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Time for self-reflection
Left, and all of us, must end occupation based on patriotism, not self-hate
Gadi Taub
As usual, the Left skipped the latest period of self-reflection. The Left seems to be in charge of the conscience of all of us, yet somehow not of its own soul – it serves as our conscience, and a conscience always plays the role of judge, not the party being judged.
Too bad. Because as result, the Left doesn’t learn much from its failures or successes. On the one hand, it can boast great success – its fundamental political position, the need to partition the land (a view that used to be held by a tiny minority) has become the view of the majority. This is so much so, that even the prime minister of a rightist government had to declare, reluctantly, that this is Israel’s stance.
On the other hand, the more leftist positions trickled down to the center, the more closed up, sore, and alienated the Left became. As though the sense of being a just minority was more important to it than a change in Israel’s policy. And now, when what it views as the lowly masses have been convinced, it needs to come up with a new minority view, which will allow it to reinforce its position in a way that avoids involvement with them.
Nonetheless, a little before Yom Kippur we saw one attempt for such self-reflection. A lengthy manifest headlined “A National Left” written by Shmuel Hasfari and Eldad Yaniv (in the interest of full disclosure, I will note that I endorsed it myself.) This manifest stirred great anger, mostly I think because it slammed draft-dodgers.
Yet I admit that I wondered whether part of the fury provoked among the professional Left – the leftist camp that likes to maintain its glorious isolation – had to do precisely with the fact that Hasfari and Yaniv are essentially right. The Left lost its power because it forgot the arguments it originally maintained in favor of the State of Israel rather than against it; arguments that stemmed from concern for the State rather than alienation to the State.
Based on the terminology developed by the Left, there is wickedness on one end of the spectrum, known as “national feelings” or “The National Camp,” and there is goodness on the other end, known as “human rights.” This deceptive division is part of the reasons for the Left’s electoral decline. Because a part of human rights is the right for national self determination (if we had to judge the withdrawal from Gaza only in human right terms, we would have to reinstate the Israeli occupation there, because the human rights situation there under Hamas’ regime of horrors only deteriorated.)
The Left’s success in prompting Israel to shift in the direction of partition is also not only premised on individual human rights. It is premised on the reorganization that our national right for self-determination faces danger.
The basic argument of partition supporters draws great strength from here, and had the Left engaged in genuine self-reflection it would realize that Hasfari and Yaniv are right on that front at least: An anti-national Left will not have any benefit aside from its own sense of justice. A patriotic Left, on the other hand, is what convinced Israelis that they need to leave the territories if they wish to avoid sinking into a bi-national state. Only such Left can bring about the realization of this aspiration in the difficult conditions whereby a partner is absent.
The result is that a genuine leftist self-reflection is also genuine self-reflection by all of us. The time has come to concentrate our genuine desire for life based on the faith in Israel’s right to exist, which is based on the right of all nations – including ours – for self-determination. Because we have to – based on love for Israel rather than hate for it –wake up already from the delusional stupor that prompts us to drag behind the settlers.
The time has come to look ourselves in the eye and say that the settlement enterprise is Israel’s most horrible political mistake, and that for our own sake, not for the sake of the Palestinians, out of patriotism and not due to rejection of “national feelings,” we’ll find a way to eliminate the occupation before the occupation eliminates us.
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