AN AVERSION TO LOGIC: DAVID ISAAC
An Aversion To Logic
http://shmuelkatz.com/wordpress/?p=303
By David Isaac
Vladimir Jabotinsky: Master of the Greek Art of Logic
In Lone Wolf, the two-volume biography of his mentor, the great Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky, Shmuel Katz refers to a conversation between Max Nordau and Jabotinsky during World War I.
In reply to Jabotinsky’s contention that the Turk was ‘our worst enemy’ and that ‘now that the hour of his downfall has struck, we cannot possibly stand by and do nothing,’ Nordau contented himself with ‘a profound saying’: “This my young friend, is logic, but logic is a Greek art and Jews can’t tolerate it. The Jew learns not by way of reason but from catastrophes. He won’t buy an umbrella merely because he sees clouds in the sky. He waits until he is drenched and catches pneumonia.” (Lone Wolf, Barricade Books, p. 149)
This peculiar aversion to logic, a malady which Nordau was convinced Jews suffered from, did not afflict Jabotinsky. Indeed, Jabotinsky was aware that he thought in a non-Jewish manner, that his mentality was, in the words of Colonel John Henry Patterson, the commander of the Jewish Legion, “void of the peculiar inhibitions of a Jewish mind influenced and twisted by the abnormalities of centuries of life in dispersion.”
As Jabotinsky himself said of his idea for a Jewish regiment to take part in the conquest of Palestine. “As matter of fact, this idea is a very normal idea which would have occurred, under such circumstances, to any normal person; and I claim the title of a fully normal person. In Jewish colloquial parlance, that title is sometimes translated by the expression goyishe kop; if it is true – so much the worse for us.”
A close friend of Shmuel’s once said that Shmuel wished to imitate his hero, Jabotinsky, in all things. In respect to his use of logic, he more than succeeded. Shmuel Katz was eminently logical. He used his own “goyishe kop” to good effect and had he been alive today he would have likely pointed out the illogic of the Netanyahu government’s actions, particularly in regard to its 10-month “settlement freeze”.
The freeze is now over, though we don’t know for how long, as Prime Minister Netanyahu is looking for a formula to satisfy the international consensus that ending settlement construction is a desirable goal. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that although the freeze has ended, “as a compromise” Israel has already “proposed to scale back some building.”
So while towns like Revavah cheer, sing and release balloons to celebrate the end of the 10-month moratorium on new construction, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asks the residents of such communities to show “restraint” and “responsibility” in their public celebrations. He is right to do so, though for the wrong reasons.
Netanyahu has his own motives for calling for restraint. He wants negotiations to continue and is eager not to antagonize the Arabs. Those of Netanyahu’s supporters who believe that he has confected some clever formula that will satisfy both American pressure and ensure that the Arabs will never agree to a deal, are deluding themselves. Netanyahu is invested in the “two-state solution”. Even as he called an end to the freeze, he appealed to PA head Mahmoud Abbas to continue in the talks. Former British PM Tony Blair, now representative of the Quartet, who has had plenty of opportunity to interact with Netanyahu is probably correct when he recently said he is “absolutely sure [Netanyahu] would sign a deal.”
The real reason the pioneers of Judea and Samaria should not be celebrating is that he, Netanyahu, has done incalculable damage to their cause. U.S. pressure to implement a “settlement freeze” is nothing new. American administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have regurgitated the idea, one supplied to them by an inveterately anti-Zionist State Department. Shmuel, therefore, had ample opportunity to point out with his impeccable logic that “a suspension of settlement … even if intended as only ‘temporary’ is burdened with implications very much deeper and more far-reaching.”
In “The Prime Minister is Heading for a Trap” (Ma’ariv, March 10, 1978), Katz wrote:
After all the concession is designed to satisfy the desire of the Arabs — who oppose any Israeli presence. Their opposition is a function of their claim that the country belongs to them. Our settlement is an expression of our ownership of the land. A suspension of our settlement as a result of their opposition inevitably conveys recognition of the legitimacy of their claim, and a weakening, to the same degree, of our claim that the country belongs to the Jewish people. This is an understatement. Any concession, and especially if publicly-declared, on the establishment of settlements, adds strength to the forces working for our eviction from Judea and Samaria.
Four years later, when the topic of a freeze was again broached, Katz wrote in “Purse String Tangles” (The Jerusalem Post, November 12, 1982):
Does [Moshe] Arens not understand the implications of such a “freeze?” That by agreeing to it, Israel would be embracing the principle that the settling of Jews in Eretz Yisrael is a bad thing; is, in fact, an “obstacle to peace?” That it will be interpreted as acquiescence in the monstrous Arab charge that the absence of peace is due to the presence of Jews in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and not to successive Arab aggressions?
Does he not know that the sly suggestion of a “temporary” freeze is only a move in the campaign not only to delegitimize Jewish rule in that part of Eretz Yisrael but to delegitimize any Jewish presence there? That if Jews settling is bad and holds back peace for six months, how would it become positive and “peace-making” afterwards?
This is precisely what Netanyahu has done with his freeze. He had created an admission of guilt and given credence to the Arab charge that Jewish towns are an “obstacle to peace.” “Why else would he freeze them?” they will now argue. And if these communities were an obstacle that required freezing for the past 10 months, why should they become “peace-making” in the next 10?
The Arabs would further argue, with the full force of logic on their side courtesy of Netanyahu, that if the Israeli prime minister wants a two-state solution, where exactly does he think that second state would be if not in the territories where he is now permitting Jews to build? If his goal is to hand over those territories for a Palestinian Arab state, it makes no sense to expand the Jewish presence there any further. Logically speaking, they would be right.
Can this abysmal situation be rectified? It will start with a “goyishe kop” – Israeli leaders who can think with the logic of a Jabotinsky, Nordau or Katz, and will have the courage to state the Jewish claim to the Land. Menachem Begin, for a fleeting moment, before his collapse, offered an example of how this combination of courage and logic might look.
In The Hollow Peace, Katz describes Begin’s first meeting with President Jimmy Carter, who expressed “his reservations about the establishment of Jewish settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.” Begin replied:
“Mr. President, there are a number of towns whose names derive from the Bible. There are so many places named Hebron and places called Shiloh and other places known as Bethlehem. Would it occur to you to prevent anybody from settling in one of those places? Have you the authority to do so? In the same way the Government of Israel cannot forbid a Jew to settle in the original Hebron or the original Bethlehem.”
Begin made his case admirably, though he would later falter and fail. But Israel is capable of producing leaders who will not falter and of producing leaders capable of logic. It has done so before. It is only logical it will do so again.
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