DATE: Sunday, September 21, 1997            TAG: 9709110868

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review

SOURCE: BY RABBI ISRAEL ZOBERMAN 

                                            LENGTH:   40 lines

ISRAEL'S MORAL DILEMMA

RUBBER BULLETS

Power and Conscience in Modern Israel

YARON EZRAHI

Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. 307 pp. $25.

Yaron Ezrahi, political science professor at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, penetrates the soul of the State of Israel in Rubber Bullets: Power and Conscience in Modern Israel. Aroused by the December 1987 Palestinian Intifada uprising in the occupied territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Ezrahi laments the untenable position thrust upon young Israeli soldiers who continue to face the wrath and rage of Palestinians yearning for their own national identity and rule.

The rubber bullets that Israeli soldiers use to curb without killing violent protestors, who are prepared to inflict deadly harm on soldiers and civilians alike, symbolize for him Israel's moral conflict: It is torn between its traditional and historical restraint of power and its modern wartime status. The young-old nation that for so long knew the painful experience of powerlessness has regained sovereignty and is contending with the use of power.

The government's decision, supported by the military, not to respond to the Palestinian provocation with substantial force, gave credence to a peaceful solution to territorial conflict. But the Nov. 4, 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the leader of Israel's peace camp, clearly demonstrated that not all Israelis concur with ceding parts of the historical land of Israel that were gained after the Six Day War of 1967.

Ezrahi's overriding concern is with securing Israel, in the face of mounting fundamentalist pressure, as a liberal-democratic state. MEMO: Rabbi Israel Zoberman is the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth

Chaverim in Virginia Beach.

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