0:00:12 > 0:00:15Every year in the spring,
0:00:15 > 0:00:19a country born from the ashes of annihilation
0:00:19 > 0:00:23remembers a loss for which there are no words.
0:00:23 > 0:00:25SIREN WAILS
0:00:43 > 0:00:46SIREN CONTINUES
0:01:47 > 0:01:50SIREN GRADUALLY FADES THEN STOPS
0:02:09 > 0:02:15Everybody standing by their truck or their car or in the street
0:02:15 > 0:02:18just knows it could have been us.
0:02:21 > 0:02:23It's still heartbreaking.
0:02:30 > 0:02:32And then life goes on.
0:02:51 > 0:02:56Today, around half the Jews in the world live here in Israel.
0:02:56 > 0:02:57Six million people,
0:02:57 > 0:03:02six million defeats for the Nazi programme of total extermination.
0:03:09 > 0:03:13I've always thought that Israel is the consummation
0:03:13 > 0:03:15of some of the highest ethical values
0:03:15 > 0:03:18of Jewish tradition and history.
0:03:18 > 0:03:22But creating a place of safety and defending it
0:03:22 > 0:03:27has sometimes challenged those same ethics and values.
0:03:30 > 0:03:32How all this came about
0:03:32 > 0:03:34and what the consequences for the world are
0:03:34 > 0:03:39is the last chapter of our story without an end.
0:04:27 > 0:04:31I was born in 1945.
0:04:31 > 0:04:33Before I was out of short trousers,
0:04:33 > 0:04:35I knew about those other boys,
0:04:35 > 0:04:37the boys of the ghettos and camps,
0:04:37 > 0:04:41the ones who never got to be Bar Mitzvahed.
0:04:49 > 0:04:52My Bar Mitzvah party was just around the corner from here.
0:04:55 > 0:04:59Back then, I hadn't heard of Szmul Zygielbojm,
0:04:59 > 0:05:02a Polish Jew who lived in this part of west London
0:05:02 > 0:05:06between the springs of 1942 and 1943,
0:05:06 > 0:05:10the year when three million other Polish Jews were murdered.
0:05:16 > 0:05:19Zygielbojm had escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto
0:05:19 > 0:05:23charged with the grave mission of alerting the Allies
0:05:23 > 0:05:26to the brutal mistreatment of Jews in occupied Europe...
0:05:27 > 0:05:31..to the massacres that followed Nazi arrival,
0:05:31 > 0:05:34to the plans for a wholesale annihilation.
0:05:35 > 0:05:39He spent 18 months in America
0:05:39 > 0:05:43addressing rallies, trying to rouse the conscience of politicians
0:05:43 > 0:05:46now that information about the Nazis' extermination plans
0:05:46 > 0:05:49was becoming irrefutable,
0:05:49 > 0:05:51and all to little effect.
0:05:51 > 0:05:55Then Zygielbojm went back to Britain and spoke on the BBC,
0:05:55 > 0:05:59saying things you don't usually hear on the BBC.
0:05:59 > 0:06:04He said this - "It would be a crime and a disgrace to go on living,
0:06:04 > 0:06:06"to belong to the human race
0:06:06 > 0:06:09"unless immediate action is taken
0:06:09 > 0:06:14"to stop the greatest crime ever known to human history."
0:06:20 > 0:06:25In April 1943, an SS operation to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto
0:06:25 > 0:06:28ran into fierce, armed Jewish resistance...
0:06:30 > 0:06:35..the first major rising against Nazi rule in occupied Europe.
0:06:38 > 0:06:41It took the SS a month to crush it.
0:06:41 > 0:06:43Many of the leaders of the uprising
0:06:43 > 0:06:45were Zygielbojm's friends and comrades.
0:06:47 > 0:06:50And among those who perished were Zygielbojm's wife and son.
0:06:54 > 0:06:56At exactly the same time,
0:06:56 > 0:06:59British and American diplomats were meeting in Bermuda
0:06:59 > 0:07:03to discuss the plight of wartime refugees.
0:07:04 > 0:07:08The words "Jew" and "Jewish" were banned from the proceedings.
0:07:12 > 0:07:14After ten days of talk,
0:07:14 > 0:07:17the Allies decided to do...nothing.
0:07:19 > 0:07:21But Szmul Zygielbojm acted.
0:07:21 > 0:07:25He wrote a letter to the Polish government in exile
0:07:25 > 0:07:26and to the world, saying,
0:07:26 > 0:07:30"My comrades fell with their arms in their hands.
0:07:30 > 0:07:33"It was not permitted to me to join them,
0:07:33 > 0:07:35"but I belong to their mass grave."
0:07:41 > 0:07:44The Holocaust put paid to the idea
0:07:44 > 0:07:47that when facing annihilation,
0:07:47 > 0:07:51the Jews had any reason to expect much in the way of protection,
0:07:51 > 0:07:55succour or asylum from anyone.
0:07:55 > 0:07:57Expressions of concern, yes,
0:07:57 > 0:08:01but not what you'd actually call saving lives.
0:08:01 > 0:08:04So it was not just what the Nazis did to the Jews,
0:08:04 > 0:08:07but what everyone else failed to do
0:08:07 > 0:08:10that made the moral case for Israel.
0:08:19 > 0:08:23For the Jews who had somehow survived the Holocaust,
0:08:23 > 0:08:25this is what salvation looked like
0:08:25 > 0:08:29in the years immediately after the Second World War...
0:08:30 > 0:08:33..the coastline of Palestine.
0:08:35 > 0:08:38They came here in their tens of thousands
0:08:38 > 0:08:42on dangerously overcrowded rust-bucket ships,
0:08:42 > 0:08:45a desperate exodus from the blood lands of central Europe
0:08:45 > 0:08:49where two-thirds of Jews had been wiped out.
0:08:52 > 0:08:55There was no returning to that continent of phantoms.
0:08:55 > 0:08:59Some who tried to go back to what had been their homes
0:08:59 > 0:09:02in Poland or Romania were harassed, assaulted,
0:09:02 > 0:09:04sometimes even killed.
0:09:09 > 0:09:12But Palestine didn't want them either.
0:09:12 > 0:09:14Since the end of the First World War,
0:09:14 > 0:09:16it had been controlled by the British,
0:09:16 > 0:09:19who for decades had struggled to keep a lid
0:09:19 > 0:09:23on a vicious inter-communal war between the Arabs and the Jews.
0:09:24 > 0:09:27The sudden influx of tens of thousands of Jews was,
0:09:27 > 0:09:29from the British perspective,
0:09:29 > 0:09:33impossible, threatening chaos inside Palestine
0:09:33 > 0:09:36and Arab hostility outside.
0:09:41 > 0:09:45So the Jews were taken off their ships, put onto cattle trucks,
0:09:45 > 0:09:48unloaded a few miles further down the coast
0:09:48 > 0:09:52and escorted to a camp surrounded by barbed wire
0:09:52 > 0:09:55where men were separated from women and children
0:09:55 > 0:09:59and everyone was directed towards a shower block
0:09:59 > 0:10:01that dominated the centre of the camp.
0:10:05 > 0:10:07For Holocaust survivors,
0:10:07 > 0:10:11memory wounds, barely scarred over, opened again.
0:10:13 > 0:10:15One of them was called Berele Wagner.
