The following text is reprinted from "Haaretz" Friday Supplement, 9 January, 1998 / 11 Tevet 5758. translation by Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis). As a public service, we bring to your attention its content.

Ari Shavit - Follow-Up Article on "Why We Hate Him [Netanyahu]"

[Following the publication of "Haaretz" columnist Ari Shavit's article "Why We Hate Him [Netanyahu]: The Real Reason" which appeared in the Friday Magazine Supplement on 26 December 1997, he published a follow-up piece in response to the criticism directed at him. It appeared on January 9, 1998. The following is IMRA Dr. Aaron Lerner's translation of key sections of the article.]

These were two interesting weeks: Around one man who rose to say, excuse me, but it seems to me that the chorus here is a bit too large, a bit too uniform, a bit loud, emerged overnight a large chorus, unified and loud, which called in a deafening voice, how do you even dare, and what chorus are you talking about, and who is even yelling.

..And in any case, from an impersonal standpoint, there was something depressing in the closed thinking which my writting encountered. There was something depressing in the lack of relation between the number of responses and the quality of most of them. And there was something depressing about the cheapness of the debate. The blindness to irony, to nuance, complex thought, which requires, apparently, a cooler atmosphere. And there was something depressing that so many of the facts and thoughts which I put on the table appeared not to even be reads. And there was something depressing in that in the final analysis, the entire discussion came down to the very uninteresting question - did I help Netanyahu or hurt him. Was I taken in by him, did I cross the lines.

No, I was not taken in by Netanyahu. I also did not cross the lines. Though it could very well be that for the sake of the democratic exercise it might have been worthwhile to try it. That I should present before the readers of "Haaretz" eight pages of praise to Bibi. But that is not what I did in the 26 December 1997 edition of this supplement. As many of the readers understood, the piece published here was very far from being an article supporting Netanyahu.

And yet, it became clear, it was enough to claim against the hatred of Netanyahu for the keepers of the seal of the left to mark me immediately as a Bibi-lover....And it was enough for me to try and turn the mirror just a bit in order to clash my camp also with its weaknesses and faults and ugly warts which have appeared recently on its face that I should be termed a traitor, a Quisling. For the cursers to curse also me, for the haters to hate also me and for the high priests of Israeli pluralism to make it clear to me that pluralism is good but not at home. Not for anything relating to the totem and taboo of our tribe.

Two very interesting weeks: Particularly interesting was the deep chasm between the countless emotional responses and telephone calls which reached my house and the scores of angry written replies which reached the newspapers. A gap which expresses so clearly, so tangibly, the fact that the connection has been lost, completely lost, between what is going on within the beltway of the elite columnists and what is going on in the human reality surrounding them. The connection is lost, completely lost, between those sitting at the head of the table of "Popolitica" [a top political talk show - IMRA] spewing out their scorn on those around them, and those very moderate and sound Israelis, who sit silent in the darkness in the audience in wonderment.

It was such that when I sat at the telephone for long days to answer all of those Sephardis and Russians and traditional who wanted to thank me for finally giving them expression, I reached the incontrovertible conclusion that Ehud Barak still can't be certain that the coming elections will conclude with his victory. Because the wound is still there. The Israeli masses, which are definitely prepared to withdraw from most of the territories, have not recovered from the traumatic experience which they had during the previous government. The Israeli masses, which don't have in their being even one nationalist bone, have an overwhelming fear of that spark of extremism which they see in the eyes of the left. And because of that very fixed inclination of the left to silence them. To look down on them. To reject their concerns. To make light of their considerations.

And so, between elections, these same Israelis - who are not at all right - provide the pollsters the answers that the pollsters want to get. And tell the threatening reporters the stories they want to hear. But when the moment of truth comes, when they go behind the screen to vote, they aren't able to vote for the candidate of the elites. And not only because of the experience of the fifties. Not only because of Mapai and the maabarot and the red [membership - IMRA] booklet. But because they have lost their belief in the seriousness of the elites. In the ability of the elites to organized clear thinking. In the willingness of the elites to deal at all with reality, and not just choice parts within it.

