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Hot Issues - 03/23/02

Dear God, this is Effi
Ari Shavit - Ha'aretz
Even on his day off, his "Golan day," the speaker-phone in Effi Eitam's Isuzu Trooper never stops ringing. The presenters of the morning current-events programs want his reaction, the anchors of the evening current-events programs want his presence, rabbis want to offer their support. Politicians from the National Religious Party put out feelers; liaison people in the Likud court him. And there's an important donor calling from Los Angeles. A hawkish strategist from Washington. Benjamin Netanyahu's office is on the line, too. So is the Prime Minister's Bureau. Brigadier General (res.) Effi Eitam, 50, is still not ready to be specific, but his political strategy will probably go like this: First, realize the potential of seven to 10 Knesset seats of the religious Zionist movement, and then, after the elections, hook up to the Likud in one way or another. Move toward the center of power itself. Eitam's aim is to turn the national religious camp into a kind of bridgehead, a national avant-garde movement. According to Eitam, the Zionism of normality has run its course. So the mission of religious Zionism now is to lead the entire country toward a new horizon, a new purpose: to establish the Temple. He was born in Tiberias in 1952 and grew up in Kibbutz Ein Gev, on Lake Kinneret. Here, in the kibbutz bomb-shelter, he experienced the massive Syrian shelling. He went through the 1967 Six-Day War at the edge of the kibbutz with a team of anti-aircraft gunners. Six years later, in the Yom Kippur War, he hid with a bazooka in the water ditch outside Nafa Camp on the Golan Heights. He fought against infiltrators on Har Dov along the border with Lebanon, and against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. He fought for 30 years. He fought all his life, and he always felt the frontier situation into which he was born is a heroic one. In the wake of the crisis of the Yom Kippur War, Eitam became religious. His feeling was that after the great collapse, after the great challenge, some sort of meaning had to be found. Shortly afterward, he moved to the Golan. He and his wife, Illit, established a home in Moshav Nov. They have eight children, four of whom are currently in active military service, two of them in the Egoz reconnaissance unit. Does the entire country have to go through the same process he did? Is it incumbent on Israel to be a state of returning to religion? Eitam says that the whole of Zionism is a return to religion. First the body and the blood circulation and the muscles were restored to it, and now the time has come for the soul to return, too. If he becomes prime minister, will he form a return-to-religion government? Of course. He doesn't want religious coercion and he doesn't believe in religious legislation, but the national leadership has to ensure that the State of Israel thinks about its self and its selfhood. And that will happen, of that there is no doubt. All the signs say so. I. Arabs out! Effi Eitam, are we at war? "We are in a war that was forced on us. There can be no more just war than this. The State of Israel gritted its teeth for a year and a half and tried to find every crack: Camp David, Sharm al-Sheikh, Mitchell, Tenet. But there are moments when a nation has to stand up for its life. It has to. Because if it doesn't do that, it plunges down a slippery slope. What is the danger we face? The danger is the man who shouts: A million shaheeds to Jerusalem! A person who shouts such words is certainly not a partner. Worse: Anyone who shouts that is by his very presence endangering the entire Middle East. If he is not contained, he will hook up with Iran and Iraq and lead a jihad on Jerusalem. He is liable to create a kind of extreme Muslim alignment that, on the one hand, will be armed with weapons of mass destruction and, on the other hand, will perpetrate intensive internal terrorism inside the country. "If we go ahead and do the nonsensical thing of folding up behind some virtual fence, the [Arabs'] intoxication of victory will bring about a general assault on all of Israel's borders and terrorism that will not rest for a minute. In the end, it will bring about Israel's collapse. "That is why I think the danger lies in the deterioration of the region into a fanatic religious war that will not be able to be stopped other than by the use of terrible means. I want to make it clear that I do not think we should use weapons of mass destruction. But I do think that in order to avoid a situation like that, we have to vanquish [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat along with Iraq and Iran as one package. It is impossible to talk with them, impossible to effect a conciliation with them, they have to be vanquished. There is no other way." Are you saying that a certain war is necessary in order to prevent a more