On Israel's shift to the right

It was once believed by Israelis that the drift toward extremism was a property of the Palestinian side. Israelis, particularly on the left, liked to point out that today’s moderates, the PLO, were yesterday’s extremists. This process, however, is turning out to hold true on the Israeli side as well.

Yesterday’s extreme views in Israel are today’s consensus. A cross-current process has characterized Israeli extremism, with once radical views on both left and right getting their day in the mainstream.

The leftist extremist views of the 60s and 70s—demanding the return of the occupied territories for peace right after the six days war, warning of the future cancerous effects of an occupation, later calling for negotiations with the PLO for a two-state solution—have become official policy by the 1990s.

But with the failure of Oslo, the rise of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, the tide has now turned. Currently in Israel, right wing positions once considered unspeakable in polite company—population transfer; exclusion, censure or deportation of Israeli Arabs—are slowly but insistently inching into the mainstream.

The chief strategist and spokesman for this approach is current foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, who has emerged in recent years as the type of cunning and charismatic politician who can thrive in Israeli politics even without having had a stellar army background or an ultra-orthodox flock on call. Lieberman articulated the essence of his vision in his controversial UN speech in September.

In his speech, he sought to first refute the notion that the Palestinian issue is the heart of Middle East conflict. He said: “More than ninety percent of the wars and war victims of the Middle East since the Second World War did not result from the Israeli Palestinian conflict and are in no way connected to Israel, stemming rather, from conflicts involving Moslems or conflicts between Arab States.”

Then, he sought to refute the notion that the settlements are the stumbling block to peace, noting that, “all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza were under Arab control for 19 years, between 1948 and 1967. During these 19 years, no-one tried to create a Palestinian state.
 Peace agreements were achieved with Egypt and Jordan despite the presence of settlements. And the opposite is also true: we evacuated twenty-one flourishing settlements in Gush Katif, and we transferred more than 10,000 Jews and in return, we have Hamas in power and thousands of missiles on Sderot and southern Israel.”

Noting that many blame the conflict for weakening response to Iran, he argued that the causal arrow goes in the opposite direction: “in searching for a durable agreement with the Palestinians, one which will deal with the true roots of the conflict and which will endure for many years, one must understand that first, the Iranian issue must be resolved.”

Lieberman then proposed that an end to the conflict must come in two stages: first, to deal with “emotional” wounds, “we should focus on coming up with a long-term intermediate agreement, something that could take a few decades. We need to raise an entire new generation that will have mutual trust and will not be influenced by incitement and extremist messages.”

Second, a redrawing of the borders must occur, creating a physical and national separation between the two ethnic groups at odds, Jews and Arabs. “Where effective separation has been achieved, conflict has either been avoided, or has been dramatically reduced or resolved. Consider the cases of the former Yugoslav republics, the split-up of Czechoslovakia and the independence of East Timor, as cases in point. Thus, the guiding principle for a final status agreement must not be land-for-peace but rather, exchange of populated territory. Let me be very clear: I am not speaking about moving populations, but rather about moving borders to better reflect demographic realities.”

He concluded with this reminder: “almost 4000 years during which the Jewish People were born in the Land of Israel, while developing the corpus of ethical and intellectual treasures that have been instrumental in giving rise to Western Civilization. 2000 years of forced exile, and interim conquest by Byzantines, Arabs, Mamelukes, Ottomans and others, cannot, and never will, impair the unbreakable bonds of the Jewish People to its homeland. Israel is not only where we are. It is who we are.”

All this sounds well and reasoned, until you consider context, logic, and subtext.

First, whether or not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is marginal in terms of numbers, it is not marginal to the Israeli and Palestinian people at its center. And symbols attain their force not from their absolute size but from their emotional resonance. For example, Israel’s problems in absolute terms are dwarfed by problems of many other countries. Should the US therefore, in Lieberman’s view, reduce its aid to Israel to reflect that? More pointedly, most Jews don’t live in Israel, which somehow does not stop Lieberman from claiming in his speech that for Jews, “Israel is not only where we are. It is who we are.”

