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 aifa
is Israel's third city, but by international standards it is a small
town. It is also the least Israeli of Israel's cities. It has weather
like the Riviera. It is cosmopolitan: On the top of the mountain
German is still spoken, at the bottom Arabic, and in the middle
Russian. It has the country's only subway train. It has lots of
trees and a huge environmentalist movement. In Haifa, children dare
not venture outside nor make noise during the siesta hours of the
afternoon. A dirty park bench will produce storms of protests and
letters to the editor.
Haifa was always
the least religious city in the country, and buses ran on the Sabbath
long before they did elsewhere. It is reputed to have the best Jewish-Arab
relations in the country. A bleeding-heart institution for Jewish-Arab
dialogue named Beit Hagefen is a major symbol of the city.
Haifa is also
arguably the largest remaining bastion of the Israeli Left. It has
never had a mayor not from the Labor party. Its current mayor
postures to the left of Ehud Barak, hoping to grab his position
as leader of the Labor party. "Red Haifa," as it was once
known thanks to its trade-union ruling class, is in fact a middle-class
city of yuppie elitists and employees of the high-tech industries.
It was the only serious city that voted for Barak in the last elections.
It is home to the Technion and the University of Haifa, the second
of which contains the largest Arab student body in the country as
well as a gaggle of extremist anti-Zionist "New Historians."
Haifa is home to the largest chapter of the Israeli Communist party,
and the comrades are largely Jews, unlike chapters elsewhere. The
Haifa Theater is a bastion of anti-Zionism, where any play purporting
to show that Zionists are Nazis is sure to be staged.
The university
is almost wall-to-wall Leftist, and semi-Marxist Meretz is considered
as far right as most academics are willing to venture. The Leftism
infiltrates everywhere, and even my colleagues in the business school
have ideological positions ordinarily only to be found among social
workers or deconstructionist sociologists.
Haifa Leftists
have long been convinced their city would be spared PLO atrocities
because Haifaites are such nice, progressive people, and because
they purport to have such good relations with local Arabs. When
many Jews stopped coming to restaurants and stores owned by local
Arabs briefly after the high-holiday pogroms last year, teams of
Haifaites, including many tenured Lefties, made a point of showing
their solidarity with their Arab neighbors, at the same time that
their Arab neighbors were making a point of showing their solidarity
with PLO bombers and Hamas suicide bombers.
Haifa Lefties
believed they were protected due to their progressive image, their
obsession with recreational compassion and environmentalism, and
their Leftist solidarity with Arabs. They were sure that the wave
of Arab atrocities in which Israel is being bathed would pass over
them, like a Palestinian angel of death in a parody of the story
of the Exodus.
Needless to
say, they were wrong.
Will there
be an awakening at last in this quiet dream world of Leftist delusion?
No there will
not. For one, Haifa yuppies do not take buses. Within a day or three,
they will return to their habitual peacespeak. The Peace Now stickers
will reappear. The university leftists will resume their activities.
The mayor will call for a return to peace talks with the PLO with
greater Israeli flexibility. The local Jewish communists will resume
their protests against occupation, as will the Arab student unions.
The local politicians will resume their sacred mission of making
sure the malls stay open on the Sabbath. The Arab students will
hold celebrations and parties in which the bus bombing today will
be toasted tomorrow, while the Leftist Jewish students and faculty
will rote-recite their solidarity with them and pat themselves on
their backs for sticking to their ideological guns in the face of
adversity and atrocities by their peace partners.
The Kishinev
pogrom in 1903 is supposed to have changed history. It shocked Eastern
European Jews into seeking to escape czarist Russia for safety.
It inspired a famous poem by Bialik. And in many ways it was the
trigger for the formation of mass immigration by Jews to the Land
of Israel, then misnamed Palestine. It brought down the wrath of
the world on czarism. At the Kishinev pogroms, 45 helpless and defenseless
Jews were killed and about 600 wounded.
Shimon Peres
and the Israeli Left have created a situation in which a new Kishinev
Pogrom takes place in Israel every week, while its legendary army
sits along the sidelines, shackled by the politicians, and exercises
restraint, while its leaders await the day when they can conduct
peace talks with the pogromchiks.
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