0:10:17 > 0:10:22He'd survived the liquidation of the Romanian ghettos and wrote this -
0:10:22 > 0:10:24"Arriving at Atlit detention centre,
0:10:24 > 0:10:27the British soldiers stripped us naked,
0:10:27 > 0:10:33"threw our clothes in the laundry and then forced us into a disinfection room,
0:10:33 > 0:10:36"which was just like the gas chambers
0:10:36 > 0:10:38"in a German concentration camp."
0:10:42 > 0:10:45"I'd thought the struggle was over
0:10:45 > 0:10:48"and I realised that it had only just begun."
0:10:50 > 0:10:54Of course, Atlit was no concentration camp.
0:10:54 > 0:10:56The inmates were humanely treated
0:10:56 > 0:11:00before being sent on to internment camps in Cyprus.
0:11:00 > 0:11:03But how on earth had it come to this?
0:11:03 > 0:11:08British squaddies forcibly deporting Jewish survivors of a genocide?
0:11:18 > 0:11:21At the end of the First World War,
0:11:21 > 0:11:24the situation had been very different.
0:11:24 > 0:11:25Then, Jews around the world
0:11:25 > 0:11:28had blessed the name of the British Empire
0:11:28 > 0:11:32for an historic pledge freely given by its political leaders,
0:11:32 > 0:11:34the Balfour Declaration,
0:11:34 > 0:11:3967 bland words that committed Britain to support the creation
0:11:39 > 0:11:42of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
0:11:50 > 0:11:54The man who did more than anyone to bring this about was Chaim Weizmann,
0:11:54 > 0:11:58"a Yid from Motol", as he described himself,
0:11:58 > 0:12:02a muddy hamlet in the Pripet marshes between Pinsk and Minsk,
0:12:02 > 0:12:05the usual combination of isolation and persecution,
0:12:05 > 0:12:07poverty and pogroms.
0:12:12 > 0:12:18Chaim Weizmann displayed all the combustible elements of a shtetl Jew -
0:12:18 > 0:12:21passionately excitable, tirelessly argumentative,
0:12:21 > 0:12:24earthily idealistic.
0:12:24 > 0:12:28But he combined all this with the cool analytical precision
0:12:28 > 0:12:33and dogged patience of his chosen metier - chemistry.
0:12:35 > 0:12:38His journey from yeshiva school to laboratory
0:12:38 > 0:12:40had been a remarkable one.
0:12:40 > 0:12:42In the early 1900s,
0:12:42 > 0:12:46he'd come to Manchester University as a lecturer and researcher
0:12:46 > 0:12:50where he was perfectly placed to pursue his other passion,
0:12:50 > 0:12:54as a dedicated and tireless campaigner for the Zionist cause,
0:12:54 > 0:12:58ultimately becoming leader of the World Zionist Movement.
0:13:03 > 0:13:05He never disguised his conviction
0:13:05 > 0:13:11that a Jewish homeland could exist only in one place - Palestine.
0:13:11 > 0:13:13His insistence on this point
0:13:13 > 0:13:16would come as a revelation to British politicians
0:13:16 > 0:13:19like Arthur Balfour or David Lloyd George,
0:13:19 > 0:13:22who'd imagined Argentina or East Africa
0:13:22 > 0:13:26might be more practical solutions to "the Jewish question".
0:13:30 > 0:13:33What the establishment couldn't resist
0:13:33 > 0:13:36was someone who brought the human reality of the Jews -
0:13:36 > 0:13:41their terror, squalor, righteous anger and craving for Zion -
0:13:41 > 0:13:43right into the corridors of power.
0:13:43 > 0:13:47When Weizmann spoke, it was "Hear, O England",
0:13:47 > 0:13:51and, having heard, the movers and shakers felt
0:13:51 > 0:13:56mysteriously compelled towards an act of moral salvation.
0:13:56 > 0:13:59What was the point, after all, of having the British Empire
0:13:59 > 0:14:01unless you did something grand?
0:14:01 > 0:14:05"Are we to have no more adventures?" asked Balfour.
0:14:05 > 0:14:08And even hard-headed men like Lloyd George
0:14:08 > 0:14:14felt good about giving the Jews what they wanted and needed.
0:14:18 > 0:14:21When the world went to war in 1914,
0:14:21 > 0:14:26the other side of Weizmann's extraordinary character came to the fore.
0:14:26 > 0:14:31His discovery of a technique for synthesising a vital ingredient
0:14:31 > 0:14:35for high explosives kept the British war machine turning
0:14:35 > 0:14:38and cemented his alliance with the great and the good.
0:14:42 > 0:14:46David Lloyd George would later claim that the Balfour Declaration
0:14:46 > 0:14:50had been a reward to Weizmann for services rendered.
0:14:50 > 0:14:54"I only wish it had been as simple as that," was Weizmann's response.
0:14:56 > 0:15:00As the minutes of Weizmann's Zionist committee made clear,
0:15:00 > 0:15:03the negotiations were long and hard,
0:15:03 > 0:15:07the lobbying from Jewish anti-Zionists intense,
0:15:07 > 0:15:10the outcome always in doubt.
0:15:12 > 0:15:16When the civil servant brought Weizmann a copy of the declaration,
0:15:16 > 0:15:19he said exuberantly, "It's a boy!"
0:15:19 > 0:15:22Weizmann later wrote in his autobiography,
0:15:22 > 0:15:25"Well, I did not like the look of that boy very much.
0:15:25 > 0:15:31"He was not what I expected. All the same, I knew it was a great departure."
0:15:31 > 0:15:33Why his slight reservation?
0:15:33 > 0:15:36Well, the wording that Weizmann had wanted
0:15:36 > 0:15:40talked about the reconstitution of Palestine
0:15:40 > 0:15:43as a Jewish national home.
0:15:43 > 0:15:49The wording he got talked about a Jewish national home in Palestine,
0:15:49 > 0:15:52maybe in a very small piece of Palestine.
0:15:52 > 0:15:54They were not the same at all.
0:15:54 > 0:15:57All the same, this was so much more
0:15:57 > 0:16:00than Weizmann or his colleagues could possibly have hoped for
0:16:00 > 0:16:03even a few years before.
0:16:03 > 0:16:06At that very moment, the moment of the declaration,
0:16:06 > 0:16:11Jews in Weizmann's old home, Russia, were being assaulted and massacred,
0:16:11 > 0:16:14pogrom after pogrom.
0:16:14 > 0:16:17Now, courtesy of British imperial interests,
0:16:17 > 0:16:20but also of genuine British enthusiasm,
0:16:20 > 0:16:26they would have some sort of home in Palestine to go to.
0:16:26 > 0:16:31The word "miracle" gets horribly overused in Jewish history.
0:16:31 > 0:16:35For once, it seems like the right word.
0:16:37 > 0:16:42But the Jews weren't the only ones being promised miracles.
0:16:42 > 0:16:45Fired by the same spirit of idealism and adventure
0:16:45 > 0:16:48that had inspired the Balfour Declaration,
0:16:48 > 0:16:51and directed, in some cases, by the very same people,
0:16:51 > 0:16:57the British had simultaneously been making undertakings to the Arabs
0:16:57 > 0:16:59about their national independence.
0:17:01 > 0:17:04They'd even sent a British officer called Lawrence
0:17:04 > 0:17:08to help the Arabs plan their revolt against Turkish rule.
0:17:10 > 0:17:13It's easy to be cynical about these British strategies -
0:17:13 > 0:17:17duplicitous, delusional, doomed - take your pick.
