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When
I was a little boy, no more than ten years old, I steadfastly
refused to go to sleep at night without first putting the
theme from the
movie Exodus, by Ernest
Gold, on the old record player. The soaring chords, the
majestic crescendos, the uplifting arpeggios were my introduction
to the heroic sense of life, and to the Romantic spirit in
the arts. To this day I cannot even think of that music without
feeling a catch in my throat. The movie Exodus, of
course, was based on the
novel by Leon Uris that tells a highly romanticized version
of the struggle to establish Israel, starring Paul Newman,
and the opening words
of Gold's heroic anthem are likewise burned in my brain:
"This
land is mine,
God
gave this land to me!"
The
untrammeled beauty of the music is sullied, these days, by
the reality of what Israel has become – and is becoming. For
if recent political developments are any indication, that
country is on the road to fascism, and worse. Far worse….
Whenever
anyone invokes God, or His will, as a rationale for action,
the specter of violence and bloodshed looms large. It's only
natural, therefore, that it should loom even larger in that
part of the world designated "the Holy Land," most
of which is today the nation of Israel. It should also come
as no surprise to anyone that Israel is witnessing the rise
of a politicized form of fundamentalism, what I have called
Israel's
Taliban. Its political expression has been not only the
meteoric growth of the Likud party, and of that party's extreme
right wing, which is now grasping for power, but also the
development of a "settler" movement of right-wing
extremists who are the successors to the outlawed Kach movement
founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.
If
you thought Ariel Sharon was an extremist, take a look at
his probable successor – a man who, it seems, has
already been promised the Prime Minister's post in the
not-so-distant future, if only he will agree to step in and
save Sharon's government from imminent collapse by accepting
the Foreign Ministry for the time being.
Whatever
the eventual outcome of the frantic maneuvering within the
Likud party, only one man stands to benefit, and that is Benjamin
Netanyahu. And that means trouble, and plenty of it, for the
United States and the region. His prior stint as Prime Minister
was marked by a consistent effort to undermine the Oslo agreements
in every way possible. The settlements were rapidly and aggressively
expanded; a housing complex for Jewish immigrants was built
on seized land in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem; and,
even more provocatively, a tunnel was dug underneath the Arab
section of Old Jerusalem. At the end of the rioting, dozens
were dead, and the prospects of a peaceful solution were shattered.
When militant right-wingers occupied a house, in a different
section of East Jersusalem, Netanyahu's police stood by and
nodded approvingly: it wasn't long before the IDF was standing
guard at the doorway, defending what the militants had won.
This
underscores the ideological essence of the man, rooted, many
believe, in the mindset of his famous father, Benzion Netanyahu,
an Israeli historian. As a 1997 PBS News Hour profile
pointed out:
"The
elder Netanyahu has written that Israel owes its independence
from the British in 1948 not so much to diplomacy but to the
armed attacks, sabotage, and bombings carried out by Israel's
underground, called
the Irgun."
Which
brings us back to Exodus, the movie, wherein a subplot
dealt with the internal struggle within the early Zionist
movement between the two rival underground organizations fighting
for a Jewish state in Israel. In
the Uris novel, the Haganah, which practiced a policy
of restraint and didn't attack the Brits, were the good guys,
and the Irgun was accurately depicted as a
gang of homicidal nut-balls whose terrorism engulfed one-and-all
and whose dominance would have proved a disaster for the nascent
Israeli state. Paul Newman, in the lead role as Haganah chief,
had to fight not only the surrounding Arab states, but also
the internal enemies who practiced terrorism and discredited
the cause. But the heroic theme of Exodus, the ebullient anthem
of American support for Israel, has now been drowned out by
the sour note of Netanyahu, who looks to the dark side of
Zionism for inspiration.
It
is, indeed, to the dark side that Prime Minister Sharon is
turning, in desperation – and also, it seems, heaving a sigh
of relief – upon the collapse of the Likud-Labor government
of "national unity." What provoked the collapse
of the government is often described as a disagreement over
the budget, but and this is true, but it doesn't tell the
whole truth. For the particular budget item that provoked
the Labor walk-out was about $147
million in subsidies for Jewish settlements. Naturally,
the socialist Laborites wouldn't dream of returning this money
back to Israeli (and American!) taxpayers, and give
a much-needed shot in the arm to their rapidly sinking economy:
Instead, they proposed the money be doled out to pensioners,
single-parent families, and students. Uncle Sam would still
be picking up the bill – and that's what the push in Congress
to get Israel $10 billion more in "aid" is all about.
To
Israel's defenders, I say this: billions for defense, but
not one cent for settlements! Isn't that a principle we
can all agree on?
The
Israeli budget crisis wasn't over money, per se, but centered
around the question of consolidation versus expansion. The
Laborites were saying: let's take care of the people who are
already here. The Likudniks and their ultra-rightist sometime-allies
replied: let's push the boundaries of the nation and American
patience by going on the offensive. The Right won the vote,
and that's when Labor walked out, leaving the rightists to
quarrel among themselves.