terrible war later? "Absolutely. The State of Israel cannot afford to have regimes like [those in] Iran and Iraq cross a line of nuclear capability. The model of a balance of nuclear terror will not work against regimes like that." What you are saying is that a preemptive strike has to be launched against them before they develop a nuclear capability? "Certainly. If there will be no one else to do it, we will face the same dilemma that [Prime Minister Menachem] Begin faced when he bombed the reactor in Iraq [in 1981]. In retrospect, it is clear that he was amazingly brave and that he was absolutely right. So in my opinion, we will have no choice, unless the Americans do it first." If so, we find ourselves at a critical point of time such as we have never known, not only in the Palestinian context, but in the regional strategic context, do we not? "Certainly. But I think that within this context, the opportunity will be created to deal more deeply with the Palestinian issue." What has to be done with regard to the Palestinians? "The immediate solution consists of three elements. First, get rid of this leadership. Second, to enter Area A [under full Palestinian control] and uproot the military terrorist capability. Third, to make it clear that there will be no foreign sovereignty west of the Jordan River. I am not sure that this is the time to organize what will happen east of the Jordan. But as for the area west of the Jordan, we have to state that no sovereignty will be established there other than that of the State of Israel." What do you mean by getting rid of the Palestinian leadership? To kill Arafat? To expel the 1,000 people around him? "To put them on trial. To arrest all those people and put them on trial. Simply that. To conduct Jerusalem trials and place those murderers on trial according to the criteria of international law." Do you think that is a practical idea? Will the international community accept that? "I see it as a moral issue. People say that the occupation corrupts. I say that not making war on murderers corrupts. When a mass murderer sits in Ramallah and enjoys a kind of protection, that is corruption. After all, that man is a murderer. A murderer murderer murderer. So he has to be placed on trial. In what way is he different from Eichmann? In what? I would not be scared if he were sentenced to be hung." So that is the first element. What about the second element? If you were minister of defense, would you order the reconquest of all of Area A? "I would order the Israel Defense Forces to enter into the whole of Area A. To restore full security control in all parts of Judea and Samaria." To go into Nablus? "To go into Nablus, yes. To settle in Nablus, no. But to create a situation in which there are no command posts, no chain of command, no military industry. No military capability." Isn't that liable to exact a terrible price in blood? Isn't it liable to entangle us in a general war? "Just the opposite, I think. If we don't do that, and if we go on bleeding like this and our neighbors smell blood, then things are liable to reach a state of all-out war. I do not say that there are no risks in an operation like this. But in my estimation, the risks are reasonable. There will be no Lebanon and Beirut scenarios here. But in any event, we have to understand that what now hangs in the balance is Israel's very ability to function. What we are facing is an existential danger. "Arik [Ariel Sharon] says that we will win, but [only] in the end. It will be hard, it will take a long time, but we will win. Whereas I say that it has to be fast, with a quick decision. With the use of IDF strength on a large scale. Arik is afraid that if we topple the Palestinian Authority, we will be dragged into a general war with the Egyptians and the Jordanians and others. "I say just the opposite. It is precisely this continuing situation, in which Israel is weak and stuttering and bewildered and crying, that invites intensified ecstatic processes on the Egyptian and Jordanian street. Therefore, if we do not act quickly and decisively, the regimes there will have no choice but to follow the lead of the street." But still, doesn't a war mean an endless number of killed? "We have an endless number of killed now, too. We are being killed day after day. Infants and women and children." And the third element you are proposing is to assert unequivocally that Israeli sovereignty will extend to the Jordan River? "Yes, with no beating around the bush. No beating around the bush. In the long run, the political division between us and the Palestinians will be two states on the two sides of the Jordan River. That will be the basic configuration. What we will say to the Palestinians is that the main lesson from the crisis of the Oslo paradigm is that there will not be another sovereign state west of the Jordan. There will be no partition. The only state in the world of the Jewish civilization