proposes suspending our economic and military aid to Israel until a thorough reform has been undertaken, and appointing a team of monitors to oversee the results. Israel, like the Palestinians, should also be forced to adopt a constitution.
Yours respectfully,
The Advisor.
April 19, 2003
It was an almost unbelievable news story: in order to trim the national budget, the Ministry of Education had decided to dismiss hundreds of teachers. A private company got the job of delivering the bitter news to the dismissed teachers. Two days before Passover-one of the highpoints of the Jewish calendar, both for religious and secular Jews, when families sit together around the table for the joyous Seder ceremonythe messengers of the company spread out to do their job. They knocked on the doors at midnight and delivered the notices.
Even the Israeli public, which does not get excited any more about anything, was shocked for a moment. How could such a thing happen? Couldn't they have waited until after the feast? What brutality!
For me, it was much more than a mistake of some government office. This is a symbolic act, which reflects all that is wrong in today's Israel.
First of all, the cruelty. It wasn't deliberate, of course. The Minister of Education did not tell the private contractor: hand them the notice in as painful a way as possible. The contractors, too, did not sit down and decide: let's do it just before Passover and knock on their doors in the middle of the night, like Stalin's secret police or our undercover soldiers in Nablus.
No, nobody decided. Nobody thought about it. And that is really the most shocking part: the total insensitivity.
Even three or four years ago, this would not have been possible. Somebody would have intervened in time and shouted: "What are you doing? Are you crazy?"
The Jews always defined themselves as "the compassionate sons of the compassionate." They believed that compassion is a Jewish invention and quoted the old texts (such as the Sabbath injunction in the Ten Commandments, ordering Jews to relieve their slaves and draft animals every seventh day). Nietzsche, who abhorred pity, accused Judaism of creating a morality of pity.
The new Hebrew society that was created in this country was