The Only Democracy in the Middle East
Yosef Grodzinsky, Tel Aviv University
Whenever I criticize the policies of my government, people say “But what do you want? After all, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.” This is supposed to end all discussion, as the defense of democracy presumably always prevails. Yet it seems to me that this objection is an easy way out. What I’d like to do here is try and convince you that being a democracy, a Western democracy, even an only democracy, is not enough.1
Any rational discussion of democracy recognizes a dialogue regarding the difficulty to balance democratic values with other needs, most prominently, security. Some of these difficulties arise in the context of immigration policies in many countries, others were revealed to Americans in 9/11. In the Middle East, the current crisis being no exception, issues regarding the right balance between constitutive principles arise constantly. Let me take you on a quick tour of some of these.
We might want to begin at the very foundation of Zionism, when Theodore Herzl’s articulated his vision of a Jewish State, in 1896. He wrote “It might further be said that we ought not to create new distinctions between people; we ought not to raise fresh barriers, we should rather make the old disappear… the Jews, once settled in their own State, would probably have no more enemies."
This is beautiful. And it is usually what people have in mind when they refer to “the only democracy”. Yet, the dream didn’t quite materialize as conceived. When the dream became a political plan, and then a reality, it was established not only on democratic foundations, but also on others, deemed essential to the forming national entity. These were:
These three principles – democracy, Jewishness, and the Ben-Gurion doctrine – are not always in agreement. And while in principle, any of these could be modified, even eliminated over time, this has not yet happened. Thus these principles must somehow be balanced. To understand the nature of Israeli democracy it is very important to examine this balance. Sadly, in pretty much every instance of a conflict among these three principles, democracy lost. Let’s see how.
We can divide our brief historical survey into 3 parts: the time before the territories were conquered, the time after, and the current crisis. Looking at pre-1967 Israel, we see, first of all, that when democracy was explicitly pitted against Jewishness it lost: the Law of Return of 1950, enacted as the Declaration of Independence promised, allows the immediate naturalization of Jews, and only Jews. Second, when democracy was pitted against the Ben-Gurion Doctrine, it also lost. A well-known example is the Military Rule that all Arab citizens of Israel were subjected to between 1949-1966. Despite the fact that they had Israeli citizenship, they were not equal before the law. They were perceived as a Fifth Column, their freedom of movement and residency were restricted, much of their land was confiscated (using security arguments that later turned out to be false), and they had limited civil rights.
OK, you might say, this was the beginning, and beginnings are always tough. Unfortunately, what happened next became even tougher.
Because the next phase in this story is the post-67 era, were matters became worse. Israel acquired new territories and became larger, but as territorial expansions rarely entail no addition in population, Israel’s Arab population suddenly grew. In a utopia like Herzl’s this would not be a problem, but in reality, the massive addition of Arabs that were now under Israeli rule posed problems to both the Jewish nature of the state and the Ben-Gurion doctrine that essentially suspected Arabs. A quick withdrawal after the victory thus might have been a sensible thing to do, as it would rid Israel of unwelcome residents, yet this would run against the Ben-Gurion doctrine, which also indicates that territorial assets acquired by force should not be given up, as they strengthen us in our continued struggle against the Arab world. At the height of the post-67 euphoria, few could foresee future developments. Among those was the late scientist/philosopher/theologian Yeshayahu Leibovitz , who soon after the war made terrible predictions:
"In 'The Greater Israel'…there will be no Jewish worker or farmer. The Arabs shall be the working people, the we will become a people of managers, inspectors, officers and policemen, AND MAINLY – SECRET POLICEMEN; that state would by necessity become a police state, with the SHIN BET (General Security Service - GSS) being its central institution…This will affect the spiritual and moral atmosphere in the country and society, will poison the educational system, stifle all free and critical thought – and all that will be in the Jewish part of the state. In the Arab, the Israeli government will build concentration camps and hangman’s trees. There will be terrible corruption. The subjugated Arabs will try to bribe the Israeli officials in order to obtain licenses, documents, travel passes, and the like, while we will engage in bribing Arab leaders in order to buy ourselves Quislings.
