What are we doing here?
By Berel Wein

(March 17) 'My country, right or wrong!' has been
translated in modern Hebrew to read: 'My country,
always wrong!' 

Richard Rorty, one of America's leading leftist
intellectuals, said the following in a lecture he delivered in
1997 at Harvard University: "National pride is to
countries what self-respect is to individuals: A necessary
condition for self-improvement. 

"Too much national pride can produce bellicosity and
imperialism, just as excessive self-respect can produce
arrogance," he continued. "But just as too little
self-respect makes it difficult for a person to display
moral courage, so insufficient national pride makes
energetic and effective debate about national policy
unlikely. 

"Those who hope to persuade a nation to exert itself need
to remind their country of what it can take pride in." 

One of the casualties of the current assault of hedonism
and revisionist historical writing has been the concept of
patriotism and national pride. 

This phenomenon swept the West in the 1970s and
1980s. But Reagan and Thatcher and others restored the
balance toward the end of the 1980s, so that the pride of
nationhood of the Western democracies was pretty much
restored by the end of the 20th century. 

Not so here in Israel, where we are still in the throes of a
bad case of lack of self-pride and self-confidence. "My
country, right or wrong!" has been translated in modern
Hebrew to read "My country, always wrong!" 

Reading the slanted news and editorials in the Hebrew
press makes one wonder what in the world we Jews are
doing here. We are bullies and hagglers, while the Arabs
are just, upright, and entitled to our sympathy,
understanding, and capitulation. 

Assad is a "brave leader." The Palestinians are entitled to
steal whatever they can from us because otherwise they
won't have the wherewithal to structure their state
economy. Blatantly anti-Zionist Palestinian poets should
be introduced into our school curriculum so that our
children will lose any patriotic feeling early in their lives. 

The Supreme Court has again broken new ground in
saying that the Jewish Agency can no longer set aside
land for only Jews. One of the supreme destroyers of
Jewish unity and self-respect is awarded the Israel Prize.
And those Jews who object to these goings-on are
demonized as fanatics, opponents of peace, and - the
worst possible insult - "settlers." 

HOW DID this happen? Over centuries of suffering
persecution and bigotry, Jews remained a proud people.
Our bodies could be and were destroyed, but our spirit
and knowledge of our self-worth never flagged. We
believed in ourselves, our faith, our future, and our
uniqueness. 

It was this feeling of pride that fueled the engine of
Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel. But the
sources of Jewish pride have been systematically
destroyed over the past few decades. 

Judaism, its rituals, the study of Torah, the respect for
religious scholars, the beauty and leisure of Shabbat, the
rhythm of the religious calendar, the existence of common
heroes and folklore, all created Jewish pride and national
self-worth. 

The angry, unjustified, and destructive rejection of all
Jewish tradition by the secularists of the 19th and 20th
centuries destroyed this source of self-pride. 

The denial of the divinity of the Bible negated the
uniqueness of the Jewish people. The "modern"
secularists adopted the slogan that the assimilated Jews in
Babylonia voiced to the prophet Yehezkel, 25 centuries
ago: "The House of Israel is just like all the other nations
of the world!" 

The persistence of the secular public and its leaders in
attempting to destroy the influence of religion in Jewish life
is to me an amazing example of self-destructiveness. 

Zionism and love for the Land of Israel was another
source of Jewish pride and hope. Hebron, Nablus and
Gaza were all places Jews dreamed about in the night of
exile. Building the Jewish people by building the Land of
Israel became an enormous source of pride for Jews the
world over. But in our post-Zionist period, all these
reasons for pride are being converted into sources of
shame. 

The denial of the Jewish right to the Land of Israel, based
on the Bible that a large part of the world believes in and,
tragically, a large part of the Jewish people denies, is a
dagger in our own heart. If we are not legitimately and
morally entitled to be here, then how can we retain any
national pride in this enterprise called the State of Israel? 

The IDF was once a source of national pride. No longer.
It has also been delegitimized. Let us leave the haredim
out of the picture - 30% of the non-haredi population
does not serve in the army. 

The army is blessed with courage, ingenuity and talent.
But we hear only about its failings, its sexual harassments,
its jealous generals positioning themselves for future
political office. Our pride in it has been eroded. We admit
its defeat in Lebanon and pay scant attention to its
warnings about unilateral withdrawal and the worrisome
possibilities of our future. 

So, having torn down all of the props of national pride, it
should not be surprising that we are psychologically and
morally weakened. But the Jewish people have always
been able to right themselves, regain their sense of
balance, and restore their pride. 

We should do so now - sooner than later.