Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Munich, Il film di Spielberg e l'identita' Israeliana

http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CAF4E.htm
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In fact, if the attack on the Munich games and the Israeli response are
put into their proper context, they help explain why a solution is so
difficult to achieve. For Israel's turn to assassination in 1973 - a
policy it has maintained since then - reveals much about the changing
character of Israeli society. It also shows that simple dialogue or
Western-backed diplomacy cannot provide solutions to the conflict.
Israel is what could be called a warrior-victim state. On the one hand,
it is a highly militarised society in which the army plays a central
role. On the other hand, it is a state that is defined by victimhood -
it sees itself as the only rational response to the age-old scourge of
anti-Semitism. Although these two elements coexist in Israeli society
they are often in tension with one another.
The events of the 1970s helped precipitate a change in emphasis away
from the traditional warrior towards a more victim-oriented approach.
Whereas Israelis had emphasised their character as tough fighters,
their identification as victims came more to the fore following the
Munich attacks. Indeed, the importance attached to the assassination of
enemies - a key characteristic of contemporary Israel - brings to
together the warrior and victim elements in their most brutal form.
The warrior character of Israeli society emerged as a reaction to the
experience of anti-Semitism in Europe. Early Zionist leaders, from the
late nineteenth century onwards, consciously set out to create a class
of Jews who were the opposite of the Jews of the shtetl (the
traditional Eastern European Jewish ghetto). Whereas the traditional
Jews of the diaspora were frail, the New Jews were to be physically
strong. Traditional Jews were intellectual, whereas New Jews engaged in
manual and agricultural labour. Shtetl Jews were passive, whereas New
Jews were willing to fight to defend themselves.
		Tragically, it was the Palestinians who suffered as a result of the
creation of the New Jew
Terms used included the New Jews or the New Hebrews (6). Max Nordau,
one of the early Zionist leaders, called for the development of 'Muscle
Judaism' (7). Jews who were born in Israel were known as sabras, after
the desert cactus pear, for their prickliness on the outside (although
they were also supposed to be tender on the inside).
Such warrior values were institutionalised in underground military
organisations before the foundation of the state in 1948 and in the
Israeli army afterwards. The army ensured that Israelis were trained to
be warriors who would fight against all odds, and if necessary kill, to
ensure their survival. And since the army had such a central place in
Israeli society its ethos permeated the whole of the country.
Tragically, it was the Palestinians, who were in no way responsible for
European anti-Semitism or the Holocaust, who suffered as a result of
the creation of the New Jew, when they found themselves dispossessed by
the growing number of Zionist colonists in their land. The aim of the
Zionists was not just that Jews should be able to live in the area but
to create a Jewish state (medinat yisrael) in the country. As a result
the non-Jewish population suffered.
However, the creation of a warrior Israel was not just a problem for
the Palestinians. It is less widely known that Holocaust survivors
suffered significant stigma during Israel's early years. They were seen
as having passively accepted their fate rather than fighting in
accordance with the ideology of the New Hebrew. They were even derided
as 'sabon' (soap) by some native-born Israelis - it is hard to think of
a more derogatory term for Holocaust survivors. As Klein Halevi, an
Israeli writer, notes:
'When the survivors first arrived, they were received with
indifference, even hostility. Survivors were seen as the antithesis of
Zionism's 'New Jew', passive victims who threatened the daring spirit
on which Israel's birth and continued survival depended, as if they
carried a contagious weakness. Survivors - whom sabras derisively
nicknamed sabon, soap - were even accused of having been collaborators,
their very survival suspect.' (8).
However, the Zionist enterprise never fully broke away from its
identification with victimhood. The rationale of the Zionist movement
was that Jews would always be victims of anti-Semitism in non-Jewish
society. As Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, wrote: 'The nations
in whose midst Jews live are all, either covertly or openly,
Anti-Semitic.' (9) Jews could not rid themselves of their victim status
entirely but they could escape, in Herzl's view, by establishing a
Jewish state.
Ultimately Zionism was always about running away from anti-Semitism
rather than fighting it. Both Zionists and anti-Semites shared the
assumption that Jews and non-Jews could not live together in peace.
However flawed this response, it would be wrong to blame it primarily
on Jews. It was the failure of broader radical movements before the
Second World War to tackle anti-Semitism - and transform society more
generally - that left Jews open to the arguments of the Zionist
movement.
Over a century after Herzl's death the emphasis on victimhood in Israel
has gone far further. In this sense, Israel has moved on from the
Zionist vision of the New Jew to the post-Zionist Jew as victim. For
instance, the new Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem which opened last year
- part of Israel's official Holocaust memorial centre -gives far more
centrality to individual victimhood than older parts of the complex
(10). In earlier times the emphasis was much more on the collective
suffering of the Jewish people. Before 1973, as Halevi notes, Israel's
official Holocaust commemorations even focussed 'obsessively on
partisans and ghetto fighters' in line with the ideology of the New Jew
(11).
Today's individual victim orientation has even permeated the Israeli
army. This was most apparent in last year's withdrawal from Gaza when
Israeli troops evacuated settlers from the Gaza strip. Israeli
soldiers, even officers, were openly seen weeping in front of
television cameras. Such behavior would have been anathema to earlier
generations of Israeli army officers who prided themselves on toughness
in all situations.
