It's Alice in Wonderland. A Prime
Minister who accepts crippling
constraints on his peace plan
from his own party, then insists
the plan is intact.
J
erusalern — Since I
emigrated last
December from
Southern Cali-
fornia to Jeru-
salem, I have found myself
hopelessly trapped in a
permanent_ state of two-
mindedness about Israel's
situation. My views are
capable of sliding left and
right like the needle on a
radio dial, depending on the
latest headlines — or who I'm
talking to. I can make either
case, take all sides, defend
virtually any position.
The 19th century English
poet John Keats was no Zion-
ist philosopher, but, some-
how, his words describing
what he considered the secret
to artistic success — "nega-
tive capability" — have just
the right ring. Keats was de-
scribing why he felt Coleridge
and Shakespeare excelled as
poets, suggesting that they
were "capable of being in
uncertainties, mysteries,
doubts, without any irritable
reaching after facts and
reason." I have long found
this fuzzy-headed concept in-
triguing in the abstract, but
it never seemed especially
useful in my everyday life —
until I moved to Israel.
On the day of the stabbings
on Jaffa Road (three Jews
wounded and two dead, one of
them a 91-year-old-man), I
was preparing to take a script
to a courier service down-
town, for shipment to the
States. "Don't go down there,
it's a mess," said my wife, who
had telephoned to tell me
what happened — news trav-
els fast in Jerusalem. A
young Arab with a butcher
Stuart Schoffman is a screen-
writer living in Jerusalem.
This article was made possi-
ble by a grant from The
Fund For Journalism on
Jewish Life, a project of the
CRB Foundation of Mon-
treal, Canada. Any views ex-
pressed are solely those of
the author.
knife, people waiting for a
bus. The crowd nearly
lynched the guy, she said.
"Good," I heard myself reply..
Am I not ashamed? lb have
said such a thing, even in the
heat of the moment! After
half _a year in Israel, am I
turning into a Kahanist?
Preposterous. I am left-
wing to the marrow, an unre-
generate alumnus of the 60s,
proud of my role as water-
carrier in the grand revolution
of my youth. I marched on
Washington, hurled epithets
at campus recruiters from
Dow Chemical and the U.S.
Marines, and would have
burned my draft card (or
perhaps sought deferment as
a rabbinical student) had I
not gotten out for my dismal
eyesight.
Since 1967, I have been
willing (as if it were up to me)
to trade land for peace, every-
thing, as the aged Ben-
Gurion advocated, except
Jerusalem and the Golan
Heights. I am anguished by
the shooting of stone-throw-
ers, the demolition of houses,
the conditions in the prisons.
I was revolted no less than
the staunchest TV-watching
liberal in America by images
of Israelis attacking blame-
less Arab passersby in the
wake of the Egged Bus 405
disaster. And had I actually
been on Jaffa Road that awful
day, I would have doubtless
screamed at the would-be
lynchers, "Where are your
Jewish values?"
Extremely disquieting, this
sheer inconsistency. Such
behavior one normally asso-
ciates with movie producers
and career politicians, not
civilians like myself. But at
least I am not alone. My
friend Richard, a classical
musician from Boston who
has lived here since the 1970s,
identifies himself as a leftist,
but contends "that Jericho is
part of Israel. Just because I
believe in a Greater Israel
doesn't mean I'm a rightist,"
he says. "I would never vote
for Likud."
Neither would I. Neverthe-
less, on a recent visit to Gush
Etzion — a cluster of West
Bank settlements rebuilt
after 1967 by the children of
chalutzim, Jewish pioneers,
who had been slaughtered
there in 1948 — I find myself
agreeing that this heroic
ground, an "Israeli Alamo" as
the locals like to put it, is
something we must never
give back. Yes, this is over the
Green Line = way over — but
these men died defending the
road to Jerusalem. What's
more the land of Gush Etzion
was purchased fair and
square back in the 1920s,
unlike, the locals will remind
you, various left-wing kibbut-
zim situated on the ruins of
Arab villages destroyed by
the Isralis in the War of In-
dependence. Why, there are
even neighborhoods in West
Jerusalem, they will further
remind you, that are filled
with former Arab houses. I
know; I live in one of them.
Over lunch, however, with
those same Gush Etzion
locals — \and these are the
more moderate of the West
Bank settlers — you hear
them saying that stone-
throwers should be deported
because it's more "humane"
than shooting them, and that
the Arabs of Judea and
Samaria should be granted
civil rights, but no political
rights. When you respond
that we Jews would never ac-
cept such terms, they will tell
you in return that Jews went
without political rights for
2000 years. In other words,
the Palestinians, alas, will
have to suffer because we
have suffered. If this were
most -places in the West
Bank, the "alas" would be
omitted.
If I were a Palestinian, how
would I feel?
But I am not a Palestinian,
and one must take sides; it is,
unfortunately, us or them.
How can we ever make peace
— barter our land for their
promises — with people who
plunge buses into ravines?
Whose leaders pretend to re-
nounce terrorism and then
refuse to condemn such hor-
rific acts?
Yet — how do you expect
them to respond, as a Pales-
tinan intellectual said to me,
when Jewish soldiers kill
Arab children week in and
week out?
But they encourage their
children to throw stones.
What kind of people jeopar-
dize their own children?
And what of the Jewish
Underground? Fanatics
caught redhanded planting
bombs on Arab buses, mur-
derers, who randomly gunned
down Arab college students
in the name of Jewish sur-
vival — and whose sentences
were then commuted by the
President of the State of
Israel. What kind of people
are we?
We are people, in the words
of a politician from the Negev
quoted recently in the daily
paper Ha'aretz, who typical-
ly "think Peace Now, behave
like Kahane, and vote Likud."
Or as an Israeli entertainer
explained to me: "I'm a leftist
rightist. I want the Palestin-
ians to have a state of their
own — where they can all. be
together and do to each other
what they do to us."
It's Alice in Wonderland. A
Prime Minister who accepts
crippling constraints on his
peace plan from his own par-
ty, then insists the plan is in-
tact. A National Unity gov-
ernment that is two bodies
simultaneously occupying
the same space, like some-
thing from a science-fiction
comic, saying yes and no at
the same time — talk about
"negative capability!"
According to recent polls,
most Israelis want the gov-
ernment to crack down on the
intifada, but a majority
would, under the right conch-
tions, also trade land for
peace. It would appear logical
that if we increase the vio-
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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