|
August
13/19, 2002
A
Phone Call From Hell
by Uri Avnery
There is a direct telephone connection between
heaven and hell. I can prove it.
The idea crossed my mind last Sunday,
when I was climbing to a snow-covered peak in the alpine region
of Italy, where I was the guest at a political conference. The
sun was shining, the temperature hovered around zero centigrade,
around me was a breathtaking landscape of white peaks. Far away
below, calm cowherds led their animals to their green pasture.
Heaven on earth.
And then the cellular phone rang. The
call came from Tel-Aviv, where the barometer was climbing to
32 degrees and above. The radio news from Israel, which I managed
to receive from time to time, told of people killed and wounded,
attacks and retaliation, bombs and bombardments, demolition of
homes and deportations, and, on top of that, factory closures,
mass dismissals, economic disaster. A real hell.
My colleagues at home called to tell
me about an exciting development: that morning, "Haaretz"
had published on its front-page a hair-raising sensation: "Gush
Shalom has threatened officers: We collect material against you
for The Hague". (This is the original headline in Hebrew.
In the English edition of Haaretz, it was slightly toned down.)
Following the news item, I was told,
the Prime Minister has ordered his obedient servant, the Attorney
General, to start criminal proceedings against us. The Minister
of Justice, Me'ir Shitreet, a third-rate politician, declared
that we were a "fifth column". The Minister for Communication,
Rubi Rivlin, considered by many to be a clown, solemnly asserted
that "This is Treason!"
Any number of politicians and commentators
started a lynch campaign. Expressions like "traitors",
"informers", "Capo" (the Jewish "camp
police", which served the Nazis in the concentration camps),
"Judenrat" (the Jewish committees appointed by the
Nazis in the ghettos) were freely bandied about.
There was, indeed, good reason for all
this commotion.
At the beginning of the year, the Gush
Shalom peace movement, like many people in Israel and abroad,
decided that it could no longer ignore the fact that in the course
of the IDF operations in the occupied territories terrible acts,
violating both Israeli and international law, were being committed.
Some of these appeared to be war crimes. We in the Gush decided
that it was our duty, as Israeli citizens who bear responsibility
for the acts of our government and our army, to raise our voice
and deliver a stringent warning.
On January 9 we convened a conference
on war crimes in a big hall in Tel-Aviv. Several professors of
international law and two senior (retired) army officers were
on the panel. One of the speakers was a war hero, air force Colonel
Yig'al Shohat, who had been shot down over Egypt and lost a leg.
In a voice trembling with emotion, he called upon his comrades,
the combat pilots, to refuse to obey illegal orders, such as
bombarding civilian neighborhoods.
All the TV and radio stations and the
two major newspapers ignored the conference, to which they were
invited. It was clear that all of the enlisted media had decided
to suppress the issue of war crimes.
That became quite clear when we submitted
to Kol Israel, the state-run radio network, a paid ad, informing
soldiers about their duty to refuse "manifestly illegal
orders" - literally repeating the wording of the judgment
of the military court following the Kafr Kassem massacre of 1956.
Kol Israel refused to broadcast it. We asked the Supreme Court
to order the Broadcasting Authority to air the ad, but the court
decided that it was unable to do so.
So we decided to take direct action.
We distributed among the soldiers a pocket manual, setting out
the prohibitions of the Geneva Convention, which was signed by
Israel. Among them: Executions without trial (called "liquidations"),
shooting of unarmed civilians, torture, prevention of medical
treatment, killing the wounded (called "verification of
death"), starvation, deportation.
"Protect yourself against indictment
abroad!" the manual said, "As a soldier in an occupation
army, you are particularly exposed to indictment for war crimes.
Strict adherence to this manual will protect you from arrest
and indictment abroad!"
The manual concluded: "Soldier,
remember! During your military service, whether on regular or
reserve duty, you must refuse manifestly illegal orders. If you
have witnessed a war crime, you are duty-bound to report it!"
At the same time we sent individual letters
to certain commanders and warned them that their actions might
lead in future to their indictment in an Israeli or international
court. (There is no statute of limitation on war crimes.) In
the letters, we relied solely on material published in the media,
especially on boasts made by the officers themselves, who practically
incriminated themselves.
Copies were sent to the media, all of
whom suppressed the information, as well as to the chief legal
officer of the army, who did not take any action.
We warned these senior officers that
the material collected by us would be put at the disposal of
an Israeli court, if, at any time in the future, the courts start
to fulfill their duty, or - as a last resort - to the International
Criminal Court in The Hague.
One may assume that it was one of these
officers who gave the sensational news to the military correspondent
of Haaretz. The liberal newspaper, which, until that day, had
ignored all the information about our action (as, indeed, about
almost all the activities of the peace movements) did publish
this story as the main sensation on its front page.
The result was a deluge of defamation.
The telephone lines of Gush Shalom activists were inundated with
curses and death threats. The radio talk shows competed with
each other over who would bring the most fanatical extremists
to the microphone, with the hosts egging them on and openly supporting
them. Gush activists were suddenly invited to TV and radio interviews,
where they were faced with interviewers who behaved like interrogators
of prisoners in some Shin-Beth cellar.
