The Nightmare in Israel

by Alexander Cockburn

The Nation magazine, March 25, 2002

Let's start with Baruch Kimmerling, a sociologist at Hebrew University. Here's what he published in the Jerusalem weekly Kol Ha'Ir last month:

"I accuse Ariel Sharon of creating a process in which he will not only intensify the reciprocal bloodshed, but is liable to instigate a regional war and partial or nearly complete ethnic cleansing of the Arabs in the 'Land of Israel.'

"I accuse every Labor Party minister in this government of cooperating for implementation [of] the right wing's extremist, fascist 'vision' for Israel.

"I accuse the Palestinian leadership, and primarilyYasir Arafat, of shortsightedness so extreme that it has become a collaborator in Sharon's plans. If there is a second Naqba (Palestinian Holocaust), this leadership, too, will be among the causes.

"I accuse the military leadership, spurred by the national leadership, of inciting public opinion, under a cloak of supposed military professionalism, against the Palestinians. Never before in Israel have so many generals in uniform, former generals, and past members of the military intelligence, sometimes disguised as 'academics,' taken part in public brainwashing....

"I accuse the administrators of Israel's electronic media of giving various military spokespeople the access needed for an aggressive, bellicose, almost complete takeover of the public discourse....

"I accuse everyone who sees and knows all of this of doing nothing to prevent the emerging catastrophe. Sabra and Shatila events were nothing compared to what has happened and what is going to happen to us. We have to go out not only to the town squares, but also to the checkpoints. We have to speak to the soldiers in the tanks and the troop carriers....

"And I accuse myself of knowing all of this, yet crying little and keeping quiet too often."

From the press here we learn all the time of the pressure of public opinion on Sharon and his government to bear down even harder on the Palestinians. I just listened to NPR's Linda Gradstein quoting one "expert" after another in Israel to this effect. But if public opinion here is crucial in pressuring US administrations to some measure of constructive intervention (as opposed to carte blanche for Sharon and his band of criminals), then we should be hearing every day of the passionate opposition to Sharon of people like Kimmerling.

There are many others you don't read about here. Take the courageous people in the Ta'ayush movement. On their website (http://taayush.tripod.com/taayush.hunl) you'll see the words "Arab-Jewish Partnership," and then you'll be able to scroll through one action after another in which they have braved police and army beatings, marching to beleaguered and often bulldozed Palestinian villages to stand shoulder to shoulder with the victims. Here's what Professor Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University wrote March 6 to Roane Carey, my editor at The Nation: "As to the situation here, it is getting unbearable by the day. We tried to dismantle a roadblock the other day near Hebrew U and were beaten by the police. Three women had their hands broken, one had her head opened. I was beaten while in custody with my hands handcuffed behind my back. Sharon bombed Gaza this morning...."

Plenty of people in Israel see well enough that repression will not work. In December Ami Ayalon, a former head of Shabak, Israel's security service, told Le Monde, "We say the Palestinians behave like 'madmen, 'but it is not madness but a bottomless despair.... Yasir Arafat neither prepared nor triggered the intifada. The explosion was spontaneous, against Israel, as all hope for the end of occupation disappeared, and against the Palestinian Authority, its corruption, its impotence.

"I favor unconditional withdrawal from the territories--preferably in the context of an agreement, but not necessarily: What needs to be done, urgently, is to withdraw from the territories. And a true withdrawal.... If [the Palestinians] proclaim their own state, Israel should be the first to recognize it and to propose state to state negotiations, without conditions." There have been public statements from other Israeli security personnel bearing on the same theme-that the present strategy of extreme repression is doomed to fail and that some form of phased withdrawal is in order.

Is there anything to the Saudi proposal? After all, its suggested bargain-recognition of Israel from the Arab countries in return for Israeli withdrawal to the pre- 1967 borders---is over thirty years old. Israeli journalist Meron Benvenisti had the right angle in his February 28 Ha'aretz column: "No illusion is more dangerous than the idea being sold that 'the conflict with the Palestinians is small and incidental. We can solve the conflict with the entire Arab world.' It was long ago proven that there is no solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict without a solution to the conflict with the Palestinians---and that is what the Saudi initiative is all about."

The Bush Administration, criminally negligent in its cowardice to engage with this crisis, says the Saudi idea has merit, by which it indicates well enough the standard operating procedure for such proposals. As summed up by Uri Avnery, head of Israel's Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc): "In Israel, every international initiative designed to put an end to the conflict passes through three stages: (a) denial, (b) misrepresentation, (c) liquidation. That's how the Sharon-Peres government will deal with this one, too."

The press here has for decades been as culpable as the government. No administration will ever exert itself positively without popular pressure, and the role of the media has been to avert such pressure by suppressing opposition voices. Here's one thing you can do: Jewish Voices Against the Occupation is running an ad campaign calling for the evacuation of all settlements, return to pre-1967 borders, suspension of US military aid till the end of the occupation and the establishment of an international peacekeeping force. JVAO's Bluma Goldstein tells me 450 have signed it so far and $30,000 has been raised toward the necessary $37,750. lVAO is at PO Box 11606, Berkeley, CA 94712, and wwwjvao.org. Remember Kimmerling's line, "And I accuse myself of knowing all of this, yet crying little and keeping quiet too often."

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