Passover Eve, 2002
An Open Letter to American Jews
By Assaf Oron [Israeli army reservist]
Dear People,
Yesterday I was informed of an interesting phenomenon: a peace-supporting
Jewish organization called Tikkun published an ad in favor of us, the
Israeli reservist refuseniks [now over 1,000 Iraeli soldiers officers &
generals], and was immediately bombarded with hate mails and phones from
other American Jews. What is more
interesting is that even other Jews considering themselves supporters of
peace have denounced the Tikkun ad, to the extent that some of the Tikkun
Advisory Board members are resigning in order to minimize the personal
damage to themselves. This has so saddened, alarmed and angered me, that I
find myself setting aside a half-day at the eve of Passover, and writing
this open letter to you all. As is my habit, it is quite long, so please
bear with me.
Most of the 'civilized' attacks, so I understand, were seemingly aimed at
this or that detail of the Tikkun ad. This is nothing new to me. Over the
past two months since we came out with our own ad, I've heard and read so
many specific arguments about specific aspects of our act. They range from
petty nit-picking to plain ludicrous, and each and every one of them can be
refuted to dust in a matter of minutes. But the moment you refute them, new
specific arguments sprout up like mushrooms. It is clear that there is
something very general and non-specific behind all this criticism.
Therefore, if you allow me, I will start from the general and only later
turn to a couple of these specific issues.
The general theme is the tribal theme. A very very loud voice (and in Israel
nowadays, it is the only voice that is allowed to be fully heard) keeps
shouting that we are in the midst of a war between two tribes: a tribe of
human beings, of pure good -- the Israelis -- and a tribe of sub-human
beings, of pure evil -- the Palestinians. This voice is so loud, that it has
found its way even to the op-ed pages of the New York Times (William Safire,
March 24 or 25). To those who find this black-and-white picture a bit hard
to believe, the same voice shouts that this is a war of life and death. Only
one tribe will survive, and so even if we are not purely good, we must lay
morality and conscience to sleep, shut up and fight to kill--or else, the
Palestinians will throw us into the sea.
Does this ring a bell to you? It does to me. As a little child growing up in
Israel under Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan, all I heard was that the Arabs are
inhuman monsters who want to throw us into the sea, they understand only
force, and since our
wonderful IDF has won the Six Day War they know not to mess with us
anymore --or else. And of course, we must keep the Liberated Territories to
ourselves, because there's no one to talk with. Then came the Yom Kippur
war, and for a child of 7 it was the perfect proof that indeed the Arabs
want to throw us into the sea, and what a great opportunity it was for our
glorious IDF to teach them a lesson. I prayed for the war to continue to its
natural and final end --the complete surrender of all Arab armies. I was too
small to evaluate, then, how the war really ended; all these cease-fires and
talks were too complicated and boring, much more boring than a war.
And it seemed humiliating that WE should withdraw in these cease-fires; I
remember that the re-opening of the Suez Canal was portrayed in our mass
media as a kind of defeat.
A few years passed and a funny thing happened: those throw-us-into-the-sea
Arabs came to talk with us, and in exchange for all of Sinai they would sign
a full peace. The IDF chief of staff (the late Motte Gur, later a Labor
Party minister) shouted that it is a hoax, that we should not believe
Saadat, but the politicians had to sign. Already a teenager, I went and
protested against the withdrawal from Sinai. It seemed strange to me that
most of the demonstrators were orthodox Jews. After all, it was a purely
logical issue: the Arabs are not to be trusted, that's what we've learned
from day one. Well, lucky for the country, the government and the majority
of the people employed a different logic, and the peace with Egypt was not
missed.
But the throw-us-into-the-sea paradigm immediately found new fields for
play. There was an inconvenient reality on the Northern border, and even
though the forces on the other side (Palestinians 'Phew') had strictly
adhered to a secret cease-fire for about a year, they were Arabs and
therefore could not be trusted. So we talked ourselves into invading Lebanon
and setting up a friendlier regime there. The mastermind of the invasion was
defense minister Ariel Sharon, and Shimon Peres, then head of opposition,
voted together with his party in favor of the invasion. Only later, when it
turned sour, and after many refuseniks already sat in jail, would the main
opposition turn against the whole affair. For me at 16 it was also a turning
point. When I understood that the government had lied to me in order to sell
me this war, I turned from 'center-rightist' to 'leftist'.
Sadly enough, it has taken me almost 20 more years, in a slow and painful
process, to understand how deeply the lies and self-delusion are rooted in
our collective perception of reality.
