Ariel Center for Policy Research (ACPR) |
The Beginning of
the End?
Policy Paper No. 54, from the book,
Until the covert beginning of this process, whose terrible overt ripening is now
taking place before our eyes, the whole Zionist enterprise stood on the solid
basis of its claim to "the historically Jewish Land of Israel", whether or not
we actually had it in our hands. The source of the moral strength and material
success of secular Zionism was in the continuity of this historical
consciousness. The drastic internal ideological reversal is the source of the
treachery that was Oslo. This was not a crime of treason against the State of
Israel (the legal punishment for which would be death if Greater Jerusalem was
also handed over in Oslo) but against the Land of Israel and against the future
of our existence in the Land for years to come.
If, in the distant past, the life of the Biblical people of Israel in its Land
began in Jericho, then its end began in Jericho too. That willing concession at
the very heart of the Land of Israel, for the first time in the history of the
State, and the transfer of Jewish settlers which will come in its wake without a
doubt, (reluctantly or by force), is the beginning of the liquidation of the
Zionist enterprise as a whole. The fate of the Zionist enterprise and the State
of Israel will be sealed, in the last analysis, by abandoning parts of the Land
of Israel, because a political entity will not last long without a moral basis,
(and all the more so the Jewish state).
Those who think lands gained in 1967 are wrongly so, out of intellectual
fairness and disgust with hypocrisy, in some cases have already arrived at the
conclusion: the entire State of Israel was born in sin and will die in sin, and
the previous owners of "Palestine" will come to settle in it. This Zionism
without Zion and Jerusalem (Jerusalem as "occupied territory" too), transforms
Jewish nationalism into colonialism.
We are told that Zionism succeeded by making concessions and compromises. True
enough, but the concessions were made out of compulsion, and the compromises
because of pressures. The reversal that has taken place since those concessions
is not political but a philosophical transformation. The inner attitude toward
the Land of Israel has changed. And after the sell-out, not one leader of public
opinion raised the question, over the heads of our joy, about the loss of the
heart of our country. Government officials continue to lie insolently (and
perhaps, foolishly, if not in their minds, then in their hearts), that Jerusalem
"will remain united and our eternal capital" -- what every intelligent person
understands as no more than cheap talk.
I wrote an article with quotations from T.S. Eliot and Haim Nahman Bialik,
instead of tearing my clothes and screaming a great and bitter scream.
For
the complete article, click
here. |