This corruption, characteristic of any colonial regime, would be true for Israel. The administration will be forced to deal with the suppression of an Arab protest movement and the acquisition of Arab quislings. We must fear that even the army, and it's officers, a people's army, will deteriorate by becoming an occupation army, and it's officers, turned into military governors, will not differ from military governors elsewhere in the world."
Leibovitz’s predictions were not far from the truth. Despite (fairly successful) efforts to depict the occupation as “enlightened”, Israel quickly took measures to control the “suspect” population (some might even say – measures to rid the conquered territories from the indigenous population). This resulted in massive human rights violations (there’s no point in talking about civil rights because these people never had a citizenship in the first place), violations which, over time, varied only in amount and style. Overall, Israel has enforced a policy of deportations, detentions without trial (euphemistically called “administrative detentions”), massive land confiscations, systematic house demolitions, restrictions on free movement (that vary from curfew to “closure” to blockades), and a host of economic restrictions, most importantly – limitation in the use of water (as we speak, some cave dwellers in Southern Hebron Mountain – the poorest of the poor – are denied access even to their rain water cisterns in an attempt to chase them away and hand the area over to Jewish settlers). The appearance of the Jewish settlement enterprise in the territories made these policies more extreme, and created two legal systems – one law for Jews, one for Palestinians. Finally, the government set up – very much in line with Leibovitz’s prophecy – a system of informers, run by an ever growing GSS, which uses of complex systems of positive and negative reinforcements, most notably – torture. This last practice is particularly important: unlike other practices of the occupation, which arguably are open to different interpretations, the prohibition on torture in international law is unambiguous and absolute. And still, in Israel, torture practices have an official legal stamp. As the Supreme Court ruled, security needs override this prohibition:
We are prepared to assume that…the "necessity" defense is open to all, particularly an investigator, acting in an organizational capacity of the State in interrogations of that nature. Likewise, we are prepared to accept...that the "necessity" exception is likely to arise in instances of "ticking time bombs," and that the immediate need…refers to the imminent nature of the act rather than that of the danger. Hence, the imminence criteria is satisfied even if the bomb is set to explode in a few days, or perhaps even after a few weeks, provided the danger is certain to materialize and there is no alternative means of preventing its materialization. Consequently we are prepared to presume… that if a GSS investigator- who applied physical means of interrogation for the purpose of saving human life-is criminally indicted, the "necessity" defense is likely to be open to him in the appropriate circumstances.
As a report by The Israeli Committee Against Torture points out, from a legal-theoretical perspective, the ruling creates a situation where every State is able to violate its international obligations, while granting the agents who carry out the violations on its behalf legal protection, even if only retroactively. This report also notes that this is inconsistent with the spirit of international law, which forbids torture and ill-treatment in any situation, and anyone who tortures or ill-treats detainees is committing a serious, punishable crime, for which there is no a priori permission and no ex post factum exemptions.
Such has been the official practice for years. And it was, I contend, a result of the tension between the three constitutive principles that have guided policy makers – democracy, Jewishness and the conception of security through might and expansion, as envisioned by Ben-Gurion. Note, that in order to argue – as Israel has over the years – that it is the malevolent Arab mind that forces Israel to maintain its democracy through measures that are sometimes anti-democratic, you must make no distinction between Arab states and stateless Arabs (in this case the Palestinians both within Israel proper and without). Note also that this conception of the Arab mind (recall Ben-Gurion’s words only after total despair …may the Arabs possibly acquiesce to a Jewish Eretz Israel) leads to eternal suspicion, making a negotiated settlement virtually impossible to accept.
OK, you might say, but these are the territories. What about Israel proper? There are Palestinian Arab citizens in the Israeli democracy. What about them? You said that Military Government ended in 1966? This was, indeed, a step in the right direction. How are the Palestinian citizens of Israel doing today?