needs a minimum of territory. It has to be a reasonable state. Not gigantic, not insane, not the Tigris and the Euphrates. A reasonable state." What is the reasonable minimum as you see it? "The western Land of Israel. All of it." And what will become of the Palestinians? "For that a regional solution will be needed. It is inconceivable that of all the resources in the Middle East, the country that is poorest in land should have to bear the problem of the Palestinian Arabs with its depleted resources. The Egyptians and Jordanians have to be told that they need to contribute their share." What share will the Egyptians have to contribute? "Sinai. Egypt has to offer the territorial reserves of Sinai for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The desirable situation is that the residents of Gaza will get territory in Sinai, and will be able to receive citizenship in a sovereign Palestinian state that will be a two-lobed state. Its central lobe will be Jordan, but it will have another lobe in Sinai." Will this Palestinian state in Sinai come in place of Gaza or in addition to Gaza? "I don't think it will be in place of Gaza. Not everything has to be solved now. But what has to be solved is a problem that Israel clearly cannot solve by itself. And the problem of Gaza is a human and demographic and social time-bomb that Israel clearly cannot solve by itself. Even if the Palestinians are given the Katif Bloc [the section of the Gaza Strip where most of the Jewish settlements are], that will not solve the problem. Even if they are given Ashkelon. The only area that can give the people of Gaza living space is the empty territory of Sinai." Do you also foresee a population being drawn from Gaza to Sinai? "Yes, definitely, without a doubt." And what about Jordan? What will its contribution be? "Jordan will ultimately have to be the political and territorial venue for the national aspirations of the Palestinian Arabs. I don't think [King] Abdullah should be undermined. Israel does not have to be involved in that. But I believe that evolutionary processes of democratization in Jordan will give greater representation to the Palestinian people there." And what will become of the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza? "They will be residents without the right to vote. We have to obtain an interim settlement regarding their status. Not on the status of the territory - on their status. They have to be given a choice between enlightened residency with us or dark citizenship in the Arab states. The Arabs in Judea and Samaria will be able to make a free choice between a situation in which they will be Palestinian citizens who are residents of Israel, or citizens of their country who reside in the Palestinian state in Jordan and Sinai." And what will induce them to cross to the other side of the Jordan? To emigrate? "I don't want to be hypocritical. But I will put it like this: We do not need a declared emigration policy that encourages the emigration of Arabs. I think that we have to sincerely offer them an alternative of residency. Of course, whoever does not accept will have to be told: Your place is not with us. In a case like that, not even a wink is needed." Are you for or against transfer? "I am against easy solutions. I could tell you, let's do transfer. Let's take all these Arabs from Judea and Samaria and the Galilee and the Negev, and expel them. I think that is a solution that could be politically enticing. A lot of people are ready to listen to a statement like that today. But I do not make that statement because it is a prevarication. First of all, morally. I think that anyone who wants to live with us under the conditions of the State of Israel and under rules saying that Israel is a Jewish state, can live here. Transfer is something that it's not right to talk about. I would not deal with it, either as a political option or as something that can now be swallowed from a moral point of view." That is in the normal course of things, but what if a war breaks out? "War is a game with different rules. I don't think that professors who support peace feel uncomfortable in the Green House that is in the middle of the campus of Tel Aviv University and was once the mosque of the village of Sheikh Munis." So, in a war, the uprooting of a Palestinian population would be a possibility? "The State of Israel will not force individuals to change their location. People who live in Judea and Samaria will live there and neither they nor their land nor their homes will be touched. But if a total war is forced on us, a zero-sum war, the result could be that there will be a similar Sheikh Munis somewhere else, too. I want to emphasize: I would not want that to happen. I see that as a bad and bitter result. I am not winking and not hinting. On the contrary, I am proposing a regional solution to prevent that. But if they do not meet us halfway, and if there is no