Posted on 05/22/2003 9:28:14 PM PDT by yonif
This past Independence Day, the embers of an old debate stirred. One of our most successful performers, Ahinoam Nini (also known as Noa), left out the phrase "nefesh yehudi homiya" from her public rendition of "Hatikva."
A letter to this newspaper also reported that someone else leading the singing of "Hatikva" at a celebration in Jerusalem left out the same line. Both singers claim they had simply forgotten the phrase, referring to the "Jewish spirit singing" in the heart.
It is hard to believe that this mini-rash of specified forgetfulness is random. But if it is deliberate, why not admit to sabotaging the national anthem? The truth is that no amount of tinkering can exorcise the Jewish and Zionist spirit of "Hatikva," which reads in full: "In the Jewish heart a Jewish spirit still sings / And the eyes look east toward Zion / Our hope is not lost, our hope of 2,000 years / To be a free nation in our land, in the land of Zion and Jerusalem." Take out the Jewish parts and there would just be a tune to hum.
"Hatikva" is not only irrevocably Jewish, it is arguably Ashkenazi-centric. How can a Jew from Baghdad sing about "looking east toward Zion," unless, of course, that can mean looking the long way around.
Such political correctness often becomes a parody of itself, but there is a real issue here. During Oslo's heyday, the idea dejudaizing our national symbols so as to be more inclusive of our non-Jewish minorities seemed to be gaining steam. In 1995, deputy education minister Micha Goldman (Labor) even suggested amending "Hatikva" "in order to give expression to citizens who are not Jews," leading to a ridiculous proposal by Likud MKs to legislate against making any changes in the anthem.
The current Palestinian jihad, and the failure of the Israeli Arab leadership to unequivocally oppose it, has understandably stifled talk of hiding the nation's Jewishness. There is little doubt, however, that it will return, and that the post-Zionist idea of transforming Israel from a Jewish state to a "state of all its citizens" will eventually pick up where it left off.
Even when proclaimed openly by only a small minority, the discomfort with Israel's Jewishness is resilient because it is a rivulet from the great sea of modern universalism. We moderns feel in our bones that discrimination of any kind is wrong, and what could be more discriminatory than all the Jewish trappings of the state, such as the flag, the Law of Return, and "Hatikva."
The Arab side takes this argument to its logical conclusion, and out pops the slogan, "Zionism is racism." Nice Israeli post-Zionists would not say that, but the argument is essentially the same: Zionism=discrimination=racism.
The inhumanity of the Arab means and ends, terrorism and genocide, often seem to absolve Zionists of the need to respond to Arab arguments about the legitimacy of the Jewish state. Indeed, as Hebrew University Prof. Ruth Gavison argues in a brilliant essay ("The Jews' Right to Statehood: A Defense," Azure, Summer 2003), Arab attempts to destroy Jewish sovereignty go far in demonstrating its necessity.
But we cannot let ourselves off the hook quite so easily. If there were peace with the Arab world, the purported conflict between Israeli Jewishness and democracy would remain. We can even say, if we are honest, that the burden of proof is on us to show how a state can be Jewish and not discriminatory.
The answer is, we cannot. As Gavison put it, "The Jewish state is an enterprise in which the Arabs are not equal partners, in which their interests are placed below those of a different national group." For a good liberal, this may signal case closed, end of story. But it is not. Human rights is only a meaningful concept in the real world, and in that world, it is not always possible for competing rights to be fulfilled without compromise.
Theoretically, for example, Israel could eliminate every aspect of its Jewishness and became a binational state; in practice, in this region, 5 million Jews would be committing national suicide. Life is the ultimate human right. The world is replete with cases of national minorities who cannot exercise their self-determination to the same degree as the majority among whom they live. There is no reason why such a situation need be called antidemocratic, unless one insists on a utopian, and ultimately unworkable, definition of democracy.
The Jews, Gavison argues, had a stronger case for settling in the Land of Israel than did the Europeans who settled the New World, and now that Israel exists, its legitimacy has become stronger still. But she also cautions that Israel, while asserting its rights, must also minimize the imposition this necessarily causes to non-Jewish minorities.
Keeping this in mind is no small feat under the current circumstances. It is ironic that the same people who argue that "Hatikva" is too much of an imposition on the Israeli Arab minority think it perfectly natural that a Palestinian state would, far from catering to a Jewish minority, have every right to be Judenrein.
It is telling that it is impossible to imagine a Palestine that includes Jewish members of parliament who freely question the legitimacy of a Palestinian state. Yet there are Israeli Arab MKs who openly identify with Israel's enemies, endorse the Palestinian "struggle," and who would never be caught admitting that Jewish right to live here is equal to their own.
Our objective should be to be self-satisfied and self-critical at the same time: satisfied that our adversaries have no right to demand a form of liberalism that they would never dream of implementing themselves; critical when treatment of the "stranger" in our midst falls short of our own democratic ambitions and standards.
saul@jpost.co.il
How it that possible? I don't get how one would sing the song without that phrase. Did she zot those two measures, or just change the lyrics, or hum? It wasn't accident, that's for sure. Glad I never bought any of her CDs.
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