BY IZIO ROSENMAN
Israel: peace and democratic society in danger.
On the horizon the clouds are gathering: they concern not only peace, but also democracy and laïcité (secularism), and the consolidation of the modernity in which Israeli society has settled since the creation of the State.
Israel is indeed at a turning point: either it will integrate into the Middle East through peaceful coexistence with the surrounding peoples, beginning with the one most directly concerned, the Palestinian people, by recognizing — within the framework of sharing the land — its right to a State in the part of the land of Palestine that is not Israel; or else the Israeli refusal, coinciding with the rise of national-religious tendencies, will transform a conflict that was political, and therefore open to negotiated outcomes, into a religious conflict and thus insoluble because rendered essential.
In that case we know how such societies end: in violence!
The chances for peace will not last forever, and the window of opportunity for a historic agreement with the Palestinians — which was the result of a certain number of historical circumstances and of a slow evolution of mentalities — seems to be closing.
Already there is talk of a new Intifada if nothing happens, that is to say if Mr. Netanyahu’s Government persists in its refusal to genuinely implement the Oslo accords signed by the Rabin-Peres government, and the Hebron accords signed by Netanyahu himself. If it persists in, or rather extends, the colonization of the territories — thereby tracing the road toward a new confrontation that risks being far more deadly than the previous ones — with the illusion that he will be able to dupe everyone by dragging out the so-called discussions and imposing ever more conditions on the Palestinians before committing to evacuate the slightest parcel of territory.
At the same time the rise to power of the fundamentalist religious or national-religious parties accentuates this policy and endangers the democratic structure of the State of Israel, reducing to nothing what was the Zionist vision or dream.
Israeli society too is at a crossroads: either it will durably embed in reality the aspirations of the Zionist movement, that is to say create a Jewish, modern, secular and democratic society; or else, through a regression toward a type of society founded on religion and ethnicity, where the other — Arab, or Jew of a different persuasion — has only limited rights, the conflict within the society will compound the one with the surrounding peoples.
It is time that we Jews of the diaspora made our voice heard for a moderate solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, a solution based on mutual recognition and on the sharing of the land between the two peoples, which alone will allow Israel to be integrated into the Middle East, by being accepted by the surrounding peoples — which would be the true crowning of a hundred years of the history of Zionism.
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Algeria: a people held hostage.
The violence and horror in Algeria have reached an unsuspected degree, with the massacres of entire villages, women and children. The Algerian people is held hostage by those who seek to ensure its submission. The first, the Islamists, in order to seize power, local or national, do not hesitate to outdo themselves in uncontrolled violence, to impose themselves through terror. The others, that is to say the army and the military-police caste in power, either let it happen in order to punish those with Islamist leanings or who had voted “wrong,” or else, in order to keep absolute power, engage in blind and bloody repression in contempt of the elementary rights of the population that every political regime is in principle charged with defending.
An international commission to shed light on the sources and the authors of the violence would be welcome.
What is France doing?
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Congress
This issue of Plurielles includes several contributions made at the Congress of the International Federation of Humanist and Secular Jews, which was held at the Sorbonne on October 5, 6 and 7, 1996, on the theme “Jews among the nations.” This theme has been central for Jews since their Emancipation, that is to say since their full entry into modernity. We have been able to publish only some of the captivating contributions that were made at this congress, co-chaired by our friends Albert Memmi and Sherwin Wine, our former and current presidents.
As is the tradition at the congresses of the FIJHL, a tribute was paid to Jewish figures: one will therefore find the one paid to Elisabeth and Robert Badinter and to Simone Veil, together with their replies, which are a fine contribution to the analysis of the modern Jewish condition in its diversity. We were unable to include the tribute paid to Yaïr Tzaban — an Israeli political figure, a tireless militant for peace, for laïcité and for human rights — nor his reply. These will be found, along with others, we hope, in the next issue.