Second, individual settlements may or may not be stumbling blocks for peace. But overall, the settlement movement is enabled by, and manifests, the occupation, which is an inherent stumbling block for peace. The very history of the Jewish people in Israel attests to this simple fact, characterized as it’s been, in Lieberman’s own proud telling, by continual struggle against occupiers!

Moreover, applying Lieberman’s own logic, it is clear that the occupation has not bought Israel peace, quiet, and security, but rather conflict, death, world status erosion, moral decline, and toxic internal strife. Why keep such a failing program?

Third, the idea that Iran is the root cause of the conflict also defies Lieberman’s own logic. He argues that the fact the conflict continued despite withdrawals and peace achieved despite settlements renders withdrawals and settlements inessential to the conflict. But the conflict also existed well before Iran became a player; actually during the times Iran was Israel’s ally. So how can Iran be its root cause?

Now, Lieberman is right about the toxic lack of trust between Israelis and Palestinians, but there’s no evidence that a vague “intermediate” solution is more likely to hasten change than a radical shift denoted in a comprehensive peace agreement. In fact, social science shows that waiting for an attitude change to bring about a change in behavior is usually a rotten idea. It is more effective to change the laws first, and let people learn to adjust their attitudes accordingly.

Politically, examples abound of the potential efficacy of a dramatic land-for-peace agreement in ensuring stability. The Israel-Egypt peace agreement is one case in point. Egypt was Israel’s largest, most vehement and powerful enemy between 1948-1977, responsible for most Israeli war casualties. Then, Sadat made his dramatic visit to Israel. A peace treaty was signed in ’79; the Sinai desert was returned to Egypt. Not one Israeli soldier has died on the Egyptian border at Egyptian hands ever since.

Finally, the Israeli idea of redrawing the borders is a close cousin of the Palestinian idea of the right of return. It’s clear to anyone who truly desires peace that the weak version of both can be managed. The borders can be redrawn to reflect contiguous concentrations of Israelis and Palestinians, but that will have to logically include the division of Jerusalem (on which Lieberman is curiously mum in his speech). Some compensation will be given the descendents of Palestinian refugees (which Lieberman of course doesn’t mention).

The strong version of this argument, however, is a straw man designed to foster conflict and promote more sinister agendas on both sides. Those on the Palestinian side who argue for the full right of return are not interested in peace, but in annihilating Israel. Those on the Israeli side, who are arguing for ethnic purity in the biblical homeland, are also not friends of peace.

When Lieberman, as he did in his U.N. speech, speaks of moving borders in the context of the Jews’ 4000 years history (and follows that quickly with the ‘loyalty oath’ vote in the Knesset, forcing non-Jewish citizens to swear allegiance to the Jewish state), most people in the region hear the subtext. Palestinians hear a call for affirming the biblical mandate on the land, which leaves them nowhere. Israeli Arabs hear a call for revoking their status as equal citizens in a democracy and redrawing Israel’s borders anew to exclude them. Neither population is bound to see these changes as gestures of peace.

Lieberman is well poised to become Israel’s prime minister in the near future, and his positions represent well the emerging Israeli zeitgeist. Israeli leftists always tell their peers on the right to make peace with the enemy now so as to avoid dealing with a more extreme enemy later. They would be well advised to give a similar advice to the Palestinians.

Peace Talks Fatigue

One of the most interesting things about the new round of peace talks now underway between Israeli and Palestinian authorities is how little this event manages to register on the emotional valence scale.

On its face, the fairly resounding yawn with which the renewal of talks has been received is puzzling. After all, the war between Palestinians and Israelis is a perennial international attention grabber. Moreover, peace has ostensibly been the dream of citizens and the desire of their governments on both sides of the table for a long time.

For both Israelis and Palestinians, much of the quality of daily existence now—and the nature, or even odds, of future existence—hinges on whether there’s war or peace between the sides. For the lives of individuals, the character and destiny of the nations involved, and even the shape of regional and world politics, this is a huge deal.

