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A MATTER OF LEGITIMACY

























     Other Israel, issue 143-144, November 2009, lead article.
Many of those who had placed high (perhaps unrealistic) hopes in the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States are by now feeling disappointed and dejected. The prolonged, highly publicized tug-of-war between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu culminated in a rather farcical New York summit, where the original American demand for a complete halt to settlement construction, including "natural growth" dwindled into an amorphous call for "restraint." The crowing Netanyahu held himself the victor, and in particular proclaimed his intention to continue the aggressive penetration of Israeli settlers into the Arab neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem. And indeed it didn't take long for Jerusalem to become the scene of riots and internationally publicized confrontations. Like so many times before, the religiously super-sensitive Temple Mount/Haram a-Sharif Compound was at the focus. After the surprise announcement of President Obama's winning of the Nobel Peace Prize, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin -- a stalwart defender of the Likud's traditional Greater Israel ideology -- expressed his apprehension of Obama putting greater pressure on Israel in order to justify being a laureate of this glittering prize. For their part, cautious peace seekers felt the onus was on the American President to prove that hopes placed in him had a basis. When Obama entered upon his job he seemed ready to embark on a new US role in the Middle East. A credible effort to seem -- and to be! -- an honest broker. A serious, vigorous American involvement, aimed at taking the state of Palestine out of platitude and into reality. An end to the occupation and an Israeli-Palestinian peace to be signed within the president's current term. This necessarily meant a head-on confrontation and clash with the Israeli settlement project, a complete freeze of settlement construction as the prelude to the mass dismantling of settlements. A step which the majority of Israelis might accept once it has become a fait accompli, but which they seem plainly incapable of initiating and carrying through on their own. It is still too early to conclusively confirm Netanyahu in the "victory" which his aides were quick to claim after the New York summit. Should it prove to be true, and Obama's further involvement in the Middle East become reduced to displays of hollow rhetoric, the great loser would be Israel. Should Obama really prove to have been derailed so quickly and easily, it is unlikely that anybody would even try again. Israel would be free and unhindered -- to erode the fibre of its own society and international support, to steadily undermine its existential base and relentlessly work its own destruction.

