Showing papers on "Jewish state published in 1979"

The Rabin Memoirs

Abstract: The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in November of 1995 - one year after he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Yasir Arafat - sent shock waves around the world. Known as both a man of war and of peace, the Jerusalem-born Israeli prime minister played a key role in developing the Jewish state and was instrumental in establishing peace in the Middle East. Yitzhak Rabin's memoirs, first published in 1979 but long out of print, are now available in this expanded edition. They provide a candid appraisal of significant events in Israeli history, and passages censored when the memoirs were first published have been restored. The addition of an afterword by Rabin's political advisor, Yoram Peri, and his most important speeches given after 1979 round out Rabin's life and show the evolution of his beliefs.Rabin writes of his years in the Haganah (the independent Jewish military) and gives a controversial account of the War of Independence. He details the tactical moves that made him a hero in the Six Day War and recalls his years as ambassador to the United States. He tells of his difficult decision to authorize the 1976 rescue of hijacked hostages from the Entebbe airport. Rabin describes the conflicts that eventually led to his party's defeat after thirty years in power, and he concludes with a shrewd assessment of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty and of prospects for peace with Israel's other neighbors, including the Palestinians. Yitzhak Rabin's memoirs are important not only for the insider's view they offer about Israel and the Middle East, but also for providing a very human portrait of a heroic world leader.From the book: "Most of you watched that ceremony on the White House lawn with mixed emotions, many of you grinding your teeth. I knew that the hand outstretched to me ...was the same hand that held the knife, that held the gun, the hand that gave the order to shoot, to kill. Of all the hands in the world, it was not the hand that I wanted or dreamed of touching...On that world stage, I stood as the representative ...of a state that is willing to give peace a chance. As I have said, one does not make peace with one's friends. One makes peace with one's enemy." - Jerusalem, December 1993.

The 1948 American Embargo on Arms to Palestine

Abstract: The 1948 American arms embargo on Palestine and the Middle East stands in stark contrast to the general diplomatic support that President Truman extended to the nascent and fledgling Jewish state. As is well known, President Truman repeatedly countermanded State Department directives that he felt were inconsistent with his pro-Jewish-state policy.' It is enough to recall the promotion by the administration of the U.N. General Assembly's partition resolution;2 the immediate American recognition of the new state;3 the appointment of James G. McDonald as Washington's special representative to Israel in June 1948;4 and the rejection of the Bernadotte proposal to detach the Negev from

Traditionalizing Israeli Nationalism: The Development of Gush Emunim

Abstract: In the period following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a new movement has gainec increasing popular support in Israel. Called Gush Emunim ("The Bloc of the Faithful"), the movement presents an irredentist stance vis-a-vis the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and other "administered territories" (the Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights). The focus of Gush's activities has been the establishment of Jewish settlements in these territories, "beyond the Green Line." The settlements were founded with volunteered labor and without the consent of the (then-) Labour government.' The political opponents of Gush viewed these settlements as illegal, a blatant defiance of the government. Many critics demanded their removal, if necessary by force. Gush responded by rejecting the political arguments. In their view each settlement was a further move towards the integration of Eretz Yisrael, The Land of Israel, into a Third Jewish commonwealth. Thus the leaders and supporters of Gush saw themselves standing "above party politics" and, if necessary, above parliamentary process. They rejected the political arguments of their opponents by claiming for their movement a legitimacy based on religious (and not political) values. The ultimate value was that of Messianic Redemption. In this light the advent of the Jewish state was less the triumph of a particular "movement of national liberation," i.e., Zionism, than it was the beginnings of a divinely inspired and ordained redemptive process. This process depends on, among other things, the territorial integrity of Eretz Yisrael.2 Failure to settle The Land or the withdrawal from presently occupied territories would be only secondarily a military-political "blunder." Such failure or withdrawal would constitute man's (or his government's) direct contravention of God's will: this would cause the interruption, or worse, the cessation, of the redemptive process. In the national election of May 17, 1977, control of the government was voted away from Labour and passed to the right-of-center Likud party headed by Menachem Begin. The new prime minister chose as the site for his first postelection speech the Gush settlement Kaddum. There he proclaimed Judea and Samaria to be "a part" of Israel. By July, the government announced plans for 16 new towns to be built on the West Bank. Seven were listed as projects planned by Gush Emunim. Two related transformations had occurred: "political" and "religious" legitimacy, hitherto disjointed, appeared to be conjoined in a Likud government fostering a Gush Emunim program. And Zionism, it was claimed, had undergone a major and inevitable reorientation, finding at last its "true expression." By examining the roots of the Gush Emunim movement, this paper seeks to illuminate these transformations. What is important to understand is that they did not arise, de novo, with the replacement of a left-wing by a right-wing government. As with any

