Israel’s Fate
I read Ari Shavit’s book nine years ago and I just
reread it for my book club. It was better than I remembered it and given the
current political situation in Israel, the book is as timely as it was in 2013.
Shavit, a writer for the very left Haaretz newspaper, remains a geopolitical
realist despite his long history in Israel’s peace camp. He is, of course,
anti-occupation, but he fully understands the risks of having a Palestinian
state side-by-side with Israel and the existential threat coming from Iran.
Simply put withdrawing from the occupied territories will not, in of itself,
solve the Israeli/Palestinian dispute.
Instead of being a normal history, Shavit brings the
history of Israel to life with a series of vignettes starting with his great
grandfather’s trip to Israel in 1897. Herbert Bentwich was a successful British
lawyer who ultimately immigrates to Israel thus making Shavit a scion of the
Tel Aviv Ashkenazi liberal establishment.
His vignettes cover the start of the Kibbutz movement,
the creation of Israeli orange groves, the Palestinians living side-by-side
with the Israelis, the housing projects dealing with the mass immigration of
Jews post- Independence in 1948, the Dimona project which builds the Israeli
A-Bombs, a project which his chemical engineer father worked on; the massacre
of the Arab villages of Lydda in 1948, Tel Aviv nightlife in 2000, the
high-tech sector, and what today is a very timely chapter on Aryeh Deri, the
founder of the Shas Party and now a key member of Netanyahu’s government.
According to Shavit Labor Zionism ignored the Arab
population living beside them. For example, no notice of the Arab population
was mentioned in Bentwich’s travelogue. However, Zeev Jabotinsky, the founder
of Revisionist Zionism, had no illusions about the local Arab population. He
correctly foresaw conflict between the growing Jewish population and the
locals. A chapter on Jabotinsky’s successor, Menachem Begin, would have been a
helpful addition to the book.
Shavit ended his book on an optimistic note with the
arrival of Israel’s new government in 2013 led by Yair Lapid and Naftali
Bennett which he hoped would lead the country away from religious zealots and
its uninspiring politicians. Unfortunately, given the latest election Israel is
turning away from pluralism and heading in a very authoritarian direction. As
result not only does Israel face external threats; it is now threatened from
within. As Shavit notes Israel and Zionism have overcome prior challenges over
the past 125 years and let us hope it once again rises to this new challenge
and remains the miracle that it is.
For the full Amazon URL see: Israel's Fate (amazon.com)
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