Dread of the postmodern twist

Who's to blame for the loss of perspective in this young, tormented country? The main contenders are postmodernism and Ariel Sharon. You could link the two together: Sharon is the first postmodern prime minister. The history of Israel is to some extent found in his own personal story. Through it, Arik has been a metaphor of the deterioration of the state. From a handsome young man, like the legendary sabra who came from the sea, this unique individual experienced, body and soul, the glory days of the early years of the state, the heroics as well as screw-ups of the military struggle - from Kibia and Lebanon to the fearful present.

He is postmodern because like this very influential trend in contemporary thought, which has combined brilliant insights into the public discourse with losing sense, Sharon is the great rule breaker in Israeli society and politics. As in postmodernism, he has no hierarchy of good and bad. He was, therefore, capable of heatedly opposing the separation fence and a week later leading it into another classic Sharonist imbroglio. The state is in a quagmire from which no one knows how Sharon might extricate it. There are many fathers to the snarl-up, obviously in the Arafat court as well, but there has never been a leader like Sharon, who made things so postmodernistically confused.

Nothing remains consistent here, except for jitteriness, which is indeed committed on a historic scale, like the settlement baby that Sharon, more than any other public figure, nurtured and stuck deep down the nation's throat. In the most postmodern way, Sharon has no clear outline, for in the postmodern mind set, clear direction is a basic no-no. He waves about the disengagement plan, but in his special way, Sharon leaves a web of escape routes before pushing through even the first practical step. He has nothing clear to say about the goals of the nation, and says it.

The postmodern twist, here as in the finest Western states, is shaping culture. Sharon, like his predecessors, has nothing to do with the cultural life of Israel. But at its most unsavory, it behaves like him. It is vulgar in its efforts to secure a following, shows its rear end, and spits in the face of an audience that is thirsting for the assurances of asylum from the present angst. Its popularity is similar to Sharon's: measured by the rating of the currently new program, which evaporated to give way to the next program in line. The smash hits are reality shows - a bogus image of reality in a competitive set that is chock full of violence, scheming and ambition, and empty of content. Public television, an important but rotten branch of culture, has been entrusted to a floundering, byzantine manager, Yosef Barel, whose chief loyalty is to a leader in a way that seemed to have ended with the fall of Ceausescu.

You cannot pin all of the evils infecting the country and the happiness of its residents on a single person. It would be more correct to say that nearly every element of the national crisis derives from the same feebleness of mind that raised up Sharon to leadership, and which continues to grant him such grass-roots support. It may also be attributed to the cold feet of a secular Israeli culture that has stomached the long-drawn-out takeover by a messianic voodoo cult under the cover of religion. Within the postmodern tumult, which demands the blurring of clear choices, you can sell everything: even the seemingly preferred status of zealous rabbis who have appropriated the Torah for the purposes of a Greater Land of Israel. Yet another link in this chain was the document composed by leading rabbis in the territories and in the hesder yeshivas recommending to take pre-emptive action against those who seek to kill us, even if civilians are killed in the process.

Post comes after the modern, but in Israel we have skipped over significant portions of modernity. There is high-tech, there is incredible Bauhaus architecture - Tel Aviv has been declared a global preservation site, there is world-class literature, and Prada fashion, and the absolutely last word in cellular technology and smart bombs. But before normal, modern values found their way into the priorities of the nation, they were cut short by the dread of the postmodern twist. Isn't it a shame?