Is Israel finished? Five questions

Jeffrey Goldberg's latest article in The Atlantic was not an easy read for a concerned Israeli. It started with the cover of the May issue, asking "Is Israel Finished?" and continued with his piece, focusing on the complicated relations between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and novelist David Grossman, who lost his son in the Lebanon war.

Goldberg has a new blog on the Atlantic's website in which he will write even more about Israel (he makes this specific promise as he lists the topics on which he is about to blog: "the future of Israel, the coarsening of American life, the Jewish predisposition toward dissatisfaction, the Mets (see previous), Dylan and Springsteen, the perfidies of Wal-Mart, genocide in Africa, gun control, the civilizational struggle within Islam, airline delays, screenwriting and the bleakness of journalism").

And he also has a new, marvelous, web story, detailing Atlantic predictions from the 1920s and '30s about the prospects for a Jewish homeland. Here is one paragraph from a 1927 article by Henry Nevinson that is part of this wonderful collection:

Like most Englishmen, I certainly had no prejudice in favor of the Jews. Rather the reverse, though I have always admired their exceptional intelligence, their patriotic mutual aid, and their marvelous persistence in the face of the cruelest persecution. But as I surveyed the work of the Zionist cause in tangible or visible form I was filled with a sympathetic exhilaration at the sight of so many young men and young women released from the perpetual fear under which their fathers had suffered for so many centuries.

Last week, as we discussed his article over the phone, Goldberg graciously agreed to answer, in writing, some questions I had about his article on the future of Israel. I sent 5 questions. Here is the dialogue:

1. In your conversation with the Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, he said that the success of the American Jewish community now is no proof that it will not face extinction in the future. His words: "Jews in Germany - and I don't draw any comparison at all - Jews in other parts of the world were very successful all their lives, and that didn't provide them with safety." You write that this was "a careless and cynical statement" but do not really explain why - is it because you do not believe such think is imaginable, is it because a Prime Minister should not be saying such things, is it other reason?

I find it impossible to believe that a serious man like Ehud Olmert could possibly believe that the situation of American Jewry is analogous in any way to that of pre-Holocaust German Jewry. There's nothing at all in history, or current reality, to suggest anything except that America is a second Promised Land for the Jewish people. This, of course, is a challenge to Israel-centrism. If America is a Promised Land, then why do we need the actual Promised Land?

I actually believe we need both, but I think the success of American Jewry tests the Zionist idea. If you go back to the speeches of the early Zionist Congresses, you'll see that even Herzl and his deputy, Max Nordau, saw America as a challenge to their idea. Nordau's role at these congresses was to report on the state of worldwide anti-Semitism, and so the delegates heard about France's endemic Jew-hatred, and Russia's pogroms, and so on. But when Nordau got to America, he described a country in which Jews were excluded from certain hotels. It wasn't his most convincing moment.

All that said, I think there's an important, and subtle, point to make, about the danger faced by Jews in America. It is not a physical danger, but a spiritual danger. America is safe for Jews, but not for Judaism. I'll take a spiritual threat over a physical threat any day, but this is still a serious challenge, and one I hope the prime minister of Israel would address. Olmert loses credibility when he suggests that America is susceptible to European-style anti-Semitism. It's simply not believable to most Jews who actually live here.

2. The sub-headline leading to your story asks this question: "Can Israel overcome its paralysis to make the hard choice necessary for its survival as a Jewish democracy?"

What's this hard choice that Israel haven't already made?

It hasn't separated itself from the West Bank. The settlements continue to grow, the bypass roads spread like kudzu, and the Palestinians remain locked away behind checkpoints and walls. My point is simple: If Israel doesn't change the West Bank dynamic soon, it will find itself one day ruling over more Arabs than Jews, and we don't need Jimmy Carter to tell us what that means.

I don't argue for a withdrawal from the West Bank because I'm a fervent believer in the Palestinian cause. I'm not such a good person that I can easily forgive the Palestinian national movement its record of brutality and self-destructiveness. I advocate this because I want Israel to remain a Jewish-majority democracy. I also want Israel to fight its next war ? the war Iran and its local militias, Hams and Hezbollah, seem to desperately desire? with the support of the international community.

