Peace of no choice

Rabin rally recorded by Adam Keller, with extensive quotes of Grossman's speech

Saturday, November 4. The year's most bloody weekend. The Palestinian death toll at beleaguered Beit Hanoun creeps higher and higher up with every news bulletin. In the afternoon a twelve-year old girl is reported killed from a direct shot to the head by an Israeli army sniper. "The sniper thought it was an armed militant" says a perfunctory apology from the military spokesman's office. The killing goes on.

The man in charge (at least nominally) of this rampaging military juggernaut is Amir Peretz, Labour Party leader and Defence Minister of Israel. Precisely a year ago, it was Amir Peretz who mounted the stage at the annual Rabin Memorial - to anoint himself Rabin's successor and speak of his dream that "One day, Israeli and Palestinain children will play together in the no-man's-land between Israel and the Gaza Strip"...

Wisely, the organizers of this year's commemoration took a blanket decision to have no politicians at all among the speakers. This exclusion of Peretz may well have saved him from being greeted by prolonged whistles and catcalls from those who have a good reason to feel cheated.

Peace groups decided to make the Rabin Rally a starting point for their month long Gaza campaign, against the siege and carnage. At 7.00 dozens of volunteers were assembled at the edge of the Rabin Square, with Jana Kanapova of the Women's Peace Coalition energetically coordinating the preparations. A big helium canister was brought to fill an enormous lot of black ballons with the inscription "SOS Gaza"; yellow jackets had been collected from car owners to make the planned human chain more conspicuous,and packages of stickers contained the message "Gaza - Open the Siege, Stop the War" - the logo of barbed wire turning into an olive branch.

These were distributed to the youngsters who started to arrive at the spot, together with the brochure with answers to "Frequently asked questions on Gaza. (What did we get of leaving Gaza? Nothing, because we did it unilaterally, without a negotiated agreement which could have prevented the shooting of missiles. And anyway, we did not really leave, Israel controls all the passages in and out of the Strip. Why should I care what happens to the Palestinians? If you enclose your neighbors in a big prison and starve them, you create a powder keg which will explode in your own face!")

Other groups and movements also arrived, with a big medley of stickers, leaflets, brochures, balloons, signs and the blue ribbons remembered from last year struggle on the Sharon disengagement... The Peace Now blue and black placards read "Olmert and Peretz - you have abandoned his way!" ( a bit unfair, as Olmert never claimed to be a Rabin follower... ). Meretz, in green on white, had: "Rabin, we are with you - Labour is with Lieberman!".

The entry of arch-racist Avigdor Lieberman to the government, with Labour concurrence, was also the subject of a Hadash leaflet, and of various hand-made signs carried by a group of youngsters unaffiliated with any organization.

Supporters of the Geneva Initiative distributed their maps for "mutual minor territorial exchanges between Israel and Palestine" and the "One Voice" placards asked "What are YOU willing to do in order to end the conflict?", and "The Fifth Mother" had "Only dialogue can bring good neighborliness" .

The "Studying and Working Youth", like every year present in massive blue-shirted contingents, made the solemn pledge: "We will neither forget nor forgive those who incited, hated beyond measure, harmed democracy and did all they could to prevent any chance for living in peace, among ourselves and with our neighbors. We vow to continue ever onwards on the way of Yitzchak Rabin, who was murdered because of his striving for peace".

Meanwhile, members of the Gay Community were mobilizing support for their controversial Jerusalem Gay Pride March ("If you believe in a liberal, open and tolerant Jerusalem, come and march with us"), supported by the militants of "Socialist Struggle" ("The Knesset Members' and police's opposition to the march shows the inherent homophobia of the establishment. Wide social solidarity must be mobilized!"). And Tzedek (Justice) made an urgent appeal: "The new government budget imposes new cuts in the welfare, education and health budgets, Tens of thousands more children will be pushed under the poverty line. Come with us tomorrow evening, to protest outside the Finance Minster's home, to voice the outcry of the hungry children". And the animal rights groups were there, too: "If you eat meat, you should know that your meal had wanted to live, just as much as you want to live!".