0:17:17 > 0:17:21Even so, by the war's end, there was reason to believe
0:17:21 > 0:17:24that the aspirations of Jew and Arab
0:17:24 > 0:17:27could both, somehow, be accommodated
0:17:27 > 0:17:29in a modernised Middle East
0:17:29 > 0:17:32under the paternalistic eye of the British Empire.
0:17:34 > 0:17:37You don't have to take my word for it.
0:17:37 > 0:17:39Listen to the words of Prince Faisal,
0:17:39 > 0:17:41later King Faisal of Iraq.
0:17:42 > 0:17:47Well, here's what the military leader of the Arab Revolt
0:17:47 > 0:17:51felt about Zionism in 1919.
0:17:51 > 0:17:55Faisal writes to Felix Frankfurter,
0:17:55 > 0:17:58senior American Zionist,
0:17:58 > 0:18:00in the following way.
0:18:00 > 0:18:03"Dear Mr Frankfurter,
0:18:03 > 0:18:07"I want to take this opportunity of my first contact with American Zionists
0:18:07 > 0:18:11"to tell you what I've often been able to say to Dr Weizmann
0:18:11 > 0:18:13"in Arabia and Europe.
0:18:13 > 0:18:17"We feel that the Arabs and Jews are cousins in race,
0:18:17 > 0:18:19"have suffered similar oppressions
0:18:19 > 0:18:23"at the hands of powers stronger than themselves.
0:18:23 > 0:18:27"We Arabs, especially the educated among us,
0:18:27 > 0:18:32"look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement.
0:18:32 > 0:18:37"We will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home."
0:18:39 > 0:18:42Now, that, to me, is incredibly moving.
0:18:42 > 0:18:47Yes, the historian in me knows Faisal had an interest
0:18:47 > 0:18:49in recruiting Jewish influence,
0:18:49 > 0:18:52even Jewish money, to the Arab cause.
0:18:52 > 0:18:55Weizmann and the Zionists in their turn
0:18:55 > 0:19:00had an interest in keeping people like Faisal happy
0:19:00 > 0:19:03for the purposes of Jewish immigration to Palestine.
0:19:03 > 0:19:09All the same, the cynic in me is banished at this particular moment.
0:19:09 > 0:19:13This is a document, with all the reservations
0:19:13 > 0:19:16and understanding of the complexity of the issue,
0:19:16 > 0:19:19this is a document of what might have been
0:19:19 > 0:19:23and, do you know, what might still be.
0:19:29 > 0:19:32Chaim Weizmann never stopped believing
0:19:32 > 0:19:35that Jews and Arabs could be reconciled
0:19:35 > 0:19:39through the benevolent power of modernisation and progress.
0:19:39 > 0:19:43But in the meantime, he got on with the hard slog
0:19:43 > 0:19:46of building a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
0:19:51 > 0:19:54Land was bought, farms established,
0:19:54 > 0:19:57Jewish immigration increased,
0:19:57 > 0:20:00but always strictly controlled by the British.
0:20:03 > 0:20:06They were realising far too late
0:20:06 > 0:20:09that the Arab nationalism they had once encouraged
0:20:09 > 0:20:12and thought could be managed by the likes of Faisal
0:20:12 > 0:20:16had fostered a local Palestinian nationalism
0:20:16 > 0:20:21that saw in the Jews the alien usurpers of their land.
0:20:25 > 0:20:30Those Palestinians would find their opposite number in Ze'ev Jabotinsky,
0:20:30 > 0:20:34a pugnacious, articulate Zionist from Odessa.
0:20:34 > 0:20:36While Chaim Weizmann was schmoozing
0:20:36 > 0:20:39the great and the good of the British establishment,
0:20:39 > 0:20:43Jabotinsky was putting guns into the hands of Odessa Jews
0:20:43 > 0:20:48so they could defend themselves against the repeated savagery of the pogroms.
0:20:52 > 0:20:55He'd fought for the British in World War I,
0:20:55 > 0:20:58but, unlike Weizmann, he was no Anglophile
0:20:58 > 0:21:01and he rejected as sentimental delusion
0:21:01 > 0:21:04the idea of harmony between Jews and Arabs.
0:21:07 > 0:21:12These bleak, hard views he expressed in 1923
0:21:12 > 0:21:16in a short, sharp essay called The Iron Wall.
0:21:19 > 0:21:21"Apparently," he wrote,
0:21:21 > 0:21:23"I'm considered an enemy of the Arab people
0:21:23 > 0:21:27"and a proponent of their expulsion. This is not true.
0:21:27 > 0:21:30"Expulsion in any form is impossible.
0:21:30 > 0:21:33"There will always be two nations in this country,
0:21:33 > 0:21:37"and that's good enough for me, provided we are the majority.
0:21:37 > 0:21:39"Conflict is inevitable."
0:21:46 > 0:21:51Jabotinsky's brand of so-called Revisionist Zionism,
0:21:51 > 0:21:54born in the dark valley between the two world wars,
0:21:54 > 0:21:59took on many of the trappings of the militant nationalism of that period -
0:21:59 > 0:22:02the uniforms, the marching, the salutes,
0:22:02 > 0:22:07the insistence that you were either for us or against us.
0:22:07 > 0:22:10Jabotinsky died in 1940,
0:22:10 > 0:22:14but his intransigent spirit did not.
0:22:17 > 0:22:22But for some, Jabotinsky's Iron Wall was a negation
0:22:22 > 0:22:25of what Zionism was supposed to be about -
0:22:25 > 0:22:29the realisation of spiritual and cultural ideals
0:22:29 > 0:22:33and a rebuttal of crude power politics and petty nationalism.
0:22:42 > 0:22:46The most thoughtfully tortured of the idealists
0:22:46 > 0:22:48was the philosopher Martin Buber.
0:22:48 > 0:22:52Buber had known Weizmann and Jabotinsky when they were all young Zionists,
0:22:52 > 0:22:55but unlike them, he didn't think Zionism
0:22:55 > 0:22:58had to be mostly about matters of power.
0:22:58 > 0:23:02On the contrary, if Zionism ended up merely reproducing
0:23:02 > 0:23:05the power plays of the rest of the world,
0:23:05 > 0:23:09all of its achievements would be merely self-defeating.
0:23:09 > 0:23:13For Buber, a true Jewish national revival
0:23:13 > 0:23:15had to be based on Judaism,
0:23:15 > 0:23:19and the principal of Judaism that mattered most to him was simple -
0:23:19 > 0:23:25do not do unto others what is hateful to you.
0:23:25 > 0:23:29Now, the acid test of that fundamental Jewish principle,
0:23:29 > 0:23:34for Buber, was how Jews treated the Arabs of Palestine.
0:23:34 > 0:23:36For decades afterwards, whatever happened,
0:23:36 > 0:23:40Buber would insist on the importance of that.
0:23:47 > 0:23:50Chaim Weizmann was the diplomat-statesman,
0:23:50 > 0:23:53Jabotinsky was the ideologue,
0:23:53 > 0:23:55Martin Buber a moral philosopher.
0:23:55 > 0:23:58What was missing if Zionism was really going to work
0:23:58 > 0:24:02as a concrete, successful movement?
0:24:02 > 0:24:05The answer is organisational politics,
0:24:05 > 0:24:10and no-one was as good at that as David Ben-Gurion.
0:24:10 > 0:24:15Ben-Gurion was the vital force of hard-headed politics.