Anyway, when Peres withdrew most of our forces from Lebanon in 1985, the
Arabs could still not be trusted. And so, to soothe our endless paranoia and
suspicion, we created that perpetual source of death and crime ironically
known as "the Security Zone." It took many years, a lot of blood and Four
Mothers -- against almost all politicians, generals, and columnists -- to
finally pull us out of Lebanon. In the long and hard way, we learned that
even the Lebanese are human beings whose rights must be respected. But not
the Palestinians. Because the Palestinians are too painfully close, like a
rival sibling (and, may I add, because they have always been so weak), we
have singled them out for a special treatment. Having them under our rule,
we've allowed ourselves to trample them like dirt, like dogs. We've been
doing it even to our own Palestinian citizens (especially before 1966), but
we have perfected our treatment in this strange no man's land created in
1967, and known as the Occupied Territories. There we have created an
entirely hallucinatory reality, in which the true humans, members of the
Nation of Masters, could move and settle freely and safely, while the
sub-humans, the Nation of Slaves, were shoved into the corners, and kept
invisible and controlled under our IDF boots. I know. I've been there. I was
taught how to do this, back in the mid-1980's.
I did and witnessed as a matter of fact, deeds that I'm ashamed to remember
to this day. And fortunately for me, I did not have to witness or do
anything truly
"pornographic", as some friends of mine experienced. Since 1987, this cruel,
impossible, unnatural, insulting reality in the Territories has been
exploding in our face. But because of our unshakeable belief that the
Palestinians are monsters who want to throw us into the sea, we reacted by
trying to maintain what we've created at all costs. This meant of course
employing more and more and more force, with the natural result of receiving
more and more and more force in return. When a fledgling and hesitating
peace process tried to work its way through this mess, one major factor
(perhaps THE factor) that undermined it and voided its meaning was our
establishment's endless fear and suspicion of The Other. To resolve this
fear and suspicion, we chose the insane route of demanding full control of
The Other throughout the process. When this Other finally decided that we're
cheating him out of his freedom (and having too many mental disorders of his
own to accommodate ours as well), violence erupted, and all our ancient
instincts woke up.
There they are, we said inrelief, now we see their true face again. The
Arabs want to throw us into the sea. There's no one to talk with ('no
partner", in our beloved ex-PM's words), and they understand only force. And
so we responded as we know and love, with more and more and more force. This
time, the effect was that of putting out a fire with a barrel of gasoline.
And that's the moment when I said to myself, NO, I'm not playing this game
anymore.
But what about the existential threat, you may ask? Well I ask you, have you
not eyes? Don't you see our tanks strolling in Palestinian streets every
other day? Don't you see our helicopters hovering over their neighborhoods
choosing which window to shoot a missile into? What type of existential need
are we answering in trampling the Palestinians? Prevention of terror, I hear
you say. Let me use the wonderful words of my friend Ishay Rosen-Zvi: You
are fighting against terror? What a joke. The Israeli government, in its
policies of Occupation, has turned the Territories into a greenhouse for
growing terror!!! We have sown the seeds, grown them, nurtured them -- and
then our blood is spilled, and the centrist-right-wing politicians reap the
benefits. Indeed, terror is the right-wing politician's best friend. You
know what? When you treat millions of people like sub-humans for so long,
some of them will find inhuman strategies to fight back. Isn't that what the
Zionists, and other Jewish revolutionaries, argued about a hundred years ago
in order to explain the questionable strategies of survival that Jews used
in Europe? Didn't our forefathers say, Let us live like human beings, and
see how we'll act just like other human beings? So here's the deal. I hope
that the first part of this letter made it clear that I don't buy the "they
want to throw us into the sea" crap. It's just a collective self-delusion of
ours. But more importantly, I don't see tribes. I see people, human beings.
I believe that the Palestinians are human beings like us. What a concept,
eh? And before everything else, before EVERYTHING else, we must treat them
like human beings without demanding anything in return. And no (to all
die-hard Barak fans), throwing them a couple of crumbs in which they can set
up pitiful, completely controlled Bantustans in between our settlements and
bypass roads, and believing it to be a great act of "generosity', does NOT
come close to answering this basic requirement. This requirement is NOT
negotiable; moreover, in a perfect demonstration of historical justice, it
is a vital requirement for the survival of our own State.
