Israel@75
Daniel Gordis, the American born Israeli Distinguished
Fellow at Jerusalem’s Shalem College, has offered up an examination of where
Israel has succeeded and failed through the lens of its 1948 Declaration of
Independence. It is important to note here that although there is much history
in his book, it is not a history of Israel. He simply asked whether or not
Israel would today be viewed as a success or a failure in the eyes of its
founders.
Today’s Israel would give immense pleasure to its
Zionist founders. Instead of the cowering Jews of the shtetl, the average
Israeli stands upright and, although not quite “the light unto the nations” and
not necessarily loved, it is respected in the international community. Indeed,
Israel has become a regional superpower with a vibrant culture and a buoyant technology
driven economy. It is a country that stops work on Yom Kippur and even among
secular Jews it has the highest birthrate in the industrialized world.
The country has grown from the 1947 partition lines of
660,000 Jews and 600,000 Arabs to country of seven million Jews and two million
Israeli Palestinians. People today forget how close run its survival was in
1948 and that the vote to declare independence passed by a thin 6-4 majority.
Gordis also reminds us that the founders created an ethnic democracy, not a
liberal democracy. Afterall, Israel is the Jewish state. And in 1948 its goal
was survival, not prosperity. It certainly has survived and thrived.
Nevertheless, the founders would be surprised to see
that Mizrachi Jews now account for a majority of the state’s Jewish population,
a group that was then and still today that is looked down upon by the Ashkenazi
elite. The founders hoped that American Jews would move to Israel in substantial
numbers. This, as we know, did not happen. To American Jews, America is the new
Jerusalem.
The 1948 vision of Israel society was that of a
state-centered socialism. That lasted for Israel’s first 25 years, but as that
the bureaucracy ossified, in fits and starts Israel became a market economy
with a very unequal distribution of income. Nonetheless, the social safety net
is propped up by a strong universal health insurance system.
The founders would be surprised to see that the
tensions between the Israelis and Palestinians continue unabated. After 75
years there is still no end in sight. Gordis supports a two-state solution, but
that remains far off in the distance. The founders couldn’t imagine that
Israeli troops would be deployed outside of the 1948 lines for so long acting
as occupying troops. Perhaps even more shocking to the founders would be the
power of the orthodox Haredim in today’s government and how far right leaning
it is. Remember that in 1948 the Israeli right was just as secular as the
Israeli left.
Although not present at the signing of Israel’s
Declaration of Independence and hardly in the leadership, it was Menachem Begin,
heir Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Revisionism, who was most clear-eyed about Israel’s
future. To the Revisionists the antagonism coming from the Arabs would be long
lasting and that ultimately Israel’s economy would have be organized along
capitalistic lines if it were to succeed.
As an aside after reading this book and Walter Russell
Mead’s “The Arc of a Covenant,” I can’t help but thinking had the U.S. Congress
not passed the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924, there might not be an
Israel today; many of the Jews of Europe would have ended up in America, not
Israel. (See:
Reading Daniel Gordis’ book has reinforced my belief
as to what a miracle Israel is. Against all odds and with all of its fallibilities,
Israel remains a hope for the Jewish people and, in a way, for the people of
the world.
For the full Amazon URL see: Israel@75 (amazon.com)
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