[Peace-discuss] Background on Shalem Center (Halevi)

[David Green]

The Program for Jewish Culture and Society is
sponsoring Yossi Klein Halevi, who is an associate at
the Shalem Center in Israel. This center was founded
by Yoram Hazony, a religious settler-advocate, who has
worked to reframe Zionism in religious terms. He
previously worked with Netanyahu. In this company and
with his views, there is no way that Halevi can be
characterized as anything other than Pipes/Abrams
style neocon/Likudnik. I would have thought that the
PJCS would have wanted to at least try to put a more
liberal face on their guest, but I would have thought
wrong.

By the way, Hazony is discussed in an excellent book
called Zealots for Zion (1991). Ironically, he
attended Princeton around the same time as Norman
Finkelstein.

Below is a critique that falls within the Zionist
framework, but still informative.

What Really Endangers Zionism
By MICHA ODENHEIMER 

Ever since Israeli author and scholar Yoram Hazony
started raising hell about Israel's textbooks and the
cavalier way they present Zionism, the Holocaust and
the story of the Jewish people — a cause vociferously
taken up by Israel's new minister of education, Limor
Livnat — I've been tempted to shout, "Hey, is this guy
stupid, or what?"

Not that he lacks I.Q. Mr. Hazony, the author of a
much-discussed book, "The Jewish State: The Struggle
for Israel's Soul," writes a clear, elegant prose. A
onetime speechwriter for former Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, now head of his own conservative
Jerusalem think tank, the Shalem Center, he has a
knack for picking up on the ghost of an idea and
tracing it back to its philosophical roots, then
chasing down every tendril, even to the choice of
photographs in the textbooks Israel's kids are being
given to read.

It's not that he's wrong in saying Israelis have a
right and duty to tell our story proudly, to imbue our
children with an identification with and love of the
Jewish people. It's been a hard and crazy couple of
millennia and this is the only state we've got. If we
can't tell our own story to our children, who will?

No, my problem with Mr. Hazony and the Shalem Center —
and much of the Netanyahu right — is the schizophrenic
existence they lead. Mr. Hazony's war on behalf of the
Zionist narrative is fueled by a deep fear for the
future of Israel, or at least that's how Mr. Hazony
presents it. As he tells it, if Israeli children cease
to believe in the story of Zionism, in the unique
history of the Jewish people, then the solidarity that
links Israelis, and that gives us strength and
inspiration to risk our lives in battle, will be
sapped.

But the fight to maintain a uniquely Jewish culture
and public life in Israel is only one part of what the
Shalem Center is about. The center and its supporters
— beginning with Mr. Netanyahu himself, whose book "A
Place in the Sun" was ghostwritten by Mr. Hazony — are
true believers in what they like to call free-market
economics. They favor the starkest kind of
survival-of-the-fittest policies. 

Some actually believe that this economics — a blind
belief in "market" forces that allows corporations and
wealthy individuals to manipulate the economy to their
gain — works to the benefit of society. But no one can
claim it encourages social solidarity.

During the past 25 years, Israel has seen its sense of
solidarity and mission corroded, not by bad textbooks,
but by the greed of its economic elite and the
politicians who serve them. To our shame, Israel's
egalitarian roots have given way to a society that now
boasts of the largest gap in income between rich and
poor of any Western country.

Israel's taxes have been structured in such a way that
thousands of newly minted Israeli millionaires receive
blanket exemptions on stock exchange earnings, while
hundreds of thousands of us barely keep afloat from
paycheck to highly taxed paycheck. Companies that
survive only through government guarantees and
subsidies manage to pay their executives bloated
salaries. But teachers are paid next to nothing and
schools have 40 children to a classroom.

As government officials "privatize" the land that
Zionist pioneers once sacrificed so much to redeem,
selling it off to wealthy contractors who build
suburban housing for the well-heeled, affordable
housing for the poor is placed at the bottom of the
national agenda. A public transportation system that
serves rich and poor alike goes under-funded and
under-developed, while a massive, unnecessary highway
is being built to satisfy the greed of car importers
and building contractors who want to put McDonald's
and shopping malls near the off-ramps.

If Mr. Hazony and Ms. Livnat truly fear for Israel's
youth, they should get to know the teenagers in two
Israeli neighborhoods, different as night and day but
affected by the same corrosive cynicism that so
threatens our existence. Let them meet the wealthy
children of affluent Tel Aviv suburbs such as Herzliya
or Ramat Aviv, and savor the fruits of the culture of
greed brought to this land by the economic policies
they support. Let them hang out in the malls with the
teenagers, talk to them about the benefits of cable
versus satellite TV, have a bite at McDonald's,
discuss their latest purchases of laptops, DVDs and
stereo systems.

They would discover, as they fear, that many of these
teenagers don't plan on going to the army. They don't
have much feeling for Zionism. What they do have is a
profound identification with Western consumer values.
They didn't pick that up from reading a textbook.

Then they should spend some time with kids of the
other Israel. They should visit the slums of Ramle,
just outside Ben-Gurion Airport, and then go to
Shechuna Dalet of Beersheva, to the development town
of Kiryat Malachi or any of 100 other impoverished
neighborhoods. They should speak to any of the about
50% of Israeli children who will never receive a high
school matriculation diploma.

These kids won't have read the textbooks that Mr.
Hazony and Ms. Livnat deplore, because history isn't
even part of their curriculum. Many won't be going to
the army either. Some won't go because they already
have police records, so the army won't take them. Some
won't go because they don't want to fight for a
country that can't be bothered to give them an
education.

Yes, Mr. Hazony, we do have a values problem in
Israel. Children are smart. They absorb what's going
on in this country, and that shapes their at
des. You
can't idolize corporate executives, open all the gates
to multinational corporations, and then expect to
strengthen the Jewish identity of the youth. You can't
have an economics based on naked greed and inculcate
self-sacrifice. You can't ignore the educational,
health, employment and housing needs of millions of
Israelis, and expect to maintain a citizen's army.

It's not the textbooks. It's the reality, stupid.

Rabbi Odenheimer is chairman of the board of the
Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews. This article is
reprinted with permission from Ha'aretz, whose Web
site is haaretzdaily.com.

 



		
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