Turning Israel Around

By Yitzhak Klein

Even bad situations have opportunities. In order to identify and exploit them one needs a little toughness of mind and spirit.

The editors of Israel National News have kindly invited me to blog for you. My object in this venture is to share with you my sense of Israeli society “from the inside”—domestic politics, culture, morals and morale, where the country is going and what its chances are of surviving the trip, and most important—What Is To Be Done.

I’ve had many conversations with dedicated people in Israel and abroad who fear for Israel after disengagement and a lost war in Lebanon. I’ve heard a lot of fatalism, a lot of quiet despair: “Nothing we try is going to work, they’ll never let us change anything.”

Things are indeed pretty bad, and most Israelis realize it, including the people who get their opinions from Ha’aretz. But neither fatalism nor despair are warranted. Any objective survey of matters is bound to be less black than the counsels of despair. Even bad situations have opportunities. In order to identify and exploit them one needs a little toughness of mind and spirit.                                                                      

So let’s take a survey. Israel has dedicated terrorist groups on its borders in Gaza and Lebanon, against whom, for various insufficient reasons, its government is afraid to fight. Behind the terrorists is Syria, which is trying to rebuild an army worthy of the name. Behind them are the Iranians, who are building a bomb and will acquire one unless someone stops them. Beyond them are the growing numbers of antisemites worldwide who think the Jews have another holocaust coming. None of that constitutes an unmanageable threat to Israel’s survival, not even the bomb.

The real threat to Israel, the only thing that can permit any of those external threats to succeed, is—Israel. The country’s political institutions don’t work. Its statesmen and opinion leaders are demoralized; they harbor wild and unfounded hopes that Israel’s enemies will someday decide they really like her, which they make the basis of their policy, coupled with profound fear of acknowledging and countering what those enemies are actually doing, which is plotting to destroy her. They hate, fear and discriminate against those of their countrymen who think differently, and fear and hatred have driven them to do things that undermine the very legitimacy of Israel’s regime. Many of the leaders are corrupt. The country seems to have come to a dead end, ethically, ideologically, institutionally, politically. This moral and spiritual dead end, which threatens to stymie anything constructive Israel might do on its own behalf, is the real threat to the country’s survival.

And it’s also an opportunity, actually, the biggest we’ve had so far.            

This moral and spiritual dead end, which threatens to stymie anything constructive Israel might do on its own behalf, is the real threat to the country’s survival.

And it’s also an opportunity, actually, the biggest we’ve had so far.

The people who have brought Israel to this pass, the politicians, petty manipulators, and opinion leaders, the “they” who control (for now) the levers of power in the country, used to be sure they knew what was best. Anyone who thought differently was smothered in a wave of ridicule laced with acid. A lot of that self-confidence has evaporated. Many of these people are acutely aware that ordinary Israelis have lost confidence in them. Israelis know they’re at a dead end, which is an improvement on the past, when they didn’t even know it. Now they need someone to show them how to turn around.

There are two main challenges. The first is to show ordinary Israelis and people in the Jewish communities abroad just what the institutions currently leading Israel and the ideas that animate the people who occupy them are worth. We should encourage them to compare where their leaders promised to take them with where Israel’s actually ended up.

The second is to articulate an alternative vision of how Israel should act, in foreign and domestic policy both, and indeed of what kind of society Israel should be: A society committed to the values and the interests of the Jewish people, just, fair and honest within, offering no harm to those abroad willing to keep the peace, decisive and unforgiving toward those who won’t. In fact, a Jewish society, since all those things are founded in Jewish ethics.

“The rest is interpretation, go and learn,” said Rabbi Akiva to the fellow who wanted to learn the entire Torah on one foot. I cannot pretend I know more about this vast subject than the next guy, though I may be advantageously placed to pick some pertinent information. Join me in the weeks ahead in following how these two challenges fare in Israeli society today. Your comments are welcome, though I can’t promise to respond to every one, or to respond onsite.

Dr Yitzhak Klein is Director of the Israel Policy Center, a public-policy institute in Jerusalem. He can be reached at yklein@merkazmedini.org .