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ISRANET
DAILY BRIEFING May 8, 2008; ISRAEL @ 60 — Part II REBIRTH—T’KUMA In loving memory of Malka
z’l “The first independent
Jewish state in nineteen centuries was born in Tel Aviv.”—Front-page
headline of “A state cannot be created
by decree, but only by the force of the people and in the course of
generations. Even if all the governments of the world gave us a country,
it would be a gift of words. But if the Jewish people will go and build
Eretz Israel, the Jewish state will become a reality, a fact.”—Haym
Weizman “‘Accordingly, we the members of the National Council, representing the Jewish community of Eretz Israel and the Zionist movement, are here assembled on the day of the termination of the British mandate over Eretz Israel and by virtue of our natural and historic right and on the strength of the resolution of the United Nations general assembly, hereby declare the establishment of the Jewish State, to be known as the State of Israel.’ Thus, the thirty odd signatories rose one by one and set their names on the parchment scroll. The Proclamation on the rise of the State of Israel had been written into the life and law of nations. The words rang out strong and defiant, across the humble museum hall. HATIKVAH, the anthem of hope, burst into the entire Eretz Israel and into history!”—Abba Eban, My People, My Country Israel’s birth and the end of British rule were not the whole story of this historic day. The Arab armies were ready to attack, to get at the newborn State of Israel’s throat. Within eight hours of Israel’s declaration of independence the Arab armies had begun their attack, from all directions: from the north, the Lebanese armies, the Syrians from the northeast, the Iraq cohorts from the center and from the south, the powerful Egyptian army drove towards Tel Aviv. The Yishuv stood up confidently against the challenge of the invading Arab cohorts and the vicious political campaign led by the infamous Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Said Haj Amin El. The sense of national identity, rooted in the Bible, held firm. Jews never ceased to remember their ancient writings, not only in the spirit of religious belief, but also and mainly as they taught distinctive national roots: “…for Torah shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and he shall judge between many peoples… And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war anymore” (Micah, 4:2-3). For all intents and purposes, Jewish life in Eretz Israel was, from the beginning, a “national life”. It was expressed in the basic emotions of the settlers, in their effort and keen desire to rehabilitate the country, not only to improve their economic and political situation, but to further the cause of the nation as a whole. The result of their efforts, sacrifice and devotion was the conversion of a desolate land into a flourishing and productive country. The adoption of Hebrew as a spoken language and the creation of many cultural institutions inaugurated an era of profound spiritual revival, and of a new national consciousness whose reverberating effects on the Jewish and non-Jewish world at large were entirely disproportionate to the number of the early pioneers. These pioneers were resolutely convinced that theirs was not a utopian vision, but rather a destiny, one forging a new era of freedom for the Jewish nation, for world Jewry and for all of mankind: the creation of a Jewish State, the State of Israel! The Arab neighbours sought strenuously to destroy the foundations of the Jewish State. They defied—and continue to defy—the legality as well as the moral, human, and political validity of the Jewish State. The Arabs believed that force and terrorism would undo the creation of the Jewish State. Today the Arab states are united in only one respect: they are opposed to the creation and existence of a Jewish State. Victory in the 1948 war did not end Israel’s fight for survival: 1956, 1967 and 1973 brought wars intended by the Arab powers to destroy the young Jewish State. Today the terrorist armies of Hezbollah and Hamas, among other assorted thuggish groups, supported by Iran and Syria, continue to threaten the daily lives of Jews in their homeland. And the revival and spread of antisemitism and of anti-Israel and “anti-Zionist” hate campaigns the world over, remind us how fortunate we are to have a homeland, and how vital it is to support our State of Israel, uniquely Jewish. As we celebrate Israel’s sixtieth anniversary we have witnessed a radical shift from political powerlessness to sovereign power, from military weakness to the region’s most modern and sophisticated army, capable of responding forcefully to aggression and of safeguarding Israel’s civilians from its enemies. Miraculously, after 2,000 years of Diaspora scattering, today the largest Jewish community in the world lives and flourishes in Israel. “And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land. And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before the sword. And five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight, and your enemies shall fall before the sword” (Leviticus 26:6-8). Long live the State of Israel! Long live the Jewish People! Am Yisrael Chai! (Baruch Cohen is Research Chairman of CIJR) 60
