Today'szaman / Kerim Balci

Sixty years later, Middle Eastern politics is one of confrontation with occasional cease-fires and two major peace agreements between Israel, Egypt and Jordan. This year Iyyar 5 is May 10. Today's Zaman interviewed the Israeli Ambassador to Turkey Gabby Levy on the fruits of these 60 years. The Israeli ambassador believes that in order to stay Jewish and democratic, the state of Israel needs a Palestinian state, but he also believes that the Palestinian people have a right to aspire to a state for their own reasons and that the future Palestinian state should not be a product of Jewish aspirations.

Mr. Ambassador, on its 60th anniversary of statehood, can we say that the State of Israel has already become a nation, or is it still evolving?

I can say that we are an old nation, an old people and a young state. Maybe the main characteristic of our nation is not yet fully crystallized, but through our 2,000 years of Jewish Diaspora, the concept of nation was never foreign to Jews. The genuine aspiration to return to Zion started as a national concept during and simultaneously with the rise of nationalism in Europe at the beginning of the 19th century. We know of Jewish rabbis and intellectuals who spoke about the creation of a Jewish national home in the very early 19th century.

But in order to become a nation, the founders of the state had to adapt a kind of social engineering also. Am I wrong?

You are right. Though the concept of nationhood is early, by means of becoming a social and cultural laboratory, we certainly are still in the process of trying to create a very definite nation. This is understandable. Bear in mind that you have a people that came from so many corners of the world, spoke so many languages and followed so many cultures. This is still continuing. In the last 10-15 years we have brought within our country a new element: the Afro-Jews, people from Ethiopia. We need more time to create a final breed of society which will have definite characteristic.

Immigration has enriched the Jewish society, but it was also painful. Many Afro-Jews speak of discrimination and many Jews from Muslim countries were almost reconverted to Israeli Judaism.

I think this is only natural and expected. We have elements in our society that have the feeling of being discriminated against, and they say that Jews who were discriminated against in the past are discriminating against Jews. Wherever there is immigration, you will find that there are difficulties. We have to bear in mind what kind of difficulties these people are going through and the efforts by the Israeli society to absorb them. It is not simple to bring elements from a country which is sometimes referred to as medieval into a modern, vivid and intellectual community. But take, for instance, a different example of immigration into the state of Israel: immigrants from Russia. During the 1990s we brought almost 1 million new immigrants from Russia to Israel. I am not going to say that we didn’t have problems with some of them, but all in all this was a blessing to the State of Israel, to the Israeli society and to the Israeli culture. It was a revolution in a cultural and technological sense. This immigration was the basis of the high-tech revolution in Israel.

The founders of the State of Israel were from Eastern Europe: Ashkenazi, secular and socialist. Sometimes Sephardim and religious Jews claim that these founding elements regard the state as their own property. Israel has its center-periphery conflict also. Am I imposing a Western concept on Israel?

The concept of Aliyot, the immigration waves, was based on two main ideologies. One was undoubtedly pure communism and the second, nationalism. Both were led by people who came from Eastern Europe. As to the contention between those who established the country with the new wave of immigration, I have to admit that the old guard made mistakes. In many instances they made these immigrants, who came mainly from Muslim countries -- including Turkey, feel discriminated against. They were not given a fair chance to develop themselves economically and culturally in this new country. In 1948 the Jewish population of the state was about 600,000 people, and over 90 percent were of European origin. They controlled all the institutions, government, economics and so on. When the new immigrants, who did not have all the necessary education and qualifications, arrived, this created problems. The old guard could have done much better to absorb the newcomers. It took exactly one generation for the new social formations in Israel, the newcomers, to overtake the government democratically.

Is this Ashkenazim-Sephardim contention still there?

It is already subsiding. We have other contentions, of course, but take my personal experience as a microcosm and you will see what is happening on that front. What can you say about a person like me who comes from a Sephardic family, from Turkey, and is married to a girl born in Israel with parents from Poland and Austria (you cannot find a better Ashkenazi than that)? When you ask our daughters, they don’t care. This is the new breed of Israel, this is what our founding fathers thought would happen.

