Last week the Wall Street Journal carried a front page article entitled "
As Israel Prospers, Some Fear Its Defenses May Grow Soft." The basic thesis of the article by Peter Waldman is that increasing
wealth and prosperity in Israel has led to a combination of draft dodging and deterioration of the pioneering Zionist spirit upon which the Jewish State was built. This in turn has led to military softness and materialistic decadence that is inconsistent with Israel's heritage.
The makeover shows how Israel has flourished beyond the wildest dreams of the ardent socialists who founded the Jewish state. Powered by high-tech exports, the Israeli economy grew 6.3% in the first quarter this year, with a 28% jump in personal consumption of durable goods, such as cars and refrigerators. Sales of Porsches doubled in 2006 from 2004, and last year Lexus opened shop in the Jewish state. Yet prosperity has not brought security. As Israelis begin another summer fraught with regional instability, some are pondering a troubling question: Is the idea of an advanced consumer society, with its attendant individualism, compatible with the solidarity and focus required to defend a small state bordered by hostile neighbors? And could the growing gap between poor and wealthy Israelis undermine its national drive to protect itself?
Such concerns have grown particularly stark in recent months, as Israel has grappled with a crisis of confidence. Last summer's military stalemate with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas's recent conquest of the Gaza Strip over rival Palestinians have reinforced Israeli worries that it takes more than a high-tech army to address the terror and missile threats it faces from enemies on its borders. Later this summer, the independent Winograd Commission, appointed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, will release its review of last summer's war. The commission's harsh preliminary report suggests it will recommend an overhaul of Israel's national-security system, and possibly the resignation of Mr. Olmert himself.
One lesson from last summer's war: Even the world's best precision-guided weapons, fired from the most advanced military aircraft, can't quell a committed guerrilla force on the ground without support from trained and tested combat troops. Now the question is whether Israelis, like citizens in many developed countries, are losing the stomach for that sort of slog."
Frankly, I think Waldman has his eyes on the wrong point and cause. His focus on "
rich and poor" as a primary cause of a soft belly or draft dodging does not cohere with my first-hand impressions nor does he present more than cricumstantial statistics to buttress the argument. In fact, there have always been wealthy Israelis. That never stopped anyone from serving in the military.
The money quote in the article in my opinion (which I think Waldman missed) is this one.
"When my father and grandfather fought in wars, they each believed their children would one day live in peace. But now I have more experience," says Mr. Gazit, 33. "Every 10 years there's a clash, and every 10 years it's more extreme.""
Messianic movements, or, should I say false messianic movements, bring behind them waves of despair. For 2000 years, Jews lived in exile, praying for the messiah to bring us back to our homeland. Over the generations, there have been numerous false messiahs from
Bar Kochba to
Shabtai Tzvi. In their wake, there were mass conversions away from Judaism or despair leading to the loss of life.
Modern Zionism has created its own messiahs. Fringes of the national religious Zionist movement have become very messianic and part of that led to
the denial that the Gaza disengagement two summers ago would happen and the despair that ensued. It also caused some of its harder-core elements to shun army service because of disillusionment with the Zionist enterprise and their feeling that the secular Zionist government had lost its way on the path of redemption.
Similarly, and much more ominously, the bourgeois left, which is also the center of the Labor Party is currently disillusioned by the unmasking of their own false messiah, the Peace Messiah. Reared on the assumption that full peace would come in their lifetime and fooled by the promises of a "
New Middle East" in the wake of the Oslo Accords, the "
fat belly" of Israel's Labor Party and left wing
Meretz Party have woken up to the morning after. It turns out that
you cannot reform a lifetime terrorist by simply giving him money, weapons and territory. It turns out that all of our victims of suicide bombings brought about by Arafat's martyrs and the minions of the terrorists in Iran and Syria were not
sacrifices for peace as now-President
Shimon Peres and former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (z"l) insisted, but rather just another step in the war for the homefront.
No. Oslo was a false Messiah. The New Middle East is a false Messiah and so were the promises and promisers of this Middle Eastern faux Garden of Eden.
Peace is a very important goal and one we all need to strive for every moment of the day. It just turns out that you cannot microwave peace in the way we expect instant gratification in every other facet of our life today from food, to VOD and day trading. Setting expectations of a long slog is critical to maintaining an even keel and staying true to all goals, including Zionist goals. (See also this speactaular WSJ Op/ed by Bret Stephens entitled "
Who Killed Palestine?")
More than wealth or consumerism, post-messianic disillusionment of the peace-hungry bourgeois left of Tel Aviv is responsible for Waldman's "soft belly" of Israeli society and other ills such as draft dodging and faked psychoses. And it is the false messiahs of Oslo, Geneva and other microwaved peace initiatives that are the root cause of decline in the will to fight.
It is also the reason that this decline in the will to fight is neither long term nor fatal to Israel. It is both passing and a fringe phenomenon. You see, the Jewish world has seen its false messiahs and has always rebounded from them. We wake up quickly to reality and the same will happen again. Already, as Waldman wrote, the religious Zionist movement is quickly filling the vacuum in the army since they were never fooled by the false Peace Messiah. They are highly motivated and very loyal soldiers who still run on the original Zionist fuel. Other Zionists from around the country from wealthy
Raanana to some of the poorer development towns continue to fill the Israeli Army, Navy and Air Force ranks with pride and honor. That is still our majority and it is a tribute to the amazing youth from all walks of our society.
And, when the relatively small contingent of draft dodgers realizes that peace will be built here between people, personal connection by personal connection, brick by brick and factory by factory, rather than in glorious ceremonies, pompous declarations and
civil-rights free weaponry, then they will all come back to fight for the peace we all hope and pray for.
Labels: Israel, messiah, palestinians, peace