Rejection in the Region
Zionism had set out to create a Jewish state in a country where, in the early 1900's, more than 90% of the population was Arab, and which was part of a predominantly Arab region. This inevitably aroused strong opposition. There was no real reason for Arabs to accept the historical claim presented by Zionists. Nowhere else in the world was it ever seriously suggested that any group of people could repossess a land where their ancestors lived 2000 years ago. Nor was there a real reason why Arabs should be the ones to pay the price for the persecution of Jews by Europeans, before and in the Holocaust. The only way to create a Jewish state in an Arab-inhabited land was to break Arab resistance by brute force -- which was exactly what Zionism did in 1948, forcing the state of Israel upon a region where it most definitely was not wanted. The military might forged by Ben Gurion was enough to make Israel a fait accompli in 1948, at the price of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians being uprooted and consigned to refugee camps. Later, Ben Gurion and his successors extended their armed forces, up to and including possession of nuclear weapons, so as to defend the results of 1948 and follow them up with even more "facts on the ground." But Israel's military might was never enough to bring about "a total victory" from which its Arab adversaries could not recover. The closest Israel seemed to come to that was the swift six-day campaign of 1967. Yet even that swift and crushing victory soon proved illusory. Already by the end of 1967 the Egyptians rebounded to impose on Israel the three harrowing years of the War of Attrition -- and it was 1967 that marked a great upward swing in the fortunes of Palestinian Nationalism. Israel's superiority never was, and is never likely to be, overwhelming enough to impose acceptance on those who were wronged and victimized. Indeed, every exercise of Israeli military force to counter an immediate threat also created a new set of grievances, a fresh infusion of anger and bitterness from which a new threat arose. One need not be a Christian to appreciate that he who lives by the sword might indeed die by the sword. Israel's long-term survival depends on winning acceptance by and legitimacy from its environment -- specifically, from the Palestinians. And winning such acceptance and legitimacy would depend upon making a real compromise, real and tangible concessions. Twice, Israel seemed near to the point of winning such acceptance -- and both opportunities were missed. In November 1977 Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, came to Jerusalem with the proclaimed aim of "breaking down the psychological walls." He offered Israelis peace with and recognition by the biggest Arab state, which had four times gone to war on behalf of the Palestinians (though, to be sure, out of Egyptian interests, too). In November 1977 Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, came to Jerusalem with the proclaimed aim of ``breaking down the psychological walls.'' He offered Israelis peace with and recognition by the biggest Arab state, which had four times gone to war on behalf of the Palestinians (though, to be sure, out of Egyptian interests, too). Sadat made clear that he had not come to make a separate peace, that freeing the Palestinians from occupation must follow. Menachem Begin would not listen. While peace with Egypt was implemented, settlement on the West Bank increased tenfold. One month after the completion of the withdrawal from Sinai, the first of the bloody wars in Lebanon was launched. Sabra and Shatila followed three months later. Whatever Sadat intended, Israel's peace with Egypt became in practice a separate peace, in which the Palestinians were not included. It survived and continues to survive (to no small measure, because it entailed a very generous package of US aid to the Egyptian economy - an aid whose annual maintenance cannot rely on an Egyptian lobby on Capitol Hill). But it long ago lost its soul, became ``The Cold Peace'' (or, as some say, a Middle Eastern Cold War). The psychological walls between Israelis and Egyptians have come up again, higher than ever. Israel's Ambassador to Cairo is the most isolated and miserable of diplomats, and the Foreign Ministry finds it increasingly difficult to recruit new candidates for this post. Israeli commentators long spoke off the peace with Jordan as being far warmer than the one with Egypt. Indeed, Zionist relations with the Hashemite Dynasty started before the creation of Israel, and continued secretly even through the two times when Jordan (reluctantly) went to war with Israel. Still, Israel's peace is essentially with the regime rather than with the Jordanian people, more than half of whom are Palestinian. The Israeli Embassy in Amman is built like a fortress, and its staff rarely emerge except for well-guarded convoy to and from the airport. In a recent interview King Abdullah of Jordan warned Israelis of ``very dark times ahead for all of us'' if they fail to make peace with the Palestinians. There had been one moment when Israel did get a chance to directly address the Palestinians in its quest for peace and legitimacy in the region. In September 1993 Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chariman Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn. Unlike the later re-enactments, the futile and meaningless ``photo opportunities'', it was a moment of genuine excitement from which real reconciliation might have developed, a moment when the possibility of peace seemed real and palpable, supported by a clear majority among Israelis and Palestinians alike. A possibility which was entirely missed and aborted, leaving behind it only bitterness. Many articles and complete books were written on the reasons for the failure of Oslo. Suffice it here to say that when Rabin declared that ``there were no sacred dates'' and that Israel could manipulate timetables at its whim, he started the avalanche which was to take his own life as that of so many others; that after Rabin paid the ultimate price, there was none to match his sincere if flawed leadership; that May 1999 passed without the slightest sign of the Palestinian state which was supposed to arise on that date according to the agreement, and with the settlements grown to double size; and that at Camp David Barak's ``generous offers'', which were none so generous, turned out to be the harbingers of war. And sixteen years later, the walls of mistrust and hatred seem higher than they were before 1993, and Israel's acceptance by the surrounding region more distant than ever.

