August 17, 2009
Zionist Pioneer Renounces Zionism
By HELENA COBBAN
I've never met Dov Yermiya, a Jewish Israeli peace activist who is now 94 years
old. But I read of course the book he published in 1983 in which he wrote with
anguish about the torture and other gross mistreatment of civilians he
witnessed directly during Israel's invasion of Lebanon the year before.
I have it in my hand now.
I just learned, from an open letter published by Uri Avnery, that Yermiya,
recently renounced the ideology and practice of Zionism with these stirring
words:
“I, a 95 year old Sabra (native born Israeli Jew), who has plowed its fields,
planted trees, built a house and fathered sons, grandsons and great-grandsons,
and also shed his blood in the battle for the founding of the State of Israel,
“Declare herewith that I renounce my belief in the Zionism which has failed,
that I shall not be loyal to the Jewish fascist state and its mad visions, that
I shall not sing anymore its nationalist anthem, that I shall stand at
attention only on the days of mourning for those fallen on both sides in the
wars, and that I look with a broken heart at an Israel that is committing
suicide and at the three generations of offspring that I have bred and raised
in it.
“... for 42 years, Israel turned what should have been Palestine into a giant
detention camp, and is holding a whole people captive under an oppressive and
cruel regime, with the sole aim of taking away their country, come what may!!!
“”The IDF eagerly suppresses their efforts at rebellion, with the active
assistance of the settlement thugs, by the brutal means of a sophisticated
Apartheid and a choking blockade, inhuman harassment of the sick and of women
in labor, the destruction of their economy and the theft of their best land and
water.
“Over all this there is waving the black flag of the frightening contempt for
the life and blood of the Palestinians. Israel will never be forgiven for the
terrible toll of blood spilt, and especially the blood of children, in
hair-raising quantities.. . “
Avnery's response is fascinating. He too is a veteran peace activist, and of
about the same generation as Yermiya. But in the letter he is, I think,
pleading with Yermiya not to renounce Zionism completely, but rather to
reconnect with the "idealistic" Zionism that they both experienced during their
youth.
He writes,
“When I think of our youth, yours and mine, one scene is never far from my
mind: the 1947 Dalia festival.
“Tens of thousands of young men and women were sitting on the slope of a hill
in the natural amphitheater near Kibbutz Dalia on Mount Carmel. Ostensibly it
was a festival of folk dancing, but in reality it was much more - a great
celebration of the new Hebrew culture which we were then creating in the
country, in which folk dancing played an important role. The dancing groups
came mainly from the kibbutzim and the youth movements, and the dances were
original Hebrew creations, interwoven with Russian, Polish, Yemenite and
Hassidic ones. A group of Arabs danced the Debka in ecstasy, dancing and
dancing and dancing on.
“In the middle of the event, the loudspeakers announced that members of the UN
Commission of Inquiry, which had been sent by the international organization to
decide upon the future of the country, were joining us. When we saw them
entering the amphitheater, the tens of thousands spontaneously rose to their
feet and started to sing the "Hatikva", the national anthem, with a holy fervor
that reverberated from the surrounding mountains.
“We did not know then that within half a year the great Hebrew-Arab war would
break out - our War of Independence and their Naqba. I believe that most of the
6000 young people who fell in the war on our side, as well as the thousands
that were wounded - like you and me - were present at that moment in Dalia,
seeing each other and singing together.
“What state did we think of then? What state did we set out to create?
“What has happened to the Hebrew society, the Hebrew culture, the Hebrew
morality that we were so proud of then?”
Then, he pleads this:
“You, Dov, have invested in this state much too much to turn your back on it in
a gesture of anger and despair. The most hackneyed and worn-out slogan in
Israel is also true: ‘We don't have another state!’
“Other states in the world have sunk to the depths of depravity and committed
unspeakable crimes, far beyond our worst sins, and still brought themselves
back to the family of nations and redeemed their souls.
“We and all the members of our generation, who were among those who created
this state, bear a heavy responsibility for it. A responsibility to our
offspring, to those oppressed by this state, to the entire world. From this
responsibility we cannot escape.
“Even at your respectable age, and precisely because of it and because of what
you represent, you must be a compass for the young and tell them: This state
belongs to you, you can change it, don't allow the nationalist wreckers to
steal it from you!
“True, 61 years ago we had another state in mind. Now, after our state has
tumbled to where it is today, we must remember that other state, and remind
everybody, every day, what the state should have been like, what it can be
like, and not allow our vision to disappear like a dream. Let's lend our
shoulders to every effort to repair and heal!
These are very weighty issues that these two longtime Zionists are debating.”
I remember the evening I had back in early March with longtime Jewish-Israeli
nonviolence activist Amos Gvirtz. Gvirtz is "only" in his late 60s or early
70s. But like Avnery and Yermiya he grew up in Israel.
He told me in March,
“I became an anti-Zionist after Oslo, when the government expelled the Arabs of
Jahhaleenn to make room for the big new settlement area if Maale Adummim...
Like the Zionists, I believe we Jews need a state of our own. But unlike the
Zionists I don't think this should be built on the ruins of someone else's
home. So our state need not necessarily be right here.”
Gvirtz, too, like Avnery, identified a strong link between the events of
1947-48 and the situation today-- though the nature of the link Gvirtz
identified was very different from Avnery's: "The Nakba wasn't really a single
event that happened in 1948, so much as a long-drawn-out process, that
continues to this day." In other words, he was quite unwilling to neatly divide
Israeli history, as Avnery still does, between the idealized, prelapsarian days
of the 1947 Dalia festival and the post-lapsarian era that was inaugurated- -
in Avnery's view-- only by Israel's conquest of the West Bank.
Obviously, this is a very weighty issue for Zionists and their supporters to
grapple with. Did 1967 mark a notable break between a laudable past and a
troublesome present? Or were there indeed, as Gvirtz and many other current
non- and anti-Zionists have argued, many elements of continuity from the 1947
period right through to the present?
Anyway, I'd love to see the whole text of the latest Yermiya letter from which
Avnery is quoting, if anyone can provide a link to it, preferably in English.
The only recent English text that I could find by him online was this letter,
published in the Communist weekly Zo Haderekh in June 2008.
In it, Yermiya was returning to Defense Minister Barak the invitation he had
been sent to attend a ceremony to honor all veterans of Israel's 1948 "War of
Independence" .
He wrote,
“As a veteran of the 1948 war, who was already wounded in face to face combat
two weeks before the Declaration of the State, I feel obliged herewith to
return the invitation to you, as Minister of Defence. I do so regretfully but
see this as my duty.
“I consider you, Ehud Barak, as one of the top military commanders and
prominent political leaders who were responsible for converting the army from
‘the Israeli Defence Force’ to an army of occupation and oppression of the
Palestinian people and defender of the criminal settlements in their country.
“40 years of occupation have utterly corrupted the Israeli army and all strata
of Israeli society.They are both characterized by the nationalist 'east wind'
[the east wind brings the chamsin and locusts ]which blows and kindles
conflagrations of endless wars, which threaten our people and land with the
third and final destruction. Your share in the responsibility for all this is
enormous, and therefore I return your invitation to you, without thanks...”
Helena Cobban is a veteran writer, researcher, and program organizer on global
affairs. Since 2003 she has published "Just World News", a lively blog on
international issues that has gained a broad international readership. She can
be reached at hcob...@gmail. com
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