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Today's
Stories
October 20,
2004
Yitzhak Laor
"Did
You Two Squabble?": a Bullet Fired for Every Palestinian
Child
October 19,
2004
Jeff Taylor
Confessions
of a Swing State Voter
Matt Vidal
American
Myopia: "More Money in Your Pocket"
Victor Kattan
"It's Not Who You're Against; It's Who You're For":
Palestine Takes Center Stage At Euro Social Forum
William Loren
Katz
What Goes Around Comes Around
Sean Carter
O'Reilly Should Shut Up About Extortion Claiims
CounterPunch Wire
Who's Really in Bed with Republican Funders: Kerry or Nader?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Party
Favors: the Political Business of Terry McAuliffe
October 18,
2004
Saul Landau
Facts
and Lies; Slogans and Truth
Dave Lindorff
Bulletin
on the Bush Bulge
Diane Christian
Sheep
and Goats: On the Language of Goodness
Greg Bates / Dave Lindorff
Betting on War: a Wager on the Fallout of a Kerry Presidency
Uri Avnery
Ariel
Sharon's Philosophy
Peter LaVenia
Leaving the Greens So Soon? a Response to Josh Frank
Mike Whitney
O'Reilly at the Whipping Post
Elaine Cassel
The Other War: Civil Liberties Three Years After 9/11
October 16
/ 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
October 15,
2004
Paul Craig
Roberts
Where
Did These "Conservatives" Come From?: The Brownshirting
of America
Laura Carlsen
Wal-Mart
vs. the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
Greg Bates
Empire of Insanity: Kerry's Iraq Troop Numbers
Michael Donnelly
News from a Swing State: Does Anyone Here Have a Spine?
Katherine Lahey
The Venezuelan "Threat": Why Do Kerry and Bush Fear
Hugo Chavez?
Robert Jensen
/ Pat Youngblood
Election Day Fears
Leah Caldwell
From
Supermax to Abu Ghraib: the Masterminds of Torture and Abuse
Website of
the Day
An Anti-Billionaire Policy? Why That Would Be Economic Racism
October 14,
2004
Darcy Richardson
The
Other Progressive Candidate: the Lonely Crusade of Walt Brown
Willliam A.
Cook
Turning
Myths into Truth
Laura Santina
Water, Women and War
Evelyn Pringle
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma: What You Can't Say About Drug
Importation
Alan Farago
Lessons
from Nature
Rep. Maxine Waters
A Letter to Colin Powell on Haiti
Nicole Colson
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
October 13,
2004
Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath
of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti
Sharon Smith
Barak
O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran
Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: a False Beacon?
Website of
the Day
Operation
Truth
October 12,
2004
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters
in Swing States
Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader
Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from
UN Oil-for-Food Program
Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course
Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake
Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Israel as Sideshow
Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
October 20, 2004
A Bullet Fired
for Every Palestinian Child
"Did
You Two Squabble?"
By
YITZHAK LAOR
Editors'
Note: This
trenchant essay by Israeli novelist Yitzhak Laor was originally
submitted to the London Review of Books, which in the
past has frequently published Laor's writing. But they refused
to run this skewering of the Israeli Left with the LRB's editor
chiding Laor that "in
my editorial judgment (to be pompous) this piece won't help anyone." CounterPunch
is honored to publish it. AC / JSC
One of the times I was detained (it
was after a demonstration), I shared a cell with a young burglar,
all blood and broken teeth, beaten twice. The first time was
when he tried to escape, as detectives came to arrest him, since
attempted escapes had become a sort of free license for police
violence. The second time was a bit later when he was taken to
hospital to stop his bleeding. Handcuffed he entered the ER,
chained to a cop, and the doctor asked them both: "Did you
two squabble?" The burglar did what he had to do: he spat
his blood right into the face of the enlightened MD, and of course
was beaten again, right there, still handcuffed, under the indifferent
eyes of the medical staff. I liked my cellmate, I cannot forget
his story, nor his pride. From that day on, June the 8th 1982,
the question "did you two squabble?" became for me
the image of the real description for the bystander.
A month after the Intifada
began, four years ago, Major General Amos Malka, by then No.
3 in the military hierarchy, and until 2001 the head of Israeli
military Intelligence (MI), asked one of his officers (Major
Kuperwasser) how many 5.56 bullets the Central Command
had fired during that month (that is, only in the West Bank).
