Thui-sday, September 6,1990 — THE BULLETIN — 5
Israel WaSted^23 precious strategy
By MORDECHAI NISAN
There is a widespread feeling in Israel that the existing situation in Judea, Samaria and Gaza cannot and should not continue. After 23 years, the drama of the Six-Day War has faded and been replaced by daily documentation of Jewish-Arab confrontation. Why Israel is there appears to be irrelevant. The raw immediacy of violence and the unacceptable yoke of dismay have silenced any hopes for a rapid and complete solution.
SOLDIERS dancing at Western Wall moments after Old City was captured in 1967.
From the start, it was clear that Israel's 1967 military victory and territorial gain exposed a lack of historical readiness. The Jews returned tothe heart of the Hebrew homeland, yet they reacted like strangers in the midst of the Arab presence.
True, there wajan outburst of nostalgic sentimentality for old Jerusalem and Hebron; but the Israelis visited the holy sites and historical spots like tourists, not the emotional stuff of ideological commitment to return as native sons coming home. A secularized culture and a pragmatic political ethic conditioned Israeli self-alienation from the land of the Jewish people.
Military power and national feebleness constituted an oxy-moronic Israel in the face of anawesome and positive challenge. With an almost eerie ascetic mood, the government proposed a policy of territorial self-denial. Jews would not as a rule, certainly not en masse, be settled throughout Judea and Samaria. At the same tinie, the slogan of "territories for peace*' confirmed a psychological willingness to abandon th^ newly acquired geographic possessions (known as a Potlatch Syndrome in anthropology).
That Arab enemies, whose scheme of destruction had just been foiled by Israel's miraculous military performance, would now rush to the bar of political contrition was an unexamined, though bold, notion. However, the very fantasizing of peace wishes, when reality did nothing to confirm them, suggested an Israeli state of political autism.
The terminology of psychology is employed here because Israel's response to the Six-Day War triumph was transformed into the mental and emotional contortions of a national illness: Suffering from mutism, the government was unable to speak in a forthright fashion: to present the legitimacy of conquest and the more subtle theme of liberation.
Arab aggression and bellicosity could have been defamed and put in the perspective of Israel's right for retention. But, realistically or not, Israel sought popularity and peace instead. The only psyehoIogicaUyndromethat Israel was indeed4ryi to overcome — traditional Jewish paranoia — was ironicalFy a sign of profound Jewish realism and mental health.
At root was the question of the Jewish people as a normal human community, possessing the natural instincts in the face ^ of danger and opportunity. Thus, rather than closing a historical circle in the Jewish tale in Eretz Yisrael, and in the regional
struggle with the Arab peoples, Israel left open^ll options. The _ contrived art of politics won out over the organic magnetism b Jewish nationalism..
In setting forth on thediplomatic path of peace formulae and negotiating scenarios, Israel demonstrated the corrosive, spiritual deterioration of de-Zionization. The Israeli Centre and Left decided that Israeli maturity called for neutralizing the ideological springs of Zionist activism. The loss of vigor in pursuing the tasks of pioneering settlement, and^ the political resignation in the face of Arab demands, became part of a new moral climate mlsraeli history.
Once self-affirmation was abandoned, Israel's national exhaustion had to hide under the guise of a noble, and higher,
purpose. The ideological vacuum was quickly filled with a pan-joply of Western political cliches, imported directly from America.
The Americanization of the conflict became, with Israel's consent and willing participation, an Arab victory of a high political order. Pivotal to the paradox, despite Israel's '67 win in war, was a string of Arab gains and Israeli losses. Within Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Arab society experienced an amazing advance in material terms: personal income rose, hpusii^g projects sprouted, goods were estabhshed, health clinics spread, newspapers were published, and the enchantments of Israel were explored. ^
Palestinian nationalism born of PLO inspiration relentlessly developed its hold over the minds and hearts of the Arab population. Islam, the dominant religion, propagated its message of faith and struggle.