And yet nobody seems to really be talking about the peace talks. No one is excited. No one is celebrating. No one is happy.

One obvious explanation is that people hold their enthusiasm and hopes in check given past experience. After all, Israelis and Palestinians have been at it for years. The basic parameters of a workable agreement have been known for decades, and yet little progress has been made. Therefore, it is understandable why nobody is eager to don the party hat upon hearing of the promise of peace. On top of that general skepticism, particular doubts remain about the current leaders on both sides, and their ability to deliver for their people.

Another explanation is that vast populations in Israel and the Palestinian community no longer want peace. They want war. The strength of the broader Palestinian camp’s commitment to peace has always been rightfully questioned. No ‘Peace Now’ movement has ever emerged in the occupied territories. And while the choice by Gaza Palestinians to pick Hamas to rule them surely denotes a complexity of motives and desires, an inclination toward peace and reconciliation cannot easily be inferred as one of them. The echoes of a historical Jihadist ethos have not been banished from Palestinian life.

On the Israeli side, the situation is a bit difference. Israel has forever seen, presented, and from time to time conducted itself as a peace-seeking nation. Various peace movements have always dotted the landscape of Israeli culture and politics. Israeli children, like me, were fed the dream and hope and promise of peace from childhood. But Israel is changing. The hegemonic old school Zionist ethos, with its largely secular, democratic, and dovish sensibilities, is on the decline. Ascendant forces in Israeli demographics, politics and culture are largely autocratic, messianic, hawkish, and militaristic.

Large and powerful segments of Israeli culture no longer wish for peace with the Palestinians, but for their removal or annihilation— either by military force or by divine intervention. In this sense, Bibi and Barak—for all their haughtiness, ineptitude, duplicity, and brutality—represent perhaps the last of a dying breed, having kept a commitment, however sloppy, to the idea of the usefulness of peace and a foot, or at least a toe, in the world of reason and of secular, democratic values. Their likely successors—the Liebermans and Eli Yishays and their ilk—are a much more frightening bunch, untethered as they are to the principles of secularism, democracy and enlightenment that were so alive within early Zionism.

The ascendant forces within Israeli culture are not merely skeptical about the actual possibility of peace, but opposed to even the ideal of it.

Another likely reason for the lukewarm reception of these peace talks may reside far away from the disputed land itself, in Iran. It is not a rare occurrence in history that a pressing problem outlasts its own prominence; that by the time a movie gets to the climax, the audience has already lost their interest in movies altogether. This descent into irrelevancy can happen suddenly, even after many years at the top.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be experiencing such a moment. By now, the question of the Iranian bomb has become de facto the deciding issue in the Middle East. In light of the looming nuclear bomb threat, the questions of whether a few cockeyed settlers will again pitch a tent on some godforsaken hill, or whether Palestinian youths again snipe at bored soldiers in the Kasbah of Hebron seem trivial.

In Israel, at least, this realization seems to have taken root. It is highly likely, in fact, that the rush to negotiations right now has more to do with Iran than with anything else. After all, everyone in the region is afraid of Iran. It is one of the sole issues that unite Israel with many of its Arab neighbors, including the Palestinians in the west bank.

A peace with the Palestinians is likely to get Israel in the U.S. and the world’s good graces, buying it maneuvering room Vis a Vis Iran. Such peace will make it easier for other Arab nations to tacitly aid Israel if and when it decides to attack Iran. And right now, the ‘if’ part of that previous sentence seems by all evidence merely rhetorical.

Shameless Self Promotion: My Book is Out!

At this point I’m going to beg my three loyal readers for forgiveness. Then I’m going to do something I have not done before—which at my age and mileage is saying a lot—and engage in the shameful All-American art of shameless self-promotion.

You see my first novel in English, The Good Psychologist (Holt; 256 pages; check you local bookstore), is coming out August 3rd. And that is something I’d like everyone to know. And by ‘know’ I mean ‘read,’ and by ‘read,’ let’s be honest, I really mean ‘buy.’