Three years later Malka talked about these horrific figures.
This is what he said to Ha'aretz's diplomatic commentator,
Akiva Eldar about the first month of the Intifada, 30 days of
unrest, no terrorist attacks yet, no Palestinian shooting:
Kuperwasser got back to me
with the number, 850,000 bullets. My figure was 1.3 million bullets
in the West Bank and Gaza. This is a strategic figure that says
that our soldiers are shooting and shooting and shooting. I asked:
"Is this what you intended in your preparations?" and
he replied in the negative. I said: "Then the significance
is that we are determining the height of the flames." (HaAretz,
11.6.2004).
It was a bullet for every Palestinian
child, said one of the officers in that meeting, or at least
this is what the Israeli daily Maariv revealed two years
ago, when the horrible figures were first leaked. It didn't much
change "public opinion", neither here nor in the West,
neither two years ago nor 4 months ago when Malka finally opened
his mouth. It read as if it had happened somewhere else, or a
long time ago, or as if it was just one version, a voice in a
polyphony, hiding behind the principle theme: we, the Israelis
are right, and they are wrong.
Israeli political society--including
the Zionist Left, Labour, Meretz and Peace Now,
all currently disappearing because of this war--had been so deeply
involved in construction of anti-Palestinian consent during the
first months of the Intifada, that none of them -- neither their
politicians, nor their intellectuals -- were able to acknowledge
such a story and say: "Oops, we're sorry, we were misled."
And it is not only about Major
General Malka's bullet figures, of course. It is also about the
total dismissal of the Palestinian accusations during those months
of autumn 2000: nobody--not even the pro-Palestinians in the
West--believed them, when they tried to tell their story, that
included the reality of the 1.3 million 5.56 bullets fired
at them, when they tried to tell their version of how Israel
made every possible effort to turn the unrest of Fall 2000 into
a bloodbath, to push the various factions to use arms, to turn
this into the final stage of unwriting Oslo. That was the goal
of Ehud Barak and his men, General Shaul Mofaz (then Chief of
Staff, now minister of defence) and General Moshe Ya'alon, the
real mastermind behind the plan -- to "burn onto the Palestinian
mind" (his own words) that they cannot beat us.
What appeared in the liberal
press in the West--and I don't even mean the New York Times--together
with sporadic reports from the scenes and reaction from the Israeli
official spokesmen was a "comfortable, balanced lesson":
both sides should not be violent, or should not use violence.
"You two squabbling" over there. By and large
this construction of public opinion everywhere was based on nothing
like facts. It was based on a long tradition of Western hostility
towards the Arabs, but it was cemented with the help of the Zionist
Left writers and intellectuals.
A few weeks before Camp David,
summer 2000, during preparation for Camp David summit, Major
General Malka reviewed Arafat's positions for the Israeli cabinet
members.
I said there was no chance
that he would compromise on 90 percent of the territories or
even on 93 percent. He is not a real-estate trader, and he is
not going to stop midway. Barak said to me: "You are telling
me that if I offer him 90 percent, he isn't going to take it?
I don't accept your assessment."
I said to him that indeed, there is no chance that he would accept
it. [] I told them [the cabinet members, all Labour and Meretz]
that the difference between me and them is that they are speaking
from hope and I am trying to neutralize my hope and give a professional
assessment. But Barak saw himself as able to make his assessments
without assessments from MI, because he is his own intelligence,
and he thought he was smarter. Afterward, it was convenient for
him to explain his failure by a distorted description of the
reality. (Ha'aretz, 11.6.2004).
That distortion of reality
wouldn't be a realizable project, were it not corroborated by
the old Western colonial discourse of mistrust of the Arabs.
But it also needed, in a very interesting way, the Israeli Peace
Camp's intellectuals. None was more suited for this task than
the Israeli writers who built their careers in the West on being
Peace loving people, without ever specifying what peace means.
However, the gap between the facts and the effort to distort
them was so wide that it didn't take too many years to come to
light. Akiva Eldar, who brought the could-be-sensational interview
with Malka, writes:
Malka insists that even after
the peace talks gave way to hostilities, MI did not revise its
assessments. Neither did the research units at the Shin Bet,
the Mossad, the Foreign Ministry and the office of the coordinator
of activities in the territories adopt the thesis that the Camp
David summit had revealed "the Oslo plot" [by Arafat].
