222
PARTISAN REVIEW
bins, scavenging cats, and everywhere the color of yellow stone. Whereas
vast parts of Tel Aviv have been constructed of concrete resembling
nothing so much as the gray cardboard backing that comes with shirts
from the laundry, this yellow stone - the cost of which varies depending
on its gradations of pink, white or beige - has been the mandated build–
ing block ofJerusalem since 1948. A conference-hopping Rumanian ar–
chitect whom I have lunch with across the street from the King David
Hotel at the YMCA dining room - no plebian institutional mess hall this,
but an airy, glass-paned venue for the city's non-kosher cognoscenti -
explains that there is something about Jerusalem stone which apparently
refracts the light differently. (He is part of the opposition to an ongoing
civic movement agitating to use a variety of materials for construction.) If
you respond to Israel, if you overlook its many unpleasantnesses, ranging
from scratchy toilet-paper to the all-powerful "Bezek" - the nationalized
phone company which periodically goes on strike, scrambling numbers
and making it impossible to confirm flights into or out of the country - it
is my contention that sooner or later it will be the color of those yellow
stones you are responding to.
It
will linger in your bones, like an ache,
making it difficult to write the country off as a contentious and divisive
mirage otherwise known as aJewish homeland.
After the massacre, the blitz of accusations and recriminations began
within what seemed like a matter of minutes. Who was to blame? And for
what? Americans, for producing this foreign implant? "Neta zar," were
the exact disdainful words Rabin used, pointing a finger at all those un–
wholesome immigrants with their deranged allegiances to Meir Kahane,
et
aI.,
which a chronically people-hungry country like Israel was forced to
take in - to welcome, yet! Or maybe it was the government, for allowing
the settlers to think their expansionist vision had a particle of reality....
Or maybe it was Shimon Peres himself, for pursuing an accommodation–
ist, possibly self-destructive peace policy - and in the process giving fuel
to those who were waiting for an opportunity to prove him wrong.
Amos Oz, Cynthia Ozick, and Abe Rosenthal weighed in on
The
New York Times
Op-Ed page with widely divergent, panoramic views,
suggesting either that Israel was too aggressive or that Jews were too con–
trite. Meanwhile, Israeli commentators tried to study the tragedy under a
microscope, providing a closer examination of the volatile intertwining of
Biblicism and nationalism that led to the redemptive theology of the tiny
Kach movement to which Goldstein belonged. Aviezer Ravitzky, a pro–
fessor ofJewish thought at Hebrew University, suggested in
The Jerusalem
Post
that within any given society and every religion - including
Orthodox Judaism - there will always be a fringe group of people whose
core identity comes from demonizing the Other: " 'If I have an enemy, I
