The Other Israel Issue Nr 127-128 September-October 2006 (raw version)
Index in the end
Of the lead article a definite version has already been posted:
THROUGH THE FIRE T127-128
THROUGH THE FIRE
When Ehud Olmert formed his cabinet, a bare few months ago, there was no hint that within the first hundred days of its existence this government would plunge the country into the destructive convulsion of war.
In the March elections, Ehud Olmert had asked -- and at least seemingly, got -- a clear popular mandate for the carrying out of "Convergence" or "Realignment", i.e. a unilateral withdrawal from large parts of the West Bank and evacuating some 80,000 Israeli settlers from these areas, while retaining and perpetuating Israeli rule over the so-called "settlement blocks."
The Kadima Party which Ariel Sharon had created while breaking asunder the Likud, and which Olmert inherited with Sharon's stroke, had no other visible agenda or raison d'tre -- nor did the cabinet that he formed.
Olmert clearly did not share the Social Justice agenda that had been the elections plank of his main partner, Labour Party leader Amir Peretz. He adamantly refused to entrust Peretz with the Finance Ministry, the only ministerial post where the former trade union leader could have made a serious effort "to redefine Israel's socio-economic priorities."
When Peretz acquiesced in Olmert's veto and agreed to take up instead the Defence Ministry, as being "the only ministry of equal weight", it was widely regarded as a tacit agreement to put social reform on the back burner.
With the inauguration of Olmert's "Convergence Cabinet", settlers on the West Bank were preparing to wage a grim last-ditch struggle against the planned widespread dismantling of settlements. Some settler factions started open threats of violent civil disobedience which "would go much further" than the failed settler efforts to block Sharon's "Disengagement from Gaza" a year ago.
For their part, peace activists were bracing for a difficult dilemma: to support the Olmert plan because it promised to remove many of the settlements -- or to oppose it because it would annex many others, and was to be unilaterally imposed on the Palestinians.
Though having some misgivings about Peretz taking up responsibility for Israel's machinery of armed might and oppression, some voices in the peace camp were hopeful that such an outspoken dove as Peretz would use this powerful position to push Olmert away from unilateralism and towards a negotiated solution.
In all these debates and calculations, few gave much thought to the Lebanese border, which had been quiet -- bar minor incidents -- for the past six years. True, from time to time the papers published the remarks of generals -- sometimes a direct quotation, more often an anonymous "senior source inside the armed forces" -- stating that the stockpiling of Katyusha rockets by Hizbullah was "unacceptable" and that "sooner or later, something will have to be done about it." But such statements were not given much attention.
Until July 2006, it was taken for granted that no Israeli government would send the troops back into the notorious "Lebanese swamp" where they had wallowed for eighteen years of futile, hellish guerrilla war -- for much the same reasons that no US President is likely to order a new large-scale invasion of Vietnam.
Talking to all, but...
Olmert had a very clearly formulated "Road Map" of his own for implementation of his unilateral plan, bearing not the slightest relation to the mothballed Middle East Road Map of international diplomacy (to which the PM paid the most bare minimum of lip service).
The details were set out in several official interviews and unofficial "leaks from senior sources" granted to various influential journalists. Olmert was to set out on an international tour to canvass diplomatic support for "Convergence": First, naturally, in Washington; then at important European capitals such as London and Paris; and then would come Cairo and Amman, housing pro-American Arab regimes which signed peace treaties with Israel.
Altogether, Olmert hoped to garner massive international and Arab backing to his plan. Only then would he offer it to the Palestinians themselves, on the basis of "take it or leave it."
He did not truly expect them to take it. As Olmert envisioned, there would be some months of pro-
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forma talks, which he assumed would prove futile and peter out, leaving Israel to "take its fate in its own hands" (an expression repeated in various of the PM's speeches and interviews) and define its own borders, more or less according to the line of the "Separation Fence" which is being energetically built and cutting up the West Bank.
In fact, Olmert placed far greater importance on "negotiations to achieve consensus within the Israeli society" which essentially meant negotiating with the settler leadership and asking it to at least tacitly accept the loss of smaller settlements in order to safeguard the position of bigger ones.
The PM seemed confident of his ability to eventually convince the more pragmatic settlers that trying to keep the whole of the West Bank would lead to the Palestinians, with their higher birth rate, becoming the majority and asking for the vote in Israel -- which would spell the end of the entire Zionist project.
Soon, Olmert embarked on the planned tour, with somewhat mixed results. Commentators and ministerial aides constantly debated on whether or not President Bush defining Olmert's plan as "bold" amounted to a complete endorsement.
Later on, at successive joint press conferences with Prime Minister Blair, Presidents Chirac and Mubarak and King Abdullah, Olmert repeatedly made use of the same gambit: declaring that "negotiations are the best option" but that if they fail "there should be some fall-back option." Whatever reluctant assent his host provided was interpreted as an endorsement of unilateralism.
The only one who would have none of it was the King of Jordan. Already long ago the Hashemite Dynasty made abundantly clear that -- due to the great number of Palestinians among Jordan's own population and their multiple family and social contacts with West Bank inhabitants -- it would regard any precipitate Israeli step as a direct threat to the stability of its own regime.
In particular, the direct link between Olmert's Convergence and the Separation Fence -- inflicting a massive dispossession and disruption of daily life on the West Bank Palestinians -- made the Jordanians highly suspicious.
So, the Jordanian monarch pointedly did not give any endorsement -- explicit or implicit -- to the Convergence Plan of his Israeli guest; instead, Olmert was strongly prevailed upon to meet at last with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen).
Olmert reluctantly agreed to hold such a meeting, on Jordanian soil -- but he signally failed to provide Abu Mazen with even the slightest of achievements. Worse than that: Olmert did not even bother to curb his generals, who launched a devastating aerial attack on "terrorist targets" in Gaza City on the very eve of the scheduled meeting, leaving several civilians dead. This naturally caused Abu Mazen to come under strong criticism among Palestinians for having gone ahead with shaking Olmert's hand in front of clicking TV cameras.
"The importance of the meeting was in the very fact that it took place" stated prime ministerial aides after the meeting, and mentioned "the need to hold a further, better prepared meeting" at a date "within a few weeks." But before that further meeting could take place, rapid escalation reached the stage of all-out war.
Boycott backfires
The victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections seemed to play into the hands of Olmert and his unilateralists, giving a kind of wide international endorsement to the assertion that "there is no partner." Palestinian Prime Minister Haniya and his cabinet were dismissed as "terrorists bent upon Israel's destruction" and President Abu Mazen -- as "well-meaning but powerless."
As it turned out, however, the brutal boycott of the Palestinians which Olmert actively promoted had the effect of inflaming the situation and setting in motion a rapid escalation which ultimately derailed Olmert's carefully worked out schedule, swept aside his entire Convergence Plan, and cast grave doubts on his very political survival.
What made the international boycott on the Palestinians devastatingly effective was the full participation of the Europeans, dating back to the very moment when the Haniya Government was inaugurated.
When agreeing to make economic aid to the Palestinians dependant upon the new cabinet accepting the famous "Three Conditions" -- recogni-
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tion of Israel, acceptance of former agreements and renunciation of violence -- European leaders may have had in mind some process of official and unofficial negotiations whereby some compromise formulation would be established.
Haniya, his ministers and other senior Hamas ministers were quite open to such ideas -- as they made abundantly clear through various feelers: Discreet messages were passed through whichever diplomats were willing to talk to them, in numerous interviews to the international press and some in the Israeli media as well, and also through the beginnings of direct dialogue between Hamas and the Israeli peace movement.
On May 13, Uri Avnery of the Gush Shalom movement arrived at A-Ram, a large Palestinian suburb of Jerusalem, to take part in a procession protesting the erection of the "Separation Wall" which bisects and effectively strangulates the town.
Within half an hour of his arrival Avnery had to take refuge in a nearby Palestinian home, with heavy clouds of tear gas shot by Israeli troops choking the street outside -- in company with Sheikh Muhammad Abu-Tir, a prominent member of the Palestinian Legislative Council who also took part in the A-Ram protest.
The two had little to do until the gas subsided but talk to each other; subsequently, Avnery was invited to Abu-Tir's home in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Tzur Bahr, and a second meeting in the same venue included eight members of the Gush Shalom board, who held a several hours' discussion with Sheikh Abu-Tir and his fellow parliamentarian Ahmed Atun.
Words and deeds
Addressing Congress in Washington, Olmert declared: 'We extend our hand in peace to the Palestinian People'. Senators and representatives gave his a standing ovation.
At the very same time that Israel's Prime Minister uttered these words, Israeli forces conducted a large-scale invasion to the heart of Ramallah. At Manara Square -- Ramallah's main square, comparable to Tel-Aviv's Dizengoff Square -- the soldiers opened fire and shot to death four Palestinian youths.
In place of the Palestinians, how much credence would we have given Olmert's words?
The message emanating from these meetings -- as from numerous other sources -- was clear: Contrary to the Olmert Government's assertions, the Hamas movement and the cabinet it had formed were not "committed to the destruction of Israel." Rather, they wanted the end of the Occupation, in exchange for that -- but not for less than that -- they were willing to make some kind of deal such as "a sixty-year long cease-fire with Israel."
The Olmert Government was not interested, nor were the editors and commentators in the mainstream Israeli media. The information presented by Gush Shalom -- as by numerous other would-be mediators and people of good will of various nationalities -- was greeted with derision and labeled "transparent terrorist propaganda"; Abu-Tir and Atun soon found themselves in an Israeli prison camp, in the company of many other Palestinian lawmakers and ministers.
True, Israeli Government speakers could gleefully point to radical statements emanating from the more militant wing of Hamas -- which, being located at Damascus, was absolved of direct responsibility for the population of the Occupied Territories and specifically of the need to pay monthly salaries to Palestinian government workers.
These, Olmert and his Foreign Minister Tzippy Livni declared without the slightest hesitation or doubt, were the only true and authentic voice of Hamas, the only one that needed to be taken seriously and which proved conclusively the organization's nefarious and satanic designs.
Pressure cooker Gaza
Fortified by the full backing of Bush, who unhesitatingly placed Hamas among the Bad Guys of the Terrorist Axis of Evil, and of the Europeans who should have known better, Olmert steadily tightened the screws on the Palestinians. They were subjected to more severe economic sanctions than Apartheid South Africa ever endured. No less than denial of salaries to all public sector workers, who constitute more than a third of the Palestinian work force -- after the possibility of working in Israel, the other main economic mainstay for Palestinians, was already cut off almost completely.
The worst hit was the Gaza Strip, always the most impoverished and overcrowded part of the Palestinian Territories. Following Sharon's Disengagement from Gaza last year, some rosy predictions were made of Gaza's possibilities of economic recovery and flourishing -- but as all experts made clear, any such prospects were completely dependant on a free flow of goods into and out of the Strip.
Until the Palestinian elections, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice made some effort to nudge the recalcitrant Israeli authorities to open up their stranglehold over the Gaza border crossings. But this ceased as soon as news of the Palestinian elections results arrived in Washington.
With the tacit assent of Washington, the Karni Checkpoint -- Gaza's main artery -- was kept closed for months on end. Agricultural products from the hothouses left behind by Israeli settlers rotted on the Palestinian side, never reaching the European market where they might have fetched good prices -- and whatever industry Gaza possesses stood idle for lack of the raw materials which piled up on the Israeli side.
Amir Peretz -- in his first weeks as Defence Minister still trying to implement somewhat of a dovish policy -- instructed the military authorities to speedily open Karni. A week later, he discovered that his order was carried out only very partly -- to
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be precise, the checkpoint was opened for three and a half hours and then closed again "due to a severe alert of a planned terrorist assault."
Everybody concerned -- the Israeli side as well as the Palestinians -- agreed that there was some connection between the economic pressure on Gaza and the increasing of the cross-border exchanges of fire. Homemade, inaccurate Palestinian Qassam rockets were shot by militias at Israeli communities; batteries of heavy Israeli artillery answered with about a hundred times the Qassam's firepower.
According to Palestinians, the shooting of Qassams was an expression of Palestinian desperation at being literally strangulated; Israeli officials claimed that the closing of the checkpoints was "unavoidable due to increasing Palestinian aggression."
A factor that certainly increased the flames was the fact of Amir Peretz residing in Sderot, the Israeli town closest to the Gaza Strip border and targeted by the Qassams already for years.
Palestinian militias felt that they now had a significant military target within reach -- namely, the private residence of Israel's Defence Minister -- and redoubled their attacks on the town of Sderot.
For their part, inhabitants of Sderot -- including key political supporters -- started pressuring their fellow-townsman Peretz to "do something real against the Qassam." Some started a hunger strike in front of Peretz's home, and they were joined by right-wingers eager to prove that "Withdrawal from Gaza was a mistake, as we had said all along."
With the demonstrators crying out that "bombarding empty fields in North Gaza is a joke", and senior military officers saying more or less the same, Peretz finally authorized the artillery batteries to shoot far closer to Palestinian dwellings than they used to -- with the inevitable result that more and more Palestinian civilians were getting killed. As reported by the weekend papers, Peretz agonized over each of these cases -- which might even have been true, but the killings continued.
The killing of an entire Palestinian family on a picnic at the seashore of Gaza was not the first case of its kind -- but it was the first in which photographers
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with video camera arrived on the scene quickly enough to capture the dramatic footage of a terribly distraught girl near the body of her dead father, which were then broadcast worldwide, and especially on the Palestinian TV itself.
(After a few days, the army started claiming that the Israeli artillery shells were not to blame, and that the family "was probably killed from a mine placed by the Palestinians themselves" -- but had to admit that a second killing of civilians, three days later, was indeed "the result of a regrettable miscalculation by an Air Force pilot").
What Palestinians termed "The Beach Massacre" finally caused the Hamas leadership -- hitherto stubbornly clinging to the Tahadiya (Ceasefire) it had declared in early 2005 -- to join the Qassam firings, earlier conducted only by smaller, marginal militias. A retaliatory "rain of 40 Qassams" fell on Sderot (without hurting anybody) and Hamas officially took responsibility for it.
Government speakers gleefully pounced on this "proof positive of Hamas' terrorist nature", and generals spoke of "plans for a ground invasion in Gaza" being "ready for a forthcoming implementation."
With all this, the Palestinian society was also faced with an imminent danger of a civil war.
Unity starting in prison
Aside from other effects, the Hamas elections victory engendered a lasting bitterness and antagonism between the elections victors and the Fatah Party, which had led the Palestinian National Movement for close to half a century and had controlled the Palestinian Authority since its inception.
When Hamas offered the creation of a National Unity Government, Fatah leaders had refused out of hand -- preferring to let Hamas "face the music alone" and hoping for the interlopers' failure. And almost immediately upon learning the results of the "experiment in Palestinian democracy" which they had encouraged, the Americans had been pressing President Abu Mazen to dissolve the Hamas cabinet by one pretext or another.
Feeling (and not without reason) that the Palestinian security forces owed loyalty to the previous government more than to the current one, the Hamas cabinet started forming its own loyalist armed forces (or rather, give official status to the already-existent Hamas militia).
Rival militias and armed forces deployed in the streets of Palestinian cities, amid accusations and recriminations on both sides. This situation was observed with considerable concern by Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli prison camps.
The highly popular imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti approached fellow prisoners of similar standing from the other Palestinian factions -- including Hamas and even the smaller and far more militant Islamic Jihad -- to draft together a document which could serve as a basis for national reconciliation among Palestinians -- and possibly also for breaking the international boycott on them.
The "Prisoners' Document" -- which immediately became the subject of intensive discussion among Palestinians and not only among them -- called for creating a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders (thus implicitly recognizing Israel) and for limiting the Palestinian armed struggle to the Occupied Territories (in effect opposing the shooting of missiles or sending of suicide bombers into Israeli territory).
