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Sept. 23, 2005
Israelis move left, but vote right
Hebrew University professors comment on contemporary issues at
Vancouver conference.
PAT JOHNSON
The successful and relatively peaceful Israeli withdrawal from
the Gaza Strip represents the victory of the secular democratic
state over the forces of religious fundamentalism.
That was one of the perspectives offered last weekend at a major
conference in Vancouver featuring seven top Israeli academics. Stretch
Your Mind: The Best of Hebrew U was the third such event in four
years that brought professors from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
to Vancouver for a day and a half of lectures.
Prof. Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov told his audience that a fundamental
schism in Israeli society exists between those who believe that
Israeli control over the West Bank and Gaza is divinely ordained
and those who believe that a solution to the conflict is in the
hands of humankind. The relative peace with which the Gaza disengagement
unfolded indicates a broad acceptance, said Bar-Siman-Tov, that
secular, democratic institutions are the ones that will determine
the course of Israeli history.
The pullout – and other issues of international significance
– were addressed by the seven professors, but so was a wide
range of other topics, in disciplines as diverse as art, prayer
and animal welfare.
Saturday night's keynote address – which followed a Havdalah
service led by Or Shalom Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan – featured
political scientist Reuven Hazan.
Hazan contended that Israelis have been moving steadily toward the
left of the political spectrum over the past decade – yet have
given the right-wing Likud party unprecedented landslide electoral
victories.
Public opinion polls indicate that Israelis are overwhelmingly supportive
of a final peace agreement with the Palestinians and with the Syrians,
that the Gaza withdrawal is just the beginning of a process that
will see Israel also withdraw from the West Bank, and that settlements
were a historical mistake.
All of these attitudes would seem to bode well for the Labor party,
which has traditionally comprised the "peace camp," but
electoral results tell a different story. The last two elections
have resulted in Likud landslides, Hazan noted.
The incongruity between Israelis' expressed attitudes and their
behavior in the ballot booth is not so inexplicable, said the professor.
It is not, Hazan said, evidence of a national schizophrenia.
"I think this is a logical response by a democracy being attacked
by terrorists," he said. The contradictory response is not
so much an indication of fundamental disagreement, he said, but
rather a recognition of short-term realities and long-term hopes.
In the long-term, Hazan said, Israelis accept and support a Palestinian
state and most of the policies that reflect traditional left-wing
Israeli positions. In the short-term, however, when Israelis are
dying in terrorist attacks, the immediacy of self-preservation requires
a different response, Hazan suggested.
Moreover, while Likud has seen landslide elections, its actual vote
count has not increased significantly. On the contrary, left-wing
voters stayed home during the past two elections, sending the Labor
vote plummeting.
"The right-wing is not winning elections," Hazan said.
"The left-wing is losing them."
Many traditional Labor voters sat out the 2001 election out of disappointment
with incumbent prime minister Ehud Barak. Arab Israelis, who Hazan
said have usually supported Labor or other left-of-centre parties,
have effectively boycotted the past two national elections.
In other sessions, Prof. Richard Cohen, a specialist in the interrelation
of art and society, delivered a presentation that demonstrated Judaism's
struggle to balance modernity and tradition in the mid-19th century.
In paintings by Jewish artists, he said, there are often non-Jewish
observers in the periphery, sometimes blonde, representing the tensions
Jewish communities of Europe were undergoing in balancing their
traditional segregation from the gentile world with a new tendency
toward varying degrees of assimilation.
Prof. Yuval Elbashan of Hebrew University's faculty of law discussed
how a rich country like Israel has seen the number of soup kitchens
shoot from six a decade ago to 170 today. One in five Israeli children
questioned say they have gone to bed hungry in the last three or
four nights, he said. Elbashan argued that the emergence of a serious
poverty crisis in Israel is related to the transition from a socialist,
collectivist ideal to a neo-liberal economic model in the past several
years.
Sameer Mabjeesh, senior lecturer in the faculty of agriculture,
challenged his audience on the rights of animals to live with the
least indignity and suffering. He contended that public ignorance
and the inattentiveness of media has allowed animals to be treated
in inhumane ways.
Prof. Avigdor Shinan, whose specialty is biblical interpretation,
lectured on the history of Kaddish, the Mourner's prayer, to rave
reviews from participants. In a panel discussion capping the Sunday
afternoon portion of the conference, Shinan noted a changed attitude
in Israel toward the Diaspora.
"From 1948 to around the Yom Kippur War, in 1973, there was
a negative attitude toward those who live in the Diaspora and choose
not to make aliyah," he said. After that time, Israelis began
to see Diaspora Jewish communities as necessary allies in a troubled
world. This change in attitude can even be seen in the altered language
Israelis use when speaking of the Diaspora, he said, noting that
the term "galut," which has rather negative connotations,
was replaced with the more universal and less laden term, Diaspora.
Prof. Noam Shoval, a geographer, presented on the realities of Israel's
security barrier being constructed along the boundary with the West
Bank. Despite claims that the barrier represents an Israeli land
grab, Shoval said, the fence takes a routing almost exctly like
that proposed at Taba in 2001. He acknowledged the unpleasantness
of the barrier, but noted the number of lives lost to terror in
the past five years and the need for such a measure.
"It looks really bad, but the question is, what are the alternatives?"
he asked.
The conference was co-sponsored by Canadian Friends of the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, the Jewish Community Centre of Greater
Vancouver and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.
Rosalind Karby, who co-chaired the event with Phyllis Moscovich
and Julie Schneiderman, praised the university and high school student
volunteers who helped make the weekend function successfully. She
also added that, although the organizers strive for representative
panels, the professors who come are determined by the Hebrew University
and by the professors' availability. Though this year's conference
featured seven male professors, Karby said, she hopes future events
will have a better gender balance.
Pat Johnson is editor of MVOX Multicultural Digest, www.mvox.ca.
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