Time for the Jews to stop being tribal

By Jonathan Power

LONDON (JP): "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?" Shylock's lament (in William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice) could be the epitaph for Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's beleaguered prime minister.

Through the fog of Netanyahu's war--a battle that appears to rage just as fiercely against liberal-minded Jews within Israel as it does with the Palestinians outside--there is the unbending conviction of a man who believes absolutely that right is on the side of his deeply wronged people in the historic divide between Jew and Arab.

To serve this cause he dispenses a bittersweet mixture of justice and revenge. As Golda Meir and Menahem Begin believed before him, not to seek compensation in blood and territory for three millennia of wrongs is in some profound way to forsake the deepest calling of one's religious conviction.

It is a militancy of a deeply tribal kind that carries in its certainties the deadly ingredients of irrationality and unconditionality. It is uncompromising in goal, only allowing for deviation as a tactical means of surmounting an obstacle or foiling a countermove. It remains the religion of the Old Testament, a part of their religious heritage that most of Christendom has long sidelined, probably an overwhelming majority of modern day Jews have diluted and, it should be added, a good many Moslems too.

The truth is Netanyahu is a profoundly alienated figure. His view on Israel's long-term mission is a minority one. He does not command a majority in Israel to sabotage the Oslo-negotiated peace with the Palestinians. At best he has a narrow majority (a mere 29,000 votes decided the election in his favor) only to make a more watertight deal in terms of ensuring Israel's long-term defenses. Poll after poll make clear an overwhelming majority of Israelis want a durable live-and-let-live-peace with the Palestinians, as respected neighbours.

Netanyahu's fervor, although it draws its militaristic self- righteousness as much from the deep historical well of the wrongs done to Jews by Christendom over centuries as it does from the present hostility of the Muslim world, is now totally out of step with the march of western civilization. Aggressive tribal alignments are no longer acceptable. When they do erupt as in ex- Yugoslavia there is a determined effort to explain it away as Balkan marginalism, exacerbated by years of communist misrule.

Thus, the Israelis have now to look deep into themselves and decide not only do they want to make peace with Palestine but do they want to be part and parcel of contemporary western civilization, to which in art, music and literature, not to mention economic and scientific endeavor, they have over centuries contributed more than their fair share?

Or are they a tribal people from another era, a Semitic people of the desert who live by the simple rules of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, who will not countenance the greatest achievement of the twentieth century that, after two terrible wars, there is now discernible progress towards a practice of world order that is defined more by law, arbitration and diplomacy than by the sword.

Before President Bill Clinton came into office America, through a long succession of presidents, had tried to be a calming and civilizing influence on Israel. Sometimes actively, sometimes rather passively, but usually usefully. In contrast Clinton seems willing to abrogate this historic role and too often leave Netanyahu's government to its own devices.

Although the Clinton Administration has finally got round to deploring Netanyahu's decision to build a Jewish settlement in occupied east Jerusalem it has twice vetoed, otherwise unanimous, resolutions at the Security Council condemning the move. Less and less, it seems, is America prepared to use its muscle and its public voice--not least the $3 billion it gives Israel every year--to keep Israel from reverting to tribalism.

Washington is doubly to be faulted. First, on the merits of the issues at hand and secondly because the reason for the element of caution in American policy in previous years is now an anachronism. In the Cold War years Soviet military and rhetorical power provided support for potential Arab military actions against Israel, tilting the balance of power in the Middle East dangerously against Israel. Now this is no longer so Washington should be free to become the honest-broker it always strived to be.

Clinton has allowed himself through lack of leadership to become a prisoner of the highly active minority in the American Jewish community that are militantly pro-Netanyahu. They are not in the mainstream of informed western Jewish opinion, much less the mainstream of non-Jewish opinion.

Thus the struggle to de-tribalise Israeli politics is for the moment being lost. Under Netanyahu's stewardship an ancient wrong is to be met by a present day revenge--and no one with any power will gainsay him.