I am a big fan of Tom Friedman’s work. He always does the research, traveling the world, interviewing incessantly, learning new things, writing with clarity and insight. So when Tom raises the alarm, as he’s been doing recently about Israel’s future, it is important to take notice.
Friends have been asking what I think about the current situation in the Holy Land. The short answer: I haven’t been there recently—I went at least once a year for about 30 years—so I’m not sure. The general drift of Israeli politics—to the right—has been depressing and the demographics are what they always were: there will be more Palestinians and ultra-Orthodox Haredim and Jewish settlers on Palestinian lands in the future. Things will probably get worse. But the end of Israeli democracy? An Armageddon-like war? I’d be surprised. I’m a Jew. I feel a visceral need for Israel to exist, but my feelings about the place are complicated.
Let me tell you a story. The Time Magazine bureau in Jerusalem was one of my favorite places. There were a succession of great correspondents and photographers—and there was also Aaron Klein, our Israeli military expert, and Jamil Hamad, who was Palestinian. I loved them both, in different ways. Aaron was bluff and tough and solid. Jamil was quiet and kind and erudite. Whenever I was in town, Jamil would insist that I come over to Bethlehem for dinner with his family. This is what happened on one of my return trips:
I came across the green line with Time’s Jerusalem correspondent, Tim McGirk, just before sunset. We had a wonderful dinner, with Jamil pessimistic and realistic and insanely civil, as always. On the way back to Jerusalem, Tim and I were stopped at the border by a very attractive Israeli soldier–her looks did make a difference in this case, because they were so much at variance with what came out of her mouth. She said it was illegal for us to be in the West Bank after dark. Tim said no, we were journalists–and I was visiting from the United States. “Where are you from?” she asked me, with a fine smile and jingly black curls. New York, I said. “Wow. That’s cool,” she replied, then nodded back toward the border. “Why did you want to spend time with those people?”
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere. The beautiful soldier—my romantic Exodus-driven, childhood image of Israel, the international act of justice after the Holocaust, making the desert bloom etc etc. And then there’s what the soldier said. (Actually, I think she said “those animals…”) I wanted to smack her in the face…which was how I sometimes felt about the State of Israel under conservative Likud rule and the unquestioning support that groups like AIPAC gave Bibi Netanyahu (Jews are supposed to be argumentative, not supine, but just watch them). I knew too many Jews—close friends—who considered Palestinians animals; I knew too many Palestinians like Jamil, who weren’t.
The thing about Bibi is, he always assumed he was thirty IQ points smarter than his smartest opponents. Which made him foolish. At one point, he told me that he had conclusive evidence that as soon as Iran got a nuke, it would launch on Israel.
I started to laugh. I had been to Iran twice. It was a middle-class country with a well-educated populace, not just some collection of bedouins and terrorists living in tents. “What’s so funny?” Netanyahu asked.
“You think they’re that stupid? Twenty minutes after they launched, their country would be incinerated.” After all, Israel has nukes, too. Lots more and better than Iran will ever be allowed to have.
“But they’re religious fanatics!” He insisted.
The next day, I asked a source in Israel’s intelligence community: “Does Bibi really believe that?”
“Who knows?” He said, “But that’s what he tells all the Americans.”
And so many believe him. Not just AIPAC, but all those Rapture-deluded Evangelicals who always show up at Netanyahu’s political rallies, who actually think Jesus will return to lead the forces of decency against the forces of evil at Armageddon. (There is, by the way, a Shi’ite analogue—members of Hizbollah also believe in Armageddon, but they think the 12th Imam will return to lead the forces of righteousness. I’ve been to Megiddo—Armageddon in Greek—the Israeli town where the battle would be fought and Cecil B. DeMille couldn’t have picked a finer stage for the apocalypse.)
Bibi has been at the center of Israeli politics—on and off, but mostly on—for as long as a Gabriel Garcia Marquez character. He is trusted because he gives the impression of unremitting strength. And he is willing to make deals with the devil. His coalitions inevitably feature the right wing settler lunatics, a disproportionate number of whom seem to come from Philadelphia with something to prove about their testosterone levels. And also the Haredim, the ultra-Orthodox super-procreators who believe their religious purity, and need for constant Torah study, exempt them from service in the Israeli military. The coalitions are always flimsy, liable to crumble and cause yet another election…but Netanyahu’s strength seems eternal. And now, he apparently feels that he can move against the Israeli Supreme Court, one of the most respected judicial institutions on the planet and the most effective moderate counter-balance against the extremists. This is a significant change for Netanyahu and his previously secular party, Likud, which acted to strengthen the court in the past.
Why Now? Some reasons:
He’s desperate. He is facing trial on corruption charges. He needs “a get out of jail free card,” a former US diplomat in the region recently said. Otherwise, he could wind up in the slammer. They actually do that in Israel. His predecessor Ehud Olmert did jail time, and he was a nicer guy.
He can probably get away with it. Israel is in a stronger position than it’s ever been in the region. It has a close intelligence alliance with its neighbors, Jordan and Egypt and a surreptitious one with the Saudis—a gift from the widely hated and feared Iranians—and a burgeoning, post-Abraham Accords commercial relationship with the Gulfies. (The Saudis and the Iranians have now re-established relations. We’ll see how that works. The Saudis are fanatic Sunni; the Iranian leaders are fanatic Shi’a. Oil and oilier.)
The aforementioned AIPAC will make sure that Joe Biden stays on board, holding his nose, since he’s going to need all the help he can get in 2024. (Amazing how little Biden has had to say about the Middle East compared to every US president since Nixon.)
The Palestinians, always a political mess, seem in a fugue state, led by another endless Gabriel Garcia Marquez character, Mahmoud Abbas.
The demographic trends are with Netanyahu. The old socialist left is gone. The new settler right is growing. The Haredim are procreating. The Israeli-Arab middle and professional class has always been moderate, but now has something to lose. They tend to be dentists, not terrorists…although there does seem to be a new generation of angry young people on the West Bank.
There is another Israel. It is based in Tel Aviv, and along the Mediterranean coast. There is Silicohn Valley, there are elements of the military and the intelligence community, which have joined the demonstrations against Netanyahu. There are all those discos. There is Eilat, the beach town where God, it is said, doesn’t live. This Israel is, at once, vibrant and perhaps on the wane. One would hope that it could throw some commercial and cultural weight against the Netanyahu coalition, but the demographics suggest otherwise.
In ancient Jewish legend, there was a United Kingdom of Israel, founded by King David and his son Solomon. It split in two, and became the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah. Divided they fell. The Jews were driven from power by the Assyrians, then the Babylonians (ironically, the Persians restored them), and then the Romans and then the Turks and eventually, half-heartedly, the British. They were driven to the four winds. The Jews, my beloved people, have a positive genius for subtracting themselves.
I’ve been thinking about the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah lately. In the past, when we spoke of a two-state solution, we meant Israel and Palestine. I’d still like to see that happen, but nobody talks about it very much anymore. Now, in Israel, the two states are Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, secular and religious. As I said at the top, I’d like to believe Tom Friedman is being pessimistic, that a way forward will be found. But the Jews have a track record on this particular piece of turf: they’ve lost it before.
A final note: Jamil Hamad passed away some years ago. He had a blood disorder and Howard Chua-Eon, Time Magazine’s invaluable chief of correspondents, moved to get him a hospital bed in Israel. His sons drove him to the border—there was some sort of delay; I’m not sure of the details—but Jamil didn’t make it. He died on the border.
Please consider this edition of Sanity Clause a small tribute to the memory of a mentor and colleague and friend, Jamil Hamad.
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Thank you for this beautiful and insightful essay.