Failing surrogates
     In the 1950's, David Ben Gurion and his then young protégé‚ Shimon Peres came up with the idea of bypassing and ``encircling'' the hostile Arab world by building up a strategic alliance with the region's non-Arab countries - in particular, with Iran and Turkey.
     It is now hardly remembered that, indeed, for several decades Iran was Israel's closest military and political ally in the region, a great strategic asset which successive Israeli government were proud of (and also a source of lucrative civil as well as military contracts for Israeli corporations). But it all depended on the survival in power of one man, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Helping the Shah stay on his throne was considered a paramount Israeli interest, and any help whichIsrael could render was well-worth the effort.
     That included, especially, help in training the Shah's secret police, the Savak -- a name whose similarity to that of the Israeli Security Service, the Shabak, might not have been entirely accidental. (Though, to be sure, the two did have full names, in Persian and Hebrew respectively, of which these were acronyms).
     There were at the time even rumours of Israel helping its great friend the Shah taking the initial steps in getting his country on the way to nuclear power.
     As a result, when in 1979 the Shah was overthrown, Israel's former friend and strategic ally was transformed into the most hated and feared enemy and threat -- to the point that Israeli pundits often debate on whether or not even a peace with the Palestinians and all of the Arabs would be enough to quench the fires of Iranian hostility.
     Israel's strategic alliance with Turkey lasted much longer, and went through less sharp gradients -- but by now it, too, clearly seems to be fast unraveling. In the 1950's Ben Gurion and Peres assumed -- with good reason -- that the Turkish Republic established by Kamal Ataturk was a democracy only in a very limited sense.
     Elected Turkish governments might come and go, but it was the Turkish Army which was the final arbiter, letting a civil government stay on, as long as it remained within the limits set to it, or overthrowing it if it was considered to have "gotten out of hand."
     As long as Israel's relations with the Turkish Army were firm, Turkey could be considered a solid, bedrock strategic ally of Israel. For decades, this was certainly the situation, with Israeli generals on the best of terms with Turkish colleagues. And to be sure, there were also many Turkish Prime Ministers on good terms with their Israeli opposite number.
     In token of the Israeli "special relationship" with Turkey, Israeli governments -- even while maintaining an intensive worldwide campaign against Holocaust deniers -- were careful to make no reference of any kind to the Armenian Genocide. (Once, during a brief tenure of the "leftist" Yossi Sarid as Minister of Education, he tried to insert some reference to the Armenians' fate into school textbook -- for which he was sharply reprimanded and vetoed).
     In the 1990's things started to change. Turkey made increasing efforts to pursue its long-standing dream of joining the European Union, and got told that a country where human rights are not respected and whose army is ever poised to take power cannot be considered for membership.
     The Turks did make some significant changes, especially in the treatment of the Kurdish minority. Which did not get them admitted into Europe -- while countries that applied much later were duly admitted, even when their human rights record sometimes left something to be desired. (But their inhabitants, unlike those of Turkey, were Christians.)
     For long, all these developments were not really worrying to Israel. Even when the democratization of Turkey meant that an Islamist Party could be elected and could take power in Ankara without the army immediately staging a coup d'etat. It was, after all, a different kind of Islamist Party, seeking to demonstrate its moderation, and stating that seeking better relations with its Arab and Islamic neighbours was not in any way intended at the expense of relations with its good old friend Israel.
     Turkey wanted, in fact, to act as a mediator and honest broker bringing about peace between Israel and Syria (a role which the US, under George W, Bush, was not interested in playing). Indeed, the indirect negotiations carried out in 2007 and 2008 under Turkish mediation had progressed so well that on December 2008 Israeli PM Olmert was asked to show his hand and definitely commit himself to withdrawing from the occupied Golan Heights in return for peace with Syria. Whereupon Olmert chose that same week to launch the highly destructive war in Gaza.
     Olmert did not bother giving the slightest hint or warning to his Turkish colleague, at whose Ankara office he had a highly cordial meeting three days before the planes went off to bomb Gaza.
     From then on Israeli-Turkish relations were marked by a series of highly publicized diplomatic rows. But Israeli decision makers only became truly alarmed when in October Turkey announced the last moment cancellation of the Israeli Air Force participation in exercises, of the kind in which they had taken part dozens of times before: "We are not willing to admit into Turkish Air Space the planes and pilots who bombed Gaza and killed hundreds of children."
     Such a decision, touching directly on the Turkish armed forces, could only be taken with the consent of the Turkish generals -- which meant that Israel could no longer rely on them, either.
     Some experts say that with great effort, patience and diplomacy -- qualities not abundant among the present government -- something could still be salvaged of the relations with Turkey. At the moment, however, the only thing still intact is the eagerness of low-income Israelis to ignore nationalist boycott calls and go on flocking to Turkish resorts, which offer better prices than anywhere on the Mediterranean littoral.

