I wouldn’t be surprised if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were thinking of Tevye these days. Tevye was, after all, a quasi-pathetic character simply trying to make sense of a world changing far more quickly than he might have ever imagined possible. Having granted his daughter, Hodel, permission to marry Perchik the pauper, he wonders, “What am I going to tell your mother?” He didn’t choose Perchik, and he doesn’t really approve. But he is powerless. And when his wife expresses her dismay, the best explanation he can offer is “It’s a new world, Golde.”

“It’s a new world, Golde” is not a claim that Perchik is the right man for Hodel. Or that he’ll ever make a real living. It’s simply a claim that the rules have changed. And in a world with new rules, people must learn to act and respond differently. Tevye never says that, of course. But he is simple, not stupid; and he intuitively understands that he is going to have to learn to navigate his world in an entirely different way.

Tevye is a not entirely inapt metaphor for Israel. We’re living in world operating according to rules that we’re just beginning to understand. Convinced of the legitimacy of at least much of our position, for years we ignored the warning signs that the world was turning on us, that it has grown tired of the conflict in the Middle East, and that it believes we are the reason the conflict will not subside.

The world didn’t change overnight. We simply weren’t watching.

NOW THERE is no more denying the new ground rules. Barack Obama is not really changing them. Perhaps he is shifting America’s position, perhaps not. But more than anything, he is simply articulating infinitely more clearly than anyone else has what it is that the world has come to believe. And we are going to have to learn to operate not in the world we wish existed, but in the world that does exist. And in this new world, Israel is going to be held to standards that are infinitely less tolerant than the standards to which the rest of the world is accountable.

Consider, after all, events of just the past few weeks. In the aftermath of the Iranian election, much of the world watched with admiration and hope as Iranians took to the streets to insist on their (supposed) democratic rights. When the Iranian government resorted to intimidation, silencing of the press, force and then murder, the world was horrified – but it was also quiet. Where were the mass rallies across Europe and on those North American campuses where students were still to be found calling for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to back down? Where were the heads of state clamoring to get in front of television cameras calling for a new election? To be sure, the world was unhappy, but this was hardly an outpouring of support or of condemnation.

Compare that to the world’s reaction to the Gaza operation half a year ago. To be sure, the circumstances were entirely different. Iran’s election is an internal matter, while the Gaza op was not. And other differences abound. But Israel was responding to eight years of shelling of its citizens in what is undisputedly its territory (unless one disputes the notion that any territory is legitimately ours – which, in fact, is exactly Hamas’ position); nonetheless, even before the urban warfare began, the world was unanimous and vocal that the operation had to end.

An almost deadening silence in one instance. And deafening outcries of excessive force in the other. Welcome to the new world.

OR SUPPOSE that some number of Israeli Arab women decided that they were going to wear the burka as a means of intensifying their personal religious odyssey. And that in response to their decision, Netanyahu said, “In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity,” or that “the burka is not a religious sign, it’s a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement – I want to say it solemnly, it will not be welcome on the territory of the State of Israel.” One can just imagine the world’s outcry, the accusations of religious oppression, comparisons with apartheid South Africa or, yes, Nazi Germany. But substitute “the Republic of France” for State of Israel, and you have precisely French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s words this week – again, to a relatively silent international community of listeners.

Or finally, recall Obama’s twisting in the wind as he came to realize that his outstretched hand to Iran was not going to be shaken as warmly as he’d allowed himself to imagine. Eventually, he gave in to enormous pressure to criticize the Iranian regime’s repressive measures. But his criticism was tepid – he couldn’t get over his fundamental sense that the world ought not meddle in Iran’s internal affairs. A few days later, however, the press reported that Sarkozy had told Netanyahu that it was time to dump Avigdor Lieberman and restore Tzipi Livni. Sarkozy’s advice, apparently, is considered moving peace forward. Obama’s suggesting that Iran recount the vote would be meddling.

THERE’S NO point railing against a double standard that no one is even inclined to deny. Right or wrong, for better or for worse, we need to adapt. Israel is going to have to learn to get ahead of the curve. Had Netanyahu’s speech at Bar-Ilan University, by most accounts a very good speech, preceded Obama’s Cairo address, Israel would have been throwing down the gauntlet, challenging the Palestinians to recognize the Jewish state and to live in peace beside it. But coming when they did, Netanyahu’s remarks were essentially seen as caving in to Obama – too little, too late. That’s what has to change.

