52 pages • 1 hour read
My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel
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Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “J’Accuse, 1999”
Aryeh Machluf Deri was an affluent Moroccan Jew who migrated to Israel as a boy after the Six-Day War made Moroccan life intolerable even for wealthy Jews. In Israel, the Deris lived in a housing estate in a bad area. Although the Deris were secular Jews, Aryeh’s mother sent him to a series of ultra-Orthodox boarding schools. Because Deri was prodigiously brilliant, he was welcomed at a variety of schools across Israel and culminated his education at Hebron, the pinnacle school of the Israeli Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox world. Together with rabbis David Yosef and Elazar Shach, he formed the Sephardic religious political party Shas in 1984.
At 25, Deri led the party to its first electoral victory. At 26 he was advisor to the minister of the interior. At 27 he was the director general of the Ministry of the Interior, and at 29 he was Minister of the Interior. Deri advanced the causes of ultra-Orthodox Jews, Oriental Jews, peaceniks on the Left, and settlers on the Right. He was the first ultra-Orthodox Oriental Jew to obtain political power in Israel. In 1990 he was embroiled in a corruption scandal that sapped much of his public legitimacy, but he maintained his political posts. He constructed “a parallel Israeli universe: a religious Oriental world funded by the government it challenged and undermined” (276), and he led a revolt against the secular Ashkenazi Zionist state of Israel.
In 1996 Shas won 10 seats in the Knesset. In 1997 Deri was indicted in court on suspicion of persuading Prime Minister Netanyahu to appoint an attorney general to help Deri evade corruption charges. In 1999 the Jerusalem District Court found Deri guilty of accepting bribes and sentenced him to four years in prison. Following sentencing, Deri broadcasted a powerful speech across Israel, establishing himself as the symbol of Israel’s “Oriental narrative: of rejection, humiliation, and persecution; of the unwillingness of the secular Ashkenazi establishment to honor and respect traditional Oriental Jews; of the exclusion of the Jewish-Israeli other” (278). Deri became a hero. Sixty days after his sentencing, Shas had gained 17 seats in the Knesset.
Deri explains the ultra-Orthodox Oriental religious revolt in a conversation with the author. Their culture has three pillars: community, synagogue, and the father. Israel’s immigration policy of dispersion stripped Oriental Jews of their community, and its secular society deprived them of their synagogue. Israel’s lack of opportunity prevented fathers from providing for their families and deprived them of their authority. This crisis manifested itself in the ultra-Orthodox Oriental religious revolt. The Israeli state-building project required assimilation, but assimilation destroyed the Oriental Jewish community.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Sex, Drugs, and the Israeli Condition, 2000”
Nuclear capability, military prowess, peace, global connection, and a strong economy permit Israelis to relax and enjoy life. Israelis are tuned into the world and want to be a part of it. Tel Aviv’s Club Allenby 58 is the epicenter of Israel’s young, vibrant, vivacious culture, which is accepting and progressive. Chupi, an Israeli DJ, explains, “The DJ liberates them for a few hours from the conflict and the wars and the stress and all the shit of this country” (300). Tel Aviv’s club scene now rivals that of London, Amsterdam, and Paris. In the new millennium, a liberating revolution has taken place in Israel. It is not a political or military revolution, not even one of ideas. It is a revolution in attitude, in outlook, in approach to life. This revolution is not trying to change the world. It offers an alternative: It replaces sacrifice with pleasure, war with love, hate with acceptance. Israel’s LGBTQ community is at the movement’s forefront. At Club Allenby 58, dancers lose their inhibitions and are transformed.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Up the Galilee, 2003”
Israel is over 70 years old. Zionists have been defining the area for over a century. It is a strong and self-sufficient first-world state and a regional military superpower. Still, Jews are a Middle Eastern minority. Israel’s population is less than 10 million, and it is bordered by 350 million Arabs, surrounded further by 1.5 billion Muslims. In time demography will change, and with it the balance of power. The Palestinian Arab perspective is that Jews have no legal, historical, or religious claim to the land—that Zionists unjustly claimed 78% of Palestinian land and exiled the Arabs living there. Israel’s existence as a Jewish state will be threatened; it is inevitable.
Most Arab Palestinians no longer believe in a two-state solution to the conflict. They frame the peace process of the 1990s as one that subjugated Palestinians and preserved occupation. Israelis have moved on from the catastrophe of 1948, but for Arab Palestinians it continues. Mohammed Dahla states, “the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 was a holocaust of man and land. The destruction of our people […] was also the destruction of our homeland” (319). If the conflict escalates from an Israeli-Palestinian one to a Jewish-Islamic one, it will be dire. This is the objective of Zionist Protestants in the United States, who believe the Jewish people must return to Israel and partake in a great war to trigger Armageddon.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Reality Shock, 2006”
In just three decades, Israel has weathered seven revolts. While they are justified individually, the combined effect of these revolts is to disintegrate the Israeli republic. Shavit elaborates:
[…] they turned the nation into a stimulating, exciting, diversified, colorful, energetic, pathetic, and amusing political circus. Rather than a mature and solid state body that could safely navigate the dangerous waters of the Middle East, it became an extravagant bazaar (328).