Opinion polls among Palestinians showed a solid majority -- composed of the supporters of virtually all parties and factions -- supporting the Prisoners' Document.
In Israel, various doves and peace groups welcomed it -- though predictably the Olmert Government angrily rejected it out of hand, reiterating its
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demand for 'The Three Conditions And Nothing But The Three Conditions.'
The document's standing changed when Abu Mazen -- alarmed at the situation where the Palestinians' fortunes seemed to have reached their nadir while Olmert was received with a standing ovation at the halls of Congress in Washington -- felt the need to take a bold new initiative: he declared that he would put the Prisoners' Document before the general Palestinian public in a referendum, scheduled for the end of July.
The declaration of the referendum raised the inter-Palestinian tensions to the highest pitch yet, with Hamas literally up in arms against what they considered an attempt to undermine and destabilize their cabinet and "nullify the elections result." Clashes between armed supporters of the two parties -- often with lethal results -- became a daily occurrence -- interspersed with Israeli attacks leaving their own deadly toll.
Many of the reports published in the Israeli media were full of glee at "the Palestinians killing each other", and Palestinian support for the Prisoners' Document went down as with the referendum controversy it came to be perceived as "divisive rather than uniting."
For the Palestinian President, however, the referendum was a ploy to accelerate negotiations rather than an end in itself. There ensued intensive and often confused three-way negotiations between President Abu Mazen, the Gaza-based Prime Minister Haniya (who was reasonably amenable) and Khaled Mash'al -- the Damascus-based Hamas leader who proved to be a more difficult obstacle.
Finally, Abu Mazen and Haniya reached an agreement whereby Abu Mazen cancelled his referendum in return for Hamas agreeing in principle to form a Unity Government on the basis of the Prisoners' Document.
But by the time they achieved this, their agreement seemed moot and irrelevant. A bold attack on an Israeli army position, with two soldiers killed and one captured and hauled off to a hiding place inside the Gaza Strip, has thrown a major monkey wrench into all the political and diplomatic alignments and calculations
'Arresting' or 'kidnapping'
On virtually every night since Israel reconquered the West Bank cities in April 2002, army units have been conducting raids aimed at capturing "wanted terrorists."
Every morning the Israeli radio news broadcast the statistics of the previous night's raids -- the number of "suspected terrorists" captured (usually between ten and twenty) and the cities and villages where they were captured. Altogether, between 9,000 and 10,000 are nowadays behind Israeli bars.
Such raids are never a big news item -- not even when some of the Palestinians get killed while "resisting arrest" or "trying to escape" (which happens every week or two). The term in Israeli reports used on such occasions is always "arrest",
In Tel-Aviv & Ramallah
2 rallies against boycott of the elected PA
The twin aspect was what made this not just another protest march, that Saturday night, June 3. It was still before the deterioration into full-fledged war with Gaza and Lebanon.
Jews and Arabs from all over the country had come to protest against the boycott of the elected Palestinian Authority, against siege and starvation of the Palestinian people, for negotiations without preconditions. In short: Against the Occupation.
Former Minister Shulamit Aloni was the most prominent and outspoken of the speakers in Tel-Aviv. The thousands present burst out in loud cheering when it was announced that in Ramallah, Palestinian speakers of different movements send greetings to the Tel-Aviv event.
Israeli organizing groups:
Women's Peace Coalition, Gush Shalom, Ta'ayush, Hadash, Balad, ICAHD, AIC, Student Coalition of Tel Aviv University, New Profile, Anarchists Against The Wall, Artists Without Walls, Bat Shalom, Raging Grannies, Banki, Yesh Gvul (more on page 15)
implying that Israel has a legitimate police power and that the people involved are criminals. Palestinian reports of the same events usually use the term "kidnap", but most Israelis neither know nor care about Palestinian opinion in the matter.
The raid near Rafah, where two Palestinian brothers were taken out of their beds by invading Israeli commandos and hauled off to detention in Israel, got a bit more attention because it was the first time that such methods were used in the Gaza Strip since the completion of Sharon's Disengagement. Even so, it was taken as very unsensational news, and no international diplomat is known to have commented on it.
It was quite different three days later. On an early morning hour, a Hamas squad penetrated half a kilometre into Israeli territory by a carefully dug tunnel bypassing the fortified border defences. They took an Israeli unit by complete surprise, destroyed a tank, killed two soldiers and carried off a third one as a captive.
This raid became worldwide news within minutes, and Gil'ad Shalit -- hitherto an anonymous conscript like any other -- became a household name. And here it was the Israeli side which very emphatically used the word "kidnapping", echoed by various diplomats who demanded an "unconditional release of the hostage."
Nobody on the Palestinian side presumed to claim that he was "arrested." It was, however, widely asserted that he was a Prisoner of War -- a reasonable assertion considering that he was captured in course of what Israeli generals grudgingly admitted was "a professionally planned and executed military operation."
The operation and Shalit's capture were evidently a complete surprise -- and not a pleasant one -- to both to Palestinian President Abu Mazen and to
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Prime Minister Haniya. If to anybody, the attackers seemed accountable to the radical Hamas faction in Damascus. Apparently, neither Abu Mazen nor Haniya knew where he was held -- and even had they known, there was no way for either one of them to comply with the Israeli and international demand for an "immediate and unconditional" release.
The soldier's capture had aroused wild hopes among the family members of the Palestinian prisoners, who went out on the streets in their thousands, holding photos of their imprisoned loved ones. Even to not particularly radical Palestinians, the international preoccupation with a single Israeli prisoner, compared with the indifference to thousands of Palestinian ones, seemed the most gross of double standards.
For his part, Olmert took a highly intransigent position, repeatedly declaring that he was going to "change the rules in the Middle East." True, in previous cases of captured Israelis, the government of the day had released hundreds (sometimes thousands) of Palestinian and other Arab prisoners -- but he, Olmert, was not going to emulate them.
As commentators noted, exactly because his cabinet was conceived as being "dovish", and because he and his Defence Minister were both "civilians with no military experience", Olmert felt constrained to be far more inflexible than Sharon, for example, might have been in his place.
Noam Shalit, the captured soldier's father, who gained an enormous moral standing overnight, was daily interviewed by Israeli and international media that virtually besieged the Shalit Family home in a small Galilee community. In his modest but impressive way he called upon the government to accept the principle of prisoner exchange and "save my son before it is too late" -- to no avail.
Israeli Military Intelligence was unable to locate the secret hiding place where the captured soldier was being held -- very luckily for Shalit, since most previous attempts to release by force such Israeli prisoners ended with the prisoner's death. But there was left to Olmert and Peretz the option of using brutal and unrestrained force on the whole of the Gaza Strip -- and this they proceeded to do.
Death and destruction
First, the air force was sent to bomb the Gaza Strip's electric transformers, plunging the poor and overcrowded area into literal darkness. (Surviving auxiliary stations allowed Gazans no more than about six hours of electricity per day.)
In fact, since Gaza draws most of its electricity from Israel, there was no real need to destroy the transformers, causing damage estimated in the tens of millions of dollars, whose repair would take at least half a year. Simply closing a single switch on an Israeli switchboard would have sufficed -- except that then the Palestinians could have sued the Israeli Electricity Company for breach of contract (and probably won) while destroying the transformers came under the legal heading of an Act of War.
Next, the army embarked on a night-time West Bank sweep of a special kind -- targeting the Hamas movement's parliamentarians and cabinet ministers, and netting more than half of them. For some who evaded capture the hunt went on for the next month -- such as Aziz Dweik, Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, whose capture was announced to the Israeli press in a proud joint communiquŽ of the army and the security service.
While the Palestinian Authority had long since stopped exercising much of a real authority on the
March of folly
ad in Ha'aretz, July 7, 2006
The offensive on land, from the sea and from the air does not put an end to the launching of Qassam rockets. It is leading to their increase.
The sowing of destruction in the Gaza Strip does not bring Gilad Shalit home. It is endangering his life.
Actions against the Hamas ministers, members of parliament and social institutions will not bring Hamas down. It will intensify popular support for them.
A Government that refuses to negotiate will sink ever more into the quagmire.
And together with them -- all of us.
Gush Shalom
Pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033
ground, the blatant mass arrest of its top political echelon had stripped off the last remaining pretence of its being a sovereign authority.
In Gaza, the rump Palestinian cabinet continued to meet -- though often in secret locations, ever attentive to the Israeli planes ceaselessly circling in the Gazan skies, and to Israeli armoured columns penetrating deeper and deeper into the Strip.
As Israeli commanders frankly admitted, the strategy was to send the tanks and armoured personnel carriers into neighborhoods or refugee camps known as Hamas strongholds and provoke militants into opening fire with their ineffective light weapons -- whereupon the soldiers would endeavour "to kill as many of them as possible."
After having done their worst in a particular location, forces would withdraw -- to repeat the same procedure in another location on the following day.
Altogether, Israeli generals could boast of an impressive "body count" -- two months of constant Gaza attacks resulted in more than 250 dead Palestinians, as against two dead Israeli soldiers (one of them from "friendly fire").
According to the army's communiquŽs, most of these killed Palestinians were "armed militants" -- an assertion strongly disputed by the Palestinian side (and by whatever journalists and human rights observers who managed to collect first hand evidence).
The army also conducted numerous "limited incursions", penetrating only a short distance from the border, but with far from limited results: since it turned out that the tunnel which was used for the raid in which Shalit was captured had been disguised by a Palestinian hothouse, the army systematically
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destroyed in the vicinity of the border all Palestinian hothouses and many private homes, as well as despoiling numerous fields and orchards "which might hide a new tunnel."
In effect, wrote Nachum Bar'nea in Yediot Aharonot, the already narrow and overcrowded territory of the Gaza Strip was considerably reduced.
There was one thing which all this devastation and untold suffering failed to achieve -- namely, what was at least officially its purpose: the release of the captured soldier.
The captors remained obdurate, not budging from their original demand for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange -- especially female and underage prisoners.
The Egyptians, with long experience in mediating both between Israelis and Palestinians and between Palestinian factions, bent their best efforts to "squaring the circle" and finding a face-saving formula -- namely, "a non-simultaneous deal" where the soldier would be set free and Israel would oblige itself to later release Palestinian prisoners as "an unconnected good will gesture."
The Egyptian mediation efforts were still going on, as was the Israeli devastation of Gaza, on the morning of July 12 -- when the Lebanese Hizbullah decided to take a hand, staging its own cross-border raid, enormously raising the ante and opening the floodgates of all-out war.
For restraint, strength is needed
After the end of the war, Hizbullah's leader was to declare, in what seemed a remarkably frank TV interview: "Had I known that the Israelis would react with such a devastating war, I would never have authorized that raid."
True, Hizbullah had been making careful, meticulous preparations for the eventuality of a war with Israel -- training its troops to a high pitch of efficacy, stockpiling enormous quantities of missiles, building bunkers and fortifications in the border area and mining all the roads and highways with explosive charges designed to destroy tanks. Still, there is good reason to believe that its leaders did not expect all-out war to break out at just this juncture.
Ever since the unilateral Israeli withdrawal form South Lebanon in May 2000, in whose wake Hizbullah took up effective control of the evacuated area, there have been numerous border incidents -- especially in the area of the "Shaba Farms" which the Lebanese consider to be a piece of their territory still held under Israeli occupation -- which gave Hizbullah the legitimacy for maintaining its own independent armed forces, while other Lebanese militias had disarmed. Israel sticks to the version that it is Syrian, in token of which it was annexed unilaterally to Israel as was done with the rest of Syrian territory occupied in 1967, the Golan Heights.
In all the earlier border incidents, Israeli retaliations were limited to a few hours of bombardments in the immediate border area. This was also how it went in the most serious of the previous incidents, the one of October 2000, when Hizbullah fighters, using almost precisely the same tactics as were to be repeated in July 2006, staged a cross-border raid and captured three Israeli soldiers.
Also at that time, the Israeli side had contented itself with "a minimum retaliation" and later released many prisoners in order to get back the captured soldiers (or rather, their bodies, as they died of wounds inflicted during their capture).
It was quite well known that Hizbullah had obtained thousands of Katyusha rockets, some of which with a range long enough to hit the whole of northern Israel. Successive governments were in no hurry to open this Pandora's box and engage in a duel of mutual destruction -- even if Israel's firepower was greater.
Occasionally a general or a right-wing politician would denounce "the shameful situation" in which "terrorists have established a balance of deterrence with Israel." But meanwhile the tourism industry in the Lebanese border region steadily grew, providing more jobs.
In July 2006, the Palestinians -- and the masses all over the Arab world -- were full of anger and frustration over what seemed the unwillingness and/or inability of the Arab regimes to provide meaningful help and stop the destruction at Gaza. By striking an unexpected blow at Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians -- and at the same time gaining captives who could be exchanged for Lebanese prisoners in Israeli hands -- Hizbullah leader Nasrallah could hope to garner considerable political capital, at what seemed an affordable price.
Such calculations ignored, however, the dynamics of the Olmert-Peretz government. As a center-left coalition it had little opposition from the left to restrain it, and considerable pressure from the right and the Army Supreme Command to egg it on to ever increasing aggressiveness.
In Gaza, Olmert had already embarked on a policy of total intransigence and disproportionate retaliation for a cross-border raid and the capture of a soldier. His reaction to the Hizbullah raid was a logical extension, transferring the same policy to a larger canvas with the attack engulfing an entire sovereign state.
The personal trajectory of Olmert and Peretz, who as novices in military matters had to prove themselves, coincided with the already prepared military contingency plans for "swiftly crushing" Hizbullah, which Army Chief-of-Staff Dan Halutz was apparently "itching to try out."
Opposition to the war inside the Israeli society was marginalized. A war frenzy developed with amazing rapidity, sweeping with it most of the usually reasonable people -- reminiscent of what happened in Europe in 1914.
The dovish Meretz Party in the Knesset and its allied extra-parliamentary Peace Now movement came out in positive support of the war (though there were dissident voices in both).
Such internationally-known cultural figures as playwright Yehoshua Sobol and writers Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman explicitly
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supported the war. So did three of the four founders of the Four Mothers Movement, whose campaign in the late 1990's had a major role in getting Israeli troops out of Lebanon.
As the government knew in advance, bombings in Lebanon immediately brought retaliation upon the whole of Israel's northern region, including the major port city of Haifa.
As after the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000 following "The Generous Offers of Barak", there was in the general public a strong perception of Palestinian/Arab/Muslim perfidy ("We withdrew from Gaza and Lebanon, and they repay us with raids and missiles").
This combined with the nuclear efforts of Iran and the abominable statements of Iranian President Ahmedinajad, gave many people a feeling that "this time it is an existential struggle" and that Israel was fighting "The first battle in the Third World War against Islamic Fascism."
This had the result of a widespread callous indifference to the horrific casualties among the Lebanese civilian population. Most Israelis, relying for their information upon the Hebrew-language mass media, were hardly aware of the dead Lebanese civilians at all.
And while those who protested the severity of the bombings found it difficult to make their voice heard, there were quite a few raucous demands for "carpet bombings" and the "flattening" of entire villages and towns, as well as actual criticism of army and air force commanders for being "too scrupulous" and "too moral."
At the crucial emergency cabinet meeting, which was held at the Ministry of Defence at a night hour on July 12 and where the army's plan of attack was approved without demur, one of the most outspoken advocates of massive bombings of civilian areas in Lebanon was a former dove, Justice Minister Haim Ramon.
As was to come out in considerable salacious detail a few weeks later, Ramon seized on his way to the meeting a girl soldier, embraced and kissed her on the lips -- allegedly, against her will.
It was this act of casual machoism that seems now to threaten Ramon's career. Not what he did a few minutes later on the same evening -- i.e., enthusiastically giving the authorization for bombings which would result in the killing of more than a thousand Lebanese civilians, many of them small children.
