My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (51 page)

Sadly, wars are a testament of Israel’s national strength. Israel’s remarkable victory in 1948 exemplified how determined and well-organized the society formed by Zionism in Palestine was in the twenty years prior to the War of Independence. Israel’s astonishing victory in 1967 showed how cohesive and modern the nation-state that Ben Gurion forged was in the twenty years prior to the Six Day War. And Israel’s alarming impotence in 2006 revealed how disoriented and dysfunctional the bizarre political entity that rose from the ashes of Old Israel in the twenty years prior to the Second Lebanon War was. Yes, occupation is killing us morally and politically, but occupation is not only the cause of the malaise but its outcome. In the twenty-first century, Israel’s immediate challenge is not an ideological one. It is not a choice between peace and war. The immediate challenge is the challenge of regaining national potency. An impotent Israel cannot make peace or wage war—or end occupation. The 2006 trauma provided Israelis with an accurate picture of the overall condition of their political body: an enfeebled national leadership, a barely functional government, a public sector in decay, an army consumed with rot, and a startling disconnect between metropolis and periphery.

But the 2006 experience also provides a detailed panoramic picture of the world Israel lives in: Iran on the rise, Hezbollah building up in the north, Hamas building up in the south. Peace has failed. Occupation has failed. Unilateralism has failed. Any stretch of land from which Israel withdrew—in the north and in the south—was taken over by an Iranian-backed terrorist entity able to menace Israel with its rockets. As the threat of a nuclear Iran hovers above, the peril posed by tens of thousands of rockets encircling Israel is imminent. Faced with renewed existential danger, Israel has no relevant national strategy. It is confused and paralyzed.

The combination of a grim new geostrategic reality with the inherent internal weakness of the state itself is overwhelming. True, the Second Lebanon War bought Israel time. For the next few years Hezbollah
would think twice before launching a new attack. It would not want to see Lebanon devastated again as it was when it last provoked Israel. But when this lull ends, what Israel will face might be ten times worse than what it encountered in the traumatic summer of 2006. Next time Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion airport, and the Dimona nuclear reactor might be under fire. Hundreds or thousands of Israeli civilians might be killed as every site and every home in the Jewish state will be within reach of the rockets of those enraged by Israel’s very existence.

In the first Zionist century, Jews proved to be vital and resourceful. They rose to every challenge. Great obstacles that endangered and nearly ended their national endeavor were surmounted. The Arab uprising of 1936–39 was overcome. The war of 1948 was won. By 1967, Dimona secured the existence of the tiny young state. In 1973, the fighting spirit of the Israeli rank and file rescued the nation from the jaws of defeat. So the question posed following the 2006 debacle is whether Israel still has what it takes. Whether in the second Zionist century Jews can rise up to the challenge and defend their national endeavor as they did in its first one hundred years.

The fundamentals are good: we have a strong economy, a vibrant society, extremely talented individuals with impressive common sense and resilience. But the political structures and institutions of the Israeli republic are ailing. Malaise runs deep. The seven Israeli internal revolts have eroded the sovereign nation from below. The elite’s disaffection has eroded the sovereign nation from above. The binding Israeli narrative has fallen apart. As a result, there is no one to speak up for the silent and sane Israeli majority. There is no great idea or even a reasonable political platform to address Israel’s real challenges. In its seventh decade, Israel is much less of a solid nation-state than it was when it was ten years old.

As war rages on in the north, I decide to revisit Tel Aviv’s night scene. By now Allenby 58 is closed, but Jerusalem’s Hauman 17 has turned a huge garage in southern Tel Aviv into the new mecca of dance, drugs, and casual encounters. As the Israeli army struggles desperately to push into the Hezbollah-held territory in southern Lebanon, I spend an evening in the sweaty, crowded club, then continue on to a Russian dance
hall in Bat Yam, and then visit a new venue that has just opened next to the Ayalon highway on the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv. I end the night at a hip underground club in Tel Aviv located in a cellar, its walls painted black. Straight stuff, gay stuff, mixed stuff. A lot of dark stuff. “People really need it hard,” a twenty-five-year-old blond psychology student tells me as she offers me a tiny vial of cocaine, which I politely refuse. “Ecstasy was love-sex, coke is alienation-sex,” she continues. “After peace fell apart and suicide bombers struck, the naïve scene of the 1990s was replaced by hollow-eyed parties like the one you see all around us tonight. It’s hard-core, in your face, but there’s no love, no affection. No hope whatsoever.”