After that, and based on the lessons of modern history, especially that of
the Arab-Israeli conflict (as was briefly described above), I do believe
that the Palestinians will calm down, and that the elusive "Security" and
peace will finally come upon us (as it did, incidentally, for almost two
whole years between Wye 1998 and Camp David 2000). I don't have any
insurance policy for that (well --almost none, except the solemn promise of
the entire Arab world), but remember - I have this funny notion that they
are human beings. In any case, we are seeing now all too well what type of
insurance policy the opposite paradigm is providing us. In the meanwhile, I
refuse to be a terrorist in my tribe's name. Because that's what it is: not
a "war against terror', as our propaganda machine tries to sell. This is a
war OF terror, a war in which, in return for Palestinian guerrilla and
terror, we employ the IDF in two types of terror. The more visible one are
the violent acts of killing and destruction, those which some people still
try to explain away as "surgical acts of defense." The worse type of terror
is the silent one, which has continued unabated since 1967 and through the
entire Oslo process. It is the terror of Occupation, of humiliation on a
personal and collective basis, of deprivation and legalized robbery, of
alternating exploitation and starvation. This is the mass of the iceberg,
the terror that is itself a long-term greenhouse for counter-terror. And I
simply refuse to be a terrorist and criminal, even if the entire tribe
denounces me. That leads me to the first specific subject: are we, the
refuseniks, being persecuted and denounced, or are we enjoying the wonderful
Israeli tolerance and democracy and exploiting it to make trouble? Well, I
must admit that this is not yet the USSR or Pinochet's Chile, and at least
the Jews here enjoy a relative democracy (describing it as vibrant or
tolerant would be a gross error, but that is a different subject altogether;
maybe in another letter). I first must point out that the government and IDF
also enjoy the image of 'letting us speak', and it serves them well.
Secondly, in a rather sophisticated manner the establishment (with the
generous and voluntary help of the mass media) is effectively shutting us
up. The media has decided for us that there is no opposition. Thus, a
demonstration of 20,000 is reported in 5 seconds at the late-night edition,
and a demonstration of 500 outside a military prison is completely ignored.
The fact that right now there are over a dozen refuseniks in jail -- the
lrgest number in twenty years -- is hidden from the Israeli public. The
story of Captain (resrv.) Itai Haviv and Sergeant (resrv.) Yair Yeffeth, who
demanded a full military trial in which they could prove that refusal is
innocence and that the order to serve in the Territories is illegal, was not
told anywhere except for a brief mention in the back pages of Haaretz. So
the public, of course, didn't learn that the IDF evaded answering these
demands, and that Itai Haviv will spend the Seder night in prison following
a 'disciplinary hearing.' I hope the readers are intelligent enough to know
that if the media wanted, these stories would make the headlines. Still, you
keep hearing about us. That's the key word, ABOUT us. But you don't hear us.
You just hear people explaining, analyzing, mostly (in a ratio of 99 to 1)
attacking us. We have become the perfect 'hate hour' figures, to reunite the
tribe against (have you read 1984?) Petty "volunteer" groups who organized
against us, a mayor who called upon local governments not to hire us, and a
group of industrialists who called employers to fire us, have all won their
moment in the spotlight. No one cared to mention that these are blatantly
illegal calls (no, 'the law' is remembered only when we 'break' it). No one
has tried to set limits to this discussion. Moreover, the prime minister in
one of his rare public addresses blamed us for the wave of terror (us, not
his catastrophic policies). The IDF chief of staff can't stop talking about
us; he sees us as a bunch of inciters with a hidden agenda. So, ironically,
the only thing protecting us from long-term 'gulag' imprisonment and from
losing our jobs is public opinion - the rather large pockets of support and
sympathy among key sectors in the Israeli public, and yes, support ads such
as the one published by Tikkun. The moment the government or IDF will think
the lights are out, and no one sees or cares -- they will find or invent the
'legal' clause (Israeli politicians are experts in this) and throw those
they believe to be our "leaders" to jail for long terms. Remember, even poor
Abie Nathan was thrown in for two years, just because he dared speak with
PLO personnel about peace. But that's nothing, because the moment our
government will sense a "lights out" situation - a huge terror attack, an
American attack on Iraq - there will be a horrible bloodbath in the
Territories, compared to which the last year and a half will be remembered
as a happy picnic.
And that brings me to the second specific issue, that of the Nazi allusion.
Some readers thought that the way the Tikkun ad said "obeying orders" was an
allusion to Nazi murderers' claim that they were "just obeying orders."
Rabbi Lerner has rightly pointed out to these readers, that automatic
execution of orders is a characteristic of all dictatorship, not just the
Nazi one, while refusal on moral grounds is a sign of democracy. I agree,
but let me be less polite and politically correct. After all, it's just my
country that's going up in smoke as I write. What is this? Does Israel have
the exclusive monopoly of labeling all its rivals as Nazis, and everyone
else has to shut up, even when reality starts speaking for itself? Parties
that support the essentially Nazi idea of deporting all Palestinians from
the country, have been part of our Knesset and our "legitimate" political
map since 1984. Recent opinion polls show that 35% of the Jewish public now
supports this "solution", as it is sometimes called. Leaders, Rabbis, and
just plain folk feel free to call openly in the mass media to eradicate
Palestinian cities with or without their tenants. Last weekend, Gen. (res.)