The Kosovo doctrine
Israel had taken no part in The Kosovo War of 1999. Still, it has now become clear that that war greatly influenced the strategic concepts of the Israeli Defence Forces -- having provided, as it seemed, a positive proof that "wars can be won by the intensive use of air power."
The new doctrines which were formulated on this basis -- even before Air Force general Dan Halutz assumed supreme command, but especially afterwards -- implied that tanks, infantry and other ground forces had become largely obsolete (except where needed against the unruly Palestinians, which is essentially a police task rather than a military one) and that the emphasis should be placed on sophisticated new airplanes and electronic equipment.
With regard to Lebanon, the army had prepared a very long list of targets: locations in which Military Intelligence discovered the hiding places of long-range Hizbullah missiles; locations of all kinds of other Hizbullah institutions; the private residences of Hizbullah members; villages, towns and city neighborhoods which were considered Hizbullah strongholds; targets of general Lebanese infrastructure, some of them actually located in areas hostile to Hizbullah...
Altogether, the direct military capacities of Hizbullah were to be considerably damaged and neutralized, its leaders killed or driven into hiding, the communities supporting it terrorized into withdrawing that support, the general Lebanese population made to suffer by infrastructure destruction and a tight air and sea blockade and blame its trouble on Hizbullah, and the Lebanese government of Fuad Siniora forced to take decisive action and disarm its militants.
The government approved Halutz's plan in its entirety, and its accelerated implementation began immediately -- starting with putting the Beirut International airport out of commission and making an enormous bonfire of the stores of oil kept there.
The villages of South Lebanon were swiftly emptied, with their population escaping the destruction raining from the sky. The Israeli planes did give some advance warning of where they were going to attack -- but in several cases they afterwards bombed the refugee columns heeding the warning, with gruesome results which were shown on international TV (but not in Israel).
The massive air operation took place as planned -- but the expected swift victory over Hizbullah failed to materialize. A lot of the Hizbullah missiles had indeed been destroyed, at the cost of considerable "collateral damage." The organization had, however, plenty more left -- more than enough for Hizbullah to retaliate with daily salvos of a hundred to two hundred rockets whose like northern Israel had not known in five decades.
In Beirut, the entire Dahiya Quarter at the city's southern side, hitherto home to some 100,000 people, mostly Shi'ites, was made into a pile of rubble -- but the senior Hizbullah leaders who used to live there had not stayed for the show.
And from his hiding place, Nasrallah continued to deliver televised speeches -- often timed for the hour of the Israeli TV evening news and containing defiant messages aimed directly at the Israeli public. While having himself no knowledge of Hebrew, clearly somebody was providing Nasrallah with daily briefings of the Israeli media.
It was, of course, true that many Lebanese were not precisely happy with Hizbullah having gotten them into deep trouble; indeed, quite a few Lebanese had not been Nasrallah fans to begin with.
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But it did not necessarily translate into repudiating Hizbullah under fire. With the increasing destruction and carnage, Lebanese of all factions tended to accuse Israel for the bombings carried out by Israeli planes and in many cases to applaud Hizbullah for its ability to fight back.
For its part, among the general Israeli public Nasrallah developed into a devilish "larger than life" character, and the wish to see him dead was more intense even than had been the case with other demonized Arab leaders, such as Arafat or Saddam Hussein. But there was also some grudging admiration; in a Yediot Aharonot opinion poll, a majority of Israelis was found to consider Nasrallah a better war leader than Olmert.
The PM's Churchillesque speeches somehow just failed to strike the right tone. "The home front is strong! The people of the North are steadfast! We are fighting a just war, for our homes! Together we will win!" repeated Olmert, and Peretz, and other ministers and Knesset Members and other public figures in daily speeches.
Indeed, on TV people of the North were shown stating their opposition to a cease-fire. "Since it has already started, let the army finish the job, get rid of Hizbullah once and for all!" But only gradually did it become clear that quite a few of the people of the North -- in some communities much more than a half -- had simply fled the missiles, those who had families or friends in other parts of the country, or could afford to stay in a hotel. Mostly it was the weaker part of the population that was left to deal with the situation of daily bombardments -- a situation that some commentators compared to hurricane inflicted New Orleans, last year.
The government relief services proved unable to help the people stuck day after day in overcrowded bomb shelters -- with sometimes all shops closed and no way of buying basic foods.
It fell mainly to private charity organizations to organize some basic relief. Arkady Gaydamak -- a rather shady multi-millionaire, who is wanted by the law in France due to some suspicious arms deals in Angola and who is reportedly seeking a political career in Israel -- established from his private fortune "a temporary camp" on the sea shore, with enough space to house some 7000 people. The government declared its intention to build a similar camp, but the idea got mired in endless bureaucracy until at last the war ended.
Nearly half of the fifty civilians killed in the Hizbullah rocket attacks on Israeli territory were actually Arab citizens of Israel, which is not surprising, since the Katyusha is a highly inaccurate weapon and half the population of the north is Arabic. Also the city of Haifa, a major Hizbullah target, has a sizeable Arab community.
As it turned out, the targeted Arab towns and villages had no air-raid shelters or sirens installed -- either because the government did not think they would be targeted, or as part of the general neglect of basic infrastructure in the Arab sector.
The common danger of the missiles and the common daily bereavement might have served to draw Israeli Jews and Arabs closer together in mutual solidarity. But it did not happen. The Arabs -- including the direct families of those killed -- refused to declare their support to the war. In the media and the political system, the outspoken opposition of Arabs to the war was translated as "support for Hizbullah."
Thus, the war had the result of increasing the raucous voices of those calling the Arabs "a Fifth Column." The odious Avigdor Lieberman has built his career on such calls, and polls indicate that support for his party is on the rise. Nor is he alone -- his rival on the right, former Brigadier Effi Etam found the time ripe for an explicit call to expel the Arabs from the West Bank as well as "removing the Arab Fifth Column from Israeli politics."
War as a gimmick
By the time the war was a week old, it was already clear that the air war was not going to achieve the far-reaching aims which Olmert and Peretz confidently proclaimed in the first days.
The Air Force had done its worst, in 24-hour bombings, destruction and killings -- aided by the artillery and the navy gunships cruising off the Lebanese shore. But Hizbullah was not broken, as evident in its daily salvos of missiles on Northern Israel -- with in fact only a small fraction of the firepower of the Israeli bombs raining down on Lebanon, but enough to dislocate the life of hundreds of thousands of Israelis.
Furthermore, Hizbullah had some additional surprises to display, such as the ground-to-sea missile shot at an Israeli warship off the Beirut shore, killing four of its crew. Israeli ships have blockaded and bombarded Lebanon with complete impunity since the 1970s, and the crew did not even bother to put on a warning system designed to give warnings against just such attacks.
In the thinking of the Chief-of-Staff himself, there seemed to be no place for such mundane things as protecting troops against enemy fire. Former Air Force commander Halutz thought in terms of unchallenged aerial superiority. His idea was to systematically destroy Lebanon's electric power stations, and inform the Lebanese that unless they surrender "Lebanon would just have no electricity for the next two years" (as a Ma'ariv article quite approvingly put it).
This cute idea was, however, vetoed by the Americans. The Bush Administration had supported the Israeli offensive to the hilt, outspokenly opposing -- as much as did Olmert himself -- the idea of an early ceasefire, and preventing such forums as the UN Security Council and the G-8 Summit from adopting resolutions to that end.
Israel's war on Hizbullah was perceived as part and parcel of the worldwide "war on terrorism." Indeed, American generals felt increasingly disappointed and frustrated to find Israel as bogged down as they had become themselves in Iraq.
Even so, the Americans did realize that destroying
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Lebanon's electricity generation capacity for years to come might or might not bring Hizbullah down, but would certainly destroy the government of Lebanese PM Siniora whom Washington had classified among "The Good Guys." (In fact, the Siniora Government had resulted from the celebrated anti-Syrian "Cedar Revolution" of last year.)
With recourse to this extra-draconian measure ruled out, the government could have consented to a cease-fire -- proclaiming that the exorbitant price already exacted from Lebanon would serve as a sufficient retribution and effective deterrence against any new such raid. Indeed, though it did not at the time get to the general public knowledge, such a proposal did come up in the senior political and military echelons, but it was not seriously considered.
Taking such a course, however, would have forced Olmert and Peretz to swallow far too many rash dire threats and boastful promises and proclamations which they have made just a few days before (and which the Americans have moreover backed up, putting their own prestige on the line). Specifically, ending the war would have obliged Olmert to start negotiations for release of the captured Israeli soldiers, on the basis of a prisoner exchange, taking back even more firm and high-handed recent declarations which he had just made.
The other option, if the war was to continue at all, was to send ground troops back into Lebanon -- the one act which hitherto all commentators agreed no government would undertake, so deep was the trauma of the army's eighteen years in the "Lebanese Swamp."
Faced with the dilemma between two unpalatable options, the government opted for a classic "rotten compromise" -- i.e., to send troops into Lebanon by gradual piecemeal steps, without any clear coherent strategy and with operational plans being repeatedly changed and revised.
At first, the army tried to copy in Lebanon the methods which were so effective against the Palestinians in Gaza -- a quick series of raids into Hizbullah-held territory, without keeping the soldiers too long on any one spot.
But Hizbullah had prepared for this eventuality over the past six years, the invasion routes were highly predictable due to the rugged mountain terrain, and the militants had advanced anti-tank missiles and long-prepared hidden positions from which to fire them.
The Israeli Merkava Tank, declared by its builders to be "the world's safest tank", proved far from impervious to missiles. And also the method of taking over civilian houses and making of them military positions, often used in the Palestinian territories, turned out to be very dangerous in Lebanon -- since the Hizbullah missiles proved easily able to penetrate even through thick walls.
A force was sent on a raid into the town of Bint Jbeil, which government propagandists dubbed "the capital of Hizbullah." Then they were ordered to stay there, and a general proudly announced, "Bint Jbeil is in our hands" -- though in fact the soldiers held only a small part of this sizeable town, in normal times the home of tens of thousands of people. On the following day the soldiers were ambushed and eight of them killed, whereupon the rest were hastily withdrawn. This handed Hizbullah a handsome propaganda victory -- and the army sent the soldiers to conquer the town a second time, entailing further casualties...
There was also a highly-publicized raid by elite Israeli commandos on the town of Ba'albek, deep behind the Hizbullah lines -- which was described in the media in glowing heroic terms but whose entire achievement turned out to be the capture of an elderly Lebanese greengrocer whose name happened to be Hassan Nasrallah (he is a distant cousin of the Hizbullah leader of the same name).
As the public was to learn some weeks later, many officers were furious with this raid, considering it as the irresponsible risking of 200 soldiers' lives (the helicopters were in concrete danger from Hizbullah missiles) in the service of an empty PR trick.
And meanwhile, the government authorized the mobilization of several reserve divisions, with the reservists kept in tent camps on the Israeli side of the border and told to await further orders. While waiting, twelve of them were killed by a single rocket. As it turned out, their commanders failed to take quite simple precautions that might have saved their lives.
Crumbling euphoria
Meanwhile, Olmert's time for waging war started to run out. Under increasing pressure on the international arena, the Americans made clear that they could not continue indefinitely with providing him a diplomatic cover. American generals and neocons were openly disappointed with the lack of a decisive Israeli victory, but were also becoming skeptical of the Israeli armed forces' chance to achieve such a victory if given further time.
Moreover, Bush seemed in imminent danger of losing his best international ally, Tony Blair of Britain, whose opposition to a Lebanese ceasefire and enthusiastic espousal of the Olmert stance proved highly unpopular with the British public and further undermined his already fragile political situation.
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice embarked on a Middle East shuttle tour, aimed at achieving an agreed formula for a ceasefire on the basis of stationing a strong UN force in South Lebanon (an idea which had already been thoroughly discussed in the various diplomatic forums since the beginning of the war). Brokering a ceasefire would have constituted a feather in her personal cap, in readiness for a possible contesting of the 2008 presidential elections.
Rice was closeted with Olmert in Jerusalem, with her aides telling the press that "a ceasefire deal" was "all but sewn up", when the news came of an Israeli bomb totally demolishing a three-storey residential building and burying under the ruins the families which had been seeking with their children a safe refuge in the basement. At first the number of killed
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civilians was estimated at 60, afterwards it turned out to be "only" 28. As it happened, it was at Qana Village in South Lebanon -- the very same location where scores of Lebanese civilians found their death by an Israeli artillery shell hitting a UN camp, in the notorious previous atrocity at 1996.
The bloody photos from the scene were shown all over the world, and caused especially an uproar in Lebanon itself -- where the Siniora Government was obliged to tell the Secretary of State that in the Lebanese public the US was being directly blamed for the carnage and that her return to Lebanese soil was "undesirable and impracticable" for the moment.
Rice reportedly tried to convince Olmert to put a halt to the offensive in Lebanon. She had only the partial backing of the President, and got a partial success: the Israeli air offensive was halted for 48 hours (the announcement of this measure came from the White House spokesperson, rather than from any Israeli official -- which placed Olmert in a bit uncomfortable situation). But the temporary cessation of the aerial bombardments was "counterbalanced" by the government on the very same day authorizing a large-scale ground invasion -- though "only to the depth of a few kilometres."
This at last aroused the mainstream peace movement: Peace Now and Meretz held their first protest against the war (rather, against its extension -- they still claimed that it had been justified to begin with). And for their part, the writers' trio -- Oz, Yehoshua and Grossman -- now made an impassioned plea for a ceasefire. (As it turned out, Grossman's own son was to be among the soldiers killed in those futile last days.)
On the diplomatic arena, the US found itself for once unable to dictate the terms of solving a Middle East crisis, and had to hold intensive and intricate negotiations with France, which -- as the country supposed to provide the largest contingent of soldiers to the proposed UN force -- had a strong bargaining position, and which (for good reasons) the Lebanese trusted far more than they trusted the Americans.
Finally, at midnight (Israeli time) on the night of August 11, the news came from New York: the Security Council had unanimously adopted "Resolution 1701" on the basis of the American-French draft. Olmert immediately announced Israel's acceptance of the resolution. The war seemed to be over; certainly, many of the soldiers at the front thought so, and congratulated themselves on their good luck.
They were, unfortunately, premature. At the very same time that the government declared its acceptance
"We went down into the Saluki Canyon, as ordered. We did not see any Hizbullah fighters. They were too well hidden, but the missiles we saw. The tanks got hit and started burning, tank after tank. They had sent us right into hell. Why was it needed to send us into that trap? We already thought we were on our way home, smiling and with the flags flying. Instead, we now bury our friends."
From a soldier's testimony published in "The Canyon of Death", Yediot Aharonot, Aug.16).
of the ceasefire, it also sent the army on by far the biggest offensive of the entire war: some 35,000 troops were ordered deeper into Lebanon in a futile last-ditch effort to create some "facts on the ground."
By the time the ceasefire finally went into effect, two and a half days later, thirty-four Israeli soldiers (and an unknown number of Lebanese militants and civilians) were added to the fatalities. Olmert and Peretz could not point to the slightest achievement that would make this price seem in any way worthwhile.
Time of reckoning
On the morning of August 14, the Lebanese nightmare was at last over (in Gaza the carnage still continued, completely unnoticed). The streets of Israeli cities were still filled with bumper stickers reading "We Shall Win!" which had been produced and distributed in enormous numbers by Bank Leumi (Israel National Bank), complete with the bank's logo on their corner. But it was agreed by virtually everybody that Israel had lost the war.
Though only few said that the war should not have been started at all, quite some felt that it should have been ended earlier, and especially that the last-minute offensive should never have been undertaken. On the other hand, there were a huge lot complaining that the war was stopped too early; that it should have continued "until victory"; that the ground invasion should have started sooner; that the bombardments had been "too cautious".
