In recent weeks the mostly left-leaning news
media have published articles about the turbulence of this year’s elections in
Israel with such handwringing titles as “Is the Israeli left doomed to
marginalisation?,” “The Decline of the
Israeli Left,” and “Whatever Happened
to the Israeli Left?” But if one really wants to educate oneself
deeply and broadly about this shift in the tiny democracy’s political landscape,
one can hardly do better than to read Mordechai Nisan’s new book, The
Crack-Up of the Israeli Left, published by Mantua Books. In it, Dr. Nisan brilliantly
dissects the rise of the Right and the decline of the Left in the Jewish state.
To quote from the book cover’s description, it details how “the Left detached
its moorings from reality and principle, raised its voice against the Zionist
enterprise, and chose surrender to the Arab enemy.”
If anyone is
qualified to expound upon Israel’s political and cultural battlegrounds, it’s Mordechai
Nisan. Dr. Nisan (with a doctorate in Political Studies from McGill University)
has been a teacher and consultant for a number of academic and public
institutions in Israel, including Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he
taught Middle East Studies for 35 years. Among his many books are Toward
a New Israel: The Jewish State and the Arab Question (1992), Only
Israel West of the River: The Jewish State and the Palestinian Question (2011), and Politics
and War in Lebanon (2015). He has written articles for The Jerusalem Post, Israel
National News, Global Affairs, Middle East Journal, and many other
publications. He has also been an activist for Jewish settlement in the
territories of Judea and Samaria.
Dr. Nisan was kind
enough to take time to answer some questions for FrontPage Mag.
Mark
Tapson: You
begin your book by describing Israel as “a fable and a myth, but also a Great
Truth.” What do you mean by that?
Thus, the
distinction between reality and imagination, truth and fable, collapses in the
dynamic Jewish Return to the Land of Israel. This is the secret of the founding
or re-founding of the state of Israel in 1948. A culture that has lost myth,
wrote Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, "has lost its natural
healthy creativity." Israel's myth lives on, and so does Israel.
MT: What IS “the crackup of the Israeli left”?
MN: The Israeli Left is stuck in a deep moral
and political crisis. Its cyclical downturn has degenerated into ideological rigidity
(against the Land of Israel) and political arrogance (against the citizens of
Israel). Rootless leftist elites, who are entrenched in the media, academia,
the arts, and the judiciary, parade secularism against tradition, vaunting a
pro-Palestinian political narrative and having abandoned a pro-Israel one. The more radical elements in the Labor and
Meretz parties severed their spiritual ties to the vision of a proud Jewish
state, as when they opposed the 2018 Basic Law recognizing "Israel as the
nation-state of the Jewish people."
This Leftist
"crack-up" includes a long list of political pathologies: siding with
the BDS travesty, charging Israel with fascism and Nazi-like policies, refusing
to sing the national anthem, employing blood libel terminology to denigrate
Jewish settlers, praising Palestinian enemies as peace-loving, and trivializing
the dangerous consequences of territorial withdrawal. Leftist incoherence and
despair have cost them votes, with the nationalist-rightist Likud Party
dominating Israeli politics for decades, since 1977.
MT: To confront the Palestinian “war is peace” mindset
toward Israel, you state that “Israel is in need of a culture of war to secure
its future.” Can you elaborate on that?
MN: The Israel Defense Forces, with an array of
intelligence and cyber capacities, are on 24/7 alert since the day Israel arose
in 1948; and poised to defend the country from threat, attack, and terrorism by
Iran and Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah. For its part,
Islam is a religion of war – as Ayatollah Khomeini said; but this does not
prevent the Palestinian war donning the mask of peace as a strategy of deception.
Israel enlists and
trains its youth for military service and instills love for the homeland, to
fight and sacrifice to protect its citizens. This is not a sign of militarism,
rather a call for realism and vigilance. When I say that Israel must cultivate
a culture of war, despite Judaism in its biblical, prophetic, and rabbinic
sources teaching that the highest human value is peace, I am speaking about a
patriotic spirit for the defense and survival of Israel.
