It is not easy under those circumstances to recruit new doctors into family practice in small rural communities, however attractive these communities might otherwise be.
Jaan Roos, MD
Minden Hills, Ontario
In the BC Kootenays, we were greatly amused by Alastair Brown’s declaration of health-care hardship for people who had a hospital—presumably full service—only twenty kilometres away. Here on the east shore of Kootenay Lake, we are a thirty-minute ferry ride plus a fifty-kilometre drive away from the hospital in Nelson. Ferry service ends at 10:20 p.m. and resumes again at 7:10 a.m., so nighttime emergencies must go instead to the Creston hospital, which is seventy kilometres away along a narrow winding road.
However, the hospital in Creston is understaffed, short at least four doctors. The demands of their practices and the ER result in chronically overworked staff. The hospital is rumoured to have considered closing its ER between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. If this happens, we would have to drive an additional ninety kilometres to Cranbrook in the event of a nighttime emergency. In order to draw attention to our plight and raise money for emergency medical response training and doctor recruitment, on June 3 and 4, residents of the east shore will be holding the World’s Longest Rummage Sale, stretching from Sirdar to Riondel, about seventy kilometres. We’re making a Guinness World Record attempt and hope to garner sufficient funds and notoriety to alleviate our predicament. Until then, were eating apples daily.
Nancy Galloway
Crawford Bay, British Columbia
Israel’s Split Decision
The first poster illustrating David Berlin’s article (“Israel’s Divided Soul,” April) says it all. Herzl, founder of Zionism, which was conceived of as a secular movement for the establishment of a Jewish state, is shown standing in front of two, not one, Stars of David, the ultimate symbol of Judaism. Indeed, more than the division between secular and religious Zionism, Berlin beautifully depicts the distinctive agendas, styles, and torments that characterize the internal divisions within the religious camp, usually thought of as univocally monolithic.
Common wisdom concerning Israel has it that religious Zionism thwarts any chance of resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians, while secular Zionism can entertain a mutual existence in the torn land. Berlin bows to this mantra when he writes, “it appears that the forces of secularism, not religious idealism, will shape the future of Israel and its relationship with Palestine.” In only two places—three if we include the subtitle of the article itself—does he explicitly formulate the idea that gives this article added value. First, almost apologetically, he tells us, “it might be argued that Zionism...has overstayed its welcome.” Then, at the end of the article, Berlin asks Elyakim Haetzni if there is not an “internal contradiction in Zionism.” His question is the leading question of the article—“Has the Zionist dream played itself out”
This internal contradiction involves the oft-mouthed oxymoron “Jewish, democratic state.” Thinking that religious Zionism was defeated—it did fail but has definitely not been defeated—in the August disengagement from Gaza and again this past March in the Israeli elections is missing the point. The secular Zionist camp, which is touted as supporting “rolling back Jewish settlements,” has imbibed the central idea of Zionism, be it religious or secular: as much of the land as possible should be made available to Jews.
Even the “convergence plan,” which advocates dismantling settlements and outposts beyond the wall, would leave large “settlement blocs” and over 300,000 settlers in place. In that sense, the settlement project, exposed for what it is—a collaboration of all types of Zionism—has been victorious. Indeed, most of Israel is not divided.
The real division is between Israelis of Zionist persuasion who insist on an a priori Jewish majority in a Jewish state, thereby calling for religious or ethnic exceptionalism, and those who view all inhabitants of the land—Jewish, Palestinian, and others—as equally deserving of citizenship, rights, and justice. If we look to the posters accompanying the article, one stands out as strikingly utopian: building an industry of air transport, the name of the future company is—in Hebrew—Land of Israel Airways and—in English—Palestine Airways. In the 1930s, somebody thought that Israel and Palestine could coexist.
Anat Biletzki
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv, Israel
David Berlin helps us to see how Jewish fundamentalisms, which, parallel to Palestinian forms, have been emboldened by the failures of secular alternatives. The contradictions of the Israeli state are also cast into stark relief by the second-class citizenship of non-Jewish citizens within Israel’s borders. The Bedouin are a poignant example: in the Negev, the Israeli government runs a paramilitary “Green Patrol” dedicated to destroying Bedouin crops, confiscating their livestock, and demolishing their homes. Sharon may have deftly dissected the religious Zionists, but at the same time he has moved the rest of Israel even further to the right.
Jesse Benjamin
Associate Professor of Human Relations and Multicultural Education
St. Cloud State University
St. Cloud, Minnesota
David Berlin ignores a central and decisive factor when he tries to explain the decline of religious Zionism, namely the interdependence of religious and secular Zionism. To a large extent, religious Zionism has been a tool in the hands of secular Zionism throughout most of Israel’s short history. In fact, religious Zionism has rarely, if ever, managed to carry the torch of Zionism on its own. Religious Zionism has always depended upon the military, economic, and bureaucratic assets of secular Zionism. Even more importantly, religious Zionism could not survive without the international cover of the Western world, which secular Zionism makes possible. More often than not, religious Zionism has been an instrument in the secular project. Religious Zionism provided the majority of the settler population that helped successive secular administrations “create facts on the ground” in Gaza and the West Bank.
Berlin rightly notes that religious Zionism was ascendant after the 1967 Israeli military victory. This shows that in moments of relative security, religious Zionism can thrive and even challenge secular Zionism. But it also shows that whenever Arab and Islamic resistance to the Zionist project is robust, as it is now, whenever Israel feels besieged and the Zionist project seems in doubt, religious Zionism tends to take a back seat. That is one reason why religious Zionism is, as Berlin rightly notes, in decline.