'Israel and other European Countries'
     When feeling unwanted and rejected, and in need of a refuge from the geographical location, it is primarily to the West that Israelis turn.
     Israel is a Democracy, it is a Western Democracy, and it is The Only Democracy In The Middle East. Israel is "a villa in the jungle" as the Laborite Defence Minister defined it, and thus naturally entitled to the support of other villa dwellers against the dangerous primitives of the jungle.
    The United States comes first on the list of friends. On Israel's Independence Day there is a considerable number of Israelis who purchase the Stars and Stripes from street vendors and fly it, along with the Israeli national flag, on their cars and balconies. However, while the US is friendlier, Europe is closer.
     Many people would like to see Israel become part of Europe, just accidentally tucked off in the Middle East. Indeed, sometimes they entertain the illusion that Israel is part of Europe. They are very happy to see the Israeli soccer and basketball teams participate in European championships, and Israeli singers at the Televised European Song Festival "compete with all the other European singers" as a TV commentator this year put it.
     Most Israelis, however, would not like the European Court of Human Rights to subject the Israeli armed forces to the kind of scrutiny which British forces in North Ireland got. There is the rub: being a member of the Western Democratic family is an increasingly difficult and strained relationship, because in the past decades Western Democracies have adopted more exacting standards of democracy, increasingly diverging from the norms which Israeli society is accustomed to.
     This leads to increasingly frequent confrontations, such as Israel's recent spat with Sweden whose vehemence and vindictiveness were out of all proportion to the rather stupid newspaper article that sparked it.
     Always in such cases, the complacent, warm assurance of Israel being "in fact a European country" is instantly replaced by bitter and wild accusations of anti-Semitism. Dark affairs from the time of the Second World War are dug up, widely publicized and in one way or another attached to the present-day government and society of the country in question.
     There were several such occasions just in the past few months, with large parts of the Israeli media and political system going into a frenzy. Suddenly, supposedly reasonable commentators can be heard voicing incoherent and wild statements and accusations. Indeed, the anxiety behind it is not baseless. Simply put, instead of gaining legitimacy in its own region and from its own neighbours, which it so vitally needs, Israel is in real danger of losing its legitimacy in the rest of the world as well.

Gradually growing apart
     Zionism was created by European Jews, who had a European way of thinking, who were influenced and inspired by European models. To be sure, most of them were Central Europeans or East Europeans, from countries where democratic norms were far from firmly established in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Zionism was greatly inspired by German, Polish, Hungarian and Russian Nationalism, as well as other Eastern European varieties which were often far from enlightened or liberal and whose treatment of minorities (Jews and others) left much to be desired.
     But also the great democracies of the West -- from which only a few a Zionist founders came, though many of them looked up to these countries as example and pattern -- were very highly flawed by present-day standards.
     At the time of the First Zionist Congress in 1897, the Great American Republic has just completed the conquest and dispossession of the indigenous population "from sea to shining sea", feeling little guilt or remorse and mainly regretting that "The Frontier had closed" because there was no more land to grab.
     In the world where Zionism was born, Colonialism was completely legitimate and acceptable. All but a few radical visionaries took for granted that it was the "right" of Europeans to settle in non-European lands, with or without the consent of the "natives." Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, essentially claimed for European Jews a share in this European enterprise.
     He had no qualms about dealing with the British Colonial Office over the idea of settling Jews in Uganda. (Unlike more romantically minded Zionists, he was not completely wedded to the idea of the Biblical Eretz Yisrael as the one and only possible location of the Jewish state). And it was quite natural for him to found what was called "The Jewish Colonial Trust" (precursor of the Bank Leumi LeYisrael, presently one of Israel's main commercial banks).
     Herzl would likely been surprised that later-day Zionists would vehemently reject any hint of a connection between Zionism and Colonialism, and publish -- as they presently do -- learned tomes dedicated to "refuting this baseless calumny."
     In the West of the 1890's and 1900's, Zionism did not seem very much out of place, nor was there any reason why its designs should seem especially immoral.
     The world of the late 1940's, where Zionism felt strong enough to make an actual bid for statehood, was a very different place. Colonialism was on its last legs, no longer universally legitimate or acceptable. But then, Zionism at exactly this moment could -- and did -- have reasonable convincing grounds to dissociate itself from Colonialism, indeed claim pride of place among the militant Anti-Colonialist movements seeking to free themselves of its yoke.
     The Zionist underground militants shooting British soldiers and blowing up British installations and facing proudly the British gallows were real enough, as were the illegal Jewish immigrants cruelly turned away by the British Navy. Nobody remembered or cared that until its big quarrel with Zionism in 1939 the British Empire had greatly facilitated Jewish immigration into Palestine, and had trained and armed the Zionist militias from which the Israeli Army later grew.
     And of course, in the terrible shadow of the just-ended Holocaust Jews could claim the high moral ground, come to the International Community as aggrieved victims with an all too obvious demand for justice.
    Certainly, it was in many ways unfair that Zionism emerged as the voice of that demand. Many, likely most, of the six million murdered Jews had not been Zionists (they were, after all, the ones who stayed in Europe). But they were dead, and many of the survivors -- all too naturally -- came to accept the basic tenets of Zionism: That Jews could never be equal, or even physically safe, until they had a country to themselves where they could be "their own bosses" (hardly anybody referred to their also becoming somebody else's bosses).
     As is hardly remembered nowadays, Zionism and Israel were a progressive cause in the 1940's, getting wide support from much the same kind of people who at present would support the Palestinians. The people who feel a natural tendency to stand with the underdog. The young Israel was perceived as the country of a persecuted people, barely emerged from the horrors of the Holocaust, fighting bravely against big odds to build a Socialist Utopia manifested in the Kibbutz.
     The massive uprooting of Palestinians from what became Israel did get reported in the world press -- but often as a humanitarian problem rather than a political one. It did not seriously impede the acceptance of Israel as a member state of the UN.
     For the transformation of what had been Arab villages and cities into Jewish ones, the new Israel could point to a weighty recent precedent: the mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from East Europe and the transformation of German Danzig into Polish Gdansk and German Konigsberg into Russian Kaliningrad -- all carried out with the explicit approval of the Allied leaders gathered at Potsdam in the immediate aftermath of the 1945 victory. And if Soviets got the licence to such acts on the grounds of being victims of the Nazis, why not the Jews?

