Our Hope Is not Lost
By Sarah Honig

(September 21) There's a little bead store in the swank
new shopping mall in my town. It exudes a Sixties hippie
ambiance, but that's not what draws my attention. 

Atop its entrance, the name of the emporium is emblazoned 
on a big Magen David - unique among the trendy brand names 
and international logos imported from posh Europe. This 
store sign seems to have been transported from 1920s
Tel Aviv, whose building exteriors exulted in Jewish
symbols and were delightfully decked with biblical scenes 
on ceramic tiles. Designers and their clients in the first 
all-Jewish city proudly displayed their Zionism. 

But no more. 

Jewish symbols are now the exclusive preserve of the radical 
Right/religious fringe. 

Therefore the Magen David in the mall convinced me, in
the spirit of our national anthem, that all hope isn't yet
lost. But hope's vulnerable spark was almost extinguished by 
a very venerable lady - former state controller Miriam Ben-Porat, 
who had nothing better to do than suggest a "national song" to 
accompany "Hatikva" and serve as a substitute for the anthem
regarded as reprehensible by many Israeli Arabs. 

She reckoned this would help them celebrate Independence Day 
with us. 

Ben-Porat made hope appear lost indeed. Hers wasn't avowed 
anti-Zionist Mohammed Barakei's proposal for a "universalist, 
humanist" anthem to supplant the offensively Jewish "Hatikva," 
nor his blatant demand that Israel relinquish its Jewish 
identity and become "a state for all its citizens."
The equivalent to the national suicide he recommends wouldn't 
be tolerated in any democratic state. But you can't fault
his strident rhetoric when we misguidedly - in the name
of high-minded principles - allow it, and - in the name of
post-Zionist rationalization - convince ourselves that he's
the harbinger of justice, equality, and enlightenment. 

But it's a whole other can of worms that Ben-Porat opened. 
If what comes from Barakei can somehow be stomached, what 
comes from her cannot - despite her milder tones and 
articulate civility. She is one of us, a rock of the 
mainstream establishment and full of good intentions. The 
problem is that good intentions pave the road to a very 
bad place. She threw a pebble into the water, and, in the 
words of the old Yiddish homily, "a thousand wise men cannot 
now retrieve it." Unwittingly, she emboldened the Barakeis 
among us. They ostensibly won respectability and approval 
from one who cannot possibly be suspected of seditious motives. 
While they tirelessly chip away at our national resolve, she 
hacked off a giant chunk. She made the hitherto unthinkable
worthy of consideration, considering the suggestion came from 
her. 

Ben-Porat's primary error is her assumption that we're dealing 
with an innocuous national minority, whereas in fact this 
minority never accepted our Jewish nationhood and is an 
inalienable part of the Arab world which keeps trying to 
destroy ourstate - be it by outright warfare, terrorism, or
by eroding our faith in the justice of our cause. 

Arabs who happen to hold Israeli citizenship identify with
their kin across the Green Line. It's a minority totally
unlike the sort Jews constitute in the Diaspora. Jews
were never enemies of their host nations. Quite the contrary, 
they pathetically tried to outdo their neighbors in patriotism.
Jews often saluted flags with crosses on them, but never
clamored for their removal. 

Barakei, however, wants the Star of David off our flag and 
the menora off our national emblem. He also wants Zionist 
institutions like the Jewish Agency and JNF dismantled. To 
appease him, Ben-Porat may one day suggest a companion flag 
with a crescent instead of the Magen David. 

Appeasement knows no bounds. 

AT STAKE aren't mere symbols, but Israel's very existence in 
what the Arabs consider their exclusive domain. They 'll soon 
have two Arab states in what was original Mandatory Palestine - 
Jordan and Arafat's fiefdom, which are culturally and 
ethnically indistinguishable. The irredentist Arab aim is now 
to take another bite of the little still left to the Jews of 
the territory once set aside for our national home. 

If Israel is rendered binational rather than a Jewish state,
they'll have two unadulterated Arab states plus (at least)
half of Israel. 

Ben-Porat is naive to identify the problem as the Jewishness 
of Israel's anthem. She no doubt knows that other anthems of 
other ethnocentric democracies are also national in nature. 
Israel isn't unique, though perhaps we're not entitled to 
what's acceptable elsewhere. While Palestinian nationalism is 
being forged, Jewish national identity is fashionably enfeebled. 
She knows other anthems don't make allowances for minorities. 
In Great Britain there must be a great many atheists and
republicans whose national anthem still mentions the God
in whom they don't believe and the queen whom they don't 
support. Nonetheless, democratic Britain hasn't altered its 
anthem to cater to their views. It's not the anthem which 
keeps Israel's Arab citizens from celebrating Independence Day. 
The state is anathema to them. They call its creation their 
naqba (catastrophe). They have a flag and an anthem - those of 
the burgeoning Palestinian state next door. 

That's what Adel told me. He comes from one of the nearby 
Triangle towns and works as a cashier in a large retail chain 
in the same mall which houses that quaint bead store. He says 
he "won't sing anything Ben-Porat deems appropriate for us. 
That's demeaning. In my,town we sing "Biladi Biladi" (the 
Palestinian anthem) at every gathering and occasion. One day 
you'll sing it too, when this place is rightfully returned to 
Palestine," he predicted. 

I headed back for another glance at the bead store sign, perhaps 
to reassure myself that all hope isn't lost. Looking at it, I 
reflected on the never-sung verses of Naftali Hertz Imber's 
"Hatikva." According to the long poem's closing stanza: "only 
with the last Jew, will disappear the last of our hope." 

As long as some of us still care and our star is still displayed 
somewhere, our hope isn't lost - not entirely.