0:24:18 > 0:24:19He came from Plonsk in Russia,
0:24:19 > 0:24:22but he always said he'd never really suffered very much
0:24:22 > 0:24:26from anti-Semitism directed at him personally.
0:24:26 > 0:24:29So it gave his vision, which he certainly had,
0:24:29 > 0:24:31a Bible-saturated vision,
0:24:31 > 0:24:34a kind of flinty optimism,
0:24:34 > 0:24:36a sort of element of rejoicing in it
0:24:36 > 0:24:40as well as a fierce sense of political calculation.
0:24:40 > 0:24:43And it was this kind of complex moral decency
0:24:43 > 0:24:47inside this human machine of political cunning
0:24:47 > 0:24:50that won David Ben-Gurion respect,
0:24:50 > 0:24:53both before and after Israel's independence.
0:24:56 > 0:25:00But the decades that lay between the Balfour Declaration
0:25:00 > 0:25:04and the Declaration of Independence proved to be bloody ones.
0:25:06 > 0:25:09Despite the high hopes expressed in Prince Faisal's letter,
0:25:09 > 0:25:14opposition to a Jewish national home among the Arabs of Palestine
0:25:14 > 0:25:17had quickly turned violent.
0:25:20 > 0:25:23Arab attacks on settlements and towns were met
0:25:23 > 0:25:25with swift Jewish counterattacks.
0:25:28 > 0:25:32Hunkered down in pillboxes and fortified barracks,
0:25:32 > 0:25:36the British had brutally suppressed Arab revolts.
0:25:36 > 0:25:38But at the same time,
0:25:38 > 0:25:41they were slamming the door on Jewish immigration to Palestine
0:25:41 > 0:25:44in the hope of appeasing Arab opinion,
0:25:44 > 0:25:48provoking mass protests from the Jews already there.
0:25:52 > 0:25:54And at the same time,
0:25:54 > 0:25:57all over the rest of the world,
0:25:57 > 0:26:00other escape routes were being closed,
0:26:00 > 0:26:04condemning to death the Jews trapped in Nazi Europe.
0:26:06 > 0:26:08The Protestant cemetery in Jerusalem
0:26:08 > 0:26:11bears testimony to the human cost to Britain
0:26:11 > 0:26:14of the "adventure" begun by Balfour and his colleagues -
0:26:14 > 0:26:18soldiers and policemen who died on active service,
0:26:18 > 0:26:21some of them victims of Jewish terrorism.
0:26:22 > 0:26:25By the time the last man died,
0:26:25 > 0:26:28Britain had handed responsibility for Palestine
0:26:28 > 0:26:30over to the United Nations.
0:26:32 > 0:26:37In November 1947, the UN recommended partition.
0:26:41 > 0:26:47A viable, independent Jewish state covering 56% of Palestine
0:26:47 > 0:26:49had been voted into existence
0:26:49 > 0:26:51by the international community.
0:26:54 > 0:26:57On May 14th, 1948,
0:26:57 > 0:27:01at a hastily arranged ceremony at the Tel Aviv Museum,
0:27:01 > 0:27:04David Ben-Gurion turned the United Nations vote
0:27:04 > 0:27:07into an historic reality.
0:27:07 > 0:27:14TRANSLATION OF DAVID BEN-GURION: The land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people.
0:27:14 > 0:27:21Here, their spiritual, religious and national identity was formed.
0:27:21 > 0:27:23Exiled from their land,
0:27:23 > 0:27:26the Jewish people remained faithful to it
0:27:26 > 0:27:29in all the countries of their dispersion,
0:27:29 > 0:27:33never ceasing to pray and hope for their return
0:27:33 > 0:27:37and for the restoration in it of their national freedom.
0:27:51 > 0:27:54But national freedom had to be fought for.
0:27:54 > 0:27:57The Arabs rejected the UN partition plan
0:27:57 > 0:28:02as they had rejected every previous attempt to divide Palestine.
0:28:02 > 0:28:06The bitter civil war between Jews and Arabs in Palestine
0:28:06 > 0:28:11now became a war between Jewish and Arab states in 1948
0:28:11 > 0:28:15when armies from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq
0:28:15 > 0:28:17simultaneously attacked Israel.
0:28:21 > 0:28:24One of the crucial battlegrounds was here
0:28:24 > 0:28:28at the kibbutz of Yad Mordechai, where a small group of Jews,
0:28:28 > 0:28:33inspired by comrades who had fallen in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,
0:28:33 > 0:28:38held out against Egyptian tank divisions for a critical six days.
0:28:38 > 0:28:41For Yad Mordechai, the heroic deaths in Warsaw
0:28:41 > 0:28:47had made their own battle to survive in Palestine a sacred obligation.
0:28:50 > 0:28:53After the war, an armistice agreement
0:28:53 > 0:28:56allowed Israel to expand its boundaries,
0:28:56 > 0:28:59redrawing them along the so-called Green Line
0:28:59 > 0:29:05and putting Israel in control of nearly 80% of Mandate Palestine,
0:29:05 > 0:29:07including West Jerusalem.
0:29:07 > 0:29:11The biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria
0:29:11 > 0:29:14and the old city of Jerusalem, site of the Western Wall,
0:29:14 > 0:29:16were not part of this new Israel.
0:29:16 > 0:29:18But for secular Zionists,
0:29:18 > 0:29:22this was an emotional, symbolic issue rather than a practical one.
0:29:25 > 0:29:29The centre of gravity of the new Jewish state was not Jerusalem,
0:29:29 > 0:29:31burdened with the aura of its history,
0:29:31 > 0:29:35but Tel Aviv, which by the 1940s
0:29:35 > 0:29:38had grown into a modern, secular, breezy metropolis by the sea,
0:29:38 > 0:29:42a cafe-happy cultural powerhouse of creativity,
0:29:42 > 0:29:46boasting the latest in modernist architecture and modernist thinking.
0:29:49 > 0:29:53A new home for new Jews in their new old land.
0:30:04 > 0:30:07For the Arabs of Palestine,
0:30:07 > 0:30:12Israel's war of independence had meant Nakba - catastrophe -
0:30:12 > 0:30:14the displacement, sometimes violently,
0:30:14 > 0:30:19of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from towns and villages
0:30:19 > 0:30:22like Lifta on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
0:30:27 > 0:30:31By the time of the 1949 armistice,
0:30:31 > 0:30:36around 700,000 Palestinians had left, some fleeing in fear,
0:30:36 > 0:30:41some obeying the orders of village elders or Arab guerrillas,
0:30:41 > 0:30:43some driven out by force and terror.
0:30:48 > 0:30:51Their towns and villages became part of Israel,
0:30:51 > 0:30:54and they have never been able to return to their homes,
0:30:54 > 0:30:57except occasionally as visitors.
0:30:57 > 0:31:02House door keys are the icons of their loss
0:31:02 > 0:31:06and their hope of an eventual return.
0:31:07 > 0:31:09It killed us,
0:31:09 > 0:31:15but this life outside Lifta shaped our mentality.
0:31:18 > 0:31:23They lost everything. Only the hope to come back.
0:31:23 > 0:31:29So always I bring my son to come to Lifta.
0:31:29 > 0:31:32I tell them, "Here is my father's house,
0:31:32 > 0:31:34"here is your father's house,
0:31:34 > 0:31:37"here, here, here, here."
0:31:37 > 0:31:40So they will never forget.