Sharon's
first act was to meet with the representatives of the extremist
Yisrael Beiteinu Party, which consists of three ultra-nationalist
factions: Yisrael Beiteinu, Molodet, and Tkuma, who constitute
what I have called Israel's
Taliban. Their political program amounts to the Israeli
version of national socialism, a full-fledged fascist movement
lacking only the snappy uniforms: the forced transfer of the
Palestinians out of the occupied territories, the annexation
of the West Bank and Gaza, and the creation of a "Greater
Israel" as the dominant regional power.
That
this is bad news for the United States, not to mention the
peoples of the region, might go without saying: except that
Israel's
amen corner in the U.S., which wields such influence in
the halls of Congress, is bound and determined to whitewash
the dark flower of evil taking root in Israeli soil. One could
argue that the growing popularity of Israeli fundamentalism
is but a consequence of Palestinian terror, although there
are others who claim the roots of the expulsion idea have
a long tradition in Zionist thought, and is implicit in the
Zionist program itself. But whatever the origins of this noxious
growth, the reality is that American aid and support is sustaining
it, encouraging it, and enabling it to develop further. We
unleashed Sharon, and now we are getting Netanyahu – and a
growing reaction to American calls for restraint that can
only be called anti-Americanism.
Just
as the Irgun attacked not only Arabs but also the British,
so the hostility of the new Irgun-istas is equally
ecumenical, aimed not only at the Arabs but also the Americans.
While Sharon
is quick to assure Washington that a narrowly-based right-wing
government won't change its foreign policies one iota, this
kind of promise cannot be kept: Yisrael Beintenu pulled out
of the government when Sharon, under pressure from the Americans,
refrained from executing Arafat and annexing the West Bank.
What happens the next time the IDF moves into Palestinian
territory, and comes under pressure to withdraw? It all depends
on whether the Americans come through with their expected
invasion of Iraq.
Only
Bush can save Sharon, now. Under cover of a regional conflagration,
the ultra-nationalist dream of a Greater Israel could be quickly
accomplished. While all eyes are on Baghdad, what is happening
on the West Bank could be contained to the back pages, a sidebar,
at most, to the main event. Pressure on the President to make
war is increasing, with hotheads like Charles Krauthammer
demanding
to know why the President is "going wobbly"
while others
confidently predict the outbreak of hostilities sometime early
next year, or perhaps
even sooner.
Why
war? Why now? For the answer, forget about oil – Iraq's oil
isn't going anywhere, but the Sharon government may not last
out the year. Look to the internal political dynamics of the
U.S., and specifically within the President's own party, where
a coalition of Christian fundamentalists and the neoconservative
friends of Israel – who rationalize a radical policy
of expansionism as "self-defense" – are beating
the war drums for all they're worth.
The
idea of a Jewish state that is also a fascist state is an
oxymoron, one that could only exist in the Bizarro
World of our post-911
reality, in all its epic ugliness. And yet that is what
is evolving, as the Israeli ultra-right mobilizes to seize
power. Indeed, the present government has some of the tone
of a military junta, with the new defense minister, General
Shaul Mofaz, hot off the battlefield of the West Bank,
where his ruthless tactics reaped a fresh crop of suicide
bombers – and the cheers of the right-wing.
Is
this is how the dream evoked by the theme song of Exodus is
fated to end: as a Yiddish version of the "Horst
Wessel Lied"?
Israel
is under attack, alright, and not just from Arab suicidal
bombers. It is also under attack from the suicidal policies
of its increasingly wacky leaders, who have done nothing but
kill Palestinian teenagers, make demands on the Bush administration,
and actively undermined the fight against Al Qaeda on the
diplomatic-political front, as
well as covertly.
When
will Washington, and the American people, say: "Enough!"?
Postscript
to my last column
In
my zeal to make a point about the neoconization of the Left,
I failed to mention a major counter-example. Alexander Cockburn
is a columnist for The Nation who is the exact opposite
of David Corn (whose
article attacking The American Conservative, and
trivializing my own contribution to the first issue, I answered
in my column). Cockburn, our sometime columnist and a friend
of mine, has steadfastly stood up for the intellectual and
political integrity of a left-right alliance against the War
Party, and I was remiss not to mention him.
My
point, however, is that the social democratic left, of which
Corn is an exemplar, is essentially hostile to Cockburn’s
populist, anti-authoritarian brand of leftism. It’s no coincidence
that the left-social democrats and the neo-Stalinists of the
International Action Center/A.N.S.W.E.R. group are hostile
– each for their own reasons – to libertarianism. But I get
too many letters from lefties who read me faithfully to believe
that either Corn or the Workers World Party represents the
rank-and-file of the American Left.
–
Justin Raimondo
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