The most vocal voices were those of soldiers -- reservists, especially, who were discharged and free to talk to the press -- who spoke less of grand strategy and contentious political issues, and more of concrete failures and fiascos which they had experienced: of being sent into battle with obsolete and faulty weapons and equipment, after years of having hardly trained for the tasks they would have to undertake; of having had to provide vital items from their own money; of the collapse of army logistics and being stuck deep inside Lebanon with virtually no food or water; of commanders issuing contradictory and senseless orders, and staying behind to conduct the battle from the computer screens of their safe command centers.
The media, which had for more than a month patriotically muzzled itself, burst out in floods of sensational revelations, papers and TV programs savagely competing and trying to outdo each other in splashing the most sensational and shocking exposŽ over centrefold pages.
In the opinion polls the ratings of the government as a whole, and especially of Olmert and Peretz personally plummeted sharply, while the ratings of the right wing parties and leaders rose (though many in the general public were not quite happy with the prospect of replacing them by the Likud's Binyamin Netanyahu, with his less than admirable record, or with Lieberman's simple-minded demagoguery).
Within just a few days after the formal end of the war, Israeli public life assumed the form of a free-
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for-all general melee. The Olmert-Peretz-Halutz trio came under considerable fire, and alternated between closing ranks and attempts to make each other the scapegoat.
Olmert and especially Peretz faced increasing restiveness, major and minor rebellions inside their respective parties, while Halutz faced mounting criticism of fellow officers, openly from retired generals and less open from serving ones. And there were other bickerings, of generals against generals and junior officers against generals and protests and bitter grievances of all kinds.
At least two generals made themselves conspicuous in outspoken criticism: Moshe Ya'alon, former Army Chief-of-Staff sacked by Sharon a year and half ago, who had been holed up at a Washington think-tank and biding his time ever since; and Shaul Mofaz, who never forgave Olmert for demoting him from Minister of Defence to Minister of Transportation.
Mofaz and Ya'alon (each one separately, as there is very little love lost between them) launched enormous media broadsides, roundly condemning the conduct of the war -- and were answered by counter-broadsides, which accused both of them of bearing the lion's share of responsibility for the war's failures and fiascos, since both of them had been in recent years in charge of preparing the army for the contingency of just such a war.
Adding to the atmosphere of general disintegration was the coincidence that exactly at this time the police started an intensive investigation of none other than the President of The State of Israel, Moshe Katzav (whose position is purely titular) on no less than seven charges of sexually harassing women employees in his present and previous positions -- an investigation likely to lead to criminal charges.
The Israeli system has a time-honoured solution for this kind of situation: forming a Judicial Commission of Inquiry, whose members are appointed by the Supreme Court and which has a complete independence in conducting its investigations and publishing its conclusions and recommendations.
The catch is that only the government can decide upon the appointment of such a commission -- and no government is likely to appoint a commission capable of terminating itself, unless forced to by an enormous tide of public pressure.
It did happen twice before, in the aftermath of other wars which were generally considered a failure: In 1974, after the Yom Kippur War when Israel had suffered a humiliating surprise attack by Egypt and Syria, the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry ended up with ending the career of PM Golda Meir and dealing Defence Minister Moshe Dayan a blow from which he never truly recovered; and in 1982 -- after the Sabra and Shatila Massacres -- the commission kicked Ariel Sharon out of the Ministry of Defence and into twenty years of eclipse and exile from the corridors of power.
A well-organized group known as "The Movement for a Better Government" took up the task of trying to arrange such an occurrence for a third time in Israel, by "a non-partisan campaign against government corruption, uniting the entire people -- right and left, religious and secular, rich and poor."
Spontaneity and "white-hot anger" were provided by the disgruntled reservists. Extreme-right militants were also involved, concerned less with the war and more with getting rid of Olmert and preventing any settlement evacuation, and some left-wingers -- paraded to the media as a "counter-balance."
Quite a few manifestations of this protest appeared and were duly reported in the media -- but still, far less than the outpouring of a general, overwhelming popular anger and protest that the organizers hoped for. And when they played their ultimate card and called for a mass rally in Tel-Aviv's Rabin Square, some tens of thousands turned up -- a crowd which would have looked enormous in smaller squares, but was a bit dwarfed in this venue, and was certainly a far cry from the legendary 1982 mass rally on the same location which had brought Sharon down.
Faced with a not quite overwhelming pressure, Olmert made a not quite overwhelming concession. He agreed to give the commission of inquiry rather broad powers, but kept the appointment of its members in his own hands. Specifically, he took care to preclude any possibility that the commission would be headed by Justice Aharon Barak, who has just retired from a long term as President of the Supreme Court -- a very dominant, assertive and charismatic person, who would have had no hesitation about terminating by a withering report the career even of a Prime Minister.
Instead, Olmert made sure that the actual commission be headed by Justice Eliyahu Winograd, who has far less of a public stature and independent habits. A man who could be managed -- or so, at least, the Prime Minister hopes.
War unto eternity
Shortly before the end of the war, a religious group that seems to have a lot of money published and distributed by the tens of thousands a brochure printed on glossy paper, with the title "We told you so!"
The text, accompanied by colour photos, set out a simple, clearly comprehensible theory: The government of Israel has withdrawn from Lebanon and afterwards from Gaza, though in both cases wise and far-seeing people (including and especially the group's own rabbi) had warned that this was a terrible mistake.
The evil Arabs had used the evacuated territory in order to shoot missiles on Israel, necessitating the sending of soldiers back in, and proving the wisdom of the warnings made by the afore-mentioned rabbi and others of the same mind.
The conclusion was obvious: it had been a mistake to withdraw from any territory, and the mistake should not be repeated. Especially, a withdrawal from the West Bank (the brochure of course called it "Judea and Samaria") would mean that in the next
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war the missiles will fall on Tel-Aviv, too. And a next war was sure to come; Hizbullah was no more than the outpost of an Islamic Axis of Evil, Iran and Syria were hatching nefarious schemes. The very idea of peace was a dangerous naive nonsense, Islam by its nature was implacably hostile and would always be hostile.
What Israelis had to do was to pray and trust in God, but except for that they had to be strong and tough, give a martial education to their youths and give the army as much money as it wants and needs in order to do better next time.
The group that published this brochure was by no means unique. Quite a few others started speaking in much the same vein -- not all of them religious or identified with the extreme right. Echoes of the same kind of talk could be discerned in the writings of some mainstream commentators and editorial writers, and in speeches by politicians.
The generals were certainly happy with the idea that the Defence budgets would be considerably increased, and the idea of cutting them buried (which had been espoused, among others, by Amir Peretz up to the day of his being appointed Defence Minister).
The popularity of Olmert's Convergence Plan plummeted even more than Olmert's personal rating. During the war, he had still spoken of his intention to carry out the plan, and even predicted that the war would give it "a new momentum' (which drew an angry outcry from the settlers and their supporters). But soon after the ceasefire, Olmert declared that "Convergence had gone into deep freeze."
That statement was considered to be part of an Olmert effort to draw Lieberman into his cabinet. Another signal to Lieberman was a big headline according to which Olmert was considering to take up, as his cabinet's "new agenda" instead of the Convergence, a change of the electoral system so as to create "something similar to a presidential system" and "make the executive branch more strong."
Lieberman had always supported such ideas, and made no secret of his dream to one day become himself such a strong executive president. However, Lieberman reportedly had a high price for joining the Olmert Government and "bailing out the PM" -- no less than getting the Ministry of Defence, in Peretz's place. That much Olmert seemed disinclined to pay, at least for the moment.
Another window?
The right-wing conclusions were not the only ones that could be drawn from Israel's recent experiences. In the immediate wake of the war, the long-dormant Geneva Initiative placed big billboards all over the country, with the text "Victory -- only by Negotiations! Talk to the Palestinians -- Now!"
For his part Yossi Beilin, Meretz party leader whose brainchild Geneva was, tried hard to compensate for his initial support of the war in Lebanon by a constant stream of interviews to the Israeli and international media, refurbishing his dovish credentials. As Beilin endlessly reiterated, it was not withdrawal as such which has proven a failure, but unilateral withdrawal implemented without trying to achieve a peace agreement -- indeed, undertaken in order to avoid paying the price that a peace agreement required.
As is well known, Sharon had withdrawn unilaterally from Gaza in order to keep large portions of the West Bank, and Olmert's intended convergence had the same aim.
Beilin, however, also extended the same analysis further backwards. He pointed out that in 2000 Ehud Barak had a real option for a peace agreement with Syria, which would have entailed peace with Lebanon as well, including a clause about the disarming of Hizbullah. But the price for that was a complete withdrawal from the Golan Heights, which Israel occupied in 1967. In order to avoid paying that price, Barak chose to withdraw unilaterally from Lebanon and keep the Golan, thereby giving Syria every incentive to continue providing Hizbullah with a stream of the most modern missiles.
At least in the view of some, the logical conclusion in the here-and-now was to correct that mistake and try to talk to the Syrians and extract them out of the alliance with Iran.
Peretz, also in need of recreating a dovish image for himself, made a speech in that vein. Unfortunately, it coincided with a rather bellicose speech made on the same day by Syrian President Assad. More decisive, a sharp reaction was quick to arrive from Washington: Bush was firm in continuing to place the Syrians among the Bad Guys of the Axis of Evil, and would be displeased with any Israeli move to extract them from there.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese ceasefire stabilized. UN troops started arriving in considerable numbers, despite a French display of cold feet at the crucial moment, with the situation saved by the Italians. Contrary to what many expected, Hizbullah made no effort to start a guerrilla war against the Israeli troops still holding some parcels of Lebanese territory.
Rather, the main Lebanese grievance was the air and sea blockade of their shores which Olmert maintained for several weeks after the ceasefire came into effect, seriously impeding Lebanon's chances of starting to repair the enormous war damages. Mounting international pressure finally persuaded the PM to leave the Lebanese alone. Thereafter, the focus of international diplomatic attention shifted back to the Palestinians, who had been left completely in the shadow over the past two months.
Tony Blair -- arriving in the Middle East just as his career at London was drawing to an ignominious end -- seemed concerned with trying to salvage for himself at least some mark in history.
In Jerusalem, Blair strongly prevailed upon Olmert to restart negotiations with Abu Mazen "with no further delay" and got from him some kind of a promise to that effect. At Ramallah, he
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congratulated the Palestinians on their renewed efforts to achieve a National Unity Cabinet involving Hamas, Fatah and the smaller factions, effectively promising European support to such a cabinet and holding out a ray of hope to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian public sector workers who had gotten no salary over the past half a year.
And so, as we go into print a diplomatic move seems to be gathering momentum in the Palestinian arena. The interlinked moves would include, together with the formation of the new Palestinian cabinet, a return of the captured Israeli soldier in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Despite his earlier tough stance, Olmert seems by now resigned to this step -- but as always in such situations, the sensitive issue of "prisoners with blood on their hands" still requires further complicated haggling.
Connected to that would be a ceasefire, putting an end to both the massive pounding and strangulation of Gaza by Israel and the quite ineffective shooting back of Palestinian rockets.
And after that, actual peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians are supposed to start, for the first time since January 2000 -- though one can doubt whether Olmert has either the will to pursue such talks seriously or the necessary public standing inside Israel, given the extremely shaken and disheveled condition of his cabinet after only a few months of existence.
Or could the atmosphere still be improved? There is that other effort, by the Arab countries, to revive their peace initiative -- adopted at the proposal of Saudi Arabia in the Beirut Summit of April 2002, which was then immediately drowned out by the Israeli invasion of the West Bank cities.
Now, the Arabs intend to let the UN Security Council officially endorse that initiative, by which Israel is offered full peace with the entire Arab world in exchange for a full withdrawal from the territories occupied since 1967.
The Olmert Government has already indicated its displeasure with this initiative, and Foreign Minister Livni was dispatched to Washington to get American help in torpedoing it. But to quite a few Israelis, this Arab initiative seems one of the most surprising and hopeful things to happen after a far too long stretch of bleakness and misery.
The Editor
****
Lessons from wars
Beate Zilversmidt
Thursday July 13th, the government had given the Army Chief-of-Staff a free hand to do as he saw fit in retaliation against Wednesday's provocation, and the bombardments of "the whole Lebanese infrastructure" had already started with the Airport of Beirut.
The general mood was that Hizbullah's crossing the border, killing and capturing soldiers, deserved to be answered, Israel's deterrence restored. However, in the evening of that same Thursday some hundred people took to Kaplan Street in Tel-Aviv protesting against the government's rushing towards another Lebanon war.
What moved these hundred in front of the Defence Ministry into going against the current, exposing themselves to derisive and unfriendly reactions of passers-by? Hadn't they themselves been pleading for years that the army should withdraw from Lebanese territory in order to defend the country from behind the international border? What was then so wrong, now?
Indeed, if there would not have been the background of that other "bombarding round the clock" in Gaza, the Gush Shalom initiators of this demonstration may not have so immediately called a protest, but waited a day or two and then say: "Enough is enough!" But after weeks of bombarding Gaza to the Stone Age, the Hizbullah raid was seen as an act of solidarity with the Palestinians.
It didn't really help the Palestinians, as it deprived them of the last bit of attention that their ordeal still got. Still, it uplifted them to see Hizbollah unafraid of a confrontation with the IDF.
It was about two weeks after the daring outbreak from besieged and strangulated Gaza by a group of Palestinian militants. They had made a surprise attack on an Israeli tank unit employed in the encircling of the Gaza Strip.
At that time, Israelis wanted to know all about the fate of the captured soldier Gil'ad Shalit. Underneath, there appeared to be quite a bit of respect for the audacity and cunning of the Palestinian militants. The feeling "we gave them Gaza, and now they come to attack us" was also expressed, but wasn't very widespread.
With the Hizbullah attack it was different. The general public, including the majority of what is usually considered "the peace camp", did not recognize mitigating circumstances -- let alone justification -- for an attack coming from Lebanon, when after 18 years we had withdrawn from there to an internationally-recognized border.
Peace activists used to remember proudly how the movement against the first war in Lebanon had grown, starting with only a few and growing within months into a movement which brought 400.000 to the street in that legendary rally after the horror of Sabra and Shatila, and (years later) the success of 'Four Mothers' to widen the movement enough as to actually achieve the withdrawal of the army. Especially at times of being isolated and marginalized, these successes are commemorated -- to heighten morale.
The hopes that we held -- that also this time the protest would widen -- did not come true. For sure, there had been some growth; protest marches of a few thousand, week after week and the last one supposed to be even ten thousand, with activists bused in from all over the country.
And there had wisely been invited speakers such as Shulamit Aloni and Yael Dayan. Both had often
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taken the floor also in Peace Now events, in the time that this less outspoken peace organization still knew to mobilize huge crowds.
Even so, the demonstrations did not really get out of the stigma of being "the radicals, with their predictable support among Arab Israelis" (the relation was more or less fifty-fifty).
Was it only because the war did not last long enough? Maybe some more specifics should be taken into account.
- In 1982 the whole peace camp was againstt the war, but because of the taboo on "demonstrating while our soldiers fight" initially only the radicals turned to the street. In 2006 the taboo doesn't exist anymore, but still the masses didn't show up.
- In 1982, the army succeeded within a weeek to put an end to the shooting of Katyushas which at that time only threatened the border communities; in 2006 the Katyushas had a much longer range and the ongoing shooting and daily killing of Israeli civilians was not affected by anything the army was able to do.
- In 1982, the peace treaty with Egypt andd the visit of Egyptian President Sadat were still rather fresh in the memory. They had only months earlier been crowned by the implementation of the Carter-brokered withdrawal from Sinai. In 2006, people don't think in terms of peace agreements; after the hopeful beginning of the Oslo Process, the failed peace talks of the 2000 Camp David Summit, followed by the outbreak of the Second Intifada, left many disillusioned.