0:31:44 > 0:31:48But there are other memories and other catastrophes
0:31:48 > 0:31:51dating to these same fateful years.
0:31:51 > 0:31:53Hundreds of thousands of Jews,
0:31:53 > 0:31:56living in Muslim countries for centuries,
0:31:56 > 0:32:00discovered suddenly their home was no longer their home.
0:32:04 > 0:32:06This is the Eliyahu HaNavi,
0:32:06 > 0:32:10Elijah the Prophet's synagogue in Alexandria.
0:32:10 > 0:32:14In its day, it could swallow 1,000 worshippers without blinking.
0:32:15 > 0:32:20This was a deeply rooted community with clans of families,
0:32:20 > 0:32:23inevitably some richer, some poorer,
0:32:23 > 0:32:26the older of them sitting in their family pews.
0:32:26 > 0:32:28You showed up on Shabbat
0:32:28 > 0:32:31and you knew exactly where the Shamas would be sitting.
0:32:34 > 0:32:37But all of that became suddenly irrelevant
0:32:37 > 0:32:41following the establishment of Israel in 1948
0:32:41 > 0:32:44and the war that followed.
0:32:45 > 0:32:50It hadn't always been easy to live as a Jew in a Muslim country,
0:32:50 > 0:32:52and long before Israel was created,
0:32:52 > 0:32:56it was getting harder to avoid charges of Zionism
0:32:56 > 0:32:58in countries like Egypt and Iraq.
0:32:58 > 0:33:01But after 1947, the gloves came off.
0:33:04 > 0:33:07Assaults, riots, murders,
0:33:07 > 0:33:10arrests, show trials,
0:33:10 > 0:33:13public hangings, expropriations,
0:33:13 > 0:33:14expulsions.
0:33:18 > 0:33:22Did you have any sense that there might be trouble?
0:33:22 > 0:33:26I knew nothing. I was only ten years old.
0:33:26 > 0:33:28So all of a sudden, at midnight,
0:33:28 > 0:33:34ten Egyptian officers in our house, searching everywhere.
0:33:35 > 0:33:37I don't know what they were searching after.
0:33:37 > 0:33:39They opened closets, drawers,
0:33:39 > 0:33:41they cut mattresses.
0:33:41 > 0:33:45I didn't know what they wanted, and they left.
0:33:45 > 0:33:47They found nothing, they left.
0:33:47 > 0:33:50They did the same to my uncle upstairs,
0:33:50 > 0:33:52but they took him to prison.
0:33:52 > 0:33:56For me, it was a trauma, a shock,
0:33:56 > 0:34:01because prison, for a child ten years old, is a criminal.
0:34:01 > 0:34:03My uncle was a criminal?!
0:34:03 > 0:34:07I asked my mother if that's true. "Is he a criminal?"
0:34:07 > 0:34:12She explained to me that he went to prison because we are Jews.
0:34:15 > 0:34:19The same story was repeated all over the Muslim world,
0:34:19 > 0:34:23not just in Egypt, but in Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon,
0:34:23 > 0:34:26Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.
0:34:26 > 0:34:31At least 700,000 Jews left or were expelled,
0:34:31 > 0:34:34many reduced to destitution,
0:34:34 > 0:34:37taking with them only what they could carry.
0:34:37 > 0:34:39Some went to America,
0:34:39 > 0:34:43others in the North African world to France, Iraqis to Britain.
0:34:43 > 0:34:46But many came to Israel,
0:34:46 > 0:34:49most of them Zionists by necessity rather than choice.
0:34:53 > 0:34:57The exodus of Jewish communities from Muslim lands
0:34:57 > 0:35:01almost doubled the population of Israel in just a few years -
0:35:01 > 0:35:04the first, but not the last, demographic tidal wave
0:35:04 > 0:35:06to engulf this tiny country.
0:35:09 > 0:35:12In the decades that followed,
0:35:12 > 0:35:14millions more would come when they could,
0:35:14 > 0:35:18from places as far apart as India, East Africa,
0:35:18 > 0:35:20the Caucasus and Russia.
0:35:20 > 0:35:23This was a country for Jews,
0:35:23 > 0:35:27but it also became one of the most diverse in the whole world.
0:35:31 > 0:35:33The state did all it could
0:35:33 > 0:35:36to forge a common identity for these new arrivals.
0:35:36 > 0:35:38Hebrew was the armature
0:35:38 > 0:35:42around which a Jewish-Israeli identity would be built.
0:35:44 > 0:35:46The ancient language of the Bible
0:35:46 > 0:35:50adapting itself to the demands of a modern state.
0:35:52 > 0:35:54Israel exploded the stereotype
0:35:54 > 0:35:58of Jews as weak, rootless victims.
0:35:58 > 0:36:02Here, the Jews were enterprising, muscular and vigorous.
0:36:04 > 0:36:08Those born here were nicknamed "sabra" - prickly pears,
0:36:08 > 0:36:10tough and uncompromising on the outside,
0:36:10 > 0:36:14soft and sweet on the inside - and the rest of the world
0:36:14 > 0:36:17would just have to get used to dealing with them.
0:36:28 > 0:36:33And this is when I played my own modest part in the miracle.
0:36:33 > 0:36:39In 1963, I worked for two months on a kibbutz called Beit HaEmek.
0:36:39 > 0:36:43Returning nearly 50 years later brought it all back.
0:36:43 > 0:36:47Freddy Kahana, Beit HaEmek's resident architect and planner,
0:36:47 > 0:36:51who's been on the kibbutz for more than 60 years, showed me round.
0:36:52 > 0:36:54These are the original houses of Beit HaEmek.
0:36:54 > 0:36:56You probably remember them. I do remember.
0:36:56 > 0:37:00I remember the lawns very well and I remember the olive trees.
0:37:00 > 0:37:02The trees have grown up,
0:37:02 > 0:37:04and a bit of the landscape has changed. Yeah.
0:37:04 > 0:37:07But these are the original houses of Beit HaEmek.
0:37:07 > 0:37:10Maybe some of these trees are 200 years old, 300 years old.
0:37:10 > 0:37:11They're very beautiful.
0:37:13 > 0:37:18It looks like a comfortable enough kind of place, but in its day,
0:37:18 > 0:37:21Beit HaEmek and the other 270 kibbutzes of Israel
0:37:21 > 0:37:26were once the scene of a radical new departure in the Jewish story.
0:37:31 > 0:37:34The kibbutz blended the Zionist dream
0:37:34 > 0:37:36of building a new Jewish country
0:37:36 > 0:37:40with a secular, socialist vision of building a better world.
0:37:40 > 0:37:45For a Jewish teenager like me, it was an irresistible blend
0:37:45 > 0:37:51of romance, social idealism, adventure and sunshine.
0:37:54 > 0:37:57The reason I came to Beit HaEmek was
0:37:57 > 0:38:01I was a member of a Zionist youth group in London, Habonim,
0:38:01 > 0:38:05being drawn to the ideals of, um...
0:38:05 > 0:38:07communalist and socialist Zionism
0:38:07 > 0:38:11pretty much as an alternative to a religious life.
0:38:11 > 0:38:12I wanted a different kind of Jewish
0:38:12 > 0:38:17from the Judaism that the Synagogue offered.
0:38:17 > 0:38:20The kibbutz movement, when it came, had...
