The current accepted wisdom and dominant explanation for the view of the Israeli Left on the question of Jerusalem is that the Left believes that in exchange for Israel relinquishing its control of the Old City and eastern Jerusalem, the Arabs will call off their Jihad against Israel and agree to live in peace alongside a rump Israeli state. In other words, most people think that the position of the Left on Jerusalem is based on simple foolishness of Leftists.

This notion is disrespectful of the Left and is false. The Left should be given more credit than that.

I think that the Left knows perfectly well that even if Israel gives eastern Jerusalem to the PLO, the war and terror will continue and the PLO and Arabs will continue to strive to see Israel destroyed. So why then does the Left advocate Israel giving up Jerusalem?

The answer, in my opinion, is that the Left wants Jerusalem "returned" to the Arabs for its own sake and not as a means to achieve peace, which they know perfectly well will not result from its "return."

They want Israel to give up Jerusalem because they have always been uncomfortable with the idea of Jerusalem. Tel Aviv is the symbol of everything for which the Israeli Left strives. A secular ugly proletarian yuppie socialist city full of non-kosher restaurants, nightclubs and night life, pushy and crowded ("i.e., "modern"). A huge Bauhaus Blunder. The Post-Zionist dream. A City of post-Jewish Canaanites. Cosmopolitans. Yuppies.

But Jerusalem is an annoying reminder of everything the Israeli Left wants Israelis to transcend and put behind them. A city of religious symbolism, Rabbis, yeshivas, where the Temple once stood. A city of backwardness, of Diaspora obstinacy. Of rejection of political correctness. Of Yiddish and pre-modernity.

Getting rid of Jerusalem, passing it to Arab hands, would free the country from its dark roots, allow the Left to engage in social engineering. Socialism in our time. In 1949, Israel had the military strength to take the Old City and eastern Jerusalem. Ben-Gurion ordered the army NOT to do so. Supposedly because he thought peace could be achieved if Israel did NOT take the Old City. And supposedly because he did not want to antagonize the Vatican and Christendom.

But it was four years after the Holocaust, and the world's guilty conscience was still operating. And now fifty years later it would have been as unthinkable for Israel to leave Jerusalem as to leave Haifa and Tel Aviv. The Labor Party of the 1940s and 1950s -- like that of the 1990s -- perhaps just did not want its grand social engineering program mucked up by the embarrassing inconvenience of a Jewish Jerusalem. And it is trying to correct the mistake of 1967 now.

On a similar note is the encroachment of "Jerusalem" into the suburbs of Tel Aviv. A major political issue facing Israel now is the question of whether in Israeli democracy someone has the right NOT to desecrate the Sabbath.

Yes, you read that correctly. No misprint.

The issue has come up with respect to Lev Leviov, an immigrant to Israel who has done quite well in the Israeli business world, and is also a hozer b'tshuva, someone who became religiously observant. Leviov is the owner of a new shopping center in Ramat Aviv, the yuppie Leftist suburb north of Tel Aviv, in which Tel Aviv University sits, in which people like Shimon Peres and Leah Rabin live.

Leviov has decided that in the shopping center, which is his personal property, the stores and services will not operate on the Sabbath. Sure, he will lose some rent, but that is what he wishes.

But that decision has outraged the Leftist lumpenproletariat of yuppie Ramat Aviv. No fair, they scream. Ramat Aviv is a leftist, secular enclave! They insist that Leviov allow all the shops and services to operate in his shopping center mall, since after all they serve the militant secularists of Ramat Aviv, the same "religious tolerants" who have been demonstrating against "polluting" the Tel Aviv University campus by allowing a synagogue to be built there. The Labor Party and Meretz minions have joined in and are also demanding that Leviov be coerced into allowing the mall to stay open on the Sabbath, giving the teenagers of Ramat Aviv some place to hang out and play Beverly Hills 90210.

Then along comes Roni Milo, the mayor of Tel Aviv. Now, Ramat Aviv is not even in His Honor Mayor Milo's jurisdiction, and he is from the Likud Party (the traditionally more traditional political party). But Milo, whose principles are interchangeable with those of the Labor Party left (he favors Oslo) has come out in FAVOR of the forces of darkness attempting to coerce the opening of Leviov's mall on the Sabbath. Milo is following in the steps of his predecessor Mayor General Shlomo Lahat, who got elected to City Hall as a Liberal Party (part of Likud) candidate and then became Shimon Peres' booster and cheerleader for Oslo. Milo wants to ride the fence and play the Leftist-metamorphosis option.

The secularists are threatening to invade religious town Bnei Barak on Sabbath with cars and noise as "retaliation" for the human rights abuse being perpetrated upon them by Leviov in his obstinate refusal to allow the Sabbath to be desecrated on his property. So much for "Shabbat Shalom" or for that matter "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem."
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