Books on Israel, Volume I

Political Discourse in Israeli Literature

Political Discourse in Israeli Literature Donna Robinson Divine Although the establishment of a Jewish state in 1948 was a central event in the national life of the Jewish people, the state's existence has not been taken for granted, particularly by its own citizens. The significance of a Jewish state continues to puzzle Israelis, who presumably know it best. Since the state's founding there is more uncertainty about the significance of Jewish political sovereignty and more diversity about its meaning. The concern can hardly impress those familiar with Zionist history as novel, but that it structures intellectual life in the Jewish state does seem exceptional. That the Jewish state simultaneously evokes unequivocal willingness to fight for its existence and highly charged questioning of the reasons for its existence seems a strange juxtaposition. Israel is a country where very few citizens refuse the call to arms. Heroic military service is ordinarily associated with ardent political commitment. But if we acknowledge the near universal consensus on shouldering the military burdens of the Jewish state, we must also recognize the collective unease with the structures of power these actions have helped to effect and perpetuate. In Israel, obedience coincides with political ambivalence. Modern scholars are not agreed in their interpretations and evaluations of this ambivalence. Many Zionists predicted that Jewish life was in jeopardy if not already doomed without political sovereignty. In light of the central Zionist disposition to discount the value of diaspora Jewish life, some scholars contend that the apparent refusal of most diaspora Jews to live in a Jewish state calls into question Israel's raison d' etre.1 At the very least, the political and economic security of many diaspora Jewish communities compels the Jewish state to try to prove itself in reference to the standards of Jewish life elsewhere. While the criteria of comparison are often skewed in Israel's favor, the comparative process has far-reaching implications. On the subject of diaspora Jewry, Israelis are on the defensive and that strongly influences the understanding they have of their own society. Theirs is often a negative case including lists of purported dangers that are due to materialize presumably because Jews in other lands are powerless. The collective image by which Israelis have come to recognize themselves is grounded on the erosion of Jewish life elsewhere. The image of strong and vibrant diaspora Jewish communities only deepens the Israeli sense of their own collective vulnerability. Scholars also emphasize the challenge to Jewish sovereignty posed by the political subordination of Palestinian Arabs. Many Israelis have come to view the achievement of their own political independence as partly responsible for depriving Palestinian Arabs of theirs.2 The humanitarian hopes stirred by the movement to create a Jewish state have been vitiated by on-going Arab hostility. Put in these terms, the constant re-assessment of the meaning of Jewish political power reflects the gap between Zionist visions and Israeli political realities. Much of the self-conscious reflection and self-criticism in Israel is born of despair over the irreconcilable conflict with the Arabs.3 But the questions raised about the purpose of Jewish sovereignty are no simple laments on Israel's loss of civic virtue. Rather, they are part of the process whereby those Donna Robinson Divine is Professor of Government and member of the Jewish Studies Program at Smith College. She is the author of several articles on Zionism, and Israeli and Palestinian·Arab history. 37 Political Discourse in Israeli Literature civic virtues are being defined. The Jewish political experience in mandatory Palestine did not fully prepare Israelis for the novelty of living in a Jewis.h state. Nor could Zionist ideologies fully apprehend the meaning of Jewish sovereignty at a time when Jews lived without a state of their own. Ideologies which coalesced around exhortations to create a Jewish state had restricted usefulness once the state was created. Contemporary deliberations on Jewish sovereignty function as a foil, then, against which a theory of political authority relevant to the new circumstances of Jewish statehood is being forged. Discussions on public values are not unique to Israeli democracy. Intellectuals in many countries routinely ponder the ethical implications of public policies. But the way in which questions are raised in Israel about the Jewish state's existence without proceeding logically to challenge Israel's right to exist does seem theoretically distinctive and politically significant. The contemporary interrogation of Jewish sovereignty is radically different from the highly self-conscious explorations of the...