be no wars between the Druze and the Arabs, Jordan would love to host and feed the millions of poor Palestinians, and if you wouldn't have existed at all the world would have been such a better place," but what does that mean to my grandson in Tel Aviv, who has to judge about a plan to build a brand new Palestinian city on the Israeli Mediterranean coast, with all the possibilities of firing rockets from there right into his home?
I'm sure he's not suicidal, so please, international world, international opinion, try to put yourself into the position of the average Jew in Israel for once, instead of the position of the average Jew in Manhattan or the average Jew in Miami Beach. There's a significant difference; the difference between relative safety and constant danger.
Just another thing: does the "international opinion" know that 48% of the Israeli electorate are against the right-wing policies, are striving for peace? What about giving them a chance? Or is it easier to forget about them because they're left-wingish? And if so, what does distinguish this Obama government from the McCarthy times? So do we deny a significant part of the Israeli electorate the opportunity to bring peace in the Middle East, just because of this part is left-wing? Is it really true that the Obama government prefers a hawkish right-wing Israeli government above a dovish left-wing Israeli government?
Or is this sharade just there to tell us that the times of Benjamin Netanyahu are over? That would be great.

Martin Buber (February 8, 1878 – June 13, 1965) was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher. In 1925 he was involved in the creation of the organisation Brit Shalom (Covenant of Peace), which advocated the creation of a binational state, and throughout the rest of his life he hoped and believed that Jews and Arabs one day would live in peace in a joint nation. "Only an internal revolution can have the power to heal our people of their murderous sickness of causeless hatred. It is bound to bring complete ruin upon us. Only then will the old and young in our land realize how great was our responsibility to those miserable Arab refugees in whose towns we have settled Jews who were brought from afar; whose homes we have inherited, whose fields we now sow and harvest; the fruits of whose gardens, orchards and vineyards we gather; and in whose cities that we robbed we put up houses of education, charity, and prayer, while we babble and rave about being the "People of the Book" and the "light of the nations"."

A temporary meritocracy
Without political agendas and electorates in mind, Israeli and Palestinian scientists have proved to be perfectly able to work together, to solve all kinds of problems concerning health, agriculture, technology, arts, humanities, etc. The only people that obviously are not able to cooperate, are Israeli and Palestinian politicians. This, in my opinion, calls for a system that (temporary) eliminates the powers of Israeli and Palestinian politicians.
A thought: the establishment of a (temporary) meritocracy (system of a government or other organization wherein appointments are made and responsibilities assigned to individuals based upon demonstrated talent and ability (merit), as opposed to democracy, political government either carried out directly by the people (direct democracy) or by means of elected representatives of the people). A group of wise men (Israeli and Palestinians), possibly elected by a special committee of the United Nations, will rule the country (including the Palestinian areas) for a certain period of time, to establish peace, safety and stability. In that restricted period of time there will be no democratic rule, so the process will not be influenced by politicians and political agendas.

Jerusalem, as seen from what now is called East Jerusalem, in 1842

The "complex" Jerusalem solution
Before King David captured Jerusalem, the city was called Jebus, and it was inhabited by the Jebusites. According to the Hebrew Bible, the Jebusites were a Canaanite tribe who inhabited and built Jebus. Elsewhere in the Bible, the Jebusites are described in a manner that suggests that they worshipped the same God. Palestinians say that they are descendants of the Canaanites, allthough they also might be descendants of the Philistines, or both. Jonathan Tubbs, a British archaeologist, argued that the Israelites were themselves Canaanites, and that "historical Israel", as distinct from "literary" or "Biblical Israel" was a subset of Canaanite culture. Canaan when used in this sense refers to the entire Ancient Near Eastern Levant down to about 100 AD, including the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. For example, Mark Smith in "The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel" states, "Despite the long regnant model that the Canaanites and Israelites were people of fundamentally different culture, archaeological data now casts doubt on this view. The material culture of the region exhibits numerous common points between Israelites and Canaanites in the Iron I period (ca. 1200–1000 BC). The record would suggest that the Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from Canaanite culture... In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature. Given the information available, one cannot maintain a radical cultural separation between Canaanites and Israelites for the Iron I period."
Jerusalem city has a history that goes back to the 4th millennium BCE, making it one of the oldest cities in the world. Jerusalem is the holiest city in Judaism and Christianity and has been the spiritual center of the Jewish people since c. 1000 BCE, when the King of Israel first established it as the capital of the Jewish Nation, and his son Solomon commissioned the building of the First Temple in the city. Jerusalem contains a number of significant Christian sites, and due to the mentioning of the Al-Aqsa-Mosque and the blessed earth around it in the Qur'an (Sura al-Isra), Islam regards Jerusalem as its third-holiest city. Despite having an area of only 0.9 square kilometer (0.35 square mile), the Old City is home to sites of key religious importance, among them the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque. The old walled city, a World Heritage site, has been traditionally divided into four quarters, although the names used today—the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters—were introduced in the early 19th century. The Old City was nominated for inclusion on the List of World Heritage Sites in danger by Jordan in 1982. In the course of its history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times.
Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem has been repeatedly criticized by the United Nations and related bodies, and Palestinians demand East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. In the wake of United Nations Security Council Resolution 478 (passed in 1980), most foreign embassies moved out of Jerusalem.
Knowing all this, it's impossible to say that the Israelis or the Palestinians have the exclusive rights to Jerusalem.