MT: You refer to the 1993 Oslo Accord as a
“swindle,” “plotted in darkness” and “abundant in Israeli hubris.” What did the
Accords lead to instead of peace and democracy?
MN: The 1993 Oslo Accord was born in the
political shadows by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who maneuvered
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to take a leap of faith into political oblivion.
The Israeli government galvanized parliamentary support by scandalous means,
shamelessly recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a peace
partner, and propounded the absurdity of a "New Middle East." The
Jews embraced their murderers, fantasizing that the Palestinians want nothing
more than independence and sovereignty when, in fact, their goal was and
remains the destruction of Israel and the elimination of the Israelis.
Thus the idiocy of
a "two-state" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum. Israel
agreed to imprudent territorial withdrawals and, in return, the Palestinians
violated obligations and commitments, unleashing the "Oslo War"
indiscriminate terrorism against Israelis, in restaurants, hotels, markets, and
busses, on the roads and in the forests. This diabolical war/peace political
theatre led to the slaughter of many hundreds of Jews. Leftist complacency and
naivety brought fear and panic, suffering and death, upon the people of Israel.
The loony Left has not confessed its error and continues to promote further
capitulation and withdrawal from land. Fools repeat their mistakes and do not
learn from them.
MT: You’re critical of the Israeli response to Arab
terrorism, which is to treat it too much like a law enforcement issue. What is
a more effective approach to deterring terrorism?
MN: The anti-terror agencies have the
responsibility to monitor, detect, and prevent, apprehend and punish those
elements engaged in terrorism against a country and its citizens. Israel's
security apparatus is exceptional; its performance level is perhaps the best in
the world. The Israelis are Middle Easterners expected to understand the
cultural code and workings of Arab society. As such, fighting terrorism as a
law enforcement task misses the point, because the Palestinian war against the
Jews and Zionism is rooted in religious and ideological Islamic and Arab
imperatives. When Palestinians arson Jewish fields or throw rocks at an Israeli
car, this is not an isolated misdemeanor or youthful prank, but jihad as
a deadly campaign.
To apply effective
deterrence, the people closest to the terrorist must pay the price of expulsion
for the individual terrorist's lone foray to destroy and murder. Before the sun
rises, the terrorist's family disappears. To act with boldness in applying
collective punishment is not to be arbitrarily ruthless toward the enemy, but
to show compassion for your people and implement an effective policy to save
lives.
MT: You point out that the prescient philosopher
Eric Hoffer recognized as far back as 1968 that, “as it goes with Israel, so it
will go with all of us.” Why is Israel the canary in the coal mine?
MN: The image of "the canary in the coal
mine," as the bird faces impending death while warning humans of a like
fate, ostensibly misconstrues the connection between Israel and the West.
Considering the ignoble collapse of Europe facing militant Islam, the European
miner is in a more dire condition than the Israeli bird. Eric Hoffer foresaw
the link between Israel and the West, the Jewish state being a litmus test for
the survival of the West.
However, his
prediction did not account for signs of a loss of meaning and political
submission that have afflicted western and central Europe, Canada and Australia
as well. Like a wounded animal, Europe seems lifeless. While Europe's loss of
will ill-prepares it to withstand the multi-level Muslim challenge, which
strikes at the very core of peoples' historical culture and national pride,
Israel – that lone canary – forges ahead with resolve.
Yet, were Israel
to go down and the Muslim world triumph against the Jews, the forces of Islam
would be emboldened to believe that Christian Europe - Madrid and London, Paris
and Rome – later perhaps New York and Washington – would fall into their hands.
In that regard, Eric Hoffer grasped the interconnection of things in the
historical process. Worth mentioning here is the menacing Arab adage:
"after the Saturday people come the Sunday people." When the West
supports the Jews, they are also saving the Christians.
From FrontPage Mag, 7/3/19