People without hope cannot easily be convinced that now is the time to make peace gestures; now while they are still strong, is the time to solve their problems with all the neighbors, withdraw from the occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories and achieve peace. Probably only when it is too late will that truth sink in.
Or could it be that the feeling of having lost this war somehow prepares Israelis under the skin to be less arrogant, to come down from the Olympus and start peace talks as equals?
If it really would work as a timely warning, then this costly war would after all have achieved something.
****
39th year of the disease
This year's commemoration of the 39th anniversary of the occupation took place in a very tense atmosphere; it was only weeks before it actually came to an explosion in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. The following description, written immediately after the event, helps to understand why.
The march: Peace -- Yes! Starvation -- No!
June 3 evening, in Tel-Aviv: for about half an hour the wide Ibn Gvirol Street is ours -- dominated by angry chants protesting the sanctions and siege of the Palestinians. Two faces on many of the marchers' T-shirts: Che Guevara, the revolutionary killed so many years ago in Bolivia, and activist Tali Fahima, still incarcerated at Ramla Prison for the crime of engaging in peaceful dialogue with militants in occupied Jenin.
Many marchers wear black armbands to mark "The utter illegality of the occupation" and which also expresses mourning for the dead. The black flags -- usually the symbol of the Anarchists -- are more frequent than usual in the procession; other flags: the red flags held by the Communist youths and some smaller factions, rainbow flags -- of the Israeli Gay Community; European peace flags which are a slightly different rainbow; the Gush Shalom round two-flag signs; some Palestinian national flags brought by Arabs from the Galilee, and one Israeli national flag carried by a lone Peace Now veteran who insists that being a proud Zionist is entirely compatible with marching here.
The chanting is well-organized, mostly old favourite slogans with some new twists: 'Peace -- Yes! Occupation -- No! Peace -- Yes! Sanctions -- No! Peace -- Yes! Starvation -- No! Peace -- Yes! Strangulation -- No!' 'Neither Olmert nor Bush -- Down with the Occupation!' 'Occupation is Terror -- the Refuser, a Hero!' 'Starving children is the worst of terrorism!' 'Dismantle the Settlements, Dismantle the Wall!' (Some radical youths add 'Dismantle the Army, Dismantle the State!').
Of all the calls, the one which draws the biggest number of throats and the loudest voices is 'Peretz, Peretz, hey hey hey. How many kids did you kill today!' Some of the participants may have actually voted for Amir Peretz in the March elections, or at least seriously considered doing so.
Certainly, many have felt -- just a short half a year ago -- that Peretz's surprise winning the Labour primaries on a dovish social justice platform was a breath of fresh air in Israeli politics -- only to see him blithely assuming the Defence Ministry (which in Israel is in effect the Ministry of Occupation) and massively authorizing raids into Palestinian cities and bombings and bombardments and "liquidations."
In the angry chanting there was the sense of personal betrayal this crowd would not have felt towards another minister.
Turning a corner into King Saul Boulevard, past the Israeli Opera edifice where some well-dressed spectators gazed with surprise, and into the site of the rally.
Sharp speeches at Museum Square
The open space next to the Museum of Art is frequently the site of peace rallies. On the other side it is directly overlooked by the chromium tower of the Defence Ministry where the aforementioned minister meets with his generals. The stairs of the Municipal Library served as a podium. The two moderators -- Jana Kanapova and Khuloud Badawi -- took care that all announcements and introductions of speakers were given in Hebrew and Arabic alike.
The keynote speech was delivered by Shulamit Aloni, the legendary lady of the Israeli left. There was a subtle political message in introducing her, not
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as a former Minister of Education (though everybody knows she is that) but as Laureate of the Israeli Civil Rights Prize.
No justice, no judge
How much more can the Israeli occupying state degenerate? How much lower can the army that's called the Israeli Defence Forces sink? It is carrying out acts of bombing, killings and murder. We have passed despicable legislation that enables the army to do whatever it likes in the Occupied Territories without the need to pay compensation. It is permissible to injure, destroy, torture and kill. There is no justice and there is no judge.
Amir Peretz is following the war crimes path trodden by his predecessors. Three days ago during the Shavuot celebration, he spoke of Jewish Justice and the concept of Love and Care for the Other. But in reality we are becoming a despicable Apartheid state, everything said about Jewish Justice has been turned into dust and ashes.
And now we have a law that prohibits to Israeli citizens who happen to be Arab the right to family reunification with spouses from the Occupied Territories. A jurist friend of mine tells me that these people are from an enemy country. An enemy country? Who has been ruling those parts for nearly forty years? Who has been stealing land and water and turning towns and villages into detention camps? Everything is permissible because "there is no partner." But there has never been a partner. Arafat was not a partner, Abu Mazen was not a partner, and naturally the Hamas is no partner.
So, let me tell you, my friends: there IS somebody to talk to, and we ought to talk to them. Over there, there is a democratically elected government. I'll let you in to a little secret: we have had many democratically elected governments here in Israel that I was not too enthusiastic about, some which I positively did not want. But nevertheless, these were democratically elected governments.
If the State of Israel wants peace, and I have my doubts as to whether it does, then it ought to know that there is someone to talk to, there among the Palestinians, and there's a need, an urgent need. to talk to them. From the speech of Shulamit Aloni.
Palestinian educator Terri Boullata, principal of a school in Abu Dis, brought greetings from a simultaneous rally by thousands of Palestinians at Manara Square in the heart of Ramallah.
Boullata, whose own backyard has been divided by the "Separation Wall", and whose children grow up knowing no better than to live in the shadow of the Wall, ended her address with a strong plea:
"You Israelis want security. I also want security for my children. Let me tell you that no one will get security out of unilateral actions. If you don't implement the two-state solution now, if you imprison the Palestinians in twenty ghettos, you will get neither peace nor security. You'll get security only by negotiation and through the setting up of two states based on the 1967 borders."
Salman Natour, a popular Arab Israeli writer, got the audience crying out: "We thought that for the first time we have a civilian Defence Minister. We thought that we have someone who instead of just climbing down from a tank, has come from a poor neighborhood in a development town, from a demonstration or a strike meeting. What we got is a blind follower of the generals, follower from murder to murder."
"Don't say you didn't know!" thundered Yehuda Shenhav (a professor at Tel-Aviv University who is also a passionate fighter for social justice). "Don't say that you didn't know that war crimes are being perpetrated in our own backyard. That executions are taking place there without trial. That the elderly and the sick are being halted at checkpoints on their way to hospitals. That our taxes are being squandered on maintaining the occupation and constructing settlements and walls, while our poor are sinking ever deeper in misery and squalor.
Our men and women of letters, High Court judges, academics, poets and writers, have become morally and ideologically bankrupt, opportunistically adapting themselves to the occupation.
It is time to tear down the hypocrisy curtain. A Palestinian state must be formed in the 1967 borders -- a genuine sovereign state, not an Israeli protectorate. A Swiss-cheese state full of holes and gaps will not do. It will not bring peace." Shenhav ended his speech by calling out again and again: 'Talk to Hamas now! Talk to Hamas now!' Thousands of voices in the crowd echoed his call.
There were calls of support at the rally for three refuseniks currently serving time for their refusal to be conscripted into the army of occupation. The well-known protest singer/song writer Zeev Tene performed his song "Know no grief, know no army" and the Lydda and Ramlah Arab Rap singers group of Tamer Nafar expressed in bitter and ironic dialogue what if feels like "to be a stranger in your own homeland."
Greetings were read from the villagers of Bil'in who are struggling against the construction of the fence on their land and from simultaneous rallies and gatherings in the US, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Greece and Japan. All called on their own governments in particular and the international community in general to remove the boycott and financial embargo of the Palestinian people.
The Raging Grannies were a smashing success with the audience. An idea originating in North American peace groups, it had powerfully caught on in Israel: respectable matrons, who make no claim to professional standards of singing, adapting well-known songs with biting new and topical words.
Is there a Wall in Jericho, Jericho, Jericho? Is there a Wall in Jericho? No.
But there is a Wall in Mes'ha, Bidu, and Bil'in.
There is a Wall in Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Tulkarm. There is a Wall is Kalikilya, Abu Dis and Jayyous.
Is there a Wall in Jericho? Not yet.
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Where other rallies would conclude with an anthem, singer Tal Haran came up to perform an old song by Saul Tchernichovsky, one of the Zionist movement's well-known poets, written in dark days of Jewish persecution -- a compulsory part of the curriculum in all Israeli schools. A new meaning was achieved by having the stanzas alternate between Hebrew and Arabic:
"Laugh, laugh at me, laugh at my dreams/ Laugh, for I still believe in humanity, for I still believe in you/ For I also believe in the future, though it may be distant/ When my people, too, will know freedom/ A generation will rise up, the iron off its chains broken.
She suddenly broke up the song and cried in a loud and piercing voice: "Down with the occupation!"
Not just words...
The June 3 event was initiated by the Coalition of Women for Peace and cosponsored by a whole lot of groups among them Gush Shalom and Ta'ayush. The latter two also took actively part in a worldwide fundraising campaign for Food and Medicine for Palestinians, which was coordinated by Physicians for Human Rights.
The following is translated from a Ta'ayush leaflet, distributed at the rally.
There is a severe shortage of basic medical supplies in Rafah and Nablus as well as in all other Palestinian towns and villages. The siege on Gaza and the refusal to transfer funds to the Palestinian Authority has left hundreds of thousands of people without the means to provide for their most basic needs. International organizations have warned that a humanitarian catastrophe is in the making.
The economic strangulation, the ongoing closures and sieges are part of a collective and indiscriminate punishment, which is meant to encourage division as people fight for their share of the dwindling resources, and thus cause the disintegration of Palestinian society.
Palestinian hospitals have provided a list of their most urgent needs, and we want to raise money to provide all that appears on that list -- and if we get a bit more, there is a second list that also includes very vital needs.
The message was also widely circulated in Israel and abroad via the international network of Gush Shalom and Physicians for Human Rights -- with the result that the target sum was reached within two weeks and money continued to pour in.
Getting physically to Nablus, past the army roadblocks, was quite difficult -- and even more so into the Gaza Strip. However, long and intricate negotiations with the army by Physicians for Human Rights finally produced the needed permits.
On June 10, activists were informed that a first installment of medical supplies and money were passed over to the hard-pressed Palestinian doctors and medical workers. (The idea was that whatever could be procured from Palestinian sources should be, to give a small boost to the strangulated Palestinian economy -- while what has no Palestinian source would be delivered from the outside.)
****
'Break their bones!'
Police clubs at Bil'in
Two days earlier, we encountered Matan Cohen on a Tel Aviv street. The 17-year-old Matan, a veteran of the years-long struggle around the Wall, who was hit in his eye by an army "rubber bullet", doctors being far from sure they would fully be able to restore his sight. But he was not talking so much about himself, more about the Bil'in situation.
"There is a new unit in charge of the area from the army side, a very nasty one. The new commander thinks he can do what the old one failed to do -- to break the struggle. The violence is becoming worse, and the people are getting tired, after a year and a half of demonstrating and confronting the army week after week after week. We are making a special effort for this Friday, we need everybody who can come." Who could resist such an appeal?
And so, there we were once again. Quite a few Israelis and internationals gathered on the morning of June 2 at the home of a villager, whose ground floor became the headquarters.
White placards were spread on the floor, with activists giving loving care to the colors and graphics -- knowing full well that their handiwork was destined to have a brief life, and that in two hours or less most of these placards would lie torn and blackened.
A young Palestinian came in: "Get ready, the Friday prayer is nearly ended!" And so we streamed out, mingling with the villagers pouring out of the nearby mosque, walking westwards towards the Wall. A rhythmic sound of drums, with placards and Palestinian flags held aloft, all kind of peace and revolutionary T-shirts on display; traditional Arab headdresses worn in traditional way by elderly villagers and in all kind or rakish angles by youngsters (Palestinian, Israeli and international alike).
A Palestinian matron was engaged in animated efforts to communicate, despite the lack of a common language, with a slender young girl incongruously wearing a colorful touristy shirt form the Isle of Wight. And there were quite a few VIP's walking along: Rafiq al-Husseini, Chief of Staff for President Mahmoud Abbas, Sari Nusseibeh, the well-known activist and President of al-Quds University, former presidential candidate Mustafa Barghouti -- and from the Israeli side, Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom and Hadash MK Muhammad Barakeh.
There was a special reception laid out for us. First, a barbed-wire entanglement put up a few paces ahead of the official Fence that cuts through the land of Bil'in. This was gingerly pushed aside by several courageous villagers.
Just beyond, the Border Guard -- the Israeli police's dirty tricks department -- had three armoured cars parked side by side, with only a narrow space
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left in between. Demonstrators rushing forward were exposed to Border Guards standing on top, expertly wielding their batons and hitting at the exposed heads below them. A few demonstrators, Israelis and Palestinians, did manage to get through this gauntlet, headed by the irrepressible Yonathan Pollack. But those who tried to follow got such a rain of blows that they had to turn back.
A large crowd stood beholding this scene, making increasingly angry protests: "Look at this bastard smirking as he is hitting! He is enjoying himself! Bastards! Bastards!" It was not long before the stones started to fly. Bil'in organizers tried to stop it, shouting again and again: "No stones! No stones!"
At this point, soldiers always start a heavy barrage of tear gas canisters. The Border Guards did fire some gas and shock grenades, but clearly their main forte is the clubs and batons. As if they had been waiting for the stones -- and probably they had indeed been -- squads started charging into the crowd, raining blows right and left. Soon, stretcher-bearers carried wounded protesters into the waiting Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance.
Some of the police strongmen picked up a young villager, seemingly at random, and started dragging him towards the car. He was struggling and screaming, and for a moment released himself from their grasp and fell on the earth. Before they could grab him again, I succeeded in stepping between them, while holding towards the police the Gush Shalom two-flag sign. The Border Guard commander just shrugged and turned his men elsewhere. The villager, who narrowly avoided some unpleasant weeks/months in detention, muttered some thanks and ran back to the main body of the demonstration.
After a quarter of an hour of a wild melee, things sorted themselves into two lines facing each other. Israelis shouted in Hebrew: 'Shame on you! Shame! Shame! Servants of the occupation! Refuse! Refuse!' Suddenly, a Border Guard commander was quite clearly heard above the hubbub, shouting to his club-wielding men: "Break their bones!"
Immediately, MK Barakeh called at the ranking officer: "There is media here. You have been recorded; your man has been recorded giving the order to break our bones! I shall lodge a complaint!"
The officer replied: "Are you threatening us?"
Barakeh: "I shall complain about you too!"
The officer turned to his men and shouted: "You are witnesses! He is threatening an officer!"
Barakeh: "Yes! Yes, I, a member of the parliament to which you are accountable, am threatening you with the due process of law!" [A.K.]
****
A murderer in the neighborhood
June 10, 2006, the horror of nearly a whole family killed on the beach of Gaza once again drove hundreds of us into the streets on short notice to cry out in anger and outrage. In the weekend the Defence Ministry gates are closed. We all welcomed the idea of the Anarchists to go after Chief of Staff Dan Halutz at his own home at Tzahala.
The affluent Tel-Aviv suburb where we were going was built in the 1950's as a prestigious place of residence for serving and retired military officers, the most well known of its original inhabitants being the late Moshe Dayan.
