I'm Not in the Radical Right

By: Shahar Ilan

An interview with Prof. Ruth Gavison: This is the first part of a three part series, in which Prof. Gavison expresses her thoughts and concerns about the future of the Zionist enterprise - the State of Israel.

PART I

Prof. Ruth Gavison is convinced that if we don't wake up Zionism from its coma, we could become the Crusaders of the modern age. "Then we'll have a few more governments and a few more election campaigns. But we won't be able to sustain this enterprise, because the ground it's built on is not stable enough. There will be no way we can be a high-tech country, and we intellectuals will constantly be visiting our friends in Princeton and Harvard, and staying on there in peace and quiet. Because there are enough people who don't want us here. Until we really convey the message that we're here for good, there will be no peace agreement."

A member of the Winograd Committee that investigated the handling of the Second Lebanon War, Gavison now seeks to place on the public agenda a series of publications that she believes will rouse the dormant Zionist discourse across the political spectrum. The atmosphere of solidarity surrounding the Israeli offensive in Gaza makes the timing appropriate for such a discussion. As for the fighting in Gaza, "there was hardly any choice except to do something, and the public seems to agree," she says, adding, "but this operation is still taking shape and I don't think it's right to react in real time."

Gavison insists that she stands behind the Winograd report, but allows that she is not at all certain that legal commissions of inquiry are the right forum for judging the fitness of leaders: It is up to the public to decide this. As for the situation in the south, she said in an interview two weeks ago that the State of Israel cannot permit itself to be so exposed to harm.

"Once it seemed that we were unbeatable," she explains. "Egypt made peace because it thought the price of defeating us was intolerable. Today it's clear that [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah was able to convince the Palestinians [that it's possible to fight us]. We have a strategic weakness. Our professionalism is declining, our ability to be thorough is declining, our commitment is declining. Our neighbors consider shooting at Israeli civilians in the north and south a legitimate tool. So you can say that this is just a passing episode because we're an empire. But it's irrelevant that you have the strongest army in the Middle East if children in the south are wetting their beds. It is the state's duty to protect its citizens, but for months and years citizens are fired upon and the strongest army in the Middle East doesn't have a response? I think it's intolerable."

Are we the new Crusaders?

Gavison: "We're not the Crusaders because we have nowhere else. History will judge whether, like the Crusaders, we'll be a historic episode of military sovereignty in the region or not. I hope that when we grasp the difference between us and the Crusaders, we'll muster the strength to ensure that there will always be a Jewish political entity in the Land of Israel."

We're burned out.

"I agree that there's burnout because, like spoiled children, we'd like to have peace now. There is no peace now. Some of your neighbors want you to be like the Crusaders, they won't give you peace now. There is no real option to just concede enough to bring peace now. Anyone who thinks there is such an option is not reading reality correctly."

Because there's no partner?

"The question is, a partner for what? For accord and reconciliation, there is no partner. I agree, there isn't. There's no partner. There's no partner for a declaration that they're forgoing the claim that all of Palestine is their homeland and that we dispossessed them. But there may be a partner for a practical agreement."

Israeli 'backbone'

Since she served in the 1980s as chairwoman of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Gavison, a highly esteemed professor of the philosophy of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has made several moves that the liberal left has perceived as crossing the line. About a decade ago, for example, she spearheaded opposition to the Supreme Court's judicial activism; in 2005, her candidacy for a seat on the Supreme Court stirred a bit of an uproar, when then-court president Aharon Barak denounced her "agenda."

The Gavison-Meidan covenant between religious and secular that she co-authored in 2000 with Rabbi Yaakov Meidan, head of the Har Etzion yeshiva, also made waves: Among other things, the two proposed an arrangement for civil marriages, but only for heterosexual couples. Gavison is also one of the most prominent supporters of the Citizenship Law (which bars family unification involving Israeli and Palestinian spouses), and supported limiting the immigration of Jews from parts of the Third World to Israel.

In 2005, she founded the Metzilah Center, which has survived its initial growing pains and is now ready to come out with a series of publications. These include a position paper on demography; a book about November 29, 1947 - the day the United Nations decided to partition Palestine; and a series of online debates between intellectuals. The position paper on demography (written by Dr. Uzi Rebhun and doctoral candidate Gilad Malach of the Hebrew University), touches on a point that leftists consider extremely politically incorrect, if not racist.

"One of the main arguments in the paper is that the goal of achieving a stable Jewish majority is a legitimate goal for Israel and that Israel must seek to advance this goal," says Gavison. "Once this was taken for granted, but today it's not acceptable to say it. However, my guess is that a large portion of decision makers, including people from Meretz, wouldn't dare to say that a Jewish majority is not a legitimate interest of Israel."

The question is, what are you prepared to do for the sake of a Jewish majority?

"Only what human rights allow. I'm not prepared to expel the Arabs or to discriminate against them. But the State of Israel can say it is not interested in expanding the minority that is striving to undermine the justification of our existence. You could say that the only people who immigrate here are people who accept Israel as it is. I don't see any reason why Israel shouldn't demand an oath of loyalty from people who assume its citizenship. This is a standard immigration requirement."

In 2006, the High Court of Justice approved the Citizenship Law by one vote. Then-president Barak and current court President Dorit Beinisch were among those who opposed the law, which is temporary, periodically renewed and currently under discussion by the High Court.

"On the matter of the Citizenship Law, I have a disagreement with Barak and Beinisch," Gavison explains. "But with me are the justices of the majority - like [Mishael] Cheshin, [Miriam] Naor and [Asher] Grunis. It's an ideological rather than a legal debate, and it shouldn't be decided in court, but rather in the Knesset and in civil society. If the court is going to rule on this question in contrast to the political decision, I support the initiative by [Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann] not to give the court this power, and if this means that overriding is required, then so be it.

"There is a deep ideological debate on these issues and the time has come to argue them. I think I speak for the large majority of the Israeli public that wants to maintain this country as a state that is both Jewish and democratic. A large majority, not a small majority. I'm not in the minority and I'm not the radical right. I'll fight any attempt to label me and my message as radical right. I reflect the backbone of the people in Israel."

You haven't shifted rightward?

"Ideologically, I haven't changed. I'm a social democrat and I'm in favor of two states for two peoples - two positions clearly identified with the left. So it's very hard for me to understand how I could be defined as a rightist. But something happened to me that some interpret as a shift from left to right. Fifteen years ago, I still took the success of Zionism and the Jewish state as givens, in the long run, and I saw my role as doing my utmost to ensure the country is as fair, just and moral as it can be. I did what the people who I'm now warning about are doing. Today, the picture of the Middle East without Israel seems realistic to a large portion of our enemies, and to some of our friends. There's been a growing attitude that the right thing to do is to give up on the dream of the Jewish state. This endangers the ability of the Zionist enterprise to survive. I'm motivated by a sense of great urgency and great importance and very great justice."