Last update - 00:00 23/08/2007
Strictly mainstream
Naftali ("Naftul" = "Evasive") Kuntzmacher (Trickster), a member of the extreme right, is going through a hard time ("Extreme right? I've remained in the center, where Berl Katznelson once stood. It's you, including the Likud, who've become an ephemeral left"). A good, pleasant man, educated in his own way, sharp- and quick-tongued, occasionally too much so; the fastest trigger in Judea and Samaria, at least when it comes to responses on every panel and in every interview: pre-neo-Zionist, a public figure, a patriot and a settler.
The revolt of the skullcap-wearers in Hebron and their obedience to the rabbis, the issue of avoiding service in the Israel Defense Forces and the affair of the cursing professor from Bar-Ilan, have all posited him at the center of the public turmoil. But wait a minute: Why "have posited him" and why "recently"? After all, for years he has been positing himself there, in the midst of the public turmoil, maneuvering on the one hand among the Israeli elites in the media, the IDF and the government, and on the other among his friends in his community and in the settlements and the yeshivas, which are the rationale for his public existence.
He has solved the inherent dissonance in his situation by pushing everyone to the margins and portraying himself and his co-religionists as some kind of sane, balanced "center" - a practice that has become his life's ambition and purpose. He always finds this central point by engaging in anachronistic sentimentalizing about some "spirit" that used to hover here, and especially in the IDF, in the 1950s, totally ignoring the issue of the annexation of the territories, a matter which for him is a religion that brooks no compromise. But when he performs on the one hand in military-Sheinkinist-journalistic slang, and on the other with casuistry from the yeshiva, citations and verses from the Torah, our friend always knows how to give it to "extremists on the left and the right," although there is nobody more right-wing than he.
And thus he automatically agreed to the no-less-automatic request to be interviewed for the noontime news program on the radio.
The interviewer, Osnat Consensus, "didn't make his life easy," as usual: "I have only one simple question for you, and I would like you to answer me in one sentence: Do you support the refusal to obey orders on the part of soldiers who listen to the rabbis rather than their commanders?"
Naftul smiled to himself. That's simple. But even before rejecting the very legitimacy of the question, he heard himself saying: "First of all, if you'll allow me, good morning and a good month to everyone. And my condolences of course to those killed in the accident."
Somehow it always escapes from him, as in a broken stereo: On the leftist radio channel he winds up sounding like an arrogant dos (religious person), although he intended to sound on the rightist channel, in the ears of his own people, like someone who belongs to the religious world as well and knows that today is the first day of the Jewish month of Elul.
"Yes, yes, good morning" - with the first sentence, the interviewer has already lost patience - "and I assume that the month is good too. But about the question ..."
"Of course I'm angry about the very fact that you asked the question," said Naftul, trying to get back on the road to journalism; and in order to prove that settlers, as opposed to the ultra-Orthodox, are in the mainstream, he even added with a kind of intimacy. "Look, Merav ..."
"Osnat."
Darn it. What a schlimazel. But never mind, it can happen even to Amos Oz. "Of course, Osnat. Look ... and allow me, incidentally, to remark, that I'm very doubtful as to whether you would ask such a question of one of our friends on the left."
"I would like to remind you, MK Kuntzmacher, that I asked you about obeying ..."
She loses patience, even turns hostile, but he's used to that. Hostility is like fertilizer to him, because it enables him to present himself as a moderate, understanding, humanist advocate for his clients the settlers.
"So first of all, I want to say clearly and unequivocally, so that they won't slander me afterward and say that I and my ilk don't make clear statements. So I'm saying, and you can quote me: The IDF is the IDF and an order is an order. But ..."
"In other words, you're in favor of following an order even when ..."
"But I started to say, that even in dark periods that I don't want to mention here, certainly not during the month of selihot (penitential prayers recited during the month preceding Rosh Hashanah), an order is an order. But not every order is also conscientious and ethical. Just as I'm opposed to the transfer of Arabs, at least without their agreement, I'm also against the transfer of Jews. But ..."
That's it. Now it's flowing smoothly. He's centered in the middle of the highway, speeding along the lane divider. Soon he will also get to things that Amoz Oz said regarding trucks and the transfer, and later he will get to Gan Shmuel, Udi Adiv. And if they talk about Bar-Ilan University he will of course mention the murder of taxi driver Derek Roth. What's the connection? There's a connection, as a warning against generalizing: Just as not all the secular people murdered the taxi driver, not all the Yigal Amirs who study at Bar-Ilan are to blame. In other words ...
"In other words, are you in favor of selective obedience of orders?" the interviewer asked, insisting on stretching the interview until the commercials and the news flash.
"Look, Tzofnat, the use of the word 'selection' ..."
"Osnat. So I didn't understand: Are you condemning the soldiers who rebelled against the IDF? Please answer yes or no."
"Look," he said, going over to an amazed, arrogant snicker, "it's not a matter of yes and no. In life there is no yes and no. I, of course, oppose draft evasion for reasons of conscience and bleeding heartism, if you asked me about that."
"No, I didn't."
"But when it comes to the issue of obeying an order I would suggest to all of us not to intervene in issues that are causing the greatest rabbis to deliberate, and believe me, I don't envy them. But in general I would recommend to all of us to return to the values that ..."
The interviewer began to fold up the dais: "All right, I see that we aren't going to get an answer here. So I'll ask you about the statements by Prof. Tzedrayter (Nutty) of Bar-Ilan."
Ah, that's simple too: "I know Prof. Tzedrayter as a warm, moderate, wise and bespectacled person, who weighs every word; but one doesn't judge a man who is no longer young during his time of sorrow when he is angry at a time when his deceased relative has not been buried yet, certainly not during the month of compassion and two years after the Holocaust of the Jews of Katif, and a year after the lessons of the Lebanon War, and a decade after Oslo and its dead. But ..."
"So you condemn his words?"
"I have yet to hear a demand to condemn Oslo on the part of the new president, what's his name, Shimon Peres; but ..."
"Do you condemn his words?"
"Of course I wouldn't come and agree with every word that anyone comes and says, from the right or the left; but ..."
"Thank you, Naftul Kuntzmacher."
The Holy One, blessed be He, gave a nice gift to his creatures: "But." A small word, but so useful: It will solve any contradiction, straighten out any problem, neutralize any statement; fill any time slot; allow any Tzedrayter and Naftul to walk along the edges and feel that he is in the center; allow any anomaly for years, decades, generations. No, we can't go on this way. But ... here we are.