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CNN Sunday Morning
Israel Marks Yom Kippur
Aired September 15, 2002 - 11:33 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Israelis are doing some soul searching today. The Jewish day of atonement, Yom Kippur, is getting under way, and as their country observes this holiday, Israelis are also facing some key questions and concerns about their future. Here's CNN's Jerrold Kessel.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Midnight prayer at Judaism's holiest site, Jerusalem's Western Wall. Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, is traditionally a time for starting anew, a time for introspection, individual and collective. But after a two-year bitter and bloody conflict with the Palestinians, this is one day of atonement where among Israelis there seems to be no real national soul search.
DAVID LANDAU, HAARETZ NEWSPAPER EDITOR: No soul searching because half of Israeli society is not prepared to engage the other half in a really bruising battle at the time when both halves are bleeding.
KESSEL: Most Israelis are decidedly unapologetic, holding the Palestinians to blame for peace hopes being buried in the ongoing confrontation.
AMNON DANKNER, MA'ARIV NEWSPAPER EDITOR: Suddenly it dawned upon us that this is not about occupation. This is about the mere existence of Israel. There was a shift in Israeli public opinion from dreamers to embittered realists. Suddenly, after about six years of rosy and optimistic period, we came to realize that the question still remains: Do the Palestinians, do the Arabs accept the existence of the state of Israel as a Jewish island in an ocean of Arabs? And they don't.
KESSEL: With no suicide bombers striking for a month, the mood has relaxed a little. On the beach, when a white flag is raised, it's not a symbol of surrender but of tranquility.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It means swimming wherever you want. Sea is good. No problem. And I hope the next year we'll have also white flag.
KESSEL: But Stefan (ph), the Tel Aviv life saver doesn't really believe that that hope is going to be realized.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every year, we believe we're trying to believe that it will be a better year, but actually what happens, year by year it's getting worse and worse.
KESSEL: While the beach seems the ideal place to try to cast fears further aside, nervousness and pessimism remains, because for most Israelis the battle with the Palestinians is now projected as a battle for national survival.
LANDAU: The peace camp sees Israel's very existence threatened by the absence of peace. The hard-liners see Israel's existence threatened by making a premature peace or a specious peace with the Palestinians, because they say that the Palestinians can never make peace with Israel because they're not prepared to reconcile themselves to the very existence of a Jewish state. So both sides are waving this flag of existentialism. That's why the Israeli political dialogue is so fraught, is so pained. It causes rifts within families, rifts within individuals. People wake up one day and they feel, my God, the Palestinians are an existential threat; the very next day, they wake up and think, my God, if we don't make peace with the Palestinians, we are endangering our own existence.
KESSEL: One thing does soothe Israeli fears, their inter- relating with the United States. Here on the beach front at a September 11 memorial, over 4,000 candles are lit, symbolizing the number of people killed in the terror outrage in the U.S. last year, together with the number Israelis say have been killed in Arab terror since Israel's creation half a century ago.
And in a nearby concert hall, Mozart's "Requiem," performed as Israelis mark their total identification with the U.S.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are all worried about the future, but that's not the point. The point is we are living with all this agony.
KESSEL: A requiem is meant to commemorate, help lay to rest a painful past, but for Israelis, the unease deepens as they anticipate further Mideast storms and even more global Mideast war.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I feel very, very hard with what the future is gathering for us.
KESSEL: This requiem concludes not with applause but with a minute silence. Also silent, Israeli self-questioning, as instead of laying to rest the painful past, a sobering present brings little repose for what's seen as a bleak future. An unfinished requiem, they feel.
Jerrold Kessel, CNN, Tel Aviv.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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