regional solution and the Palestinian offensive continues, the dynamic will shift toward a total war that is liable to inflict a tragedy on the Palestinian people." Are you talking about 1948 redux? A repeat of what happened in 1948 in the areas of Judea and Samaria? "Yes, of course. If the alternative is the suicide of the State of Israel and if a war is forced on us, then in war, behave as in war. I can definitely see that as a consequence of a war, not many Arabs will remain here." And what about the Israeli Arabs? "Israel is making a big mistake with the Israeli Arabs. It is according legitimization to a process that cannot be seen other than as the Arab minority's betrayal of Israel. Sheer betrayal. Therefore, if we do not place a warning sign in front of the Israeli Arabs, they are liable to cross lines that we will then have to demarcate anew, and we will be forced to engage in a very difficult struggle with people who are citizens of the country. "I am not in favor of depriving them of the right to vote. On the contrary. But I say that the current leadership of the Israeli Arabs will bring us and them into a frontal clash in which we will have to reconsider the ability of Israeli democracy to permit that public to go on taking part in it." What are you actually saying? "I am saying that the Israeli Arabs are in large measure the ticking bomb beneath the whole democratic Israeli order inside the [1967] Green Line. Even today, in the Galilee and the Negev, a de facto autonomy of theirs is being created, which could in practice turn Israel into the bubble of Metropolitan Tel Aviv. Into a kind of pipe-state: a country of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv-Haifa road. Therefore, I say that the State of Israel today faces an existential threat that is characterized by being an elusive threat, and elusive threats by their nature resemble cancer. Cancer is a type of illness in which most of the people who die from it die because they were diagnosed too late. By the time you grasp the size of the threat, it is already too late to deal with it." So, according to your viewpoint, the Israeli Arabs, too, are liable to find themselves not here? "The Israeli Arabs will remain citizens of the state if they do not cross the red lines. It's possible that when a Palestinian state is established in Jordan and Sinai, they will prefer to move their right to vote to the place where the fate of their people is decided, but that is still a long way off. It is still too soon to deal with it." II. My God Effi Eitam, you are a believing person. In what do you believe? "I believe that the Jewish people has a role. I believe that this anomaly in which we traverse all of human history is not just a historical and biological fact: It is a commitment. I believe we have a mission in the world. We have been given a mission." What is the mission? "To reveal God's image in the world." Could you explain that? "The Jewish people is different in a very deep way from every other people. I see the Jewish people as a kind of big family. A small people, a big family. And the most intimate family trait we have is that we encountered the Master of the Universe. We are, in fact, a family whose whole culture and whose whole memory and whose whole way of life revolve around the experience of the encounter with the Master of the Universe. That is our national story. That is what sets us apart." What do Jews have that others do not? "Jews have a way of life that transforms the image of God in mankind from a spark, from a sort of flash, into a continuous light. In the Torah lies the ability to maintain the image of God in mankind continuously and throughout life and in many spheres. You have to understand, every person in the world has a moment in which he is superior to the animals. Every person has a momentary flash of transcendence. But what is new here is to take this from the individual core to the commonalty. Because we are not only individuals who possess the image of God - we are a nation that possesses the image of God. That is the great innovation. What is new is that there is a nation that has this. There is a nation with a soul." If so, what you are saying is that a world without Jews is a world without a soul, a dead world? "A dead world. Without Jews the world cannot live. A world without Jews is a world of robots without a soul. A dead world. The world before the establishment of the State of Israel is not the same world that exists after Israel's establishment. The State of Israel is the seed. It is the Noah's ark of the world's future. We are the heart of the organs. That is the reason for the hostility toward us." I want to make sure I have understood. Do you maintain that we are substantively different from every other people and that at the deepest level, we are not a people like all other peoples and not a state like all other states? "That is correct, and in my opinion that is