Bernard Henri-Levi: The task of the Jews
Leo Strauss wrote in the preface to the American edition of his Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (1965) that “it is not quite day and not quite night, either.” In doing so, Strauss was up to his old esoteric tricks, for that phrase, a reference to the coming of the Messiah, is taken from the Passover service. Strauss seemed to be suggesting that Jews had as many reasons to be afraid as they had reasons to hope. That, I think, remains true today: There are reasons for fear as well as reasons for hope, the latter defining the tasks incumbent upon the Jewish people of this new century.
I am almost as old now as the State of Israel, and I sense that not in the past sixty years has there been a time when Israel has been so alone, vulnerable and threatened as it is today. Israel has always had enemies, of course. But as I have watched Hamas firing rockets at Sderot and now at Ashkelon, from a territory Israel has not occupied for two years, I think of Hizballah: During the summer of 2006 it amassed missiles at Israel’s northern border at a time when Lebanon itself no longer had any territorial dispute with Israel (save the ambiguous, minute and artificial Shebaa Farms affair). In other words, here we have two adversaries of Israel, Hamas and Hizballah, who no longer have claims that are intelligible within the classical logic of political conflict. Today, at least, the demands of the Palestinians may be seen as exaggerated and unrealistic, but at least there are demands. Hamas and Hizballah demand nothing from Israel, except that it be annihilated. Their actions are not based on strategy but on a brutal and naked hatred, one that no negotiation or concession can slake.
When facing its enemies since the consolidation of independence in 1948–49, Israel has always been able to rely on its indisputable military superiority. Israelis and their well-wishers often worried of course, knowing, as Thucydides paraphrased Pericles, that “no one is ever so strong that he can be sure he is the strongest.” We were nervous on the narrowing road past Latrun up to Jerusalem before the Six Day War, yes, but we also knew that security is less about kilometers than intelligence—and that in terms of intelligence, the Jewish State would be unbeatable for a long time.
Today, however, one detail changes everything: That these enemies-to-the-death of Israel are tied to a state in pursuit of a technological leap that could nullify the strategic superiority of the Israeli Defense Forces. No one knows exactly what Iran is doing in its nuclear projects. What we do know is that the regime wants a nuclear weapon, and that its President, at least, wants it for the clear, repeatedly declared purpose of getting rid of what he calls, depending on his mood, an “imposture”, a “criminal regime”, a “dirty black germ” or a “wild animal” unleashed by the West in order to destroy the Muslim world. If Lenin was soviets-plus-electricity, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the bomb-plus-eschatology....
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I am almost as old now as the State of Israel, and I sense that not in the past sixty years has there been a time when Israel has been so alone, vulnerable and threatened as it is today. Israel has always had enemies, of course. But as I have watched Hamas firing rockets at Sderot and now at Ashkelon, from a territory Israel has not occupied for two years, I think of Hizballah: During the summer of 2006 it amassed missiles at Israel’s northern border at a time when Lebanon itself no longer had any territorial dispute with Israel (save the ambiguous, minute and artificial Shebaa Farms affair). In other words, here we have two adversaries of Israel, Hamas and Hizballah, who no longer have claims that are intelligible within the classical logic of political conflict. Today, at least, the demands of the Palestinians may be seen as exaggerated and unrealistic, but at least there are demands. Hamas and Hizballah demand nothing from Israel, except that it be annihilated. Their actions are not based on strategy but on a brutal and naked hatred, one that no negotiation or concession can slake.
When facing its enemies since the consolidation of independence in 1948–49, Israel has always been able to rely on its indisputable military superiority. Israelis and their well-wishers often worried of course, knowing, as Thucydides paraphrased Pericles, that “no one is ever so strong that he can be sure he is the strongest.” We were nervous on the narrowing road past Latrun up to Jerusalem before the Six Day War, yes, but we also knew that security is less about kilometers than intelligence—and that in terms of intelligence, the Jewish State would be unbeatable for a long time.
Today, however, one detail changes everything: That these enemies-to-the-death of Israel are tied to a state in pursuit of a technological leap that could nullify the strategic superiority of the Israeli Defense Forces. No one knows exactly what Iran is doing in its nuclear projects. What we do know is that the regime wants a nuclear weapon, and that its President, at least, wants it for the clear, repeatedly declared purpose of getting rid of what he calls, depending on his mood, an “imposture”, a “criminal regime”, a “dirty black germ” or a “wild animal” unleashed by the West in order to destroy the Muslim world. If Lenin was soviets-plus-electricity, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the bomb-plus-eschatology....