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The Promise of Peres - November 24, 1995 | ||||||
Before I get into the heart of this article, let me make it clear that I do not for one minute believe that Shimon Peres is a good Prime Minister for Israel. So if any public opinion people are reading this, do not let this article be taken as a ringing endorsement of his leadership. However, I feel I must state publicly, that for the first time in a very long time, I feel comfortable in fully supporting an initiative of an Israeli Prime Minister. Indeed, it has been over four years since I have been able to say that without sounding terribly sarcastic. Let me explain. Upon taking over the premiership from the dead but not forgotten Yitzchak Rabin, Peres immediately realised what few others in his entourage were willing to acknowledge. The Oslo Process is in a state of suspended animation. If Peres doesn't do something really creative, quickly, it will die, and leave Israel in the precarious security situation that everyone in the opposition, including yours truly, have been warning about for the past four years. Arab control over areas in the heart of Israel, with no Israeli security personnel present, and no intelligence gathering capability to forewarn of attacks. Israel would corrode from within, and be left a skeleton of a country with nothing but an impressive export industry. President Weizman knows this truth, and has been shouting it from the rooftops for months. With Rabin's death, Weizman now has the opportunity to demand attention from the government, and get it. He has, and he is. In the process of forming a new government which Peres has just completed, Weizman told him, in as many words, that a wider coalition was necessary for not only this government to survive, but for the entire nation to survive. Compromise was to take the place of vitriol. Co-operation was to replace hate. Moreover, the sources of the hatred that was eating away at the soul of the Jewish people must be rooted out and destroyed. Israel was now to undergo a process of healing, and that process had to start with the diagnosis and destruction of its ailment. Part of what ails Israel is a political rift that was caused by the previous government, and by quite a few individual members of its leadership. A bigger part of what ails the Jewish nation, however, is the bitter hatred of the anti-religious for the religious. Developing from that, a new hatred was beginning to grow larger, and that is the hatred of the ultra-orthodox for the non-religious, or the less-religious. It is Shimon Peres's challenge, as presented to him by President Ezer Weizman, to heal these rifts, and to dissolve these hatreds. Not only the life of his government depends on it. The life of the State, and of the entire nation depends on it as well. The first order of business for Peres, then, was to form a government he could lead in the efforts to build national reconciliation. The easiest way to do this was to re-arrange the extant government and re-distribute some of its responsibilities. He also added two new members to the government, one of whom was given the specific job of liaison to the religious community. Even though none of the jobs that were re-arranged directly affected Meretz, that party has emerged significantly weakened by the distribution of the new government. Immediately upon announcing the new government, Peres continued his negotiations with the National Religious and Tsomet parties. These negotiations are not meant to bring these parties officially into the coalition, but rather to secure their passive support in the event of non-confidence motions brought against the government. NRP and Tsomet, of course, are asking for a favour in return. They appear ready to agree to passive support if the government agrees not to sign any further agreements with the PLO until after the 1996 elections, and if they agree to maintain the status quo in religious legislation. Both these conditions could have very interesting effects. First, and most obvious, such agreement would mean the next nail in the coffin of the State of Palestine. Any further substantive negotiations would then depend on the outcome of the next elections, which are anything but certain. Second, the agreement would mean that the recent Supreme Court decision granting legitimacy to non-Orthodox conversions becomes a moot point for at least a year, and third, any recent public opinion poll can be thrown out the window. Allow me to elaborate on each of these. For the past three years, the Knesset opposition, along with the demonstrators on the streets, have been trying, as their sole mission, to end, or at least delay, the Oslo Process with the PLO. Delays have in fact been the story of the process, but Yitzchak Rabin showed an unbelievable level of stubbornness in not only ignoring the very substantial opposition, but in taking every opportunity to insult and disgrace the opposition for merely thinking that he might be wrong. Say whatever else you want about Rabin, but if there was one reason above all else why I could never support him, it was this. A leader of a democratic country cannot treat such a large segment of the population the way he did and hope to retain any support for his policies. When those policies are implemented anyway, there cannot be any hope but for their failure because of the vast chasm they cause among the population. Peres realizes this, perhaps a bit too late. He, too, after all, took full part in the vitriol against the opposition throughout the past three years. But at least he appears ready to do something about it now that he is Prime Minister. He appears to be ready to work at healing the rifts he helped cause. In the words of Meretz Minister Yossi Sarid, "A government in which the NRP & Tsomet have any role, even passive, is not the same government. It could not possibly be seen as a continuation of the Rabin government." Perhaps that is the point. The Rabin government was easily the government most damaging to the fabric of Israeli society of all Israeli governments. Perhaps it is good that this government is not a continuation. In terms of religion, it cannot be pointed out enough that Israel is a Jewish state. In so being, Israel must be ruled by Jewish morals, Jewish laws, and Jewish people. One of the most stinging controversies to have never been put to rest in Jewish history is the question of "Who is a Jew?" This question has two roots: first in the mind-numbing frequency of inter-marriage among the secular, Reform, and Conservative segments of Judaism, and second in the issue of Reform and Conservative conversions. The two logically follow one from the other. All sects of Judaism realize that inter-marriage breeds a loss of identity. As a band-aid measure, therefore, the Reform and Conservative movements instituted a system of conversion which does not follow accepted Jewish norms, as an easy way for the non-Jewish partner in such a marriage to "become Jewish", thereby eliminating the problem. The ease of such conversions is brought about, in part, by the lack of many necessary elements to the process, such as learning or immersion. |
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