what underlies the crisis of the State of Israel today. I see it like this: Zionism at its outset inscribed on its banner the aspiration to be like all peoples. A state like all states. It espoused normality - to be a Western, secular, liberal state. America. But today we have reached a situation in which that striving for normality, to be a state like all the other states, has turned out to be insufficient. It was very important in the first stage, the stage of our birth. But today it is not enough. Today we must clarify what our soul is, what our statement to the world is." What is our statement? "That man has a connection with the Master of the Universe. That man is not alone in the world. In every place and in every generation, the Jews were the womb that preserved the divine idea. That is, in fact, the self-sacrifice of the Jews across the generations. The insistence on Sh'ma Yisrael. Without that, we are in large measure dead. We are an organization without a soul. Because that is our avocation: to restore to mankind his dialogue with the Master of the Universe." From your point of view, is the State of Israel actually the state of the Lord? "Of course. Israel is in large measure like the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. Here there is a state that carries God's image. The nation that was at Mount Sinai received this mission, this trait. It carries God's image in history. Therefore, I say that the innovation that the Jewish people proposes as a nation is a double one: (1) There is infinite absolute good, and (2) we have the responsibility to realize that good in the world. First of all for ourselves, but also for the whole world. We are the carriers of the tidings of a world revolution." Do you see this revolution being carried out in practice? Do you see it beginning in a great movement of teshuva, a return to God? "The word `teshuva' has an almost violent connotation, as of missionaries. So I would speak of drawing close, a movement of drawing near. I would adopt the slogan of returning to ourselves. To return to ourselves, not in the sense of fleeing from Judea and Samaria [as in the slogan of Peace Now], but in the sense of returning to our selfhood. To what is Jewish and dedicated in us. "For a long time, Israel has been living with its heart in a fist. The heart is there, it is beating, but it is inside a fist. That is why we are so angry at ourselves; so hard with ourselves. But I have no doubt that the moment we begin to allow ourselves to be us, the process will be very, very unexpected and very, very nonlinear. Suddenly, a spring that has been hidden within us will burst forth. A light that is hidden within us. And when it begins to bubble forth, unexpected things will happen." Do you see redemption? "Of course, of course. For me, the State of Israel is the revelation of divine providence in history. It is the embodiment of divine providence within the human order of life. And the State of Israel is the beginning of the emergence of our redemption. It is the expression of God's operation in the world. I have a fundamental conception of the period in which we are living: that it is the most riveting and most amazing time in which the Jewish people has ever lived. I feel that in front of my eyes, the most meaningful process of the repair of the world for 2,000 years is taking place. Every number, every event, every newspaper headline, is some sort of decoding of something that was inherent in the secret of the generations, the secret of the kabbala. It is a secret that was hidden in the bosom of history and is now being realized in practice. "That is why I am not pessimistic. Because we are standing on the brink. It is like some sort of metamorphosis, and the hard moment is just before the chrysalis becomes a butterfly. At that instant, it looks totally impossible. One's very existence appears to be in danger. But immediately afterward, the wonderful wings of the butterfly emerge." Does this have an effect on the political events that are occurring around us in the world of concrete history? "Yes. Paradoxically, the more the Palestinians move in the direction of religious thoughts, on the one hand, we see radicalization among them, but on the other hand, they increasingly understand the role of the Jewish people and the role of the State of Israel in connection with clarifying the image of God within the nations. They understand far better than we do that the State of Israel is the hope of the world. "So it is no coincidence that all their moral savagery is organized to prevent this. And in the midst of this is Jerusalem; in the midst of it is the Temple Mount. Because all the forces in the world are against this thing that is about to appear: the revolution of the revolutions, the healing of the world in the kingdom of Shadai." You mentioned the Temple Mount. What is its meaning for you? "The Temple Mount is the point of meeting. From it