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were put forward "not in the Middle East Institute in Leningrad, nor
in the Kreisky school in Vienna, nor by anti-Zionists in Princeton,
nor by anti-Semites in Paris, but here, by Jewish-Israelis."
All the accusations of the Israelis as "racist" and "antidemocratic"
- and which receive ample press coverage - fly in the face of the
Israeli reality.
"If
that were true," Megged told me, "every time there
was an Arab terrorist attack, there would be a pogrom against an
Arab village or neighborhood."
Again, he tries to define a center course.
If
the left is guilty of
blaming Israel for everything, it has correctly seen the corrupting in–
fluence of the occupation. But the occupation not only forces Israelis
to rule another people, and distorts the social structure by driving
Israelis out of low-paying and low-status jobs. It also caused, says
Megged, many Israeli intellectuals "to perversely reach complete
identification, heart and soul, with the enemy whose declared goal is
our destruction." They influence "wide circles" and have "created a
public climate" in which their criticisms have become staples of "con–
ventional wisdom." By challenging the national confidence, Megged
continues, the left has undermined national security: "Whoever does
not fool himself that the terrible war in Lebanon was our last war,
asks himself with growing concern where we will find the moral
strength - that same strength of which we were so proud, and on
which we depended more than on our arsenal- to stand against our
enemies in the difficult struggles ahead?"
With the battle lines drawn, other writers and journalists leaped
in. Writing in Megged's old paper,
Davar,
Hayyim Guri (one of the
four who called on the left to join the national unity government) said
that the new left is intolerant, except when it comes to "our neigh–
bors," that is, the Arabs. Then it "makes allowances and sympathet–
ically understands their 'primitivism', their 'folklore', their 'sacred
tenets' and 'preconceived notions'." When it comes to Israel, they
completely reject these aspects of the culture.
Guri sees the conflict as one between the modish left and the
"rooted and traditional left" to which he and Megged belong. Gefen's
attempt to read Megged, Guri and other writers out of the left is to
Guri a reminder that Gefen and his Mapam were once pro-Stalinist.
The next day, Hagai Eshed attacked the left for identifying with
the PLO, and for ignoring Middle Eastern realities.
In a previous piece criticizing the dovish left, Guri proposed
that the government give Peace Now a mandate to negotiate with
the PLO - in order to prove once and for all that the PLO is unwill-
