August 29, 2003/Elul 1 5763, Vol. 55, No. 53
Israel, revisitedJewish state grows more complex with age
AVI AZRIELI
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 The Israeli flag flies on Israel's northern border, overlooking an empty Hezbollah outpost in Lebanon. Hezbollah is one of the many terrorist groups threatening Israelis every day. Photo by Brian Hendler/JTA |
I moved away from Israel 14 years ago to study in New York and planned to return to practice law. Yet like other Israelis, I stayed, intoxicated by the incredible lightness of being American. Since then, the perspective of passing years and periodic pilgrimages has fostered a measure of objectivity.
On the recent trip, we landed at Ben Gurion Airport an hour before sundown on the eve of Shavuot. A young taxi driver put out his cigarette and quickly packed us into a tidy white van. Drivers with death wishes filled the road, tailgating each other at breakneck speed, steering with one hand while talking with the other. Our driver dialed his cell phone while passing a small Fiat on the left shoulder to remind his wife to bring his white shirt to his parents' house for the holiday dinner. He assured her he would be there soon; I believed him and tightened my seat belt.
Noa's wedding was unlike any nuptial celebration we had seen before. The groom's friends - in white shirts, slacks and sandals, handguns stuffed in their belts - danced tirelessly to modern interpretations of Hasidic tunes. The bride's girlfriends, faces red, long dresses sodden with sweat, danced behind a see-through partition until their ankles showed. The parents' friends, with gray hair under knitted yarmulkes and colorful headdresses, sat around loaded tables with their large families and pointed out matches for their own brides-to-be, until the groom's father pulled them into the ever-expanding rings of dancers.
Almost a week passed before our jetlag subsided. We went for a drive, descending the mountains west of Jerusalem. I noticed large signs for Highway No. 6 - the first-ever Israeli toll road. I called one of my brothers-in-law. He cautioned me, "The Cross Israel Highway is not safe." Later that night I learned that as we took the coastal road from Tel Aviv, a grandfather and his 6-year-old granddaughter were fatally shot by Arabs on the new toll road.
Israeli society has changed
One night, I met a friend at a Jerusalem cafe. A security guard frisked us and probed our shoes with a metal detector. The place was busy, giving us a warm feeling of camaraderie with the other potential terrorist targets. We sat outside. I eyeballed every pedestrian male whose love handles could hide a more imminent health risk to him and others.After a few days, my wife set aside her vow to avoid public places and went shopping with my sister for Israeli sandals. They returned with three pairs - red, black and brown. A TV news flash interrupted us. A suicide bomber dressed as an ultra-Orthodox Jew had triggered his belt on a bus at a Jaffa Street stop, along the path my wife and sister had walked an hour earlier. Sixteen killed. One hundred wounded.
Israelis' fierce zest for life reminded me of New York City. People there exhibit similar driving habits and possess comparable scars from Islamic terrorism. Both places are populated by disproportionate numbers of writers, painters, musicians, idealists and regular dreamers who share sidewalks with corporate leaders, government bigwigs, and lots of lawyers, all infused with frantic energy, driven to change the world.
But comparing the Israel of today with my recollection of two, six, eight and 10 years ago, I am saddened by its decline. Three years of post-Oslo Palestinian terrorism have sapped the famous sabra optimism. Though the American economy is hurting, Israel is in the midst of a depression. Government coffers, as Treasury Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hoarsely recites, are empty, resulting in elimination of essential health, education and social services. Foreign tourism and investment have plummeted, while emigration is on the rise. Secular Zionism has followed the socialist pioneers into nursing homes, and the Histadrut, the all-powerful labor union, unleashes destructive general strikes to resuscitate an octogenarian-led Labor party, while the ruling Likud searches for its lost way.
Talking politics was once a favorite Israeli pastime. But these days, Israelis refrain. No one bothers to speculate about the future. Fatalism is safer, which explains why people still crowd buses and go browsing in the malls. Many Israelis have stopped watching the news, shutting their eyes to more scenes of the same horrors. President George W. Bush's "road map" has led to more indifference.
Israelis have grown disillusioned about what they suspect is the Palestinians' ultimate goal - the destruction of Israel.
But a quiet transformation is changing Israeli society. Suffering has caused many to embrace faith. Religiousness in Israel is reflected by head coverings. By this measure, Israel is more religious than I remember it. Men opt to become modern Orthodox, fashioning knitted caps (larger circumference indicating stricter observance). Others skip directly to ultra-Orthodox ranks, adorned with black yarmulkes and blacker hats. Women have their choice of flowered headdresses, shapely ladies' hats or deceptively realistic wigs.
Orthodox organizations, which feed on government subsidies, offer free daycare, schools and healthcare, as well as financial and spiritual support during difficult times. Considering the peace of mind that comes with knowing that fate is prescribed from above, it's no wonder many have turned to reliance on the Almighty.
