Muchas gracias a Irmgard Emmelheinz por el envío.
Issue 26 Magic Summer 2007
The Barber Trial: Sivan vs. Finkielkraut
Thomas Keenan and Eyal Weizman
Transcript of trialEnglish translation and French transcript of the trial available here
Cabinet at DocumentaCabinet re-examines this trial at Documenta
In February 2004, French-Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan filed a libel suit in the Paris courts against philosopher Alain Finkielkraut. The previous year, Sivan, working with Palestinian filmmaker Michel Khleifi, had released Route 181: Extracts from a Palestinian-Israeli Journey—a four-and-a-half-hour travel documentary tracing what remains, in the memories of the landscape and its inhabitants, of the violent expulsion in 1947–1948 of some three-quarters of a million Palestinians from the territory that would become the state of Israel. The film had been aired on the European cultural television channel Arte in November 2003, and a few days later, on November 30, Finkielkraut was interviewed on the French Jewish radio station RJC. In the radio broadcast, Finkielkraut launched an aggressive critique of the film, arguing that its entire meaning rested on a false analogy between Israel’s 1948 war of independence and the Nazi Holocaust, that the film was a “call to murder,” that Arte was guilty of “incitement to hatred,” and that Sivan himself was representative of a “particularly painful, particularly frightening reality—Jewish anti-Semitism.” The case came to trial on 23 May 2006, and the official transcript of the proceedings at the Palais de Justice, Paris, is translated here in its entirety. The case revolved around witnesses, in the courtroom and in the film. To testify on his behalf, Finkielkraut called on the filmmaker Claude Lanzmann; historian and former Israeli ambassador to France, Eli Bar-Navi; and Anny Dayan, a cinema studies professor and pro-Israel activist based in Paris. Sivan called two left Israeli intellectuals: philosopher Adi Ophir, and film theorist Haim Bresheeth, as well as Parisian publisher/activist François Maspero, who established his radical publishing house against the background of the Algeria war. Finkielkraut himself was the first witness, and having affirmed that he had indeed made the remarks in question, he produced a simple but forceful intertextual reading of the film in order to justify his critique. Route 181, he told the court, “rests entirely on an analogy between the fate of the Palestinians from 1947 to the present day, and the destiny of Jews under Nazism. It is a constant plagiarism of Lanzmann’s film.” Lanzmann’s film is, of course, Shoah, his 1985 nine-and-a-half-hour documentary oral history of the Holocaust.1 Shoah introduced a new sensibility to documentary filmmaking—it rejected the use of archival footage and instead planted itself militantly in the present, in the ruins of the European camps, and in the voices and memories of the witnesses and participants, victims and, to a lesser extent, perpetrators. Shoah does not include a single archival frame.2 It came to define what Lanzmann called a cinema of “transmission,” a visual strategy that did not simply privilege but relentlessly investigated the act and status of the eyewitness. Finkielkraut’s accusation of plagiarism turned around a reading of one of Shoah’s most celebrated sequences, in which Lanzmann interviews a survivor named Abraham Bomba, whose task in the extermination camp of Treblinka was to cut the hair of Jews before they were led into the gas chambers. The interview, in which Lanzmann pushes Bomba to describe his work in the camp, is conducted as Bomba cuts the hair of one of Lanzmann’s production team in a Tel Aviv barbershop. There is a barber in Route 181, too, and Finkielkraut is clearly correct that the scenes, and indeed the films, have a powerful relation. In Sivan and Khleifi’s film, a Palestinian barber in the former Palestinian town and now mixed city of Lod, near Tel Aviv airport, is filmed recounting the scene of a massacre that led to the expulsion of most of the town’s Palestinian residents in the summer of 1948. He speaks from his own active barbershop. For Finkielkraut, though, the quotation is neither an act of homage, nor an ordinary intertextual reference, nor a challenging critique of one film by another, but a hint that the film is engaged in nothing less than the identification of the expulsion of the Palestinians (the so-called Naqba, or Catastrophe) with the Shoah, and hence a decisive delegitimation of Israel’s right to exist, and hence an incitement to the murder of Jews in Israel. Sivan and Khleifi had traveled and filmed along the route outlined in UN Resolution 181—which called in November 1947 for the partition of British Mandatory Palestine into convoluted and non-contiguous Jewish and Palestinian states—and the film explores what remains of Palestine in today’s Israel. In criticizing and rejecting the politics of partition, Route 181 resurrects political ideas originating in the 1930s and implicitly advocates a federal, multi-, or bi-national, single democratic state with equal citizenship for both Arabs and Jews within Mandatory Palestine. For Finkielkraut, promoting the liberal idea of a single state for Arabs and Jews embodies nothing less than “a genocidal intention to kill if not all then most of the Jewish Israelis.” Finkielkraut repeated this accusation throughout the trial, claiming “a murderous logic is at work in this film.”3 The nature and intensity of Finkielkraut’s accusations is typical of a certain current of discourse on Israel among liberal-right French intellectuals. Since the 1980s, Finkielkraut in particular has had a special inclination to accuse the “pro-Palestinian” French left of anti-Semitism4 and, more recently, to charge multiculturalist or tolerant discourses about race with responsibility for the riots in France’s immigrant-rich banlieues.5 Finkielkraut’s attack came in the context of a series of attempts to stop Route 181 from being shown in France. In one of these cases, Jewish-French intellectuals and Israeli representatives successfully lobbied the Pompidou Center against screening Route 181 in its 2004 Festival Cinéma du réel, purportedly because of the recreation (“plagiarism”) of the barber scene. More then six hundred people, including Jean-Luc Godard, Tzvetan Todorov, and Étienne Balibar signed a petition protesting this censorship. The film has been shown a number of times in Israel. Although Nicolas Bonnal, the presiding judge at the trial, rejected Finkielkraut’s conflation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, he dismissed Sivan’s petition, based on the argument that Finkielkraut’s attack was part of a legitimate political disagreement. In the wake of the trial, Arte decided to cease commissioning films from Sivan on Middle East affairs, and he lost as well his teaching position at CLEMI (French Ministry of Education’s center for information media). Sivan appealed the decision in February 2007 and the verdict was pending as this magazine went to press.6
Stills from Route 181: Extracts from a Palestinian-Israeli Journey, by Eyal Sivan and Michel Khleifi, 2003.
* * *We asked Sivan about Shoah, the barbers, partition, and history. For him and Michel Khleifi, he explained, it was not a matter of “comparing” the Shoah and the Naqba, as if they were discrete entities that required outside intervention to be brought together. Rather, he told us, they should be seen as historically continuous and contiguous, part of a single historical process extending across the decade between 1938 and 1948. Like Lanzmann, his emphasis in investigating the apparently bygone past by means of its living witnesses was to restore it to its rightful place in our present—the Palestinian catastrophe, for him, is still ongoing. “It is shocking for a Frenchman, but frequently evoked in Israel,” said Sivan. “For an Israeli Zionist poet like Avot Yeshurun, it was possible to say that ‘these two holocausts together, are the Holocaust of the Jewish people.’ The Naqba of the Arabs of Palestine and the Shoah of European Jews are two sides of a single Holocaust—ours…” The strength of Route 181 is in providing an oral history of the forgotten Naqba, in presenting scores of conversations with Israelis and Palestinians, and in unearthing stories repressed for decades. The film powerfully demonstrates Israelis’ willing ignorance of and ongoing complicity in the suffering of Palestinians and the denial of their national rights—and, paradoxically, their often remarkable recall of the events of 1948, their former Palestinian neighbors, and the intense proximity of their lost life together. In its filmic language and its relation to witnessing and testimony, Route 181 is a worthy successor to Shoah, charting a significant shift in the relation between memory, responsibility, and history. That, for Sivan, is what is at stake in the barbershops. “Abraham Bomba was staged! He was no longer a barber when he was interviewed, and three times during the interview he begs Lanzmann to stop. But Lanzmann believes that it is the victims who should bear the ‘duty of memory.’ I believe that this duty should be the perpetrators’.” Of course, Lanzmann interviewed perpetrators and not-entirely-innocent bystanders as well, and famously argued that the intent of Shoah was not to ask why (an “obscene” question, he wrote) but rather to lay out how the mass murder happened. Sivan—who had earlier, with Rony Braumann, re-edited the footage of the 1961 Eichmann trial into a powerful portrait of the banal professional “specialist”—radicalizes this pursuit, with an unexpected outcome. He told us that his project was “to treat the actors in a crime as bearers of the capacity both to witness and [to] reflect on it, and as the ones who have a ‘duty of memory.’ In the Israeli case, I am interested both in their memory of the land (before 1948) and their actions. What is surprising is to notice to what extent the analogy with the Nazi genocide existed already during the 1948 event—it was only three years after the end of the Second World War. It throws a completely new light on the myth ... that memory can be a vaccine against future crimes.” Sivan also drew our attention to the power of the camera, or rather, to the power of speaking before a camera. We asked whether his interviews aimed to produce a reflection or even a transformation in his witnesses, or simply to document their recollections, justifications, evasions. Did he want them to accept their responsibilities? He reminded us: “In the case of the Israelis, I am as responsible as they are. … I was very interested in trying to follow the structure of the discourse as a starting point for opposing it. So I was not interested just in statements but in a process of thinking. This is what the documentary camera can and even should try to do. ... The articulation of an argument in front of the camera allows the witness to think and reflect on the event, sometimes for the first time since it took place! Let’s not forget that while undertaking a collective crime, people think that they are thinking, while in fact they are merely repeating the discourse of power.” “I am as responsible as they are.” It is the very possibility of acknowledging the continuity between the Shoah and the Naqba that would, for Sivan, establish the condition for sharing a single democratic state between Jews and Palestinians. “The problem is that we Israelis must take responsibility for the deeds of our parents, deeds for which they refused to take responsibility. In the eyes of Lanzmann or Finkielkraut, if they acknowledge the crime of 1948, then Israel does not have the right to exist.” Sivan speaks instead as one who accepts that right, but differently—as a citizen. “The existence of the Israelis is careless for them, they need Israel as a concept, a shelter, an insurance company. They do not have the relation of citizens to this state, but a relation of ‘share holders’ or ‘members of a religion.’ ... For them, to acknowledge the crime is to de-sacralyze the State which replaced their Jewish identity.” For the citizen, he said, the experience of the partition and its remainders, the proximity of proximity and separation, can only issue in a sense of the inevitability of sharing: “We share the history of the land, we share a memory of the Naqba/Independence, we share a destiny. This is a basis for thinking equality.”
The authors would like to thank Haim Bresheeth and Adi Ophir for sharing their reflections on the trial. For the English translation and French transcript of the original trial, see here.
This article and accompanying transcript of the trial are published as part of Cabinet‘s contribution to Documenta 12 magazines, a collective worldwide editorial project linking over seventy print and online periodicals, as well as other media. See Documenta 12 for more information.
Para leer la nota completa (con notas a pie y fotos): http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/26/sivanintro.php
domingo, 6 de diciembre de 2009
viernes, 4 de diciembre de 2009
Otra mirada de 1967 - Uri Avnery en español
1967: Un testimonio personal
Uri Avnery
Rebelión
Traducido por Carlos Sanchis y revisado por Caty R.
El 25 de mayo de 1967, doce días antes de la Guerra de los Seis Días, publiqué en Haolam Hazeh, la revista de la que era editor, un artículo titulado "Nasser ha caído en una trampa". Esto parecía una locura porque, por aquel entonces, todo Israel estaba atenazado por un miedo mortal.
Pocos meses antes me invitaron a dar una conferencia en un kibbutz del norte. Tras la conferencia me convidaron a tomar café con unos pocos integrantes del mismo. Allí mi anfitrión me dijo en confianza que el jefe del Comando Norte, el general David ("Dado") Elazar, había estado allí solamente una semana antes. En la misma estancia, Dado había contado confidencialmente al mismo pequeño grupo: "Cada noche, antes de irme a dormir, rezo para que Nasser concentre sus tropas en el desierto del Sinaí. Allí los aniquilaremos".
Cuando Nasser concentró sus tropas en el Sinaí a mediados de mayo de 1967, pareció como una respuesta a esta plegaria. Así, mientras todo el mundo a mí alrededor estaba paralizado por el miedo yo no me alarmé.
El miedo era auténtico. Se hablaba mucho sobre un inminente Segundo Holocausto. Desde el principio de la crisis hasta el comienzo de la guerra, durante tres semanas enteras, el miedo que había atenazado a Israel se intensificaba de día en día. La “Voz del Trueno”, la emisora de radio de El Cairo, que emitía en un hebreo desbaratado -hasta entonces considerado más bien ridículo- fue emitiendo amenazas cuajadas de sangre. El propio Gamal Abd-al-Nasser –que en realidad estaba muerto de miedo por la posibilidad de un ataque israelí y ni soñaba con atacar- pensó que amenazando con arrojar a Israel al mar nos amedrentaría y abandonaríamos cualquier idea de guerra. Naturalmente ocurrió el efecto contrario.