(Ha'aretz, 11.6.2004)
So, it was the Zionist Left's
mission four years ago to either impose an impossible peace plan
on the Palestinians, or to depict them as responsible for the
war that would break out. This is how David Grossman did his
job for Ehud Barak:
True, there is no symmetry
between the concessions the two sides can make. Israel holds
almost all the cards, while the Palestinians have more restricted
options Nevertheless, there is no escaping the sense that Arafat
was the less bold, less creative, and more stubborn of the two
leaders. (Death as a Way of Life).
It is not dialectical, nor
is it crooked thinking. It was the foreign Office theme, to frame
Arafat. That decision preceded even the war. It ran throughout
the Oslo years, when colonization deepened, the number of settlers
tripled, lands were expropriated, roads for Jews were paved in
the Occupied Territories. But when Camp David failed, regardless
of anything else, they all, the writers, the ambassadors, the
senior columnists, got the same tip: put the blame on Arafat.
Read how Amos Oz described for the The Guardian's readers
the failure of Camp David in July 2000 and note how similar is
the way Arafat "inability" is being portrayed also
here:
Ehud Barak went a very long
way towards the Palestinians, even before the beginning of the
Camp David summit; longer than any of his predecessors ever dreamt
to go; longer than any other Israeli prime minister is likely
to go. On the way to Camp David, Barak's proclaimed stance was
so dovish that it made him lose his parliamentary majority, his
coalition government, even some of his constituency. Nevertheless,
while shedding wings and body and tail on the way, he carried
on like a flying cockpit, he carried on. Seemingly Yasser
Arafat did not go such a long and lonely way towards the Israelis.
Perhaps he could not, or lacked the fierce devotion to making
peace. (Even if Camp David Fails, this Conflict is on its
Last Legs', Guardian, 25 July 2000, my emphasis).
When he wrote for the NYT he
was even more vicious: "I am sitting in front of the television
in the living room, seeing Yasser Arafat receive a triumphant
hero's welcome in Gaza, and all this for having said no to peace
with Israel. The whole Gaza Strip is covered in flags and slogans
proclaiming the 'Palestinian Saladin' . . . My heart breaks."
(NYT, 28.7.2000).
And he went on, the same month,
same newspaper:
Yet the Palestinians said no.
They insist on their 'right of return', when we all very well
know that around here 'right of return' is an Arab euphemism
for the liquidation of Israel. Mr Arafat doesn't insist on merely
the right to a Palestinian state, a right I fully support. Now
he demands that the Palestinian exiles should return not only
to Palestine, but also to Israel, thus upsetting the demographic
balance and eventually turning Israel into the 26th Arab country.
But four years later, HaAretz
revealed what every Palestinian negotiator had claimed for four
years.
In a lecture at Princeton University
in March, 2002, [Prof.] Mati Steinberg, [until the middle of
2003 a special advisor to the head of the
Shin Bet] argued that the Camp David summit failed because of
the dispute over the Temple Mount--not over the issue of the
right of return,
which was barely discussed at that summit and was born retrospectively
in Israel in order to create the internal consensus. (Ha'aretz,
11.6.2004).
Needless to say, Amos Oz never retracted, never apologized. On
the contrary, he sharpened his attacks on the Palestinians, very
flattered by the position he obtained with Ehud Barak, for a
while at least, as a "soul mate" for late night phone
calls from the leader of the Labour in his last days in power.
Those who read Oz's prose can
easily find in it that kind of "Brotherhood of the agonizing
strong males". Perry Anderson rightly described it as the
Israeli "Labour's traditional culture--the mixture of machismo
and schmaltz of which a figure like Amos Oz offers a typical
embodiment."
I could go on forever with
quotes. But silence is unquotable. The way these protagonists,
representatives of the Peace Movement, as they are depicted in
the Western press, kept their mouths shut during the great massacres
in Raffah or Gaza, and before, during the massacres in Jenin,
or other towns and villages of Palestine, that silence is unquotable.
Unless the Western newspapers were to ask them: 'Are you for
or against the IDF? Would you speak out for or against this operation,
or that one?' there would be no answer. But they didn't ask,
because they didn't want to know, those Western newspapers, because
the function of these writers was never informative, nor intellectual.