Israeli society is unequal, has no solidarity, and no longer has unified belief in its Zionist mission. Shavit argues that Israel’s immediate challenge is not ideological or an external military threat, but rather to regain its potency as a nation. Iran is an increasingly powerful threat to Israel, and the militant anti-Israeli groups Hezbollah and Hamas have assumed power just outside Israel, but Israel’s biggest threat is its own confused lack of national strategy.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Occupy Rothschild, 2011”
Zionist ambition, Israeli intelligence and creativity, and strong relationships with Western nations have made Israel an economic powerhouse. Michael Strauss, an owner of Strauss-Elite, Israel’s largest food and beverage company, and member of the founding family of Strauss Dairy attributes Israel’s economic success to the Israeli people, whom he describes as creative, quick, and bold. Kobi Richter—decorated Israeli Air Force pilot, scientist, and founder of the high-tech company Orbot and the medical device manufacturer Medinol—explains that Israel’s economic success is the product of “the infrastructure of the defense industry, Israeli innovation and improvisation, Russian skill, and the integration of different fields of knowledge in small daring groups” (352). Those elements have made Israel a high-tech “start-up nation” with a nimble economy.
Israeli economists note the downsides of Israel’s economy. Stanley Fischer—former deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, vice chairman of Citigroup, governor of the Bank of Israel, and former vice chairman of the United States Federal Reserve Board of Governors—claims Israel’s economy has four problems: (1) the deteriorating education system; (2) the high (49%) unemployment rate among ultra-Orthodox men; (3) high unemployment rate among Arab women; and (4) lack of competition in the marketplace. Dan Ben David, an Israeli economics professor, explains to Shavit that Israel’s economic miracle happened between 1955 and 1972, when Israel’s GDP grew annually at a rate more than double that of Western nations while maintaining its egalitarian character. He says in 1973 Israel’s economy began declining. As the state doubled its defense budget, growth slowed, and inflation increased. Welfare spending rose five-fold between 1972 and 2002. David elaborates:
In recent years, growth has been high, but excellence, social cohesion, and social justice have been dangerously eroded. The high-tech boom is the fruit of the long-term investment in human capital made by a previous generation. But the high-tech boom creates a shiny bubble of prosperity that conceals the fact that today we are not making a similar investment in the human capital of the future. Budgetary policy is flawed, public policy is failing, Israeli society is sick. If Israel does not change course soon, even the high-tech miracle will eventually fade away (356).
David says that by 2030 Israel’s secular Jewish population—those who work, produce, and pay taxes—will be a minority. The non-working ultra-Orthodox population will become an unsustainable drag on Israel’s economy.
Israel began as a socialist state. Socialism was necessary to unify Israel’s disparate peoples and accomplish their nation-building mission, but Israel is no longer a socialist nation. Modern Israel is all capitalism. With Israel’s turn to capitalism came a reduction in Israel’s egalitarianism and an increase in income inequality. Israeli wealth is concentrated in a select few, magnates control much of Israel’s resources, and social gaps are now wide. The government has been too weak to restrain market forces and address Israel’s challenges. Israelis denied these issues for a long time but is now beginning to recognize them. In 2011, 450,000 Israelis marched in the streets demanding social justice, and Shavit believes Israel’s future depends on the success of this movement. It is a wake-up call and the start of Israel’s most ambitious project yet: nation rebuilding.
Chapters 11-15 Analysis
Israel has experienced at least 30 years of internal upheaval. The state intended to accept thousands, if not millions, of secular European Jews. The Holocaust changed that. Millions of European Jews were exterminated, so Israel replaced them with African and Middle Eastern Jews, who were more Orthodox religiously than Israel’s founders. Israel was not built for them, but it had them. This tension manifested itself in the ultra-Orthodox Oriental revolt, which created powerful right-wing elements in Israeli society.
At Israel’s inception, its lack of security and scarce resources demanded a cohesive national effort. That effort built the solid state that presently exists. That effort permitted Israel’s military victories and scientific achievements in Dimona, which ensure its security—security that has bred complacency, weakened social cohesion, and destroyed the national effort. Modern Israel is a fractured society of warring factions fighting to pull the state in different directions. There is no unified effort or vision.
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