La cadena de hechos que hicieron inevitable la guerra se parecía en algunos aspectos a la que condujo a la Primera Guerra Mundial,” la guerra que nadie quiso”.
Siria apoyaba la guerra de guerrillas iniciada por Yasser Arafat en su frontera. Israel respondió con terribles amenazas. El jefe del Estado Mayor, Isaac Rabin, amenazó públicamente con ocupar Damasco y derribar el régimen. Los sirios se asustaron y pidieron ayuda a Egipto.
Justo antes del comienzo de la crisis, el embajador soviético, Chubakhin, me pidió que fuera a visitarlo a su embajada de Ramat Gan. Me dijo que Israel estaba planeando atacar a Siria y que ya estaba concentrando tropas en la frontera. Veía esto como parte de un plan de Estados Unidos para poner regímenes pro estadounidenses por toda el área, empezando por el reciente golpe de Estado de los coroneles en Grecia (Abril de 1967) y las maquinaciones en Irán. El embajador quería que yo utilizara mi posición como miembro de la Knesset y redactor jefe de una popular revista para alertar a la opinión pública.
Me temo que mi respuesta fue más bien cínica: “Si teme esto, ¿por qué no instruye a su embajador en Damasco para que pida a sus amigos sirios que detengan los ataques de la guerrilla a Israel, al menos durante algún tiempo? ¿Por qué dar a nuestro gobierno un pretexto para la guerra?”
Chubakhin me respondió asombrado. "¿Cree que alguien en Damasco escucha a nuestro embajador?"
El relato sobre Israel "concentrando tropas en la frontera" era, por supuesto, ridículo. Un general soviético podría creer que antes de empezar una ofensiva, las tropas debían concentrarse en la frontera. Pero en el diminuto territorio de Israel, “concentrar” tropas era tan imposible como superfluo.
De todas maneras, enfrentado con el requerimiento de ayuda de Siria y con el relato soviético sobre la concentración de tropas israelíes, Nasser vio una oportunidad de afirmar su liderazgo en el mundo árabe. Mandó sus tropas al Sinaí. Si realmente hubiera tenido la intención de empezar la guerra, hubiera hecho esto tan secretamente como le hubiera sido posible. Pero sus tropas cruzaron El Cairo a plena luz del día, prueba de que lo que quería era mostrarlas.
Entretanto, en una fiesta, me encontré con Ezer Weitzman, que hasta hacía poco había sido comandante del ejército del aire israelí. Me dijo que estaba atónito. El servicio de inteligencia militar israelí había sido tomado por sorpresa por la aparición de las tropas egipcias en el Sinaí. Habían estado convencidos de que todo el ejército egipcio estaba concentrado en el lejano Yemen donde Nasser estaba interviniendo en una guerra civil. Verdaderamente, la capacidad de la fuerza aérea egipcia para abastecer a sus tropas allí produjo, a regañadientes, la admiración de Weitzman.
El 23 de mayo Nasser anunció (mintiendo) que había minado el mar en las proximidades de Eilat. Esto era para Israel un casus belli (motivo de guerra, N. de T.). Eilat era la puerta de entrada de Israel al mundo oriental, un paso franco que tenía una importancia emocional mucho más allá de su valor real. Recuerdo que al regresar de la Kensset aquel día les dije a mis colegas del comité ejecutivo del partido Nueva Fuerza: “La guerra ahora es inevitable”, y añadí: "Esta guerra lo va a cambiar todo".
Para exagerar sus actuaciones Nasser pidió al secretario general de la ONU, U Thant, que retirase las fuerzas de las Naciones Unidas, pero solamente de cierto sector (estas fuerzas estaban apostadas en la frontera desde la guerra del Sinaí en 1956).
U Thant, que malinterpretó por completo la situación, retiró todas sus tropas quedando así enfrentado a la posibilidad de un ataque preventivo israelí y creyendo su propia propaganda de que Israel no era sino una marioneta estadounidense, Nasser envió a su vicepresidente a EEUU para intentar que los estadounidenses detuviesen a Israel. Entretanto los israelíes vieron solamente la amenaza concurrente y creyeron que podrían ser atacados en cualquier momento.
Puedo atestiguar cuál era el estado de ánimo en las altas esferas. Unos días antes de la guerra, Menajem Begin me apartó a un lado en la Knesset y con una gran agitación me dijo: "Uri, tenemos diferentes opiniones, pero en esta crisis existencial todos tenemos la misma meta: salvar a Israel. Tú y tu revista tenéis una gran influencia en la gente joven. ¡Por favor úsala para endurecer su moral!"
En mi última intervención en la Knesset antes de la guerra, dije: "En este momento de duda, justo al borde de la guerra, un gran estadista israelí tomaría una iniciativa revolucionaria para empezar un diálogo directo, quizás secreto, quizás público e impresionante, que podría conducir a un cambio fundamental de nuestra posición en el área".
La demostración del apego a la desesperación general fue la personalidad de Levy Eshkol, el sucesor de David Ben-Gurion como Primer Ministro y ministro de Defensa, a quien se veía, de forma totalmente equivocada, como un arrogante, indeciso e incompetente líder. En un discurso crucial emitido por radio tropezó con una palabra que había sido colocada en el último minuto por uno de sus consejeros y parecía que tartamudeaba.
En el transcurso de aquellos "días de ansiedad", como se conocen desde entonces, Eshkol estuvo bajo una intensa presión. Destacados generales (entere ellos Matti Peled, que después se convertiría en mi amigo y un activista por la paz) acudieron a Eshkol y le plantearon lo que equivalía a un ultimátum, exigiendo un ataque inmediato. Con casi la totalidad de la población masculina movilizada y esperando en las fronteras, la vida normal llegó a una virtual congelación. Todo el país contenía el aliento.
Yo recibía casi diariamente informes sobre lo que hacía el gabinete. Mi fuente era Yigal Allon, antiguo comandante del Palmach (las fuerzas de choque del Haganah) y comandante del frente sur en 1948, que ahora era ministro de Trabajo. Nos hicimos amigos tras la guerra de 1948. Cuando empezó la crisis de 1967, decidí publicar temporalmente un diario llamado Daf ("página"). Sin embargo, no había imprenta preparada y capaz de imprimirlo excepto la del movimiento kibutzí de Allon.
Durante la crisis me reunía con Allon casi diariamente para tratar el asunto y en una de esas ocasiones se sinceró. Su empleo de subordinado en el gobierno era frustrante para el héroe militar de 1948. Pretendía dirigir el ministerio de Defensa y la profundización de la crisis le ofrecía la oportunidad.
Todos los días, casi perceptiblemente, crecía la exigencia de que Eshkol dejara su cargo de Primer Ministro o al menos que renunciara a la cartera de Defensa. Al principio se pusieron en circulación los nombres de varios candidatos para dicho ministerio de Defensa. Allon estaba en lo más alto de la lista. Otros candidatos creíbles eran el "viejo" David Ben-Gurion -jefe provisional del Estado Mayor en 1948-, el general Yigael Yadin, antiguo viceministro de Defensa, Simón Peres, y el ex jefe del Estado Mayor Moshé Dayán.
Allon confiaba en obtener el cargo, puesto que ya era miembro del gobierno y había sido un general muy exitoso en la guerra. De día en día se volvió más radiante. En la calle la lista se volvía cada vez más corta hasta que al final la exigencia del público se centró en Dayán. Un grupo de mujeres (inmediatamente apodadas "las alegres comadres de Windsor") se manifestó por su patrocinio frente a la sede del Partido Laborista.
A finales de Mayo, cuando volví a ver a Allon, estaba destrozado. Acababa de oír que Eshkol había nombrado a Dayán. Allon despreciaba al famoso general. Como la mayoría de los comandantes de 1948, consideraba a Dayán como un mal soldado, incapaz de organizar el trabajo en la Plana Mayor y completamente irresponsable. (Ciertamente, escuche una vez a Dayan jactándose de su "irresponsabilidad").
Dayán tuvo poca influencia en la planificación de la guerra, pero tuvo un impacto inmenso en la moral de las tropas; carismático, glamouroso y con una reputación de comandante atrevido y agresivo.
Los reservistas que habían sido movilizados sólo para esperar, esperar y seguir esperando, saludaron su nombramiento con entusiasmo. Entendieron que la larga espera casi había acabado.
Cuando nuestro ejército atacó, fue como la liberación de un potente muelle.
El primer día de la guerra, tras una sesión parlamentaria de emergencia, yo estaba sentado en el refugio antiaéreo de la Knesset al resguardado del bombardeo de la artillería jordana en Jerusalén Este, cuando un amigo me susurró al oído: "Ya hemos ganado la guerra. La aviación ha destruido los aviones egipcios en tierra".
Esta información se escondió al público. Todas las informaciones de las increíbles victorias de nuestro ejército fueron suprimidas por la censura. La ONU quería imponer un alto el fuego –que en ese momento parecía obstructivo-. Así el público estaba expuesto a las absurdas hipérboles de la Voz del Trueno, según la cual Tel Aviv estaba ardiendo.
Muchos de los territorios fueron conquistados casi por accidente. Había un plan para la destrucción de las fuerzas egipcias en el sur, pero no había planes para una guerra de gran amplitud. Dayán no sólo estaba en contra de la ocupación de la Franja de Gaza, sino incluso contra la ocupación de Jerusalén Este. Cisjordania fue ocupada en una operación improvisada después que el rey Hussein, inesperadamente, abrió fuego para demostrar su solidaridad con Egipto. Al principio Dayán también objetó la operación contra Siria, por miedo a una intervención soviética. Por todo ello, no hubo planes de futuro para la numerosa población de los territorios ocupados.
El quinto día de guerra, justo después de que nuestro ejército hubiera conquistado Cisjordania y la Franja de Gaza, escribí una carta abierta a Levy Eshkol proponiéndole que aprovechase la oportunidad histórica y ofreciera al pueblo palestino la posibilidad de establecer un estado propio. Yo había estado abogando por esta idea desde 1949, pero estaba convencido de que este momento, con toda la región en un estado de conmoción, era el tiempo apropiado de hacer la paz con los palestinos haciéndoles una oferta histórica.
Justo después de la guerra, Eshkol me invitó a una conversación privada. Me escuchó pacientemente mientras yo exponía esta idea. "Uri, ¿qué clase de negociador eres tú?, dijo con una sonrisa condescendiente. "En las negociaciones uno empieza ofreciendo lo mínimo y exigiendo lo máximo. Entonces, gradualmente, eleva la oferta hasta alcanzar un compromiso en algún punto medio. Lo que tú propones es ofrecerlo todo incluso antes de que las negociaciones hayan empezado".
"Eso es cierto cuando uno vende un caballo", le contesté, "no cuando uno quiere alcanzar una paz histórica."
En oposición a su imagen, Eshkol era en realidad un tipo duro. Estaba disfrazado por una amigable disposición, un sentido del humor yiddish y una sintaxis que hacia subirse a los taquígrafos de la Knesset por las paredes. Toda su vida había sido partidario de levantar las colonias judías y ahora todo lo que podía ver era un vasto espacio que podía ser usado para nuevos asentamientos.
En los siguientes meses y años hice docenas de intervenciones en la Knesset (además de mis artículos en Haolam Hazeh) abogando por la idea de un estado palestino en los territorios recién ocupados. En uno de mis discursos informé de que había estado con todos los destacados líderes de Cisjordania y la Franja de Gaza, incluyendo a aquellos que eran conocidos como los "partidarios de Jordania", y que todos ellos me habían dicho que preferían un estado palestino que la restauración de la gobernación jordana. Tanto Dayán como Eshkol lo negaban, pero Eshkol envió a su consejero para los territorios ocupados, Moshé Sassoon, a preguntarme sobre mi información en una conversación privada. El 13 de Agosto de 1969, Sassoon escribió un informe al Primer Ministro (con una copia para mí) en el que confirmaba que su propia información era idéntica a la mía.
Para mi sorpresa placentera, encontré que tenía un buen número de partidarios en el alto mando del ejército.
