It is very difficult to convey a full impression of
the national mood: a victory without celebration, rescue with no exaltation,
and with it all, a somber sense of fragmentation and of incompleteness. The
fact is that the israeli people have not yet emerged from an Experience of
profoundly traumatic scope.
What happened in the first week of October was not
merely the collapse of certain assumptions and predictions concerning the true
Reality of the balance of Power. What is more wounding is the necessity,
without any transition, to bring about a substantial modification of all our
conceptual principles and to try to look at ourselves and the world around us
in a new perspective.
The origin of what is called the crisis of morale in
Israel flows not from the War of 1973, but from the War of 1967. Let there be
no misapprehension. The 1967 War was the most chivalrous and heroic of all Israel’s
military exploits. None of us can forget the special exuberance which attended
us in its immediate aftermath and for many years beyond. Yet, as we look back
on those six and onehalf years, we cannot avoid the impression that we were
living within an insubstantial and distorted vision. There had been a total
israeli victory, total arab defeat, we constructed, and the rest of the world
with us, an image of ourselves and of our neighbours.
Israeli omnipotence, arab ineptitude – these were the
visions that most of the world carried in its consciousness from the summer of
1967. I remember how this [unclear]come to expression in concr[unclear] [unclear]lomatic
occasions, especially [unclear] studies of the power balance[unclear]
discussions with our friend [unclear] about whether three arab [unclear] to
every israeli aircraft con[unclear] israeli superiority, three arab [unclear]
to one israeli tank meant [unclear] predominance.
There was lost, because [unclear] dazzling evidence
of the [unclear] War, that salutary measure [unclear]criticism and of prudent
self[unclear] which had come after the [unclear] Independence, which was [unclear]tory
won with great sacrifice [unclear] after many setbacks and [unclear]. The 1973
War is a more [unclear] historic phenomenon. It takes [unclear] the story of
the War of Independence, but in the intervening [unclear] our sense of
proportion had [unclear] distorted by an event that [unclear] [unclear]ceptional
in its Absolutism [unclear] which was allowed to bec[unclear] criterion for
generalised jud[unclear]. Therefore, we find – as jew[unclear] [unclear]tempted
to do through the [unclear] intensity of their temperamen[unclear] find
ourselves in this [unclear] swing from what might have [unclear] an excessive
selfconfidence [unclear] excessive melancholy, and our [unclear]ness is to find
a point of [unclear]. The israeli crisis does not flo[unclear] day from
obssession with the [unclear] but from uncertainty about the future.
Onehundredandfifty days [unclear] elapsed since the
Yom Kippur War and the characteristic jewish [unclear] for recuperation has not
yet asserted itself. The work will [unclear] to be done by the israeli people [unclear]
their elected leaders, with the [unclear]taining help of the jews across the
world.
The business of leadership [unclear] out of the past
into the [unclear]. Its aim is not merely the [unclear]vation or order, or the
admiration of existing machinery. [unclear] the anticipation of social wants, [unclear]
invention of new forms, the [unclear]ration of new groths. The [unclear]erate
making of issues is very [unclear] the core of the stateman’s [unclear]. The
greatest wisdom is re[unclear] to select policies that will [unclear] the
public mind, and the [unclear]cy for recuperation by a clear [unclear] lofty
articulation of national [unclear].
[unclear] therefore, frankly told you [unclear] the
need for psychological [unclear]peration. I do not believe that [unclear] be
achieved by Rhetoric alone, [unclear]though it would do no harm to [unclear]
israeli people to be told some[unclear] about its affirmative promise, [unclear]
of which have been swept [unclear] in the debris of the Yom Kippur War. There
is a furious as[unclear] upon leadership. Anybody [unclear]ing from Mars would
believe [unclear] we have come into the governmental offices in Jerusalem with [unclear]
and asserted ourselves by [unclear]. Nobody would possibly be[unclear] that the
problem of our leadership was decided in the public bal[unclear] less than two
or three months [unclear].
There are, therefore, things that [unclear] to be
said to the israeli peo[unclear]. It has to be said that although [unclear]
were setbacks and disappoint[unclear] there was no defeat, that no national
interests have been irre[unclear]bly lost, that we are neither [unclear]shed
nor defeated nor over[unclear]own. We are discussing how to [unclear]gage israeli
forces from their [unclear]timity to Cairo and Damascus. [unclear] are not
discussing how to dis[unclear]age arab forces from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. This
nation’s land [unclear] under its feet and its resources [unclear] in its
hands, and its destiny lies [unclear] it.
