Ten years have passed since Egyptian TV produced a series telling the story of a young Egyptian Jew who immigrated to Israel at the end of the 1940s. The story is true and was taken from secret Egyptian intelligence files. Regardless of the drama, certain comments caught my attention and remain in my memory. He said, “The Jews are looking for love and for those who love them. They have a feeling that they are loathed and that everyone else is their enemy. And that they, even though they are in Israel, are still prejudiced in favor of the nationalities they formerly had and that one does not get close or marry except from that nationality which they surrendered when they became Israelis.”
I took this with a pinch of salt even though I subsequently learned that these statements were actually taken from the Egyptian files. I have now read a report from the French paper, “Le Monde”, which presents different sides of life in Israel. It illustrates the extent of prejudice and fragmentation that dominates life there, especially social life. The report presents a number of individuals who have grown fed up with the political circumstances that govern their daily lives and that the Promised Land is based on a pack of lies invented by rabbis who believed it and lived those lies at the expense of the Palestinian people.
The Israeli intellectual, David Grossman, said, “After the long wars, the Israeli nation has reached a certain conclusion and that is that any ‘other’ is their enemy.” The conflict is between polarities. Young men and women are finding ways to escape military duty and many of them feel that they may have to sacrifice their lives for something they no longer believe in.
Grossman adds, “The truth is that Israel was born as a result of special circumstances and if it were today that it demanded the right to exist, it would not receive a majority of votes in the UN because the world is no longer so sympathetic to it. Israel is supposed to have been established so that Jews can live in safety and security but those have become something akin to iron armor in search of a knight to wear it. Israel was founded so that Jews would no longer have to live with the feeling of being victims but what is the situation now?”
The protests that have lately occurred in Tel Aviv have been not only in support of withdrawal from Gaza but also to be rid of the dominant politically static state. And most have deep feelings of disapproval about the abuse received by the Palestinians.”
Here I say that the Jews of Israel live in a community that is falling apart due to the great heat of political turbulence and increasing military violence against Palestinian resistors who are accused unjustly of terrorism. And if we add the social prejudice the Jews enforce on themselves out of habit and because of history and their constant feeling that others hate them, we find that they have lost the very pillar on which states are founded — the pillar of national unity. Students and experts in constitutional law say that the bases — or pillars — for establishing a state are three: territory, population and power. For Israel we find the following: Power is there. But the territory on which people live under Israeli control is land that the Jews stole from Palestine. Thus the matter of land remains an issue and this issue in turn weakens one of the bases of a state and so jeopardizes the establishment of this particular state. Then there is the matter of the population itself which is not merely about numbers. Unity and cohesiveness are needed among a country’s people and this is something which is totally lacking in Israel. The Israeli community deals with Israeli Jews according to their nationalities before arriving in Israel. And this contradicts the second basis for establishing a state: The concept of different nationalities among Israeli Jews. And this is in conflict with the second pillar for establishing a state.
