Meanwhile:
A song and a victory that ring hollow
Uri Avnery International Herald Tribune
THURSDAY, MAY 19, 2005
TEL AVIV The uproar has been raging for weeks. Israel is shaken to the
core. Is it the postponed Gaza disengagement plan? Is it the killing of
demonstrators? No, it's a song.
Like a devout Christian, Naomi Shemer confessed on her deathbed
to the greatest sin of her life: Her immortal song, "Jerusalem of
Gold," is a copy of a Basque lullaby.
She hadn't stolen the melody consciously, she said, but had
absorbed it into her subconscious and taken it for her own. She also
took pains to stress that she had altered eight notes of the melody, so
that, according to the law, she had every right to the royalties she
had been receiving for 38 years.
It's an old story: A "new" song's tune turns out to have been
borrowed. Except that Shemer was no ordinary songwriter, and this no
ordinary song.
Shemer is a symbol of what is called, nostalgically, "the
beautiful Eretz Israel." She was born in a socialist kibbutz on the
shores of the Sea of Tiberias and celebrated the landscape of the
country in words and music. Even when she married an extreme rightist
and became an icon of that trend, leftists continued to admire her for
her engaging personality and her songs.
But because of its history, the song was even more important than
the songwriter.
Thirty-eight years ago, on the eve of Independence Day 1967,
Shemer wrote a song for an Israeli competition and insisted that it be
sung by an unknown young singer.
The song touched the souls of all who heard it. But it would have
remained just a beautiful song if the Six-Day War had not broken out a
few weeks later. The Israeli Army conquered East Jerusalem, reaching
the Western Wall, a remnant of the ancient Jewish Temple. Israel was
swept by the intoxication of victory, spiced with a semi-religious
mysticism.
Overnight, "Jerusalem of Gold" became the supreme expression of a
victory that was seen as a redemption.
At the time, I was a member of the Knesset, Israel's Parliament,
and saw an opportunity. I do not like our national anthem. Written more
than 100 years ago, it expressed the longing of the Jewish Diaspora for
the Land of Israel. It is a hymn of a dispersed religious-ethnic
community rather than the anthem of a sovereign state.
In addition, more than 20 percent of Israeli citizens are not
Jews, and it is not healthy that so many citizens cannot identify with
the anthem and the flag of their state.
I proposed Naomi Shemer's song as a national anthem, introducing
a bill in the Knesset to this effect. Its speaker insisted I obtain
Shemer's agreement, so I met her in a Tel Aviv café. I detected
a certain hesitation on her part, which I understand only now. But in
the end she was not opposed to the idea.
The bill was never put to a vote, but "Jerusalem of Gold" has
since enjoyed the unofficial status of a second national anthem, and
especially as the anthem of the Six-Day War. This is what makes the
present uproar more than a scandal about a song and its author.
"Jerusalem of Gold" has suffered the same fate as the Six-Day War.
That war was preceded by three weeks of mounting anxiety, when
almost all Israelis believed that the state and its inhabitants were in
mortal danger. The armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan were poised - so
it seemed - to eradicate it from the face of the earth. The Israeli
Army attacked first, defeated all three and conquered not only the
remainder of Palestine, but also the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan
Heights.
Years later, it became clear to historians that there had been no
real danger to the state, that the neighboring countries had not
intended to attack but merely to bluff, that Israel's victory had been
no miracle but the result of meticulous preparations. But the myth
survives to this day.
After the fighting, it was clear that Israel would be compelled
to leave the occupied territories. Until that happened, it was
believed, the Palestinian people would live under a "benign occupation."
Since then, 38 long years have passed. The "benign occupation"
has long since turned into a brutal and ugly regime of oppression. The
prophecy of Professor Yeshayahu Leibovitz, that the occupation would
corrupt us through and through and turn us into a people of exploiters
and secret-service men, has come awfully true.
Israel is a country built on many symbols and myths. What could
be more symbolic than the destruction of the myth of the Six-Day War,
followed by the collapse of the myth of "Jerusalem of Gold," that war's
song?
(Uri Avnery heads the Israeli peace movement Gush Shalom. )
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