What are the goals toward which Israel has the
capacity to move to the degree that it has a lucid sense of its own priorities?
The priorities are, first, the new opportunities for
Peace. It is simply not true that Israel emerges from the Yom Kippur War without
politicalgain. If we analyse the sources of the deadlock in the six and onehalf
years that went before, we come again and again upon two central themes. We
never succeeded before 1973 in persuading the egyptian Government to negotiate
with Israel facetoface without accepting on our part beforehand the full
egyptian territorial claims. And we did not succeed before 1973 in persuading
them to accept interim agreements on the road to Peace unless, in the course of
that agreement, we prejudiced in their favour the outcome of the final Peace.
We were not even able to make crucial, experimental,
exemplary steps towards a Peaceeffort without deciding the final boundary in
their favour. Now, there has been a complete unfreezing in both of these
directions. Egypt has sat with us at a Peaceconference on the Middle East
without our giving an engagement for total withdrawal. In fact, I remember that
the egyptians and the rest of the listening world heard the israeli Foreign
Minister say on that occasion that we do not intend to return to the previous
armistice lines, and having heard this, the egyptian Government continued to
sit with us at a Peaceconference and to enter into a negotiation with us, not
that they accepted or that we asked that they accept that declaration. But this
was the antithesis of what they always wanted. They had previously said that a
condition of negotiation was that we should decide the future boundary in their
favour in advance.
Why is is that Egypt has accepted, since October
1973, proposals and ideas which it had firmly rejected before that date? The
reason is that there was pressure upon it to accept it. The reason is that our
proximity to their capital, the advance across the Canal on the western side,
created a necessity and a compulsion for urgent compromises, just as the
egyptian inroads into our positions east of the Canal created an absolute
compulsion for a new balance of compromise. In other words, there have been
farreaching politicalresults. What will be the future evolution of this process
is hard to say. But even on its own, the egyptian-israeli disengagement
agreement is an innovation of unusual scope. If it is carried out in fidelity,
as it has been so far, if, in addition to accepting all the limitations of
forces inherent in the agreement, the strengthening of the ceasefire,
abstention from active belligerency and blockade, the egyptian Government
transfers the focus of its effort to economic development, creates a new center
of international navigation and of civilian life within the canal zone, that
Reality will be a greater guarantee for the preservation of Peace than any
signature on a document, for it will create a voluntary vulnerability which
would indicate a genuine investment, if not in final Peace, at least in a new
Philosophy of disengagement from the recurrent cycles of War and tension.
You cannot have concrete Peacesettlements unless you
first achieve some progress in weakening mutual skepticisms, and I believe that
the faithful fulfillment of the egyptian-israeli disengagement agreement – the more
so if followed by other agreements – will do much to undermine the Absolutism
of that skepticism, and thereby create a momentum favourable to Peace. One
might say that this is only the first step, only the first movement, but surely
it is the first movement that counts, first, because it creates momentum and
secondly, because it sets a direction. Anybody who has ever had the Experience
of trying to push a stationary car knows full well that it is the first push
that exercises the greatest strain, both upon one’s physical strength and upon
one’s peace of mind. Once in motion in the right direction, everything seems
easier than before. Therefore, we have decided to go forward upon this path of
approach to Peace in tangible, concrete, realistic steps.
It is also our goal, basing ourselves on the effort
of conciliation, to bring about a general compromise within our arena. You must
have been following some of our internal problems with perplexity. If you don’t
understand them, then take comfort from the fact that many of us don’t
understand ourselves either.
The basis for all this movement and turbulence is a
genuine division of opinion between those whose skepticism about Peace leads
them to an insistence on the status quo and those of us who believe that
without mobility, compromise and a fair measure of control and calculated risk,
we shall never bring the prospects for Peace even to a degree of examination.
The virtue of a disengagement agreement is that it is a laboratory test. We can
argue forever – and we do argue forever in our seminars of experts and
orientalists and socialscientists about whether Egypt is prepared for Peace.
Instead of arguing about the doctrine, we have subjected it to a laboratory
test – that’s what a disengagement agreement is. Our task is both to bring
about the maximal approach to Peace and also to ensure vital security
interests.