YEARS ON THE MAP Israel’s major accomplishment in 60 years of independence is surviving—staying on the map as a sovereign state, with equal status among the nations of the world. The many economic and cultural achievements have helped to contribute to this survival, while the desire for peace with our neighbors remains unfulfilled, but the triumph is that we are here. The primary goal of Zionism was and remains the re-establishment of sovereignty and self-determination for the Jewish people in our homeland. In addition to fulfilling the 2,000-year-old desire to return to Eretz Yisrael, the history of persecution (particularly in Christian Europe), expulsions, and pogroms culminating in the Holocaust demonstrated the dangers of dependence on others. In the modern world, the Jewish people could only survive, both physically and culturally, by regaining and maintaining national independence, equal to the Christian nations of Europe, the Moslem nations of the Middle East, and the others across the globe. The alternative was to disappear from the stage, along with the richness of the Hebrew language, and the heritage of 4000 years of Jewish history and tradition… For the Arab and Moslem “rejectionists” (including the Iranians, who are claiming leadership of this group), the idea of Jewish sovereignty in the “Moslem Middle East” was and remains unacceptable. This fundamental conflict, and not differences over borders, post-1967 settlements and occupation, is the core of the conflict and has led to the wars of aggression and mass terror attacks against Israel. This rejectionism is often expressed through proposals for the “one-state solution,” the nullification of the Jewish symbols of the Israeli state (including the calendar and flag), and the demand that millions of Arabs who claim refugee status from 1948 have a “right of return,” and thereby create an Arab majority. Similarly, the attempt to deny the 4,000-year-history of Jewish Jerusalem, as expressed in Palestinian textbooks, and by Yasir Arafat at the Camp David summit with President Clinton in 2000, also reflects this effort [to] reverse Israel’s status as an independent Jewish state. The campaigns in Western Europe and elsewhere that use labels such as “apartheid” and “racist” in reference to Israel and Zionism, and the strategy of boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) are part of the efforts to deny the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty. The same is true for the blanket condemnations of Israeli responses to terror attacks and the attempt to deny Israel the right to self-defense enjoyed by all other sovereign and independent nations. Similarly, the false claims of “war crimes” and “collective punishment” are used constantly to demonize Israel in the United Nations and by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that exploit the rhetoric of morality to demonize Israel. This was also the main objective of the infamous 2001 Durban Conference, and the planned 2009 Review Conference, to be led by Iran, Libya and Cuba. The delegitimation and demonization of Zionism, and the singling out of Israel for special treatment, while erasing the context of Palestinian terrorism and other violent attacks, have become the modern form of anti-Semitism.… In the face of this intense and ongoing hostility, Israel’s ability not only to survive, but to thrive, is the main story marking 60 years of independence.… [P]rogress towards the acceptance of Jewish sovereignty equality among the nations of the world is painfully slow, and the struggle has been and will continue to be exhausting. But there are no better choices—there are no alternatives for Israel and the Jewish people. (Gerald Steinberg is the
Executive Director of NGO Monitor and THE
STATE OF THE NATION AT 60 When our first child was born, the midwife, after a cursory inspection to establish gender, welcomed him into the world with the Eeyore-esque summation: “Another soldier.” He’s 16 now and, indeed, only two years from putting on the uniform of his country’s defense forces. We never remotely doubted that Israel would still need an army to protect itself by the time our children would be old enough to serve. We had hoped, though, as all sane Israelis have always hoped, that with the passage of the years, our sovereign Jewish presence in this region would gradually become more tranquil, that our neighbors would come to accept us, and that by the time our kids reached 18, Israel would no longer be engaged in a day-to-day struggle to ensure its very survival. But our eldest, born shortly after Saddam’s unprovoked Scud attacks and in the midst of the first intifada, has lived through years blighted by the same intermittent wars as faced by previous generations and by levels of terrorism more ruthlessly orchestrated than ever previously known, and is reaching maturity in a Jewish state arguably threatened as never before by the Israel-hating Iran’s march toward a nuclear weapons capability. As David Ben-Gurion told the first new Israelis and the rest of the world 60 years ago, what we were doing on that May day in 1948 was exercising our thoroughly “natural right” to retake our place among the nations—to reestablish a Jewish state for the Jewish people in the historic Jewish homeland. Certainly, that long overdue mandate for Israel’s revival was never going to be accepted with delight by the impacted local Arab population, but the international community did attempt a Solomonic division of Britain’s mandatory territory that was intended to feature a first-ever sovereign entity for those local Arabs, too. The fact was that, with mutual goodwill, the envisaged two-state solution was eminently viable. With mutual goodwill, it still is.