In this new world, the spotlight will almost always be on Israel. Settlement building. Roadblocks. Lieberman. We’re going to have to learn to alter that. Make some accommodations, but demand – clearly and unequivocally – that the Palestinians do the same. Netanyahu, or whoever follows him, is going to have to learn to keep the ball, and the world’s attention, squarely in and on their court. Like it or not, Israel needs to take the initiative, time and time again – because nothing else will work.

“It’s a new world, Bibi,” Tevye would have said. We don’t have to like it. And it may not be fair, or just. But as we are wont to say, “zeh mah yesh” – it is what it is. As Tevye understood, we can either adapt, exerting at least some control over our fates, or we can wistfully long for days when other rules prevailed, even as we get swept away by currents we’ve barely begun to comprehend.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were thinking of Tevye these days. Tevye was, after all, a quasi-pathetic character simply trying to make sense of a world changing far more quickly than he might have ever imagined possible. Having granted his daughter, Hodel, permission to marry Perchik the pauper, he wonders, “What am I going to tell your mother?” He didn’t choose Perchik, and he doesn’t really approve. But he is powerless. And when his wife expresses her dismay, the best explanation he can offer is “It’s a new world, Golde.”

“It’s a new world, Golde” is not a claim that Perchik is the right man for Hodel. Or that he’ll ever make a real living. It’s simply a claim that the rules have changed. And in a world with new rules, people must learn to act and respond differently. Tevye never says that, of course. But he is simple, not stupid; and he intuitively understands that he is going to have to learn to navigate his world in an entirely different way.

Tevye is a not entirely inapt metaphor for Israel. We’re living in world operating according to rules that we’re just beginning to understand. Convinced of the legitimacy of at least much of our position, for years we ignored the warning signs that the world was turning on us, that it has grown tired of the conflict in the Middle East, and that it believes we are the reason the conflict will not subside.

The world didn’t change overnight. We simply weren’t watching.

NOW THERE is no more denying the new ground rules. Barack Obama is not really changing them. Perhaps he is shifting America’s position, perhaps not. But more than anything, he is simply articulating infinitely more clearly than anyone else has what it is that the world has come to believe. And we are going to have to learn to operate not in the world we wish existed, but in the world that does exist. And in this new world, Israel is going to be held to standards that are infinitely less tolerant than the standards to which the rest of the world is accountable.

Consider, after all, events of just the past few weeks. In the aftermath of the Iranian election, much of the world watched with admiration and hope as Iranians took to the streets to insist on their (supposed) democratic rights. When the Iranian government resorted to intimidation, silencing of the press, force and then murder, the world was horrified – but it was also quiet. Where were the mass rallies across Europe and on those North American campuses where students were still to be found calling for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to back down? Where were the heads of state clamoring to get in front of television cameras calling for a new election? To be sure, the world was unhappy, but this was hardly an outpouring of support or of condemnation.

Compare that to the world’s reaction to the Gaza operation half a year ago. To be sure, the circumstances were entirely different. Iran’s election is an internal matter, while the Gaza op was not. And other differences abound. But Israel was responding to eight years of shelling of its citizens in what is undisputedly its territory (unless one disputes the notion that any territory is legitimately ours – which, in fact, is exactly Hamas’ position); nonetheless, even before the urban warfare began, the world was unanimous and vocal that the operation had to end.

An almost deadening silence in one instance. And deafening outcries of excessive force in the other. Welcome to the new world.

OR SUPPOSE that some number of Israeli Arab women decided that they were going to wear the burka as a means of intensifying their personal religious odyssey. And that in response to their decision, Netanyahu said, “In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity,” or that “the burka is not a religious sign, it’s a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement – I want to say it solemnly, it will not be welcome on the territory of the State of Israel.” One can just imagine the world’s outcry, the accusations of religious oppression, comparisons with apartheid South Africa or, yes, Nazi Germany. But substitute “the Republic of France” for State of Israel, and you have precisely French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s words this week – again, to a relatively silent international community of listeners.

