From: Jeff Jones
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 8:13 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [R-G] Uri Avnery: The Settler State
Avnery remains the gold standard for Israeli history and analysis of
the occupation of Palestine. One never fails to learn pivotal
historical facts in his weekly columns.
Jeff Jones
Uri Avnery's Column
The Settler State
16/04/11
THE OTHER day, the almighty General Security Service (Shabak,
formerly Shin Bet) needed a new boss. It is a hugely important job,
because no minister ever dares to contradict the advice of the Shabak
chief in cabinet meetings.
There was an obvious candidate, known only as J. But at the last
moment, the settlers' lobby was mobilized. As director of the "Jewish
department" J. had put some Jewish terrorists in prison. So his
candidature was rejected and Yoram Cohen, a kippah-wearing darling of
the settlers was appointed instead.
That happened last month. Just before that, The National Security
Council also needed a new chief. Under pressure from the settlers,
General Yaakov Amidror, formerly the highest kippah-wearing officer
in the army, a man of openly ultra-ultra nationalist views, got the
job.
The Deputy Chief of Staff of the army is a kippah-wearing officer
dear to the settlers, a former head of Central Command, which
includes the West Bank.
Some weeks ago I wrote that the problem may not be the annexation of
the West Bank by Israel, but the annexation of Israel by the West
Bank settlers.
Some readers reacted with a chuckle. It looked like a humorous aside.
It was not.
The time has come to examine this process seriously: Is Israel
falling victim to a hostile takeover by the settlers?
FIRST OF all, the term "settlers" itself must be examined.
Formally, there is no question. The settlers are Israelis living
beyond the 1967 border, the Green Line. ("Green" in this case has no
ideological connotation. This just happened to be the color chosen to
distinguish the line on the maps.
Numbers are inflated or deflated according to propaganda needs. But
it is can be assumed that there are about 300,000 settlers in the
West Bank, and an additional 200,000 or so in East Jerusalem.
Israelis usually don't call the Jerusalemites "settlers", putting
them into a different category. But of course, settlers they are.
But when we speak of Settlers in the political context, we speak of a
much bigger community.
True, not all settlers are Settlers. Many people in the West Bank
settlements went there without any ideological motive, just because
they could build their dream villas for practically nothing, with a
picturesque view of Arab minarets to boot. It is these the Settler
Council chairman, Danny Dayan, meant, when, in a (recently leaked)
secret conversation with a US diplomat, he conceded that they could
easily be persuaded to return to Israel if the money was right.
However, all these people have an interest in the status quo, and
therefore will support the real Settlers in the political fight. As
the Jewish proverb goes, if you start fulfilling a commandment for
the wrong reasons, you will end up fulfilling it for the right ones.
BUT THE camp of the "settlers" is much, much bigger.
The entire so-called "national religious" movement is in total
support of the settlers, their ideology and their aims. And no wonder
- the settlement enterprise sprung from its loins.
This must be explained. The "national religious" were originally a
tiny splinter of religious Jewry. The big Orthodox camp saw in
Zionism an aberration and heinous sin. Since God had exiled the Jews
from His land because of their sins, only He - through His Messiah -
had the right to bring them back. The Zionists thus position
themselves above God and prevent the coming of the Messiah. For the
Orthodox, the Zionist idea of a secular Jewish "nation" still is an
abomination.
However, a few religious Jews did join the nascent Zionist movement.
They remained a curiosity. The Zionists held the Jewish religion in
contempt, like everything else belonging to the Jewish Diaspora
("Galut" - exile, a derogatory term in Zionist parlance). Children
who (like myself) were brought up in Zionist schools in Palestine
before the Holocaust were taught to look down with pity on people who
were "still" religious.
This also colored our attitude towards the religious Zionists. The
real work of building our future "Hebrew State" (we never spoke about
a "Jewish State") was done by socialist atheists. The kibbutzim and
moshavim, communal and cooperative villages, as well as the "pioneer"
youth movements, which were the foundation of the whole enterprise,
were mostly Tolstoyan socialist, some of them even Marxist. The few
that were religious were considered marginal.
At that time, in the 30s and 40s, few young people wore a kippah in
public. I don't remember a single member of the Irgun, the
clandestine military ("terrorist") organization to which I belonged,
wearing a kippah - though there were quite a number of religious
members. They preferred a less conspicuous cap or beret.
