Echoes of Joshua’s Spies, by Israel Harel (Haaretz)
“The government did not assert, as it should have, the national rights of the Jewish people over its liberated homeland. It did not even treat them in this way, as it should have from a historical perspective. ‘Bargaining chips,’ it called them.”
“By relying on this status, relating to areas of the homeland as bargaining chips, for 40 years most of our troubles and evils have come to us: the Yom Kippur War, the intifada, the terror war of September 2000, the deep rift among the people and the distancing of most of the world from identifying with Israel.”
Full Text;
This Shabbat we will read the portion “Shlach” in the book of Numbers, and this week is the anniversary of the Six-Day War. As happened then, some people are spreading evil reports that the land to which we have come is a land that “eats up its inhabitants.” More than 3,000 years after the story of Joshua and the spies, portions of the people influenced by a media that has for years fostered feelings of guilt, let out that old lamentation: “And all the congregation lifted up their voice and cried…why did the Lord bring us into this land, to fall by the sword?…Were it not better for us to return to Egypt?”
Euphoria reigned after the Six-Day War, say the “forgive-us-for-winning” people. That is not true. There was a feeling of relief; the human joy of victory, pure and simple. And yes, a feeling of elation because, in addition to having been saved from annihilation, we had also arrived – Moshe Dayan put those feelings best – at the places the people had longed for thousands of years. And there was also a rational conclusion: There would not be another opportunity to slice across our narrow hips, and that our security was assured for a long time to come.
Those were the justifiable, natural and rational reactions of millions of people in the three weeks before the war. People lived in existential anxiety and feared the worst, 22 years after the Holocaust.
The government did not assert, as it should have, the national rights of the Jewish people over its liberated homeland. It did not even treat them in this way, as it should have from a historical perspective. “Bargaining chips,” it called them. By relying on this status, relating to areas of the homeland as bargaining chips, for 40 years most of our troubles and evils have come to us: the Yom Kippur War, the intifada, the terror war of September 2000, the deep rift among the people and the distancing of most of the world from identifying with Israel.
“It is not the price of the occupation – a people is not an occupier in its homeland – that we are paying, and not the price of determining the facts on the ground. If we had determined them to a great and irreversible extent, the world would have come to terms with them. Lacking a leader who can call out that ‘we should go up at once…for we are well able to overcome,’ we are being carried on a wave of lack of self-confidence, ‘and we will be in our own sight as grasshoppers,’ just as in the days of the Joshua’s spies.”
There is no precedent in the history of Israel of an army handing its rulers such a great military victory with the goal of deriving maximum political achievements. Neither is there a precedent of a government that so missed a historic opportunity, as the Levi Eshkol government did in 1967, to advance national, security and political interests. At historic junctures, when there is no understanding of the greatness of the achievement and the greatness of the opportunity, the greatest of victories is also missed.
America at that time, haunted by guilt feelings of a government and public opinion that did not – as they should have – come to Israel’s aid when everyone thought the Jewish state might be destroyed, expected Israel to take significant steps in the matter of territory. In Europe, especially in treacherous France, no one dared to preach to Israel what to do. The Arab world, battered and defeated, could not prevent anything. But the strong man in the cabinet, Moshe Dayan, waited for a phone call from King Hussein of Jordan instead of pushing for a realization of the vision he touted.
The decision-makers did not have a super-ideology; and lacking this, they could not formulate a strategy. For example, the annexation of the liberated territories, which would have upgraded our position in the world and determined irreversible political, psychological and physical facts on the ground.
It is not the price of the occupation – a people is not an occupier in its homeland – that we are paying, and not the price of determining the facts on the ground. If we had determined them to a great and irreversible extent, the world would have come to terms with them. Lacking a leader who can call out that “we should go up at once…for we are well able to overcome,” we are being carried on a wave of lack of self-confidence, “and we will be in our own sight as grasshoppers,” just as in the days of the Joshua’s spies.
Commentary;
There is a concept, as understood by this author from a Shabbos Drasha for Parsha Shelach said over by Rabbi Chaim Zev Malinowitz, that a people becomes a nation, a unity with mutual responsibility for each other ONLY when they are in their land, i.e. the B’nai Yisrael in Eretz Yisrael.
Rav Malinowitz addressed the placement in our Parsha of the Nesachim(libations) of Korbanos (sacrifices) immediately after the Chet HaMiraglim (the story of the spies). He expressed that the Nesachim which were to accompany a Korban were, after the the Egel Zahav (Golden Calf), to be brought only accompanying community korbanos, but after the Chet HaMiraglim they were to accompany individuals’ korbanos as well. These Nesachim were said to symbolize both destructions of the Beit HaMikdash — the Egel Zahav symbolizing the first destruction; that B’nai Yisrael was guilty of avodah zora, but were unified, did Teshuva and went on — the period of the dispersion was finite at 70 years; whereas after the Chet HaMiraglim for which the generation was punished by dying off in BaMidbar with the subsequent generation going into Eretz Yisrael — this symbolizes the destruction of the second Beit HaMikdash and the second dispersion from which we still await the Geula Shlaima — the Moshiach, the Redemption.
From here, this author derives an understanding that we are an incomplete people or nation. We are not totally or even a majority in The Land and that those of us who are in The Land, thanks to successive Israeli governments, are not in the the entire land, not even in the entire Post-6 Day War Land.
Just as in the Bamidbar, when the people demanded that spies be sent to survey the land for the best point of entry, etc., and the Spies, the Princes of the Tribes — the biggest, most renowned scholars prejudiced their reports on The Land based on their desires to maintain their power, their influence over the people; so too it would seem that in watching contemporary history, modern-day secular political “leaders”, and their “religious” political counterparts consciously fear the loss of power, the loss of influence to result from the unity of the entire B’nai Yisrael living and possessing the entirety of Eretz Yisrael. These corrupt, self-interested, self-aggrandized
“leaders” fear the day when the unity of entire B’nai Yisrael possesses the entirety of Eretz Yisrael and thus every man is charged with the mutual responsibility for each other — no more cheating your fellow, no more deception, no more dishonesty, no more graft, bribes and corruption, no more violations of omission or comission — on any level. This would seem to this author to be the fundamental truth which lay beneath the surface of all of the euphemisms; territories, occupied territories, Oslo, “shtachim”, Saudi or Arab League “peace” plans, “American or EU pressure,” “roadmaps”,
“disengagement”, “consolidation” and multitudes of other rationales too numerous to list here. Israel’s political leaders; they know the score — just as it seems that the Miraglim did.
Olmert, as with Sharon’s “disengagement” – expulsion, disgracefully seems intent on offering up the Golan to Syria. Shas and their “leader” seem intent on making Shimon Peres president despite evident damage that he will cause the nation. They are emblematic of a political system which seems more than willing to offer up the nation which they govern as korbanos in order maintain their power, riches and influence AT ALL COST! MB
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