Israel's Coming Identity Crisis Labor Party's Avraham Burg sees peace creating the dilemma of Israelis no longer defined by their enemies. ERIC SILVER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS vraham Burg confides inition of themselves and they that he is "scared to death" evaporated. We in Israel had an about the peace process. immunity against assimilation, of because Mr. Burg — mixed marriages and evapora- number three on the Labor slate tion." after Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon But peace, says the only Labor Peres in the 1992 elections — is Knesset member who graduated against the deals made so far from the national religious B'nei with the Palestinians and the Akiva youth movement and still Jordanians, or has lost faith in wears a knitted yarmulke, could his leaders. change all that. The 39-year-old Knesset mem- "We, as Israelis, will face a sit- ber was an early Peace Now cam- uation where we'll have to define paigner. In February 1983, he ourselves. We shall have to ask was one of 10 demonstratorS ourselves, 'Who are we? Jews? wounded outside Prime Minister Middle Easterners? People with Menachem Begin's Jerusalem of- a new Israeli identity, not the tra- fice when a right-wing fanatic ditional Jewish one? How do you, flung a grenade into a vigil Avraham Burg, define yourself without the help of the outside enemy?"' All this in an age where the global village, CNN and MTV, Coke and Nike, has invaded the Jewish state. "For an observant Jew like me," Mr. Burg shudders, "for whom the taste of life was my faith, my morality, my tradition, my normative way, it is a shock- ing experience to go into a school and ask the children what is the taste of life. The answer is always Coca Cola. It is a stronger symbol of com- munal longing than my tradi- tional one." Knesset Member Avraham Burg: The As if brooding on the future of taste of life is now Coke, not religion. Israeli Jews were not enough, Mr. against the Lebanon war. No, Burg also frets about the future what frightens him is the dilem- of the Middle East. Israel, he con- mas peace will pose for Israelis. tends, cannot disconnect itself ge- We talked less than a week af- ographically, economically, ter Israel and Jordan sealed their politically or culturally from its peace treaty in the gritty Arava region. But where is the Middle desert. It turned rapidly from a East going? conversation to a seminar. Mr. Israel, he maintains, inherit- Burg, father of four and chairman ed the legacy of three revolutions: of the Knesset education com- the French (civil rights), the Eng- mittee, is a natural teacher. Like lish (industry, one's relations to the best of them, he offers more one's environment, one's work questions than answers. and to nature), and the American "We are now walking the last (one's relationship to democracy). steps of the good old world we "Modem Israel," he says, "went knew," he says. "That world was through all three revolutions. a world of known enemies. Our The Middle East did not. It is identity was defined from outside. still a pre-revolutionary region. I knew who I was because I had It is like the Roman empire with an external enemy. one world inside the walls and "Whenever 'Who is a Jew?' was the barbarians outside. Espe- debated in the Knesset, some- cially if you add the qualitative body always said Hitler knew edge between the within-the- who was a Jew. The enemy de- walls world (high-tech and infor- fined who I am. In recent years mation) and the outside-the-walls American and other Western world (low tech and lack of infor- Jews had less and less of an ex- mation). ternal enemy. Half of them didn't Israel will be like a bridgehead find a i alternative, internal def- of Western culture in this world. AN For some children, visions of growing up may be simply that. Visions. 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