Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Heroism against all odds

Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2003 | 8:45 a.m.

AS IF ISRAEL doesn't have enough problems.

We went on a trip back to the future Sunday night as my publisher (aka my mother), my wife and I journeyed to a very special evening in Los Angeles with the former Prime Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres. It is not an understatement to declare that Prime Minister Peres is one of the last and the current centuries' most brilliant statesmen and, at the very young age of 80, one of the world's great optimists.

I thought we were going to learn more about a very serious matter affecting the growth of the Jewish state and the Jewish people. We did. But we also were very warmly and pleasantly surprised to be a vital part of a recognition ceremony that recounted the acts of three heroes of Israel's War of Independence in 1948. All three men were Americans at the time they risked all they had to help the fledgling state defeat the combined armies of practically every Arab state in the Middle East.

The victory against overwhelming odds was a miracle, one that has been repeated throughout the short 55-year history of the tiny Jewish country.

Two of the men, Al Schwimmer and Lou Lenart, were at the ceremony. The third, Hank Greenspun, was not. But he was well-represented by my mother, my wife, Myra, and me. Lenart was the number one of four pilots in the Israeli Air Force when the war started. He was recruited by Mr. Schwimmer who, following the war, went on to start the Israel Aircraft Industries, which was responsible for Israel's superior technological power and incredible military victories in the ensuing decades. Al also recruited my father who was responsible for finding, securing and providing the munitions and armaments necessary for young Israelis to defend themselves and, ultimately, defeat the well-equipped and overpowering regular armies of the neighboring Arab states.

As some of the stories were recounted, I noticed a thirst among the 1,200 people gathered in the Stephen Wise Synagogue for more information about a time in history in which ordinary and extraordinary people became heroes. If not for the fights they encountered then for the reasons they fought them.

It was a thirst similar to that which I have noticed across America in the year 2003. We are all looking for heroes and their stories so that we will have something much larger than ourselves to believe in again. The American men and women who have fought so bravely in Iraq and Afghanistan are one source for such stories of selflessness. And there will be others because we need to rekindle the candle of optimism that has burned in Americans since the beginning and which, of late, has been flickering in the winds of uncertainty that blow across this world.

As is often the case, the uplifting stories came at a price. And that was the other reason we gathered together the other night.

Israel has long been known as the only democracy in the entire Middle East. If that were not the case, if the Arab countries and the tens of millions of people living within them were also democratic, then all this bloodshed and killing would not be happening. Rarely do democracies make war against each other.

But, like most democratic experiments, Israel has a few areas in its governing rules that can stand a little improvement. The matter of religion is a prime example.

Both the United States and Israel were founded on the principle of religious freedom. When the colonists sailed to the New World, they were in search of a land where they could pray as they wished, if they wished, without fear of coercion from the king. That concept was embodied in the very first amendment of the Bill of Rights.

When Israel was established as a homeland for the Jewish people, the United Nations recognized that this tiny country, grown out of the ashes of the Holocaust, was necessary for the sake of the Jews and their need to be free to worship as they pleased without persecution from a violent and all-too-often ignorant world.

The United States, with a few exceptions, has managed to remain true to the wishes of our Founding Fathers by keeping the long and all-powerful arm of government out of our religious lives, no matter how great the temptation to allow the interference has been.

Israel, on the other hand, has not fared as well. For whatever reasons, most of which have been political calculations gone awry, the balance of power in Israeli society has rested firmly in the decrees of the Chief Rabbis of that state. Why should Israel, like everything else Jewish, be content with just one Chief Rabbi when it can have two to cause a bigger stir?

The reason this has happened is because Israel's democratic system requires that coalitions be built in order to govern. Oftentimes, the smallest of Israel's political parties, mainly ultra-religious ones, determine whether the coalitions can be formed. With such inordinate power, far greater than their numbers would allow, they are able to "extort" concessions that would and should not normally be granted.

The danger, of course, is the same as would exist in the United States should the religious zealots among us gain so much power that they could dictate the political course of this country. While some might think we have already reached that point or, at least, have come dangerously close to doing so, the fact remains that we have a Constitution which prohibits such excess. Israel does not.

And because it doesn't, religious fundamentalists have been able to trump rational democratic thought. That has proven to be a dangerous obstacle to peace in the region as well as a greater danger to peace within Israel's borders among its own people.

That is why there is strong support in Israel for a law that will separate the church from the state. Sound familiar? Of course, the extreme religious parties do not like the concept because it will make them equal in the eyes of the law, not superior. But the vast majority of Israelis know that what works in the United States to help us form a more perfect union will also work in their part of the world.

The meeting Sunday night told the stories of Israel's early heroes. That meeting also told a contemporary story which will require a new set of heroes if Israel is to continue on its miraculous way. Being a light unto the nations isn't easy and it often requires that Israel learn from others.

The United States is an expert when it comes to the First Amendment and church and state issues. It is good that Israel is looking our way for answers.

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