In a recent speech, the head of the Shin Bet revealed Ronan Bar one of the strategic threats to Israel’s security. Contrary to expectations, he did not express anxiety about the Iranian nuke, terrorism from Gaza or Hezbollah’s precision missile project: according to him, the internal rift is “the most complex challenge facing Israel.” Bar also pointed out the main factor for this: “the breakup of the historical common denominators”.
The connection between the internal weakness and the external danger is clear. “Hundreds of thousands of eyes and hands are praying for our weakness that you will come,” Moshe Dayan said about Roy Rotenberg’s grave in 1956. His words are still valid today, and even more so. The enemy is determined and patient, watching, measuring our weaknesses and planning his steps. The famous “spider web” theory devised by Hassan Nasrallah continues to be part of the doctrine of the terrorist organizations that strive to see us disintegrate from within.
But what’s wrong with the controversy? After all, Judaism is multi-faceted. From the dawn of the days of the nation, the kingdom, the Hasmonean period, the exile and the state, there was an internal polemic about the nature of the kingdom and the state, and out of it grew our national identity. He has always been our pride. As the Jewish Midrash says, “No knife sharpens except at the hip of its friend”. Indeed, the disputes between Beit Shamai and Beit Hillel in the Mishnah, Abey and Raba in the Gemara, Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky in the Revival, although they were principled and heated, improved and violated the ideology. What made the chance a risk and the violator a crumble?
There is no escaping the fact that in the midst of the momentum of the establishment of the state and its establishment, our generation, the third of the revival, fell into an embarrassment and searched for meaning and identity. The embarrassment has been taken over by extremists and interested parties who are not looking for the equal valley but a clash, and they are the ones who turn the dispute into a fight. The loss of the common bases of identity turned from violent disputes into bitter and dangerous rifts. The solution was given by the head of the Shin Bet simply and clearly, when he called us to stop tearing apart our historical common denominators, and instead to re-establish and unite under them.
And what are those shared values? History gives us a clear answer: the return of the Jews to their land and the revival of their language, culture and nation were made possible thanks to our Judaism and Zionism. True, we disagree about the exact interpretations of what Judaism and Zionism are, and what they demand of us. But these are constructive disputes, not destructive ones. Therefore we should not shy away from them. We must embrace them and manage them the way our ancestors managed their disputes, out of shared destiny and unity of purpose.
Judaism and Zionism, two foundations of our identity, are the source of our strength. The Zionist good we all have in common. To them we must return and under them to unite again. On the basis of this agreement, we can continue to preserve ideological disputes, even difficult and deep ones, without disintegrating the society from within. Precisely now, during the campaigns of the various parties, we are required to take responsibility for meeting the common challenge – in the face of danger.
The author is the CEO of the Fund for Zionist Leadership