The blind giant of the Middle East

Israel's disastrous Second Lebanon War showed we've become an existential danger to ourselves. Our future depends on fundamental change.

By David Grossman

Read more: Palestine, Israel, Middle East, Jews, Lebanon, Opinion, Ehud Olmert

REUTERS/Ammar Awad

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert

Feb. 11, 2008 | JERUSALEM -- I don't believe the rumor that, after reading the final report of the Winograd Commission, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert telephoned former Minister of Defense Amir Peretz and declared, "We're off the hook!" But even if Olmert felt some relief, he knows very well that he isn't off the hook, and that the Second Lebanon War will pursue him wherever he goes.

And not only him. The war's casualties have certainly not gotten off the hook. Nor have the other Israeli citizens who spent weeks in bomb shelters, those who did not have shelters, and those who followed on television the state's and the army's inability to protect them. They know in their hearts that we are not off the hook.

We haven't gotten off the hook because we haven't yet really gotten onto it. We have not yet dared to face, open-eyed, this war's deep and frightening significance. Set aside for a moment the convoluted, supremely cautious final report. Go back to the war days. Recall the moments of anxiety, the sense of ever-widening fissures, when it suddenly became clear to each and every one of us that perhaps the army will not always be able to save us, and that there could be a time when a war could end otherwise.

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Isn't that what suddenly began to seep through the tightly fastened armor of denial that we Israelis always shut ourselves up in? True, existential fear is an almost constant companion; it is always hovering over us; but perhaps precisely for that reason it is so threatening, and so hard for us to look straight at. Maybe that is why we actually do not dare face it soberly, and why we don't take the necessary measures to counter it. I do not mean just military measures (even there we failed), but also the profound and comprehensive change of consciousness required of all who are truly determined to prevent such a deadly danger.

Israel has immense and impressive capabilities, but what did we see when we looked at ourselves during the war? We saw a powerful hulk groping its way insensibly, lurching hesitantly and clumsily, without any idea of where it was going. We were like a blind giant striking out in all directions, while others much smaller and weaker nipped at his flesh, drawing blood and exhausting him to the point where he might have collapsed at any moment.

The last war put it sharply: More and more it looks as if the things that set Israel going at its birth have lost their potency -- its concept and its daring, its confidence in its purpose and values, its desire to create a country that would not only be a refuge for the Jewish people, but that would also transform Jewish existence into a modern civil state. Now, 60 years after Israel was founded, it must find new substance that will fuel its way forward. Without re-creating itself, it will not be able to stay in motion. Too many things, outside and inside, will hinder it. The time will come when Israel will not have the strength to overcome them.

Countries that have achieved some sort of state of tranquillity, countries that face no threats to their very existence, may perhaps carry on without constantly doing maintenance on their ties to their land, without re-creating those ties in each generation. Israel simply cannot allow itself such latitude. It must struggle endlessly, and not only to keep up its military strength. It must again make itself into a place of meaning and not just a refuge or fortress. Israel must once again become a home. Its inhabitants must feel they belong here not because they have no other choice, but rather because this place speaks to them, quickens them, grants them meaning they can find nowhere else.

Today, Israel is an intolerably opaque place. The public atmosphere is turbid, sometimes horrifically so. This did not, of course, begin with Ehud Olmert, nor during the last war. For many years we, the Israelis, have been sunk in internal strife, to the point that we have lost our ability to see the larger picture and our real interests as a people and a society. Sometimes it looks as if we have also lost a nation's healthy, natural instincts, those that can direct us in setting our priorities and resolving our conflicts, before we lose everything.

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