(Note:  This was delivered in the David Alhadeff Torah Institute of Congregation Ezra Bessaroth in Seattle, Washington on September 3, 1996.  I would like to thank Rabbi Yamin Levy for the invitation. )

During the Jewish year 5756 I lived a kind of split existence.  I taught political science at Tel Aviv University, located in the affluent Tel Aviv neighborhood of Ramat Aviv, the neighborhood that, in Israeli popular culture, symbolizes the emerging Israeli upper class and the dovish views they espouse.  "Ramat Aviv" III is the title of the Israeli equivalent of Beverly Hills 90210, and Ramat Aviv is the home of both Leah Rabin and Shimon and Sofia Peres.  Tel Aviv University has, I believe, the smallest percentage of religious students of an Israeli University, and, as best I know, I was one of very few religious teachers in social science there.
    Israeli student life is heavily politicized, but at Tel Aviv University only the Labor party and its ally, Meretz, were strongly represented.  The Communist party seemed to be more active on campus than the Likud, at least if one judged by the quantity of posters on bulletin boards.  I should hasten to add that although I am a religious Jew, and  sympathetic to the religious and right-wing parties, I never encountered any personal hostility.
    At home, in Petach Tikvah, an industrial suburb of Tel Aviv about 7 miles from the University, I lived in a neighborhood whose largest element was religious and Zionist, what in Israel is called kippah serugah, or knitted kipah.  None of my acquaintances or my wife's relatives in Petach Tikvah were secular, whereas at the University almost all of them were.  No one that I knew in Petach Tikvah would admit to being supporters of Labor or even the peace process; at Tel Aviv, only a few were anything but Labor or Meretz supporters and strong advocates of "Oslo."
    The assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin revealed the radical political division between my two worlds, almost exactly a month after I arrived in Israel.  The only thing that both worlds had in common in reaction to the assassination was anger.  At Tel Aviv many of my colleagues, and students, were enraged that the Prime Minister had been murdered by a Jew whom they saw as a member of the national-religious camp and acting out of national-religious motives.  In Petach Tikvah the religious were themselves angry at the charges of collective responsibility and collective guilt that secular leftists in the media and public life aimed at the national religious and their institutions.
    These are the two radically dichotomous environments that served as the background for my understanding of (and in a very limited way, participation in) Israeli politics in the Jewish year 5756, 1995-6.  This year proved the most eventful year in Israel's history apart from the war years of 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973.
    5756 was a year that contained two extraordinary events.  The first, to which I have already alluded, was the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin.  The second was the astonishing defeat of the Labor party and its leader Shimon Peres, at the hands of the Likud's leader Benyamin Netanyahu and the coalition embracing religious and ultraorthodox Jews, old Herutniks, new immigrants and working class Sephardim and Mizrachim that he and his advisors orchestrated.
    Peres's defeat was extraordinary in part because it occurred despite the Rabin assassination less than seven months before, which caused many Israelis to feel a tremendous repugnance toward the opposition and toward Netanyahu its leader.  The assassination, macabre as this may sound, appeared in November of 1995 to grant Peres and the then governing "Leftist" coalition of Labor and Meretz an insuperable electoral advantage.  Netanyahu's triumph, at the simple level of electoral competition, ranks as one of the great upsets in the relatively short history of modern democracy.
    An election is a matter of persuasion, that is to say, of rhetoric.  My studies of ancient and modern politics have convinced me that a political community makes itself through its rhetoric.  One cannot imagine, for example, the American civil rights movement without the "I had a dream" speech of Martin Luther King.  Nor is the American dedication to human equality, after long and painful years to culminate in the movement King led, imaginable without Lincoln's bid in the Gettysburg address to dedicate ourselves and our government to the proposition "that all men are created equal," as the only fitting memorial to the dead of the Civil War.
    In a contested election each candidate puts forward his or her own attempt to persuade.  Sometimes the debate is only personal, about matters of competence, character, and fitness for the public trust.  Other times, interesting times but not happy ones, in line with the ancient Chinese curse, the debate is about competing understandings of the nation's political situation as whole, or even, in an extreme case, about the human situation in its entirety.  It is an extraordinary thing that the contending campaigns, the speeches and advertisements of the Left and the Right in the recent Israeli elections, raised the largest possible questions and can only be understood in the context of the largest questions.  It says a great deal about the importance of Israeli politics for political science and political reflection generally, even as it points to the weaknesses and instabilities of Israeli democracy, that in its normal processes it could throw forth such divergent visions as the "campaign strategies" of the two major parties.  For anyone who suffered through the recent Republican and Democratic conventions in the United States a look at the Israeli campaign will prove rhetorically refreshing; a little rhetorical refreshment is probably not worth the price that Israel pays for it, but that is another matter.