Israel's liberal policy orientation facilitated a monumental opportunity for the Arabs to push forward against Israel. Access to the Supreme Court and Israel's national media have been of enormous help in casting the Palestinians into the consciousness of the country, and projecting them into the living-room of the world. This hostile Arab communitfwas able to benefit in substantive terms from prosperity, security and freedom under Israeli rule. .
The state of political affairs in 1990 points to the need to expose the tainted ideas of the Israeli Left and its supports as an historic fallacy. The Left and the Labor Party favored a political settlement with. Jordan, but King Hussein, lacking the requisite Arab ideological authority, could never deliver a credible agreement to the Israelis.
With much emphasis in recent years, these same forces presented the Palestinians as a moderate people with whom Israel could make peace. But the PLO-enchanted Palestinians knew only political subteif uge and seditious terrorism in their campaign against Israel.
""And all along it was suggested that a public posture of Israeli moderation, featu^'ing a willingness to withdraw from the areas, would elicit respectful global consideration. It is closer to the bitter truth to recognize that Israel wasted 23 precious years on a P.R. strategy that has made no impression at all on either President Bush or Secretary Baker.
Dr. Mordechai Nisan is senior lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the Rothberg School for Overseas Students. He was born in Montreal. This article was originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
After 23 years, Israel is apparently no closer to a soliition of the conflict. However, that is not its primary purpose. First and foremost it must assure the basic interests of the country, and secure the physical safety of its citizens. With the areas, Israel possesses the minimal parameters Of strategic welfare: mountain heights, early-warning radar stations, and a military deterrent capacity. With Judea and Samaria, Israel also possesses the terrain for population dispersion and the field for Zionist self-actualization..
The alternative, in simple geo-strategic terms, is to recreate the 14-26 km. geographic width of the state, put Jerusalem the capital alongside a PLO state whose borders begin just south of GiFoancl noftKof Ramot, and facilitate a massive Arab invasion-coming westward across the Jordan River.
Dreaming of make-believe worlds and musing over Utopian solutions can, particularly in the Arab Middle East, get a country just so far. After 23 years, the Jewish people in Israel may finally conclude that the waiting game be declared over.
WEST GERMAN DIARY	PART 8
Bremen: from 3,000 Je	ws to 150
By ROBBIE MICHAELSON
BREMEN^JThis northern Gernian city exemplifies the situation of German Jews as vve enter the last decade of the centuryTA Jewish presence in this Hanseatic region of Germany has been re-established again, though it is only a frac-_ tion of what once was. ■
Jews were prevented from living in this region of Germany until 1804 when a "Tolerance Edict" allowed them to seuleinthisportcity. During the days of the Weimar republic the Jewish population of
Bremen climbed to over 3,00(r" men, women and children. Today, there are about 150 Jews in Bremen.
Karla Muller-Tupath works for Radio Bremen as a regional political editor and is also chairperson of the Bremen Jewish Council and a director of the Central Deutsche Region for Jews in Germany. I met her at recent World Jewish Congress meetings in Berlin a^iid thus was able to garner a direct insight into what it means to be a Jew in her community.
Karla^ speaks with pride about the resilience of the Bremen Jewish community. A synagogue was re-established in 1961, which is traditional in worship, and, despite the small size of the community, a minyan is not a problem.
There is a rabbi and Kosher goods are shipped in from Frankfurt and Berlin. There are 19 children who participate in various activities, and Bar- and Bat-Mitzvah lessons are held twice a week. As for so much of European Jewry^ the community dilemma is
Vancouverite Robbie IMichael-son is on woric assignment in West Germany for two years.
that because of the.Holocaust there are few middle-aged members. Jnterestingly, this smaH community does include a few Israelis and Jews from the Soviet Union.
According to Muller-Tupath, today's Germany has, on the whole, Jearned from the past. However, she is concerned about future generations and, in particular, about the coming German reunification. She wonders whether the' new German society-to-be will be too ready to say "Kad-dish" over the Holocaust.