Not well. Discrimination is built into the system, aimed at preserving the Jewish character of the state: briefly, Arab lands have been massively confiscated, the Palestinian Arab citizenry suffers from limitations on land ownership, and is subject to educational, budgetary and occupational discrimination. On several occasions, Arab demonstrators have been shot and killed by the police. In October 2000, 13 Arab citizens who demonstrated against the state lost their lives. This has never happened to Jews. Ever. There’s even a law now pending that might throw out most Arab parliament members and block their participation in the "democratic process." This discrimination, crucially, is not arbitrary: it follows from a specific choice the government has systematically made – the principle of Jewishness and the Ben-Gurion doctrine always win over the democratic one. In the absence of such a decision, Arab demonstrators would not be shot; in the absence of such a decision, Arab, but not Jewish, lands would not be confiscated.
The result – and this is recognized by virtually everyone – is a 3-tiered hierarchy of weakness: At the bottom are Palestinians of the territories with no citizenship or protection; above them were the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, whose civil rights were far below those of the Jews, who were at the top. (We actually now have over 250,000 foreign workers – Chinese, Rumanian, Thai, Nigerian and Philipino, who are terribly exploited, and also lack legal protection, but that’s another story.)
The picture of Arab Jewish relations (both within Israel and also in the Occupied Territories) is not a pretty one. We have a long way to go before we pride ourselves of being the only democracy in the Middle East. And it is against this background that we should move to consider current events, as obviously, the April 2002 violence (note that I am not calling it invasion, because Israel was present there all the time anyway) did not take place in a vacuum. All the above was in the hearts and minds of both invaders and invaded. Note that I restrict myself to the Israeli side – the one with 4,000 tanks, hundreds of jets, helicopter gunships, bulldozers, decoys, electronics, troop carriers and more – all US made.
But wait, you’d say: The current operation, or war, is different. How can you discuss it without acknowledging that it was launched to contain a terrible wave of terrorism, in which innocent Jewish victims, young and old, religious and secular, Ashkenazi and Sephardi, and even Arab, were indiscriminately murdered or maimed by a vicious enemy who has no respect for human life, who sends children suicide bombers to kill innocents?
I should tell you that I am not impressed by the depiction of Arabs as monsters who do not value human life. In the youth movement we were raised on stories about brave commandoes who volunteered to heroic suicide missions. Best known and admired among them was the one about a mythical paratrooper commander, Lt. Colonel Ariel Sharon, who bravely dispatched young Yehuda Kan-Dror to his death at the Mitle Straights during the 1956 Suez operation, and about how Kan-Dror knowingly agreed to be killed, just so that his friends be saved. Many societies idolize individuals who choose to sacrifice their lives for the general good. It is the killing of innocents that is the problem, not the suicide part; and terrorist agendas aimed to kill civilians, alas, are not a Palestinian invention. We are also told that Arab parents gladly send their sons to death. Jewish parents no less pride themselves of educating their sons well so that they later volunteer to high-risk commando units in the army. I know personally Jewish settlers in the territories who, despite warnings, risk their children’s lives – some have actually died in ambushes on the West Band roads. Such acts are condoned by one’s own society, and condemned as monstrosities when committed on the other side.
I should also tell you that one of my most favorite coffee shops – the Byalik Café in Tel Aviv – was bombed last March. I was not there at the time, but I was terrified. Yet, scared as I was, I couldn’t help wondering whether this “mini-war” was indeed aimed at eliminating the infra-structure of terrorism, as the authorities have contended, or whether it was, rather, aimed at something else? Thus, even though I knew that the current wave of terrorism was due hopelessness and despair, I still tried to ask myself honestly whether the government – much as I opposed the general direction it was headed to – could provide a quick solution. As I delved into the matter, I discovered that the professed aims of operation “Defensive Shield” differed from the real ones, and that the real ones were consistent with the Ben-Gurion doctrine.
From the beginning, I watched and listened to the news very carefully. We were – and still are – constantly bombarded by propaganda, and it was difficult to know what exactly was happening. Difficult, but not impossible. Let me read to you some excerpts regarding military tactics from my little “war” diary, as I think they are very revealing.
