The Golem Turns on his Creator
In Jewish legend, the Golem was a man-made creature
endowed with enormous strength. Rabbi Judah Loew
of Prague, also know as the Maharal, created him of
clay and gave him life by putting a piece of paper with
the secret name of God under his tongue.
The Golem helped the Jews defend themselves against
anti-Semitic rioters, but one day he turned against his
creator. He sowed ruin and destruction, until, at the
last moment, the rabbi succeeded in extracting the
piece of paper from his mouth. The Golem turned back
into a heap of clay.
Ariel Sharon is not a rabbi and the Kabbalah is a closed
book to him. But he has created a Golem: the
settlement movement in the occupied territories.
He was sure that the Golem would serve him. After all,
the settlers owe him everything. It was he who nursed
them for decades, diverted funding to them on a
massive scale, put at their service all the political
positions he occupied one after the other: the ministries
of agriculture, defense, foreign affairs, housing, industry
and trade, infrastructure, and, finally, the Prime
Minister's office.
(I remember about 25 years ago, visiting Sharon at
home in the preparation of a biographical essay I was
writing about him. My wife and I were sitting in the
kitchen with Lilly Sharon, who served us her delicacies,
when I noticed that the chiefs of the settlers were sitting
in the adjoining room. Sharon himself went back and
forth between us, sharing his time with us equally.
Even at that early stage the settlers clearly treated him
as their patron.)
During all these years, ever since he served as the
Commanding General of the Southern Sector in the
early 70s, he preached to everybody he met, Israelis
and foreigners alike, the gospel of the settlements,
spreading maps in front of them (he always has maps)
and demanding that they act. According to him, it was
vitally important to set up settlements in order to turn all
of Eretz Israel - from the Mediterranean Sea to the
Jordan River, at least - into a Jewish State, to tear the
Palestinian territories into ribbons and prevent the
creation of a Palestinian state, which would be an
obstacle to the achievements of the full aims of
Zionism.
Like a bulldozer without brakes, Sharon leveled all
opposition. He saw to it that tens of billions of dollars
were turned over to the settlements (the exact amount
cannot be ascertained, being hidden in various corners
of the budget), bent the laws to their benefit and
enlisted the officers of the army in their service. In this
way, a closely woven network of settlements and
special roads came into being, with perhaps 250,000
settlers (who is counting?)
When he coined the slogan "unilateral disengagement",
it never occurred to him that the settlers might oppose
him. Don't they owe him? Are they not his pampered
children? Aren't they eternally in his debt?
Sharon offered them a deal that seemed to him
eminently reasonable (as it had once looked to Yossi
Beilin, who invented it, and then to Ehud Barak,
who tried to implement it): Give up the isolated
settlements, with a few tens of thousands of settlers,
in order to secure the future of the big settlement
blocks, with 80% of the settlers, which will be
incorporated into Israel. Sacrifice some fingers in order
to save the whole body. This way not only do we save
the settlement enterprise, but we also gain the better
part of the West Bank.
But the Golem, once the piece of paper is under his
tongue, demonstrates a logic of his own. He does not
intend to give up the dozens of small settlements,
especially as that is were the hard core of Messianic
fanatics lives. He also understood that the evacuation
of the first settlement would create a precedent that
would endanger all the others. The real settlers may
have nothing but contempt for the Gush Katif "settlers",
who are first and foremost calculating businessmen,
but they understand the crucial importance of the battle
for Gush Katif.
Like the Maharal, Sharon underrated his Golem.
He treated him as a servant. How could he respect
a creature that he had created with his own hands?
Now he is learning that it is much easier to create a
Golem than to reverse the process.
In the surfeit of interviews that Sharon gave last
weekend, he declared that the settlers are only a small
minority of the people. And indeed, even according to
the settlers themselves, they constitute less than 4% of
the citizens of Israel. But the numbers do not reflect
their actual power. In a democratic society, a small,
fanatical and highly motivated minority can influence
matters more than a big but apathetic and flabby
majority.
Sharon speculated on the unpopularity of the settlers
in Israel. They are violent and unruly; they speak,
dress and behave differently, even their body-language
is different. The ordinary Israeli sees them as a bizarre
sect. Also, at long last it has dawned on the Israelis
that the settlements are devouring the billions that are
needed for Israel's economic and social recovery.
But in the course of the decades, the settlers have set
up an extensive apparatus of control and propaganda.
Patiently, they have infiltrated the army, where they
now occupy the key positions once held by Kibbutzniks.
Their independent media are expanding, while the Left
has in the course of the years given up literally all their
independent media. The settlers are in possession of
huge funds, not only the money that flows to them
through hundreds of channels from the state coffers,
and not only the lavish donations from American Jewish
multi-millionaires, but also from the plentiful resources
of the American Christian evangelists.
One may well ask: what foolishness possessed Sharon,
when he proposed that the Likud members, of all
people, should decide on his plan? Did he not realize
that this is the only arena where the settlers can
command superior forces?
Why?
As usual with victory-drunk generals: out of sheer
arrogance and contempt for the opponent. At the
pinnacle of political power, he disparaged the settlers.
He did not dream of the mass home visits.
He underrated their emotional appeal and their well-
oiled logistic machine, that was created with the money
of the state.
Most of the settlers constitute a disciplined body.
Like any messianic sect, they unquestioningly obey
their commanders, the "Yesha rabbis" (Yesha is the
Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and Gaza.)
This is a totalitarian structure, in the true sense of the
term: total faith, total organization, total discipline.
"My head supports the Sharon plan, but my heart
supports the settlers," a Likud member confessed.
That is quite natural: when a settler pair with attached
baby (there is always a baby attached!) knocks at the
door and asks: "Do you want to evict us from our
home?" - how can he resist? After all, from the day he
was born he has heard that the national aim is to
possess the whole of Eretz Israel, that the settlers are
the salt of the earth, that one can ignore the rest of the
world - and suddenly this man, Sharon, comes and
says the opposite?
Yet it must be remembered that less than 2% of the
Israeli electorate voted against the Sharon plan in this
party referendum. (In the last elections, the Likud
received less than 30% of the votes. Less then a
quarter of these are Likud members, who were entitled
to take part in the referendum. Of these, less than half
did actually vote, and of these, less than 60% voted
against the plan. These, together with the settlers who
are not Likud members, compose the Golem.)
One good thing has come from this referendum:
suddenly the public has woken up and seen the Golem
that has come to life in their midst. From the first
moment, the writing was on the wall: the settler
movement is sucking the marrow from the state,
it is an obstacle to peace, it is a danger to Israeli
democracy and to the future of the state itself.
Now the general public, too, sees the danger
represented by this rampaging Golem.
It is not too late to remove the piece of paper from
beneath the Golem's tongue.
Not yet!
Uri Avnery
4 May 2004 |