The contract's other half
     Notwithstanding all the above, the International Community has never granted Zionism a complete and unrestricted licence -- not even in the time when Zionist ideology and practice were much more in tune with prevailing national standards.
     The international community gave legitimacy to the aspirations of the Zionist Movement in two basic documents: the Balfour Declaration, issued by the British Empire in 1917 and approved by the League of Nations in 1922; and the UN Partition Plan of 1947. Both approved of Zionism sharing the land with the Palestinians (whether or not the Palestinians consented) but neither authorized the complete dispossession of the Palestinians, or anything like an exclusive Jewish control.
     The "Jewish National Home" envisaged in the Balfour Declaration was conditioned upon the rights of "non-Jewish Communities" living in the country not being infringed. There can be no dispute that in the event, their rights were infringed and violated most thoroughly.
     In the 1947 Partition Plan the creation of a Jewish State was supposed to be concurrent with that of an Arab one. In practice, Israel is now entering on its 63rd year while the Arab Palestinian state never came into being. The countless resolutions of the UN and the plans and proclamations drawn up by the world's best diplomatic talent didn't fare any better.
     In a very real way, the state of Israel can be said to have contracted a very fundamental moral and legal debt which was never paid off -- a situation becoming more obvious with Israel moving in a retrograde direction, ever more out of tune with internationally-accepted norms.
     In the decades since its foundation, Israel thoroughly shed any vestige of pretence at being Socialist, or Progressive, or "A Brave Little David." (And years-long overuse and abuse of the memory of the Holocaust are rapidly undermining also this moral high ground.)
     Just as the last bastions of Colonialism crumbled and disappeared all over the world, Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza Strip and proceeded to establish something closely resembling the classical colonial pattern (a pool of cheap labour and a captive market for the metropolitan industrial products).
     With the victory of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's and the end of racial segregation in the United States, discrimination on ethnic grounds became completely unacceptable in the West of which Israel regarded itself a part. Yet the Israeli government's jurists came up with an extensive structure enabling Israeli settlers on the West Bank to live under a legal system completely different from -- and vastly preferential to -- the one governing the life of their Palestinian neighbours. Even the Arabs who live in Israel's pre-1967 territory, in theory its full-fledged citizens, are exposed to numerous and blatant discriminatory measures.
     The Oslo Agreements, with what seemed a serious Israeli attempt to adopt and adapt its behaviour to the prevailing international norms, halted for a considerable time the process of Israel's delegitimization. But in the years following the Camp David fiasco of 2000, when the country descended into violence and bloodshed, the erosion of Israel's international legitimacy resumed and accelerated.
     Sunk in self-righteousness, many Israelis managed to convince themselves that "the terrorist and intransigent Palestinians had brought it all upon their own heads" -- but the rest of the world was far less ready to take this version whole.
     Lebanon 2006 and Gaza 2009, two brutal wars in three years, filled the world's TV screens with the images of Israeli planes raining death and destruction upon helpless civilian populations. Israel's image was fixed as the undoubted brutal Goliath of the region -- far beyond the ability of the government's best propagandists to explain away (or explain at all).
     The Israeli society, stifling itself in denial, brought Netanyahu to power in the elections of February, his team including characters who would not have been admitted to the cabinet of any other country calling itself a democracy.