Is it about bad writing? Is
it about bad journalism? Is it about paternalistic editors who
tollerate awful columns from such a provincial place where they
all squabble each other? No. It is far more serious. "Allow
me to tell a brief story, a private one." This is how David
Grossman opened one of his European columns, in 1998.
A very dear member of my family,
a survivor of the Treblinka death camp, arrived at my wedding
with a bandage on her forgotten forearm. She was covering her
tattooed number so as not to mar the celebration with a memento
of the Holocaust.
I understood then, very sharply,
how much all of us here in Israel are always walking on a surface
as thin as that bandage.
Only in Israeli writing in
the West--Exodus of course preceded "us"--does
one reflect in one's own wedding party on the fate of the Jewish
people. However this is not a story about a family, but about
"politics in Israel", told not by a survivor, or son
to survivors, "second generation". No. Every Israeli
is a second generation within the Western imagery of Israel,
no matter what happens to the Palestinians. Israel wouldn't succeed
later in the Intifada (after Jenin) to brush aside criticism
in the Western press with the silly concept of "New anti-Semitism",
had it not had those cheap and vulgar "personal stories"
about "our life thin as a bandage". And it works especially
among Diaspora Jews, especially in NYC, who are, usually, blackmailed
three times with such kitsch: "How dare you being alive?",
"How dare you being against us?" "How dare you
being so better off than we are?" Needless to say that no
Israeli newspaper would have published such rubbish, about that
aunt with the bandage even if Grossman would submit it. Needless
to say that no reviewer abroad would pick on such an embarrassing
and infantile "lesson of Holocaust".
Why is it important to analyze
this kind of journalism? Because it has long become part of
the image of "Modern Jew" in the West. We--no matter
what we do--represent something else. Would it be the same for
a Palestinian to have a seat in the same Pantheon? Of course
not. He has to be at least Edawrd Said in order to do so, an
expert of "our" culture, that is English literature,
and/or Wagner. Otherwise he is not one of us. But the "Modern
Jews", that is Israelis, have a different role and place
in the matrix. They represent an "alternative history",
where the Jews were never expelled or destroyed, just traveled
for a while. No matter what they do, as long as they "look
like one of us, talk like one of us, think like of us" they
please us.
No serious writing about the Middle East conflict within the
Western press can evade both the theme of "You two squabble
over there" and the role of the Israeli embodied
in a certain "liberal" Israeli writers writing about
politics, totally uncommitted to politics.
In short, the "balanced
position" of newspapers such as The Guardian, Le
Monde, La Republica etc. was not achieved through
the Zionist Left writers' argumentation, but through their presence,
like images, like voices, like sound bites. Their thought had
no importance, only the personal aspect. Even Amos Oz the less
personal of all, had to use his "personal credit card"
when depicting the Israeli as a victim of the Palestinians:
Already in 1967 I was one of
the very few Israelis invoking the solution of two neighbouring
states, with Jerusalem as the capital city of both, reciprocal
recognition and mutual acceptance. Since then, for many years,
my own people treated me like a traitor. My children at school
suffered all manner of insults, accused of being the children
of one ready to sell off his homeland. [...] I pause to reflect.
I remember how in the old days a single phone booth would have
sufficed to contain the entire national assembly of Israeli peace
activists. We could literally count ourselves on the tip of our
fingers, a tiny minority among minorities. Today everything is
different. More than half the nation is with us. [...] Yet the
Palestinians said no.
This is of course a mixture
of truth and fiction. Oz's children grew up in a Kibbutz and
if they suffered it was never because of his political positions
back in 1967. But that doesn't matter, he is a representative
of a nation, and as such he has a role within the European need
for an Other that is part of the I, not real other at all. One
could easily begin here an analysis of the way Israeli literature
is being read and accepted in the West . But we better forget
the literature. The point is that the reader of such critical
newspaper, critical of Israel policy, sometimes even critical
of Zionism, that reader is surely appalled by what s/he reads
about Israeli racist citizenship laws, or about Israeli draconic
apartheid in the Occupied Territories, or about the death toll
of Arab babies in Israel compared with Jewish babies, but s/he
is not anti-Israeli like the Right Wing press. On the contrary.
