Coming To Grips
With A New Israel
GARY ROSENBLATT
-editor
The leaders of
the Rabin gov-
ernment in Isra-
el have a mes-
sage for Ameri-
can Jews: step
aside so you
don't get blown
411.
over by the winds of change in
Jerusalem.
"This new government —
and I'm saying it loud and
clear — is a revolution,"
sserted Yael Dayan at the
annual America-Israeli dia-
logue in Washington last
week sponsored by the
American Jewish Congress.
"It's not a change of
government; it's a change of
policy and personality."
Ms. Dayan, an outspoken
Member of Knesset (Labor)
and daughter of the late
military hero, Moshe Dayan,
was responding to a sugges-
tion by the previous speaker,
American attorney and
former United Nations dip-
lomat Alan Gerson, that the
Rabin government not
discard the diplomatic ac-
complishments of the Likud-
led previous government.
He pointed out that Likud
had made the case for "land
for security" rather than
"land for peace," had stress-
ed Israel's importance as a
strategic ally of the U.S. and
had resisted the use of the
word "national" in discuss-
ing the legitimate rights of
the Palestinians.
"The new Israeli policy
seems to be doing away with
the previously planted
',seeds" of the Shamir
government, Mr. Gerson
said. He questioned the
wisdom of abandoning these
long-fought-for diplomatic
gains and noted that Ameri-
can Jews are confused by the
. rhetoric of the new Israeli
government, which seems to
accept the notion of a future
Palestinian state.
Ms. Dayan was impassioned
in her response, asserting
that the Rabin govern-
ment should "uproot the
seeds of evil" planted by
its predecessor. She spoke of
the 1982 war in Lebanon
and the emphasis on set-
tlements, territory and oc-
cupation rather than on
making peace. And she
spoke of her resentment for
those who suggest that the
Rabin government is
recklessly seeking peace at
the expense of security.
"We know the high price of
peace, the risks," she said.
"Likud had no monopoly on
security. No one knows
security better than Labor."
But she insisted that the
mandate of the Rabin
government is to end Israel's
role as an occupier of the Pa-
lestinian people and to make
peace.
She and other leaders of
the new government suggest
that this is Israel's best, and
perhaps last, opportunity to
make peace based on the
strength of Jerusalem's posi-
tion.
The dialogue, which
brought together about 15
leaders in the American
Jewish community with an
equal number of Israeli po-
litical leaders for three days
The issues here
speak to a
fundamental
change in
psychology and
self-definition.
of intense discussion around
a large table, seemed a
microcosm of the current
tension between American
Jews and Israel.
Ironically, the roles of re-
cent years have been re-
versed, based on the discus-
sion at the symposium:
Israelis are hell-bent on
making peace with the
Arabs, while U.S. Jews are
nervous and urging re-
straint. The Americans
favored the peace talks, but
they had questions they
wanted answered. Is Israel
moving too quickly toward
accommodation with Syrian
president Hafez Assad, who
has been characterized for so
many years as a man as
ruthless as he is cunning? Is
Israel putting too much
stock in the peace talks and
not planning ahead for a
"rainy day policy," as one
American participant put it,
in case the current negotia-
tions fail? And after years of
threatening that a Palestin-
ian state would spell the
destruction of Israel, is the
government in Jersualem
now sanguine about the pos-
sibility of such a state?
The leaders of the Rabin
government, however, are
coming from a different
place. They insist that Israel
should no longer be perceiv-
ed as the downtrodden
underdog in the Mideast
equation but rather as the
party with the upper hand.
"If we are still talking here
about Israel's survival, then
we're not having a real dia-
logue," Yael Dayan told the
symposium participants.
"We're not talking Galut
(Diaspora) mentality; we're
going to have peace and we
will pay the price with
land."
She and other leaders of
the new government insist
that they have discarded
Yitzhak Shamir's paranoid
world view that all the world
hates Israel. Yossi Beilin,
Israel's new deputy foreign
minister, stunned an Ameri-
can Jewish group in Wash-
ington recently when he
noted that Labor's platform
does not reject negotiating
with the PLO, and that the
end result of the peace talks
may, indeed, be a Palestin-
ian state.
The decision, he emphasiz-
ed, will be made by Israel.
"If we decide as a society, as
a state, that we will never
compromise on a Palestinian
state, there won't be a Pales-
tinian state . . . That's why
I'm not so afraid of referring
to those words."
Mr. Beilin said that
Likud's "main message"
was that "we as Jews cannot
trust the world." But in light
of the collapse of the Soviet
Union and the outcome of
the Persian Gulf War, Labor
feels that Israel has the
upper hand, albeit for a lim-
ited time.
Prime Minister Rabin, in
his Rosh Hashanah
greetings, stressed this
point, as he did in his inau-
gural address to the Knesset
in June. In his new year
greetings, he said that he
Yael Dayan: the new Rabin government is a "revolution."
was optimistic, that there
was now "a unique window
of opportunity for peace and
development," and that "we
are negotiating from a posi-
tion of strength — the
strength that we have final-
ly succeeded in convincing
our adversaries that coex-
istence is the only solution to
our problems."
This new worldview from
Jerusalem suddenly has
eclipsed an American Jewry
trained over the years to
think of Israel as the victim.
The issues here transcend
politics and hawks and
doves; it speaks to a fun-
damental change in psychol-
ogy and self-definition, not
only for Israelis, but for all
Jews.
And while Israel's leaders
should be educating us to
this new way of thinking,
they are still busy venting
their thinly-veiled resent-
ment at American Jews who
feel they know what is best
for the Jewish state.
Yael Dayan spoke at the
symposium of her many ap-
pearances in the U.S. over
the years on behalf of the
United Jewish Appeal.
"Every American Jew was a
general," she said, telling
her which Phantom jet
Israel should buy and which
piece of land was most vital.
It's time for American
Jews to stop being afraid and
to let Israel handle its own
affairs, she insisted. And it's
not the role of American
Jews to seek to pressure the
Arabs into moderation.
What role does she
perceive for American Jews,
Ms. Dayan was asked after
the dialogue had ended and
she was rushing to leave.
She stopped in her tracks to
respond: "You should not be
dealing with maps and
weapons, but with issues
that bind us as Jews —
human rights, social issues,
Jewish education. If we don't
strengthen those ties, we
won't have dialogues like
these in future generations."
A second later she was
gone; the message was clear:
if you want to be relevant,
you have to keep pace. But
we're not waiting for you. ❑
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