And thus, over the years, these wary Israelis have been observing their elites with an interesting mix of respect and disdain, of admiration and panic, asking themselves all the time if it is possible to rely on them. If they know what they are saying. And if that same group lead by Amnon Dakner...is a serious group. A group in whose hands you can entrust the fate of the state.

And time after time these Israelis decide no. That its too dangerous, Time after time they decided that if these are the local elites then it is better to do without them. And that if the choice is between the judgment of the self satisfied left and the judgment of the sour faced right the sour faced are preferable. And so, just so, those Israelis vote. Just-not-elites is how they vote.

No, no, it is not from hatred of elites that I wrote "Hatred of Netanyahu". And not out of some kind of effort to defend a crumbling government. Also not out of some effort to destroy the world of thoughts of the doves within which I still see my home. The complete opposite is the case. I wrote "Hatred of Netanyahu" out of great concern. I wrote "Hatred of Netanyahu" because for a long time I see how life within a closed hothouse of thought, without real competition, is destroying the thoughts of the doves. I wrote "Hatred of Netanyahu" because for a long time I follow with trepidation the lazy atmosphere of self satisfaction and isolation and intellectual exhaustion which the Israeli left projects.

I wrote "Hatred of Netanyahu" because from year to year I see how the Peres-Beilin consensus since '93 is taking on the frightful signs of the Golda-Dayan consensus of '67-'73. And how what was once a dynamic leftist start-up, has become a cartel of thought. How what was once a vibrant and creative stream of thought is becoming a spring of orthodoxy, without curiosity, which knows all the answers before they have even been asked.

...Around the corner a frightening period awaits us. It may take a year, it may take three years, maybe ten, but within a relatively short time an Arab bomb will be assembled. War heads armed. 30-35 good years of Israel's strategic monopoly will come to an end. 30-35 easy years, during which Israel's existence was not threatened, will come to an end as if they never existed. And here, specifically here, on this thin stretch of land, the critical question of the 21st century will be asked: Will non-Christians also know to treat non-conventional weapons with the same responsibility that Christian man has since 1964? Will the new democratization, which is inevitable, of weapons of mass destruction end in nightmare?

So the challenge facing Israeli society already now, already in 1998, is a challenge unlike anything since 1948. It is a challenge which raises unprecedently deep human, moral, societal, economic, religious, and foreign policy questions. How will we live under this new threat? How will we build here a place which will be worthy enough that it can provide us with the spiritual strength to enable us to carry on our lives in a more or less normal fashion in the shadows of apocalypse.

One thing is certain: We can't do this without the veteran Israeli elites, which I see myself a part of, undergoing some kind of revolution. We can't do this as long as the almost sole contribution of the veteran Israeli elites to public discourse is automatic applause for any withdrawal, and automatic catcalls against any pause in withdrawal. We can't do this as long as the Israeli elites continue to behave as if the Jewish-Palestinian conflict began on 5 June 1967, and as if it will be resolved the moment the IDF withdraws to the border of 4 June 1967. We can't do this as long as the Israeli elites don't open their eyes to the complicated and tragic dimensions of the conflict, which can't be summarized in the serious problem of the continuation of the occupation.

So even after recent events when we see the beginning of the end of the Netanyahu government, even if already this Spring Israel has a different government, the basic problems which I tried to deal with in my article will still be there. Because these basic issues derive from the fact that the veteran Israeli elites - without which Israel would have no hope - have developed in the last decade an understandable, very human, and sometimes even heart touching, attempt to bridge the brutal gap between its values and the history we experienced.

..And now, at the edge of this new era, this has to change. It has to change because it has simply become too dangerous. No less dangerous, but not more, than that of the nature of the right.

Ari Shavit - "Haaretz" - 9 January, 1998

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