DAVI D TWERSKY
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In part, the insistence on the powerful clash of mutually exclu–
sive ideas serves to reject the language of unity, whose political ex–
pression was the coalition . In this sense, "unity" is seen as a flight
from clarity, seeking refuge from weariness in confusion. But if the
left is unable to reimpose the old ideological hegemony of the labor
movement, and Likud is not strong enough to impose its own counter
historical myth, the patterns of hegemonic thinking remain intact.
The system now requires the ideology of "national unity ."
"It is the role of the intellectuals to explode this myth of unity,"
Yehoshua Sobol, a leading left-wing playwright (whose
Soul of a Jew
and
Ghetto
will appear on Broadway this fall) told me. But if national
disagreement should not be swept under the carpet of "unity" it does
not have to lead to "civil war" either. And, as we have seen, it is the
myth of the unity of Israeli intellectuals that is being exploded .
As against the civil war rhetoric of the left and the right, and
the false and hollow unity rhetoric of many of the politicians, writers
like Oz and Yehoshua grope towards "a gradual healing" through
honest exposure of the numerous wounds in the body politic .
Israeli democracy often works in strange ways. The Ministry of
Education and Culture supports the local film industry and theater;
but most films and plays have been "left oppositionist ." The director
or playwright often takes his production abroad, where he is praised
as an honest dissident against his regime, only to confound his for–
eign colleagues by informing them that the major investor was the
same Israeli government that is "occupying the West Bank," "deny–
ing the Palestinians their rights," and "bombing Beirut."
Sobol's plays have aroused angry passions , and not only on the
right. He is the artistic director of the Haifa municipal theater, largely
supported by public funds . His latest play ,
King of Israel,
addresses
the pervasive role of the army, and especially of senior army officers,
in the political and moral climate of the country. The play inspired
criticism from the left as well as the right. The key theme among the
critics was that Sobol was targeting an important national institution,
the army, and generalizing from the worst examples (say, Sharon)
about what remains a critically necessary part of Israeli life . A dovish
Labor Knesset member, Shevach Weiss , attacked Sobol, by compar–
ing the alienation of the intellectuals from the people and the voting
patterns of the past decade : "The right has grown while the left has
diminished ... he who is alienated from his people will find that they
become alienated from him ."
