Israel today is a place that provides the most security to its citizens. We have the best army, the best citizens" (Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer, in a television interview, November 2001)
For generations, at least since Stanley Kubrick's film "2001 A Space Odyssey" from 1968 (based on a story by Arthur C. Clarke from 1950), the year 2001 flickered somewhere on the horizon as an enigmatic, futuristic fictional concept. The melancholic and pessimistic satire of the film presented a mixture of mental emptiness and technological progress, in the shadow of unsolved, mystical puzzles that elude man's reach. This is based on the premise that the development of man's devices - from the bone held by the ape-man, to the computerized spaceships - will indeed free him in 2001 from the hardships of existence on earth, but not from the confrontation with the meaning of his hollow and programmed life, and with the riddle of the universe that is somewhere beyond the stars.
But the real year 2001, which will end in a few days, provided far more sharp satire than any witty and pessimistic script; Because the premise was undermined in it, as if the "year" of 2001 would be synonymous with inventive innovation, the expansion of horizons, and at least the physical comfort and security of the human environment. But what to do, and almost the opposite happened: the actual year 2001 will be remembered precisely as the year of the technological collapse, the physical distress, the takeover of elementary existential insecurity, and above all - as the year of the renaissance of everything old, backward and ancient.
If an even greater disaster does not occur in the days remaining until the end of the year - the central image of 2001 will remain the burning and collapse of the "World Trade Center" towers in New York, whose echo of collapse shook the entire planet. And how ironic it is that instead of sophisticated spaceships we got simple Japanese knives in 2001; And instead of the threat inherent in the mighty computer "God" - humanity received a much more dangerous threat, in the form of the malicious and dream-eating mind of moles from the caves of Tora Bora, which seemed to emerge from the dawn of the first millennium AD. It is also ironic that in Kubrick's film the transportation convenience and safety were represented by interstellar spaceships of "Pan-Am" - the airline that was considered a sort of icon of American convenience and security itself, and which collapsed after the explosion over Lockerbie. And this as "soon" in preparation for the events of 2001 - the year when even a flight from Boston to New York became a dangerous gamble, and fighter jets were launched to intercept passenger planes in which a nail clipper was discovered.
The suddenness with which the security was undermined, the deterrence of the optimism in Western society, which has been based for fifty years on educational creativity, technology, reconciliation - this is the surprising odyssey of the real year 2001. The feeling of "life on the edge" suddenly spread in all the cities of the West, under the shadow of serious warnings about chemical, biological and atomic attacks; And it is still not clear if there is a turning point in this, or just a sort of "air pocket" into which humanity fell in its journey into the future. This year also saw the collapse of the high-tech economy; And if this coincidence seems like an exaggeration in the script, what can be said about the great revival of everything conflicted, primitive and primitive, that raised its head all over the world - but especially here, and in our region?
And indeed, the collapse of the peace process with the Palestinians, and the drift - sometimes with the enthusiasm of fools - to the escalation of violence and the destruction of all hope and creativity, this year seemed like a kind of inverted evolutionary process. It seems as if the plot of the movie "2001" takes place in our region from the end to the beginning: from the futuristic world, where the "New Middle East" was about to sail to the sounds of a waltz among the heavenly bodies of the political and economic initiatives - we returned to the Neanderthal existence and to the Stone Age. The place of the sophisticated and high-brow diplomats was taken by the baboons on both sides; And at home - instead of the updated vision of Israeliness for the end of the millennium (remember the "Civil Revolution"?) we received the 50 and XNUMX and the instinctive and fruitless, consciousness-escalating retaliatory actions that emerged straight from the XNUMXs.
If there was any consolation in our deteriorating situation, which rejects hope with a strange eagerness - it was expressed in the wretched "half-consolation" of all: that of the "trouble of many." Indeed, for a moment the attacks in New York dwarfed even the attacks in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. For a moment, the complacency of the districts that had for years been the district of scapegoats for many Israelis was shaken, to which the words of the prophet Amos can be applied: "When a man flees from the face of the lion - and the bear strikes, and the house comes and leans his hand against the wall - and the snake bites." But how miserable is this consolation, that "the whole world is bad and no longer safe, and therefore - with us it is good; that is - bad as everywhere, bad for glory".
Indeed, like a beggar and a millionaire, a dust-cloud of collapse covers them both and makes them similar - for one bittersweet moment "Tel Aviv" and "New York" became colleagues: because of the deterioration of their situation and not because of any improvement in our situation; Thanks to their sudden unhappiness more than thanks to our happiness or achievements. Sooty and dusty, we too were ushered, through the back entrance, into the lounges of the West, threatened by terrorism: we finally belong - by grace, not by right - only because we and them are being blown up. And this is perhaps the reason for the desperate and strange euphoria that has descended on Israel since September 11, and which also envelops the visionless and actionless government, whose slogan is one: "Blessed are we, victims of terror." We are defined by terrorism. We are united by terrorism. For a while we even became the people of the world, New Yorkers, because of the terrorism.
But this dream-illusion will not last long. Sooner or later the cloud of dust will disperse, and then the essential differences between Tel Aviv - and New York, between Israel - and the West will be revealed again, in their full depth; Between mighty powers, stretching from ocean to ocean - and between "poor Samson" huddled in a tiny and narrow strip of coast to the coast of Asia; Between living as a survivor-conqueror - and between living within defined and recognized boundaries; Between normality and the "right to happiness" - and between an existential anomaly. After all, as the hour of emergency, which currently overshadows everything, the basic data of geography, history, statistics, balances of power will be determined anew. And then it will become clear that "it's in our hands" not only to shine slogans on towers, or to unite around despair and inert nothingness, or to bask in the feeling of eternal victimhood, or to join the victims or vindictiveness of others - but to do for ourselves and our future; define the boundaries of our space; to look for a practical solution even in the very difficult objective data of reality.
"Open the doors of the escape hatch, God" - this is the famous sentence from "2001 A Space Odyssey", where the astronaut commands-begs before the computer-robot, which has taken over the spaceship and its journey. Who will open our escape hatch doors? Who will save us from the demented robot of escalation, obsolescence, inertia and despair, which took over the journey of our lives in 2001?