Suddenly, out of the powerful loudspeakers, the recorded voice of Rabin - speaking from this same podium eleven years ago, strong and confident and having no idea it was the last day of his life: "I have been a military man. I fought when fighting was necessary. But when the chance for peace comes, you must take it. And the chance is real, peace is possible!". Words which were a bit banal at the time, at the heyday of Oslo, assuming greater retrospective significance after years when belief in the very possibility of peace had waned.

Then, well-known artists go up to sing, one by one - some songs with politically significant words, others which have become in a way hallowed by being sung here every year.

Meanwhile, the Gush Shalom sticker "Talk to Hamas!" led to quite some debates. Some took it up enthusiastically, others with an embarrassed smile, but there was also quite a few opponents, also in this milieu: "Why? They are extremists, terrorists!" "Do you see on the side of the sticker: 'Peace is made with the enemy'. This is what Rabin said, for whose sake we came here". "But they are so reactionary!" "And what about our government? Are they progressives? Let our reactionaries talk to theirs!".

Suddenly, a hush. The writer David Grossman got up to deliver the keynote (in fact, virtually the only) speech, which would be broadcast live on radio and TV.

Grossman had been much in the limelight recently. He had supported the Second Lebanon War at its inception, but later turned around and made a dramatic call for ceasefire, which the government ignored - and in the last battle of the war his own son was killed.

"There was a war. Israel exerted a powerful military muscle - but exposed fragility and shortcoming. We found that after all the military might in our hands cannot in itself ensure our survival. Especially, we discovered that Israel is in a deep crisis, far deeper than we guessed, a crisis touching all spheres of our life.

I am talking as one whose love for this country is a difficult and complicated love, and still unequivocal, and as one whose alliance with this country has been horribly sealed in blood. I am a completely secular person, and still for me the creation - and very existence - of Israel is a miracle. A miracle which happened to us as a people, a political, national, human miracle. I don't forget that for a single moment, even when many things in the reality of our life revolt and depress me, even when the miracle is changed into the small change of routine and squalor, of corruption and cynicism. Even when reality looks like a bad parody of the miracle, I always remember.

"Look, land, how wasteful we have been" wrote the poet Tchernichovsky in 1938. He mourned the fact that again and again we commit to the soil of this country young people in the very prime of their life.

The death of young people is a terrible waste. But just as terrible is the feeling that for many years already, Israel is wasting not only the lives of her sons but the miraculous opportunity which was given to her - the rare opportunity granted by history to create here an enlightened democratic state, conducted according to Jewish and Universal values. A state which would give Jews not only a refuge but also a new meaning for their lives. A state which would regard its Jewish identity and Jewish ethos as inextricably involving respect and complete equality of its non-Jewish citizens. And look what happened! (Loud Clapping and cheers).

Look what happened to the young, daring country which was here, full of the a flaming spirit. How, as in an accelerated process of aging, Israel jumped from the stage of vivid youth directly to a feeling of frustrated angry old age. When did this happen? When did we lose the feeling that there could ever be a different life fro us, a better life? How can we still stand aside and look, as if hypnotized, at the madness and roughness, violence and racism taking over our home?

I ask you, how is it that a people with such powers of recuperation and creation as ours, a people which rose like a phoenix from the ashes time after time, finds itself - exactly when it possesses such an overwhelming military power - so frail and helpless? How did our people become a victim again - but this time its own victim, the victim of its anxieties and despair, of its own shortsightedness? One of the most terrible results of the last war was to increase the feeling that there is no king in Israel, no leadership. Our leadership is hollow - the political and military leadership both. I don't now talk only of the obvious fiascos of the war, of the big and small corruption scandals. I am talking about the fact that the people who now lead Israel can offer nothing more than anxiety on the one hand and intimidation on the other. The cheap fascination of naked power, and the wink of crooked deals. It seems that the vision of those who lead extends no further than the next newspaper headline, or the next interrogation by the Attorney-General.

