Shmuel Cytryn is a dual American-Israeli citizen. He fought in the Golani Brigade in Lebanon. He has a wife and five small children. He is employed, but has had his salary cut off while he is in prison. He does not own any weapons, even though he lives in Kiryat Arba -- a dangerous place to live these days, what with the IDF pulling out and not responding when called to defend the Jews of the area.
One officer of the prison in which Cytryn is being held was recently asked if Cytryn had ever committed any crime, or even been suspected of criminal activity. He answered "no." And yet, there is no explanation for Cytryn's incarceration, nor any noise at all from the courts to have him released. Pleas to the United States government, and to the embassy in Tel Aviv have fallen on deaf ears.
The case of Shmuel Cytryn cries out to be heard throughout the Jewish world. But its cries are not only those of a lonely Jew at the mercy of an unsympathetic government. They are not, as the Jewish Establishment supposes, the cries of a "Jewish Extremist" whose ego has been bruised. No, Shmuel Cytryn's pleas are the lead element in a problem that has grown so large so quickly that every Jew in the entire world is threatened by its implications.
Let us revert for a moment to the underlying idea of Zionsim -- the reason for the existence of Israel in the first place. For millenia, Jews around the world have been victims of hostile governments. Never have Jews enjoyed full and normal civil rights in any society until this century. Jews were routinely imprisoned for no reason, expelled from their communities, cut off from their families, sent into forced exile, tortured, and killed. Whole communities were wiped out regularly through pogroms, inquisitions, and holocaust.
In the Soviet Union of this century, Jews were massacred by Stalin. Later, they had their rights deprived by successive totalitarian regimes, where only high-ranking party members of good standing could enjoy somewhat normal lives. Religious coercion, and cultural deprivation were the norm in the Soviet Union. Jews were routinely imprisoned for merely stating that they wanted to visit Israel or teach Hebrew. Jobs were lost and families went without winter clothes or other necessities as a result.
In Germany, before the Holocaust, Jewish businesses were boycotted -- if not destroyed -- and Jewish institutions were vandalized and burned. And, as the Holocaust drew nearer, the government officially allied itself with perhaps the only person in the world who could destroy Judaism by cutting it off from its roots -- Hajj Amin el-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
Israel came into existence in 1948 as the ultimate answer to the hardships of the Jews over two thousand years. Now, there would at long last be one state where Jewish rights were guaranteed, where Jews could freely practice their religion, their customs, their culture, where Hebrew could be spoken and taught freely, where Jewish intelligence could be developed at world class houses of learning, where Jewish interests would be identical to those of the larger society.
The problem today is that Israel has not only abandoned this purpose of its existence, it has become the main reason why such a purpose is necessary. Israel of 1995 and 1996 is no better than the Soviet Union of the 1950's and 1970's, or Germany of the 1930's, or Ethiopia or Syria of the 1980's. Israel is the only state in the world where Jews are arrested without cause, where Jewish freedom is little more than a dream, and where Jewish security does not exist due to its being sold to hostile enemies for nothing.
I have long believed that negotiations with the PLO was a mistake on the part of Israel. The Oslo Accords are nothing more than the supreme realization of that mistake. This weekend, with the elections of the Palestinian Authority, Israel creates a Palestinian State -- something that Labour consistently refused to do, and something which many in the Nationalist Camp, myself included, warned about more than two years ago.
But this process would not, in and of itself, destroy Israel. Instead, that has now been accomplished by the Israeli government itself. The proof exists, personified by the likes of Moshe Feiglin, Rabbi Benny Elon, Shmuel Sackett, Nadia Matar, Rabbi Eido Elba, and now Shmuel Cytryn.
Shmuel Cytryn has embarked on a hunger strike not to embolden his own case. He is not interested so much in making himself a household name. He is not the problem. What Cytryn is attempting to do, and what all true Zionists must pledge themselves to assist, is to publicize the death of an idea.
Israel is no longer the Jewish answer to the hostile world. Instead, Israel is the hostile world. Shmuel Cytryn, together with the other Prisoners of Zion, are all that is left between Israel as it should be, and Israel as it is. If they lose, it is a loss for all Jews. For if they lose, Zionism is dead, and the purpose of the State of Israel will have died with it. If they lose, Israel fails.
At this point, there is only one way for them to win, and that is for the current tyrannical government to be defeated at the polls, and replaced by one in whose vision Israel can still serve its purpose. This is a choice the Israeli electorate must make. If they choose to elect such a government, then most, if not all, of the problems represented by Shmuel Cytryn can be solved. But if Peres and Labour are re-elected, there remains no reason for me, as a Zionist, to continue to strive for Israel, or to entertain any notion of ever living there.
Copyright 1996. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission only.