Los generales, se ha dicho, siempre luchan la última guerra. También tienen en su mente la última paz. En 1956 el presidente Eisenhower y los líderes de la Unión Soviética habían obligado a Ben-Gurion a devolverle a Egipto todos los territorios ocupados durante la guerra del Sinaí. Ahora todo el mundo esperaba que pasara lo mismo. Enfrentados a esta posibilidad, muchos generales preferían la idea de un estado palestino desmilitarizado junto a Israel que la perspectiva de devolver los territorios a Jordania, un estado mucho mayor que podría servir de área de escenificación para los ejércitos de Jordania, Siria, Iraq y Arabia Saudí. En las encuestas de opinión pública, el apoyo a la idea de un estado palestino junto a Israel alcanzó un asombroso 37%.
Esta fase pasó rápidamente. EEUU, que en las vísperas de la guerra había informado secretamente a nuestro gobierno de que no habría objeción a un ataque israelí, ahora no hacían nada para obligar a Israel a retirarse. Gradualmente, el liderazgo israelí se dio cuenta de una total ausencia de presión internacional para devolver nada. Además los tres "NO" adoptados el 7 de septiembre por la cumbre de los humillados líderes árabes reunidos en Jartum (No paz, No reconocimiento, No negociaciones) jugaron a favor de los anexionistas israelíes.
Equipos de personas del movimiento kibutzí ya estaban hormigueando por Cisjordania buscando emplazamientos favorables. Los hallaron en el llano Valle del Jordán, adecuado para los tractores y regado por el río. Inmediatamente después de la guerra, grandes cantidades de refugiados de la guerra de 1948 fueron expulsados de los campos de refugiados de Jericó cercanos al río. El acicate colonizador, que cambiaría totalmente el mapa, estaba en marcha.
Casi automáticamente se llevaron a cabo acciones de limpieza étnica. Nunca se averiguó quién dio las órdenes que claramente se transmitieron verbalmente. Sobre ellas sobrevolaba el espíritu de Moshé Dayán.
Inmediatamente después de la lucha, el escritor Amos Kenan vino a verme. Estaba en un estado de conmoción y me dijo que acababa de ser testigo de la expulsión de miles de habitantes de tres poblaciones del área de Latrun. Le pedí que se sentara y que escribiera un informe de lo que había visto. Era un documento nauseabundo. Me dirigí inmediatamente a la aldea de Imwass (quizás la Bíblica Emaús) y vi las excavadoras arrasando casa tras casa. Cuando traté de tomar fotografías los soldados me llevaron lejos.
De allí me fui rápidamente a la Knesset y repartí copias del informe a varios ministros, incluyendo a Begin y Mapam, así como a los asistentes del Primer Ministro. No sirvió para nada. El trabajo fue acabado antes de que nadie pudiera intervenir. Hoy el "Parque Canadá" cubre el lugar.
Por aquel entonces todavía todo el mundo creía que Israel sería presionado para devolver los territorios que había conquistado. Las aldeas de Latrun eran una especie de abombamiento en la Línea Verde que dominaba la carretera principal entre Tel Aviv y Jerusalén. Por esta razón, alguien decidió crear un fait accompli (hecho consumado) que eliminaría la presión para devolver esta área.
Casi al mismo tiempo me informaron de que el ejército había comenzado a destruir la ciudad de Qalquilya. Desde los aledaños de esta ciudad la artillería jordana había tratado de bombardear Tel Aviv desde unos 25 Km. de distancia. Me apresuré hacia allí y vi que un barrio estaba ya casi completamente demolido. De nuevo fui a la Knesset para inducir al Primer Ministro y a los otros ministros a que intervinieran. Y efectivamente se detuvo la demolición y las casas arrasadas se reconstruyeron. No sé exactamente qué papel jugó mi intervención en esto pero desde entonces, cada vez que paso por el lugar, tengo un sentimiento de satisfacción. (Aunque Qalquilya está ahora cortada por el muro monstruoso)
Poco después un soldado vino a mi oficina en un evidente estado de depresión nerviosa. Me dijo que cada noche los refugiados trataban de cruzar el río Jordán para volver a sus hogares y que las órdenes eran matarlos en el sitio, mujeres y niños incluidos. Le escribí una larga carta al jefe del Estado Mayor, Isaac Rabin y recibí una respuesta de su jefe de oficiales, Samuel Gat, fechada el 29 de octubre de 1967, diciendo que el ejército había investigado el asunto "sacando la conclusión que podía sacar". Hasta donde sé, las matanzas sistemáticas se detuvieron.
(Hace unos días volví a encontrarme con ese soldado. Estaba tocando la flauta en la calle).
El primer día de combate fue una guerra defensiva. Dayán declaró que no teníamos intenciones de conquista y casi todos los israelíes también pensaban lo mismo. Un día después de que acabasen los combates, se había convertido en una guerra de expansión y anexión. Completamente intoxicada por paisajes bíblicos, el diluvio de "álbumes victoriosos", las nuevas canciones patrióticas y los lemas mesiánicos, el público se envalentonó. El gobierno de Eshkol, que primeramente había decidido oficialmente negociar la devolución de los territorios, se olvidó del asunto cuando se dio cuenta de que no era necesario hacerlo.
Poco después escribí un relato sobre cómo capturar monos. Se fija una botella a la rama de un árbol con una fruta dentro. El mono pone la mano dentro de la botella, agarra la fruta con la mano y trata de sacarla, pero su puño agarrando la fruta es demasiado grande. Así se le captura. Puede, por supuesto, quedar libre en cualquier momento soltando la fruta, pero, muerto de ganas por la fruta, es incapaz de hacerlo. De la misma manera, aferrándonos a los territorios ocupados, hemos sido rehenes de nuestra propia avaricia.
Tras la guerra el profesor Yeshayahu (Isaias) Leibowitz, un judío ortodoxo, predijo que la ocupación nos corrompería y nos convertiría en un pueblo de "agentes del servicio secreto y encargados de mano de obra barata”, le llamé el “profeta Isaías tercero”, lo que le puso furioso. Dijo que un profeta se hace eco de la voz de Dios, mientras que él estaba hablando en el lenguaje de la lógica.
Retrospectivamente parece como si todo el escenario fuera el trabajo de un director de cine con talento; la ansiedad, el aumento del miedo, la milagrosa victoria. Esto ayuda a explicar lo que paso más tarde.
En la leyenda de Fausto, Mefistófeles paga por el alma del culto doctor con cada imaginable clase de placer. Algo así nos sucedió en junio de 1967. La cadena de hechos dirigidos por un ser superior, una tentación deliberadamente puesta frente a nosotros para probarnos. Lo que parecía un regalo de Dios era realmente una tentación de Satanás, un intento de comprar nuestra alma.
¿Sucedió eso? ¿Perdió Israel su alma?
Espero que no. Espero que la borrachera desaparezca ahora. Esta semana se han dicho y escrito muchas cosas que lo indican.
Cuarenta años después de los hechos la cuestión sigue abierta.
(Algunas partes de este artículo se han publicado en la revista judío-estadounidense Tikkun.)
Original en inglés: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/archive/1182406019
Carlos Sanchis y Caty R. pertenecen a los colectivos de rebelión, Tlaxcala y Cubadebate. Esta traducción se puede reproducir libremente a condición de respetar su integridad y mencionar al autor, el traductor y la fuente.
Uri Avnery
Rebelión
Traducido por Carlos Sanchis y revisado por Caty R.
El 25 de mayo de 1967, doce días antes de la Guerra de los Seis Días, publiqué en Haolam Hazeh, la revista de la que era editor, un artículo titulado "Nasser ha caído en una trampa". Esto parecía una locura porque, por aquel entonces, todo Israel estaba atenazado por un miedo mortal.
Pocos meses antes me invitaron a dar una conferencia en un kibbutz del norte. Tras la conferencia me convidaron a tomar café con unos pocos integrantes del mismo. Allí mi anfitrión me dijo en confianza que el jefe del Comando Norte, el general David ("Dado") Elazar, había estado allí solamente una semana antes. En la misma estancia, Dado había contado confidencialmente al mismo pequeño grupo: "Cada noche, antes de irme a dormir, rezo para que Nasser concentre sus tropas en el desierto del Sinaí. Allí los aniquilaremos".
Cuando Nasser concentró sus tropas en el Sinaí a mediados de mayo de 1967, pareció como una respuesta a esta plegaria. Así, mientras todo el mundo a mí alrededor estaba paralizado por el miedo yo no me alarmé.
El miedo era auténtico. Se hablaba mucho sobre un inminente Segundo Holocausto. Desde el principio de la crisis hasta el comienzo de la guerra, durante tres semanas enteras, el miedo que había atenazado a Israel se intensificaba de día en día. La “Voz del Trueno”, la emisora de radio de El Cairo, que emitía en un hebreo desbaratado -hasta entonces considerado más bien ridículo- fue emitiendo amenazas cuajadas de sangre. El propio Gamal Abd-al-Nasser –que en realidad estaba muerto de miedo por la posibilidad de un ataque israelí y ni soñaba con atacar- pensó que amenazando con arrojar a Israel al mar nos amedrentaría y abandonaríamos cualquier idea de guerra. Naturalmente ocurrió el efecto contrario.
La cadena de hechos que hicieron inevitable la guerra se parecía en algunos aspectos a la que condujo a la Primera Guerra Mundial,” la guerra que nadie quiso”.
Siria apoyaba la guerra de guerrillas iniciada por Yasser Arafat en su frontera. Israel respondió con terribles amenazas. El jefe del Estado Mayor, Isaac Rabin, amenazó públicamente con ocupar Damasco y derribar el régimen. Los sirios se asustaron y pidieron ayuda a Egipto.
Justo antes del comienzo de la crisis, el embajador soviético, Chubakhin, me pidió que fuera a visitarlo a su embajada de Ramat Gan. Me dijo que Israel estaba planeando atacar a Siria y que ya estaba concentrando tropas en la frontera. Veía esto como parte de un plan de Estados Unidos para poner regímenes pro estadounidenses por toda el área, empezando por el reciente golpe de Estado de los coroneles en Grecia (Abril de 1967) y las maquinaciones en Irán. El embajador quería que yo utilizara mi posición como miembro de la Knesset y redactor jefe de una popular revista para alertar a la opinión pública.
Me temo que mi respuesta fue más bien cínica: “Si teme esto, ¿por qué no instruye a su embajador en Damasco para que pida a sus amigos sirios que detengan los ataques de la guerrilla a Israel, al menos durante algún tiempo? ¿Por qué dar a nuestro gobierno un pretexto para la guerra?”
Chubakhin me respondió asombrado. "¿Cree que alguien en Damasco escucha a nuestro embajador?"
El relato sobre Israel "concentrando tropas en la frontera" era, por supuesto, ridículo. Un general soviético podría creer que antes de empezar una ofensiva, las tropas debían concentrarse en la frontera. Pero en el diminuto territorio de Israel, “concentrar” tropas era tan imposible como superfluo.
De todas maneras, enfrentado con el requerimiento de ayuda de Siria y con el relato soviético sobre la concentración de tropas israelíes, Nasser vio una oportunidad de afirmar su liderazgo en el mundo árabe. Mandó sus tropas al Sinaí. Si realmente hubiera tenido la intención de empezar la guerra, hubiera hecho esto tan secretamente como le hubiera sido posible. Pero sus tropas cruzaron El Cairo a plena luz del día, prueba de que lo que quería era mostrarlas.
Entretanto, en una fiesta, me encontré con Ezer Weitzman, que hasta hacía poco había sido comandante del ejército del aire israelí. Me dijo que estaba atónito. El servicio de inteligencia militar israelí había sido tomado por sorpresa por la aparición de las tropas egipcias en el Sinaí. Habían estado convencidos de que todo el ejército egipcio estaba concentrado en el lejano Yemen donde Nasser estaba interviniendo en una guerra civil. Verdaderamente, la capacidad de la fuerza aérea egipcia para abastecer a sus tropas allí produjo, a regañadientes, la admiración de Weitzman.
El 23 de mayo Nasser anunció (mintiendo) que había minado el mar en las proximidades de Eilat. Esto era para Israel un casus belli (motivo de guerra, N. de T.). Eilat era la puerta de entrada de Israel al mundo oriental, un paso franco que tenía una importancia emocional mucho más allá de su valor real. Recuerdo que al regresar de la Kensset aquel día les dije a mis colegas del comité ejecutivo del partido Nueva Fuerza: “La guerra ahora es inevitable”, y añadí: "Esta guerra lo va a cambiar todo".
Para exagerar sus actuaciones Nasser pidió al secretario general de la ONU, U Thant, que retirase las fuerzas de las Naciones Unidas, pero solamente de cierto sector (estas fuerzas estaban apostadas en la frontera desde la guerra del Sinaí en 1956).