    I will explore, if not any manner that could be called definitive, the rhetorical causes for the extraordinary defeat of Labor and Peres.  A political scientist is someone who believes that human events have human causes.  A political scientist does not attempt to explain political outcomes by appeal to material facts, such as climate, location, natural resources.  Nor does a political scientist attempt to explain political outcomes, human facts, in terms of divine intervention.  The previous Rebbe of Sanz-Klausenberg was asked shortly before his death (before the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin) by an opponent of the Rabin government why Rabin was pursuing the policy of territorial concession.  The Rebbe answered that Rabin's actions were impossible to understand; and that the policies of his government must simply be an expression of the divine will.  I think that the Rebbe's explanation has a great deal of merit, but as a political scientist I am nonetheless committed to replacing an explanation of human events that makes reference to divine intervention with an explanation that points only to human causes, to human ambitions, desires, hopes, fears, rather than to the Divine Will.
    To search for a human explanation of the events of the past year in Israeli politics does not mean to reject the importance of human beliefs about trans-human questions.  Religious faith, hope, and prayer are human attitudes that in themselves have been and are of tremendous importance in human affairs.  Indeed, I will argue that the recent Israeli election campaign reflects a conflict between two human and very Jewish attitudes, a conflict between what I will call the Messianic posture toward Israeli affairs and the security posture.
    Both of these postures transcend particular policies.  Here I will discuss the Messianism of the Israeli Left only.  Messianism has had and, no doubt, will have an important place on the Israeli Right, as well, but this Messianism of the Right did not play much role in the rhetoric or the outcome of the 1996 election campaign, except insofar as the Right's previous record of Messianic rhetoric influenced the public understanding of the Rabin assassination.  Conversely, the peace process can be advocated from the security posture-- many distinguished reserve and retired Israeli military men have advocated territorial compromise with the Palestinians strictly on security grounds.  Yet Labor's campaign in 1996 omitted the rhetoric of security, and so failed to persuade those Jewish Israelis who did not share Peres's Messianic vision of peace.
    The Zionist dream as expressed by such figures as diverse as Theodore Herzl and Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Cook saw in the return to Zion and the establishment of the state steps toward a solution of the Jewish problem in the modern world.  For Rav Cook, such a solution would mean the realization of the messianic vision of traditional Judaism; for Herzl and other political Zionists, it represented the replacement of the traditional messianic vision with a nationalist vision of an independent, secure Jewish state.
    But "secure," there, precisely is the rub, as Hamlet said.  Maimonides writes in the last chapter of his monumental code, Laws of the Kings and their Wars chapter twelve, that there is no difference between these days and the days of the messiah except that Israel dwells in security among the nations.  In terms of the "black-letter law" as restated by Maimonides, a truly secure Israel is the essence of the Messianic vision.  To take Israel's security as a given, either now, or in the foreseeable future, is to believe that the days of the Messiah are within reach.  To assume that the Messianic age can be brought about through treaties and agreements is to take a messianic posture toward human affairs.
    The security posture, unlike the Messianic posture, does not assume that peace is diplomatically available.  In place of peace the security posture aims at simple physical security from violent death, at an armistice.  The messianic posture sees an end to war, the security posture aims at extending the pause between wars as long as is militarily advisable, and no longer.  In foreign relations, the messianic posture looks to Israel's neighbors; the security posture looks to Israel's physically distant allies (at present, unfortunately, Israel's only reliable ally is the United States) for defense against Israel's neighbors.
    The messianic and security postures represent possible attitudes constantly available to activists and politicians within Israeli political culture.  The current Israeli Defense Minister (in Hebrew, sar habitachon, Security Minister), Yitzchak Mordechai, said in his formal address on taking office in June 1996 that there is no people whose desire for peace contrasts so sharply with their lack of security as the peple of Israel.  The messianic posture transforms this desire for peace into an analysis of current events as ripe for peacemaking.
