In the Israeli newspaper Haaretz it is quite common to find these days voices who express a heavy sense of failure and even the acceptance of the destruction of the “state of Israel” as a foregone conclusion. I have recently mentioned here of such notables as Tom Segev and Asa Kasher who seem to have recognised that the project (after nearly 80 years) looks in such a shape they are left wondering where exactly along the way it all failed so fundamentally for the State of Israel?
Many Israelis tend to blame right wing Zionism for the actual destruction but also blame the left (Zionist and non-Zionist) for not being able to prevent the failure and for not offering a working opposition.
The truth is that this “State” of Israel hasn’t really been established. What was established is an Army and not a viable, normal, State.
It was this army who actually created the new Israeli collective.
Around this army coalesced a new soldier-nation.
With clever PR the entire project was wrapped with plethora of Judaic symbols to lull Jews into the thinking that debates around “security matters” are happening within the State of Israel.
The question is, can you actually claim you have a State if the vast majority of energies are directed towards building an army and in nurturing the next generation as soldiers- to-be?
Is it not obvious that what you actually having is an Army masquerading as a State? A society of soldiers making the military uniform a formative essence of the new Jewish collective. Its existential realisation can only be war, conquest and ethnic cleansing. Nationhood that is not there to cherish national values but nationhood which is itself not only an instrumental vessel but the content as well.
Practically, Army and State symbols use the Jews as the tool to serve those mechanisms and not the other way around.
Because today’s Jews have no shared national content the only way possible for them to establish a State for themselves is when the State itself becomes the core of their collective nationality. The internal, the immanent, is being filled by the outer layer of symbolism of nationality which extends inwards down to the core. The outside becomes the inside.
Army needs and a meaningful Israeli nationality were competing on material and spiritual resources. A normal state is not there to impose on its people a delay and/or to forgo nationality in favour of a permanent grand mission of organising itself as an army. The tank has turned out not only a tool for salvation but as salvation itself.
The hidden role of the Israeli “State” was to convince Israelis that due to “emergency” situation they have to postpone meaningful nationality and be obsessed with militarism. This postponement hasn’t really stopped.
The vast majority of Jews in Israel went along with this, quite enthusiastically, so much so that they have gotten used to accepting unfathomable wars, which always end in some form of a national enquiry with regards to what went wrong…
Diaspora Jews who normally do not sacrifice blood and sweat in the tank feel bad about themselves so they send money and learn to hate Palestinians as a reasonable compensation to the fact they are not there to fight in body.
How can the supposedly “most intelligent” people be so stupid? It doesn’t matter how; the fact is that it can, and it did. Aimlessly turning to left and to the right, being manipulated by their own fears, getting free weapons and free gifts, just to carry on wondering what went wrong. Not letting go of an American assault rifle and a fistful of green dollar bills. What went wrong? What went wrong?
Blinded they go. Bumping into each other in a bomb shelter. Not looking at each other. Gasping for air, looking at the sky. Time to get up, put on the army boots and continuing the march into the unknown future.
