Back To Zionism

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In an Israeli club scene dominated by trance music, Moshe Lahav had modest ambitions for his nostalgia singalong show. But after 20 years in the business, this pudgy, scruffy guitarist is suddenly riding a wave of sentimentality among young Israelis yearning for less complicated times. From midnight to 4 a.m. at the Yellow Submarine in Jerusalem's Talpiot industrial district, Lahav sings tunes written when Israel was a brand-new state by people who, if they are still alive, are probably in bed with their teeth on the nightstand by the time Lahav takes the stage. At 2 a.m., Lahav wraps up a romantic song about making love in a jeep and leads the whole club in a chorus of another old Israeli favorite that goes: "I'm a soldier. Don't cry for me, Baby."

For the past decade, Israelis felt they were leaving behind the pioneering days of Zionism, the movement that campaigned to found the Jewish state and create a strong character in its young people, all of whom had to serve in the army. The phrase post-Zionism came to describe the country's effort to build an individualistic, high-tech economy. Most Israelis hoped their country would become like anyplace else: ordinary, boring and safe. But two years of violent intifadeh — bloody Israeli occupation of West Bank towns and frequent Palestinian suicide bombings, like the twin attacks in Tel Aviv that claimed 22 lives on Jan. 5 — have snapped Israelis back into the mixture of nationalism and fear at the root of Zionism. What used to be a minority view — the conviction that Israel's enemies mean to wipe it off the map and that to make peace is to invite extinction — is now mainstream thinking. It can be measured in the high level of response to call-ups for army reserve duty by ordinary Israelis, and it's erased almost entirely any lingering support for the concessions offered to the Palestinians in the 1993 Oslo peace accord.

As a result, in the run-up to the Jan. 28 national election, in which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is likely to trounce challenger Amram Mitzna, Lahav is in demand at clubs all over the country, and singalong television shows teach youngsters old campfire numbers from the 1948 Independence War. The intifadeh "has pushed Israeli society back in history to its Zionist ideological phase," says Benny Morris, a leading post-Zionist historian. "People are moving backward to a collectivist view."

The effect of the New Zionism isn't limited to social life. Because most Israelis are convinced that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will never stick to an acceptable peace agreement, right-wing parties are getting a boost in the polls. This shift to the right also colors the way left-wingers are fighting the election, which Sharon called after the Labor Party quit his "national unity" coalition. Even some dovish candidates, like Labor Party leader Mitzna, are keen to show they won't be saps for the Palestinians.

Sharon's biggest advantage in this election is that he is the only party leader who actually fought in the desperate 1948 war and held key roles in all the existential struggles of Israel's early decades, when the underequipped army triumphed against the odds. Though he now wields a military with an overwhelming superiority over the Palestinians, it's that history that makes Israelis trust Sharon to handle a situation in which low-level warfare seems to have become a permanent fact of life. The image of Israel facing a hostile world that would have it concede its security for a peace deal has also become increasingly useful for Sharon, as he cashes in on resurgent Zionist sentiment.

Last week, Sharon barred Arafat's delegates from traveling to a Palestinian-reform conference organized in London by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Israeli analysts saw the move as an attempt to embarrass Blair, because he had refused to host Sharon's Foreign Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, while granting an audience to Mitzna. But it also helped Sharon score a few tough-guy points in the days after the Tel Aviv bombings.

Sharon would be looking at a landslide victory if his Likud Party hadn't tarnished itself with corruption scandals (see box), which have boosted the protest vote and offered opposition parties a chance to increase their seats in the Knesset. Polls show Green Leaf, whose platform calls for the legalization of marijuana and which got only 34,000 votes in the last election, netting at least two seats. "Likud is corrupt and so is Labor," says Dan Goldenblatt, Green Leaf's deputy leader. "People are supporting us because they're fed up." An even bigger winner is the centrist Shinui Party. Ardently anti-religious and financially clean, Shinui is set to become the third-biggest party in the Knesset, which might force Sharon to become the first Likud leader to form a coalition without the religious parties.