Soviet decision making in practice : the USSR and Israel, 1947-1954

Abstract: The Soviet Union executed an apparent about-face in its traditional anti-Zionist position when the Palestine issue came before the United Nations in 1947 In addition to political support at the UN from May 1947 to May 1949, important military assistance was rendered to the Jewish Palestinian Yishuv throughout 1948 by the Eastern bloc Toward the end of that year, however, indications of change became apparent, and the Soviet Union began criticizing Israel This book studies the USSR's attitude toward the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine in the immediate post-World War II period and toward Israel in the first years of its existence, and it investigates the complex of considerations that caused the initial apparent reversal of traditional Soviet anti-Zionism The author contends that this support for Israel contributed considerably to the evoking of Soviet Jewry's enthusiastic reaction to the establishment of the State But this very reaction resulted in turn in Moscow changing its tactics again, since it could not allow its Jewish citizens to identify with a state outside the Soviet Union and the Communist orbit During the few years after the Israeli War for Independence, in which the Arab-Israeli conflict was relatively low key, the USSR adopted a position of seeming neutrality between two sides--while quietly wooing the Arab nations Ro'i examines how toward the end of the Stalin period the Jewish problem again intervened with the infamous' 'Doctor's Plot," and how early in 1953 the Soviet Union severed diplomatic relations with Israel One year later the USSR cast its first two pro-Arab vetoes in the UN Security Council, and from this point on Soviet-Israeli relations openly became a function of the increasingly cordial Soviet friendship with the Arab world

The population factor in the Middle East

Abstract: Any attempt to assess the prospects.for a peace-either full or partial-in the Middle East must address the question of Israel's willingness to make substantive concessions on the West Bank-Gaza-Palestinian issue. During the more than eleven years since the Six 'Day War, when the areas in dispute were occupied by the Israeli army, discussion of Israel's stance on the occupied territories has tended to focus on factors such as the military security issue, American and international pressure on Israel, and the historical-religious identification of vocal elements in Israeli politics with the principle of a Jewish state in the entirety of the historic Land of Israel. It has often been assumed that the interaction of these key factors would produce the ultimate Israeli policy position on the territories. While such issues, particularly the security question, undoubtedly play a major role in the formulation of policy, it would seem that an additional factor has long been ignored: that of sheer numbers. Israeli policy makers are confronted with a demographic crisis so acute that room to maneuver is virtually non-existent. Israel intends to remain a Zionist (i.e. Jewish) state as well as a Western-style democracy. But the state of Israel can neither incorporate the territories nor retain the status quo for any length of time and remain either Zionist or democratic in any meaningful way. To preserve the dual goals of democracy and Zionism, Israel must end the current status quo in Gaza and the West Bank, and create an alternative political status for the 1.2 million Palestinians who inhabit these areas. Although there are some in Israel, even in Begin's own Herut (Freedom) party within the ruling Likud (Unity) bloc who, either as members of Eretz Yisrael Hashlemah (known in English as the Greater Israel Movement) or as supporters of the Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) settlement zealots, favor annexation, Begin is not now and indeed never has been part of this school of thought. During his period in opposition he often identified with the anti-Labor protests of the settlers, but he drew the line on the question of incorporation. Begin is an heir to the ideology of his oft-quoted "mentor and teacher" Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the father of Revisionist (or militant) Zionism, and he has long held to a cardinal Jabotinsky principle: that the single most important task of Zionism was to establish a Jewish majority in

Between Existentialism and Zionism

Abstract: This essay seeks to delineate the existential situation of the modern Jew through a critical but appreciative analysis of Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew. Following Sartre, it is argued that the Jews of modernity, especially in the Diaspora, are characterized by conflicting fidelities-universalism and particularism-which indelibly shape their basic sensibilities. It is then proposed that there are existentially "inauthentic" and "authentic" options to resolve this conflict. Following a discussion of the nature of the modern Jew's particularity and universalism, the thesis is advanced that an affirmation of either pole of the conflict to the exclusion of the other would constitute an existentially inauthentic resolution of the conflict. Various strategies-all in my view inauthentic-adopted by the modern Jew to reconcile his universalism and particularism are then discussed. Special attention is paid to the so-called "mission theory" espoused by Reform, neo-Orthodox, and secular Jews alike. The cult of Spinoza in modern Jewish thought is also used to illustrate the dilemma inherent in the modern Jew's attempt to relate his Jewishness to his universal concerns. It is then held that Zionism-the conscious choice of a Jew to live in the Jewish State of Israel-constitutes an authentic response to the existential situation of the modern Jew, for it points to a genuine reconciliation of his universalism and particularity. This thesis is supported by an analysis of the implications of the social and political "normalization" of Jewish life sponsored by Zionism. This interweaving of the Jew's universal and particularistic sensibilities also promises the renewal of Judaism as a metaphysical framework providing a system of symbols and cognitive structures in which ultimate and thus universal questions are addressed. In conclusion it is argued that while Zionism may indeed be an authentic response to the existential situation of the modern Jew, it is a response that is not bereft of moral ambiguity and grave responsibility.