    In the state of Israel since its founding, the security question is the dominant political question.  This formulation is in a way too weak; the security question is of such political importance as to transcend "politics," as politics is understood within Israeli political life.  After the Dizengoff Center bombing on the eve of Purim in March of 1996, then Prime Minister and Defense Minister Shimon Peres summoned to his office in the defense ministry in Tel Aviv Rafael Eitan, leader of the right-wing Tzomet faction in the Knesset, then in opposition, and a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces.  Upon leaving Peres's office, Eitan told the media that he had not come to discuss political questions, but only, as he was asked, to give his advice to the Prime Minister on security matters.  "Mortal danger pushes politics aside" (pikuach nefesh docheh politika) was a prominent right-wing slogan on billboards all over Israel this past year.
    One can thus say without fear of exaggeration that the security question is the fundamental question of Israel, the vital question, the existential question.  What differentiates the state as realized from the aspirations of all the streams of the Zionist moved is this focus on the simple matter of protecting the Jewish State from its foreign enemies.  To say that the great Zionists from all the streams of Zionism failed to anticipate the importance that security, understood in human rather than in Messianic terms, would have for the Jewish State is to be far too charitable to their foresight.  Despite the massive changes that Israel has seen in recent years, demographic, social, and economic, it is still true that the State of Israel does not have an army, it is an army.
    During the negotiations early in 1996 over the extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Egypt engaged in a sustained campaign of diplomatic and media pressure to bring Israel in as a signatory of this treaty, in other words, to agree to nuclear disarmament (though Israel has never officially admitted to having nuclear weapons).  "Give me peace," said then Prime Minister Peres in an interview while the diplomatic storms that Egypt caused were raging, "and I will give up the atom."  Asked to explain this remark in the Knesset, Peres stated that by peace he meant "a general peace, with all of the states of the Middle East, including Iran and Iraq."  The newspaper HaAretz, the voice of Israel's business and intellectual establishment, a paper generally extremely supportive of the peace process and the policies of the Labor Party, said in an editorial the next day "it is not the responsibility of the Prime Minister to make plans for the days of the Messiah."  I must admit that it is this editorial that led me to think about the messianic posture of the Israeli Left.  I will contend that this messianic posture was what determined the character of Shimon Peres's unsuccessful election campaign.
    Peres, since the Oslo accords of 1992, never hesitated to articulate his messianic vision.  His New Middle East assumed that, within a fairly short horizon, Israel would have a genuine and reliable peace with each of its neighbors.  In his style in discussing the peace process both as Foreign Minister in the Rabin government and as Prime Minister, Peres fit in very well with what can only be called the religious features of the Israeli peace camp:  the young people with their candles lit, the song for peace, Yitzchak Rabin as martyr for peace, and so on.
    From a biographical point of view I must add that the visionary Messianic Peres of the Peace process represents only a partial view of Peres's character.  This was made clear to me when I saw a recent interview with Peres about the hostage rescue at Entebbe in 1976, which occurred while Peres was Defense Minister in Rabin's first government.  Peres spoke about the burden of weighing the consequences of various alternatives to the rescue mission, about the large share of the responsibility for success or failure that was uniquely his as defense minister.  This language of duty and responsibility, to the present, was, missing, however, in Peres's statements about the peace process, or, indeed, in his entire campaign.
    In an election the incumbent normally runs on his or her record, it is the challenger who runs on promises.  Yet the Labor campaign refused to highlight its record or achievements in concrete terms.  Partly, no doubt, this was because Labor's campaign got started only the aftermath of the wave of bombings in Jerusalem, Ashkelon, and Tel Aviv in March, so the Peres government was vulnerable on its record.  Peres's campaign concentrated on the contrast between the future, conceived messianically as a peaceful future, and the past, the violence and stress of the Palestinian intifadah.  For the present where human affairs are conducted, Labor's campaign remained vague and unfocused.  The Peres and Labor campaigns never spoke about the immediate consequences of Oslo, even of those consequences that would have been to his political credit.
    To pick a central example, the government failed to mention, much less exaggerate, the assistance it was receiving from the Palestinian authority in the struggle against terrorism in the two months before the election.  After the March bombings, Yasir Arafat extended unprecedentedly extensive cooperation in security matters, arresting and holding suspects according to a list given to him by Peres, and in fact preventing any further major attacks.  The Likud claimed that the government's policy had failed in large part because Arafat could not be relied upon.  Labor never deployed the material it had to reply to that charge.
