In his article “Cry Beloved Country”, Azriel Carlebach, founder of the Israeli daily Maariv, expressed in a prophetic manner in 1953 his realization of Israel's predicament: The fear of having to pay for what it did to the Palestinians. He did so in a short and moving story.
A father intends to go with his 10-year-old daughter to the Galilee and shows her, what the Zionist movement accomplished and what it did to the inhabitants of the land. Zionism’s achievements were reached by mere power. “There is no problem, my daughter. For that, all you need is power.” The story speaks for itself: "[A] day will come when you will be reminded of all that you are about to see, and then it will touch you and hurt you sorely (...) that day - I'll not be here to see it - you will ask me with pain and with anger: "You, Father? Did you do this? (...) I am afraid for you, my daughter, because I fear that when you grow up, you will have to pay for all this. I do not know, how or when or with what, possibly, I hope, with money alone, but possibly with blood as you or your sons go to war..."
The injustices done in 1948 are still haunting Israel’s political establishment till today. To the point, Carlebach expressed the moral dilemma of Zionist ideology: “I'm afraid to look in their eyes, because I am ashamed. They, this human dust, are the only people in the world whom I cannot look in the eye. I am not afraid to meet them in battle. I am not afraid of being an enemy to them or of defending myself from them. I am not ashamed to be a foe, a fugitive, a beggar or anything else... but a thief? A thief in the night I do not want to be.” Was Carlebach one of the latest Jewish prophets?