The national-religious party (originally called Mizrahi - Eastern)
played a minor role in Zionist politics. It was decidedly moderate in
national affairs. In the historic confrontations between the
"activist" David Ben-Gurion and the "moderate" Moshe Sharett in the
50s, they almost always sided with Sharett, driving Ben Gurion up the
wall.
Nobody paid much attention, however, to what was happening under the
surface - in the national-religious youth movement, Bnei Akiva, and
their Yeshivot. There, out of sight of the general public, a
dangerous cocktail of ultra-nationalist Zionism and an aggressive
tribal "messianic" religion was being brewed.
THE ASTOUNDING victory of the Israeli army in the 1967 Six-day War,
after three weeks of extreme anxiety, marked a turning point for this
movement.
Here was everything they had dreamed of: a God-given miracle, the
heartland of historical Eretz Israel (alias the West Bank) occupied,
"The Temple Mount Is In Our Hands!" as a one general breathlessly
reported.
As if somebody had drawn a cork, the national-religious youth
movement escaped its bottle and became a national force. They created
Gush Emunim ("Bloc of the Faithful"), the center of the dynamic
settlement enterprise in the newly "liberated territories".
This must be well understood: for the national-religious camp, 1967
was also a moment of liberation within the Zionist camp. As the Bible
(Psalm 117) prophesied: "The stone the builders despised has become
the cornerstone". The despised national-religious youth movement and
kibbutzim suddenly jumped to center stage.
While the old socialist kibbutz movement was dying of ideological
exhaustion, its members becoming rich by selling agricultural land to
real estate sharks, the national religious sprang up in full
ideological vigor, imbued with spiritual and national fervor,
preaching a pagan Jewish creed of holy places, holy stones and holy
tombs, mixed with the conviction that the whole country belongs to
the Jews and that "foreigners" (meaning the Palestinians, who have
lived here for at least 1300, if not 5000 years) should be kicked out.
MOST OF today's Israelis were born or have immigrated after 1967. The
occupation-state is the only reality they know. The settlers' creed
looks to them like self-evident truth. Polls show a growing number of
young Israelis for whom democracy and human rights are empty phrases.
A Jewish State means a state that belongs to the Jews and to the Jews
only, nobody else has any business to be here.
This climate has created a political scene dominated by a set of
right-wing parties, from Avigdor Lieberman's racists to the outright
fascist followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane - all of them totally
subservient to the settlers.
If it is true that the US Congress is controlled by the Israel lobby,
then this lobby is controlled by the Israeli government, which is
controlled by the settlers. (Like the joke about the dictator who
said: The world is afraid of our country, the country is afraid of
me, I am afraid of my wife, my wife is afraid of a mouse. So who
rules the world?)
So the settlers can do whatever they want: build new settlements and
enlarge existing ones, ignore the Supreme Court, give orders to the
Knesset and the government, attack their "neighbors" whenever they
like, kill Arab children who throw stones, uproot olive groves, burn
mosques. And their power is growing by leaps and bounds.
THE TAKEOVER of a civilized country by hardier border fighters is by
no means extraordinary. On the contrary, it is a frequent historical
phenomenon. The historian Arnold Toynbee provided a long list.
Germany was for a long time dominated by the Ostmark ("Eastern
marches"), which became Austria. The culturally advanced German
heartland fell under the sway of the more primitive but hardier
Prussians, whose homeland was not a part of Germany at all. The
Russian Empire was formed by Moscow, originally a primitive town on
the fringes.
The rule seems to be that when the people of a civilized country
become spoiled by culture and riches, a hardier, less pampered and
more primitive race on the fringes takes over, as Greece was taken
over by the Romans, and Rome by the barbarians.
This can happen to us. But it need not. Israeli secular democracy
still has a lot of strength in it. The settlements can still be
removed. (In a future article, I shall try to show how.) The
religious right can still be repulsed. The occupation, which is the
mother of all evil, can still be terminated.
But for that we have to recognize the danger - and do something about it.
--
Marianne Mikkelsen & Jeff Jones
P.O. Box 43
Sointula, B.C. Canada
V0N 3E0
(250) 973-6413 phone/fax
email: [email protected]
Website: www.island.net/~jjones/
_______________________________________________
Rad-Green mailing list
[email protected]
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
-----
No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 10.0.1321 / Virus Database: 1500/3582 - Release Date: 04/18/11
------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe: <mailto:[email protected]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Digest: <mailto:[email protected]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Help: <mailto:[email protected]?subject=laamn>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Post: <mailto:[email protected]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
[email protected]
[email protected]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[email protected]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