U Thant, que malinterpretó por completo la situación, retiró todas sus tropas quedando así enfrentado a la posibilidad de un ataque preventivo israelí y creyendo su propia propaganda de que Israel no era sino una marioneta estadounidense, Nasser envió a su vicepresidente a EEUU para intentar que los estadounidenses detuviesen a Israel. Entretanto los israelíes vieron solamente la amenaza concurrente y creyeron que podrían ser atacados en cualquier momento.
Puedo atestiguar cuál era el estado de ánimo en las altas esferas. Unos días antes de la guerra, Menajem Begin me apartó a un lado en la Knesset y con una gran agitación me dijo: "Uri, tenemos diferentes opiniones, pero en esta crisis existencial todos tenemos la misma meta: salvar a Israel. Tú y tu revista tenéis una gran influencia en la gente joven. ¡Por favor úsala para endurecer su moral!"
En mi última intervención en la Knesset antes de la guerra, dije: "En este momento de duda, justo al borde de la guerra, un gran estadista israelí tomaría una iniciativa revolucionaria para empezar un diálogo directo, quizás secreto, quizás público e impresionante, que podría conducir a un cambio fundamental de nuestra posición en el área".
La demostración del apego a la desesperación general fue la personalidad de Levy Eshkol, el sucesor de David Ben-Gurion como Primer Ministro y ministro de Defensa, a quien se veía, de forma totalmente equivocada, como un arrogante, indeciso e incompetente líder. En un discurso crucial emitido por radio tropezó con una palabra que había sido colocada en el último minuto por uno de sus consejeros y parecía que tartamudeaba.
En el transcurso de aquellos "días de ansiedad", como se conocen desde entonces, Eshkol estuvo bajo una intensa presión. Destacados generales (entere ellos Matti Peled, que después se convertiría en mi amigo y un activista por la paz) acudieron a Eshkol y le plantearon lo que equivalía a un ultimátum, exigiendo un ataque inmediato. Con casi la totalidad de la población masculina movilizada y esperando en las fronteras, la vida normal llegó a una virtual congelación. Todo el país contenía el aliento.
Yo recibía casi diariamente informes sobre lo que hacía el gabinete. Mi fuente era Yigal Allon, antiguo comandante del Palmach (las fuerzas de choque del Haganah) y comandante del frente sur en 1948, que ahora era ministro de Trabajo. Nos hicimos amigos tras la guerra de 1948. Cuando empezó la crisis de 1967, decidí publicar temporalmente un diario llamado Daf ("página"). Sin embargo, no había imprenta preparada y capaz de imprimirlo excepto la del movimiento kibutzí de Allon.
Durante la crisis me reunía con Allon casi diariamente para tratar el asunto y en una de esas ocasiones se sinceró. Su empleo de subordinado en el gobierno era frustrante para el héroe militar de 1948. Pretendía dirigir el ministerio de Defensa y la profundización de la crisis le ofrecía la oportunidad.
Todos los días, casi perceptiblemente, crecía la exigencia de que Eshkol dejara su cargo de Primer Ministro o al menos que renunciara a la cartera de Defensa. Al principio se pusieron en circulación los nombres de varios candidatos para dicho ministerio de Defensa. Allon estaba en lo más alto de la lista. Otros candidatos creíbles eran el "viejo" David Ben-Gurion -jefe provisional del Estado Mayor en 1948-, el general Yigael Yadin, antiguo viceministro de Defensa, Simón Peres, y el ex jefe del Estado Mayor Moshé Dayán.
Allon confiaba en obtener el cargo, puesto que ya era miembro del gobierno y había sido un general muy exitoso en la guerra. De día en día se volvió más radiante. En la calle la lista se volvía cada vez más corta hasta que al final la exigencia del público se centró en Dayán. Un grupo de mujeres (inmediatamente apodadas "las alegres comadres de Windsor") se manifestó por su patrocinio frente a la sede del Partido Laborista.
A finales de Mayo, cuando volví a ver a Allon, estaba destrozado. Acababa de oír que Eshkol había nombrado a Dayán. Allon despreciaba al famoso general. Como la mayoría de los comandantes de 1948, consideraba a Dayán como un mal soldado, incapaz de organizar el trabajo en la Plana Mayor y completamente irresponsable. (Ciertamente, escuche una vez a Dayan jactándose de su "irresponsabilidad").
Dayán tuvo poca influencia en la planificación de la guerra, pero tuvo un impacto inmenso en la moral de las tropas; carismático, glamouroso y con una reputación de comandante atrevido y agresivo.
Los reservistas que habían sido movilizados sólo para esperar, esperar y seguir esperando, saludaron su nombramiento con entusiasmo. Entendieron que la larga espera casi había acabado.
Cuando nuestro ejército atacó, fue como la liberación de un potente muelle.
El primer día de la guerra, tras una sesión parlamentaria de emergencia, yo estaba sentado en el refugio antiaéreo de la Knesset al resguardado del bombardeo de la artillería jordana en Jerusalén Este, cuando un amigo me susurró al oído: "Ya hemos ganado la guerra. La aviación ha destruido los aviones egipcios en tierra".
Esta información se escondió al público. Todas las informaciones de las increíbles victorias de nuestro ejército fueron suprimidas por la censura. La ONU quería imponer un alto el fuego –que en ese momento parecía obstructivo-. Así el público estaba expuesto a las absurdas hipérboles de la Voz del Trueno, según la cual Tel Aviv estaba ardiendo.
Muchos de los territorios fueron conquistados casi por accidente. Había un plan para la destrucción de las fuerzas egipcias en el sur, pero no había planes para una guerra de gran amplitud. Dayán no sólo estaba en contra de la ocupación de la Franja de Gaza, sino incluso contra la ocupación de Jerusalén Este. Cisjordania fue ocupada en una operación improvisada después que el rey Hussein, inesperadamente, abrió fuego para demostrar su solidaridad con Egipto. Al principio Dayán también objetó la operación contra Siria, por miedo a una intervención soviética. Por todo ello, no hubo planes de futuro para la numerosa población de los territorios ocupados.
El quinto día de guerra, justo después de que nuestro ejército hubiera conquistado Cisjordania y la Franja de Gaza, escribí una carta abierta a Levy Eshkol proponiéndole que aprovechase la oportunidad histórica y ofreciera al pueblo palestino la posibilidad de establecer un estado propio. Yo había estado abogando por esta idea desde 1949, pero estaba convencido de que este momento, con toda la región en un estado de conmoción, era el tiempo apropiado de hacer la paz con los palestinos haciéndoles una oferta histórica.
Justo después de la guerra, Eshkol me invitó a una conversación privada. Me escuchó pacientemente mientras yo exponía esta idea. "Uri, ¿qué clase de negociador eres tú?, dijo con una sonrisa condescendiente. "En las negociaciones uno empieza ofreciendo lo mínimo y exigiendo lo máximo. Entonces, gradualmente, eleva la oferta hasta alcanzar un compromiso en algún punto medio. Lo que tú propones es ofrecerlo todo incluso antes de que las negociaciones hayan empezado".
"Eso es cierto cuando uno vende un caballo", le contesté, "no cuando uno quiere alcanzar una paz histórica."
En oposición a su imagen, Eshkol era en realidad un tipo duro. Estaba disfrazado por una amigable disposición, un sentido del humor yiddish y una sintaxis que hacia subirse a los taquígrafos de la Knesset por las paredes. Toda su vida había sido partidario de levantar las colonias judías y ahora todo lo que podía ver era un vasto espacio que podía ser usado para nuevos asentamientos.
En los siguientes meses y años hice docenas de intervenciones en la Knesset (además de mis artículos en Haolam Hazeh) abogando por la idea de un estado palestino en los territorios recién ocupados. En uno de mis discursos informé de que había estado con todos los destacados líderes de Cisjordania y la Franja de Gaza, incluyendo a aquellos que eran conocidos como los "partidarios de Jordania", y que todos ellos me habían dicho que preferían un estado palestino que la restauración de la gobernación jordana. Tanto Dayán como Eshkol lo negaban, pero Eshkol envió a su consejero para los territorios ocupados, Moshé Sassoon, a preguntarme sobre mi información en una conversación privada. El 13 de Agosto de 1969, Sassoon escribió un informe al Primer Ministro (con una copia para mí) en el que confirmaba que su propia información era idéntica a la mía.
Para mi sorpresa placentera, encontré que tenía un buen número de partidarios en el alto mando del ejército.
Los generales, se ha dicho, siempre luchan la última guerra. También tienen en su mente la última paz. En 1956 el presidente Eisenhower y los líderes de la Unión Soviética habían obligado a Ben-Gurion a devolverle a Egipto todos los territorios ocupados durante la guerra del Sinaí. Ahora todo el mundo esperaba que pasara lo mismo. Enfrentados a esta posibilidad, muchos generales preferían la idea de un estado palestino desmilitarizado junto a Israel que la perspectiva de devolver los territorios a Jordania, un estado mucho mayor que podría servir de área de escenificación para los ejércitos de Jordania, Siria, Iraq y Arabia Saudí. En las encuestas de opinión pública, el apoyo a la idea de un estado palestino junto a Israel alcanzó un asombroso 37%.
Esta fase pasó rápidamente. EEUU, que en las vísperas de la guerra había informado secretamente a nuestro gobierno de que no habría objeción a un ataque israelí, ahora no hacían nada para obligar a Israel a retirarse. Gradualmente, el liderazgo israelí se dio cuenta de una total ausencia de presión internacional para devolver nada. Además los tres "NO" adoptados el 7 de septiembre por la cumbre de los humillados líderes árabes reunidos en Jartum (No paz, No reconocimiento, No negociaciones) jugaron a favor de los anexionistas israelíes.
Equipos de personas del movimiento kibutzí ya estaban hormigueando por Cisjordania buscando emplazamientos favorables. Los hallaron en el llano Valle del Jordán, adecuado para los tractores y regado por el río. Inmediatamente después de la guerra, grandes cantidades de refugiados de la guerra de 1948 fueron expulsados de los campos de refugiados de Jericó cercanos al río. El acicate colonizador, que cambiaría totalmente el mapa, estaba en marcha.
Casi automáticamente se llevaron a cabo acciones de limpieza étnica. Nunca se averiguó quién dio las órdenes que claramente se transmitieron verbalmente. Sobre ellas sobrevolaba el espíritu de Moshé Dayán.
Inmediatamente después de la lucha, el escritor Amos Kenan vino a verme. Estaba en un estado de conmoción y me dijo que acababa de ser testigo de la expulsión de miles de habitantes de tres poblaciones del área de Latrun. Le pedí que se sentara y que escribiera un informe de lo que había visto. Era un documento nauseabundo. Me dirigí inmediatamente a la aldea de Imwass (quizás la Bíblica Emaús) y vi las excavadoras arrasando casa tras casa. Cuando traté de tomar fotografías los soldados me llevaron lejos.
De allí me fui rápidamente a la Knesset y repartí copias del informe a varios ministros, incluyendo a Begin y Mapam, así como a los asistentes del Primer Ministro. No sirvió para nada. El trabajo fue acabado antes de que nadie pudiera intervenir. Hoy el "Parque Canadá" cubre el lugar.
Por aquel entonces todavía todo el mundo creía que Israel sería presionado para devolver los territorios que había conquistado. Las aldeas de Latrun eran una especie de abombamiento en la Línea Verde que dominaba la carretera principal entre Tel Aviv y Jerusalén. Por esta razón, alguien decidió crear un fait accompli (hecho consumado) que eliminaría la presión para devolver esta área.
Casi al mismo tiempo me informaron de que el ejército había comenzado a destruir la ciudad de Qalquilya. Desde los aledaños de esta ciudad la artillería jordana había tratado de bombardear Tel Aviv desde unos 25 Km. de distancia. Me apresuré hacia allí y vi que un barrio estaba ya casi completamente demolido. De nuevo fui a la Knesset para inducir al Primer Ministro y a los otros ministros a que intervinieran. Y efectivamente se detuvo la demolición y las casas arrasadas se reconstruyeron. No sé exactamente qué papel jugó mi intervención en esto pero desde entonces, cada vez que paso por el lugar, tengo un sentimiento de satisfacción. (Aunque Qalquilya está ahora cortada por el muro monstruoso)
Poco después un soldado vino a mi oficina en un evidente estado de depresión nerviosa. Me dijo que cada noche los refugiados trataban de cruzar el río Jordán para volver a sus hogares y que las órdenes eran matarlos en el sitio, mujeres y niños incluidos. Le escribí una larga carta al jefe del Estado Mayor, Isaac Rabin y recibí una respuesta de su jefe de oficiales, Samuel Gat, fechada el 29 de octubre de 1967, diciendo que el ejército había investigado el asunto "sacando la conclusión que podía sacar". Hasta donde sé, las matanzas sistemáticas se detuvieron.