Many Israeli combat soldiers, including members of elite combat units,
have expressed unease at what would normally be considered a core part
of their job. Some 13 members of Sayeret Matkal, Israel's equivalent of
Britain's Special Air Service, including a major, have even signed a
letter declaring their refusal to serve in the West Bank or Gaza strip
(12). In addition, an officer and sergeant of Duvdevan (cherry), an
elite undercover and assassination unit, were recently dismissed after
refusing to carry out an arrest mission in the West Bank town of Jenin
(13). Such incidents probably help explain why in recent years Israel
has increasingly used helicopter gunships rather than ground troops for
assassination missions.
Clearly both warrior and victim elements still coexist to some extent
in contemporary Israeli society. But the theme of individual victimhood
has come to the fore at the expense of the ideology of the tough New
Jew.
It was the events of the 1970s, beginning with the attack on Israeli
athletes in the Munich Olympics in 1972, which increased Israeli
society's sense of victimhood. The October 1973 Yom Kippur war, in
which Israel was attacked by Egypt and Syria, helped to strengthen its
sense of vulnerability much further. After the 1967 Six Day War, when
Israel had destroyed the surrounding Arab armies in less than a week,
there was a feeling of near invincibility in Israel. In contrast, six
years later an acute sense of anxiety began to develop in the popular
mood.
Subsequent events have heightened Israel's feeling of insecurity still
further. Its invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982 was first followed by
many years of indecisive conflict, and then by a humiliating
withdrawal. The Palestinian first intifada (uprising) of 1987-88 and
the second intifada that broke out in 2000 also played a role.
But Israel should not be examined in isolation from the rest of the
world: the growing emphasis on victimhood and vulnerability in Western
society has also influenced Israeli culture (14). In a sense, everyone
nowadays wants to identify with the most tragic aspects of the Jewish
historical experience - a trend that was evident in Spielberg's
previous film, Schindler's List (1993). This is why the term
'Holocaust' is increasingly used to apply to all kinds of conflicts.
In contrast, the qualities associated with the New Jew are seen as
repellent. Anyone who is willing to stand up for themselves, with force
if necessary, is viewed with hostility. Much of the popular hostility
to Israel nowadays is based on its willingness to fight. At the same
time, little credence is given to the idea that the Palestinians should
have the autonomy to determine their own future - as witnessed by the
frequent demands for Western diplomacy to solve the conflict.
It is in the context of the shift from New Jew to victim that the
Israeli assassination teams, as featured in Spielberg's Munich, should
be understood. The distinctive character of an assassination team is
that it fuses together the warrior and victim elements in a
particularly brutal way. Or as a senior Israeli army officer said
following the assassination of a Palestinian activist in 2000: 'We will
continue to take action against anyone who tries to harm us.' (15) If
someone defines themselves as a victim, and they have the means at
their disposal, it makes sense to kill whoever is seen as the
aggressor. Even if your military doctrine emphasises self-defence - as
the Israeli army's 'purity of arms' does - anyone can be judged a
legitimate target if they are seen as a quasi-Nazi (16).
Anyone who doubts the importance of assassination to Israel should
remember that two former prime ministers, Ehud Barak and Benjamin
Netanyahu, along with many other senior politicians, were members of
Sayeret Matkal: for years Israel's prime assassination unit (17).
Indeed, Spielberg's Munich shows Barak, then commander of Sayeret
Matkal, leading an assassination operation in Beirut in response to the
attack on the 1972 Olympics.
Since then, Israel has pursued a policy of assassination, including
high-profile Palestinian leaders among its targets. In 1988 a joint
Mossad-Sayeret team killed Abu Jihad (Khalil el-Wazir), then the PLO's
military commander and its deputy leader, in Tunis. In March 2004 an
Israeli army helicopter was used to assassinate Sheikh Ahmed Yassin,
the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas (the Islamic Resistance
Movement), with a missile strike. The following month Abdel Aziz
al-Rantissi, the Hamas leader, was killed in a similar attack (18). It
is also widely believed that as part of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon
in 1982 the then defence minister, Ariel Sharon, wanted to assassinate
Yasser Arafat, but his move was vetoed by America. In April 2004,
Sharon, now prime minister, threatened publicly to have Arafat killed
(although he did not pursue it) (19).
Israelis have also learned that once the principle of assassination is
accepted it can have unexpected consequences. In 1995 Yigal Amir, an
Israeli extremist, assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, then Israel's prime
minister, for negotiating with the Palestinians.
This is the character of the Israeli tragedy. The original impulse of
Zionism was to break away from Jews' position as victims to create a
new warrior Jew. But its inherent limitations meant that it could never
fully escape from its identification with victimhood. In addition, the
Palestinians, a people with no responsibility for the Holocaust,
themselves became the victims of the Zionist enterprise.
However, it is wrong to blame the Zionist movement or the Israeli state
wholly for this situation. The failure of radical movements to combat
anti-Semitism played an important part in creating the circumstances in
which this tragedy could develop. America and Britain have also played
a key role in backing Israel in the past, since it has often fitted in
with what they see as their strategic interests.
Clearly such a complex and embedded situation cannot be easily resolved
- certainly not by simple dialogue, as suggested by Spielberg's Munich.
Perhaps the best starting point is to reject the contemporary trend for
individuals to define themselves as victims. For once people identify
themselves as victims above all else, then perhaps anything, including
assassination, becomes justifiable.

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