Oh, What a Wonderful Unity!

In all its 53 years, Israel has never been likethat it is now. Almost Tthe entire Israeli publicseems to have becomehas become a bunch flock of parrots.

No matter who Whoever is talking- the seller of Fellafel fallafel or a professor ofhistory, a taxi driver or Our Political Correspondent, an army officer or a member of theKnesset- all of them endlessly repeat endlessly the same some seven- or eight slogans, inexactly the same words:

• “Barak has turned every stone on the way to peace.”
• “He has offered Arafat (almost) everything he asked for. And what did we get in return? War.”
• “Arafat (the villainous, cheating, lying, corrupt), instead of accepting the

generous offer with both hands, started a campaign of violence and terror.”

• “This proves that the Palestinians never wanted peace. They want to annihilate the State of Israel (throw us into the sea).”
• ” The right of return is a plot to destroy Israel.”
• “We have no partner for peace.”
• “The struggle is not about the settlements, but about Jaffa and Haifa.”
• “The conflict just doesn’t have a solution.”

Each of these slogans is wrong and can be easily disproved by the facts. But that is not the mainthing. The main thing is the total uniformity of the public discourse in Israel, including thevoters of Barak and Sharon, the members of the Labor and Likud, the far-right Moledet and theMeretz parties.

This by itself could be the subject of an interesting scientific research project. How doesthis happen? We have no Goebbels-like ministry of propaganda. Dissidents don’t disappear inthe Gulag, as in Stalinist Russia. Intellectuals are nor dragged to labor camps, as in theCultural Revolution of Mao. They not are not even compelled to drink castor oil, as inMussolini’s Italy.

So how does it happen? How does an entire people in a democracy behave as if hypnotized? How dothe free media- the dozens of newspapers, channels and networks, with the hundreds ofcommentators and correspondents, turn themselves into the organs of a uniform, primitivepropaganda? How does such a system of brain-washing come into being without a cruel,omnipotent dictator, but as a kind of voluntary auto-brain-washing?

This is especially odd, because the main message of this brain-washing is not cheerful andoptimistic, but as pessimistic as can be. It says that there is no chance for peace, and neverwas. That the war is eternal. That “they” will always want to kill us, and that there is nothingwe can do about it. That anyone who thinks otherwise (if such a person exists) lives on the moon.

Stranger still, this message does cause some depression, but that is not the only reaction.When the air escaped from the balloon of peace, one could hear a vast sigh of relief.

A foreigner will not understand this. We do.

The Oslo agreement, which descended on the public without any prior preparation, created ashock. I remember the day it was signed. I was in Jerusalem. In the Eastern part, there waseuphoria. The Palestinians, together with some Israeli peace activists, drank champagne inthe American Colony hotel, rejoiced together on the steps of Orient House. In the streets,bands of Palestinian youngsters were roamingwandering about, waving the (forbidden)Palestinian flag and nearly kissing the Israeli border policemen. When I crossed into WestJerusalem, I found there a strange, hesitant, thoughtful mood, cautiously optimistic. I wasinvited to a TV broadcast and found the same mood in the studio.

Since than, for eight years, Israel was has been in the grips of a painful syndrome, called”cognitive dissonance”. This is a situation where incoming new information crashedintocollides with old, deeply rooted attitudes.

Every person (and, it seems, an entire people, too) has a world-view, a fixed pattern ofperceptions, a kind of mental map that directs their thoughts and reactions. Without such amap, the person (or people) feel lost in a world of chaos. The map gives them security; they knowwhere they are and where they are going. When they are hit by new information that contradictsthe existing pattern, they find themselves in a frightening situation of uncertainty,insecurity and anxiety. Whoever is responsible for this becomes the object of hatred andfury.

For hundreds of years, the Jews have been persecuted in many countries. Everywhere theyencountered anti-Semitism, suffered from discrimination, became victims of pogroms, weremurdered in the Holocaust. Even in enlightened countries, almost every Jewish child absorbsabsorbed with his mother’s milk the belief that the Goyim hate the Jews, always did and alwayswill. Every year, on the eve of Passover, in the warm family circle, millions of Jews repeat thewords: “In each generation they try to destroy us, but God saves us from them.”

Zionism was supposed to create a New Jew, but in practice it only transferred the existingmental pattern to the new country. Arab opposition to the Zionist penetration lookedtoappeared to the Jews as a natural continuation of the old story of persecution and pogroms.The existing Jewish pattern was not shattered, but became even stronger. It created a feelingof unity, permanency and order. A cheerful song, beginning with the words “The whole world isagainst us / but we do not care…” became a folk dance.

And then Oslo came. Perplexing new perceptions hit us. The Arabs want peace. Arafat, who onlyyesterday was the Arab Hitler, became a partner. The Arabs are were reconciled with out to ourexistence. A New Middle East. Peace, conciliation, mutual respect are just around thecorner.

This picture did not cause happiness. On the contrary. It caused deep anxiety. It was clearthat something was wrong, The pattern was shaken, and no new one replaced it. The old map, whichdescribed a familiar landscape, did not show the way anymore. It was necessary to draw a newmap, contradicting all that was known and doubting all that was thought and felt until then.

And then, suddenly, a powerful reaction set in. Ehud Barak, the man of peace, therepresentative of the left, killed Oslo and exposed the Arab plot. He proved that there was nopartner. The Arabs want to destroy us. Thank God, everything returned to what it was before.What a relief!

After all, in a situation of war and conflict, everyone of us knows exactly how to behave, whatto do. There is no cause for anxiety. The old map remains true. The pattern that served us forhundreds of years remains good for the future.

This causes deep satisfaction. Haven’t we said all the time it’s all a big bluff? As YitzhaqShamir put it so succinctly: “The Arabs are the same Arabs, the Jews are the same Jews and the seais the same sea.”

In this situation, a wonderful national unitywas is reborn. All the Jewish parties from leftand right can unite. Shimon Peres can sit in the same government with men like Ze’evi,Lieberman and Landau, who could give lessons to Haider and Le-Pen. The media and academia.almost without exceptions, can join the feast. Pseudo-leftists of yesterday confess theirsins as if they were in a Soviet meeting of self-criticism. Oh, what a wonderful unity!

The most repelling exhibition in this orgy is the treason of the intellectuals. They, whoshould have drawn the new map that would lead the people towards the reality of peace, arebetraying their trust. The few, the very few, who stay true to their mission, are despised andhated.

But on the shoulders of these few the fate of the country rests now rests. There is no future forIsrael if it goes on behaving like an armed ghetto. A state is no ghetto, as the ghetto was nostate. In order to exist, the state needs a new perception of itself and its surroundings, onethat suits the new situation.

And that is, first and foremost, the task of the intellectuals.