On the eve of the United Jewish Communities’ General Assembly in Jerusalem today, Avrum Burg published in The Los Angeles Times his latest tirade against Israelis, our government, our sense of history, and our supposed “pervasive Shoah” consciousness.
Israel suffers, Burg charged, from "the absolute monopoly and the dominance of the Shoah on every aspect of our lives."
A former Speaker of the Knesset and head of the Jewish Agency, Burg bemoans “the primacy of the Shoah ... in Israel’s politics and policy…. It becomes virtually impossible to find a conversation carried out with reason, patience, self-control or restraint. Take Iran as an example. With regard to Iran, as with any other security matter that has potentially existential consequences, we have no thoughts at all -- only instincts and trauma-driven impulses…. Few [in Israel] are willing to try on the glasses of understanding and of hope for dialogue. Instead, the question is always: Is a second Shoah on the way? This is one of the strongest reasons why I voluntarily withdrew from political life in Israel. I couldn't help feeling that Israel has become a kingdom lacking in vision and without a prophetic horizon.”
Yes, Israel’s current transient leadership is indeed rootless and rudderless. But Burg besmirches all of the citizens of the “kingdom,” Israelis who you meet in the street, school, synagogue, and work. Israel’s Emperor may have no clothes, but the Israeli people have hopes, vision, patriotism and even a prophetic horizon. They are not obsessed with death, fears and the Shoah.
The phenomenal optimism of the Israeli people was described in an incredible essay by the mysterious columnist, pen-named “Spengler,” who described earlier this year “Why Israel is the world's happiest country.” Below are excerpts written by this non-Jewish scribe:
“Envy surrounds no country on Earth like the state of Israel, and with good reason: by objective measures, Israel is the happiest nation on Earth at the 60th anniversary of its founding. It is one of the wealthiest, freest and best-educated; and it enjoys a higher life expectancy than Germany or the Netherlands. But most remarkable is that Israelis appear to love life and hate death more than any other nation…. In a world given over to morbidity, the state of Israel still teaches the world love of life, not in the trivial sense of joie de vivre, but rather as a solemn celebration of life. … The contrast of Israeli happiness and Arab despondency is what makes peace an elusive goal in the region.”
Burg, however, is certainly not happy. In an infamous interview with Ha’aretz’ Avi Shavit last year, Burg admits that he is no longer a Zionist and claims that Israeli “fascism” is pervasive and comparable to Germany prior to World War II. He has taken French citizenship (he brags about voting against Nicholas Sarkozy: “Sarkozy is in my eyes a threat to world peace. That is why I went to vote against him”), seeks to amend Israel's Law of Return, and encourages all Israelis to obtain foreign passports. Actually, a couple of Burg’s quotations should only add to the Israeli public’s happiness, specifically because Burg is no longer part of the Israeli leadership.
Take a look at these Burg gems:
Q: Does this mean that you no longer find the notion of a Jewish state acceptable?
"It can't work anymore. To define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end. A Jewish state is explosive. It's dynamite."
Q: And a Jewish-democratic state?
"People find this very comfortable. It's lovely. It's schmaltzy. It's nostalgic. It's retro. It gives a sense of fullness. But 'Jewish-democratic' is nitroglycerine."
“….I see the European Union as a biblical utopia. I don't know how long it will hold together, but it is amazing. It is completely Jewish. …I have already declared: I am a citizen of the world. This is my hierarchy of identities: citizen of the world, afterward Jew and only after that Israeli. I feel a weighty responsibility for the peace of the world."
Q: Do you recommend that every Israeli take out a foreign passport?
"Whoever can." *
I’ve known Burg for several decades since he was one of Prime Minister Peres’ “blazers,” the young ambitious yuppy staffers who surrounded Peres. Along with several American Jewish organization reps in Israel, I lobbied Burg and his colleagues in the Prime Minister’s office in February 1986 to urge an official hero’s welcome in Israel for Natan Sharansky upon his imminent release from the gulag. We were met with incredible reluctance, even opposition. Burg and his colleagues were more worried about boosting a potential political foe once Sharansky landed in Israel than recognizing a true Jewish and Zionist hero. One of the “blazers” even suggested that Sharansky may have actually been a spy for the CIA and not worthy of such a welcome. When I told them that thousands of Israelis would be going to the airport to receive Sharansky, one of Peres’ aides enquired, “Why?”
Another encounter with Burg occurred in the Knesset some 15 years ago when he asked me to brief him and two of his fellow Knesset Members on the American primary system. I sat with him in the Members dining room and we were soon joined by Yossi Beilin and Binyamin Netanyahu, a threesome that deservedly received puzzled gazes from around the room. I came equipped with a monograph written by Jeane Kirkpatrick warning that the American primaries were killing the political parties and that the decision-making process was corrupting the search for the best candidates. However, the three seemed delighted with the prospect, and Burg responded with a gleeful talmudic phrase accompanied by the required twist of a talmudist's thumb, “ipcha mistabra -- the opposite reasoning makes more sense.” That is to say, let’s kill off the parties and alter the process of selecting candidates.
Yes, Burg is witty and sometimes charming, but already then Burg was displaying his undemocratic, elitist and non-Zionist personality.
Two hundred years ago Sir Walter Scott wrote verses that sadly can be applied to Av
rum Burg today:Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
"This is my own, my native land!"
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.
* For the record: Fifteen years after making aliya I was asked by Israel's prime minister to take a senior diplomatic post in Israel's Washington embassy. In 1997, I surrendered my American citizenship and passport. Sphere: Related Content
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