The year 1992 marked a tremendous turning point in Israeli and Jewish politics. Prior to that year, the Israeli right had control of the government and the left ceaselessly attacked that government and its policies. In the Diaspora, the right complained that the left had no business interfering in the decisions and policies of a democratically elected government in another country, and demanded that such attacks cease. They did not.
Since 1992, the exact opposite is the case. Due largely to the complaints of the Diaspora right, that same constituency now finds itself reluctant to attack the policies of the left-wing Israeli government, no matter how damaging those policies are to Israeli and Jewish interests. To an extent this is a correct posture to take, in keeping with the maxim of consistency. To an extent. That extent must be the placing of Israel and World Jewry in demonstrated danger, and capitulation to Israel's and Judaism's enemies. Once this extent is reached, all opposition to such policies is warranted.
The analogy to which I alluded earlier is thus applicable. Israel is like a car, and Jewish opinion -- especially that in the Diaspora -- like a fuel injector, or an emergency brake. The Jewish nation is the passenger, and the rest of the world other vehicles making up traffic. Under normal circumstances, cars travel on straight, level roadways, keeping up with the flow of traffic. Israel, under normal circumstances progresses through history keeping up with the rest of the world, passing some countries, and being passed by others. Every so often cars turn into the traffic from side-streets, and others turn off into the side-streets. At certain points in history, certain countries have strengthened their alliances with Israel, and others have weakened theirs, or broken them completely.
But rarely is Israel living under normal circumstances. Indeed, few are the areas of the country in which straight, level roadways can be found. Mostly, Israel has had to travel uphill and downhill. Travelling uphill is difficult under the best of conditions. Lower gear must be used, and extra reserves of strength must be purged in order to attain the top of the hill, at which point, hopefully, the road becomes level and normal. Fuel injectors must work at higher than maximum capacity in order to propel the car against gravity. In Israel's case, the extra reserves of strength come from a very resourceful and committed Jewish community in major states in the Diaspora. The political assistance rendered Israel by these communities in the past has been invaluable. Without it, Israel would likely not have attained the height on the hill that it has. Continued tension with Israel's neighbouring countries has provided the gravity that has held back Israeli progress. Israeli history has not provided an opportunity for any brakes to be put on Israeli progress up the hill. On the contrary, extra strength has been necessary in order for Israel to achieve the level that it has until now.
Since 1992, however, it appears as if Israel has shifted direction to a downhill motion. Whenever a car is moving downhill, caution must be exercised to insure that the descent not become out of control. Brakes must be gently applied in order to maintain control, and if control is lost, emergency brakes must be applied. Israelis elected the Rabin government in 1992 in the belief that while they were going to take Israel in a downhill direction, they would be able to apply sufficient pressure to the disc brakes. The Israeli electorate, however, has been sadly disappointed, and is now looking for a way to escape the car hurtling toward doom at the bottom of the hill.
Negotiations with Israel's most irreconcilable enemy and the granting to that enemy of the legitimacy that it had heretofore lacked and so desired, have snapped the brake cables. 107 dead Israelis since the Oslo Accord (292 in total during the Intifadah as of this writing), with no effort to condemn or punish the murderers, and active assistance in arming and protecting them, have provided the ice upon which the car gains downward momentum. It is time to apply the emergency brakes to stop the rapid descent of Israel toward a certain collision with Jewish survival.
Here is where the difference is found between the opposition generated to the policies of the Israeli governments before 1992 (both Labour and Likud), and that generated after 1992. Prior to 1992, the policies of the Israeli government were, usually, part of an effort to attain higher ground on the hill, part of the upward direction of progress and achievement. Any opposition to those policies on the part of Diaspora Jewry was seen as non-Zionist, and even anti-Zionist. The opposition generated in the Diaspora, especially between 1982 and 1992, was actively destroying what progress was being made, and was quite detrimental to the State of Israel, its security, and its international standing.
Since 1992, however, the exact opposite is the case. It is the policies of the Israeli government that have shown to be damaging to Israel, its security, and its international standing, and the opposition generated in the Diaspora that has provided the support for the growing opposition in Israel, which in turn is holding back the government from pursuing even more disastrous policies.
How Israel's security is being threatened should by now be quite obvious to even the most uninterested observer. Where it is not so obvious, I must question either the motives or the intelligence of such people. That these policies are damaging to Israel's international standing is, perhaps, not quite so obvious. So I digress here momentarily to address this question.
Recently, a decision was taken by the European Union -- a unanimous decision -- to remove the arms embargo on sales to Syria. This is a substantial gain for Syria's armouries, as Europe has the potential to become Syria's largest military supplier, supplanting the enormously inefficient Russia, thus modernizing immensely the Syrian arsenal at lower cost. A Syrian attack on Israel, especially after having been given back the ground from which to launch such an attack, therefore becomes that much more likely. The reason for the Syrian decision, according to the Reuters report I saw, was the estimation among European countries that Syria has stopped supporting terrorism. After all, Israel is negotiating with them. But how then do these countries explain Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad -- all organizations sponsored, trained and equipped by Syria. Perhaps they are only parts of the Palestinian whole as represented by the PLO?
The most bothersome aspect, though, is that Rabin continues to hold fast to his policy of giving up all of the Golan Heights through a referendum which, I can assure you, will feature a quite slanted question, along the lines of "Do you prefer abandoning Golan or going to war with Syria?" (As if they are not one and the same thing.)
Now, when Israel is in need of a new direction, and of regaining control over its own historical voyage, is the time when emergency brakes need to be applied. Only in that way can the driver stop and really look at the map to see where he should be going. That emergency brake must be applied through protest meetings and concerted media campaigns in the Diaspora, and through flooding the offices of the Israeli drivers with messages of dissent. After all, passengers get injured and killed in traffic accidents as well.
Copyright 1994. Reproduction in electronic or print formats by permission only.