Or finally, recall Obama’s twisting in the wind as he came to realize that his outstretched hand to Iran was not going to be shaken as warmly as he’d allowed himself to imagine. Eventually, he gave in to enormous pressure to criticize the Iranian regime’s repressive measures. But his criticism was tepid – he couldn’t get over his fundamental sense that the world ought not meddle in Iran’s internal affairs. A few days later, however, the press reported that Sarkozy had told Netanyahu that it was time to dump Avigdor Lieberman and restore Tzipi Livni. Sarkozy’s advice, apparently, is considered moving peace forward. Obama’s suggesting that Iran recount the vote would be meddling.

THERE’S NO point railing against a double standard that no one is even inclined to deny. Right or wrong, for better or for worse, we need to adapt. Israel is going to have to learn to get ahead of the curve. Had Netanyahu’s speech at Bar-Ilan University, by most accounts a very good speech, preceded Obama’s Cairo address, Israel would have been throwing down the gauntlet, challenging the Palestinians to recognize the Jewish state and to live in peace beside it. But coming when they did, Netanyahu’s remarks were essentially seen as caving in to Obama – too little, too late. That’s what has to change.

In this new world, the spotlight will almost always be on Israel. Settlement building. Roadblocks. Lieberman. We’re going to have to learn to alter that. Make some accommodations, but demand – clearly and unequivocally – that the Palestinians do the same. Netanyahu, or whoever follows him, is going to have to learn to keep the ball, and the world’s attention, squarely in and on their court. Like it or not, Israel needs to take the initiative, time and time again – because nothing else will work.

“It’s a new world, Bibi,” Tevye would have said. We don’t have to like it. And it may not be fair, or just. But as we are wont to say, “zeh mah yesh” – it is what it is. As Tevye understood, we can either adapt, exerting at least some control over our fates, or we can wistfully long for days when other rules prevailed, even as we get swept away by currents we’ve barely begun to comprehend.

In Perspective: Obama is right, it’s time for honesty

Jun. 11, 2009
Daniel Gordis , THE JERUSALEM POST

In the days leading up to his landmark speech in Cairo, US President Barack Obama said it was time for “honesty” between the United States and Israel. Now he has spoken, and we should respond in kind. For Obama is right – it is time, at long last, for honesty.

Too many analyses of the speech have ignored the fact that it was addressed primarily to the Muslim world, and was delivered in Egypt. And in that setting, Obama insisted that the US-Israel relationship could not be upended. He mentioned the Holocaust, (implicitly) berated Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his Holocaust denial, quoted the Talmud and called on Hamas to recognize Israel and abandon violence.

Not bad.

To be sure, it was not the speech that many Israelis would have written. Obama’s articulated position on Iranian nuclear power is unacceptable, just as an absolute freeze on natural growth in “settlements,” even in places where settlements are essentially cities, is both unfair and thoroughly unrealistic. And linking Israel’s right to exist to the Holocaust is a significant intellectual and moral mistake.

We could go on, but to spend our time pointing to all our disagreements with Obama while avoiding his call for honesty would be a mistake. With stunning clarity, he has told the world where he stands. Now it is time for us to do the same. What are we committed to? What are our red lines? Do we even know?

Ironically, what Obama’s first shots across the bows of both Israel and the Palestinians have inadvertently highlighted for us is that we’re a country that does not know how to be honest, even with itself. For too long we have avoided the national conversation that would have been required for us to have a vision as clear as Obama’s. Now is the time to have that conversation, and then, as Obama has requested, to be honest about what we decide.

WHERE SHOULD we begin? As but one example, let’s begin with some of the questions that the West Bank raises: Are we ever willing to give up the West Bank? For a moment, let’s set aside the obvious security issue and the devastating consequences if Kassam rockets start flying from the West Bank as well. Let’s assume for a minute (a wild assumption, I admit) that the Palestinians decide that it really is time to move on, to abandon terror and accept a division of the land. Are we willing?

I believe that we don’t know anymore. Our unwillingness to state our position is not a reflection of dishonesty or of hiding. It’s simply a result of the fact that we have for so long seen no possibility of progress on the Palestinian front that we’ve stopped asking ourselves what we would do if we could.

So let’s be honest: What would we do?

Are we willing to leave the West Bank, land that is no less ancestrally Jewish and religiously significant than any other part of Israel? If we are committed to staying there permanently, for historical, theological or even security reasons, isn’t it time just to say that? Or to annex it and stop pretending we haven’t made that decision?