The Berlin Wall was a concrete barrier built by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) that completely enclosed the city of West Berlin, separating it from East Germany, including East Berlin. The capital of Berlin, as the seat of the Allied Control Council, was similarly subdivided into four sectors despite the city's lying deep inside the Soviet zone. Within two years, political divisions increased between the Soviets and the other occupying powers. These included the Soviets' refusal to agree to reconstruction plans making post-war Germany self-sufficient and to a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods and infrastructure already removed by the Soviets.
The ideological division between East and West was insurmountable (as is the ideological division between Israel and the Palestinians), and building the Berlin wall was the only way to keep the two apart, yet together in one city. Before and during the Second World War Berlin was the capital of Germany, but after the Berlin Wall was built, the West German Federal government decided to move the nominal capital to Bonn. Berlin remained the capital of the GDR.

Walls that are separating one part of a city from another, are a terrible thing. They shouldn't be necessary. Yet they are, obviously.

Amsterdam is the capital of The Netherlands, but ever since 1588 The Hague is the seat of government. Thus a country can have its capital in one city and its seat of government in another. Since most foreign embassies in Israel already moved to Tel Aviv, West Jerusalem could be the capital of Israel and East Jerusalem could be the capital of the Palestinians. Obviously divided by a wall, and it wouldn't necessarily have to be a straight wall. It seems to me that the Israelis already are quite experienced in building walls.

The Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem are a problem, but they always have been, so there's nothing new there. Israeli people simply have to resettle in areas that are a lesser problem.

And so a Jerusalem solution is not as complex as it may seem. The separation between the two populations exists anyway, and all that remains is to finally sit down with the Palestinians and hammer out a final status agreement, to delineate the border that is known to all which divides between the Jewish and Palestinian neighborhoods and to sign an agreement that would end the occupation and the conflict once and for all.
A solution is possible. Continued declarations of a "united Jerusalem" are just empty slogans in a de facto divided Jerusalem. It's time to remove the mask and to act according to real Israeli interests: Namely, to reach a final status agreement that would allow the Palestinians to found a state alongside Israel with its capital in East Jerusalem.

Yoram Kaniuk writes:
"... Jerusalem was empty for 2,000 years; it was home to only a handful of Jews and a handful of Arabs. For a short while it was the capital of the Crusaders, but it stopped playing that role rather quickly. The Arabs never viewed it as a capital, and the Jews preferred to remember it, but only in terms of “next year in Jerusalem.” By the time the next year rolled around they did not come, and if they did come, most of them preferred Tel Aviv, which never attempted to be an eternal city.
One dies in eternity – meanwhile, on the shores and in the valley and in the Galilee a future is being built. In Jerusalem, we create a past....
If Jerusalem so much wishes to be Israel’s capital, and the city’s name is etched on the lips of those who escape it to Tel Aviv every Thursday, then it needs to be both the capital of Palestine and capital of Israel. Not two cities, but rather, one town. A city of two nations and three religions; in fact, a sort of utopia, a word that means “no place” in Greek.
History teaches us that there is no way for Jerusalem to be solely Jewish. This would also not be good for the Jews, because if it is only their capital it will turn into the capital of itself; the Jewish acrimony that grows in the city and its vicinity would not enable it to be the State of Israel’s main city. It’s terribly simple: Either Israel and Palestine – or Jerusalem.
The decision we face is not easy. There is no city that prompted the spilling of more blood than Jerusalem. It’s the longing for everything pertaining to God, yet He apparently did not love it, as He allowed it to be razed so many times. Jerusalem is longing for the past.
Forget about using the city as a symbol. Turn it into a pleasant residential town, free of the nationalism of both sides. We shall live there together. We shall have a state of high-tech and culture in Herzliya, Tel Aviv and Haifa. Whoever wishes to reside in Jerusalem will live there as the citizen of Israel or Palestine and pay municipal taxes to a joint Palestinian-Jewish city hall.
Israel will free up for building a model state, as its founders wanted. Meanwhile, we will always be able to live in Jerusalem as a united city, rather than a city one dreams of on the eve of Passover, mostly from the outside.
People always say “let’s resolve the whole conflict, and only then get to the Jerusalem issue.” Yet we need to start precisely with this wound. Let’s resolve the problem of ownership of a city that cannot be the capital of Israel or Palestine but rather, only the capital of both nations. Should an effective solution be found, we may be able to embark on some kind of hopeful road."
Yoram Kaniuk (born 1930) is an Israeli writer, painter, journalist, and theater critic.

Israel is to begin officially monitoring incitement in the Palestinian Authority and will periodically issue a report on it, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on March 9, 2010. Netanyahu also decided to appoint Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, the former head of Military Intelligence's research department, as government coordinator for incitement in the PA. "We will set parameters by which to measure the level of incitement," Netanyahu told the committee. "People must know exactly what is happening on this issue, because for a peace agreement, education toward peace and acceptance of Israel are needed."
Netanyahu is right, but isn't it also time that Israeli people are educated toward peace and acceptance of Palestinian rights? Of human rights in general? Of the limits of the rights of Jewish people in Israel and the occupied areas?