June 22, 1979

A ‘bilingual country’? To put it far too mildly: a French Swiss’s nationality is Swiss, a Flemish Belgian’s Belgian, a French Canadian’s Canadian –though he, perhaps comes nearest, or wants to come nearest, to the Israeli’s position.

Have you ever seen an Israeli identity card, which every citizen is required by law to carry? There you will find that legally, Israeli nationality is not recognized; under ‘nationality’ (le ’om), it says either ‘Jewish’ or ‘Arab’. A binational state, then, is the proper description of this unparalleled state, with a minority of 500,000 Arabs in Israel proper having no chance, and desiring no chance of national integration: it’s easier, can be more meaningful for you to integrate into France or Germany than for an Israeli Arab – especially one of the 78 per cent Moslems – to integrate into Israel, whose culture, civilization, religion – whose whole national purpose is diametrically opposed to his, however well he may be doing materially, and the chances are that he’s doing better than he or his forebears did before the Jews came in. It would be senseless, hypocritical, for him to sing ‘his’ national anthem – and he is not, of course, required to fight for a country that isn’t his though he is its.

No wonder the fairly recent concept of the ‘Palestinians’, little as it means in national terms, has gained such popularity psychologically, it simply means a Palestine in which the Arabs are in the majority and the Jews in the minority, instead of the other way round. That the Jews wouldn’t have it so good as the Arabs have it now is neither here nor there: those who have turned the concept into an ideology don’t want the Jews to have it good, anyway, and their religion moralizes their destructive intentions beyond any reasonable endo-psychic conflict, as religions have a way of doing.

The answer, my answer, is unheard of in the history of nations – and unfortunately, the unheard-of, however difficult, becomes more easily heard-of in individual than in collective development (if any). React to rather than against. Let destructiveness arouse, not destructiveness, but a degree of constructiveness that disarms it. Not by offering the other cheek, but by making the first cheek too attractive to attract blows.

Let me hasten to add that the State of Israel observes normal democratic decency – equality before the law, respect for the laws that must be the minority’s own, pre-eminently religious laws.

But that’s not good enough. The Arabs’ national ideals – as distinct from the PLO’s ideology – must be treated like one’s own, until the 500,000 achieve the status of a privileged minority, until every trace of second-class citizenship has vanished. The material and spiritual welfare of the Arab must become a Jewish national ideal; to endanger it should feel like endangering the Jewish state. Mad? Look at the psychiatric status of the consequences of your sanity. Heaven protect us from ‘normal’ behaviour – quite especially amongst nations.

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