… Israel truly did stretch out its hand in the hope of neighborly relations, as it had promised it would in the Declaration of Independence—delightedly endorsing president Sadat’s Knesset plea for an end to wars; signing a peace treaty with the Hashemite kingdom just 100 days after King Hussein’s first public embrace with prime minister Yitzhak Rabin; and attempting to consummate Yasser Arafat’s duplicitous reconciliation overtures. And when it had to, it defended itself, at frequently tragic cost. For a full quarter century—from foundation through to the Yom Kippur War—we fought a series of wars in which defeat would have spelled the end of Israel. For the next quarter century or so, we wanted to believe that the longed-for normalization was finally coming to pass. But on its 60th birthday, Israel is slowly internalizing that we have entered a third era in which the legitimacy of our very presence here—so compelling and undeniable as to have won over the UN majority in 1947—is now widely challenged and doubted, not only by perennially hostile states in this region, but by erstwhile champions of Israel as well.… [W]e have not reached a remotely workable consensus… in our vision of the basic dimensions of this state. The conquest in 1967 of Judea and Samaria, the heartlands of the biblical Jewish nation, may have been regarded by some erstwhile Orthodox doubters as proof of divine support for the reborn sovereign experiment. But we have spent 40 years since then—most of the lifespan of our new nation—tearing ourselves apart over whether to absorb some or all of that territory into our state, failing to agree on how to reconcile ancient rights and ties, current security needs and future demographics.… Israel at 60 needs to decide what it wants. By most, though not all, demographic estimates, we lack the numbers to long maintain a Jewish majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. But we have seen the bitter consequences of unilaterally relinquishing territory in south Lebanon and Gaza. So what is the blueprint we seek to realize for the West Bank? Until we formulate an answer to that question on a national level, we will be unable to empower the appropriate politicians, and will continue to suffer from short-term, narrow-minded leadership, and international antipathy. Reaching our own consensus about the permanent dimensions of this country carries absolutely no guarantee that any such vision will be realized in the foreseeable future. The Second Lebanon War and the daily rocket assaults from Hamastan in Gaza have shattered the illusion that Israel can determine its own fate unilaterally. But an Israel of unified aspiration and purpose will be better able to encourage moderate interlocutors, to explain its goals and needs and, most importantly, to defend itself against the uncompromising Islamist mindset emblemized by Iran. By virtue of our geography and our religion, we are on the front line of the battle between the free world and the death-cult interpretation of Islam that preaches a despicable personal obligation to kill and be killed for Allah. Already, Iran is essentially encamped on two of our borders via Hizbullah to the north and Hamas to the south. Nowhere in Israel is beyond the range of its missiles. Few in Israel believe this country can survive, much less continue to thrive, in the shadow of a nuclear Iran. Certainly, there is no prospect for moderation prevailing in this region if Iran attains a nuclear capability and becomes a terrifyingly dominant regional power.… It is fervently to be hoped that the latest intake of free-world leaders are not duped into believing that Islamist “grievance” can be ameliorated through short-sighted policies on Iran, Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Any hope of reconciliation in this region, and of the defeat of Islamic extremism around the world, it should be obvious, hinges on the thwarting of the rapacious ambitions of the current regime in Teheran. Last September, it has now been confirmed, Israel was moved to act to halt Syria on the brink of a nuclear breakthrough. It should not fall to Israel to block the nuclear goals of this Iranian regime, whose president has emphatically declared war on the current world order, warning the “monopolistic powers” at the UN General Assembly last year to “return from the path of arrogance and obedience to Satan” or face “the same calamities that befell the people of the distant past.” A few weeks ago, my eldest son and his soccer team went to Sderot to play a match against the local youngsters. It was a happily banal encounter—a hard-fought game on a bumpy pitch with some dubious refereeing and a few faint sparks of talent. The new Magen David Adom station across the street was quiet and the concrete protective “cubes” at either end of the field weren’t needed because there were no Kassam alarms. As the two sweaty teams left the pitch, their talk, rather than of the rocket threat with which Sderot has now been forced to live for years, was of late tackles and missed goals. An uneventful game of soccer for pre-army teens in an Israel turning 60. Surely that, too, is our natural right
Yom Huledet Sameach, Happy Birthday Israel! CIJR's daily "ISRANET BRIEFING"
is available by fax and e-mail. The daily ISRANET BRIEFING is a service of CIJR. We hope that you find it useful and that you will support it and our pro-Israel educational work by forwarding a minimum $36.00 tax-deductible contribution [please send a cheque or VISA/Mastercard information to CIJR (see cover page for address)]. All donations include a membership-subscription to our respected quarterly ISRAFAX print magazine, which will be mailed to your home. CIJR's Briefing series attempts to convey a wide variety of opinions on Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world for its readers' educational and research purposes. Reprinted articles and documents express the opinion of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the Institute.
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