(Hace unos días volví a encontrarme con ese soldado. Estaba tocando la flauta en la calle).
El primer día de combate fue una guerra defensiva. Dayán declaró que no teníamos intenciones de conquista y casi todos los israelíes también pensaban lo mismo. Un día después de que acabasen los combates, se había convertido en una guerra de expansión y anexión. Completamente intoxicada por paisajes bíblicos, el diluvio de "álbumes victoriosos", las nuevas canciones patrióticas y los lemas mesiánicos, el público se envalentonó. El gobierno de Eshkol, que primeramente había decidido oficialmente negociar la devolución de los territorios, se olvidó del asunto cuando se dio cuenta de que no era necesario hacerlo.
Poco después escribí un relato sobre cómo capturar monos. Se fija una botella a la rama de un árbol con una fruta dentro. El mono pone la mano dentro de la botella, agarra la fruta con la mano y trata de sacarla, pero su puño agarrando la fruta es demasiado grande. Así se le captura. Puede, por supuesto, quedar libre en cualquier momento soltando la fruta, pero, muerto de ganas por la fruta, es incapaz de hacerlo. De la misma manera, aferrándonos a los territorios ocupados, hemos sido rehenes de nuestra propia avaricia.
Tras la guerra el profesor Yeshayahu (Isaias) Leibowitz, un judío ortodoxo, predijo que la ocupación nos corrompería y nos convertiría en un pueblo de "agentes del servicio secreto y encargados de mano de obra barata”, le llamé el “profeta Isaías tercero”, lo que le puso furioso. Dijo que un profeta se hace eco de la voz de Dios, mientras que él estaba hablando en el lenguaje de la lógica.
Retrospectivamente parece como si todo el escenario fuera el trabajo de un director de cine con talento; la ansiedad, el aumento del miedo, la milagrosa victoria. Esto ayuda a explicar lo que paso más tarde.
En la leyenda de Fausto, Mefistófeles paga por el alma del culto doctor con cada imaginable clase de placer. Algo así nos sucedió en junio de 1967. La cadena de hechos dirigidos por un ser superior, una tentación deliberadamente puesta frente a nosotros para probarnos. Lo que parecía un regalo de Dios era realmente una tentación de Satanás, un intento de comprar nuestra alma.
¿Sucedió eso? ¿Perdió Israel su alma?
Espero que no. Espero que la borrachera desaparezca ahora. Esta semana se han dicho y escrito muchas cosas que lo indican.
Cuarenta años después de los hechos la cuestión sigue abierta.
(Algunas partes de este artículo se han publicado en la revista judío-estadounidense Tikkun.)
Original en inglés: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/archive/1182406019
Carlos Sanchis y Caty R. pertenecen a los colectivos de rebelión, Tlaxcala y Cubadebate. Esta traducción se puede reproducir libremente a condición de respetar su integridad y mencionar al autor, el traductor y la fuente.
lunes, 30 de noviembre de 2009
Milenio semanal alude al reciente ciclo de cine "¿Paz o pax en Medio Oriente?"
Gracias a Mónica Flores
El cine como territorio libre
Detrás de cada película de cine “disidente” israelí hay una realidad dolorosa, injusta o esperanzadora para explicar el añejo conflicto en Medio Oriente.
Más... http://semanal.milenio.com/node/1568
El cine como territorio libre
Detrás de cada película de cine “disidente” israelí hay una realidad dolorosa, injusta o esperanzadora para explicar el añejo conflicto en Medio Oriente.
Más... http://semanal.milenio.com/node/1568
viernes, 27 de noviembre de 2009
Mahmud Darwish - La niña / El grito
En la playa hay una niña, la niña tiene familia
Y la familia una casa.
La casa tiene dos ventanas y una puerta...
En el mar, un acorazado se divierte cazando a los que caminan
Por la playa: cuatro, cinco, siete
Caen sobre la arena. La niña se salva por poco,
Gracias a una mano de niebla,
Una mano no divina que la ayuda. Grita: ¡Padre!
¡Padre! Levántate, regresemos: el mar no es como nosotros.
El padre, amortajado sobre su sombra, a merced de lo invisible,
No responde.
Sangre en las palmeras, sangre en las nubes.
La lleva en volandas la voz más alta y más lejana de
La playa. Grita en la noche desierta.
No hay eco en el eco.
Convierte el grito eterno en noticia
Rápida que deja de ser noticia cuando
Los aviones regresan para bombardear una casa
Con dos ventanas y una puerta.
Y la familia una casa.
La casa tiene dos ventanas y una puerta...
En el mar, un acorazado se divierte cazando a los que caminan
Por la playa: cuatro, cinco, siete
Caen sobre la arena. La niña se salva por poco,
Gracias a una mano de niebla,
Una mano no divina que la ayuda. Grita: ¡Padre!
¡Padre! Levántate, regresemos: el mar no es como nosotros.
El padre, amortajado sobre su sombra, a merced de lo invisible,
No responde.
Sangre en las palmeras, sangre en las nubes.
La lleva en volandas la voz más alta y más lejana de
La playa. Grita en la noche desierta.
No hay eco en el eco.
Convierte el grito eterno en noticia
Rápida que deja de ser noticia cuando
Los aviones regresan para bombardear una casa
Con dos ventanas y una puerta.
domingo, 22 de noviembre de 2009
Con Uri Avnery: ¿Por qué no "federación"? ... y algo sobre la compañía compañía cosmética que lleva el nombre del amor (ahavah)
Muchísimas gracias a Eduardo Mosches por este envío!
www.gush-shalom.org
Truth / Правда / אמת / حقيقة
English website http://zope.gush-shalom.org/index_en.html
Статьи Ури Авнери http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/ru/avnery
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/index_he.html אתר בעברית
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/ar/avnery اوري افنيري
A la compañía Ahavah
Press release
Gush Shalom to Ahava directors: read the writing on the wall – get out of the Occupied Territories
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/press_releases/1258534724
Ad in Ha'aretz, Nov. 20 20 09
We shallWelcomeThe declarationOf theFreeState ofPalestine
weekly ads archive
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/weekly_ad
en hebreo
גוש שלום לחברת "אהבה" – קראו את הכתובת על הקיר, צאו מהשטחים הכבושיםhttp://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/press_releases/1258449948מודעה ב"הארץ" 20 בנובםבראנחנונק דם בברכה את ההכרזה על הקמת מדינת פלסטין החופשיתארכיון מודעות: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/weekly_ad
~~~
Uri Avnery
Federation? Why NotTHESE DAYS mark the 5th anniversary of the murder of Yasser Arafat, and bring back to me our last conversation
Full English text in the end
Avnery columns' archive
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery
~~~
Fanatics and the army & the ease of dismantling settlements
On Adam's blog: http://adam-keller2.blogspot.com
אורי אבנרי
פדרציה? למה לא?בימים אלה מלאו חמש שנים להירצחו של יאסר ערפאת, ואני שב ונזכר דווקא בשיחתנו האחרונה,
טכסט מלא http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery/1258646305
ארכיון מאמרים http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery
~~~
המורעלים והצבא ואיך בכל זאת לפרק את ההתנחלויות
בבלוג של אדם : http://adam-keller1.blogspot.com
Uri Avnery21.11.09
Federation? Why Not?
THESE DAYS mark the 5th anniversary of the murder of Yasser Arafat, and bring back to me our last conversation in his Ramallah compound, a few weeks before his death. It was he who brought up the idea of a threefold federation – Israel, Palestine and Jordan. "And perhaps Lebanon, too. Why not?" – the same as he did at our very first meeting, in Beirut, July 1982, in the middle of the battle. He mentioned the term Benelux – the pact between Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg that predated the European Union.
Lately, the term "federation" has come into fashion again. Some people believe that it can serve as a kind of compromise between the "Two-State Solution", now a world-wide consensus, and the "One-State Solution" that is popular in some radical circles. "Federation" sounds like a miracle: there will be both "two states for two peoples" and a single entity. Two in one, one in two.
THE WORD "federation" does not frighten me. On the contrary, I was already using it in this context 52 years ago.
On June 2, 1957, my magazine, Haolam Hazeh, published the first detailed plan for an independent Palestinian state that would come into being next to Israel. The West Bank was then under Jordanian and the Gaza Strip under Egyptian occupation. I proposed helping the Palestinians to get rid of the occupiers. According to the plan, the two states, the Israeli and the Palestinian, would then establish a federation. I thought that its proper name should be "the Jordan Union".
A year later, on September 1, 1958, there appeared a document called "the Hebrew Manifesto". I am proud of my part in its composition. It was a comprehensive plan for a fundamental change of the State of Israel in all its aspects – a kind of complete overhaul. In its readiness to re-examine the fundamentals of the state and in the depth of the thinking involved, it has no parallel from the founding of Israel to this very day. Among its authors were Nathan Yellin-Mor, the ex-chief of the Stern Group, Boaz Evron, Amos Kenan and several others.
I was responsible for the chapter on Israeli-Arab peace. It proposed that a sovereign Palestinian state would be set up next to Israel, and that the two states would establish a federation, which would gradually assume more and more jurisdiction. I had to invent a Hebrew word to replace the foreign term "federation": "Ugda" (grouping) and suggested that it should be called "the Jordan Federation" - "Ugdat ha-Yarden" in Hebrew and "Ittihad al-Urdun" in Arabic. (To my sorrow, this use the term "Ugda" did not take root. Instead, the army adopted it for a division, which is a grouping of regiments or brigades.)
On the morrow of the Six-Day War, after which the entire country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan was under the control of the Israeli army, a new political movement called "Israel-Palestine Federation" called for the immediate creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel. The founders were, more or less, the same people who had composed the "Hebrew Manifesto".
When this historic opportunity was missed and with the occupation becoming gradually more and more oppressive, I abandoned the use of the term federation. I sensed that it frightened both parties. Israelis were afraid that the word covered a plot to establish a bi-national state – an idea that is rejected by the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis. Palestinians were afraid that it would serve as a disguise for a permanent Israeli occupation.
It should be remembered that the original partition plan adopted by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947, did envision a kind of federation, without using the term. It provided for the establishment of a Jewish state and an Arab state, and a separate entity of Jerusalem, administered by the UN. All these entities were to be parts of an economic union that would cover customs, the currency, railways, post, ports, airports and more. This would have, in practice, amounted to a federation.
THE MAIN problem with the word "federation" is that it has no agreed and binding definition. In different parts of the world, it describes wildly different regimes. The same is true for "confederacy".
No two countries in the world resemble each other completely, and no two federations are the same. Every state and every federation has been shaped by its particular historical development and specific circumstances, and reflects the people that created it.
The word "federation" is derived from the Latin "foedus", treaty. Basically, a federation is a pact between different states which decide to unite on agreed terms. The USA is a federation, and so is Russia. What do the two have in common?
The United States is, theoretically, a voluntary association of states. The states have many rights, but the federation is headed by a single president with immense powers. In practice, this is one state. When in 1860 the Southern states tried to secede and set up a "confederacy" of their own, the North crushed the "rebellion" in a brutal civil war. Every morning, millions of pupils in the United States swear allegiance to the flag and to "One Nation Under God".
Russia, too, is officially a federation, but their use of the term has a very different content. Moscow appoints the governors of the provinces, and Vladimir Putin rules the country as a personal fief. When Chechnya tried to secede from the "Russian Federation", it was crushed even more brutally than the confederacy in the American civil war. (This does not hinder Putin from supporting two seceding provinces of neighboring Georgia.)
Germany defines itself as a "federal republic ("Bundesrepublik"). It is composed of "Länder" that enjoy a large measure of autonomy. Switzerland calls itself a confederation in French and Italian ("Eidgenossenschaft" or "Oath Association" in German) and its cantons enjoy their autonomy. But it is also a very unified country.
It is generally supposd that a "federation" is a tighter association, while a "confederacy" is a looser one. But in reality, these differences are very blurred. It seems that Americans and Russians, Germans and Swiss, identify themselves first of all with their united state, not with their own particular province. (Except for the Bavarians, of course.)
The new Europe is for all practical purposes a confederacy, but its founders did not name it thus. They chose the less definite "European Union". Why? Perhaps they thought that terms like "federation" and "confederacy" were outdated. Perhaps they considered such terms too binding. The term "union" does not commit its members to anything specific, and they can fill it with whatever content they all agree on and change it from time to time. If the "Lisbon agreement" is finally ratified, the union will change again.
IT MAKES no sense, therefore, to discuss the idea of an Israeli-Palestinian "federation" in general terms, without defining right from the beginning what is meant by this. The same word, used by different people, can express completely different and even contradictory intentions.
