DAVID TWERSKY
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could possibly have opened concentration camps for union leaders
and Peace Now activists .
During those years, these elites increasingly spoke with the voice
of strident oppositionism, laced with the mournful elegiac tones of
an aristocracy of light fallen before the forces of darkness . To be
sure, Likud rule brought with it policies worth opposing, like the
growing West Bank Jewish settlements and the Lebanon war; but it
also brought the peace treaty with Egypt.
If
not exactly "a herd of independent minds," the differences
among Israeli intellectuals were lost in the general anti-annexationist
and anti-Lebanon war sentiments of that time . The widespread una–
nimity on what was to be opposed masked an underlying diversity on
how to break out of the political impasse and on an alternative vision
of society.
The unanimous rejection of the right's creeping annexation of
the territories did not produce automatic agreement as to what a
moderate Israeli policy might look like. There were differences over
the PLO, and over both tactics and strategies towards the right-tilting
orthodox Jews, whose political support remains crucial to a leftward
realignment. The more dovish left found it increasingly difficult to
agree on a set of positive symbols - national, familial, spiritual- with
which the mass of Israelis could identify . There was a growing am–
biguity toward the people who had voted Likud and supported the
Lebanon war. Finally, under cover of the widespread opposition
to
that war, extreme anti-army and antinationalist attitudes emerged,
though most people continued to see themselves as Zionist, demo–
cratic and patriotic.
The left found that it could not maintain a sense of proportion
about its usually justified criticisms of Likud policies . For those poli–
cies could not be held primarily responsible for the Israel-Arab dis–
pute, which had preceded both the rise of the Likud and the capture
of the territories.
Given that Israel should not have settled the West Bank or in–
vaded Lebanon and that the government pursuing those policies had
to be opposed, wasn't Arab rejection of Israel's very existence still at
the core of the conflict?
If
Gush Emunim and Ariel Sharon were bad
guys , did that make the PLO good guys, or even equally bad ones?
For if the PLO's position was as "flexibly rejectionist" as Likud's, not
to mention as politically intelligent, we would already be deep in
negotiations.
