Quotes of the Day

An interesting debate is taking place these days on the pages of Haaretz newspaper's weekend magazine. It began a month ago, when Gadi Taub, a young history scholar and writer published a sharp attack on the growing Israeli zeal for New Age ideas. He sees a connection between this trend and the relative equanimity that has greeted Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new economic plan — a scheme that will end the last vestiges of the Israeli welfare program.

In his essay, Taub offers two telling examples of the mounting New Age enthusiasm and argues that they serve, unwittingly, Netanyahu's ambition of turning Israel into a pure capitalistic state. The first example is a spiritual self-search programme called, "The Peace Starts within Me," championed by the Israeli-American millionaire Shari Arison. Arison posits that by connecting to our spirituality we Israelis will finally gain peace. Her workshops are conducted — without any sense of irony — in Ariel, a settlement in the heart of the West Bank.

But that's not Taub's beef: he criticizes the programme for putting all the responsibility for one's own welfare on the individual. This, Taub says, indirectly endorses the harshest, each-to-his-own school of capitalism. Taub's other example is Badolina, a novel by the gifted journalist Gabi Nitzan. It is an easy-reading, New-Agey book that advocates the individual's right to happiness. It's based on the idea that if each of us concentrates in seeking our own happiness and ignore politics, the complications caused by politics will cease to exist. The individualism promoted by Nitzan and Arison, Taub says, is the recipe for a grim society, where people have no sense of solidarity or social responsibility. That's the kind of society, he mournfully concludes, Israel is becoming.

Taub quotes from Nitzans' book: "The society you grew up in ... nurtures dependent, helpless creatures. That's how a world of victims is being created." Those were, Taub reminds us, the kinds of words used by Ronald Reagan's campaign against unemployment allowance and the welfare state. Netanyahu's plan, which cuts the welfare budget (but lightens the tax burden of the rich) is based an the same kind of logic. This plan, approved by the Israeli parliament last month, cut the unemployment allowance so people will be "encouraged to work" — this, in a market that suffers an unemployment rate of almost 11%.

Taub's essay set off a wave of articulate, but highly emotional responses, and the debate is still raging — in the newspaper's pages and in the salons of many Israeli households. Nitzan wrote an essay pleading that Taub's theories are too heavy for Badolina's "slender shoulders," and that his book is, in fact, the "far pole" of Netanyahu's plan. Taub worries about galloping individualism, but a campaign launched last week, points to a contradicting trend, not the less worrying. A non-profit association called Good Will Ambassadors is urging Israeli tourists to behave better when traveling abroad. Israeli tourists are infamous for being rude, stingy, loud, and too often, vandals.

The Ambassadors argue that Israeli tourists leave a negative image of their country wherever they go. "When you're abroad," the campaign ad says, "you are the state" (of Israel). This is a brilliant marketing idea, but the spirit it reflects is quite irritating. Israelis, it suggests, should feel a total identification with the state.

This attitude is especially worrying in the current atmosphere, where people often confuse the state and the government. Israel is becoming a society of two options: You're either an individual, struggling for your own survival, or you're a small part of a monolithic state. This is especially sad for a society founded on the Jewish idea of mutual surety and a caring community.

• MICHAL LEVERTOV
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