Orthodox families typically have many children. Their eyes are bright with hope that has vanished from the secular community. Teenage girls volunteer for two years of national service as teachers in poor communities, caregivers for the elderly, nurses in hospitals or organizers in youth clubs. Religious boys take pride in military service and have become a majority in elite units. A religious general was recently appointed to a front-line command, breaking a glass ceiling that had existed since Israel was born. Orthodox military recruits distinguish themselves with unquestioning patriotism, high energy and courage in battle. And when their national service is complete, religious couples dedicate themselves to social causes and pioneer new communities.
While the anti-religious party, Shinui, grew dramatically in the last election and obtained powerful government ministries in a coalition deal with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, many dismiss it as the last flicker of life for a secular Israel, a temporary bump in the unstoppable rise of religious power in Israeli politics.
One cannot help but respect the enthusiastic Zionist fever that typifies the Orthodox sector in Israel and, some say, fuels its growth. While some of their spiritual leaders occasionally issue Iranian-style rulings, others preach tolerance. A new - and first - Orthodox mayor of Jerusalem declared on his first day in office that city hall would maintain its support of the Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem and would not interfere with restaurants and clubs that open on Friday nights. "We must live together in tolerance," he declared.
The mayor's conciliatory tone, however, is an island in a stormy sea of factional strife. Voter fraud has plagued the combative Knesset, and two brothers in the legislative body found themselves on opposite ideological sides when the Israel Defense Forces fought with civilian settlers when removing an illegal post in the West Bank.
Many Israelis believe settlements should be removed to make way for a Palestinian state in the territories. But a growing number of religious Israelis believe that God gave Judea and Samaria to the Chosen People. They complain bitterly that the term "West Bank" falsely connotes a narrow strip along a river, while in reality Judea and Samaria extend 40 miles west from the Jordan River into Israel to the 1967 Green Line, which is less than 10 miles from the Mediterranean coastline.
Will history repeat?
We drove to a post-wedding dinner at the settlement of Yakir, expecting a narrow road connecting little settlements. Instead, we found ourselves on a wide highway heading east from Kfar Saba. Well paved and brightly lit, the highway passed by large clusters of homes, industrial parks and retail outlets. The "settlement" of Ariel, for example, has become a city with its own university. Other settlements in the West Bank, such as Efrat and Maaleh Adomin, have tens of thousands of families living vibrantly on the land of their ancestors.Many of the settlers have long given up on the aura of pioneering. Young couples, rather than pitching tents atop barren hills, are building large homes and raising children who in turn start their own families next door. The sheer quantity of middle-class families in those communities makes any talk of wholesale removal a pipe dream.
We spent hours at Yakir with extended family and friends, celebrating with the newlyweds. We left after midnight and drove back toward the Green Line in a small Renault that my brother-in-law had borrowed from a friend. The car had been fitted with inch-thick windows and armored steel plates, adding weight that challenged its little engine. I had to shift gears rapidly to keep momentum on the incline. We took a shortcut through several small towns within the Green Line near Petah Tikvah. Every few minutes, elderly volunteers with World War II Czech rifles and "Civil Guard" armbands stopped us in makeshift roadblocks to verify that we were not Palestinian terrorists.
On my last morning in Israel, I drove east from Jerusalem, descending into the Judean Desert. I was stopped at seven security checkpoints. Reservists in their 30s and 40s in full-metal jacket, machine guns at the ready, searched my trunk for explosive belts and suggested it was time to get the car washed. The tourist stops along the western shore of the Dead Sea were deserted. At Masada, a state-of-the-art visitor center sold refreshments, artful knick-knacks and a video clip starring Peter O'Toole as a Roman general in Hollywood's version of the uprising against Rome.
A new cable car whisked me and a small group of Japanese tourists to the top. The brochure provided by the Israel Antiquities Authorities told the story of King Herod's paranoid excesses, building a self-contained fort that could support 10,000 men for two years on top of a mountain in the middle of an uninhabitable desert.
Herod never needed to hole up in his palatial shelter. But a century later, during the last year of the Jewish rebellion against the Romans, Masada became the last stronghold of Jewish rebels and their families. Herod's bedrooms became communal sleeping quarters for ascetic Jewish patriots. I looked at the earthen ramp the Romans spent a year to build, and the gap in the outside wall where the Romans finally broke in, only to find that a mass suicide had deprived them of enslaving the heroes of Masada. I stood in the "lottery room" where the rebels' leader, Elazar ben Yair, drew small pieces of clay with names to select the 10 men who would slaughter all of the others and then each other.
I couldn't help but wonder whether, 2,000 years later, Jewish sovereignty over this parched land is again writing its requiem.
The Jewish People have survived several millennia. We are determined to stick around for several more. But Jewish sovereignty in the Promised Land has a tragic past. Jewish kingdoms have split into rival entities, cut deals against each other with sworn enemies and repeatedly crumbled under the weight of internal feuds. The current attempt at Jewish statehood in Israel is 55 years old. Its youthful promise has dimmed. Its middle age is agonizing. What's next?
Avi Azrieli is a lawyer and a resident of Paradise Valley.