Demonstrations have not been very frequent among these neat houses and well-manicured lawns. Certainly no processions of angry young people full of moral indignation, waving militant banners and fists in the air and ceaselessly shouting at the top of their voices:
'Dan Halutz, Child Murderer -- Get out of the Territories!' 'Peretz, Peretz -- After Murder Apology is not Enough!' 'It was no Mistake nor Error -- Occupation Kills!' 'All Ministers War Criminals!' 'Halutz to The Hague, Peretz to The Hague! 'Blood on your hands, blood on your hands!'; 'A brave Minister of Defence drops bombs on children!'; 'Occupation is Terror -- the Refuser is the Hero!'; 'Gunners and Pilots -- Refuse to be Murderers!'
The flustered police were mainly concerned to stop this tide short of the chief general's home. Their cordon managed to block the procession two streets before the target, in the midst of a well-appointed playground, equipped with everything needed for the hours of happy play that is the due of all children. This quite accidental setting made all the more poignant the spreading of colour photos of the torn and bleeding children, yesterday there in Gaza.
A merry-go-round became a highly improvised podium for the recently elected Hadash Knesset Member Dov Hanin, veteran human rights lawyer and environmental activist:
"Two weeks ago, there were civilians killed, and the army issued an apology and went on shelling. Then a week ago -- another killing and another apology. And this morning -- another apology...
Amir Peretz, not so long ago you were talking quite differently. You talked of a different kind of politics, politics of civil society and social responsibility. Then you took over the Defence Ministry from Shaul Mofaz, and you continue his policies to the dot. No, not exactly -- you have already broken Mofaz' record for the largest number of civilians killed in the shortest time..."
Chanting: 'Peretz -- Resign! Peretz -- Resign!'
Hanin: "What happened yesterday is not just a military matter. It is a political matter. It has everything to do with what Olmert is saying and doing: Dismissing out of hand the Palestinian Prisoners' Document, not wanting to hold any negotiations with the Palestinians, ignoring any chance to have such negotiations, actively torpedoing any such chance when it shows its face...
What we must demand is very simple: make an all out effort to reach cease-fire with the Palestinians. No artillery shells, no Qassam rockets, no killing on either side, no hostile act of any kind. An immediate cease-fire on the way to full-scale negotiations! (Applause.)
And let me give one final reminder to everybody concerned: the world has changed in the last
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decades of the Twentieth Century. There are new kinds of accountability that did not exist before. People who thought they could act with impunity discovered their mistake -- in the dock at the International War Crimes Court in The Hague!"
Following the speech the demonstrators backed out of the playground. Daring young activists led a procession through the streets, calling out: "Tzahala residents, there is a murderer in the neighbourhood!" while trying to get to Halutz's house by circuitous ways.
At the corner of the IDF Street and the Strategists' Street -- a confrontation, with police blocking the way and shouting demonstrators spilling over into side streets. For unclear reasons the police picked on Uri Weltmann, a lad wearing the red T-shirt of the Communist Youth, and dragged him away with far more than the "reasonable force" which the law allows. But they did not have enough manpower to break up the entire procession.
After some more turning back and forth and some playing of cat and mouse, the police was outwitted and the demonstrators streamed at last into Halutz's street. We got as close as two houses away from his home, shouting "War criminal! War criminal!"
It was about this time that a journalist present discovered the identity of a young black-haired woman, who had made no effort to draw attention to herself: Dana Olmert, the Prime Minister's daughter and a long-time refuser and activist in Machsom Watch. Her views are not a secret (in fact, the extreme-right tried to use them in the elections, without much success). She would have preferred to demonstrate as herself rather than her father's daughter. The media had other preferences, Yediot Aharonot placing her photo on its front page with the caption "Demonstrating against Papa."
But the sign she was carrying got into the front page, too: Stop Murdering Civilians!
****
Shouting at the canons
Friday Morning, June 30 -- en route to the Gaza border, an uneasy alliance. Two groups which both oppose the Gaza invasion and its underlying policies and ideologies of occupation and oppression and who both regard refusal of military orders as legitimate and praiseworthy -- but still, acting out of widely divergent motives and worldviews.
Ometz Lesarev (Courage to Refuse) was founded and is led by reservist combat officers such as David Zonsheine, paratrooper company commander who served several terms for refusal of service in the Occupied Territories, and whose request to be court-martialled was denied by the military authorities. While their name is mud in the eyes of the army high command, they still see themselves as a part -- even if a highly dissident part -- of the army to which they devoted some of their best years, their characteristic slogan being "Refusal to the occupation is Zionism!"
On the other hand, the (mostly younger) activists, refusers and anarchists did not have (and emphatically did not wish) any experience inside the army. In fact, many of them did get a prolonged tour of the army's prisons and correctional facilities; some -- like Haggai Matar and Noam Bahat of "the Five" -- having spent no less than two years behind bars. In their eyes, the armed forces of the state of Israel have no redeeming features whatsoever.
It was Courage to Refuse which came up with the idea of holding a protest near the Gaza Strip, scheduling the action for Friday morning and distributing invitations widely. The radicals, who contemplated having an action in the same area, decided to join the existing one. But on the bus going southwards from Tel-Aviv, they were displeased with what the organizers' representative was telling the press, and a confrontation blew up at a gas station where we briefly stopped.
"What is this, telling the press that we are not against the army? We are against the fucking army and their crimes!" "Against everybody in the army? Also against the soldiers whom we will meet face to face in half an hour?" "Well... more against the generals. But I am going to place this poster right in front of them: Soldier -- it is your right and duty to refuse to perpetrate war crimes!" "Go ahead, I completely agree with this text."
"You told the press that military means alone would not solve the problem. So you don't rule out the military means, the horrors they are perpetrating, you just want to add some diplomacy on top of it! This is not what you wrote in your invitation to this action!" "It was not different from the invitation, just a small difference in emphasis. We have to try to reach a wider public, after all." "It is not up to you and your friends to determine this all by yourselves. We should decide this democratically. Look around you; we are the majority in this demonstration. We are the demonstration!" "Sorry, we organized this action and invited you. You could have organized your own action." "We joined you, so as not to split forces." "You came to take over our demonstration." "We came to join you because you said you want to protest the invasion, but we will not be your silent foot soldiers. This is not the army, you are not an officer here."
Finally, Zonsheine came up with a compromise: "the other part" of the demonstration would have the right to conduct its own communications with the media, in its own way. Gush Shalom's press network proved useful for that purpose.
Though the bickering continued on a low level the rest of that day and was going on afterwards over the internet, demonstrators were able to present a united front where it mattered: in facing the army and police.
The Gaza Strip border area. Brown, semi-arid soil. Side roads leading to this Kibbutz and that Moshav. Yellowing settler poster protesting Sharon's Disengagement of last year. A sign showing a big red heart: "IDF soldiers, you are always in our hearts!" A dusty monument for a forgotten battle in 1948. A forlorn line of cactuses, testifying that once there had been a Palestinian village here -- its inhabitants
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and their descendants now living in the overcrowded refugee camps behind that fortified border fence, where daily misery is now compounded by the disruption of electricity and water supplies.
The original venue planned for the action was the junction closest to Kerem Shalom, near to where Hamas staged its raid and soldier Gil'ad Shalit carried off. But though the Palestinian raid had implications heard of throughout the world, at the moment nothing much was going on at that spot.
En route, we encountered a far more tempting "target of opportunity" -- a military camp displaying quite a few tanks, with their crews busy at work. Presumably, these were some of the tanks that the papers report as "poised to roll into Gaza when the order is given."
When our buses stopped and the demonstrators tumbled out, the gate of the camp was still wide open. A quick-thinking officer got it shut and bolted just ahead of our arrival. Nonplussed, three demonstrators placed on the wire fence a giant banner reading: 'Soldier, Stop! War Crimes Ahead!'
"Soldiers, we are not against you! We are against the cynical politicians who send you to kill and die!" called out one of the young radicals, and behind him a chorus started chanting: 'Occupation is terror -- the refuser a hero! Refuse! Refuse! Refuse!'
Some of the young conscripts seemed about to start discussing or debating, but the stern-faced captain shouted: "Not a word to them! Not a word, do you hear me?" The soldiers turned back and returned to their task of greasing the tank threads. (Later, we were to read on the Internet the furious raving reactions of right-wingers about "the traitors who dared to besiege a camp of our soldiers, engaged in the defence of their country.")
The tableau at the camp gates lasted about half an hour. Suddenly, somebody called out: "OK, we have done enough here. Now, onwards to Gaza!" and within minutes the entire column was marching westwards, completely blocking the narrow asphalt strip leading to the border, with the full-throated chanting: 'Azza, Azza, Al Ye'ush/Od Nigmor Im Hakibush!' (Gazans, Gazans, don't despair/We will yet finish off the occupation!).
"Stop! Stop! Turn back! You are entering a closed military zone! You are entering the war zone! Civilians expressly forbidden!" came the frantic shouting from the military police car's loudspeaker. Demonstrators reacted by quickening their steps forward into the forbidden zone. From behind, there was a furious honking. A military armoured truck was approaching -- and demonstrators gleefully blocked its way. After several more minutes of useless honking, the soldier at the wheel cursed loudly and turned back.
"What are you doing? Are you crazy? It is very dangerous over there!" called out a civilian, who claimed to be the security officer of a nearby community. When the column ignored him and moved ahead, he started cursing: "God damn you, stupid leftists! Go to Hell! Why don't you demonstrate under Haniya's window?"
Suddenly, an explosive sound from ahead, and another and another. It took a moment for the realization that these were the artillery pieces pounding the Gaza Strip, and that they were not very far -- in one of the fields just ahead.
Demonstrators burst out with 'No to the bombing! No to the bombing! NO TO THE BOMBING!' It was very different to shout it so close to the front line itself, very different from shouting it outside the Defence Ministry where blood-curdling orders are formulated and delivered from comfortable air-conditioned rooms.
Here, the mundane placards with their carefully printed slogans -- 'Ceasefire Now!' 'Stop Shooting -- Start Talking!' 'There is no military solution!' -- suddenly seemed far more concrete and immediate than on the streets of Tel-Aviv. [A.K.]
+++ Jerusalem, July 1, evening. The demonstrators detained the day before by the civil and military police near the Gaza border were released in time to be received as heroes outside the PM's residence in Jerusalem.
Several hundreds have answered the call of Yesh Gvul to protest, with the slogan 'Stop the war crimes!' and a motto taken from Mahatma Gandhi: 'An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.'
Placards read 'Speak to Hamas!' and 'Don't arrest elected leaders!' and 'Swap hostages now', and 'Stop, war crimes ahead.'
"What hostages are you talking of swapping?" asked a journalist. "Why, the Israeli soldier held in Gaza, and the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails," said Yishai Menuchin, spokesperson for the movement. "Do you really call them hostages? The people whom our army captured as dangerous terrorists?" "Sure. Or I can call them prisoners of war, as I can certainly call Gil'ad Shalit a prisoner of war. I don't care what you call them, as long as you swap them and send them back to their families, on the Israeli side and on the Palestinian side."
****
'No' to Lebanon War II
July 12, Evening. It was planned as a rather festive evening: the premiere of Shai Carmeli Pollack's film "Bil'in Habibti" (Bil'in, My Love), a documentary made while participating in the weekly protests against the Wall at Bil'in, and as the title indicates: expressing his very warm feelings towards the village and its inhabitants.
The very loud clapping in the end was not just an act of politeness. It was not just "politically correct", it was a good film, and we were happy to see so many of the Bil'in people themselves in the hall. (Getting them a permit to come to Jerusalem was far from easy).
But over it all hovered the anxiety about the Hizbullah raid of that same morning and what would come of it. "We are so many leftists here, we should decide on a protest action already," says a young activist. "Protest what? The ministers are sitting right now. We don't yet know what they will
Page 21
decide." The late night news was quite cryptic: "Ministers approve various plans and courses of action proposed by the General Staff." In the morning, the mass-circulation papers, Yediot Aharonot and Ma'ariv, translated this for their readership into 'Government Declares War!' followed by jingoist editorials and commentaries. Only the Liberal Ha'aretz still dared to dissent, in a cautious dovish editorial: "Say 'No' to Lebanon War II."
Soon, news came of Beirut International Airport being bombed, and by 9.00 the Lebanese death toll was already reported as 27 (including twelve members of a single family), which would get considerably higher during the day. There was also an Israeli woman killed in the northern town of Nahariya, a fact which of course got far more attention than the "enemy" casualties. (The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza Strip -- also including a whole family: father, mother and five children -- was totally pushed to the background, yesterday's war and yesterday's bloodshed.)
And then we found among our emails the call penned during the night by the Jerusalem youngsters from the Bil'in film, calling upon established groups such as Gush Shalom to come out in immediate protest.
It is criminal, and it won't help
The government chooses to use cruel military force and collective punishment against the civilian populations of Gaza and Lebanon in order to pressure the captors of Israeli soldiers. Aside from being immoral and verging on war crime, this policy will prove ineffective in returning the captives or bringing calm.
Start negotiations for prisoner exchange! Stop the killing! Stop the war! End the occupation!"
Picket the Defence Ministry Today, 6pm!
And so, while listening to the news of escalating strike and counter-strike and mounting bloodshed, there was at least something concrete to do: prepare placards and banners, phone as many people as could be found, forward the messages to different email lists, place it on relevant internet discussion forums...
A few hours after the start of the attack on Lebanon, a hundred peace activists were already gathered in front of the Ministry of Defense to protest.
'One -- Two -- Three -- Four / We do not want this fucking war!' shouted the demonstrators, members of several organizations, youngsters side by side with veterans. Other slogans (roughly translated from Hebrew) were:
'Artillery or Qassams, the Occupation is bad for everybody!' -- 'Peretz, Peretz, for the sake of the North: Get out of Lebanon!' -- 'Jews and Arabs, Refuse to be enemies' -- 'Exchange prisoners-of-war! Bring the soldiers home!' -- 'Peretz, Peretz, Minister of Defense, You have killed seven children today!'
The chanting of 'Peace -- Yes! Occupation -- No! Peace -- Yes! Invasion -- No! Peace -- Yes! Bombing -- No!' was accompanied by rhythmic thumping on the sheet iron fence erected for public works on the road -- which turned out to be an excellent improvised drum.
Some older participants started out with singing the classic Lebanon War protest song: 'Red eleinu aviron/ Kach otanu leLvanon/ Nilachem bishvil Sharon/ Venachzor betoch aron.' (Come down airplane, Take us to Lebanon. We will fight for Sharon, And come back in a coffin). The problem that neither "Olmert" nor "Peretz" could fit into the rhyme was solved easily: "Anyway, they are both just copying Sharon," commented a participant.
The reaction of passers-by was much less hostile then anticipated. Some drivers shouted curses at the activists, but quite a number honked in agreement. Most drivers seemed to be fatalistic.
The police brought a much larger force than usual, including a special unit for riot control. It seems that they feared a blocking of the traffic by the young demonstrators.
"In 1982, when we came out on the first day of the war, not far from here, the police just jumped on us as soon as we unrolled our placards. That's progress for you" said one of the old-timers.
"Katyushas fell not far from where my daughter lives in the north. I suggested to her to come with her children to Tel-Aviv until things calm down. She does not want it, says she lives in a small place that no one will think worth bombing. Sure, nobody will deliberately target such a place, but accidents can always happen, I am very worried," said a white-haired woman, holding aloft the sign: 'Stop the war madness!'
+++ Sunday, July 16. The fifth day of the war. Earlier in the day, the railway sheds at Haifa were hit, and eight workers killed, the heaviest blow to the Israeli "home front" so far. Activists from the Women's Peace Coalition got to the spot very quickly and stood outside the bombed sheds with anti-war signs, though there were warnings of more rockets expected.
Later in the day, 600 gathered at Tel-Aviv for a protest march. The pleasant tree-lined Ben Tzion Boulevard -- a scene so different from the horrors on TV -- resounded with the chanting:
'In Haifa and Beirut, children want to live!' 'Stop the War, Stop the Murder!' 'Stop Killing, Start talking!' 'Return to the Negotiation Table!' 'All the Ministers are War Criminals!' 'We shall Neither Kill Nor Die in the service of Bush!'