April 4: MORE VIOLENCE
I tend to think that the myth of the IDF is just about over. Years of police work have diminished its military capacity at every level. The 20,000 reservists mobilized last week were not even adequately fed at the beginning, as logistics collapsed; militarily, the army now appears to be having real difficulty handling resistance in the Jenin refugee camp. I do not think this would have happened 35 years ago. If armed clashes will continue, I suspect we’ll be witnessing a slow and heavy army chasing light, effective guerillas, just as was the case in Lebanon.
April 6: THE ARMY: INCREASED BRUTALIZATION
There are still major difficulties – logistical problems are evident, and reservists declare that they do not understand the goals of the operation. The diminished quality of the army, and the improved military capacity of the Palestinian fighters in the Jenin refugee camp, are now affecting the Palestinian population. The army’s inability to take over the camp and the growing number of casualties have led to increased brutalization. This should come as no surprise: As the Palestinians are closing the gap in quality of fighting, the Israeli army – that has sent top units into the camp – can only rely on its technological advantage. It is difficult to know what exactly is happening in Jenin, as no reporters are allowed in (Shimon Peres said yesterday that "TV cameras are as powerful as artillery"). Still, some information can be gleaned: The local commander, Brig. Gen Eyal Shlain, said in an Israel Radio interview yesterday that the difficulty to take the camp over is indeed due to the high motivation and improved capability of the Palestinian fighters, who have "learned from experience."
April 11 – JENIN: THE MILITARY FIASCO
The army’s preparedness and capacity are an extremely important element of this whole affair. It was always assumed here that any political decision can be enforced militarily, as the gap between Israel and its enemies seemed infinite. By now, gone is the superior “human material” Israel was said to rely on. The victory in the Jenin refugee camp was obtained only by order of battle – it was won, that is, not by the Israeli soldier, but rather, by US made tanks, US made bulldozers and US made gunships.
Israel has made at least 3 mistakes: It overestimated the army’s ability; it underestimated the motivation and fighting skills of the Palestinians; and most importantly (by the admission of top brass), the strategic decision to go into Ramallah first, in order to humiliate Arafat and crush the Palestinian Authority, gave the fighters in the northern West Bank time to organize, and many on the Israeli wanted-list reached Jenin, booby-trapped large areas, and prepared for a long battle. Place of origin of ‘Az ad-Din el-Qassam after whom the military wing of Hammas is named, Jenin carries a long a tradition of tough resistance. Sharon was aware of that, yet chose to begin the attack in Ramallah, an intellectual, cultural and commercial center whose military worth was insignificant. This choice may indicate that the government’s intention was not to eliminate "the infra-structure of terrorism," but rather, to destroy the Palestinian Authority.
I did not have to invent this observation. Jamil Hilal, a professor of anthropology at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah, noted as early as April 3 that "The Palestine Authority is being demolished as institutions (hospitals, schools and universities, municipalities, police stations are all now either demolished or non-working) and as an infrastructure (roads, electricity, water services…), and as a project of statehood and independence. But it is not only the Palestinian Authority that is being destroyed but also political society (anything which signifies the existence of a political organization, such as the offices of political groups, or of known figures) is being destroyed or arrested. NGOs (including health organizations, human rights organizations) have ceased to work or function, all this on top of an economy that has been systematically strangled. If the Palestinian Authority ceases to pay salaries and wages, then at least a quarter of the labour force is left without any source of income, in addition to the 20% that depended on income from work in Israel; most of the remaining labour force, employed by the private sector and NGOs, is out of work. The prospect of starvation on a large scale unknown to UNRWA will become real in two to three months maximum."