0:38:20 > 0:38:24They were secular, they weren't religious, they didn't pray,
0:38:24 > 0:38:27but they were Jewish. And this raises the question,
0:38:27 > 0:38:30what is then Judaism under those circumstances?
0:38:30 > 0:38:32And the kibbutz movement, in effect,
0:38:32 > 0:38:37at some stage, decided that they were the new Judaism...
0:38:38 > 0:38:42..and started to define, redefine Judaism in its own image.
0:38:42 > 0:38:48And all this created in Israel a new way of being Jewish,
0:38:48 > 0:38:50and it's a secular way.
0:38:50 > 0:38:54And if there's a secular... community in Israel today,
0:38:54 > 0:38:58it owes a great deal to the foundations of the meaning of it,
0:38:58 > 0:39:00which was created in the kibbutzim.
0:39:03 > 0:39:07Kibbutzniks were never more than a tiny percentage of the population,
0:39:07 > 0:39:10but their influence was enormous.
0:39:10 > 0:39:14They were the elite of the new social-democratic Israel,
0:39:14 > 0:39:18a progressive bloc who, for decades, would dominate
0:39:18 > 0:39:22the country's political, social and cultural heights.
0:39:24 > 0:39:27But even these irreproachably liberal, right-minded,
0:39:27 > 0:39:29left-leaning Jews had to struggle
0:39:29 > 0:39:32to come to terms with the historical reality
0:39:32 > 0:39:35on which their bright new future was being built.
0:39:36 > 0:39:40In the case of Beit HaEmek, an Arab village called Kuwaykat.
0:39:43 > 0:39:45I must admit, I was not happy
0:39:45 > 0:39:48about the fact that this was sitting on an Arab village.
0:39:48 > 0:39:52I didn't feel good about it, but I accepted it. It wasn't that.
0:39:52 > 0:39:54The problem was simply not that,
0:39:54 > 0:39:57and over the years, we expanded the kibbutz.
0:39:57 > 0:39:58We took down the Arab houses,
0:39:58 > 0:40:01we expanded the kibbutz on top of the Arab village
0:40:01 > 0:40:05and, looking back now, we can say, OK, we didn't think about it,
0:40:05 > 0:40:08maybe we should have thought about it. But that's not the point.
0:40:10 > 0:40:13It's important to remember where we are
0:40:13 > 0:40:15and also why we're here.
0:40:15 > 0:40:19I have no regrets, personally, but it's not an easy subject.
0:40:27 > 0:40:29The dream of a Jewish state
0:40:29 > 0:40:32was always going to be rather different from the reality.
0:40:32 > 0:40:37In Israel, ideals and aspirations are challenged every day
0:40:37 > 0:40:40by the complexities of survival
0:40:40 > 0:40:42in a world that mostly remains hostile.
0:40:44 > 0:40:48Photographer Micha Bar-Am has been recording the struggle
0:40:48 > 0:40:52between aspiration and reality for more than 50 years.
0:40:54 > 0:40:57It's a kind of a witnessing,
0:40:57 > 0:41:02observing and trying to leave your little scratch
0:41:02 > 0:41:05by the way you look at things.
0:41:08 > 0:41:12This is one of the first settlements in the Negev,
0:41:12 > 0:41:16which is the southern part, the desert part, of Israel.
0:41:16 > 0:41:19What is this? That is trenches.
0:41:19 > 0:41:20Oh, they're trenches?
0:41:20 > 0:41:24They are trenches, and you can see them in many settlements.
0:41:24 > 0:41:27This makes it even more fantastic.
0:41:27 > 0:41:31So you have this really rather innocent image of the halutz,
0:41:31 > 0:41:36the pioneering house, very... you know, kind of honest, virtuous,
0:41:36 > 0:41:38sense of home and hard work,
0:41:38 > 0:41:41and then you have the military reality of it around it.
0:41:41 > 0:41:43It's something like a rift...
0:41:44 > 0:41:48..like a rift dividing, even now, the Israeli society.
0:41:54 > 0:42:00In June 1967, Israel was once again fighting for its existence
0:42:00 > 0:42:05with Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian armies massing on its borders.
0:42:05 > 0:42:08But with a series of bold, pre-emptive strikes
0:42:08 > 0:42:09and swift forward actions,
0:42:09 > 0:42:13a war fought initially for survival became,
0:42:13 > 0:42:14just six traumatic days later,
0:42:14 > 0:42:19a military triumph for Israel that few had foreseen.
0:42:19 > 0:42:23THEY SING
0:42:25 > 0:42:28Israeli forces pushed over the Green Line,
0:42:28 > 0:42:31south into Sinai, north into the Golan Heights
0:42:31 > 0:42:34and east to the banks of the Jordan,
0:42:34 > 0:42:38occupying cities and territory steeped in biblical history.
0:42:40 > 0:42:44But it was the capture of the old city of Jerusalem,
0:42:44 > 0:42:47the religious heart of Judaism, that caused
0:42:47 > 0:42:51even the most secular-minded Jew to be swept away
0:42:51 > 0:42:53by a sense of the miraculous.
0:42:54 > 0:42:58Micha Bar-Am was there when Israeli paratroopers arrived
0:42:58 > 0:43:00at the Western Wall,
0:43:00 > 0:43:05the last remnant of the high temple destroyed 1,900 years before
0:43:05 > 0:43:10by the Roman legions, the start of centuries of exile from Jerusalem.
0:43:15 > 0:43:18This is a... ..prayer shawl of bullets.
0:43:18 > 0:43:19Yeah, exactly.
0:43:19 > 0:43:23That was the day the Western Wall in Jerusalem
0:43:23 > 0:43:26was liberated by the paratroopers.
0:43:29 > 0:43:33It was such a moving moment for everyone.
0:43:33 > 0:43:37You didn't have to be a religious Jew,
0:43:37 > 0:43:42but it's a historic moment when the messianic spirit
0:43:42 > 0:43:46and the military power have merged
0:43:46 > 0:43:49and brought upon us what is now...
0:43:50 > 0:43:54..the spirit of Israeli society.
0:43:54 > 0:43:56It changed Israel.
0:43:56 > 0:43:58That's the simplest way to say it, don't you think?
0:43:58 > 0:44:02All of a sudden, you could visit biblical scenes
0:44:02 > 0:44:06that were part of the history of the Jews
0:44:06 > 0:44:09from the River Jordan,
0:44:09 > 0:44:12from Joshua crossing into...
0:44:12 > 0:44:17Hebron. Hebron and Nablus - Shechem, you know.
0:44:17 > 0:44:24All of a sudden, the feeling of people was that maybe it is right
0:44:24 > 0:44:27to go back to all those historic sites.
0:44:30 > 0:44:32But going back was just the beginning.
0:44:32 > 0:44:36For some, the victories of the Six Day War
0:44:36 > 0:44:39were a clear divine summons
0:44:39 > 0:44:42to reclaim not just biblical-historical acreage
0:44:42 > 0:44:46but what they now thought had been the true Zionist ideal all along.
0:44:46 > 0:44:49Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel,
0:44:49 > 0:44:53for them was a place of messianic redemption.
0:44:53 > 0:44:57This was the start of the so-called settler movement,
0:44:57 > 0:45:00a hybrid of religious and nationalist zeal
0:45:00 > 0:45:04flourishing under the umbrella of Israeli military power
0:45:04 > 0:45:06and taking its authority from the Bible
0:45:06 > 0:45:09rather than its permission from the UN.