You see my agent, who resembles hard candy in that she’s at once sweet and capable of breaking your teeth, insists that publishing your book, which used to be the name of the game, isn’t anymore. The name of the game now is getting your book read. To get your book read, you have to publicize it.

She assures me that everybody is doing it, which to me is the opposite of assurance, of course. The last thing you want to do is what everyone is doing. You don’t want to do what everyone is doing and you don’t want to go where everyone is going; and you don’t want to read what everyone is reading, even though you wouldn’t mind being the one everyone is reading. These are life’s paradoxes. At least that’s what I tried to tell my agent.

But I think she’s heard that argument before, probably in one version or another from every writer she’d ever worked with, because writers are a prickly, snobbish, paradoxical bunch. Pains in the ass, in other words.

So then she reminded me gently that I have a daughter in college. That, for those uninitiated parents among you of still-small children, means that I have bills I can’t pay; which is to say I need added income; which is to say, in I’d better sell books; which is to say I’d better engage in self promotion, which is to say lose my dignity and compromise my so-called principles; which is apparently the new name of the game, and which is something that I hope those college teachers my shamelessness pays for teach my daughter not to do. Life is paradox.

But yes—if the book sells, I may get some money, which is a nice aspect of the American book business, in contrast with the Israeli book business where if you sell many books you get no money. And I say that from experience. In Israel you make money in only two ways: by selling weapons or high tech. So if you sell high tech weapons, you’re doubly set in Israel.

The Jews may still be the people of the book, but they’re also definitely the people of high tech weaponry. At least in Israel; at least if they wish to be in the money. So money, yes, there’s a convenient catchall default motive.

But there is another reason I’d like my book to get ‘known’: you see, if it does OK, my odds of getting to write the next one increase. And writing, the creative endeavor, is one of my funnest hobbies, way funner than sitting alone in the dark empty house playing an out of tune piano, or biting the fingernail of my left thumb, which are my two other hobbies, if I could get personal for a moment without you getting all uncomfortable.

So I’m being both shameless and selfish here, admittedly. But that is evidence that I’m just a regular Joe and not some prickly, snobbish writer-type, which should be good for sales, at least my agent says so.

At this point, you, my loyal reader (the other two have fled in horror; or are already in line at the bookstore, because readers are a paradoxical bunch also), may want to stop the sales pitch and concern yourself with the tangential issue of whether the book is any good.

Fair enough. But this, in truth, is not easy to answer because one’s book, in the final analysis, is like one’s child. You labor to create it, motivated by a mysterious mix of urges, fears, and fantasies both high and low.

When it’s out, you rejoice, and are terrified. You hope it has all the parts, and that they work properly. You hope it does well in the world, even if you’re not quite certain what ‘doing well’ entails. In your eyes it’s perfect, even if you know, rationally, that it can’t be. In your eyes it’s special, even if you know, rationally, that it can’t be.

You realize quickly you’re not the God of your child, or of your book. You’re a parent, and being the parent is different from being the God, even if both are creators. As a parent you don’t know everything about your offspring. Even though it came from you and lived with you most of its life so far, it has a mind of its own, its own spirit; a path quite different from what you had intended. It hides things from you. It keeps secrets. It travels to strange places.

In fact, other people may know it better than you on some level, because you are blinded in part by intimacy, by blood, by terror and hope, by love.

So maybe you should not take it from me. Maybe you should not relay on my opinion of the book. Maybe you should read it and decide for yourself…

Observations from Israel

It's tough to break away from The Situation when you're in Israel. The Situation is what Israelis call their, well, situation. It is the shape of fluid things.

The Situation is in part like the weather—something you can talk much of but do little about; it shifts a lot, and often quickly, and often for the worse; people seem to enjoy complaining about it; when it's good, people know it can't last.

