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CounterPunch
September
14 / 15, 2002
From Josephus
to Sharon
A Witness from the Past
by Uri Avnery
A person who died 1900 years ago was summoned
this week by Ariel Sharon to appear before his verbal kangaroo
court.
That, in itself, is not surprising. In
Jewish consciousness, there is no clear borderline between past
and present, as there is none between history and myth. This
may be the result of living outside history for thousands of
years. Anyhow, in all debates about the future, Jews are used
to involving figures from the remote past.
Joseph ben-Mattathias, better known by
his Roman name Josephus Flavius, was the scion of a priestly
family in Jerusalem. With the outbreak of the Jewish Rebellion
against Rome, 66 AD, he was appointed commander of the Galilee.
When the Romans re-conquered the region, he was holed up in
the fortified town Jotapata (Jodpat), but saved himself by
resorting to a clever device. The defenders of the town decided
to kill each other (as the defenders of Massada did later) and
fixed by lot who would kill whom. Joseph managed to be the last
one left alive, went over to the Romans and became a court historian
of the Emperor.
His book "The Jewish War" is
the most important report on the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction
of the Jewish Temple--a traumatic event, that has left a deep
imprint on Jewish consciousness to this very day. Every year,
on the ninth day of the month Av, Jews are bound to mourn the
destruction of the Temple and Israeli law forbids opening places
of amusement. The claim for Israeli sovereignty over the Temple
Mount is even now a major obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace.
A few days ago, on the first day of the
Jewish New Year, Ariel Sharon invited himself to a solemn interview
by two handpicked interviewers of the state-owned Kol Israel
radio. That was not difficult, because Sharon is now the direct
boss of all state-owned media.
(He achieved this by a small putsch:
the Labor minister who was in charge of these media was persuaded
to resign and accept a huge salary as the director of a bank,
which collapsed the next day. Contrary to the coalition agreement,
Sharon took the portfolio for himself. Now he controls the
state media the way Stalin controlled his, with the same results.)
In the course of the interview, Sharon
was asked about the Gush Shalom activists who, as put by the
interviewer, are collecting material about IDF soldiers with
the intention of submitting it to the international war-crimes
court at The Hague.
This was obviously an invited question,
since Sharon had brought with him to the interview a testimony
for the prosecution: a quotation from Josephus Flavius.
First, Sharon accused the Gush activists
(including myself) of treason and espionage in times of war.
According to him, we are collecting the names of IDF officers
and soldiers, in order to denounce them to the "enemies
of Israel", namely the judges of the International Criminal
Court at The Hague. "No act is more despicable than that,"
he pronounced.
After claiming that the Gush activists
want to sow discord within our ranks, he read the long passage
from Josephus that he had brought with him: "They (the
defenders of Jerusalem) fought against each other, and their
actions delighted the besiegers. Indeed, the evil that the Romans
brought upon the city, was not worse than the evil the defenders
brought on each other. After that, the fall of the city could
not add to the disaster. The calamities that befell the city
before its fall were so terrible, that one may say that the
quarrel conquered the city, and the Romans conquered the quarrel,
which was stronger than its besieged walls." (My translation.)
The trouble with this quotation is that
it is quite irrelevant, to say the least. The assistants who
prepared it for Sharon are, it seems, ignorant of history.
First, nobody is besieging us. We are
besieging the Palestinians. In this story, we are the Romans
and the Palestinians are the Jews.
Second, the terrible civil war that broke
out inside the besieged city was not between those who supported
the rebellion and those who objected to it, between extremists
and moderates, or, in today's terms, between right and left.
It broke out between the Zealots themselves, or, to use today's
language again, between the extreme right (Sharon) and the even-more-extreme
right (Effi Eitam and his ilk). The moderates, those who argued
that a war against the Roman Empire was hopeless, were liquidated
by the Zealots long before that. The Rabins of those days were
murdered, one by one.
Third, the crazy Zealots did indeed kill
each other inside the besieged city, they destroyed the remaining
foodstuffs and demoralized the starving population. But the
city did not fall because of the quarrels inside it. Even if
the defenders had behaved in an exemplary way and united like
one man behind Sharon and Ben-Eliezer (sorry, behind Jochanan
of Giscala and Shimon Bar-Giora), the Romans would have breached
the walls. Nobody was able to stop their immense military might
for long.
It was the Rebellion itself that was
an act of madness. The end of the Jewish commonwealth in Palestine
became inevitable when the Zealots took control of it. The more
so, since the Jews outside Palestine--already numbering at that
time two thirds of the Jewish people--turned their backs on
the rebels.
By the way, Sharon's attack on Gush Shalom
was so important to his minions, they saw to it that it was
announced in five consecutive news broadcasts throughout that
morning. All his other statements in the interview, such as
the scoop about his forthcoming visit to India and the session
of the Palestinian parliament, were ignored.
That may be a hint of what's to come.
Sharon plans a full-fledged attack on Gush Shalom and all the
serious peace camp, in order to silence all criticism and frighten
other opponents into silence. His words are not only designed
to pressure the state prosecution into putting the Gush activists
on trial, but are also a simple incitement to murder, very much
like his speeches on the eve of Rabin's assassination.
What frightens Sharon so much? It seems
that the Gush Shalom activity causes many soldiers to think,
for the first time, about the possibility that certain actions
are not only immoral and sabotage all chances for peace, but
also violate Israeli and international law and might constitute
war crimes. After all, the great majority of the soldiers are
reasonable persons. Sharon hears the echo. In order to silence
the message, he chooses to silence the messenger. I believe
that even Josephus Flavius will not help him to achieve that.
Uri Avnery
has closely followed the career of Sharon for four decades.
Over the years, he has written three extensive biographical
essays about him, two (1973, 1981) with his cooperation.
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September
12, 2002
Paul de Rooij
A Glossary
of Occupation
James C.
Faris
Riefenstahl
at 100:
The Fascist Aesthetic
Gary Leupp
Presidential
Honesty on Iraq
Tarif Abboushi
A Conversation
with My Arab-American Self
Ron Jacobs
Shelter
from the Storm
Rick Giombetti
Paxil
and Addiction
Krystal Kyer
From NAFTA
to CAFTA
Another Rotten Trade Deal
John Jonik
Overcome
in Philly
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