Effi Eitam, fresh out of the military and all ready to take the leadership
of the religious public and become a deputy or alternative to Netanyahu,
received a flattering cover story on Haaretz supplement. He unfolded his
chilling ideology, calling to expel those Palestinians who don't want to
remain in the Galilee and West Bank as serfs, to Jordan, and from Gaza to
Sinai. And he said this: why should us, the country poorest in land
resources, bear the burden of solving the Palestinian problem?
Well I don't know about you, but I remember some of the Nazi rhetoric in
that dark period between the Kristallnacht of 1938 and the beginning of the
war, when Jews were expelled from Germany but could find no safe haven
anywhere else. When I see a retired IDF general and rising political star
use the exact same Nazi rhetoric on Israel's most "liberal" newspaper,
without any criticism by his interviewer or the editors -- my hair just
stands on my head in horror.
Let's move from the political scene back to the ground. My friend, Captain
(Res.) Dan Tamir, decided to refuse to serve in the Territories about a year
ago, after he realized what he'd done as a reserve regiment's intelligence
officer a few weeks before that. He realized he had laid out the plans to
convert a large Palestinian town into a closed ghetto. You can find his full
statement on our website, www.seruv.org.il. The vast majority of
Palestinians in the Territories now starve in such ghettos; in those days of
mercy when they are allowed to leave them by foot and perhaps catch a taxi,
these taxis are forbidden from using most of the paved roads in the region.
But why listen to a "leftist"? Let's hear it from senior IDF officers. One
of the top commanders in the Territories was quoted in Haaretz (Jan. 25) as
saying that in order to prepare for potential battles in dense urban
neighborhoods, the IDF must learn, if necessary, how the German army
"operated" in the Warsaw Ghetto.
A week later, the reporter confirmed this quote and the fact that this is a
widespread opinion in the IDF, and went further to morally defend it. A
small number of people, including myself, tried to raise a scandal over
this. One letter to the editor was published in Haaretz. A much tougher
letter, which I wrote, was never published, nor was my plea for a phone
discussion with an editor ever answered. The issue just died down. No one in
Israel or in the Jewish public abroad was interested.
Where were all these holy souls, who now scold Tikkun because they
indirectly allude to the Nazi horror, where were they all when a senior IDF
officer proudly called, "in order to beat the Palestinians, let's be
Judeo-Nazis"? In my letter to Haaretz I went further. Knowing the IDF
mentality and adding one to one, I concluded that the IDF is operationally
prepared to invade refugee camps - an utter, indefensible war crime - and
through this leak to the press it is starting to pressure the government and
prepare the public opinion for the invasion. The letter was not published.
It was sent on February 2. A few weeks later we all saw the horrors of the
refugee camp invasions and the bloody revenge attacks that followed
culminating on Passover eve. And you know what? Army generals and colonels
morally and professionally pat themselves on the back, because these
invasions "prevented terror", and killed only dozens and not thousands.
(Note: in fact, the major reason limiting the bloodshed was the "terrorists"
responsible decision not to turn the camps into all-out battlegrounds. But
this may change in the next round.)
In truth, I have little hope that the Israeli public will wake up. The
Israeli public, in its fear and confusion, has made a decision (aided by the
politicians and mass media) to go to sleep and wake up only 'after it is all
over'. But it won't be over, because while our mind sleeps our muscles
tighten the death grip, instead of doing the only sensible thing (which
requires an open mind) -- which is to let go. Will you guys join the
hypocrite mobs who sing lullabies to Israel and pounce upon the refuseniks,
upon Tikkun, to shut us up? Or will you finally take responsibility and be
the true friends that Israel needs now -- even if it means not being "nice"
to Israel for a while? As you sit tonight at the Seder table, please
remember the dozen or so refuseniks that spend this Seder in a military
jail.
More importantly, please remember the thousand or so people, three quarters
Palestinians and one quarter Israelis, who were here with us a year ago and
have been murdered. Most of them could have been here with us, if you and we
had acted sooner. We have now acted, done what little we can do. Please
think of the many thousands that may be doomed soon, if you continue sitting
on the fence. May you have a happy Holiday of Freedom,
Please help us struggle free from fear, racism, hatred and the deaths they
produce. Yours,
Assaf Oron
-------------------------------------------
Macdonald Stainsby
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
"They are all Enron, we are all Argentina"
--WEF protesters.
----
In the contradiction lies the hope.
--Bertholt Brecht
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