Roni Kaplan on the Identities That Survive and the Public Narrative

This conversation with Roni Kaplan — Uruguayan-Israeli, a major in the reserves of the Israeli army and former deputy chief of the liaison with the United Nations on the Lebanese border — was recorded remotely in May 2020. Its axis is not war: it is belonging. The circumstances that make the human being, the identities that outlive states, and the distance between what a group permits saying in public and what its members do in private. Kaplan is also the subject of the op-ed “The Spokesman as the Trophy of an Anticipated Verdict”.

The interviewee’s opinions are his own; the Conversations section does not imply doctrinal agreement.

Circumstances and the Human Being

Jimmy: In Fauda, a young man named Bashar trains as a boxer with an Israeli who passes himself off as a Muslim. All he wanted was to be a successful boxer, and circumstances carry him, little by little, into becoming a terrorist. How much do circumstances weigh against what each person is?

Roni: It’s a deep philosophical question, and all of modern philosophy wrestled with it: whether existence determines consciousness, as the materialists said — Marx, for example — or consciousness determines existence, as the idealists said — Hegel, for example. For me it’s a bit of both on the ground. One has values and ideas that shape reality, and reality also shapes the way one thinks and lives. Cases like Bashar’s are not far-fetched. And God willing, in the next ten years that same Bashar will be influenced by innovation and become a great innovator in Ramallah, or wherever he lives. Life sometimes leads to that kind of place, and it’s very hard to judge a human being: each one has his own cultural baggage. You told me off camera that you were caught in the Barcelona terror attack: you know what it is to live through it. I have no doubt that peace in the Middle East also comes through improving the conditions of existence of all the players.

The Identities That Survive

Roni: When I arrived in Israel, my objective was to make peace. I came with long hair and earrings. And when you see the first intelligence reports, in the army, you realize it’s not so simple. In Latin America too it’s hard for us to make peace among our societies, and that’s with a fault line that is mainly socioeconomic. Here you have every kind of rupture: the ethnic cleavage, the religious one, the political one. And it’s not the difference between the Frente Amplio and the Partido Nacional: these are forces that want to return political thought to the era before Saint Thomas Aquinas, against forces that want to move forward.

Jimmy: Within the group you can be the best person, the most generous, and stepping out of the group and into another, be something completely different. How much does what my group will think weigh?

Roni: Completely, because identities here are often in opposition. Look at a country like Syria, which has great demographic heterogeneity: you can be Syrian on one side, Muslim on another, Shia, and live in a certain area. In the Arab Springs, what ended up prevailing were the traditional identities. The most important thing is that you’re Shia, not that you’re Syrian. Traditional identities proved to have far greater survival power than modern ones: those of belonging to a nation.

Jimmy: Imagine that in Uruguay being Uruguayan and being Catholic were two things in opposition. A most peculiar thing.

Roni: It has to do with the ruptures within societies. In Latin America it doesn’t happen to us; here it happens a great deal.

The Hand Left Hanging

Roni: The first time I went to Lebanon I was deputy chief of the liaison with the United Nations, on the border with Lebanon. We held trilateral meetings: the Lebanese generals, the United Nations in the middle, us. The first session ends, I approach the head of the Lebanese army and extend my hand: “General, I’m Major Kaplan. We’re here to try to improve relations and reduce tension on the border between Israel and Lebanon. I’m at your disposal.” The rest of the Lebanese were watching, and the man leaves my hand hanging.

Roni: Afterward they all go up to the second floor. I go down, no one was left downstairs, and before opening the bathroom door I see the general approaching me, and he extends his hand: “Major Kaplan, you may shake my hand, and you may come have a coffee with me whenever you like. But how are you going to shake my hand in front of my colleagues? What do you want, to get me killed?” That is the great lesson learned from the Middle East: they talk to Israel — through different channels, in different periods, depending on the case — but all of it beneath the table. Because the enemies of my enemies are my friends, and the friends of my enemies are my enemies. No one wants to be seen talking with Israel. And the conversations happen all the time.

The Mirror of the Tachkir

Roni: There’s the matter of the tachkir, the inquiry: it lets you look at yourself in the mirror all the time and, as long as you tell the truth, keep advancing through the lessons learned.

Jimmy: Having a universal conscience.

Roni: Exactly, that universal conscience. I believe the prophets of Israel, when they speak of that in the Bible, speak of exactly that universal conscience: understanding that only together can we face the global challenges.

Coda: The Jewish Gaucho

Jimmy: To close, tell me what you have behind you, which catches my eye.

Roni: This is a Jewish gaucho, probably in the Argentine region. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century a word was even coined in Russia, pogrom, to name the attacks on Jewish communities. A refuge was needed, because the Jewish minorities suffered a great deal of violence, and Baron Hirsch, a man of enormous wealth, decided the place was Argentina. The land of Israel was then a desolate and sorrowful land, one no one would put a cent on. Many arrived at places like Moisés Ville. There you have the famous Jewish gauchos: a person who had surely come from Europe, and here you see him drinking mate, in Argentina or perhaps Uruguay.

Conversation recorded remotely in May 2020. Edited for reading from the video’s original transcript.