Amnon Rubinstein Speaks

An excerpt from his interview with Ari Shavit:-

Could it be that you are the one who has changed? It's not only your attitude toward the Supreme Court that surprised people - in the past few years you have expressed centrist and even nationalist opinions. You used to be an enlightened liberal, but now you often support the "forces of darkness."

"I do not support the forces of darkness. I support the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. I am a Zionist. I am a national and liberal Jew. Basically, I have not changed my stance. In contrast, part of the left wing has changed its stance. So don't ask me what happened to me; ask the people on the left what happened to them. My feeling is that when I went to sleep I was part of the camp, but when I woke up in the morning I discovered that I was outside the camp. I remained in the same place, but the camp moved."

When did you sense this? When did you realize that you and the left are in two different places?

"When I read the Geneva [Initiative] understandings. I left Meretz because of those understandings. There were a great many things in them that I found unacceptable. I could not accept the compromise on the right of return. But there is one statement there that is totally inconceivable: the obligation to compensate the Arab states for having hosted the Palestinian refugees for 60 years. This, without so much as a word about what they did to the Jews, and even though it is clear that they held the refugees as hostages and educated them to hate Israel and to advocate its destruction. When I saw that clause I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. At first I thought that maybe I had gone mad, wasn't seeing right, couldn't understand what I was reading, but then I understood that my good friends in Meretz had gone off the rails. And they went off the rails because of their need to placate the Palestinians; in every case and in every situation, always to placate the Palestinians."

What is the basic cause of your argument with the left in the past few years? On what are you divided?

"I will tell you on what we are not divided. We are not divided on the need to establish two states for two peoples. We are not divided on the disaster of the settlements and the need to evacuate them. We are not divided on the need to try to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the earliest possible time. But the point of departure of the Zionist left is a strong Israel. My friends constantly tell me: What are you worried about? Israel is the strongest power in the Middle East. Whereas my underlying assumption is the reverse of that. I see Israel as a weak state in the Middle East. I think Israel is weak, vulnerable, hanging by a thread. Yes, absolutely hanging by a thread.