The Israel I Was Fighting For

Sixty years ago, when I was fighting for Israel during its war of independence, I won a lot of respect. Now many of my liberal colleagues, including Jewish ones, raise their eyebrows. They hoped for an Israel that is citadel of individual rights, a land in which social justice prevails as laid out by the Prophets, and a peace-making nation--a sort of a Switzerland in the Middle East, only more enlightened.

These liberals are ready to trade land (that is, Israeli land) for peace; a fine idea--if peace can be had. They claim that they 'know' (especially if they toured the Holy Land for a week or more) that when Hamas states that it seeks the destruction of Israel, that this is merely rhetorical stance and nothing more than posturing to improve its hand in the forthcoming peace deal. They are sure that if Israeli leaders would only agreed to sit down and talk with Hamas (and Syria and maybe even Iran), differences could be worked out. If not, they maintain, the U.S. must "lean" more on Israel.

About the last thing my colleagues want to hear about is 1948, when seven Arab armies invaded the day-old Israel. They know little about the large numbers of Israelis killed during the War of Independence, and the still larger number who were maimed and wounded. (My Pal Mach unit started with eleven hundred members and end up with four hundred).

During the Six Day War, when Israel again repelled its attackers with great courage and sacrifice, my colleagues still congratulated me; they still could take some pride in victorious Jewish fighters. Today, Israeli incursions into Gaza, the oppressive occupation of the West Bank, the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians, are viewed as akin to Bush's invasion of Iraq, or worse. When I now recount the days in Jerusalem when Jordanian tanks were closing in and we had nothing that could stop them, and suggest that the same holds now for the missiles Syria, Hezbollah and Iran are readying, my many liberals are quick to suggest that if Israel would make peace with the Palestinians, all the other nations in the Middle East would fall in line. "The road to Tehran [Beirut, Damascus, Ryadh] runs through Jerusalem" is their favorite cliché.

Above all, they want for Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders, not merely to stop the oppressive occupation but also to ensure that Israel will remain a democratic state. They hold that as long as Israel contains within its borders a large and rapidly multiplying Palestinian population, to become a majority in the near future, Israel will be forced to give up either its democratic nature or-- its Jewishness. Given that they were never subject to a mortar barrage, or had to take out a machine gun nest, my colleagues pay little attention to the small number of days--or should I say hours?--that Israel would survive if the West Bank would become a much extended version of rocket-launching Gaza.

Moreover, for many liberals, withdrawing to the 1967 borders is but the first step. Their next concern, very much echoing other multicultural agendas, is for Israel to cease being a Jewish state; to become a state in which the Arab citizens of Israel (about 17% of the total population) have the exactly the same rights as Jews--and the state is culturally neutral. Never mind that as it is Arabs in Israel already have many more rights--de jure and de facto--than they have in any Arab state. Israeli Arabs vote freely and are represented in the Knesset by their elected officials. Muslim religious functionaries are free to arrange all personal matters (marriage, divorce, burial, etc.) as they wish, just as Jews are. Still many liberals want to strip Israel from any remaining Jewish features. They are so inclined because in their mind this is what a full respect for the rights of Arab Israelis commands and because these liberals are mainly secularists and deeply offended by the fundamentalist Rabbis who do command undue influence and a bunch of privileges in Israel. These liberals ignore that separation of state and religion is largely a French-American ideal, not established in most democracies, and that all nations have some kind of cultural identity, indeed often one that has a religious tinge. (For instance, in many democratic countries, only Christian holidays are national holidays).

All this makes me reexamine what I did fight for (and would again), why my son volunteered to serve in the Israeli Air Force, and why my granddaughter just completed her basic training. The need for Jews to have their own state is not smaller today than it was in 1948, given the very widespread anti-Semitism in the four corners of the earth. Moreover, by my light, Jews have the same rights as other ethnic groups all over the world, from Romanians to Indonesians, from Jamaicans to the people of East Timor, to embed their community in state, and for the Jewish state to maintain some, already very attenuated, cultural identity.

I strongly favor the kind of peace deal with the Palestinians that Ehud Barak championed and for which Yitzhak Rabin died. However, such a deal must entail stopping attacks on Israel and threatening its very existence. If not, I fear, and I know what I am writing about, there will be many more casualties on both sides, all God's children, all people who deserve to live in peace.

Amitai Etzioni served in the Pal Mach in 1946-48 and in the Israeli army from 1948-50. His first book (in Hebrew) is called A Diary of a Commando Soldier (Available online in at http://dspace.wrlc.org/handle/1961/137 Search: "Diary of a Commando"). He can be contacted at comnet@gwu.edu