The Israeli ambassador in Washington, Sallai Meridor (who is, incidentally, the best ambassador Israel has sent to America in some time) made a fascinating point to me on the subject of international legitimacy, and invoked Herzl and Nordau to make his argument: "Go back to the Basle program of 1897, the first Zionist Congress," Meridor said. "Herzl asks Nordau to come up with one sentence of what Zionism is to achieve. He wrote that Zionism is meant to create for the Jewish people a homeland in the land of Israel, assured by international legitimacy.

One sentence, the whole story.

It's about Jewish people, about defining the community of Jews as a nation, one in the family of nations. Second, it's not a state for all citizens, but for the Jewish people. Third, it's in the land of Israel, but not necessarily all the land of Israel. And it has to be secured by international legitimacy."

Meridor has it exactly right: Israel cannot defend itself alone. It needs to be seen as a legitimate state with a legitimate cause.

3. You write that "60 years of independence have not provided Israel with legitimacy in its own region". But do you feel this is something that it's within Israel's power to change?

Maybe. I'm not sure. When I talk about the importance of international legitimacy, I'm under no particular illusion that Israel will ever find universal international legitimacy. As you know, I've spent many quality hours with Muslim terrorists and the ideologues who program them, and I'm aware that many minds can't be changed, that a good portion of the Muslim world simply can't abide the existence of a Jewish state in what they think of as Palestine. But the Muslim world isn't a monolith. I think that concrete steps on Israel's part to fix its borders in a way that allows for the birth of a viable Palestinian state can actually help the cause of legitimacy, even within the region.

4. Here's a sentence I have to ask you about:

"If Uri Grossman had been born to Jews in America, rather than to Jews in Israel, in 2006 he most likely would have been a student at Harvard or Michigan or Stanford, rather than a commander in the Armored Corps of the Israel Defense Forces".

I have a problem with the underlined assumption you have here. Why would'nt you ponder the possibility that as a US citizen, Grossman could have been a student, yes ? but he also could have been a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan? And more pointedly: why is it that you keep thinking about American Jews as separate from the national security apparatus of the US? (this is actually something we've discussed in the past in our Slate dialogue when you've remarked to my astonishment that American Jews do not have F-16s)

You misunderstand me, on a number of levels.

On the quotidian level, let me mention a fundamental difference between the American and Israeli militaries: The American military is all-volunteer; the Israeli is not. A healthy, non-haredi Israeli male at age 18 must become a soldier. Americans at age 18 do not have to. And as you know, Jews, and members of other well-educated religious and ethnic groups don't exactly embrace the idea of volunteer military service, which is a shame, but that's another subject.

On another level, let's take the example of an 18-year-old American Jew who volunteers for the army, and gets killed in Iraq. He will have fought and died as an American, fighting for America. He did not die as a Jew, fighting for a specifically Jewish cause. It's true: American Jews do not have F-16s. As Americans, they do, but those F-16s aren't there to protect them as Jews. They exist to protect them as Americans. It seems a simple point. Jews, as Jews, don't face the physical threats in America that they do in Israel. This is one of the reasons I believe that we as a people haven't yet reached the Promised Land.

5. Is Israel finished?

I hope not. But I'm worried. There are a number of forces conspiring against its long-term survival. The first is more salient: The inability of Arab Islam ? and today, Persian Islam -- to tolerate ethnic and religious diversity in the Middle East. We've seen this over and over again: Iraqi Kurds; Copts in Egypt; black Africans in Sudan, and so on. This is something people don't talk about, but the impulse toward religious and ethnic purity is quite strong in the Arab world. I worry that the Arab world is mostly allergic to the idea of Jewish national equality, and that this is more-or-less immutable. Specifically, I believe that another war is coming, a two or three-front war: Hamas versus Israel in Gaza and parts of the West Bank, and Hezbollah, once again, on the northern border. And just as the second Intifada was worse than the first, the third will be worse than the second.

I think this endless cycle calls into question Israel's ability to flourish, if not survive. I worry, too, about the Iranian nuclear program, though I have a hard time imagining that the Iranians, even the most irrational among them, would bring about the destruction of Persian civilization, which is what would happen if Iran were to use nuclear weapons against Israel. Finally, I worry about demographics. Israeli Jews will soon be a minority on the lands Israel controls. This is an immediate crisis, and I wish people would realize that.

With all this said, let me offer a note of optimism. Jews survive. It's what we do. We survive in all sorts of improbable ways. Our enemies disappear, and we remain. The current situation does not give me a great deal of hope. But our history does.

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