Mr. Prime Minister, you would not be able to say that I was overcome with grief and in this way dismiss what I have to say to you. Of course I feel grief. I feel pain for this country and what you and your friends are doing to it. Believe me: your success is important to me, because the future of all of us depends on your ability to really act.

Yitzchak Rabin did not take the road of peace with the Palestinians because he felt great affection for them or for the leader they then had. As you may remember, also then the general feeling was that we don't have a partner. Rabin decided to take action because he decided, with great wisdom, that Israeli society could not endure long in a situation of unsolved conflict. He understood, long before many others, that life in a permanent atmosphere of violence, of occupation, of terror and anxiety and hopelessness, such a life is exacting an unpayable exorbitant price.

All these things are still true today. Today, they are more sharp and urgent. Before talking of the [Palestinian] partner we have or haven't, let us take a look at ourselves.

For more than a hundred years already we live in a conflict. We, the citizens of this conflict, were born into a war, and educated in it, and in a certain way programmed by it. That's perhaps why we sometimes think that this madness, in which we live for hundred years already, is the one and only real thing. That this is the only life destined for us, that we have no possibility, nor even a right, to seek a new life: by the sword shall we live and by the sword shall we die, forevermore.

Perhaps that is the reason for the indifference with which we accept the total absence of any peace process, an absence which lasts more and more years and exacts ever more victims. That might also explain the lack of reaction by most of us to the blow delivered to democracy when Avigdor Lieberman was appointed a senior minister, a proven pyromaniac appointed to head the fire brigade! (Prolonged clapping)

That might be part of the reason why in such a short time the state of Israel degenerated into a cruel indifference towards the weak, the poor and suffering. This indifference towards the fate of hungry people, of old people, of the ill and handicapped; the indifference to the trade in women for enforced prostitution and the exploitation of migrant workers in conditions of virtual slavery; and the deep institutionalized racism towards the Arab minority. All these things happen here with a complete naturalness, causing no shock and no protest. I am beginning to fear that even if peace comes tomorrow, even if we ever return to some kind of normalcy, perhaps we already missed the opportunity for complete recovery.

The disaster which happened to my family and me, with the fall of our son Uri, does not give me any special privileged position in the public debate. But it seems to me that facing death and loss does carry some kind of clarity and sobriety, at least as regards the distinction between important things and unimportant ones. Between what can can be achieved and what cannot be. Between reality and illusion.

Nowadays, every clear-headed person in Israel - and let me add, also in Palestine - knows precisely the outline of a possible solution to the conflict between the two peoples. Every clearheaded person, among us as among them, knows in the depth of the heart the difference between dreams and wishes and between what can be achieved at the end of negotiations. And anybody who does not know it - be they Jews or Arabs - is already now not a partner. Such people are trapped in a hermetic fanatism, and therefore they are not partners. Let us look for a moment at these who are supposed to be our partners. The Palestinians placed at their head Hamas, which refuses to negotiate with us or even recognize us. What can we do in such a situation? To go on strangling them, more and more? To go on killing hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, most of them innocent civilians just like us?

Address the Palestinians, Mr. Olmert. address them over the head of Hamas. Address the moderates among them, those who like you and me oppose the Hamas and its way. Address the Palestinian people. Speak to their deep wound, recognize their prolonged suffering. This will detract nothing from your position, from Israel's negotiating position in future negotiations. It will just open the hearts a bit to each other, and this opening will have enormous power. Simple human compassion can have the power of a force of nature, exactly in situation of deadlock and hatred.

Just for once, don't look at them through gunsights or across the closed chekpoint. Just look, and you will see a people no less tortured than us. Of course, also the Palestinians share in the blame for this deadlock. Of course, they too have a great share in the failure of the peace process. But look at them just for a second with a different look. Look not only at the extremists among them. Not only at those who share an interest with our extremists. Look at the overwhelming majority of that miserable people, whose fate is inextricably tied to ours, whether or not we want it.

Go to the Palestinians, Mr. Olmert. Stop looking for reasons and excuses not to talk to them. You have given up the unilateral "convergence", and it is well that you did it. But don't leave a vacuum. A vacuum will immediately fill with violence and destruction.