    For the present, the Peres campaign only attempted to persuade the Israeli public that "Bibi is not suitable."  It was as though to make up for its mistake of underestimating its opponent, Labor needed to persuade the public to share its low estimation of him.
    The Netanyahu campaign, by contrast, concentrated only on the present.  "It is not sufficient, Mr. Peres, to embrace children; one has to protect children," Netanyahu said during the only televised debate, three days before the election.  "Netanyahu will bring a secure peace," was the principal slogan, but the accent was on the security, to be ensured by continued Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and strict limits to the sovereignty of the Palestinian Authority.  This was not the permanent security which the Messianic posture sees as the only genuine security, but the all-too-temporary and fragile security that can be secured by armed might.
    The messianic posture of the Zionist movement extended beyond its vision of the Jewish State as dwelling in security behind internationally recognized borders protected by the common will of the Great Powers.  Zionism aimed, too, to solve the theological-political problem of the Jews.  One vision of such a solution was the realization of a halachic state, as envisioned, for example by Rav Yehuda Leib Maimon, the dominant figure of religious Zionism at the founding of the state.  Other visions included A. D. Gordon's, replacing the religion of exile with a socialist or syndicalist religion of labor.  The vision that came closest to realization, a vision that can be attributed without too much distortion to Ben-Gurion, aimed to create an Israeli identity rooted in the Bible (especially in the narratives) instead of a Jewish identity rooted in observance of the Law.  According to all these strands the Jewish state would provide a permanent, institutionalized solution to the problem of Jewish identity.  The Jewish State would conclusively settle the question of the meaning of being Jewish, not so much "Who is a Jew?" for which, in Israel, the old answer still applies, but "What is a Jew?"-- the great question of Jewish history since the expulsion from Spain.
    We can see the Messianism involved in such a quest for a solution to the Jewish problem, once again, by appealing to the authority of Maimonides.  According to Maimonides the genuine rabbinic ordination can be revived should every sage in the land of Israel agree as to a single scholar worthy of ordination.  Universal agreement among Jews itself appears messianic enough, but the Zionists sought to achieve such an agreement even after the "What is a Jew?" question no longer had the range of possible answers restricted to those that would fit within the "four cubits of the Law."
    Many of Peres's supporters saw his defeat as a failure of an attempt to solve not only the question of Israel's security but the larger question of Israeli identity.  For them Peres's defeat, as a writer in HaAretz put it, was a return to the Ghettos, a triumph of diasporic thinking.
    The campaign came into focus as a conflict of visions of Jewish identity only in the very late going.  The Chabad Chassidim deployed their still powerful organization, and Australian diamond money, to campaign for Netanyahu in the days before the election.  The slogan:  "Netanyahu, good for the Jews."
    Labor, surprisingly, was outraged.  "The slogan is racist," ministers charged.  Racist, not false.  To separate Israelis for political purposes into Jews and non-Jews was racist, according to Labor's campaign.  The proper Israeli identity is inclusive of both Jews and Arabs, and the proper Jewish identity is politically subordinate to an Israeli identity.  Some of my colleagues speak of this as a "civic identity" for Israelis that transcends the national or religious identities.  Yet as another of my colleagues, Ephraim Turgovnik, a former Labor politician, put it, Labor lost because it refused to admit that the state of Israel is still a Jewish state, where most of its Jewish citizens do not hesitate to put their Jewishness first.
    From the security posture the state cannot solve the Jewish problem, it can only prevent from being solved in Hitlerite fashion, by the extermination of the Jews residing in the land of Israel.  It was to this fundamental and powerful fear, a fear that few Jewish Israelis, whatever their political position, do not share, that Chabad's slogan invoked.  To dispute Chabad's charge would have forced Labor to speak in terms of an identity many of its leaders wished to subordinate.  In taking such a Messianic posture these leaders no doubt saw themselves as taking the high road, but it was a road so high as to be elevated from the sphere of practical politics.
    There are times when the political is open to that which transcends it.  For a follower of Maimonides, such as I am, the messianic age is a possibility intelligible in human terms.  Yet the messianic age means an end to war for Israel and an end to internal conflict among Jews, that is to say, an end to politics.  Few peoples on this earth are as politically informed or engaged as the Israelis, and Shimon Peres and his Labor Party could not persuade them that the political history of Israel could come to a happy end if only they voted properly.

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