I look around me. The kids are good-looking all right, as sexy as ever. Lustful and provocative. But there is war up north tonight. Young soldiers are struggling in the bush at this very moment, stifling the fear in their hearts, smelling death close by. And the distance between what the soldiers are enduring in Lebanon and what the clubbers of Tel Aviv are doing in the black-walled cellar is incomprehensible. They are nearly the same age, same background, same education. But they are worlds apart. Planets apart. They are playing out Israel’s schizophrenia.

All of Israel’s wars had this sort of tension. In 1948, while citizens were being shot on the road to Jerusalem, others were flirting in Tel Aviv cafés. In 1969, while soldiers were taking fire in Suez Canal outposts, other Israelis were having a ball in Tel Aviv’s discotheques. This duality was part of Israel’s health and strength. It was as if there was a covenant between us: today I will stand on guard while you party; tomorrow I’ll party while you stand on guard. This way we don’t turn our nation into a barracks where life is not really worth living. This way we continue to live while we defend our right to life.

But now it is different; now there is a complete disconnect. This is what is so eerie about the war of 2006. Soldiers are fighting, and northern civilians are refugees in their own country, but many others just go on not really caring. Many of the rich are vacationing on their yachts, while the upper middle class is finding refuge in Eilat. There are summer cruises and summer parties and summer drugs. It is as if the nation were not at war, as if it were not being challenged. And that is the real threat—that is what is so scary. There is no Israeli togetherness. The
state cannot defend its citizens, and its citizens don’t go out of their way to stand by their state. There is no glue holding everything together.

This time we survived. It was only a preview of what might happen in coming years. But what will happen when it’s not just a small Shiite militia that’s attacking us? What will happen to these beautiful dancers and to this sexy Tel Aviv when some of our really powerful rivals decide to strike? Returning from a quick encounter, the twenty-five-year-old blonde rejoins me at the bar. Looking around with glazed eyes and a bewildered smile, she says to no one in particular, “It’s a bubble. It’s an amazing bubble. It won’t last.”

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photo credit 15.1
)

T
HE
S
TRAUSS STORY IS A HOPEFUL ONE
. I
T IS NOT ONLY A STORY OF A SUCCESSFUL
family and how it made its money, but a story of Israel’s industrious capitalism. It is not only the story of one family, but the story of what has flourished in Israel—and how it flourished.

Richard and Hilda Strauss married in Ulm, Germany, shortly after Adolf Hitler rose to power. On May 1, 1934, Michael-Peter was born. A year later, as Hilda was holding her firstborn in her arms, she heard Goebbels speak over the wireless. When the Nazi propaganda minister vilified the Jews, she felt a sharp pain in her body: she knew that disaster was imminent. In April 1936, the Strauss family loaded their belongings into their car and left for Switzerland. In her diary Hilda wrote, “We are emigrating. Where to? To the land of our ancestors, to our homeland, to the Land of Israel. Why? Because we are no longer wanted in the land we were born in, the land we loved. We want to stay proud, as we should be, so our children can rejoice that their parents are Jews not only in their religious persuasion but in their soul. That’s why we are leaving for a new homeland.”

On June 18, 1936, the Strausses arrived at the port of Haifa. Their disembarkation is documented in a crisp black-and-white photograph: Richard in wide, white linen shorts, a white shirt, and a white cap; Hilda
in a long, checkered summer dress, holding a rambunctious Michael-Peter, who is wearing shorts and no shirt. At first the family lived in the moshav village of Ramot Hashavim, then they moved to the southern colony of Be’er Tuvia, and then to the northern colony of Nahariya. The climate was hot, conditions were harsh, and the 1936–39 war with the Arabs was brutal. Richard, who held a Ph.D. in economics, felt lost in his chosen land. He found it difficult to relinquish his academic dreams and adjust to his new life as a taxi driver in a remote Mediterranean province. “Disappointment seeps in slowly, like the venom of a snake,” Hilda wrote in her diary. “Disappointment is 77 times greater in a new land in which we do not yet have a home. The days are very long and full of suffering. Only the boy’s cheerful laughter keeps the soul alive.”

