Soldiers

July 2, 1979

The temptation to overload this book with quotations from The Jerusalem Post must be resisted, anything remotely topical rigorously excluded, but there’s a type of topicality which hides the timeless significance of the actual or intellectual event in question, and if there is such a thing as constant Jewish character traits in the most variable circumstances imaginable, to wit, Diaspora and statehood – a question with which much of my journal is explicitly or implicitly concerned, a letter in today’s Post is an ideal illustration (both diverting and concentrating) of one of them, the Jew's realistic conviction that ‘the’ government, any government, is wrong. Even, he now comes to realize, his own.

TWO GOVERNMENTS
To the Editor of The Jerusalem Post

Sir, – after giving the matter some thought, I have come to the conclusion that what we need are two governments.

One would continue to function like the present and past governments:ministers and members of Knesset would go abroad every two months to give speeches, give and receive awards, raise funds from world Jewry, collect their per diem allowances and play political games.

The other government would be made up of men of reasonable integrity and competence whose sole job would be to run the country and be responsive to the needs of the people.

Since we already have two chief rabbis, two governments would not set a precedent.

Dr. Robert Rockaway
Herzliya

I have an outstanding candidate for the other government, though he would have to go abroad, too, for functional purposes – to represent this country reasonably, with an understanding of his addressees as well as his own people, and without the nationalistic infantilisms which, rightly to a point, spoil Israel’s image in the eyes of the semi-civilized world: it’s not civilized enough to see through the infant to the potential grown-up behind. Well, Abba Eban is a grown-up in front; I find his recent comment on two infants, Begin and his favourite ex-general, the Minister for Agriculture Ariel Sharon, deeply delightful: “They have an extraordinary tactlessness about their settlement tactics. They are the only collection of bulls carrying around their own mobile china shop.”

see also:

• introduction
• publication details
• illustrated excerpts from the diary
  • April 25, 1977: arriving in Israel
  • June 3, 1977: concert-hall conventions
  • June 22, 1979: a ‘bi-lingual’ state?
  • July 2, 1979: the government of Israel, Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon.
    
    
• the book’s launch event, 17th October 2001
  
  
• Press Release: Royal Philharmonic Society Book of the Year, 2001