When some of us speak about not making any change until the Palestinians have built a genuinely democratic infrastructure (bottom-up, we call it), are we serious? Or do we simply assume that they’ll never accomplish that under present circumstances, so what we’re effectively doing is announcing, though not with the “honesty” that Obama is rightly calling for, that we plan to stay, no matter what?

IF WE PLAN to stay, which could well be defensible, let’s be honest about the endgame. What do we plan for the Palestinian population there? The status quo forever? Are we going to make them citizens, and thus further erode Israel’s fragile Jewish majority? Are we going to give them some sort of citizenship that involves full civic rights but not the right to vote on matters that determine the nature of the state? Is that the democracy we seek? Do we have any alternative? Or are we planning to move the Palestinians to some other location (a plan which didn’t work very well with India and Pakistan, but which worked flawlessly in Cyprus)?

But if, alternatively, we do plan to leave the West Bank, what would we do if it turned into Hamastan, as happened in Gaza? We had no contingency plan for Gaza, and the results have been devastating. Will we make the same mistake again? And if we could solve the security issue, will we force all the Jews on the West Bank to leave? Or will we insist on their right to continue living there, even if under Palestinian rule?

And if Jews do have to be moved, are we accepting the international community’s tacit premise that only Jews can be moved (out of Gaza, and later, out of the West Bank)? Why can’t Arabs be moved? As even Benny Morris has noted, the Peel Commission “recommended that the bulk of the 300,000 Arabs who lived in the territory earmarked for Jewish sovereignty should be transferred, voluntarily or under compulsion, to the Arab part of Palestine or out of the country altogether,” and suggested that 1,250 Jews living in those areas slated for Arab sovereignty be moved as well, in “an exchange of population.”

How has it come to be that what the British once advocated we are too timid to raise? If Jews had to leave Gaza and might eventually have to leave the West Bank, is the movement of (some?) Arabs from Israel so it can remain a Jewish state so obviously out of the question? Why?

THESE ARE the questions we never discuss, because each of our leaders inherits a coalition so fragile that even raising such questions threatens to topple the government. So what if we were to use this new “crisis” as an opportunity?

What if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were to begin speaking with the Americans, and with any Palestinians who publicly recognize our right to exist, but at the same time forged a coalition of Labor, Kadima, Israel Beiteinu and Likud, all of which called for dramatic electoral reform? He’d have the votes needed to pass the reform (several plans are ready) and make Israel governable. He’d make it possible for Israelis to finally talk about the issues we never discuss in the public square. He’d end the cynical and self-destructive culture of “Yisrabluff,” and ultimately he’d make it possible for us to form a national consensus about which we could finally be honest – with the world, but more importantly, with ourselves.

Imagine that. If Netanyahu seized this opportunity, Barack Obama, despite everything we didn’t love about his Cairo address, might actually enable us to discuss our vision for the future of Israel.

And with that, Obama may have saved the Jewish state.

The writer is senior vice president of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. His most recent book is Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End. He blogs at www.danielgordis.org.

But the real news is that contrary to what many expected, or feared, President Obama assumed positions virtually identical to those of Israel’s political center — namely, that the Palestinians must renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist, while Israel must cease settlement building and permit a Palestinian state to arise. Now, Benjamin Netanyahu’s problem is that it’s difficult to distinguish between President Obama and Tzipi Livni. And in Israel’s recent elections, Livni and her Kadima party won more votes than anyone else.

But the major “problem” that the speech poses for Israel’s leaders is that Israelis are finally going to have to make painful decisions about our future. No longer will Israel’s fractious politics provide a curtain behind which to hide. Will we abide a Palestinian state, or are we committed to the present stalemate as a matter of principle? Are we committed to keeping the West Bank (for reasons of security, history or theology), or are we open to withdrawing if a genuine peace accord is possible? If all Jews will have to depart the West Bank, what about Arabs in Israel? For years, we’ve fudged on these painful questions; with President Obama, that may no longer be possible.

Once Israelis grow accustomed to the new tenor emanating from Washington, we may see today’s speech in a different light. Barack Obama may or may not bring peace to the Middle East, but he may well force clarity, and perhaps disciplined policy, on an Israeli society that has long desperately needed it.