In April 1937, the Strauss family finally received the plot of land it had bought months earlier: a nine-dunam rectangle on the eastern edge of Nahariya. Along with the land came a forty-square-meter house, a cowshed, rudimentary agricultural tools, an irrigation system, and a track line on the boundary of the property complete with open carts for the transport of produce. The house was small, the question marks huge. Hilda wrote in her journal, “What does the future hold? What will become of us? Our fate is in the hands of strangers, and we can only fulfill our duty and trust God.”

A few weeks later a first ray of optimism penetrated the tiny Nahariya home. Hilda wrote in her diary, “It is eight days now that there are cows in the cowshed. There is milk at home. Fresh white milk. We must work hard to acquire the expertise required to run a dairy farm.”

The Strausses were a prime example of the spirit of free enterprise that characterized the new German-speaking colony. They learned fast. Every morning Richard milked the cows, filled the large copper pots, loaded them onto his bicycle, and rode from door to door selling Strauss milk. But Nahariya had many cowsheds, and the supply of milk exceeded demand. Hilda realized that the future lay in cheese making. She studied the art of cheese making and turned her domestic kitchen into a small dairy. From professional European journals she learned how to make malodorous Limburger and milder Romadur, and she experimented with soft cheeses seasoned with pepper and paprika. She packed the 100- and 500-gram cheese parcels in wax paper stamped with a proud blue-and-white ostrich (
strauss
, in German). By 1938, she
won the British high commissioner’s prize for dairy products. By early 1939 she persuaded Richard to do away with the cowshed, sell the cows, and focus on the production of fine cheese and other dairy products. In the summer of 1939, when the thousand years of German Jewry came to a close, Hilda and Richard inaugurated their first dairy products facility. While European Jewry was disappearing into the great dark of the Holocaust, Hilda and Richard founded Strauss-Nahariya.

World War II propelled Nahariya forward, turning a struggling agricultural colony into a booming leisure town. Tens of thousands of British soldiers and Palestine Jews—now enjoying the wartime prosperity—were attracted to the European charm of the German-Jewish Nahariya. The beach was packed; the pension hotels were full; the cafés were bustling, serving strawberries and cream, fine bread and rolls, and imported meats. Chamber music concerts, jazz jam sessions, tango soirees, and Charleston competitions were held. Along the beach, the colorful huts of the Galei-Galil Company stood in row after row. Sailboats and rowboats headed into the Mediterranean powered by the strong arms of Nahariya beach boys. Slim girls came from Tel Aviv for their holidays, flirting by the beach huts at noon and in the swinging bars at night. While Europe was ablaze, the small European village founded by Europe’s survivors on this Mediterranean shore of refuge was teeming with life. Nahariya was now one of Zionism’s most famous delights.

World War II also propelled Zionist capitalism forward, turning an agricultural economy into an industrial one. The British need for an advanced logistical and technological base in the isolated Middle East made Jewish Palestine of the early 1940s a hub of private enterprise and innovation. The Strauss family was part of this process, which laid the foundation for Israel’s industry and creative capitalism.

But as war broke out, tragedy struck: shortly after immigrating to Palestine, Richard’s beautiful sister took her own life. Richard, too, was often depressed. He flew into rages and often sought comfort and pleasure in the arms of Nahariya’s young women. Yet Hilda remained totally focused. She recognized the opportunity of the wartime boom and seized it. She was tough when negotiating with milk suppliers from the neighboring kibbutzim and aggressive in marketing her products to the flourishing cafés and overbooked pension hotels. But above all, she was
meticulous about the work ethic and the hygiene and production standards of her fledgling dairy. Throughout the 1940s, Hilda Strauss established the reputation of her company as a superior German-Jewish dairy that produced, in Nahariya, outstanding European cheese. After the War of Independence, Hilda replaced the Strauss ostrich with a new and more fitting trademark: a water tower.