Israel never produced a more powerful symbol of its longing for peace than Abie Nathan, who died yesterday at the age of 81. Nathan was best known for his sea-bound radio station, the Voice of Peace, which broadcast “from somewhere in the Mediterranean” because of Israel’s (still) arcane restrictions on the radio market.

Like the Jewish people that constitute it, no democratic nation ever produced more vocal opponents to itself and its interests than Israel. Around the world, we see Israelis at the forefront of efforts to undermine Israel’s security, actively support those who seek its demise. The academic boycott of Israel in Britain boasts two Israeli scholars as their leaders. And last week a flotilla of small boats broke the naval siege of Gaza. Their leader? An Israeli Jew.

Meir Kahane used to love to call such people “self-hating Jews.” But the truth is that for the great majority of Israeli peace activists, universalism and the rejection of violence are not a rejection of Jewish identity at all, but a kind of fulfillment: They believe that there is a uniquely Jewish message for the world, and that message is one of peace and universalism, and that when the Jewish state embraces the use of force, a strong military, and an expressly self-advancing agenda, it is essentially betraying its inner uniqueness and the classical Jewish message. It is for this reason that other of Israel’s far-left activists, like former Meretz head Shulamit Aloni, have embraced the study of Jewish tradition and Jewish identity.

Leave aside for the moment the fact that people like Nathan and Aloni are wrong on so many fronts, that the Hebrew Bible is not really a text advocating universalism and non-violence (even the “swords into plowshares” quotes are taken out of context), or that survival and the prosperity of life are themselves supremely Jewish values, values that in every human era require thinking strategically and militarily to protect. Leave aside the indelible harm such activists have caused to the pride, health, and well-being of ordinary citizens in a country that has done, on balance, far more good than evil.

What’s important to know is that Nathan and his friends represent a real part of the Israeli cultural soul, a longing for a better world, that has never been relegated to the fringe. Shimon Peres, today Israel’s president, has spent his whole life struggling to find a balance between peace and security. He was the first director-general of Israel’s defense ministry, responsible for procuring arms and playing a decisive role in Israel’s nuclear project in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Yet he was also the driving force behind the 1993 Oslo Accords, which in their naive hope for peace led to a horrific escalation of terror. To understand him is to understand the ethos of a large portion of the mainstream Zionist enterprise.

This fact about Israel may not be the best thing for its health, but it is a profound fact nonetheless: A country founded by a people that has for centuries been at the receiving end of the worst of what humanity is capable of, and struggles every day to protect itself from evil while not becoming just another brutal nation, that faces accusations of genocide while in practice restraining its armed forces against civilians more than any other country on earth. It is an impossible and endless balancing act, and in the struggle Israel has managed to screw up its most basic security needs, embroiling itself in a century-long war with no end in sight.

Abie Nathan never found peace among nations in this life, nor is it clear that his efforts brought us closer to it. Nathan was loved and hated as a symbol, who in his last years was ill and largely forgotten. If he has at last found peace, it is not wholly undeserved.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 9:28 AM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.