For example: I recently saw a plan for a federation here in which every person would have the right to settle anywhere in either state while holding the citizenship of one of them. I can hardly imagine that many Israelis or Palestinians would embrace that. The Israelis would be afraid that the Arabs would soon constitute the majority within Israel, and the Palestinians would worry that Israeli settlers would take possession of every hilltop between the sea and the Jordan.
In any discussion of federation, the matter of immigration looms large as an ominous bone of contention. Would millions of Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to Israeli territory? Would millions of Jewish immigrants be allowed to submerge the State of Palestine?
The same is true for the matter of residence. Could a citizen of Palestine settle in Haifa, and an Israeli citizen in Nablus, as a Pole can now settle in France, a New Yorker in Miami, an inhabitant of canton Zurich in canton Uri?
EACH ONE of us who considers the idea of federation must decide what he or she wants. To draw up a beautiful plan on paper, which has no chance at all of being realized because it ignores the aspirations of both "partners" - or to think in practical terms about real options?
In practice, a federation can come about only on the basis of a free agreement between the two parties. This means that it can be realized only if both – Israelis and Palestinians – consider it as advantageous to themselves and compatible with their national aspirations.
In my opinion, a practical way to realize the idea could look like this:
Stage 1: A sovereign Palestinian state must come into being. This must precede everything else. The occupation must end and Israel must withdraw to the Green Line (with possible mutually agreed swaps of territory.) That goes for Jerusalem, too.
Stage 2: The two states establish a pattern of fair relations between them and get used to living side by side. There will be a need for real steps towards reconciliation and the healing of the wounds of the past. (For example: the creation of a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" on the South African model.) On the practical level, fair arrangements of matters like movement between the two states, the division of water resources etc. are put into place.
Stage 3: The two states start negotiations for the establishment of joint institutions. For example: the opening of the border between them for the free movement of people and goods, an economic union, a joint currency, a customs envelope, the use of ports and airports, coordination of foreign relations, and so on. There will be no automatic right for citizens of one state to settle in the other. Each state will decide for itself on its immigration policy.
The two parties can jointly decide whether to invite Jordan as a third partner to the proposed treaty.
Such a negotiation can succeed only if the population in each of the partner states is convinced that the partnership will bring it positive benefits. Since Israel is the stronger economically and technologically, it must be ready to make generous proposals.
Stage 4: The more trust between the parties develops, the easier it will be to deepen the partnership and to widen the powers of the joint institutions.
Perhaps, at this stage, conditions may be ripe for the founding of a wider association of the entire region, on the lines of the European Union. Such an association may include the Arab states, Israel, Turkey and Iran. The name I suggested for it in the past was "Semitic Union". (Turks and Iranians are not linguistically "Semitic" nations, but Islam is a Semitic religion and plays a major role in their culture.)
This is a vision for the future, and it can be realized. To paraphrase Barack Obama’s slogan, even if it has lost some of its luster: Yes, we can!
permlink: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1258646087/
data & Daily updated occupation related reading
http://www.kibush.co.il
http://www.btselem.org
http://www.ochaopt.org
If instead of daily looking at websites you prefer to receive a weekly selection by email
subscribe to TOI-Billboard
by writing in the subject line
"Send me TOI" to: mhtml:%7BAFAE16F9-BE05-4577-8087-8D08CA43582C%7Dmid://00000008/!x-usc:mailto:otherisr@actcom.co.il
Most recent issue at http://toibillboard.info
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gush Shalom email address for correspondence, also if you want to (un)subscribe
correspondence @ gush - shalom . org
(without the spaces!)
Address for contributions:
GUSH SHALOM p.o.b. 3322 Tel Aviv 61033
www.gush-shalom.org
Truth / Правда / אמת / حقيقة
English website http://zope.gush-shalom.org/index_en.html
Статьи Ури Авнери http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/ru/avnery
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/index_he.html אתר בעברית
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/ar/avnery اوري افنيري
A la compañía Ahavah
Press release
Gush Shalom to Ahava directors: read the writing on the wall – get out of the Occupied Territories
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/press_releases/1258534724
Ad in Ha'aretz, Nov. 20 20 09
We shallWelcomeThe declarationOf theFreeState ofPalestine
weekly ads archive
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/weekly_ad
en hebreo
גוש שלום לחברת "אהבה" – קראו את הכתובת על הקיר, צאו מהשטחים הכבושיםhttp://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/press_releases/1258449948מודעה ב"הארץ" 20 בנובםבראנחנונק דם בברכה את ההכרזה על הקמת מדינת פלסטין החופשיתארכיון מודעות: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/weekly_ad
~~~
Uri Avnery
Federation? Why NotTHESE DAYS mark the 5th anniversary of the murder of Yasser Arafat, and bring back to me our last conversation
Full English text in the end
Avnery columns' archive
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery
~~~
Fanatics and the army & the ease of dismantling settlements
On Adam's blog: http://adam-keller2.blogspot.com
אורי אבנרי
פדרציה? למה לא?בימים אלה מלאו חמש שנים להירצחו של יאסר ערפאת, ואני שב ונזכר דווקא בשיחתנו האחרונה,
טכסט מלא http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery/1258646305
ארכיון מאמרים http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery
~~~
המורעלים והצבא ואיך בכל זאת לפרק את ההתנחלויות
בבלוג של אדם : http://adam-keller1.blogspot.com
Uri Avnery21.11.09
Federation? Why Not?
THESE DAYS mark the 5th anniversary of the murder of Yasser Arafat, and bring back to me our last conversation in his Ramallah compound, a few weeks before his death. It was he who brought up the idea of a threefold federation – Israel, Palestine and Jordan. "And perhaps Lebanon, too. Why not?" – the same as he did at our very first meeting, in Beirut, July 1982, in the middle of the battle. He mentioned the term Benelux – the pact between Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg that predated the European Union.
Lately, the term "federation" has come into fashion again. Some people believe that it can serve as a kind of compromise between the "Two-State Solution", now a world-wide consensus, and the "One-State Solution" that is popular in some radical circles. "Federation" sounds like a miracle: there will be both "two states for two peoples" and a single entity. Two in one, one in two.
THE WORD "federation" does not frighten me. On the contrary, I was already using it in this context 52 years ago.
On June 2, 1957, my magazine, Haolam Hazeh, published the first detailed plan for an independent Palestinian state that would come into being next to Israel. The West Bank was then under Jordanian and the Gaza Strip under Egyptian occupation. I proposed helping the Palestinians to get rid of the occupiers. According to the plan, the two states, the Israeli and the Palestinian, would then establish a federation. I thought that its proper name should be "the Jordan Union".
A year later, on September 1, 1958, there appeared a document called "the Hebrew Manifesto". I am proud of my part in its composition. It was a comprehensive plan for a fundamental change of the State of Israel in all its aspects – a kind of complete overhaul. In its readiness to re-examine the fundamentals of the state and in the depth of the thinking involved, it has no parallel from the founding of Israel to this very day. Among its authors were Nathan Yellin-Mor, the ex-chief of the Stern Group, Boaz Evron, Amos Kenan and several others.
I was responsible for the chapter on Israeli-Arab peace. It proposed that a sovereign Palestinian state would be set up next to Israel, and that the two states would establish a federation, which would gradually assume more and more jurisdiction. I had to invent a Hebrew word to replace the foreign term "federation": "Ugda" (grouping) and suggested that it should be called "the Jordan Federation" - "Ugdat ha-Yarden" in Hebrew and "Ittihad al-Urdun" in Arabic. (To my sorrow, this use the term "Ugda" did not take root. Instead, the army adopted it for a division, which is a grouping of regiments or brigades.)
On the morrow of the Six-Day War, after which the entire country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan was under the control of the Israeli army, a new political movement called "Israel-Palestine Federation" called for the immediate creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel. The founders were, more or less, the same people who had composed the "Hebrew Manifesto".
When this historic opportunity was missed and with the occupation becoming gradually more and more oppressive, I abandoned the use of the term federation. I sensed that it frightened both parties. Israelis were afraid that the word covered a plot to establish a bi-national state – an idea that is rejected by the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis. Palestinians were afraid that it would serve as a disguise for a permanent Israeli occupation.
It should be remembered that the original partition plan adopted by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947, did envision a kind of federation, without using the term. It provided for the establishment of a Jewish state and an Arab state, and a separate entity of Jerusalem, administered by the UN. All these entities were to be parts of an economic union that would cover customs, the currency, railways, post, ports, airports and more. This would have, in practice, amounted to a federation.
THE MAIN problem with the word "federation" is that it has no agreed and binding definition. In different parts of the world, it describes wildly different regimes. The same is true for "confederacy".
No two countries in the world resemble each other completely, and no two federations are the same. Every state and every federation has been shaped by its particular historical development and specific circumstances, and reflects the people that created it.
The word "federation" is derived from the Latin "foedus", treaty. Basically, a federation is a pact between different states which decide to unite on agreed terms. The USA is a federation, and so is Russia. What do the two have in common?
The United States is, theoretically, a voluntary association of states. The states have many rights, but the federation is headed by a single president with immense powers. In practice, this is one state. When in 1860 the Southern states tried to secede and set up a "confederacy" of their own, the North crushed the "rebellion" in a brutal civil war. Every morning, millions of pupils in the United States swear allegiance to the flag and to "One Nation Under God".
Russia, too, is officially a federation, but their use of the term has a very different content. Moscow appoints the governors of the provinces, and Vladimir Putin rules the country as a personal fief. When Chechnya tried to secede from the "Russian Federation", it was crushed even more brutally than the confederacy in the American civil war. (This does not hinder Putin from supporting two seceding provinces of neighboring Georgia.)
Germany defines itself as a "federal republic ("Bundesrepublik"). It is composed of "Länder" that enjoy a large measure of autonomy. Switzerland calls itself a confederation in French and Italian ("Eidgenossenschaft" or "Oath Association" in German) and its cantons enjoy their autonomy. But it is also a very unified country.
It is generally supposd that a "federation" is a tighter association, while a "confederacy" is a looser one. But in reality, these differences are very blurred. It seems that Americans and Russians, Germans and Swiss, identify themselves first of all with their united state, not with their own particular province. (Except for the Bavarians, of course.)
The new Europe is for all practical purposes a confederacy, but its founders did not name it thus. They chose the less definite "European Union". Why? Perhaps they thought that terms like "federation" and "confederacy" were outdated. Perhaps they considered such terms too binding. The term "union" does not commit its members to anything specific, and they can fill it with whatever content they all agree on and change it from time to time. If the "Lisbon agreement" is finally ratified, the union will change again.
IT MAKES no sense, therefore, to discuss the idea of an Israeli-Palestinian "federation" in general terms, without defining right from the beginning what is meant by this. The same word, used by different people, can express completely different and even contradictory intentions.
For example: I recently saw a plan for a federation here in which every person would have the right to settle anywhere in either state while holding the citizenship of one of them. I can hardly imagine that many Israelis or Palestinians would embrace that. The Israelis would be afraid that the Arabs would soon constitute the majority within Israel, and the Palestinians would worry that Israeli settlers would take possession of every hilltop between the sea and the Jordan.
In any discussion of federation, the matter of immigration looms large as an ominous bone of contention. Would millions of Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to Israeli territory? Would millions of Jewish immigrants be allowed to submerge the State of Palestine?
The same is true for the matter of residence. Could a citizen of Palestine settle in Haifa, and an Israeli citizen in Nablus, as a Pole can now settle in France, a New Yorker in Miami, an inhabitant of canton Zurich in canton Uri?
EACH ONE of us who considers the idea of federation must decide what he or she wants. To draw up a beautiful plan on paper, which has no chance at all of being realized because it ignores the aspirations of both "partners" - or to think in practical terms about real options?
In practice, a federation can come about only on the basis of a free agreement between the two parties. This means that it can be realized only if both – Israelis and Palestinians – consider it as advantageous to themselves and compatible with their national aspirations.
In my opinion, a practical way to realize the idea could look like this:
Stage 1: A sovereign Palestinian state must come into being. This must precede everything else. The occupation must end and Israel must withdraw to the Green Line (with possible mutually agreed swaps of territory.) That goes for Jerusalem, too.
Stage 2: The two states establish a pattern of fair relations between them and get used to living side by side. There will be a need for real steps towards reconciliation and the healing of the wounds of the past. (For example: the creation of a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" on the South African model.) On the practical level, fair arrangements of matters like movement between the two states, the division of water resources etc. are put into place.