0:45:09 > 0:45:12HEBREW ON RADIO
0:45:14 > 0:45:17The international community regards these settlements,
0:45:17 > 0:45:20some now the size of cities, as illegal.
0:45:20 > 0:45:25To the Palestinians, they are part of a Trojan Horse annexation policy
0:45:25 > 0:45:27orchestrated by the government and the military.
0:45:27 > 0:45:30To many Israelis, they've become simply
0:45:30 > 0:45:33a source of affordable housing.
0:45:40 > 0:45:43But Tzvi Cooper, like many Israelis
0:45:43 > 0:45:45who choose to live in the settlements,
0:45:45 > 0:45:47is still driven by the ideals
0:45:47 > 0:45:50of the founders of the settler movement.
0:45:53 > 0:45:58This is Tekoa, halfway between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea.
0:45:58 > 0:46:02It's a relaxed kind of place where everyone knows each other's names
0:46:02 > 0:46:04and looks out for each other's kids.
0:46:09 > 0:46:13This is the very heart of what the world calls the West Bank,
0:46:13 > 0:46:17but to Tzvi and thousands like him, this is Judea and Samaria,
0:46:17 > 0:46:21the biblical home of the Jews thousands of years ago
0:46:21 > 0:46:24and now their home once more.
0:46:27 > 0:46:29One of my beliefs is that
0:46:29 > 0:46:32there's not going to be peace if Jews can't live anywhere,
0:46:32 > 0:46:33especially in their homeland.
0:46:33 > 0:46:38A Jew can live in Berlin, a Jew can live in Cairo even,
0:46:38 > 0:46:41but many people believe that Jews can't live
0:46:41 > 0:46:46in the ancient biblical homeland, which includes Tekoa, my home.
0:46:46 > 0:46:50Tell me what... You're suddenly, Tzvi, into power
0:46:50 > 0:46:53and you had a map, what would that map look like?
0:46:53 > 0:46:56I mean, how would you redraw the Green Line?
0:46:56 > 0:46:59The Green Line, in my opinion, doesn't really exist today.
0:46:59 > 0:47:00OK.
0:47:00 > 0:47:05A dream would be a return to the larger borders,
0:47:05 > 0:47:09or at least the ability for Jews... Where do the larger borders end?
0:47:09 > 0:47:12Well, Solomon's kingdom or David's kingdom.
0:47:12 > 0:47:15And today I wouldn't necessarily imagine
0:47:15 > 0:47:17that we would ever return to those borders,
0:47:17 > 0:47:20but it would be nice that a Jewish family could move in
0:47:20 > 0:47:23and build a homestead in some of those villages.
0:47:23 > 0:47:24Mm-hm.
0:47:24 > 0:47:29There are amazingly rich archaeological sites
0:47:29 > 0:47:32that are evidence to the contribution
0:47:32 > 0:47:34that Jews made to this world in this area.
0:47:34 > 0:47:36The ancient Jewish settlements in Jordan.
0:47:36 > 0:47:39There are ancient Jewish settlements in Syria
0:47:39 > 0:47:42up to the River Prat, the Euphrates.
0:47:42 > 0:47:45I think it's a lie to humanity
0:47:45 > 0:47:49for us not to be able to inhabit this land and these places.
0:47:49 > 0:47:53And it would be a disaster...
0:47:53 > 0:47:57'Meeting Tzvi was not easy for me.
0:47:57 > 0:48:00'I recognise the sincerity of his views,
0:48:00 > 0:48:02'but profoundly disagree with them.
0:48:03 > 0:48:08'A sense of territorial entitlement prescribed by the Bible
0:48:08 > 0:48:11'is not a development of the Zionism of necessity
0:48:11 > 0:48:14'but a threat to it, for the Bible is many things,
0:48:14 > 0:48:19'but a blueprint for peace in this land, it is surely not.'
0:48:22 > 0:48:27If, in fact, settlements have to be part of the Jewish state,
0:48:27 > 0:48:32you're going to be a minority presiding and ruling over a...
0:48:32 > 0:48:36you know, an unemancipated majority.
0:48:36 > 0:48:39You know, you will genuinely be in the imperial situation
0:48:39 > 0:48:42which Zionism has never wanted to be.
0:48:42 > 0:48:45Um... I think that the history is unfolding,
0:48:45 > 0:48:48and people like me and others are making that history,
0:48:48 > 0:48:52and it's up to us to bravely look at where we live
0:48:52 > 0:48:56and understand that there is no dividing up this country.
0:48:56 > 0:48:58There's no dividing of Jerusalem.
0:48:58 > 0:49:00There's no handing over of the biblical homeland,
0:49:00 > 0:49:02Tekoa and other villages like that.
0:49:02 > 0:49:04We're going to have to find a different model,
0:49:04 > 0:49:07a model that may not exist, in Europe anyway.
0:49:07 > 0:49:11So the conventional logic that's applicable to the entire world
0:49:11 > 0:49:14may need some adjustment for the Holy Land.
0:49:14 > 0:49:15It always has.
0:49:15 > 0:49:19All the rather beautiful things you speak eloquently about
0:49:19 > 0:49:23may indeed be felt, if not with a biblical text,
0:49:23 > 0:49:26by the Palestinians as well.
0:49:26 > 0:49:27So I don't know what to say.
0:49:27 > 0:49:31It seems to me like, yeah, we're arguing roots.
0:49:31 > 0:49:32Whose roots are deeper?
0:49:32 > 0:49:34I'd just like to say my roots are here too.
0:49:41 > 0:49:46There's been a dramatic shift in Israel over the past decades.
0:49:46 > 0:49:48The secular, outward-looking Israel I remember
0:49:48 > 0:49:51from my days in Beit HaEmek
0:49:51 > 0:49:55has been eclipsed by one that insists, in the name of religion,
0:49:55 > 0:49:58nationalism or security,
0:49:58 > 0:50:02on separation and difference.
0:50:02 > 0:50:06'The Israeli novelist David Grossman has tackled these issues
0:50:06 > 0:50:08'throughout his life as a writer.
0:50:08 > 0:50:12'He believes they stem from the very roots of Jewish experience.'
0:50:12 > 0:50:14..Euphrates to the sea.
0:50:14 > 0:50:17I mean, we talked to a settler from Tekoa the other day
0:50:17 > 0:50:20who got a kind of dreamy look in his eye when he said,
0:50:20 > 0:50:22"Of course, you know,
0:50:22 > 0:50:26"where the tribe of Gad was, one day..." and so on,
0:50:26 > 0:50:29and those borders are kind of set out
0:50:29 > 0:50:32very extravagantly in Genesis.
0:50:32 > 0:50:35But they're not the borders of a defensible home.
0:50:35 > 0:50:38Do you think that's part of the problem?
0:50:38 > 0:50:41These are borders of a dream. Yeah.
0:50:41 > 0:50:43Of deep religious belief.
0:50:43 > 0:50:47In the years that Israel exists,
0:50:47 > 0:50:51in the 65, almost, years of our sovereignty,
0:50:51 > 0:50:54our borders have moved and shifted.
0:50:54 > 0:50:56We invaded others.
0:50:56 > 0:51:01There was all the time this ambiguity
0:51:01 > 0:51:03of where the border is.
0:51:03 > 0:51:07I wonder, I ask myself, why it is like that?
0:51:07 > 0:51:10Probably it has to do something with our attraction
0:51:10 > 0:51:11as a people to the abstract.
