Opinion & Comment
Our Struggle for Israel's Soul

by Mordecai Plaut

Last Friday night (parshas Chukas), during a meeting of the Socialist International in Lisbon, Portugal, Israel's Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, met with Yasser Arafat (whose socialist credentials are at least as strong as his peacemaking credentials) at the official residence of the prime minister of Portugal. Though the possibility of such a meeting was foreseen, nevertheless it caused a political storm in Israel. Israel has worked to isolate Arafat and as such refuses to hold substantive discussions with him until there is a complete cessation of the Palestinian-instigated violence of the past nine months. Though technical steps were taken by the Foreign Minister to prevent those talks from being termed "official" or "political," the appearance was there and it drew an angry response from the right wing members of the current government who sit together with Peres at the Cabinet table every week. They complained, with obvious justice, that Peres, simply by meeting with Arafat, is undermining the isolation of the Palestinian leader that has been achieved so far by insisting that the terror stop before talks begin.

Our criticism comes from the fact that the meeting was held on Shabbos -- both the Socialist International meeting itself which Peres attended as a minister of the State of Israel and the meeting with Arafat.

For decades it was accepted that the government of the State of Israel does not officially work on Shabbos unless pikuach nefesh is involved. Though this principle was flagrantly violated by the Barak government, it must not be considered dead. It must be honored and observed by the current government, as it was for so many years before.

This trampling of Shabbos by a senior minister of the government does much more long term damage than any pseudo diplomatic meeting could. Shabbos is one of the key values and symbols of the Jewish people, and was always recognized as such even by those who were not personally observant.

To us this is the important issue here that is worth protesting, not the issues of political etiquette that will probably interest no one for more than a few days, significant though they may be at the time.

Our approach has recently received support from a book entitled, The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul, by Yoram Hazony. Summing up his thesis, Hazony said, "There is a shift away, even a severing in some cases, of the belief in the idea that it is legitimate, desirable, moral, fair and ultimately just for Israel to be the Jewish state, that is the state of the Jewish people. And the shift is not among post-Zionists, but among leading people in the mainstream culture."

Hazony argues that this shift is not the result of some historical tide but the product of a deliberate effort that spans decades on the part of the secular, anti-religious Zionists and especially the Left. It has been their goal from the start, Hazony argues, to separate Israel from its Jewish roots. "A state cannot be Jewish, just as a chair or a bus cannot be Jewish," says Amos Oz, one of the leading Left-wing intellectuals.

Though this analysis seems to have come as news to many in the Right and in the National-Religious establishment, it is exactly what we chareidim have been saying all along, and the awareness of this informs all of our positions on matters of public policy.

Exactly this understanding lies behind our ignoring the political implications, for example, of the meeting of Israel's Foreign Minister last week and our criticism of its religious content. Israel's soul is of much more importance than politics.

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