Stage 3: The two states start negotiations for the establishment of joint institutions. For example: the opening of the border between them for the free movement of people and goods, an economic union, a joint currency, a customs envelope, the use of ports and airports, coordination of foreign relations, and so on. There will be no automatic right for citizens of one state to settle in the other. Each state will decide for itself on its immigration policy.
The two parties can jointly decide whether to invite Jordan as a third partner to the proposed treaty.
Such a negotiation can succeed only if the population in each of the partner states is convinced that the partnership will bring it positive benefits. Since Israel is the stronger economically and technologically, it must be ready to make generous proposals.
Stage 4: The more trust between the parties develops, the easier it will be to deepen the partnership and to widen the powers of the joint institutions.
Perhaps, at this stage, conditions may be ripe for the founding of a wider association of the entire region, on the lines of the European Union. Such an association may include the Arab states, Israel, Turkey and Iran. The name I suggested for it in the past was "Semitic Union". (Turks and Iranians are not linguistically "Semitic" nations, but Islam is a Semitic religion and plays a major role in their culture.)
This is a vision for the future, and it can be realized. To paraphrase Barack Obama’s slogan, even if it has lost some of its luster: Yes, we can!
permlink: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1258646087/
data & Daily updated occupation related reading
http://www.kibush.co.il
http://www.btselem.org
http://www.ochaopt.org
If instead of daily looking at websites you prefer to receive a weekly selection by email
subscribe to TOI-Billboard
by writing in the subject line
"Send me TOI" to: mhtml:%7BAFAE16F9-BE05-4577-8087-8D08CA43582C%7Dmid://00000008/!x-usc:mailto:otherisr@actcom.co.il
Most recent issue at http://toibillboard.info
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gush Shalom email address for correspondence, also if you want to (un)subscribe
correspondence @ gush - shalom . org
(without the spaces!)
Address for contributions:
GUSH SHALOM p.o.b. 3322 Tel Aviv 61033
sábado, 21 de noviembre de 2009
Mahmud Darwish - Tengo la sabiduría del condenado a muerte
Trad. del árabe: María Luisa Prieto
Tengo la sabiduría del condenado a muerte:
No tengo cosas que me posean.
He escrito mi testamento con mi sangre:
“¡Confiad en el agua, moradores de mis canciones!”.
He dormido ensangrentado y coronado con mi mañana...
He soñado que el corazón de la tierra era mayor que
Su mapa
Y más claro que sus espejos y mi cadalso.
He creído que una nube blanca me
Ascendía,
Como si yo fuera una abubilla con el viento por alas.
Y al alba, la llamada del sereno
Me despierta de mi sueño y de mi lenguaje:
Vivirás en otro cadáver.
Modifica tu último testamento.
Se ha retrasado la fecha de la segunda ejecución.
¿Hasta cuándo?, pregunto.
Esperaré a que mueras más.
No tengo cosas que me posean, respondo,
He escrito mi testamento con mi sangre:
“¡Confiad en el agua,
moradores de mis canciones!”
Y yo, aunque fuera el último,
Encontraría las palabras suficientes...
Cada poema es un cuadro.
Pintaré ahora para las golondrinas
El mapa de la primavera,
para los que pasan por la acera, el azufaifo
y para las mujeres el lapislázuli...
El camino me llevará
Y yo le llevaré a hombros
Hasta que las cosas recobren su imagen
Verdadera,
Luego oiré lo genuino:
Cada poema es una madre
Que busca a su hijo en las nubes,
Cerca del pozo de agua.
“Hijo, te daré el relevo.
Estoy encinta”.
Cada poema es un sueño.
He soñado que soñaba.
Me llevará y le llevaré
Hasta que escriba la última línea
En el mármol de la tumba:
“Me he dormido para volar”.
Y llevaré al Mesías zapatos de invierno
Para que camine como los demás
Desde lo alto de la montaña hasta el lago.
(Publicado en el periódico Al-Hayat el 31-X-2003)
Tengo la sabiduría del condenado a muerte:
No tengo cosas que me posean.
He escrito mi testamento con mi sangre:
“¡Confiad en el agua, moradores de mis canciones!”.
He dormido ensangrentado y coronado con mi mañana...
He soñado que el corazón de la tierra era mayor que
Su mapa
Y más claro que sus espejos y mi cadalso.
He creído que una nube blanca me
Ascendía,
Como si yo fuera una abubilla con el viento por alas.
Y al alba, la llamada del sereno
Me despierta de mi sueño y de mi lenguaje:
Vivirás en otro cadáver.
Modifica tu último testamento.
Se ha retrasado la fecha de la segunda ejecución.
¿Hasta cuándo?, pregunto.
Esperaré a que mueras más.
No tengo cosas que me posean, respondo,
He escrito mi testamento con mi sangre:
“¡Confiad en el agua,
moradores de mis canciones!”
Y yo, aunque fuera el último,
Encontraría las palabras suficientes...
Cada poema es un cuadro.
Pintaré ahora para las golondrinas
El mapa de la primavera,
para los que pasan por la acera, el azufaifo
y para las mujeres el lapislázuli...
El camino me llevará
Y yo le llevaré a hombros
Hasta que las cosas recobren su imagen
Verdadera,
Luego oiré lo genuino:
Cada poema es una madre
Que busca a su hijo en las nubes,
Cerca del pozo de agua.
“Hijo, te daré el relevo.
Estoy encinta”.
Cada poema es un sueño.
He soñado que soñaba.
Me llevará y le llevaré
Hasta que escriba la última línea
En el mármol de la tumba:
“Me he dormido para volar”.
Y llevaré al Mesías zapatos de invierno
Para que camine como los demás
Desde lo alto de la montaña hasta el lago.
(Publicado en el periódico Al-Hayat el 31-X-2003)
domingo, 15 de noviembre de 2009
Noticias de Gush Shalom y un artículo de Uri Avnery
Gracias a Eduardo Mosches por el envío.
Ad in Ha'aretz, Nov. 13, 20 09
Netanyahu has come backFrom WashingtonWithout any worriesNO settlement freezeAnd thereforeNO partnerNO threat toThe Government coalition
weekly ads archive
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/weekly_ad
~~~
Uri Avnery
Scoundrel With PermissionWHEN THE TV news starts with a murder, people are relieved
Full English text in the end
Avnery columns' archive
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery
~~~
A MATTER OF LEGITIMACY
by Adam Keller and Beate Zilversmidt
Other countries may be able to remain contemptuous and uncaring when the world casts them in the role of a brutal Goliath, Israel just can't afford it
Read more ... http://toibillboard.info/144lead.htm
in 'The Other Israel' November online
~~~~
Adam's blog: http://adam-keller2.blogspot.com
מודעה ב"הארץ" 13 בנובםבר
נתניהו חזר מוושינגטון –אין לו עוד דאגות:אין הקפאת התנחלויותולכן גםאין שותף,אין איוםעל שלמות הקואליציה.
ארכיון צודעות: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/weekly_ad
~~~
אורי אבנרי
נבל ברשות התורהכאשר מהדורת החדשות בטלוויזיה נפתחת בידיעה על רצח, נושמים בישראל
טכסט מלא http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery/1258253168
ארכיון מאמרים http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery
~~~
.
הבלוג של אדם : http://adam-keller1.blogspot.com
Uri Avnery14.11.09
Scoundrel With Permission
WHEN THE TV news starts with a murder, people are relieved.
This means that no war has broken out, no suicide bomb has exploded, no Qassam rocket has been launched at Sderot. Ahmadinejad has not test-fired a new missile that can reach Tel Aviv. Just another murder.
Not that Israel is the world’s murder capital. We shall have to work much harder to reach the heights of New York or Moscow, not to mention Johannesburg. Statistics even show our murder rate is declining.
But lately Israel has been shocked by a series of exceptionally brutal murders. A husband took revenge on his wife by killing his little daughter and burying her in a forest. A man who lived with the wife of his son killed her daughter, his own granddaughter, put her little body in a suitcase and threw it into Tel Aviv’s Yarkon river. A son who quarreled with his wife killed her and her mother, cut up both bodies and dispersed the parts in garbage bins. A young man who had a quarrel with his mother killed her, and then went off to kill his brother, too. A man in his 70s killed his wife in her sleep with a hammer.
In recent weeks, there were two cases that trumped even these atrocities.
Damian Karlik, an immigrant from Russia who worked as head waiter in a Russian restaurant, was dismissed for theft and decided to take revenge on the owners, Russian immigrants like him. He went to their apartment and stabbed to death six people, one after another – the owner and his wife, their son and his wife and their two small grandchildren.
An immigrant from the US called Jack Teitel, an inhabitant of one of the most extreme West Bank settlements, has now confessed to the killing some years ago of two random Palestinians. He returned briefly to America, and, after coming back, put bombs into police cars. Why? Because the police were protecting gays and lesbians. He is also suspected of killing two traffic policemen for the same reason. He also claimed responsibility for the mass killing of gays in a Tel Aviv club (though that may be empty bragging). He planted a bomb in the home of some Messianic Jews (Jews who regard Jesus as the Messiah) and grievously injured a 15-year-old. He tried to kill the leftist professor Ze’ev Sternhell with another bomb which wounded him.
WHAT IS so special about these two cases is that they involved new immigrants who were allowed into Israel in spite of already being under investigation for crimes in their homelands.
The Law of Return accords every Jew the right to immigrate (“make Aliyah”) to Israel, where he or she automatically receives Israeli citizenship on arrival. But even according to this law, the Minister of the Interior can reject people suspected of serious crimes.
This makes the case of Karlik especially interesting. He was suspected in Russia of armed robbery, but the organization in charge of issuing Israeli immigration permits in Russia asserts that they did not know about it.
This organization, Nativ (“path”), was active in the Soviet Union as one of the Israeli secret services, like the Mossad and Shin Bet. Its particular job was to infiltrate Jewish communities and induce Jews to come to Israel.
Apart from this, Nativ was also engaged, of course, in espionage. It is no secret that for decades immigrants arriving from the Soviet Union were interrogated exhaustively by the Shin Bet about military, economic and other installations in their former homeland. The precious information thus gathered ensured Israel a high standing in the Western intelligence community.
After the collapse of the Communist regime, Nativ was to be disbanded, but like every threatened organization it fought for its life. It was decided to leave it intact and put it in charge of immigration to Israel from all the former Soviet republics.
The religious credentials of the immigrants interest Nativ much more than any criminal record they may have. It seems Nativ has no contacts with the Russian police, who probably suspect it of other activities.
Thus it happens that a person like Karlik, a man under investigation for robbery with violence, was found suitable for immigration. His ethnic pedigree was impeccable. After his arrival in Israel, the Russian authorities officially applied for his extradition for robbery, but the request was denied. The escaped robber was issued a license for a gun and allowed to work as a guard.
Teitel’s case is similar. True, in the US there is no Nativ, but the logic of those in charge of emigration to Israel is the same: to bring immigrants without asking unnecessary questions. According to religious law, a Jew remains a Jew even if he sins.
THESE AFFAIRS shine a spotlight on one of the guiding principles of the Zionist establishment: to bring Jews to Israel, whatever the price. Statistics must show that this year – or any other year – a record number of Jews have “made Aliyah”. In many communities, the bottom of the barrel is scraped in order to bring more Jews. Emissaries find “lost tribes” of Jews in Peru and Ethiopia, India and China.
In this situation, there is an understandable temptation to overlook the criminal past of would-be immigrants. So what if somebody, a kosher Jew, has robbed a bank or mistreated children? In Israel he will perhaps mend his ways. Or if somebody was put on trial abroad for illegal arms deals, money laundering and/or selling blood-stained diamonds – he is welcome, and if he brings his millions with him, the leaders of the state will be happy to be photographed in his company.
That is true, of course, only for an immigrant who is a Jew according to the Halakha (religious law). If he is a Goy, the story is quite different. That is the province of the leader of the Shas party, Eli Yishai.
IN THE present Israeli government there are several candidates for the title of Racist in Chief. An objective jury would be hard put to choose between them.
The favorite is the Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, a certified racist whose entire career in Israel is built on hatred towards Arabs and foreigners. It was he who appointed as Minister of Justice the kippa-wearing lawyer Ya’akov Ne’eman, who is now busily engaged in securing the all-important position of Legal Advisor to the Government (practically the Attorney General) for a judge educated in a Yeshiva (Orthodox school), who lives in one of the more extreme settlements and who has become notorious for several rightist judgments. Binyamin Netanyahu himself, of course, is also an excellent candidate.