We also wish to reconstruct our international
relations. Here, I believe that forces are at work to which we should give more
time and preoccupation. There are forces alive in the world which I believe are
congenial to a restoration of Israel’s international position. The fact is that
the forces which threaten israeli security also threaten the fundamental values
of organised civilisation. The extreme form of arab Nationalism which attacks
Israel’s integrity also attacks the Economies of the industrialised countries;
also attacks the immunity of air travel, also attacks the legal systems of
Europe and other countries submitted to terrorist violence; also attacks the
universal monetary system.
Concerning the energy crisis, the question is not
what America and Europe intend to do about Israel’s independence, but what they
intend to do about their own independence. Does the american nation want to
celebrate the 200th anniversary of its independence as a colony of Kuwait or
Abu dhabi? Do the european nations, which have quite rightly ceased to colonise
the arab world, propose to submit to the destiny of becoming colonies of the
Arabian Peninsula? Can the control of daily life of welfare and of economic
growth in the industrialised States be in the hands of a few people to whom
geological accident has granted a monopolistic control of energy resources or,
at least, a monopolistic control that has imprudently been allowed to develop
through a lack of vision and a lack of foresight in organising alternatives and
sources?
The fact that Terrorism, economic extortion, the
artificial pressure on the moneymarket, the paralysis of industrial Economies,
the destruction of solidarities on air and sea, the undermining of legalsystems
in favour of blackmailing and hostagetaking – the fact that all of these
attributes of extreme radical arab Nationalism afflict the basic interests and
values of mankind creates a potential solidarity between the bulk of mankind
and Israel which, in the long if not in the short run, is bound to have its
effects.
These are two of our goals: pursuit of Peace and
reconstruction of whatever has been weakened through our neighbours’ vast
assault on our international structure. A third task is, of course, to learn
the security lessons of the October War and to put right whatever has to be
amended. A fourth task is to look very carefully at our Democracy in the light
of its present dead[unclear]. Here, I believe there are three [unclear] to
perform. The first is to review [unclear] electoral system; the second [unclear]
arrive at a clear definition [unclear] dividing lines between military [unclear]gation
and politicalresponsibilities and the third is to achieve a [unclear]ciliation
between the claims of [unclear]thodox tradition and the incre[unclear] demand
for Pluralism and div[unclear]. In each case, the key word is [unclear]ance. In
no single one of [unclear] conflicts can you achieve any[unclear] by solutions
which give a [unclear] victory to one side and inf[unclear] total defeat on the
other. The [unclear] note for jewish statesmanship [unclear] the next decade at
least, is [unclear]ciliation and not sharp adjudica[unclear]. Be prepared, therefore,
for [unclear] what untidy compromises [unclear] bring conflicting interests
into [unclear]mony in the service of union.
The relationship between our [unclear]tionhood and
our religious fai[unclear] of course, a profound and tom[unclear] [unclear]ing
issue. Nobody can possibly [unclear]ceive that the jewish religious israeli
History should be exactly [unclear] same as in any other national [unclear]tory.
The fact is that religious [unclear] has played a unique part in pre[unclear] [unclear]ing
the coheesion and the identi[unclear] our nation, and it would be unh[unclear] [unclear]ical
to imagine that this should [unclear] no effects whatever on our [unclear]
Reality.
But yet our current Reality [unclear] current
Reality. It is the Reality [unclear] contemporary men and women [unclear]ing
within the atmosphere of [unclear] Times, and there must be a com[unclear]
effort to meet on a middle gr[unclear] which gives tradition its due [unclear]
pride and stature, but which [unclear] acknowledges the inalienable [unclear]
rights of citizens, including [unclear] rights of diversity. Nor can any[unclear]
seriously look at jewish History without religious thought as a [unclear] as a
Reality. One can regret this [unclear] or one can approuve, it makes [unclear]
difference. Its factuality cannot [unclear]sibly be undermined by any [unclear]
judgement. One can dislike [unclear] Himalayan Mountains
and the Mississippi River, but disliking them [unclear] not make them go away.
And [unclear] fact is that in jewish life, and [unclear]cially in american
jewish life, [unclear]gious devotion is expressed in [unclear]ersity and in
Pluralism, and no [unclear] within the the old monistic pat[unclear].