Of all the curses thrown at us, the most
instructive was "informers". It belongs to the ghetto
vocabulary. When Jews were a defenseless community, helplessly
exposed to the cruelty of Gentile authorities, a Jew who denounced
another Jew to the Goyim was considered the vilest of the vile.
The fact that this word is used today, after 54 years of having
our state, when we have one of the most powerful armies in the
world, shows that many in our country still live in the world
of the ghetto. Verily, it seems that it is easier to get the
Jews out of the ghetto than to get the ghetto out of some Jews.
The judges of the International Criminal Court look to them like
a mob of drunken Cossacks intent on carrying out a pogrom.
Our aim is, of course, prevention. We
wanted to raise awareness of this subject among the officers
and soldiers. We hoped they and their colleagues would take the
war crimes issue into consideration while making their plans,
supplying perhaps the feather that would turn the scales at the
moment of decision. We were resolved to turn this subject into
a public issue, so as to put pressure on the political and military
leadership.
Actually, the campaign of incitement
unleashed against us did serve this very purpose. For a week
now, war crimes have become a central subject of the public discourse
in Israel. No officer or soldier could avoid giving serious consideration
to his deeds or defaults in the occupied territories. Many of
them for the first time became aware of what war crimes are and
how they might affect their own lives.
From now on, this subject will not disappear
from the agenda.
Uri Avnery
lives in Israel. He has written about Sharon for more than 20
years.
New Print
Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- War Talk As White Noise:
Anything to Get Harken and Halliburton
Out of the Headlines;
- First Hilliard, Then
McKinney: Jewish
Groups Target Blacks Brave Enough to Talk About Justice in the
Middle East; Intimidation
is the Name of the Game; Smearing
"Insane" McKinney As Muslims' Pawn;
- The Missing Terrorist?
Calling Scotland
Yard: "Where's Atif?"
- They Never Booed Dylan!:
Tape Transcript Shows
Famed Newport Folkfest Dissing of Electric Dylan Not True. The Catcalls were for Peter
Yarrow!
- New Shame from the Liffey
Shrike
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now! Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
August 14
/ 19, 2002
Susan Davis
Played
Out: a Journey to Central City, Colorado
CounterPunch
Staff
Our Favorite
Films
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Usonian
Utopia's:
Frank Lloyd Wright, Working Class Housing and the FBI
Uri Avnery
A Phone
Call from Hell
Wendy Brinker
Racism
is Alive and Well in the South Carolina Death House
Hamit Dardagan
The
Unbearable Lightness of Bombing
Ahmad Faruqui
The Legacy
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Philip Farruggio
Leading
by Example
Anthony Gancarski
Union
Jackass: Richard Perle's UK Charm Offensive
Jeff Halper
Fortress
Israel: the Message of the Bulldozer
Gary Leupp
An Open
Letter to Bruce Springsteen about Bush's War on Terrorism
Dave Marsh
Sing a
Simple Song
Rashmi Mayur
To Johannesburg
in Search of Hope
Steve Perry
Another Fine Mess:
Martha Stewart and Paul Wellstone
Anis Shivani
What's
Next...Concentration Camps?
Edward Said
Punishment
by Detail
Jeff Taylor
Paul Wellstone's
Legacy
August 10/11,
2002
Walt Brasch
The Bush
2 Legacy...So Far
August 9,
2002
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Corporate
Crime:
More Shareholder Power
Not the Solution
Ansar Ahmed
The Waning
of the
Pax Americana
Alexander
Cockburn
War,
the Military and the Hunt for the "Violence Gene"
August 8,
2002
Ron Jacobs
Iraq:
The Final Storm?
Dave Marsh
Now Ain't
the Time
for Your Tears
Mark Weisbrot
Bush
Administration Tries to Hide Role in Venezuela Coup
Anthony Gancarski
AIPAC,
Congress and Iraq
Robert Fisk
Families
of the
Disappeared Demand Answers
Gary Leupp
Karzai's
Bodyguard
August 7,
2002
Anis Shivani
The First
21st Century
Police State
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Fallon's
Fallen
Is the US Navy Killing
Children in Nevada?
Robert Fisk
For the
Forgotten Afghans,
the UN Offers a Fresh Hell
Dr. Susan
Block
Rigas in
Cuffs
Bill Christison
Disastrous
Foreign Policies of the US Part 5: the Call of Democracy?
August 6,
2002
Philip Farruggio
Signs
of the Elites
Bruce Gagnon
We Must
Come Alive
David Krieger
From
Hiroshima to Hope
Jerre Skog
Global
Reach of Corporate Crime or What the Hell are
They Teaching at Harvard?
Robert Fisk
Return to
Afghanistan:
Collateral Damage
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Fox in the Pension Fund
August 5, 2002
Rahul Mahajan
Iraq
and the New Great Game
Jordy Cummings
The
Last Frontier of
Israel and Palestine
Bernard Weiner
Inside
Saddam's Diary
Mike Leon
US Mute
to Israeli Brutality
Norman Madarasz
Brazil:
the Most Important Election of 2002?
August 4, 2002
Susan Davis
Fat Americans
August 3, 2002
David Krieger
Nuclear
Apartheid
Gilad Atzmon
The End
of Innocence
Gavin Keeney
Everybody's
a Critic
Alexander Cockburn
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save Dick Cheney?
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|