Finally, in this respect, I’d like to read to you excerpts from an article by Amira Hass, a brave Israeli journalist living in Ramalah (Haaretz 24.4). It’s called “Operation Destroy The Data”:
“It's a scene that is repeating itself in hundreds of Palestinian offices taken over by IDF troops for a few hours or days in the West Bank: smashed, burned and broken computer terminals heaped in piles and thrown into yards; server cabling cut, hard disks missing, disks and diskettes scattered and broken, printers and scanners broken or missing, laptops gone, telephone exchanges that disappeared or were vandalized, and paper files burned, torn, scattered, or defaced - if not taken. And it's all in rooms full of smashed furniture, torn curtains, broken windows, smashed-in doors, walls full of holes, filthy floors and soiled bathrooms. Here and there, the soldiers left obscene graffiti or letters full of hatred, but compared to the data that was destroyed or taken, the insults read like poetry. Even the overflowing toilets look more like human weakness compared to the organized vandalism reflected in the piles of smashed computers.
It's not merely the expense of the hardware that has to be replaced. The loss is immeasurable in shekels or dollars. Years of information built into knowledge, time spent thinking by thousands of people working to build their civil society and their future or trying to build a private sector that would bring a sense of economic stability to their country.
These are the data banks developed in Palestinian Authority institutions like the Education Ministry, the Higher Education Ministry and the Health Ministry. These are the data banks of the non-governmental organizations and research institutes devoted to developing a modern health system, modern agricultural, environmental protection and water conservation. These are the data banks of human rights organizations, banks and private commercial enterprises, infirmaries, and supermarkets. They all were clearly the targets for destruction in the military operation called Defensive Shield.
…
The IDF has given up denying that some soldiers looted - money, jewels and video cameras - private homes. That can be explained by officers too weak to impose discipline on their soldiers and by soldiers too weak to fight material temptation. But the systematic destruction of the data banks was not a matter of personal weakness by either officers or soldiers.
Let's not deceive ourselves; this was not a mission to search and destroy the terrorist infrastructure. If the forces breaking into every hard disk of every bank and clinic, commercial consultant's office or PA ministry, thought that a list of weapons or wanted men was inside the disk, all they had to do was copy the information and pass it on to the Shin Bet (GSS). If they thought incriminating evidence was hidden in the Education Ministry and the International Bank of Palestine and in a shop that rents prosthetics, the soldiers would have examined document after document, and not thrown the files on the floor without opening them.
This was not a whim, or crazed vengeance, by this or that unit, nor a personal vandalistic urge of a soldier whose buddies didn't dare stop him. There was a decision made to vandalize the civic, administrative, cultural infrastructure developed by Palestinian society. Was it an explicit order or one given with a wink? Was it an order or was it the result of permission given to soldiers to do what they want? Did the order - or wink - come down from the battalion commander or from the brigadier? Was it from the headquarters of IDF forces in the West Bank or from IDF Operations? Did it come from the general in command of the Central Command or from general headquarters?
Either way, the scenes of systematic destruction show how the IDF translated into the field the instructions inherent in the political echelon's policies: Israel must destroy Palestinian civil institutions, sabotaging for years to come the Palestinian goal for independence, sending all of Palestinian society backward. It's so easy and comforting to think of the entire Palestinian society as primitive, bloodthirsty terrorists, after the raw material and product of their intellectual, cultural, social and economic activity has been destroyed. That way, the Israeli public can continue to be deceived into believing that terror is a genetic problem and not a sociological and political mutation, horrific as it may be, derived from the horrors of the occupation.
That Amira’s observations were correct was proven in Israel’s invasion into Hebron. There, things worked out differently. The “operation” there – happening late in the game – was no less effective than the previous actions, noted Channel 2 news reporter (himself a paratrooper colonel) Ronnie Daniel noted, yet it was focused, aimed to capture mevukashim – those on the wanted list, hence no infra-structure was destroyed.