The liberal reader wants to know that there are Israelis "like
us". Ah, but there are no Israelis like you, good liberals,
because to be good liberal like you, over here, one has to become
a radical, or what you vehemently condemn, an extremist. One
cannot be a European liberal and support Israeli Apartheid. One
cannot be a European liberal and support a state that prevents
marriage between religions, etc. etc. In short Zionism does not
conform with values of liberalism. It is always closer, even
it is "Left", to Le Pen or Heider. It is a matter of
minor disputes. Even if you take the simple fact, that none of
the writers I quoted here, and their colleagues, has ever supported
the refuseniks, warmly supported by every simple minded European,
we can understand that intellectual lack within that discourse
of Israeli writers on the Left. Amos Oz can receive the most
prestigious prizes in Barcelona or Berlin, he can't really talk
about peace, for the discourse of peace in Israel traverses the
old clichés that used to work before Oslo, before the
current Intifada, before Ehud Barak and his junta, supported
by the same Amos Oz, turned it to another part of history: Apartheid
in a world ruled by one super-power. Talks of peace with no politics,
no support of resistance, solidarity with the victims are empty
and hollow, fit for ceremonies, not a debate.
I am not saying that the readers of the liberal newspapers don't
care about such matters. On the contrary, they do care. They
need an Israeli to be against "all those things",
they need a columnist to do what a column sometimes does, "write
what I think, exactly what I think". Now we come back to
peace and war. I am writing these things during the atrocities
the IDF is committing in the Gaza strip.
Less than a year ago, A. B.
Yehoshua received a Peace Award from the city of Naples. The
book for which he got the award was The Liberated Bride. It
is not about peace, to say the least. Tariq Ali got the same
award, together with Yehoshua, for a non-fiction book, on Bush
and his war in Iraq. I ask you to read carefully what A. B. Yehoshua
said six month later, to Ha'aretz, 6 months before the
current atrocities taking place in Gaza. [The italic parts within
the text appeared only in the Hebrew version of the article.
The English editors of Ha'aretz chose not to include in
their own version of that interview:]
It's possible that there will
be a war with the Palestinians. It's not necessary, it's not
impossible. But if there is a war, it will be a very short one.
Maybe a war of six days. Because after we remove the settlements
and after we stop being an occupation army, all the rules
of war will be different. We will exercise our full force.
We will not have to run around looking for this terrorist or
that instigator--we will make use of force against an entire
population. We will use total force. Because from the minute
we withdraw I don't want to know their names. I don't
want any personal relations with them. I am no longer in
a situation of occupation and policing and B'Tselem [the human
rights organization]. Instead, I will be standing opposite them
in a position of nation versus nation. State versus state. I
am not going to perpetrate war crimes for their own sake, but
I will use all my force against them. If there is shooting at
Ashkelon, there is no electricity in Gaza. We shall use force
against an entire population. We shall use total force It will
be a totally different war. It will be much harder on the Palestinians.
If they shoot Qassam missiles at Ashkelon, we will cut electricity
to Gaza. We shall cut communications in Gaza. We shall prevent
fuel from Gaza. We shall use our full force as we did on the
Egyptian (Suez) Canal in 1969. And then, when the Palestinian
suffering will be totally different, much more serious, they
will, by themselves, eliminate the terror. The Palestinian nation
will overcome terrorism itself. It won't have any other choice.
Let them stop the shooting. No matter if it is the PA or the
Hamas. Whoever takes responsibility for the fuel, electricity
and hospitals, and sees that they do not function, will operate
within a few days to stop the shooting of the Qassams. This new
situation will totally change the rules of the game. Not a desired
war, but definitely a purifying one. A war that will make it
clear to the Palestinians that they are sovereign. The suffering
they will go through in the post-occupation situation will make
clear to them that they must stop the violence, because now they
are sovereign. From the moment we retreat I don't want to know
their names at all. I don't want any personal relationship with
them, and I am not going to commit war crimes for their own sake.
("A nation that knows no bounds", HaAretz weekend
magazine, an interview with A. B. Yehoshua, 18.3.2004).
It is not about cheating the
Europeans, nor selling them warmongering wrapped up in peace
phraseology, by writers who, at home, either encourage the army
to do atrocities or keep their mouth shut. No, it is about a
bizarre function of a "Peace loving writer from Israel",
who has nothing to declare but a heart full of grief, or anger,
no information, nothing but some incoherent beliefs, some "optimism"
for the complacent reader. And truth, where is the truth? Well,
"you two squabble".
Yitzhak Laor is an Israeli novelist who lives in
Tel Aviv.
Weekend
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