HOW THE IDEALS OF ZIONISM EVOLVED IN THE ONGOING HISTORY OF ISRAEL

Author: By Ethan Bronner, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, February 9, 1997

Page: N18

Section: Books

Much of what nation-building involved -- land ownership, farming, physical combat -- had been off-limits or alien to most Jews, leading Jewish culture to be identified with the pale and the weak. Explaining how, within several decades and despite the Holocaust, Jews created a military superpower and a national culture of pronounced physicality -- the ``muscle Jews'' of Zionist theorist Max Nordau -- has kept scholars busy for years.

Yaron Ezrahi, one of Israel's most prominent and thoughtful political theorists as well as an outspoken dove, has made a significant contribution to the literature on this question with ``Rubber Bullets,'' part historical analysis, part memoir and part political prescriptive.

In the best portion of the book, the first half, he offers an enlightening analysis of the fierce collectivism of Israel's early years, deconstructing Zionist attitudes toward such subtle and rarely examined issues as landscape, language, and privacy.

He contrasts the Western view of nature as a place of escape with the Israeli one in which a hike in the hills is an affirmation of ownership. Land is so vital to the struggle here that, as he puts it, ``escape into nature is invariably a political act which denies the existence of one category of human beings while affirming the existence of another. . . . No landscape is a retreat from society and any scenery is but politics in disguise.''

He recounts how, as a 10-year-old in 1950, he was sent by his parents from their home in Tel Aviv to a kibbutz for a month. A 9-year-old girl invites him to join her and friends for a swim. The city boy stares as the entire group strips and jumps in. He stands frozen on the side, a stranger in paradise. As he looks back half a century later, he points out that the body is the place where we first forge our private self and space. These were denied to those kibbutz children -- one of many ways used to forge a collectivist identity. Because they were deprived of privacy, subjected constantly to group scrutiny, individualism wassquelched.

Ezrahi is especially alive to the trampling of the culture of the individual in Israel's first years because he believes that only by permitting and encouraging more emphasis on the individual can Israel progress. He argues that with the state secure, it is time for Israelis to relieve themselves of the burden of history, to see themselves as individuals rather than as actors in an epic narrative of redemption. Israelis must now also see their opponents for what they are: individuals with their own stories and needs, rather than as simply the enemy. Only in that way can peace become possible.

In fact, Ezrahi argues, this process has begun and is progressing nicely. He uses as an example what happened during the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, that started in late 1987. Israeli soldiers moved from live ammunition to rubber bullets, and that switch, Ezrahi maintains, was filled with symbolism and significance.

For Ezrahi, the rubber bullet -- a metal pellet coated in rubber or plastic, a projectile that aims to wound but not kill -- ``represents not only Israel's desire to reduce violence in the conflict, but, more significantly, its readiness to actually reframe the conflict, to see it not as a war of survival but as a struggle between a civilian population and an occupying force.''

In general, he asserts, the experience of power has been a sobering one for Israelis who have seen that their swords cut two ways, both at the enemy and at themselves. This has led to the growth of some individualist culture and the desire to share the land and find a political solution with the Arabs.

While there is truth to all this, it seems to me that here Ezrahi, a professor at Hebrew University and possessor of a Harvard doctorate, conflates analysis with some wishful thinking, confusing his views and those of his friends and associates with those of all Israelis.

He argues that it was primarily a dialogue over the unpleasant aspects of force that led to the decision to make peace with the Palestinians. My guess is that the less lofty fear of terrorism also played a large role.

He states that Israelis learned a lesson after their attack last April on a United Nations base in Qana, Lebanon, in which 100 civilians were killed: The amount of force needed to win in some circumstances is so great that it is illegitimate in the post-Auschwitz world. I have found almost no evidence of this attitude except among the dovish left, which felt that way beforehand. Israelis dismissed the Qana attack as an unfortunate misfire.

I would wager that Ezrahi had largely finished this book by fall 1995, before Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. Rabin's murder led to a series of events that culminated in the election of the more hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu. The book barely takes into account this last development. For example, Ezrahi contrasts the attitude toward force of Rabin, a native-born Israeli, with that of his Polish-born predecessor, Yitzhak Shamir. He says Shamir viewed force through the Diaspora lens of the Holocaust, whereas Rabin had a more sober, more truly Israeli, perspective. Yet Netanyahu was born in Tel Aviv, and his attitude seems closer to Shamir's than to Rabin's.

Ezrahi may ultimately be proven right in observing that the forces for compromise and individualism in Israel are making tribal militarism a dim memory. But it does not take much to divert the stream of history in the Holy Land, and the struggle is not over. For all his insight, I fear Ezrahi has spoken too soon.