Lastly, consider the issue of the “separation fence”. The suicide bombings have led many to think that a fence should be built, to surround Israel proper, and separate it from the West Bank. That is, a fence around Israel in its pre-67 borders, where all the non-settler population is located. The erection of the fence has been proposed by politicians, recommended by the GSS, as well as by the army. It would make Israel a more difficult place to penetrate, hence make us harder to kill. Yet, the government has been hedging. Nothing has thus far happened. It is not because there is no budget for it: setting it up would be cheaper than the war; it is not because the know-how is unavailable – Israeli companies have sold electronic fences world wide. It is only because a separation fence would redefine the borders of Israel, would place the settlers without, and by extension would define the Palestinian national boundaries. And it is THAT, not terrorism, that the government thinks it cannot afford.
So we have 2 reasons to think that this invasion was not aimed at destroying the “nests of terror” – the choice to attack the Palestinian Authority and destroy its infra-structure, not the terrorists, and the reluctance to build a separation fence. There is one last perspective on the invasion that I find particularly enlightening and related to the issues we have discussed. It comes from professed policy considerations, as articulated recently by one of the leading intelligence intellectuals, Major General Yitzhak Ben-Yisrael of the Air Force Intelligence and the military R&D Authority.
The article, called “The illusion of Israeli Might” and published in Ha’aretz in the middle of the invasion (April16th), begins by noting that Israel’s resources are but a tiny fraction of the Arabs’, hence, we can never deal them (the ARABS, that is) a complete and final defeat. On the other hand, the Arabs will never accept Israel as a national entity in the Middle East (does that sound familiar?). Therefore, we are doomed to continued fighting, where we must win every round of war by a large margin, to maintain our “deterrence”. This means that the army must be forever large – currently ten times as big (relative to population size) as most modern armies of the West. This, you may recall, is precisely the Ben-Gurion doctrine, first articulated in the 1930s. In fact, the general explicitly aligns himself with Ben-Gurion and others who followed him recognized that the Arabs will always have superior resources.
The situation now, warns the general, is serious because Israel's deterrence has eroded due to the "rushed" exit from Lebanon, the "refusenik phenomenon," and Barak's generous willingness to make "far reaching concessions" to the Palestinians, who "have not resigned to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state." Deterrence, he argues, must be regained by a strong and uncompromising stance, and by complete reluctance to give up "assets," i.e., territories, "even if we reach a utopian peace agreement."
And if the issue of democracy is where we began, consider a recent ruling by the Supreme Court, "bastion of Israeli democracy". It turned down an appeal by several human rights organizations who requested to investigate cases in which the army prohibited the free movement of ambulances, and made the evacuation of the wounded to hospitals impossible. The army argued that contrary to international treaties, the Palestinians moved arms in ambulances, and thus had to be stopped. The army further "committed itself to humanitarian conduct in the future", and the appeals were turned down. Yet what the army did next pride itself in the arrest of Marwan Barghouti, head of Palestinian Tanzim. This gentleman was captured, we are told, because he was outwitted, as the soldiers approached his hiding place in an ambulance.
The invasion, then, was not about terrorism. Nor was it in defense of democratic values. The Israeli public – and the world – were deceived. The invasion was nothing but an attempt to search and destroy any sign of Palestinian statehood. Now, that the main act is over, they are trying to convince us that life is back to normal, and that once again we have been the good guys, who also happen to be strong and smart.
But hold it, you might say. If this is true, how come the public does not understand it and rebel? The Israeli society, after all, is a free society, with free press, with freedoms and all that. How can you say that the public was deceived?
There are 3 answers to this question: subtle censorship and self-censorship, not so subtle propaganda, and a host of attempts to contain opposition to the war.
Mass media tend to align with governments, Israel being no exception. Most of our military correspondents are reserve army officers themselves, and those that are not (like Israel Radio’s Military correspondent Carmella Menashe), depend on military sources. Thus the army can easily orchestrate reporting on it, just as it can control reporting on Palestinian actions, and on the opposition. As Amira Hass – almost the sole exception to this rule, notes, in the context of the data destruction: “The Israeli public has been spared the sights of the destruction. Here and there, a photo of some demolished office sneaks into the TV news shows. But Israeli TV news doesn't find a few seconds to report on a Palestinian woman or a child of nine who was shot dead from a distance, inside their homes, by an anonymous Israeli soldier, so how can it find time or reason to report on the crazed destruction perpetrated by a unit of soldiers in one office.” As the final version of this presentation is being written, there are calls in Israel to curtail Hass’s reporting, perhaps even stop printing her altogether. The record of her newspaper, Ha’aretz, is not one of brave, principled battle for free journalism, hence it is not clear whether we will continue to read important stories in the future.