The Situation is also in part your favorite sports team. When you ask, "what's the situation?" you're asking, "what's the score? Are we winning?" with the implicit assumption that your team is—or will be soon—trailing and running out of time.

Sometimes your team does win, and there's euphoria and the sense that the winning will last forever. When it loses again, you are always torn between blaming the ref, the other team's dirty play, or despairing of yourself, wishing your team would be as well-managed and coached and financed as the other teams.

The Situation is also in part a diagnostic process, like a post-physical conference with your physician, if you're middle-aged. There's always some half justified reason for worry; always a need for some obnoxious lifestyle change and a futile plan for minimizing—but not eliminating—pain. The news is always not-quite-good, even when it is not catastrophic. And everyone knows one of these days it's going to be catastrophic, even if no one says so.

I could talk about The Situation all day. But by the end of the day The Situation might have changed. As of now, though, The Situation is not good. The weather forecast is bad; our team is in a slump; results from the latest physical aren't pretty either—the heart races in sudden bouts of panic; memory lapses and mood swings abound; and the bad knees? That's not getting better. Ever.

Israel, a traumatized nation, feels threatened, and so it hunkers down, scowls, and exposes its teeth, like a cornered street dog. Right now it feels that the whole world is ganging up on it unjustly; that the world is hypocritical and worse, anti Semitic—which is of course what Israel has suspected all along, a suspicion that has historically guided the very actions that have in part led to the world's resentment of it. It's classic self-fulfilling prophecy. And they know all about the prophecy business here.

There's also a feeling here these days that the bonds are fraying on the inside. What keeps this troubled tribe together is no longer apparent. Large chunks of the Israeli public do not see the government as theirs. Do not sing the anthem or waive the flag. Do not see those around them as real Israelis, or real Jews, or even real people. Very little seems to bind the different constituencies that make up the Israeli body politic.

Still, inside The Situation, life goes on. This in fact is a characteristic aspect of Israeli life, the ability to go on despite the grim toils of The Situation. As I travel around, trying to keep my mind off The Situation, I pay attention instead to some striking cultural elements.

Honking your car horn, for example, is not only acceptable, but expected, even necessary. Other drivers will routinely cut into your lane assuming that when they get too close, you'll honk. If you don't, they may run right into you, claiming, with some justification, that it was your fault.

Mall security these days looks like a tired relic. Israel's enemies have figured out recently that flotilla-style political warfare is more effective than suicide bombing in the battle that really matters—the one for global legitimacy. So the malls are safe. And the bored security guard will all but waive you past before even eyeing you fully.

At the restaurant, no one will refill your water glass. No one will even ask you if you'd like a refill. No one will approach. It doesn't matter how long you sit, or how prominently your empty water glass is placed at the edge of the table. If you want something, you have to ask for—better yet, demand—it directly.

The food is better here and so is the coffee. There are many possible explanations—the weather, the local fresh ingredients, the regional influences on cuisine, the fertile mix of cultures and tastes—but I see a different one. It involves The Situation. On one level, gathering establishments reflect it. Every coffee place feels like an argument, in which the Jews, being Jews, disagree; and so they create a plethora of unique places, each convinced it is the only right one.

On another level, coffee houses in Israel appear to be conceptualized in the mind of their owners and patrons alike as places of refuge from The Situation. You see little in the way of TV's. You see little in the way of the corporate handbook. Israeli places of gather have more of the oasis feel. Informal, quirky, cozy, idiosyncratic sensibilities rule.

And your coffee will always be served in a mug, no Styrofoam here; and they like to make shapes in the cappuccino foam. Mostly hearts, but you can get the ying-yang circle, a baby, or a leaf, which makes your heart sing.

Watching Soccer in Israel with my Father

So I'm in Israel, at my father's apartment in Rehovot, watching world cup soccer. This is not a situation you can improve on much. It's damn near perfect, for several reasons. First, of course, is the soccer. A game so far superior to the popular American sports that you find yourself lamenting America's failure to embrace it while at the same time hoping that it doesn't, because one thing you don't want is for soccer to become dominated by America. Things that become dominated by America invariably lose their charm—think popular entertainment; think retail.