stems the ability to go forth as human beings and as a nation and as an army and as a government and as a Knesset and as flesh-and-blood Jews to this great call Sh'ma Yisrael. The Temple Mount is the point of meeting of our vertical mission - we have a horizontal mission throughout the land, the whole of the Land of Israel. But that point is the coordinate from which we go forth and from the power of which we stand up for the call. Every person has a certain core, a certain heart which, if taken away, leaves nothing. The body is there but there is nothing. So this place is the essence of the soul. The essence of life. And it is there. It is on the Temple Mount." Do you see the failure of the talks on handing over the Temple Mount as expressing divine providence? "Of course. There was something there that has no rational explanation." Do you find intolerable the fact that the Temple Mount is in practice not in our hands? "Yes. Definitely. But that will be solved." How will it be solved? "I have no doubt that in the last analysis, the call `The Temple Mount is in our hands' is a Jewish historical truth that will be realized. I think that what happened in 1967 was a leap of history. And now we are in a process at the end of which the Temple Mount will be not only in our hands, but in our heart, part of our order of life. But this is a process and I wouldn't hasten it. I wouldn't say immediately." Do the mosques on the Temple Mount pain you badly? "I see that as a distortion. I see that as a breakdown at the level of the state of the world. It is a kind of point of tohu [desolate waste] within the order of the world. And that point needs to be made right." And it will assuredly be made right? "Of course, of course. There is no doubt. Anyone who proposes that we return to the lowlands, to our low part, to the dunes, to the sands, and leave the heights of holiness in the hands of strangers, is talking nonsense. The Gemara defines `tohu.' What is tohu? It is a green line that circumvents the world from which the dark emanates. In our generation, it has a literal meaning. The Green Line is the line of tohu. Therefore, the fact that we are not sitting on the Temple Mount and not sitting in the Land of Israel, is not only our own local or national breakdown. It is the point of tohu of the world. It is the point of darkness that embodies all the evil, all the presumptuousness and the wrongs of the world." In the end, there has to be a Temple at that point? "Look, that is a question that even the sages of Israel have refrained from answering in detail. That is our great yearning. That is our heart's prayer. But we must not tinker with the idea concretely - we must not discuss which firm will build it or how high it will be. After all, we know more or less how to do everything. But it is still too soon. It is still forbidden. The level of our national soul is still not sufficiently developed." Is the movement in that direction? Is it to there that we have to move? "Yes. There must be no shortcuts, no leaps. But it is clear that the State of Israel is going there. It is written, `I redeemed you in the end as in the beginning.' In other words, our end is certainly as our beginning. In the end, we want to be a nation that has in it an encounter with the Master of the Universe as a hard reality." III. The reason I'm here Do you yourself have a feeling of personal providence? "Yes, yes. But when I say `providence,' that does not mean I was chosen and therefore I am protected. What it means is responsibility. If my mother survived everything she went through in the Second World War, and if my father endured what he did, and if when I was growing up in Kibbutz Ein Gev, I was shelled, and if I wasn't killed in the Yom Kippur War and in all the other wars - then I have a commitment. I have been given responsibility." Do you feel that you have been in some way prepared especially for this historical moment? "I already thought in terms of leading the country when I was 18. My wife, Illit, met me then in the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv when I still had a full head of curly hair and she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I told her I wanted to be the leader of the people of Israel. It is not that I walked around with a feeling of being the Chosen One. And I didn't think in terms of becoming prime minister, either. But I told her: leader of the people of Israel." Doesn't that have a biblical ring? "That's right. That's how it was." Was there any biblical figure to whom you were especially drawn? "The figure who attracts me is David. It attracts me very much. I do not think of myself as King David. But yes, that figure is very important to me. He had a synthesis that has attracted me for years: a man of the spirit and a man of action; a man of tremendous modesty toward the sacred and of tremendous heroism toward anyone who threatens this womb of the people