Similar pressures are exerted on reporters who write on opposition activities, on the “refusenik” phenomenon, on humanitarian initiatives to aid the Palestinian population. This kind of report is limited, as government spokesmen systematically denounce the opposition and whoever publicizes it. I can imagine that my appearance here would be viewed as treason by some – Deputy Minister of Internal Security Gideon Ezra, himself ex-vice-chief of the General Secret Services, already on april 5 called for increased GSS monitoring of the left, on fear of the existence of “traitors” within it. He is not alone – calls by government ministers to investigate the left, to ban the appearances of war critics and refuseniks, are constantly heard. They are picked up by the media, by academic and public institutions, who join in the fray, making the functioning of the opposition more difficult.
In a move that heads directly backward in time, the state-controlled Arabic language station of Israel Radio has recently issued new directions to news editors, that might be dubbed a Newspeak Fictionary:
These new terms are new additions to the rich Newspeak vocabulary currently in use, that contains terms like sikkul memukad (“focused prevention”), a term reserved for IDF assassination of Palestinian leaders and activists.
Despite all these, opposition activities do exist. I should tell you about some of these, so that I can conclude on an optimistic note.
* Food convoys organized by a variety of Israeli Arab, Jewish, and Arab-Jewish groups (such as Ta’ayush) keep bringing humanitarian aid to the territories.
* Anti-Occupation Demonstrations and sit-ins: the frequency of demonstrations is on the rise. On April 27th, over 5,000 marched in the middle of Tel Aviv, carrying anti-occupation slogans. Speeches were given by Arab and Jewish activists, as well as by Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, Head of Palestine Medical Relief, who greeted the demonstrators (through a cell phone) from encircled Ramallah. A larger demonstration is planned for May 11th.
* Yesh Gvul: The refusenik movement is small but growing, now spreading into the regular army. The number of reservists thus far jailed exceeds 40. It is these young men and women who actually take a risk. Thousands (including groups of over 200 professors at Tel Aviv and the Hebrew Universities) have signed petitions that support this movement.
So this is what you do. What can we, the true friends of the Middle-East in North America, do?
The US government supports Israel almost unconditionally. Just the other day President Bush said that he could not give Ariel Sharon advice on whether or not Gaza should be attacked, as Sharon was the Prime Minister of the only democracy in the Middle East. Most Americans are taken by the bravado of Israeli leaders, who pride themselves in Israel’s self-made military prowess. Yet if one bothers to look carefully, the total dependence of Israel’s military might on the United Sstates is noticed at once. It was the US military industrial complex, not the IDF, who won the battle in Jenin; that battle was won, that is, by US made gunships, US made bulldozers, and US made tanks, not by the Israeli soldier. Similarly, the air-based “focused” assassinations in which Israel has been engaged for a while are perpetrated with Apache helicopters.
I thus perceive you, those who initiated this campaign, as friends of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, not the enemies of the Jews, as some crass propaganda has attempted to depict you. Thus the idea of a conditional divestment campaign, if successfully spread, may be instrumental in informing the American public about the connection between their tax dollars, atrocities they see on TV. It will make a contribution – however modest – toward a slowing of the ever-growing militarization of the Middle-East, and perhaps towards negotiation, rather than endless fighting. In this respect your limited divestment campaign will contribute to make the Middle-East a more secure and livable region. As a concerned Israeli citizen, I can thus lend you my support, hope that your campaign will have an effect, and wish you all the best.
1This is a written version of a talk given at the MIT teach-in on May 6th, 2002. Time limitations have prevented me from providing a detailed citation of sources. Interested readers may write to me and request references.