Watching soccer in Israel is also nice because watching it in America is so depressing. Soccer is un-American by nature—it doesn't require the fancy technology, gadgets and props that define American recreation. It's a game of dreams deferred, of disappointments, of scarce rewards. America is about dream fulfillment, and about immediate and abundant gratifications. It's a game of few simple principles, applied loosely. America likes games with many elaborate rules, enforced meticulously. It's a game of continuous action, with minimal interruption. America's games are small bursts of action between long, annoying breaks for commercials.

An added joy is that Israel is again absent from the games. It's great to have Israel absent from things. Israel's presence anywhere these days is usually linked to bad emotional weather; dark clouds gathering; unrest with a chance of violence. It's nice to have an international news event that Israel can merely observe. You learn a lot from observing others, not just from acting out on them.

I can say this because I'm also an American. Regular Israelis don't think it's nice to be world cup spectators. They really want to participate in world events, even as they busily resent the world for how it treats them. Israelis are always walking that particular tightrope; on the one hand looking admirably at other cultures for their glories and seemingly superior luck and skill, and on the other fearing and disdaining all of them, awaiting their future betrayals or harboring resentments over past ones. Israel is like the kid in high school who's dying to be loved but isn't sure he's quite lovable, and is lacking social skills; so he becomes awkward, bullying, defensive, hyper sensitive to any sign of the rebuff his self doubts tell him is imminent.

Another reason this is fun is that I get to spend some quality time with my father.
Recently retired, he is quite content to recline on the living room sofa, solve crossword puzzles during half time, and dose off between goals. My father was a farmer for many years. He once told me that he liked plants better than people, because plants don't talk. He likes quiet. He's a perfect companion for watching soccer. We turn the volume down. This way we avoid those awful 'vuvuselas,' the plastic horns that are destroying the soundtrack of soccer, usually so alive with organic human sounds, singing, chanting.

We also avoid the inane announcers, who tend to yell a lot, announce what had just happened in front of your eyes ("the ball just went through his legs and into the net; the goalie is on the ground, sobbing"), or make moronically obvious predictions ("the US team will be much happier if it scores a goal").

The whole phenomenon of game announcers is strange to me. No one announces the actual game, after all. I think it is in part a holdover from the days of radio, where an expert narration of the action was, well, necessary. But on TV, the action narrates itself. And the commentators are usually former players who have nothing to say about the game, mainly because the ability to reflect analytically, required of the good commentator, hinders the ability to be in the flow, required of a great athlete. Good athletes are good in part because they don't have the ability to reflect on the moment, they have the ability to react in the moment.

So my dad and I recline on our sofas; we eat pistachios, and once in a while he makes a comment about how hot the Israeli summer is—which is of course redundant commentary nobody needs, but you don't mind that from a parent. And once in a while he gets up and goes to the kitchen to stir the stew he's cooking for dinner with the grandkids; and when he does, someone invariably scores a goal. He doesn't get upset but rather reassured, because if a goal is scored just when you leave the room for a second, then it's a sign that the rules of the universe still apply. All the rules of the universe are designed to humble man.

And sometimes he flips the channel over to the news, because it's Israel and there's always news and it's always bad. On the news he sees 10,000 orthodox Jewish men gathering in some plaza in Jerusalem, dressed in their heavy black coats and hats and beards in the stymieing heat to protest, on the Rebbe's orders, one of the things they are protesting these days: that the supreme court has ordered them to let Sephardic and Ashkenazi girls study together in state-funded schools; that the government is building a new emergency room at a hospital where some ancient pagan graves have been found; that a downtown parking lot is opening on Saturdays; that the police dares to investigate a mother from their community who was caught on camera in the hospital abusing and trying to starve her own baby.

My father groans. I think he sees the Israel that he and other Jewish farmers like him built slowly being taken over. If these dark hoards are the guardians of Jewish heritage, the embodiments of Jewish faith, the torch bearers of Jewish culture, then we're in hopeless trouble—that's what I think.