Like many German Jews, Muller-Tupath has visited Israel, as has her daughter-
BREMEN - Page 10
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Repentance and beyond:
At-one-ment^ 1^^^
Part 2
By ARNOLD AGES
Atonement literally means becoming one with G-d — at-one-ment. In order to achieve this status, tradition dictates full and sincere confession of sins. The liturgy of the Machzor helps the penitent individual run through the various sins he has committed through the year. One has the right to ask, therefore, "Isn't this preoccupation with sinfplness essentially quite unhealthy and does it not lead to a kind of morbidity?"
There is some danger in that, but mainstream Jewish practice has never looked upon the Yamim Nora im as melancholy days but rather as joyful ones. In olden times, in fact, Yom Kippiiir was the occasion for the young men and women of the community to come together for social purposes. Secondly, the fact that most of the prayers are framed in the plural rather than the singular prevents an excessive soleninity.
Third, as Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman has observed, the Vidui or confessional prayer in which we recite the "a/ chet," should not be thought of only as confession but rather as profession as well. Vidui can also mean acknowledging both the bad and the good in the period passed.
Arnold Ages, of the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Is a specialist In modem intellectual thought.
The Vidui is then a profession of loyalty to G-d like the professions of loyalty to G-d which farmers made in antiquity when they brought the firstihiits to Him. By acknowledging the best within us we can also recognize how we fell short in the task of/iA:m/i        mending the world.
The Hebrew term to describe the process in question is Cheshbon Hanifesh, an accounting fjpr the soul. Just as modem accounting has played a major role in creating systems of profit in business, so has the Jewish balance sheet of the soul yielded a high standard of moral living. Each year at this time we go through a kind of trial balance as we assess the power of sin. We ask G-d to suspend a final audit because we despair of the possibility of personal improvement and growth. The message from the tradition is that the final audit will not take place and that our feelings of hopelessness will be assuaged.
Rabbi Soloveitchik iiotes that the High Holidays have both a personal and a collective resonance. Yom Kippur is seen as bestowing two kinds of acquittal. Individual expiation is<,given to each and every Jew. But there is another entity that is purified, what we ca\\ Knesset Israel, that is to say the people of Israel. Tradition teaches that/Vzmo 5/i^/>'om. the essence of the day itself suffices to bring atonement to the people as a whole. But for the individual only sincere, repentance can bring about forgiveness.
The exercise of confession is different for the individual as such and the community, says Soloveitchik. When the individual confesses, he does so from a state of insecurity, depression and despair in the wake of his sin. Knesset Israel confesses out of a sense of confidence, and even rejoicing, for it does so in the presence of a loyal ally, before its most Beloved One. In certain communities in Germany it was customary for the whole congregation to sing the al chet confession in heartwarming melodies.
Praying as a community has salutary benefits to the individual because the first and authentic religious experience is always the experience of the community. When we celebrate our membership in the Jewish people, when we dramatize our connection to the Jewish past and to the Jewish future, we transcend our own death and sense our part.in an immortal exercise. __Without community, observes Rabbi Sherwin Wine, there is no religion: "Privacy may beappropriate to philosophy, but it is subversive of religion. Judaism did not begin with the sense of heavenly niysteries. It began with the transcendent experience of the Jewish people dancing out its will to live."
It has been said that a Jew does not know who he is until he finds himself judged. The sense of vulnerability he experiences as an individual is stressed by the language of the prayers of the holiday. One of the key phrases in those prayers is eyn banu ma'asim — we have no good deeds. In other words we stand before G-d naked, as it were, realizing that we have little merit to assert on our behalf.        —____________ __________ ________-
What is significant, according to Emil Fackenheim, however, is that while we don't have the deeds, we hav« the consciousness of the debt. The recognition of the nothing brings the teshuvdh, the repentance and the ultimate forgiveness from G-d.
There is an oscillation, moreover between the individual and the community reflected jn_the prayers we offer. Many of the verses are couched in the plural, that is true, but the focus has to-be primarily on the individual. The High Holidays speak in fact more to the individual than the congregation, beckoning the Jew to stand before G-d, and while possessing no merit, he is hopeful of G-d's love and compassion.
To Be Concluded
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