The sign carried by a young refuser had a paraphrase on Descartes: 'I occupy, therefore I am a racist; I think, therefore I am a refuser.'
"I know Amir Peretz, I worked with him many years at the Histadrut [Trade Union Federation] Headquarters. He was so proud of standing up for the workers. Now he is sending planes to kill Lebanese workers and gets Israeli workers killed in return," said a grizzled Communist.
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Anti-war struggle in war zone
Iris Bar
The war began all of a sudden. At July 12, we in Haifa were busy with preparations for a big fund-raising event that was going to be the peak of a campaign of collecting humanitarian aid for a Gaza hospital. We had rented the hall of the 'el-Midan' theatre, and good attendance was expected. We thought of the Israeli bombs on Lebanon as another example of the "routine" over-reacting Israeli cruel madness. We didn't expect the "crisis" on the Lebanese border to develop into an invasion and an all-out Open War.
On the following day (July 13), seeing the intensive Israeli bombing of Lebanon and some Katyusha rockets beginning to fall on the northern towns of the country, we decided to precede our event with a street vigil against the Israeli attack on Lebanon. We had just finished the protest and were crossing the road toward the theatre hall when a white string crossed the sky, followed by a loud noise. "It was a rocket! A rocket on us, on Haifa, they said so on the radio!"
Nervous people tried to phone their relatives, but the cellular net was down. (We noticed this interesting phenomenon again and again all along the following month -- at a time of crisis, the cellular net collapses.)
More than a hundred of the people who stood crowded in the theatre entrance went home, to be closer to their relatives and to the TV. Some had already bought tickets, but many had not. So, the first "war victim" in Haifa was an event of solidarity with Gaza.
Israeli bombings became harder during the weekend. We watched on TV the ruins of the southern suburb of Beirut, and remembered the first war in Lebanon, 24 years ago. At five minutes past eight on Sunday morning, July 16, came the first serious rocket attack on Haifa -- hitting a railway garage and killing eight of the workers.
A friend of mine, who was waiting in the railway station on his way to work, told me that the noise was terrible. A lot of people, especially young soldiers, began to cry. Then, the train they expected came -- but instead of stopping in the station, it ran away southwards, without even letting out its passengers. That was the last train seen in Haifa until the end of the war.
Also on the same Sunday, within less than six hours of the attack, many of the municipal and state institutions just withdrew from the city. The municipality closed most of its offices (including the social work agencies), and the summer activities for children were stopped.
Nothing was really functioning any more. There were problems with transportation. Half of the businesses, shopping malls, banks and post offices were closed, or at best were open for no more than two or three hours a day. The city streets were empty, even at noon. A lot of people ran away (two thirds of the residents of Haifa, according to statistics). At last there were a lot of parking places to be found in the city...
We were wandering in the city like the heroes of one of those American "dystopia" movies when civilization begins to fall apart. A state of emergency was declared and 500 Border Guards (militarized police) were brought in to strengthen the regular police. They led a very successful anti-graffiti campaign, but failed to prevent looting and plundering.
On the other hand, Haifa became, for the first time, a world media focus. They were all sitting at the Communications Center in Panorama Street on top of Mount Carmel, with (as the name implies) a panoramic view to the north, waiting to see rockets and missiles falling on the city. This street became our preferred place for anti-war vigils. We would just come with our signs of protest and stand in the empty street, in front of the broadcast teams. Never before did our activities get so much media coverage all over the world (from Argentina to Iceland, and in the different Arab channels).
We had started protests in the bombed city on that Sunday when the rocket fell on the railway garage. A women's anti-war vigil just in front of where it had fallen, nine Arab and Jewish women standing with their signs in very hostile surroundings. On the next day there was an open meeting of all people/organizations that were interested in forming an anti-war movement. More than 30 people came, including representatives of Arab political parties such as Balad (Azmi Bishara's party), the Hadash Communists and Abna'a el-Balad.
The anti-war movement kept us very busy. During the first week, a women's vigil was held every day in Haifa, afterwards at least twice a week until the end of the war. In the beginning activists held protests in the places hit by rockets -- but after facing hostile reactions from neighbours, it had been decided to move the protests to Panorama Street. Some 200 to 300 people participated in those demos -- and this after a lot of people left the city, and at a time when families with small children didn't leave their houses
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at all and a lot of people avoided hanging around in the streets as much as they could.
After the Qana massacre -- when there were two days of partial cease-fire and no rockets falling on Haifa -- we had almost 500 demonstrators. We also took part in the weekly marches in Tel Aviv (every week, a full bus left Haifa for these events) as well as marches in different Arab towns (in Sakhneen, Shefa'amr, Um el Fahm and Baqa'a there were thousands of participants each).
The anti-war movement was clearly led by the Arab parties on the one hand and the women's movement on the other, and brought the Arab movements and political parties together with radical Jewish people and groups. The Women's Peace Coalition showed considerable resilience and
'/2' 3
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energy at the time when other groups active in the Haifa Jewish Sector hardly functioned.
In the Haifa demos almost 75% of the participants were Arabs. The slogans directly blamed Israel for the aggression, favourite chants in Hebrew being 'Peretz, the Defense Minister, how many kids have you killed today?' 'All the ministers are war criminals', 'Who is the terrorist? Olmert! / Peretz the fascist!' and 'Olmert, murderer, Lebanon will win the war.' In Arabic: 'In Taibeh & Maroun e-Rass, the occupation army was beaten' and 'Bint Jbeil, you've beaten the Zionist army' etc.
To say it frankly, we were quite isolated. At least 85% of the Israeli Jewish society (maybe even more) supported the war. We were attacked during demonstrations by a mixture of Labour Party students, angry mobs and policemen. The hatred and violence were very hard to bear, and there were some very frightening events.
One of our demos was dispersed by very violent police, with the manifestly willing help of passers-by, and we were beaten savagely. Later that evening, one of the women was attacked in her own home by two hooded men who had apparently followed her. She was beaten in front of her small children and needed to go to hospital. As said, the Labour student group in Haifa University organized themselves to attack anti-war protests, especially the Women in Black vigils.
Almost every day Katyusha rockets went on falling, terribly frightening even if it was virtually nothing compared to what was happening to the Lebanese and the Gaza Palestinians. Israel was daily using an enormous number of half a ton, one ton and two-ton bombs. Such a bomb can easily destroy a whole big house and bury scores of people under the rubble, even if they were hiding in the basement (this is what happened in Qana). In comparison, the Katyusha rockets are small (7-25 kg of explosive per missile); people who hid in cellars could escape unharmed even when their house was directly hit.
In shooting on Haifa, Hezbollah was trying to hit mainly army bases, the port and the industrial area, so most of the residential neighbourhoods were less damaged. Alas, the poorer neighbourhoods -- whether inhabited by Jews, by Arabs (which is a big part of them) or mixed -- are mostly located in the Haifa Lower City, very near to these factories and military bases. They also suffer from a lack of air raid shelters and other defence resources.
As I read in the newspaper, while everybody was looking at Lebanon some 11,000 Israeli missiles were fired on the Gaza Strip. We in Haifa suffered from between 150 to 200 rockets altogether, and it was more than enough to make everybody around nervous and frightened, and to completely disrupt our daily life.
And then, on August 14, at 8:00 am, the Open War stopped, as suddenly as it began, putting an end to a really strange period. Despite the fact that we were active almost every day (we organized and participated in protests three to four times a week, and also did more social activity than usual) I felt, more than ever, that the real politics, the real changes in the world, are achieved by other people who use other means.
The July 22 Tel-Aviv weekend anti-war march attracted greater numbers than the earlier ones. The protests had begun with 100, afterwards reaching 1000, this time some 5000 took part. After marching from Rabin Square to CinematŠque Square, the protesters held a rally that flowed over into the neighboring streets. The star speaker was once again the untiring Shulamit Aloni.
'To participate in this war -- a war crime'
Excerpted and translated from Yediot Aharonot, August 1.
Before going to serve his 28 days in prison, Reserve Captain Amir Pester had to deal with an intransigent family front. His father, his general uncle Danny Mat and his brother who is a Battalion Doctor all oppose his act. Despite all this, and despite the rain of missiles falling on his home city of Haifa, Pester has no regret:
"It is unacceptable to retaliate for every missile hitting Haifa with ten missiles which would kill 54 people in Lebanon," he said on the way to Military Prison 6. "As far as I am concerned, to participate in this war is to commit a war crime."
"I am supposed to attend a conference on environmental engineering in Sardinia in the coming weeks, but now I will be the whole month in prison. You know, I have a dog. Had my girlfriend not agreed to take him, now that I can't involve my family, I am not sure I would have refused.
"For years, my company commander succeeded in convincing me to accept service in the Territories. He said he needed principled moral people like me at the checkpoints, and was willing to make compromises like never sending me on patrol into inhabited Palestinian territory. But when I phoned him on July 22, he was just back from a raid into Lebanon. He told me that this time if I refuse I would be tried.
"That evening I went to the anti-war march in Tel-Aviv. In the morning I arrived at the recruitment post. I looked at my comrades and I felt depressed. I have been with them through difficult times; I knew that what I was going to do might end my role as an officer.
"I don't feel regret. We could have avoided this entire war in the initial stage, after the soldiers were kidnapped. Quietly, by negotiations, as we did after the three soldiers were kidnapped in Shaba'a [in 2000]. We could have achieved a cease-fire and saved 400 killed of theirs, 30 of ours, [numbers at the time of the interview -- Ed] and millions of refugees on both sides of the border. But the generals wanted this war; they convinced the Defence Minister that this was the occasion for an extended offensive, without making clear all implications and how much the home front would suffer."
+++ On August 2, Ma'ariv journalist Yonathan Haleli reported about "an artilleryman refusing to shell a Lebanese village." As reported, First Sergeant Omri Zeid, a student and inhabitant of Tzfat, was posted to an artillery battery shelling the east sector of
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South Lebanon, where his duties included pinpointing the positions due to be targeted.
On August 24, the battery was ordered to shoot no less than 150 shells at the village of Mjadara. Katyusha rockets were supposedly shot from the vicinity of the village, but the retaliation -- as other soldiers in the battery told the journalist -- was an "exceptionally heavy targeting" of one village.
Zeid was seen taking up his backpack as he told his fellow soldiers: "I am not willing to be part of an army which shoots at women and children", whereupon he departed.
The incident aroused a storm of debate among the other soldiers. Some religious soldiers claimed that according to religious law, deserters deserve a bullet. Others said he had merely followed the dictates of his conscience. However, commanders calmed down the spirits and allowed Zeid to depart the battery without being put on trial. On the following day his annual period of reserve service was to end, so he was sent home one day earlier.
****
We shall all lose
August 5, Tel Aviv. "Is this the last week?" people asked each other. According to the confident predictions emanating from Condoleeza Rice's entourage at the beginning of the week, by today a ceasefire should have been in place. But this Saturday had been as bloody as ever.
Whatever the final formulation reached at the UN, it would be too late for the mother and her two daughters, killed that morning at Arab el-Aramsheh from the direct hit of a Katyusha missile. (Like nearly half the Israeli civilian casualties, they were Arabs). Also too late for the 33 farm workers (35 in other accounts) killed by a single Israeli bomb near the Lebanese-Syrian border (hardly mentioned at all in Israeli media).
Suddenly, a salvo of eggs rained down from a high storey window on the gathering activists. "Damn, I worked on this placard for nearly three hours" exclaimed a young man from Jaffa. Under the caption "Stop the carnage -- start negotiating peace!" there were two hand-painted pictures: on one side airplanes dropping bombs and great flames bursting from the ground, on the other birds flying above a meadow with children playing happily. Three girls rushed to help, thoroughly scraping the poster with tissues until all signs of the dripping yolk were removed.
The narrow King George Street through which we marched is in the downtown area of Tel-Aviv. Rather rundown though bustling -- an area which had been the heart of the city under British rule, and which has a considerable right-wing element but also enclaves of students and bohemians.
Demonstrators chanted "We shall neither die nor kill / in the service of the USA!" -- "Children want to live / in Beirut and Haifa!" -- "Peretz, Peretz, resign / Peace is more important!" -- "A million refugees / That's a war crime!" -- "Olmert, Peretz and Ramon / Get out of Lebanon!" (Originally, this slogan had Sharon's name). But the slogan repeated again and again, in alternating Hebrew and Arabic, was "Jews and Arabs Refuse to be Enemies!"
A small child, riding her father's shoulders, clapped hands merrily to the rhythm of the chanting. A middle-aged woman held a hand-painted carton sign with the words "Stop, please!"
The two stickers to be seen everywhere in the crowd were Gush Shalom's "Bring the Soldiers Home" (from a model dating back to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon) and the very popular "It Won't End Unless We Talk!" of the Bereaved Families' Forum. Filmer Eran Vered had produced quite a few on his own: the text "We shall all lose!" the colours and graphics of 'Together we shall win!' a sticker which the Le'umi Bank had been distributing widely.
The Likud Party headquarters, which the march passed, seemed deserted and lifeless. "They can afford to be lazy, Peretz is doing their dirty work" muttered an activist who shortly before furiously tore down a poster of the Labour Party leader (left over from the elections).
A bit later on, on a balcony, two bare-chested youths waved Israeli national flags and made rude gestures, shouting something that was inaudible over the din. A demonstrator silently waved towards them his own Israeli flag -- one draped in the black of mourning. A neighboring balcony bore a large Animal Rights poster -- "Meat is Murder!" -- and from it a woman in a red flowered dress was enthusiastically waving in support.
Finally, we got to the busy Allenby Street and crossed it to the scheduled rally venue, at the Carmel Market entrance.
In the back of the crowd there was constant motion and hubbub. Police constantly pushed and shoved against the crowd, and detained one activist whom they accused of throwing faeces at them (they could not substantiate the charge when his lawyer arrived). A violent group of right-wingers, alternating between singing the national anthem and shouting unprintable curses and abuse, were again and again pushed back by demonstration marshals.
Meanwhile, former MK Ya'el Dayan of Meretz (whose party supported the war) mounted the podium, getting first a wild applause when she called for immediate withdrawal from Lebanon and a prisoner exchange with Hizbullah and Hamas -- then as many boos and catcalls when she "sent greetings to the fighting soldiers" and said the war had been justified to begin with "but should be stopped now".
"Olmert, stop this madness!" called Uri Avnery at the top of his voice. "The war has gone to your head. You are drunk, war drunk. Nothing good will come of this war. Stop it, before worse things happen! And you, Amir Peretz -- you have lied to your voters and cheated them. You said you were a social reformer, a dove and a peace-seeker. You promised to divert defence budgets to education and health and social improvement. What is left of all these lies? You have become a monster, a real monster!"
The hitherto unknown Shaul Feldman told a
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personal story "After a Katyusha demolished my home, the journalist asked if that changed my opinion about the war. Change my mind? I have protested against the stupid wanton destruction of war, and then the war and destruction came to my own home. Should that make me change my mind?"
Former KM Tamar Gozansky (Hadash) revealed that she herself had had the illusion that Amir Peretz might be a bit better than others, that he at least would try to put social issues on the agenda. But things had only gotten worse.
Naomi Hazan, another dissenting former Meretz KM: "We demonstrate about Lebanon, but let's not forget the Palestinians, let's not forget the blood which was shed this morning in Rafah!"
"Jews and Arabs pay the price in blood, the price in dead and wounded, for this miserable criminal war. We are in this together. Jews and Arabs together stand here in this square, stand together and demand together the immediate end of this terrible carnage" shouted Shauki Hatib, Head of the Arab Leadership Committee. The audience responded with a prolonged "Jews and Arabs Refuse to be Enemies!"