One of David Ben Gurion’s notions was Kibbutz Galiot -- the Melting Pot. He knew in the Palestine of the 1920s that the formation of a Jewish state could not be based on just one source, Europe. The Jewish people are diverse, and all these Jews were eventually going to come. So he created this melting pot, the idea of absorbing, and he created the instruments for it. The two instruments are the educational system, in which you are equal to everyone, and, more importantly, the army. The army became a very effective instrument of assimilation. This is the source of my optimism. Give us a couple of centuries, and you will see that it is going to be a society.

When people speak about Israel they think of kibbutzim as a lifestyle as if communism is still there. How much of that original idea of kibbutz is alive?

Kibbutz communism was a very unique type of communism. When you speak about communism, in global terms, it has some negative connotations, but people have to understand that the communism that was part of the kibbutz was a pure way of communism, almost theoretical, utopian. But it worked in practice. It was a fully democratic communism. Kibbutzim had 200-300 members, and all decisions were made by the community. It was not the community of the state in which you had a higher echelon that made decisions and imposed them and became autocratic and dictatorial. No, it was fully democratic.

There have been changes to the entity we call the kibbutz. You have to keep up with changes and social and economic developments in the country. The Israeli economy developed in such a manner that the kibbutz in its old form became irrelevant. You cannot continue to work in agriculture, you must get into industry -- even high-tech -- and you cannot content yourself with the manpower of the community alone, you have to invite labor. Sometimes, in order to be profitable, you have to send your people to work outside. So this idealism no longer exists in the kibbutzim. But as a way of life, the highest level of environmentalist consciousness is observed in the kibbutzim.

Still, kibbutzim serve as a kind of instrument of introduction to Jewish society. Most youngsters come to the kibbutzim to get an idea about Israel?

You are right. This still goes on and not only for Jewish youngsters. There is a new wave of gentile volunteers who come from different parts of the world, stay and work for two to three months in the kibbutz, picking apples and milking cows. Nowadays in most of the kibbutz you have to stay in guesthouses and work in a factory rather than pick apples. But yes, the concept of a kibbutz retains its magic with the younger generations.

About two years ago I interviewed Amos Oz. He said that Israel was a dream, and now that it has been realized, its magic is gone.

That is absolutely true.

But you still have dreams?

I am a bit romantic. I think it is our duty, as a society, to create new dreams for ourselves. The ultimate dream of every Israeli is to live in peace with their neighbors. It has always been a dream of the Jewish people, regardless of the situation they were in. It is in our prayers.

Theodore Herzl had this dream of the State of Israel as a country that would not need arms, that is a center of peace in the world and one that would help the Arabs and Turks in its region. What went wrong?

I don’t think anything went wrong. Listen, he was dreaming before World War I. He was a romantic. We as Jews of Israel are grateful that we had these kinds of visionaries, but the reality then was different. He could not have perceived our current reality. Remember, this was before Arab nationalism. No one could have thought, not even the Ottomans, about Arab nationalism at that time.

Today Israel is a bit more realistic. We want to be recognized, to be integrated in our region. God forbid we should patronize anyone! We just want to be accepted. And I think, maybe this could sound absurd to many, that this could not have been achieved if Israel was not as strong as it is, militarily, economically, socially and in other aspects. I think that our reaching two major peace treaties with our neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, is only because of this advancement. I will be modest and say that at the end of our second generation we will reach peace with our Palestinian neighbors and others and will be accepted by the entire Arab world.

History’s engine goes toward peace, we know that. You cannot live with wars forever.

We have a saying in Hebrew, “How can you live with the sword forever?” It is true that we have been living with the sword in one hand and a plow in the other in order to develop. But my hopes are based on the premise that peace is part of human nature. Not only we, but our neighbors as well, will understand that this nature will bring more to us than any war can.