But then he switches the channel back to soccer; because it's hot, and who wants to think, except maybe about how the US team will be much happier if it scores a goal.

On the Flotilla Fiasco

So I’m looking at images of another Israeli spasm. Does the specific content matter? No it does not. Because regardless of content—Lebanon war, Gaza war, Dubai assassination, humiliating the Turkish ambassador, humiliating vice president Biden, the response to Goldstone, barring Chomsky at the border, and now, the tragi-moronic flotilla attack—the process underlying these diverse recent actions is essentially the same. Israel’s behavior is so predictable—and predictably self defeating— because it springs from one absurd, and yet hardening, set of core convictions, as follows:

1. Politics is for sissies. Peace is a pipe dream. Only force can be relied upon. Therefore, the failure of force is always due to a failure to use enough of it.

2. Nobody is to be trusted; except us, of course. Others should trust us, primarily because they are untrustworthy, and we are not them.

3. We are better than our enemies. Therefore, everything we do is better than everything our enemies do.

4. However cruel and violent we become, we never will be as violent and cruel as our enemies, now and in the past. Therefore our violence and cruelty cannot be criticized. Criticism from within is treason and self loathing. Criticism from without is anti-Semitism. The only legitimate response to our actions is praise.

5. We are the only real victims. All others are poseurs, hypocrites, and whiners. Acknowledging the suffering of others weakens us, and those who do it are self haters and traitors. But others’ failure to acknowledge our suffering diminishes them and exposes them for the anti-Semites they are.

6. Failed policy is like a lie—repeated over time, it becomes a success; the same goes for political leadership.

7. We don’t care what the world thinks, so we do what we want. But when the world reacts negatively to our truculence, we rage at it and view that reaction as evidence of anti Semitism.

8. Time is on our side, but only because it’s too late for anything good to happen right now, mostly because we have wasted precious time, mostly because those treacherous, pipe dreaming, self haters among us kept slowing us down.

On its face, the recent flotilla mess is quite a simple event. Was the flotilla really peace activism? No. Was it a political provocation? Yes. Does Israel have the right to protect its waters? Yes. Was a defensive operation against the provocateurs justified? Yes. Was the specific operation that was undertaken a tactical and strategic failure? Yes. Is the Gaza blockade a failed, immoral policy? Yes.

To anyone not blinded by ideology, panic or hatred, these facts are so clear as to be rather dull. The screamers and eye rollers on either side fail by now to really register as more than just noise. At least with me.

But what caught my eye as I was watching footage of the raid was one image: the Israeli commando repelling down a rope. At first, that image astonished me. This is the twenty first century, after all. Israel is a technological juggernaut, a surveillance guru, a small warfare aficionado, and this is what they came up with? A hapless latter day Tarzan hanging from the vine? A guy sliding down a rope into a hostile, confused mob?

As I began to reflect on my own reaction, it occurred to me that the image represented something fundamental about Israel’s predicament, a compulsive tic in the Israeli psyche—a scratch in the record, for you old timers—a fixation, a delusion the understanding of which is essential for understanding Israeli consciousness.

The mind that put that guy on the rope is one trapped in the past, mostly because it yearns for it, yearning to be as it once was, back in its heyday of youthful glory —the brave, cunning and nimble Commando David subduing the large, dumb philistine Goliath.

Those days are now gone. The environment that gave birth to that self image has shifted. But the longing for it remains, particularly against the backdrop of what Israel has become since: a bumbling, whining, sanctimonious, dumb-witted brute.

Israel is desperate to rekindle that flame, to return to past glory; and so, like an aging rock star reluctant to give up the spandex and pelvic gyrations, it continues to limp onto the stage, bang out the old tunes, and hope that the familiar gestures and poses will ignite old passions and adorations, thus recharging its old self esteem and reclaiming its rightful place up the charts—all the while pretending to itself that everything is as it was, that it hasn’t really changed, that the audience has not really changed; that the business has not really changed, and if they have, then they can be changed back, brought back into the bosom of old fandom.

