June 10, 2007
TOO BLUE:
Israelis ask what they have gained since Six-Day War (Steven Erlanger, June 9, 2007, NY Times)
[A]s Israel marks 40 years after an extraordinary victory, there is far less exultation than questioning about the war's impact on the country, and grave doubts about the future. There is a debate about what kind of country Israel is, about the impact those 40 years of development, immigration, war, settlement and occupation have had on the dreams of those who chose to make their lives here. And there is a widespread feeling that both left and right are out of answers. [...]"What everyone feels, no matter their politics or their understanding of the 1967 war, is a deep disappointment in themselves," said Yossi Klein Halevi, an Israeli writer and analyst on the center right. "As a people, we haven't carried on this story with the gravitas it deserves. We've been flippant. There's a sense that all of us have abrogated responsibility for the Jewish story that brought us here."
It is true, he said, that the early Zionists talked of building a "normal country." But "they meant a nation externally normalized and internally exceptional."
"Sometimes it feels we've done the reverse," he said. "We didn't want this to be one more mundane country with a mundane morality."
Of all people, one might have expected the Jews to avoid the cancer of nationalism. But, as Eric Hoffer noted: "The manner in which a mass movement starts...can also have an effect on the duration and mode of termination of the active phase of the movement." It may be that a founding so wrapped up in ethnic identity was destined to forfeit a grounding in ideas. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 10, 2007 12:29 PM
"It may be that a founding so wrapped up in ethnic identity was destined to forfeit a grounding in ideas."
... and it may be their abandonment of their religion has much to do with this. After all, it's their religion which affords them the right to live in Israel.
Yes, Judaism is the ideas.
Posted by: oj at June 10, 2007 4:51 PMJewish? Race or religion? Question without a definitive answer.
Posted by: erp at June 10, 2007 5:13 PMHardly a race. The recent Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia and India belie that premise.
Posted by: obc at June 10, 2007 7:56 PMTheir acceptance depended on a rabbinical determination that they were Jews by blood.
Posted by: oj at June 10, 2007 10:38 PMIsraelis ask what they have gained since Six-Day War
Um, prevented the utter destruction of their country, maybe? The burning of their cities? The decimation of their citizenry? The rape of their women?
(One would at least expect the Greens to praise Gaia that the Mediterranean didn't have to, um, absorb all those millions of Jews!)
That Steven Erlanger. He one funny guy!
That NYT one funny newspaper!
As the war amply demonstrated--there is no existential threat.
Posted by: oj at June 11, 2007 6:20 AMRace doesn't depend on pigmentation. North Africans and East Indians, no matter how dark their skin color, are Caucasian after all. If Jewishness is determined by rabbis examining bloodlines, then the question is answered, Jews are a race, not a religion and Israel is saved.
Posted by: erp at June 11, 2007 7:08 AMWhat! Me worry? (with apologies....)
Posted by: Barry Meislin at June 11, 2007 8:08 AM