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January 25, 2002/12 Shevat 5762, Vol. 54, No. 19
Document for unity causes controversy
GIL SEDAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - In Israel, there is nothing like an attempt at national unity to stir up a national controversy.
The latest such controversy is a 10-article document, called "The Kinneret Covenant," designed to find common denominators among different segments in Israeli society - religious and secular Jews, Sephardic and Ashkenazic Israelis, right and left.
One element not included in the new national manifesto is the Israeli Arab community - and this is not by accident.
The Covenant was created last October but released only recently. It was the first significant product of a group of Israeli intellectuals called "The Forum for National Responsibility," 60 individuals from all walks of life who decided that Israeli Jews should start talking with each other, instead of yelling at each other.
The infant charter had hardly left the presses, however, when it faced heavy criticism. Only the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, it seemed, largely ignored the document.
The Covenant is phrased like the Declaration of Independence, the document read out by David Ben-Gurion when he declared the State of Israel's independence on May 14, 1948. The Declaration of Independence laid out the general values of the fledgling state, and is considered the closest thing Israel has to a constitution.
The covenant is an attempt to phrase a national consensus to questions every Israeli asks himself: Who are we? What are we doing here? What are we fighting for?
Precisely because the answers to those questions are so controversial, the new document tried to leave aside most controversial issues. That meant that most of its conclusions were fairly bland.
The historic justification for the existence of the State of Israel is described as "a sublime existential need" based "on the devotion of the People of Israel to its heritage, its Torah, its language and its country."
There is no mention of the fact that Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, was a secular Jew, or that secular Zionism was the driving force behind the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel.
Were it not for the impressive gallery of signers, it is doubtful that the Covenant would have created the public stir it did. The charter was composed in a three-day marathon meeting in a hotel on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and was distributed recently in the weekend editions of the three major newspapers.
The reaction was astounding - page after page of letters to the editor, supporting and opposing the very idea behind the document.
"The 'Kinneret Covenant' forum is pathetic and revolting," Yosef Rosenfeld of Bnei Brak wrote in Ha'aretz. "It encourages illusions" that the Jewish people can ever be unified, he wrote.
"In order to continue the existence of a Jewish and democratic Israel, one should continue and maintain a significant Jewish majority," the drafters wrote. "Such majority shall only be preserved through moral means."
But what about the freedom of the other national group living in the Land of Israel?
"Israel will preserve the right of the Arab minority to preserve its linguistic, cultural and national identity," the covenant declares.
The covenant states that Israel does not want to rule another people. Many of Israel's Arab citizens - and even some of its Jewish ones - might question that statement.
It is no coincidence, therefore, that representatives of the Arab sector were not invited to take part in the meeting to draft the document.
"The meeting for an internal Jewish dialogue was the result of the systematic campaign of Israel's Arabs, under the umbrella of the Israeli democracy, to see themselves committed first to the Arab Palestinian nation and only then to the State of Israel," said Hava Pinhas-Cohen, one of the covenant's signers.
Once the Jews clear the air among themselves, it will be time to incorporate Arab views into the charter, Pinhas-Cohen hinted.
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