Because we always make time for you.
The Pragmatist
Stephen Dweck
Ehud Barak, in his U.S. speeches,
emphasizes the need to move forward.
IN PERSON
10 to 4
HOWARD LOVY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Designer Jewelry
New York (JTA)
he British
News
airport
worker who Analysis
slammed
his truck into a plane making a refu-
eling stop could not have realized that
he was punctuating a point for the
aircraft's important passenger.
Ehud Barak finally made it to the
United States later than planned, with
,
what he called a "small human error'
preventing him from personally
addressing the thousands of American
Jewish communal leaders
waiting to greet him in
Atlanta at the United
Jewish Communities
General Assembly.
A day later, speaking in
New York to a wildly sup-
portive crowd at an Israel
Policy Forum dinner, the
commando-turned-politi-
cian found a way to use
this concept of unpre-
dictable human failings in
his political message:
If the peace process
fails, it will be due to
human error, and its suc-
cess will not come
through heavenly inter-
vention.
"I cannot look to the heavens for
miracles, and I do not believe in wait-
ing for divine solutions," Barak told
the IPF forum, a theme he repeated
the next day to the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations. "This must be
resolved, here and now, by human
beings."
Had it come from the leader of
any other nation, this theme of
humans seizing the moment would
seem almost trite. But Israel was
founded, in part, on biblical claims,
and its history is peppered with the
language of miracles.
Support for Israel among Jews
around the world — and more
recently among Christian Zionists —
has depended a great deal upon the
idea of Israelis as modern-day heirs to
biblical stories.
T
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11■1■ 11111MMINININIMMIE.
Barak is not a post-Zionist out to
"debunk the myths" of Israel's mirac-
ulous survival, but he is attempting to
take the image of Israel among North
American Jews out of the realm of the
mythic and place it firmly in modern-
day political reality.
Barak told the Conference of
Presidents that he has "no illusions"
regarding the "tough neighborhood"
in which Israel lives.
But, he said, unlike Israel's sup-
porters and critics in Europe and
America, he's not flying in a "balloon"
and gazing below at Israel the symbol,
the idea or the fulfillment of a biblical
promise.
o by Ro bert A. Cum
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 1
Prime Minister Ehud Barak speaks
to the Israel Policy Forum.
Rather, he said, "we have our feet
on the ground."
This pragmatism came out in
many of the answers Barak gave to
those on both the right and the left at
the Conference of Presidents forum
and in his concrete proposals on what
is possible for human beings to
accomplish now, as opposed to high-
er-minded ideals toward which
Israelis and Palestinians can later
aspire.
His message to the left:
Coexistence with Palestinians, while a
wonderful ideal, is not possible in the
real world as it exists today. That's
why he is advocating "good fences for
good neighbors" and complete separa-
tion between Israel and any future
Palestinian state.
His message to the right: While
he's bothered by anti-Israeli rhetoric