Then Prof. Gadi Elgazi, historian and Ta'ayush founding member: "The main victims of this war are the poor. The well to do can afford to run away. The poor in Northern Israel and the poor in South Lebanon pay the price for the war of the rich and the generals."
"There are people who like to oppose a war after it is over, after they have cheered the soldiers on. I say: the time to oppose the war is now -- now when the blood is flowing, when the bodies are buried, when the war crimes are committed!" was the outcry of anarchist Adar Grayevsky.
The last speaker then took the floor: "My name is Zohar Milgrom. Tomorrow I have to show up at the army and get sent to Lebanon. I will tell them I will not be party to war crimes, that I prefer to go to prison. Now let me read to you the words of my friend, Isma'il Abd-el Hal from Gaza, who would have liked to stand here in Tel-Aviv and address you, were it possible.
This is what he asked me to tell: Stop this war now! This war is the mother of terrorists and extremists! We are all in danger! We have to struggle together, to end this horror, to live together in peace, in two states!"
As the crowd was dispersing, the voice of Yesh Gvuls Spokesperson Yishai Menuchin came booming over the square: "Next Saturday we demonstrate at the Atlit Prison, in solidarity with the refusers behind bars. Be there, all of you -- they deserve it!"
+++ Aug. 8, morning. About 35 Anarchists arrived for a "direct action" -- i.e. road-blocking -- at the gates of the Ramat David Air Force Base, from which planes were taking off unceasingly with cargoes of death for Lebanon.
Demonstrators were able to sit on the asphalt in front of the gate for nearly half an hour, holding a big banner with "Stop War Crimes -- Cease Fire Now!" and addressing the passing soldiers.
"Listen, do you realize that war crimes are being committed at this base?" "War crimes? What war crimes? We teach a lesson to the dirty terrorists in Lebanon! They want to kill you, too!" "The planes which take off from here drop bombs on civilians, that's a crime. If to shoot Katyushas on civilians makes Hizbullah into terrorists, then to throw bombs on civilians also makes you and the other soldiers here into terrorists." "You are breaking the
List of what didn't go in
* An anti-war petition of 60 young authors initiated by Nir Bar'am, and another one of Israeli filmmakers expressing solidarity with their Lebanese and Palestinian colleagues, both arousing considerable controversy.
* The warm reception to the speech of TOI editor Adam Keller at the anti-war rally in Amsterdam.
* The "forbidden poem" of Aharon Shabtai, which the literary supplement of Ha'aretz refused to publish because of the line "In the name of the beautiful books I read/in the name of the kisses I kissed/May the army be defeated."
* Limor Goldstein, Israeli lawyer and activist, who at one of the weekly anti-Wall protests at Bil'in got an IDF bullet in his brain and was lucky to emerge without having his mental faculties irreparably destroyed.
* The protest of Israeli and Palestinian activists (separated from each other by half a kilometre of impassable military barriers) outside the Ofer Prison, when the detention of Palestinian legislators and ministers was extended.
* The Peace Now vigil outside the Gaza Strip, with demonstrators symbolically wearing UN-style blue helmets, calling for international troops to be stationed there as well as in Lebanon.
* The involvement of Gush Shalom, Hadash and Geneva Agreement activists in the Tel-Aviv rally for a Judicial Commission of Inquiry -- with leaflets saying that the decision to start an unnecessary war must be investigated, not only technical failings in its conduct.
* The campaign against the new policy of refusing visa renewal (in effect, deporting) tens of thousands of Palestinians holding American or European passports, who have been living in the West Bank for decades. For more on this campaign you can look it up at www.ipcri.org and/or subscribe to the email list of Sam Bahour (campaign leader and himself threatened) at sbahour@palnet.com.
law and helping the enemy, the police will soon come to arrest you." "The police should go inside this base, that is where the real criminals are."
When the police did arrive from the nearby town of Migdal Ha'Emek, they spent no time on talking -- without much ado pouncing upon the demonstrators and dragging twelve of them off to detention. But as later described by the detainees -- who have considerable experience -- the police didn't use exceptional violence.
At the station, the twelve were charged not only with the usual "illegal gathering" and "disobeying a legal order to disperse", but also with "incitement" and "sedition" -- articles left in Israeli law from the time of British rule. However, when Lawyer Orna
Page 26
Cohen arrived, she soon got the detainees free without bail, and the police seemed happy to see the last of them.
+++ Thursday, August 10. Ometz Lesarev, the most radical of the movements which define themselves as Zionist, initiated the action, and Peace Now and Meretz, who at long last turned against the war, embraced it. The cabinet decision to send the troops back into Lebanon was evidently too much for them. After all, a whole generation of peace activists has gotten its political education in opposing the terrible futile war, the nightmare of sinking into "The Lebanese Swamp."
We got the call for "a Zionist demonstration", of "those who initially supported the war but now are requesting an end to the violence and destruction." Some radicals turned up their noses, but still all of us passed the call through our email networks, and quite a few of us actually went there.
With the full rank of Israeli national flags held aloft by the demonstrators, the sidewalk opposite the Defence Ministry gate looked different than in the previous protests. "There are several hundred people here -- and most of them have not been here before," said a young Communist, who did bring his red flag. Meretz leader Yossi Beilin passed by, trailed by several TV cameras. Then former MK Yael Dayan -- no longer a dissident, her party having caught up with her -- and Peace Now spokesperson Yariv Oppenheimer.
The signs said, "There is no military solution" and "Achieve a Diplomatic Victory!" and "Don't Invade Lebanon!" and "Into the Swamp Again?" and "Time for Ceasefire! Time for Talks!" and "Let the Lebanese Army hold South Lebanon!"
A group of girls in brand-new Peace Now T-shirts distributed to drivers a colourful leaflet:
"We call upon the government to use diplomatic channels and political tools to protect the citizens, to ensure the safety and security of the state and its democratic and moral values. PM Olmert should not have snubbed the decision of the Lebanese government to send its army to the south of its country. This should have been warmly welcomed, as something we have long desired and demanded."
"What a luxury, a demonstration which I don't have to organize, where I can just stand in the ranks" said a girl of the same age, who had not gotten much sleep in the past month. "But how long is this dirty war still going to last? How many are still going to die?"
+++ From the oral account by Danny Grimblatt.
In the afternoon of the last Saturday of the war (Aug.12) I went with several of my friends, "Haifa refugees" like me, to the Yesh Gvul demonstration outside Military Prison 6. We climbed the hill and together with everybody called greetings to the five refusers who were kept there for refusing to go to Lebanon. Some said they saw from the hill top people waving back in the prison courtyard.
In the bus on the way back to Tel-Aviv, the Women's Coalition invited everybody to come and pay General Halutz another visit at his home in Tzahala, to tell him what we think of him, especially about continuing the war past the announced ceasefire. The police knew we were coming; they surrounded us as soon as we arrived at ten in the evening. We made a circle and started chanting slogans; the police broke in and dragged off "ringleaders" Jana and Khuloud.
But the rest of us managed to break out of the police encirclement and walk through the streets, chanting, "Residents of Tzahala, there is a murderer in the neighbourhood!" We had bundles of leaflets and while walking we threw them into the front porches of the houses.
Then the police was ahead of us and started pushing people. Several demonstrators were pushed down. An activist from Haifa, whose head ached a lot after being thrown against the sidewalk, asked
In this issue:
* THROUGH THE FIRE (editorial overview), p. 1-14
- Talking to all, but..., p.1
- Boycott backfires, p.2
- Pressure cooker Gaza, p. 3
- Unity starting in prison, p.4
- 'Arresting' or 'kidnapping', p.5
- Death and destruction, p.6
- Malignant neo-nationalism, p.7
- For restraint, strength is needed, p.7
- The Kosovo doctrine, p.8
- War as a gimmick, p.9
- Crumbling euphoria, p.10
- Time of reckoning, p. 11
- War unto eternity, p.12
- Another window? p.13
* Lessons from wars/Beate Zilversmidt. p.14
* 39th year of the disease, p.15-17
* Not just words, p.17
* 'Break their bones!' p.17
* A murderer in the neighborhood, p.18
* Shouting at the cannons, p.19
* 'No' to Lebanon War II, p.20-21
* Anti-war struggle in war zone/Iris Bar, p.22
* To participate in this war - a war crime, p.23
* We shall all lose, p.24
* Untitled chronicles of struggle, p.25, 26
* List of what didn't go in, p.25
* Muhammad's Sword/Uri Avnery, p.28, 27
us to take him home. We left and took a taxi. Near Hadera he lost consciousness and we immediately rushed him to the Hillel Yafe Hospital.
Just when we got to Haifa, a Katyusha suddenly fell, close enough to make the taxi shake. One of the last rockets of the war, and it nearly fell on me...
+++ Immediately following the cease-fire, the news came of an officer and five soldiers arrested for having disobeyed orders during the last night of the war (Aug. 13 to 14). The five soldiers were sent to terms of 14 to 21 days each, while the officer -- Lieutenant Adam Kima -- was going to be court-martialled. However, by Aug. 20 they were all set free and all charges dropped, and Kima was treated as a hero.
From the August 20 interview to Kol Yisrael Radio.
"Our job was to blaze trails clear of mines so that
Page 27
tanks and other heavy armoured vehicles could pass. The first trails we had to blaze were needed in order to evacuate wounded soldiers and bring vital supplies to the fighting troops. No question that it was needed, and we tried our best.
Then came the night of August 13, with the ceasefire due at 8.00 in the morning, just a few hours ahead, when suddenly appeared this new mission -- we were to blaze another kilometre and half. I looked at it, and it looked bad. Very bad.
The Intelligence assessment said the area was saturated with Hizbullah. They were dug in on hilltops from which they could range exactly the places where we had to work. And there was no real need; the existing trails were good enough.
I told the Battalion Commander again and again: this does not look good; we are likely to get into an anti-tank ambush; we are going to have heavy losses. The other field officers backed me up, especially that we were given such obsolete equipment and no night-vision goggles at all.
I told him it had already been difficult enough to tell one family their son was wounded from "friendly fire." What made it worse was that the commander was to stay at HQ and monitor the battle on his computer screen. I am used to commanders who lead from the front and expose themselves to the risks to which they send others.
So, finally he assembled the soldiers and asked who was ready to go on this mission, and not a single one raised his hand. He asked who was not willing, and five raised their hands. So he said very coldly: "Very well, you will all hear from me again." When we crossed the border back into Israel, the military police was already waiting with their handcuffs.
I knew a court martial could hand me an enormous punishment, but I felt I had nothing to hide and nothing to feel guilty or ashamed about. I wanted to tell the whole country exactly what happened that night. My former commanding officers immediately started phoning everybody they could reach in the high command. They said they knew me and that it was crazy to arrest me; they pulled all the ropes they could. And I think the publicity in the papers helped. Anyway, after three days they just set us free.
As soon as I got home there started a flood of phone calls from the mothers of my soldiers. They were very emotional, crying and saying things like "Adam, you saved the life of my son." Some of the soldiers' fathers were crying, too.
Page 28
Muhammad's Sword
Uri Avnery
September 23, 2006
The struggle between the Emperors and the Popes played a central role in European history and divided the peoples. It knew ups and downs. Some Emperors dismissed or expelled a Pope; some Popes dismissed or excommunicated an Emperor. One of the Emperors, Henry IV, "walked to Canossa", standing for three days barefoot in the snow in front of the Pope's castle, until the Pope deigned to annul his excommunication.
But there were times when Emperors and Popes lived in peace with each other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present Pope, Benedict XVI, and the present Emperor, George Bush II, there exists a wonderful harmony. Last week's speech by the Pope, which aroused a worldwide storm, went well with Bush's crusade against "Islamofascism", in the context of the "Clash of Civilizations."
In his lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what he sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians see the logic of God's actions, Muslims deny that there is any such logic in the actions of Allah.
As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this debate. It is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic of the Pope. But I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me too, as an Israeli living near the fault-line of this "war of civilizations."
In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that the prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion by the sword. According to the Pope, that is unreasonable, because faith is born of the soul, not of the body. How can the sword influence the soul?
To support his case, the Pope quoted -- of all people -- a Byzantine Emperor, who belonged, of course, to the competing Eastern Church. At the end of the 14th century, the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a debate he had -- or so he said (its occurrence is in doubt) -- with an unnamed Persian Muslim scholar. In the heat of the argument, the Emperor (according to himself) flung the following words at his adversary:
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
These words give rise to three questions: (a) Why did the Emperor say them? (b) Are they true? (c) Why did the present Pope quote them?
When Manuel II wrote his treatise, he was the head of a dying empire. He assumed power in 1391, when only a few provinces of the once illustrious empire remained. These, too, were already under Turkish threat. On May 29, 1453, only a few years after Manuel's death, his capital, Constantinople (the present Istanbul) fell to the Turks, putting an end to the Empire that had lasted for more than a thousand years.
During his reign, Manuel made the rounds of the capitals of Europe in an attempt to drum up support. He promised to reunite the Church. There is no doubt that he wrote his religious treatise in order to incite the Christian countries against the Turks and convince them to start a new crusade. The aim was practical; theology was serving politics.
In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the present Emperor, George Bush II. He, too, wants to unite the Christian world against the mainly Muslim "Axis of Evil." Moreover, the Turks are again knocking on the doors of Europe, this time peacefully. It is well known that the Pope supports the forces that object to the entry of Turkey into the European Union.
Is there any truth in Manuel's argument?
The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and renowned theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts. Therefore, he admitted that the Qur'an specifically forbade the spreading of the faith by force. He quoted the second Sura, verse 257, which says: "There must be no coercion in matters of faith."
How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues that this commandment was laid down by the prophet when he was at the beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later on he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Such an order does not exist in the Qur'an. True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes -- Christian, Jewish and others -- in Arabia, when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the faith.
Jesus said: "By their fruits you shall know them." The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"?
Well, they just did not.
For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.
In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith -- and they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians.
There is no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?
What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. Jews and the Muslims were given a cruel choice: become Christians, be massacred or leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardic ("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. No Inquisition tortures, auto-da-fe flames, pogroms, terrible mass-expulsions -- such as took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.
Why? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the "peoples of the book." In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll tax, but were exempted from military service -- a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion, because it entailed the loss of taxes.
Every honest Jew with knowledge of Jewish history cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.
The story about "spreading the faith by the sword" is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims. I suspect that the German Pope honestly believes in these fables, that the leader of the Catholic world, a Christian theologian, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions.
Why did he utter these words in public? And why now? There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of "Islamofascism" and the "Global War on Terrorism" -- when "terrorism" has become a synonym for Muslims.
For Bush's handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify domination of the world's oil resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers' expedition becomes a Crusade. The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire consequences?
In this issue:
THROUGH THE FIRE, An Editorial Overview
Talking to all, but...
Boycott backfires
Pressure cooker Gaza
Unity starting in prison
'Arresting' or 'kidnapping'?
Death and destruction
For restraint, strength is needed
The Kosovo doctrine
War as a gimmick
Crumbling euphoria
Time of reckoning
War unto eternity
Another window?
Lessons from Wars, by Beate Zilversmidt
39th Year of the Disease
Commemoration of the anniversary of the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank
Not Just Words
Efforts to provide medical resources to Palestinian towns
'Break Their Bones!'
Police clubs at Bil'in
A Murderer in the Neighborhood
Protest of killing of a family in Gaza
Shouting at the Cannons
'No' to Lebanon War II
Anti-war Struggle in War Zone, by Iris Bar
To Participate in This War — a War Crime
We Shall All Lose!
Untitled Chronicles of the Peace Struggle
Muhammad's Sword, by Uri Avnery
Reflections on the Pope's controversial speech