Talk to them.Make them an offer which the moderates among them could accept (and there are more of them than what the media shows us). Give them an offer which will place them in a real dilemma between accepting it and becoming the hostages of the most fanatic brand of Islam. Come to them with the most brave and serious plan which Israel can offer, With the proposal which every clear-eyed Israeli and Palestinian knows to be the limit of concession and the limit of refusal,ours and theirs. If you delay, it will not be long before we start missing the amateurishness of Palestinian terrorism. We will hit our heads in remorse and cry out, why did we not use our mental flexibility, our Israeli creativity, in order to extract our enemies from their self-made trap.

There is peace of no choice. Just like there is a war of no choice, there is a peace of no choice, because really there is no other choice left - not to us and not to them. And a peace of no choice should. be waged with as much creativity and determination as a war of no choice. There is no other choice. Those who think that there is another choice, that time is on our side, don't comprehend the deep processes in whose midst we already are.

By the way, Mr. Prime Minister, perhaps I need to remind you that when an Arab leader sends a peace signal- even the lightest and most hesitant - you have to respond. You must check immediately how serious he is. You have no moral right to ignore such a signal. You owe it to those from whom you will ask to sacrifice their lives if another war breaks out. So, if President Assad says that Syria wants peace, even if you don't believe him -and we all suspect him - you must offer to meet him the same day. (Clapping, Peace now activists distribute stickers reading "Assad is waiting for Olmert" and "Abu Mazen is waiting for Olmert".)

Don't wait even one day. When you went into the last war you did not wait even for an hour. You charged right ahead, with all weapons. With all the destructive might. Why, when there is a glimmering of peace,do you immediately reject and erode it? Wat have you got to lose? You suspect the Syrian president - present him with such conditions as will uncover any plot. Offer a peace process which will last several years, and only at its conclusion, and if he fulfills all conditions, would he get back the Golan. (Clapping, but less strong than earlier). Oblige him to a process of prolonged dialogue. Make this possibility known to his people, help the moderates which surely exist also there. Try to shape reality, not just be its slave. That's what you were elected for, exactly that.

And to conclude: Of course, not everything is up to us.There are big and strong forces which act in the world and the region, and some of them - like Iran, like extreme Islam -work against us. And still,so much depends on what we will do, and on what we will be. The differences of opinion between Left and Right are in fact not that big any more.The decisive majority of Israel's citizens already understands - though some of them without much enthusiasm - how the outline of the solution to the conflict will look like. Most of us understand that the land will be divided, that a Palestinian state will arise. Why, therefore, are we continuing this internal bickering which has already gone on for nearly forty years? Why is our political.leadership continuing to reflect the positions of the extremists, and not of the majority of the public? Is it not clear that out position will be much better if we reach this national agreement by ourselves, rather than be forced to it by circumstances - external pressure, or a new intifada, or another war? If we do this, we will save ourselves years of bloodshed, of unnecessary bloodshed. Years of a terrible mistake.

From where I now stand I request, call upon anybody who listens to me - to the young people who came back from the war, and who know that they will have to pay the price of the next war; to Jewish and Arab citizens, to leftists and rightists: stop for a moment. Look at the edge of the abyss, think of how close we are to losing all that we have created here. Ask yourself if the time has not come to break out of the paralysis and at long last demand for ourselves the kind of life which we deserve to live.

Very very long and loud applause throughout the vast square. A feeling of revelation, even for those who disagreed on specific points. As we read on the following day's paper, the Labour Party leaders - who were seated at the stage, though not given access to the microphone - did not share in the enthusiasm, but werre rather shocked and angry; Peretz went away immediately when Grossman was done.

For the rest of us the politicians had deservedly been exposed, and the force manifested in these hundred thousand people crowded in the square and listening to their "prophet on the dais" created a rare moment of hope.
(The media were also impressed; again and again were parts of Grossman's speech broadcast, and Yediot Aharonot printed it in full, of which we made use for this translation.)