No More Excuses

HOW CAN DEFENDERS of Israel justify the country's ties with South Africa, its massive arms build-up, the mistreatment of its Arab citizens and the maltreatment of Sephardic Jews? How can a country created for moral reasons continue to act immorally?

The response usually goes that Israel is a small state surrounded by hostile neighbors, that it is practically friendless in the international arena, and that it is still a young nation, only one generation old. But this reasoning is self-fullfilling.

There comes a time when such excuses become a crutch, and serve no useful purpose, as they have for Israel. Its neighbors are as divided amongst themselves as they are united in anger against Israel. The fact that Israel has few friends internationally is a result of Israel's obstinacy, not any global anti-Semitism. And the country's youth is no excuse--all of the Middle East in a sense is new, having been cut out of whole cloth after World War I.

But apologists for Israel's every move continue to harp on these worn-out rationalizations. Every loosening of the hard-line stance, in domestic or foreign relations, is seen as a threat to the country's very existence. Two analogies seem applicable.

The first is the concept of infant industries--domestic spheres of production that a country tries to protect from international competition. This argument is not entirely without reason. International competition can stifle a growing industry, and domestic production is a crucial portion of economic independence. So many countries, the U.S. included, have turned to tariffs and other trade barriers to protect infant industries.

At some point, though, the industry has to grow up. And if it does not within a reasonable amount of time, the project is deemed a failure. Similarly, Israel cannot rely on its identify as an infant forever. The question remains; when should one abandon such excuses?

A second analogy helps answer this question. There is a doctrine of Shi'ite Islam called taqiya, whereby a follower of the Shi'a is allowed to dissimulate in the face of persecution. That means that he can renounce his faith in an emergency, and then renounce his renunciation later, with no permanent ill effects on his piety. This doctrine was developed out of historical necessity--the Shi'ites have often been a minority in Sunni states, and have met repeated persecutions over the centuries.

In this sense, the position of the Shi'ites is similar to that of Diaspora Jews, and both developed defense mechanisms against oppression. The Shi'ites got their "homeland" in the early 16th century, when the first (and still the main) Shi'ite state was founded--Persia, now called Iran. But the Muslims' dilemma remained, as has the Jews' dilemma in Israel; should one stand up for religious principles, or should one continue to dissimulate in the face of a government that is at least nominally devout. For Shi'its, the issue came to a head with the despotism of the Pahlavi dynasty in the last half-century. Finally, in 1963, a leading Shi'ite mullah declared the end of taqiya. The time had come, said Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, for Shi'its to stop rationalizing injustice.

Incidentally, one of the claims of the anti-Shah forces was that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, had helped train the Shah's special forces in torture tactics. Whether or not this is true, the Shah clearly had deep ties with Israel. The young country eagerly accepted the partnership with the dictator because of legitimate fears for its existence. Any friend was thought to be better than none.

Those conditions no longer apply, but the Jewish taqiya is still in force. Moral claims are stifled in an unquestioning acceptance of the immoral actions of the Israeli government. If Israel took the trouble to try to understand its Muslim neighbors, rather than blindly hate them, it could learn an important lesson. The time has come to renounce the Israeli taqiya.