of Israel." And among modern figures? "Yitzhak Sadeh [a founder of the pre-state Palmach "shock troops"]: He had great physical strength and was a very instinctual person, but he was also a man of the book and a thinker. He was a romantic. A boxer and a poet." Is that how you see yourself: as a boxer and a poet? "Yes. I am a very romantic person. But also practical." Is the combat experience a romantic one for you? "On the one hand, war is terrible. Someone is lying next to you and suddenly a tiny rose blossoms on his forehead and he is gone. Never to return. That is the worst loss there can be. But on the other hand, it certainly does not resemble murder or death in an earthquake or all kinds of other deaths of the individual. Because in hard days, bad days, there is also a kind of glory. In war, the most sublime things in man appear." Can you give me an example? "To this day, the thing that makes my eyes grow moist is when I saw young people loaded with equipment going into action and becoming silhouettes on the horizon. I think that is so dramatic, it is what moves me the most. Because it is the experience of the akeida [the binding, or sacrifice, of Isaac]. It is the experience of the akeida anew every time. And in this, there is a certain uplifting, like the offering of a sacrifice." Have you yourself ever experienced a moment of religious transcendence on the battlefield? "When I was a young lieutenant in the Yom Kippur War and I stopped the Syrian tanks on the fences of Nafah Camp [on the Golan Heights] with a bazooka, I had a feeling of transcendence. I have to say that. It is not the joy of war. I do not suggest initiating battles for that reason. But at that instant, I felt a certain absolute satisfaction and joy. "At first there was fear: not the fear of dying but the feeling of messing up. The fear that I would not succeed in stopping them. But after that, a kind of quiet descended on me. And suddenly it all became clear to me: Ein Gev and the sword of the besieged, and a people does not retreat from its lifework. Not that I thought in those terms then, but suddenly everything was clear and lucid. I felt that I was doing the thing for which I had come into the world." Were you born to fight? "I was not born for war. But I was born into a story, the essence of which was that one day, I would be able to save the people of Israel. For me it is very simple, not bombastic. The war was harsh, cruel, friends were killed. I was not happy about it as such. But the way things developed, I was at a critical point in a battle that was critical for the whole campaign. In other words, there was a situation in which I was called on to save the State of Israel. And I passed the test. Since then I have had happy moments in life of getting married and the birth of the children, but these are private joys, and totally without comparison. Because at that moment, I felt that I was standing exactly in the place where I was born to be." What is that place, and what is your role? "To save the people of Israel. In the simplest sense: to save the people of Israel and the State of Israel." Does something of that feeling accompany you now, too, when you are on the brink of entering politics? "The thing that frightens me most is that instead of `His glory filling the world,' I will reach a situation in which my glory fills the world. For me, the greatest heresy is that man's ego fills the world and leaves no room for God. The leader of the State of Israel also leads the Jewish people. He stands in the place where not only Ben-Gurion stood, but where Moses, too, stood. Where King David stood. So how does one do that, yet remain modest? How does one not get lost between coalition agreements and political intrigues, and a process that involves the very order of nature and the order of the heavens and the earth? "People ask me why I don't make a decision, why I am still agonizing. I am not agonizing over this or that political possibility, but I am agonizing over this fundamental question. It is precisely when people tell me, `Only you are the savior, only you are the leader,' that I become frightened. I am not frightened because I think I will not be able to make decisions. That is not my problem. But I am frightened that the move is so fast, and [am concerned about] how to ensure that I don't start thinking that no one exists but me. How does one achieve what Moses did: to be the humblest of men?" Yet isn't it the case that you have prepared yourself to be the leader of the people of Israel from the age of 18? "Yes, but that was a youthful statement. True, it was spoken out of an inner welling up of the soul. Still, it was immature. Even now I am not sure. But I am waiting for a sign. Not that this cup will suddenly fall. Not that lightning will strike. But I am waiting for a sign." © Copyright 2002 Ha`aretz - reprinted with permission
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