122 POLITICS

And this begs the question: How long will Israeli intellectuals collaborate with this task that has been assigned to them?
David Grossman and A. B. Yehoshua have interpreted Benjamin Netanyahus Bar-Ilan speech. Grossman in a somewhat pessimistic article that
repeats, in other words, the parable of Samsons foxes whose tails were
tied together with a burning torch. This parable describes how he sees
our relation to the Palestinians: All of us living here, members of the two
peoples, are jointly setting fire to our very own fields, and this cannot be
rectified unless America saves us from ourselves.
In comparison, A. B. Yehosua assumes the role of consultant to the
king and claims that if Netanyahu only retracted his demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state all would be solved. As if there
is no Occupation, as if the speech is not mere lip service, as if the formerly
genuine and sincere two states idea has not become Machiavellian, in the
service of those perpetuating the wrongdoings of the Occupation in 1967
and the wrongdoings of the Nakba in 1948. The two-state solution has
become a legitimate excuse for denying Palestinians their equal rights,
and mainly to deny the right of return, which is well founded in international law.
A. B. Yehoshua wants us to put aside theology and ideology and be
practical, but theology and ideology underlie all his arguments. The Zionist left has not allowed even those Palestinians uprooted from Iqrit and
Birim to return to their homes, in the name of its principleredemption of the sacred land.2 In view of all this, how pathetic is Yehoshuas
call for egalitarian secular Israeliness. For them, the word Israeliness
includes only Jews and their culture and excludes Palestinians and
their culture.
In other words, secular Israelis may not believe in god, but they are
sure that god promised the Holy Land to them alone. And thus, time and
again, Israeli Jews feel free to grab lands that do not belong to them and
then elect a new leader whose sole task is to manipulate the Gentiles with
sweet talking and trickery. By doing this the elected leader buys enough
time to delay the resolution until the coming of the Messiah (or the day
of judgment) and, at the same time, writers, artists, and intellectuals
maybe in good faith, maybe out of sheer opportunismimbue him with
a dignified, liberal, somewhat Western facade.
2. Iqrit and Birim are two Palestinian Christian villages whose inhabitants left in
1948. See p. 111, n. 6.

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