Amir redux: A polarized state
The brit mila of the son of Yigal Amir, the convicted assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, has rekindled the flames of hostility in Israel between the settler movement and the peace camp and between the secular and the religious communities.
The circumcision occurred on Nov. 4, the 12th anniversary on the secular calendar of the day on which Rabin was shot. (Israelis tend to mark the assassination's Hebrew anniversary, 12 Heshvan, as a day of memorial services, graveside ceremonies, and public vigils in the square in Tel Aviv where Rabin was gunned down, but the Nov. 4 date remains evocative.)
For many Israelis, Amir represents the person who shattered their hopes for peace. They believe that Amir represents the worst image of Israelis. They believe that the High Court made a farce of the law by permitting Rabin's assassin to celebrate his son's brit mila on the anniversary of the day he murdered an Israeli prime minister, statesman, and war hero.
For religious Zionists, specifically those in the settler movement who are allied with an extremist ideology, Amir has become if not a hero at least a victim. Tragically, there are those among religious Zionist forces who believe that Rabin's assassination stopped a peace process which would have destroyed their vision of a Greater Israel. Some of their extreme members even believe that Amir should be seen as a hero who saved the State of Israel from itself.
Other, less extreme forces suggest that Amir has been singled out by a court system for excessive and more stringent treatment because of his specific crime or because he is a religious Jew. Finally, there are those who argue that Amir's punishment and treatment is excessive; that he has been held to particularly high standards precisely because he comes from the settler camp.
In addition, his sympathizers assert that regardless of his crime, he should not be denied the same rights to which all Israeli prisoners are entitled, including conjugal visits and participation in “rites of passage”; i.e. his son's brit. If Arab murderers of Jews have such rights as prisoners, so, too, must Amir, they argue.
The tragedy of this confrontation is the deep-seated polarization within Israeli society that it underscores, between the religious Zionist camp and its followers who support the settler movement and others, disproportionately secular, who favor political compromise and paint all religious Zionists as political zealots as well as religious fanatics.
Judaism has always struggled to balance the religious components with the nationalist components. Historically, as long as Jews remained in galut, they subsumed their national fervor within their religious practice. With the emergence of the modern Jewish State in 1948, there have been growing factions which have moved further toward celebrating the religious without the nationalist (the haredi community) or celebrating the nationalist element without the religious (the secular community). Religious Zionists represent a third way: a synthesis of nationalism and religion.
For their supporters, this makes them a vanguard, simultaneously fulfilling the Jewish people's political and theological destiny. For their detractors, this is a serious problem, because the religiously implacable attitudes articulated by extremists in the religious Zionist camp deny the efficacy of any kind of peace process. They point to efforts by Knesset hawks to draw absolute lines in the sand ahead of the pending Annapolis meeting, especially on the Jerusalem issue, and suggest that such obstinacy is precisely the charge Israel has always made against its Arab interlocutors. As Israel considers whether and how to conduct any possible negotiations, one thing it does not need is to be locked-in politically to a particular negotiating position.
The coincidence of the Amir brit and the Rabin memorials demonstrated the depressing absence of political, religious, and intellectual leaders who could bridge this gap.
Comment | Print | Subscribe | Webmaster | Home
All rights reserved