Therefore, if we are to asso[unclear] the whole jewish world with [unclear]
israeli enterprise, there must be [unclear] kind of spirit of reconciliation [unclear]
has not come to full expression. We need, also, to define our po[unclear]
within a new public psychological understanding our place in the [unclear]
without underestimating its [unclear]ngth, but also with a due sense [unclear]
proportion. We need a reanima[unclear] of our intellectual life, sum[unclear] [unclear]ing
to that task all of Israel’s [unclear]llectual and scientific resources,
because the gap between Politics and academic life, between those who act and
those who think, is [unclear]der in israeli Politics than, perhaps, in any
other working Democracy. The task of the israeli intellectual is not to sit
upon an ivorytower contemplating our society from impossible standards of
perfection, nor to make sudden, parachutelike incursions a few weeks before
each electoral struggle, but rather to undergo a constant exercise in the
restraint of passion and rationality. For, in the life and [unclear]ory and
Experience of our people, there are so many emotional, metaphysical and
passionate ele[unclear] that it becomes the intellectual’s task to contribute
the balac[unclear] dimension of rationality.
And we also face tasks in
bringing about a closer sense of common identity between Israel and the jewish
people. This common identity is, of course, unique. We have nothing to go on in
the Experience of any other nation. This special kind of solidarity that is
hard [unclear] work in the life and mind of jewish communities everywhere does [unclear]
have any precedent or parallel. That does not mean to say that it is abnormal.
Some historians, like Toynbee and others, in their passion for generalisation,
tend to react with violence against anything which does not fit a generalised
and classified system of ideas, and since there is nothing like the relations
between jewish diaspora and Israel, therefore they decreed that it must be
abnormal. A situation can be unique without being abnormal.
The unique links between Israel
and those who share its heritage across the world are a part of the Cartography
and the History and the cultural Experience of mankind. It is, I think,
essential, however, that some limits should be observed. You might have noticed
that we do not like being lectured to from Brooklyn, for example, about whether
or not we should abolish our Socialism. We have a deep respect for religious
authority abroad, but in our own reading of the jewish faith, one of the most
emphatic commandments is that which is known as yishuv ha-aretz, namely, residence in the land of Israel, and
somewhat less pedantically, at least – al
ha regel – to come here three times a year.
Now, I have great respect for
those who decide otherwise, but I must say that it does create a certain
skepticism about their rights to influence decisions that affect the physical
security and the concrete conditions of life of every citizen in this country.
We, therefore, do ask our friends abroad to temper their Dogmatism with a
constructive humility, and all this is quite possible within the framework of
accepting the concept of a universal jewish solidarity.
One of the contributions of jews
abroad is to bring into israeli life the warm currents of a universal
solidarity. Something, I think, was missing in the first weeks after the Yom
Kippur War. We needed, in my view, the spectacle of tens and hundreds of thousands
of jews filling our streets and our buildings, whether or not they had any
special vocation or any concrete purpose. The sheer physical illumination
granted to our lives by the massive, concrete, physical presence of jews
gathering around Israel in solidarity should have been asserted much earlier as
one of the ways of reminding israelis that their solitude was a figment and
that the map did not tell the whole truth about the sources of Love and trust
and confidence that israel commands across the world.
The fact is that our burdens are
too heavy for us to bear alone, and we see no reason why we should be called
upon to bear them alone. For, after all, everything we have built and defended
here, we have defended and built together in the service of a common solidarity
and a common pride. We ask you, thus, to look upon the turbulent currents of
israeli life and try to isolate those streams of History which make for
progress, growth, affirmation and which would take our people’s minds away from
the wounds on which it justly broods, for the only legitimate despondency is
the despondence of grief and of mourning. Everything else can be reconstructed
and replaced. That alone cannot be replaced. But not even the grief of the
bereaved can be allayed by a paralysis of growth. In our tradition, insofar as
consolation is conceived as possible, it arises out of construction. There is a
saying which calls upon mourners to console themselves in the building of Zion
and of Jerusalem, not to console themselves in a nihilistic paralysis of
everything that carries the tale of life forward.
I, therefore, ask you to be
objective and realistic about what you have seen, and to try to reach a
generalised conclusion that might be transmitted back across the invisible
electronic networks that bring jewish hearts together, to transmit back to the
israeli nation the old message, chazak v’amatz,
be strong and of good courage.
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