Israel always imagines itself to be but one brilliant Entebbe-like commando operation away from turning back the clock and recapturing its old David narrative.

Alas, the world has moved on to other passions, and the world is not buying tickets for the reunion tour, not responding to the old hits, not in awe of the vain attempt to deny the present and relive the past. And thus to everybody but itself, Israel looks increasingly clueless and pathetic, like a twenty-first century soldier dangling on a rope over a hostile, confused mob.

On Time

My daughter Maya is turning 18 this week, which occasions all manner of reflection, but mainly seems like a good time to think about, well, time. A tricky subject, that; as anyone who‘s ever tried to catch a bus, plan a wedding, or truly comprehend relativity theory will tell you.

Time is something you have, although less and less of. You’re always running out of it. Nobody ever walks out of time. Even if it takes a while, you will slowly run out of time.

Time is also something you do, albeit mostly in prison, which makes the time you do also hard. And if you don’t want to do time then you’d better find time to do your taxes, because that takes time, and time is money, and money tends to run out after taxes.

Time also does things to us, of course; mostly bad things (I’m old, my eyes are fading) that we spend a lot of time telling ourselves are not that bad (I’m wise; I always liked dogs). We also try to make time, although in order to make time, you need to clear up some time, and what time is actually made of remains a thorny philosophical question. It appears on close inspection that time is made entirely of, well, time.

Time is also a gift; you can buy time, and many people seek to buy free time. But if you can’t, then it better be quality time, because you don’t want to waste time; or at least you don’t want to appear as if you don’t know what to do with your time, which is how I appear when I wait for my daughter to finish her shopping at the mall, where she is spending my money like there is no tomorrow.

You can have high time and down time, although it’s better to wait for the down time to get high. Don’t do it on company time, which is often crunch time, or money time, which, if time is money, as most companies claim it is, doesn’t really makes sense to say, and also sounds funny, particularly if you’re high.

Time is often lost, and they say you can’t make up for that; but losing your sense of time is considered a desirable thing, a sign that you’re having a good time.

Time is something you can look for, like a piece of clothing: I’m looking for the right time to fit you in, and I’m looking for the right jeans to fit into. Unlike with clothing, though, you can also bide your time, that is wait; but for what? Well, for the right time.

Time has a paradoxical quality. When we say that something is timeless, we mean that it will probably be present for all time; so timeless means having all the time. Einstein once said something to the effect that an hour on a park bench with a beautiful woman can seem like a minute. But a minute on a hot stove would seem like an hour. He called that phenomenon ‘relativity,’ and won a Nobel for it. That’s big time. Although if you try to put a beautiful woman on a relatively hot stove, I think you will end up doing hard time in the big house.

Sometimes (there’s no escape…), time can seem as both fast and slow at once. For example, raising your daughter to be 18 has that quality. Only yesterday she was running around in her diapers! Those 18 years have slipped by in a flash! But the last time I changed a diaper seems like lifetimes ago.

Since time is so slippery and amorphous, we try to organize, manage and control it. There is nothing inherent, after all, in this age of 18 that would warrant my sudden bout of reflection on time. It’s just a moment, ostensibly like any other moment in the endless flow of time, made meaningful only by the consciousness that beholds it and the devices that track it. In other words, time exists only in the systems that notice and keep it. In other words, we invent time. But you don’t have time to spend on such thoughts, unless you’re high, or planning to major in philosophy, which are kind of one and the same, and which my daughter assures me she definitely is not. She’s actually not quite sure what to major in and which classes to take. I think she should take her time. I want her to take her time and have the time of her life.

Because watching your daughter grow up and your eyes fade out, you know the time of your life is not timeless. You realize, with time, that it ends. This, of course, is timeless knowledge. Here’s Omar Khayyam, Persian poet and mathematician circa 1100:

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!