This is what I say to my friends, even as a tactic of negotiation with the Palestinians: Don’t ever say “This is our last chance. If this fails, we will resort to violence!” This is a greater help to opportunists who are opposed to a peace process. We are bound to fail many times, but at the end of the day, both the peoples have no other choice but to live side by side. I don’t think that in the 21st century there is room for a possibility that a people will disappear. Palestinians are there, we hae to recognize that fact; we are here and they have to recognize this fact. It is going to take time, but I have no doubts about the end of the day. I only hope to live to see the time when it happens.

Some say Israel is losing the war of demographics.

That is why Israel needs a Palestinian state. This is what we will insist on strongly in our negotiations with the Palestinians: Israel wants to be Jewish and democratic. The major reason why Israel is ready to go on this process is because we don’t want to separate democracy from Judaism. To be democratic, refugees must be allowed to return; however, this means that Israel is not going to remain Jewish. But if we prevent their return, then we will lose our democracy.

It is correct to claim that in order to remain and maintain and fortify our position as a Jewish democratic state, we need a Palestinian state. This is a bit crude. It is unfair to the Palestinians to say this. The Palestinians themselves have their right to national expression, they don’t want to be an outcome of Israeli ambitions. But from the point of view of Israel, that is a correct formula.

You already have a huge Arab population in Israel and you also have your contentions with them.

I think that most of this society is loyal to the State of Israel. Obviously they have sentiments; they have affection for their Palestinian brothers. This is understandable. I find this in the Turkish society, too. You are part of this Muslim brotherhood and you have emotions toward the Palestinians that you could never have for Israel. You write in your papers “Our Palestinian brothers!” and it is understandable that you will never write “Our Israeli Jewish brothers.”

I am critical of the policies of the State of Israel, and not only of one government. We should have been more accommodative of this Arab society. We should have been more forthcoming, given them a higher budget and more opportunities. But it has nothing to do with democracy or human rights. They do enjoy the same rights as us. They deserve wider employment in government ministries, for example. And the government has already started that with the Affirmative Action Law, which says that if you have two equal candidates, in order to increase the numbers of those who are less represented, you have to prefer Ethiopian Jews, women, Arabs and Druze. This is a practice that is gaining more and more room and place in government practice.

Ten years ago I asked Yasser Arafat whether 50 years of Israel taught the Palestinians anything. He said the Palestinians learned how to be a nation, how to be ready to die in order to create a state from Israel. Sixty years should have taught Israel things also.

I would have preferred if he had said that he had learned living is better than dying for one’s state or nation. Every nation creates itself some myths in the process of creating a nation. We had the same thing many years ago. Israel has gone through a tremendous transformation. Instead of glorifying death, we now glorify life.

You are referring to the Masada myth.

That is your example. I can bring you a few others, like the Trumpeldor myth -- all glorify death. We want to live now. This is a long transformation. The state of mind of every Israeli has changed tremendously. Psychologically we are going through a change. We will always remember the fallen, but we also know that their heritage is that we will live in peace with our neighbors. This is how they secured our own lives. We don’t have the right to disappoint them.

Israel’s celebration of Independence Day is a manifestation of this transformation I think. You no longer hold military parades.

Oh yes. People sprayed each other with whipped cream and we had this patishim-hummer. Celebrations evolve. Every year there are new inventions. There are changes of mood. During the Intifada, all these celebrations were indoors because of the danger. But people go out and find new ways to celebrate when there is a bit of freedom. In recent years there was a shira beTzibur tradition -- singing in public. Many went to city squares where there was a singer and thousands of people sing songs, mainly from the times of the independence. There are many manifestations of all this. This change from military parades into civilian ways of celebration is a manifestation of the meaning of Israel.

What is your hope for the 70th anniversary?

I want peace of mind. I want to live in a world in which I will have trivial things to deal with in the morning. I remember days on which headlines of newspapers would be about a kangaroo that had fallen into a pool and was saved by people. I dream of days when we can have similar headlines in the Israeli press. I dream that I will get up one morning in Yehud, my hometown in Israel, fill up my car with gas, drive to northern Israel, cross Lebanon, cross Syria and return to my hometown in Turkey, Bergama. This is a personal way of expressing my aspiration for peace.