On board the Titanic
     Ha'aretz Columnist Ari Shavit -- one of the more clear-headed of Netanyahu's supporters -- recently felt the need to sound an alarm, and warn the government and the public that the apparent calm situation ("Israel's borders are quiet, the state is stable, the economy is recovering") is deceptive, and that the ship of state is heading straight towards an iceberg -- the loss of Israel's international legitimacy.
     Among the symptoms that Shavit noted were: Turkey turning its back on Israel; the attempts by European courts to try Israeli military officers; and the boycott of Israeli products and companies in various places round the world. And he saw it also manifested in the International Community's reluctance to rush into war and destroy the Iranian nuclear program on Israel's behalf. (Shavit didn't comment on Israel's own nuclear arsenal).
     "Paradoxically, as Israel gets stronger, its legitimacy is melting away," writes Shavit. "A national movement that began as 'legitimacy without an entity' is becoming 'an entity without legitimacy' before our very eyes" (Ha'aretz, October 15). True enough. Last but not least on Shavit's list: the Goldstone Report exposing Israel's conduct in the Gaza War.
     Again, the highly emotional reactions to this report, often verging on panic, indicate that the issue involved goes beyond whether or not Israeli forces used white phosphorus in inhabited civilian areas of Gaza and perpetrated war crimes -- important as this is. What is involved is indeed the basic legitimacy of the State of Israel.
     American Jewish columnist Jay Michaelson sounded in The Forward his own dire warning: "I'm not sure any state with tanks can win a propaganda war against an occupied people with guns and Molotov cocktails -- even if the occupied people's leaders deserve plenty of blame. I don't think advocates of Israel understand exactly how bad the situation is on college campuses, in Europe, and in liberal or leftist social-political circles. Supporting Israel in these contexts is like supporting repression, or the war in Iraq, or George W. Bush."
     He concluded with a painful cri de coeur: "I've loved Israel for decades, lived there for three years, and studied in detail the subtleties of its society and conflicts. And so it is with the sadness that accompanies the end of any affair that I notice my love is starting to wane" (Sept. 16).

     Other countries may be able to remain contemptuous and uncaring when the world casts them in the role of a brutal Goliath. Israel just can't afford it.
     Without a real peace process -- not another of the miserable farces which have gone under this name in recent years -- the process of Israel's eroding legitimacy will only deepen, undermining the foundations of its existence.
     Without a real peace process, one can only hope that the very erosion and loss of legitimacy would act on Israel as a strong though poisonous medicine on a living body -- a risky shock treatment to end the malignant occupation in time.

Epilogue
     We would have liked to sign off on this, the last editorial of the printed paper, in a more hopeful tone.
     The future is not predetermined. We do not live in a Hollywood film and nobody has promised us a happy end. If we want it, we need to write it ourselves.
     As we prepare to go to print for the last time, the struggle continues on dozens of fronts. For the tenth consecutive time activists go to work with Palestinian villagers in olive groves threatened by settlers. A new group of idealistic youngsters has organized to refuse service in an army of occupation and two of them just went to the military prison, their fellows marching through the streets of Tel Aviv in solidarity.
     At a courtroom in Jerusalem, activist Ezra Nawi was sentenced to a month's imprisonment on charges of "assaulting policemen" (which was false) and of "hindering them in performing their duty" (which was quite true -- since the police's duty was to destroy the house of a Palestinian family). At another courtroom in Jerusalem, human rights advocate Limor Yehuda won a small victory for the villagers of Idna, when the court ordered the army to let them use an access road that had been reserved to settlers in the past five years.
     In a few days, the annual Rabin Memorial will take place in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square, commemorating the night of November 1995 when he was felled by the assassin's bullets. We have been there on that night, not far away from the scene though it was hidden by the bulk of the Tel Aviv Town Hall, and we have come back to each and every one of the rallies in the intervening years.
     We will also be there this year, to address and be involved on the one occasion in the year where peace-seeking Israelis are still to be seen on the street in their tens of thousands. Though knowing in advance that we would not be happy with the speeches made from the podium, and will consider some of the speakers completely unworthy of speaking on this kind of occasion, we will be there.
     We will be circulating through this crowd, distributing leaflets and stickers, communicating with people -- especially with the Blue Shirt youths, who will be there in their masses and who carry some of our hopes for a better future.
     Ending the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians is an eminently moral act. It is also an act of enlightened self-interest, of saving and preserving and safeguarding the future of Israel and of all who live in this region.

Hope is not dead. The struggle continues.

The Editors