I am Not in the Radical Right

PART II

Anti-Semitic element

There is no question that Ruth Gavison, 63, is an outspoken, opinionated and intense person who doesn't shy away from battles. When she was a candidate for Supreme Court justice, her detractors argued that she lacked a judicial temperament. So much is known about Gavison and her views that people don't notice that she is actually a very private person who speaks very little about herself. In this interview, too, she resolved to stick to the facts and nothing but the facts - with the exception of the following surprising monologue:

"I don't know how it happened that I turned out a little different," says Gavison, apparently referring to her colleagues in leftist circles. "Maybe it's because my family came from a fairly significant rabbinical heritage. I grew up in the old Sephardi Israeli community. I'm here for many generations, no less than my Arab colleagues. I have graves all over this country. There are graves of my family in Jerusalem inside and outside of the Old City walls, and in Tiberias and Hebron, but not in Safed, to my knowledge. I don't have the experience of family ties with Europe. I have no family from Europe and I don't remember any Holocaust stories. I have stories from the Old City and from the Jewish Quarter, and from moving outside the Old City walls and from Mishkenot Sha'ananim and Nahalat Shiva.

"I grew up in a Sephardi rabbinical tradition that is more flexible and also Zionist. My maternal grandfather, Rabbi Yosef Mordechai Halevy, was the head of Jerusalem's Sephardi rabbinic court during my childhood before the founding of the state. There's a picture of him at the inauguration ceremony of the Hebrew University with Rabbi [Abraham Isaac] Kook and [Haim Nahman] Bialik. My uncle, Rabbi Eliahu Pardes, was the chief rabbi of Jerusalem when I was a teenager. I didn't have to wait to meet Rabbi Meidan to know that there are men who won't shake my hand; it doesn't mean that they hate me or disdain me. It's just another culture."

The research activity of the Metzilah Center - which she established "to address the growing tendency among Israelis and Jews worldwide to question the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism and its compatibility with universal values" - is funded mostly by the Keshet Foundation, known for activities promoting reconciliation and coexistence in Israel.

"Some people go into politics. I always thought I'd be more effective in an external body that assists the decision-makers," notes Gavison.

In recent years, the advancement of Zionism has been identified with the right.

"If being a Zionist means being a rightist, then I have no problem with it. I'm proud to be a rightist and ready to pay the price. But Metzilah is an organization that deals with Zionism and Judaism, and also with human rights. If that's what you call the extreme right, then I'm on the extreme right."

I didn't say that being a Zionist means being identified with the right. I said that helping to promote Zionism has become identified with the right.

"That's a much more interesting way to phrase it. So you can be a Zionist, but not act on it? Part of the reason I founded Metzilah is because I thought that I wasn't ready to leave Zionism to the rightists, just as I'm not ready to leave the Jewish state to the religious. Zionism is threatened now because so many Zionists are ashamed of it and not prepared to act on its behalf. If leftist Zionist society thinks that the rightists will continue to do the dirty work for it while they continue to be ashamed of them, it will be interesting. The goal is to compel the public in Israel, and the left especially, to grapple with its Zionism. Let's see what happens. Perhaps it will say that it's really not Zionist."

And what about the question that must be asked: "What has the state given us after all?"

"The state has given us a lot and this needs to be remembered. The state creates for the Jews the only place in which they do not have to subject themselves to the kindness of strangers, in which they are the majority, in which their culture is dominant. This is an extraordinary gift that I'm not prepared to give up. People take it for granted."

Why carry the fate of the Jews here and not move to New Zealand?

"Some have moved to New Zealand. But the fact is that emigration from here is not that massive. You might think that Israelis who had the means would leave the country. But the number of people leaving is not that high. One of the exciting things in Israel is the very great degree of connection between Israelis and their country, because of the quality of the human relations, the language, the family. This is a tremendous achievement."

In recent years, Zionism has become identified with a regime of occupation and oppression.

"I don't accept the claim that Zionism is inherently racism, or inherently based on dispossession or oppression. Just as an Arab can be a liberal and a humanist, a commitment to Zionism and Judaism can go hand in hand with liberalism and humanism. Why can't a Jew who wants to be a nationalist also be a liberal and a humanist? I don't understand this. It's like this was something invented just for the Jew. Why for the Jews does Zionism have to be racist? Sometimes, this double standard toward Israel is so blatant that it's hard not to think that there's some element of anti-Semitism involved, because the things that are so vehemently demanded of Israel are not demanded of any other group."

The moral cost of the Zionist enterprise is not too high?

"There are 5 million Jews here and a million-and-a-quarter Muslims. In the balance is not just the suffering and injustice caused to the Palestinians, but also the loss of the Jewish state that would oblige the Jews to be a minority everywhere and to be subject to the good will of the majority everywhere. Is the fact that the Arabs will continue to be a minority in Israel for the foreseeable future a price that's too high to pay for the existence of a Jewish state? The Arabs say yes. The Arabs' principal claim that there cannot be justice or morality unless the Jewish state stops being Jewish is incorrect. It's misleading, it's unfair and it does not express civic loyalty to the state in which they live."

Civic loyalty?

"The citizen's duty is to fight within the country and not to engage in delegitimization in the international arena. It's not smart on their part either. They maintain that there's been an increase in manifestations of racism and discrimination on the part of the right, but they ignore their own contribution to the fact that more and more people think they're not loyal to the state. The Arab minority wants everything that the establishment of the state made possible for it - comprehensive education, a health system equal to international standards, a level of welfare and political freedom that is among the highest in the Middle East. But it wants all this without the Jewish state. It doesn't work that way. It's a package deal."

So why not make civilian service mandatory?

"In principle, I'm in favor of mandatory civilian service. That doesn't necessarily mean a criminal offense and prison [for noncompliance]. I don't want the whole state to be full of prisons. You can use positive and negative incentives to determine a price tag for behavior. I'm also not in favor of this kind of service becoming mandatory right away, but I do insist that citizenship means being ready to share the burden. I wouldn't oppose a situation in which everyone was obligated to do service, and some did it in the army and some in other places, in their communities, for example."

Are you disappointed with the Arab leadership?

"I'm impressed with them. I've read the 'vision' papers and I'm thrilled by how much they've learned from us. They've learned the history of the Zionist enterprise a lot better than we have. They've seen which arguments worked for us and they're repeating them. They're enlisting the human rights discourse to their cause and doing impressive and clever work. I'm impressed by the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, and think they're doing a very effective job on the operational level, on the PR level and on the level of determination. I think we have a lot to learn from them. Once upon a time, we were like that, too, but the stronger we became, the more we forgot and were weakened. But I also think that they are mistaken and misleading. They're causing substantial damage to their people because they aren't properly gauging the strength and determination and ability of Israeli society. They're repeating the historic mistakes they made in the past."