0:51:11 > 0:51:14You know, we have invented the abstract God.
0:51:14 > 0:51:15But it's not only that.
0:51:15 > 0:51:19For 2,000 years, you know, Jews lived in Spain and Morocco
0:51:19 > 0:51:24and Egypt and Yemen, and they had their concrete, everyday life there,
0:51:24 > 0:51:28but at the same time, the essence of their life,
0:51:28 > 0:51:30the essence of the meaning of their being,
0:51:30 > 0:51:33was in a totally different, remote place.
0:51:33 > 0:51:37In the end of the east, there in Jerusalem, in Zion.
0:51:37 > 0:51:40And in the Torah. In the Torah, in the Talmud,
0:51:40 > 0:51:46they created an enormous body of existence that was all imaginary,
0:51:46 > 0:51:49all in the mind, and I think part of our tragedy is
0:51:49 > 0:51:52that when we already came here to this place,
0:51:52 > 0:51:57to our home, we still flirt with this abstraction.
0:51:57 > 0:51:59We still... We are here,
0:51:59 > 0:52:04but it's always possible for us to be out of here.
0:52:04 > 0:52:07You know, it's always possible for us to exist
0:52:07 > 0:52:11in the sphere of the imagination, of spirituality.
0:52:12 > 0:52:16Peace can...root our being,
0:52:16 > 0:52:19can make it more solid.
0:52:25 > 0:52:29Today in Israel, the distance between dream and reality
0:52:29 > 0:52:33can be measured in hundreds of miles of barbed wire and concrete.
0:52:37 > 0:52:40The separation barrier was a response
0:52:40 > 0:52:43to a devastating wave of suicide bombings
0:52:43 > 0:52:45unleashed a decade ago,
0:52:45 > 0:52:48in which more than 500 Israelis died.
0:52:48 > 0:52:52Today, it cuts Israel off from the West Bank,
0:52:52 > 0:52:55except where it snakes deep into the occupied territories
0:52:55 > 0:52:58to protect some of the larger settlements,
0:52:58 > 0:53:00shredding Palestinian territory
0:53:00 > 0:53:04and making life for the Palestinians a daily ordeal.
0:53:10 > 0:53:13I don't know why, but walls are big in Jewish history, aren't they?
0:53:13 > 0:53:18Walls of lamentation, walls of the temple, ghetto walls...
0:53:18 > 0:53:20this.
0:53:21 > 0:53:24Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the militant nationalist
0:53:24 > 0:53:26Jewish Zionist leader in the '20s and '30s,
0:53:26 > 0:53:30talked about the necessity for an Iron Wall
0:53:30 > 0:53:33as a condition of there being any realistic chance
0:53:33 > 0:53:35of a Jewish state surviving.
0:53:36 > 0:53:39Well, he got it in this, didn't he?
0:53:41 > 0:53:44I want to say that nobody, including me,
0:53:44 > 0:53:49ultimately has the moral right to say that shouldn't have happened,
0:53:49 > 0:53:51the wall shouldn't have happened.
0:53:51 > 0:53:53Before the wall happened,
0:53:53 > 0:53:58hundreds of people were dying every year from terrorist attacks.
0:53:58 > 0:54:01After the wall happened, very, very few.
0:54:01 > 0:54:04In some senses, if you don't live in Israel -
0:54:04 > 0:54:05I don't live in Israel -
0:54:05 > 0:54:11you're morally obliged to be nearly silent, nearly silent.
0:54:11 > 0:54:13All the same,
0:54:13 > 0:54:17I also want to add to that huge moral caveat this -
0:54:17 > 0:54:22the Bible is full of encounters between men and God,
0:54:22 > 0:54:24between men and other men,
0:54:24 > 0:54:27between even enemy brothers.
0:54:27 > 0:54:29It's very difficult for me to sort of stand here
0:54:29 > 0:54:33and say that that kind of Judaism,
0:54:33 > 0:54:36the Judaism of openness, of encounter,
0:54:36 > 0:54:39has a chance of a true life here.
0:54:39 > 0:54:43This is a Judaism, a Jewishness, that looks...
0:54:43 > 0:54:47scurries beneath the shadows of these towers for safety.
0:54:47 > 0:54:50It's not ultimately a Judaism of bravery.
0:54:50 > 0:54:54It's not ultimately a Judaism of life.
0:55:00 > 0:55:05But there are gaps in the wall where a little light gets in.
0:55:08 > 0:55:12At the Hand In Hand school in Jerusalem,
0:55:12 > 0:55:16Jewish and Arab students are taught in Hebrew and Arabic
0:55:16 > 0:55:19by Arab and Jewish teachers.
0:55:20 > 0:55:23The kids here are no starry-eyed Utopians.
0:55:23 > 0:55:27Bitter divisions, long inherited and deeply felt,
0:55:27 > 0:55:30crowd in on their teenage lives.
0:55:58 > 0:56:01But growing up together must do something
0:56:01 > 0:56:03to immunise them against the habits of hatred.
0:56:03 > 0:56:06Where others see enemies, they see friends.
0:56:34 > 0:56:38The duel between raw power and ethical idealism
0:56:38 > 0:56:43has been at the heart of the Jewish story for thousands of years.
0:56:43 > 0:56:46It's what the historian Josephus meant
0:56:46 > 0:56:48when he said that Jews had become
0:56:48 > 0:56:52the teachers of men in the greatest of things.
0:56:52 > 0:56:54It's what flowered in medieval Spain
0:56:54 > 0:56:58when Jews and Muslims shared the same space and culture.
0:56:58 > 0:57:03It's what enabled Moses Mendelssohn to use thought and language
0:57:03 > 0:57:07to build a bridge between the Jewish and non-Jewish world.
0:57:10 > 0:57:14It's what made the songwriters plant a conscience
0:57:14 > 0:57:17into the hard-bitten money-makers of Tin Pan Alley.
0:57:17 > 0:57:20# Once I built a railroad
0:57:20 > 0:57:22# Now it's done
0:57:22 > 0:57:26# Brother, can you spare a dime? #
0:57:31 > 0:57:36Ultimately, it's about the victory of humanity over force,
0:57:36 > 0:57:40a victory enshrined in this copy of the Talmud,
0:57:40 > 0:57:43that bottomless treasure house of all things Jewish.
0:57:44 > 0:57:49It was printed in Heidelberg in 1947 on German presses
0:57:49 > 0:57:51under the authority of the liberating American army,
0:57:51 > 0:57:55to whom it's movingly dedicated.
0:57:56 > 0:57:59But it was produced and published by Jews,
0:57:59 > 0:58:03who, having survived the death camps, wanted to proclaim,
0:58:03 > 0:58:08"Like us, our culture has survived destruction too,"
0:58:08 > 0:58:11which is why it's known as the Survivors' Talmud.
0:58:15 > 0:58:20This is a vision of the eternal dialogue of the Jewish story,
0:58:20 > 0:58:24the dialogue between lament and rejoicing,
0:58:24 > 0:58:26between history and hope,
0:58:26 > 0:58:29between the earthly world and visionary possibility.
0:58:29 > 0:58:31It's an argument as well as a dialogue,
0:58:31 > 0:58:34an argument which no-one is supposed to win,
0:58:34 > 0:58:38because if we know one thing for sure about the Jewish tradition,
0:58:38 > 0:58:41it's that the chapter is written,
0:58:41 > 0:58:43but the book is not finished.
0:59:05 > 0:59:08Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd