Yeshayahu Leibowitz: Prophet of wrath, harbinger of the future
Rinat Klein and Uri Rosenwaks’ three-part documentary series “Leibowitz: Faith Country and Man” could not have come at a more important time. Fewer and fewer people know who YeshayahuLeibowitz was, or know only that he coined the term “Judeo-Nazis." Fortunately, a number of screenings of the documentary have sold out; hopefully this indicates a renewed discussion of Leibowitz’s thought and ideas.
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But in a central respect his prophecy of wrath has turned out to be true. Israel’s political system has become completely incapable of solving some of Israel’s most pressing dilemmas and unable to create a legal system with true equality before the law. To this day it is an incoherent mix of liberal democracy and clerical rule.
More than anything, Israeli public discourse is shaped by the collective denial that the occupation has been Israel’s political and moral catastrophe. This denial has created an often-shocking emptiness of political discourse and an inability of truly facing existential questions. Instead, as Leibowitz predicted, nationalism, militarism and the value of the state dominate public discourse, and politicians compete with each other in the use of nationalist clichés in order to become electable.
I do not think that Leibowitz should be sanctified, or that he was right on all counts. But there are profound reasons why so many of us who knew him deeply admire and love the man. He embodied moral clarity and the possibility to stand up to both worldly and religious powers on matters of principle. He was adamant that the collective or the majority must never be allowed to determine either what is true or false, or what is morally right or wrong. And he thought that ruling Palestinians under occupation was a moral catastrophe. Period.
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What can we learn from Leibowitz now, almost two decades after his death? It is time we accept that Israel is like all nations. Nations make mistakes, and their greatness in the end is measured by their ability to take responsibility for them, and to change. This holds true for Palestinians, whom Leibowitz held responsible for their own tragedy by rejecting the partition plan of 1947, and it holds true for Israel for believing after 1967 that it could hold on to the territories indefinitely.
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http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/strenger-than-fiction/yeshayahu-leibowitz-prophet-of-wrath-harbinger-of-the-future.premium-1.509103