But the King of Racists is the Minister of the Interior. He is more dangerous than his colleagues because he has absolute power over the civil status of every person in Israel, immigration and emigration, the Register of Residents and the expulsion of foreigners. In this position he is now doing to foreigners what others have done to Jews in many countries. He is untiring in his efforts to guard the real Israel – not the “Jewish and democratic state” as it is officially defined, but rather the “Jewish and demographic state”. For this purpose he has recently created a special para-police force for the detection and deportation of illegal foreigners.
It is difficult to decide whether Yishai is an extreme fanatic or a complete cynic, or some strange combination. As matter of fact, when Shas was still a moderate party, in those distant days when its guru, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, ruled that it is permissible to give back the occupied territories, and its former leader, Aryeh Deri, was the darling of the left, Yishai, too, declared “Yes to Oslo, Yes to the evacuation of Jews from Hebron, Yes to Arafat!” But since then much dirty water has flowed down our polluted rivers, Shas has turned into a radical right-wing party and Yishai is now the most extreme rightist in the government.
His unshakable devotion to the purity of the race arouses admiration. Hardly a day passes without some shocking news about his activites. He fights like a tiger for the expulsion of 1500 children of foreign workers who were born in Israel, who speak Hebrew and attend Israeli schools, who have no other homeland. Yishai is ready to lay down his life for their deportation.
The Interior Ministry prevents the entry of American and European citizens who bear Arab names. Officials of the UN and the EU in charge of projects for the Palestinians are normally unable to enter from Jordan (or anywhere else outside Israel), and if they somehow do obtain permission – they are then forbidden to cross the Green Line into Israel. Foreign women married to Israelis are expelled without mercy. There is no end to the examples.
In the eyes of Yishai, every son of a Thai is an enemy of the Jewish state, every daughter of a Colombian worker is a threat to the purity of the Jewish people. He has declared that the foreign workers are an “infection”, and warned that Tel Aviv is “becoming Africa”. He has disclosed that the foreigners carry frightening diseases, such as AIDS, tuberculosis and such. (And in this respect they resemble gays and lesbians, who, according to Yishai, are “sick people”.
Such a person would not remain a minister in the cabinet of the US or most European countries. In the homeland of the Nuremberg laws he would not even come close to a government position.
Recently, during the operation “Cast Lead”, Yishai demanded that we “bomb thousands of houses, to destroy Gaza” – which does not hinder him from denouncing Judge Richard Goldstone as an abominable anti-Semite. He himself, by the way, never risked his skin as a combat soldier – this national hero served as an NCO for religious services in a transport unit.
800 years ago, Rabbi Moshe Ben-Nahman, called Nahmanides, coined the phrase “Scoundrel with the permission of the Torah” - meaning a person who does despicable things which are not expressly forbidden in the Bible. I am not sure if even this appellation would fit Yishai, since the Bible forbids more than once the mistreatment of strangers – “Ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless and the widow” (Jer. 7:6), “He…loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment” (Deut. 10:18) and many other commandments to this effect.
BUT More important than Yishai himself is the phenomenon that he represents: the invocation of the demographic demon, which terrifies the country.
62 years after its foundation, the State of Israel is still living in fear of the “demographic danger”. It is afraid of its Arab citizens, and therefore discriminates against them in every sphere. It is afraid of the 400 thousand Russians who have come to this country with their Jewish relatives in accordance with the Law of Return, but whose mothers were not Jewish. Here is a built-in contradiction: while the Nativ operators are interested in maximizing the number of immigrants, Yishai and his people deny these very same immigrants the right to marry Jews or to be buried in Jewish graveyards. They serve in the army, but if they fall in action they cannot be buried next to their comrades.
Practically all Hebrew Israelis want a state with a Hebrew majority, where the Hebrew language, culture and tradition are cultivated. But many of us do not want a man-hunting, woman-hunting and child-hunting state, closed to asylum-seekers, where foreign workers who outstay their welcome must live in permanent fear, like our ancestors in the ghettoes.
In order to exorcise the demographic demon, my friends and I have applied to the courts and requested that the registration “Nation: Jewish” in the Ministry’s Register of Residents be replaced with “Nation: Israeli”. Our application was rejected by Judge Noam Solberg – the very same person the Minister of Justice is moving mountains to get appointed as Attorney General.
permlink: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1258253296
Ad in Ha'aretz, Nov. 13, 20 09
Netanyahu has come backFrom WashingtonWithout any worriesNO settlement freezeAnd thereforeNO partnerNO threat toThe Government coalition
weekly ads archive
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/weekly_ad
~~~
Uri Avnery
Scoundrel With PermissionWHEN THE TV news starts with a murder, people are relieved
Full English text in the end
Avnery columns' archive
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery
~~~
A MATTER OF LEGITIMACY
by Adam Keller and Beate Zilversmidt
Other countries may be able to remain contemptuous and uncaring when the world casts them in the role of a brutal Goliath, Israel just can't afford it
Read more ... http://toibillboard.info/144lead.htm
in 'The Other Israel' November online
~~~~
Adam's blog: http://adam-keller2.blogspot.com
מודעה ב"הארץ" 13 בנובםבר
נתניהו חזר מוושינגטון –אין לו עוד דאגות:אין הקפאת התנחלויותולכן גםאין שותף,אין איוםעל שלמות הקואליציה.
ארכיון צודעות: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/weekly_ad
~~~
אורי אבנרי
נבל ברשות התורהכאשר מהדורת החדשות בטלוויזיה נפתחת בידיעה על רצח, נושמים בישראל
טכסט מלא http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery/1258253168
ארכיון מאמרים http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery
~~~
.
הבלוג של אדם : http://adam-keller1.blogspot.com
Uri Avnery14.11.09
Scoundrel With Permission
WHEN THE TV news starts with a murder, people are relieved.
This means that no war has broken out, no suicide bomb has exploded, no Qassam rocket has been launched at Sderot. Ahmadinejad has not test-fired a new missile that can reach Tel Aviv. Just another murder.
Not that Israel is the world’s murder capital. We shall have to work much harder to reach the heights of New York or Moscow, not to mention Johannesburg. Statistics even show our murder rate is declining.
But lately Israel has been shocked by a series of exceptionally brutal murders. A husband took revenge on his wife by killing his little daughter and burying her in a forest. A man who lived with the wife of his son killed her daughter, his own granddaughter, put her little body in a suitcase and threw it into Tel Aviv’s Yarkon river. A son who quarreled with his wife killed her and her mother, cut up both bodies and dispersed the parts in garbage bins. A young man who had a quarrel with his mother killed her, and then went off to kill his brother, too. A man in his 70s killed his wife in her sleep with a hammer.
In recent weeks, there were two cases that trumped even these atrocities.
Damian Karlik, an immigrant from Russia who worked as head waiter in a Russian restaurant, was dismissed for theft and decided to take revenge on the owners, Russian immigrants like him. He went to their apartment and stabbed to death six people, one after another – the owner and his wife, their son and his wife and their two small grandchildren.
An immigrant from the US called Jack Teitel, an inhabitant of one of the most extreme West Bank settlements, has now confessed to the killing some years ago of two random Palestinians. He returned briefly to America, and, after coming back, put bombs into police cars. Why? Because the police were protecting gays and lesbians. He is also suspected of killing two traffic policemen for the same reason. He also claimed responsibility for the mass killing of gays in a Tel Aviv club (though that may be empty bragging). He planted a bomb in the home of some Messianic Jews (Jews who regard Jesus as the Messiah) and grievously injured a 15-year-old. He tried to kill the leftist professor Ze’ev Sternhell with another bomb which wounded him.
WHAT IS so special about these two cases is that they involved new immigrants who were allowed into Israel in spite of already being under investigation for crimes in their homelands.
The Law of Return accords every Jew the right to immigrate (“make Aliyah”) to Israel, where he or she automatically receives Israeli citizenship on arrival. But even according to this law, the Minister of the Interior can reject people suspected of serious crimes.
This makes the case of Karlik especially interesting. He was suspected in Russia of armed robbery, but the organization in charge of issuing Israeli immigration permits in Russia asserts that they did not know about it.
This organization, Nativ (“path”), was active in the Soviet Union as one of the Israeli secret services, like the Mossad and Shin Bet. Its particular job was to infiltrate Jewish communities and induce Jews to come to Israel.
Apart from this, Nativ was also engaged, of course, in espionage. It is no secret that for decades immigrants arriving from the Soviet Union were interrogated exhaustively by the Shin Bet about military, economic and other installations in their former homeland. The precious information thus gathered ensured Israel a high standing in the Western intelligence community.
After the collapse of the Communist regime, Nativ was to be disbanded, but like every threatened organization it fought for its life. It was decided to leave it intact and put it in charge of immigration to Israel from all the former Soviet republics.
The religious credentials of the immigrants interest Nativ much more than any criminal record they may have. It seems Nativ has no contacts with the Russian police, who probably suspect it of other activities.
Thus it happens that a person like Karlik, a man under investigation for robbery with violence, was found suitable for immigration. His ethnic pedigree was impeccable. After his arrival in Israel, the Russian authorities officially applied for his extradition for robbery, but the request was denied. The escaped robber was issued a license for a gun and allowed to work as a guard.
Teitel’s case is similar. True, in the US there is no Nativ, but the logic of those in charge of emigration to Israel is the same: to bring immigrants without asking unnecessary questions. According to religious law, a Jew remains a Jew even if he sins.
THESE AFFAIRS shine a spotlight on one of the guiding principles of the Zionist establishment: to bring Jews to Israel, whatever the price. Statistics must show that this year – or any other year – a record number of Jews have “made Aliyah”. In many communities, the bottom of the barrel is scraped in order to bring more Jews. Emissaries find “lost tribes” of Jews in Peru and Ethiopia, India and China.
In this situation, there is an understandable temptation to overlook the criminal past of would-be immigrants. So what if somebody, a kosher Jew, has robbed a bank or mistreated children? In Israel he will perhaps mend his ways. Or if somebody was put on trial abroad for illegal arms deals, money laundering and/or selling blood-stained diamonds – he is welcome, and if he brings his millions with him, the leaders of the state will be happy to be photographed in his company.
That is true, of course, only for an immigrant who is a Jew according to the Halakha (religious law). If he is a Goy, the story is quite different. That is the province of the leader of the Shas party, Eli Yishai.
IN THE present Israeli government there are several candidates for the title of Racist in Chief. An objective jury would be hard put to choose between them.
The favorite is the Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, a certified racist whose entire career in Israel is built on hatred towards Arabs and foreigners. It was he who appointed as Minister of Justice the kippa-wearing lawyer Ya’akov Ne’eman, who is now busily engaged in securing the all-important position of Legal Advisor to the Government (practically the Attorney General) for a judge educated in a Yeshiva (Orthodox school), who lives in one of the more extreme settlements and who has become notorious for several rightist judgments. Binyamin Netanyahu himself, of course, is also an excellent candidate.
But the King of Racists is the Minister of the Interior. He is more dangerous than his colleagues because he has absolute power over the civil status of every person in Israel, immigration and emigration, the Register of Residents and the expulsion of foreigners. In this position he is now doing to foreigners what others have done to Jews in many countries. He is untiring in his efforts to guard the real Israel – not the “Jewish and democratic state” as it is officially defined, but rather the “Jewish and demographic state”. For this purpose he has recently created a special para-police force for the detection and deportation of illegal foreigners.
It is difficult to decide whether Yishai is an extreme fanatic or a complete cynic, or some strange combination. As matter of fact, when Shas was still a moderate party, in those distant days when its guru, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, ruled that it is permissible to give back the occupied territories, and its former leader, Aryeh Deri, was the darling of the left, Yishai, too, declared “Yes to Oslo, Yes to the evacuation of Jews from Hebron, Yes to Arafat!” But since then much dirty water has flowed down our polluted rivers, Shas has turned into a radical right-wing party and Yishai is now the most extreme rightist in the government.
His unshakable devotion to the purity of the race arouses admiration. Hardly a day passes without some shocking news about his activites. He fights like a tiger for the expulsion of 1500 children of foreign workers who were born in Israel, who speak Hebrew and attend Israeli schools, who have no other homeland. Yishai is ready to lay down his life for their deportation.
The Interior Ministry prevents the entry of American and European citizens who bear Arab names. Officials of the UN and the EU in charge of projects for the Palestinians are normally unable to enter from Jordan (or anywhere else outside Israel), and if they somehow do obtain permission – they are then forbidden to cross the Green Line into Israel. Foreign women married to Israelis are expelled without mercy. There is no end to the examples.
In the eyes of Yishai, every son of a Thai is an enemy of the Jewish state, every daughter of a Colombian worker is a threat to the purity of the Jewish people. He has declared that the foreign workers are an “infection”, and warned that Tel Aviv is “becoming Africa”. He has disclosed that the foreigners carry frightening diseases, such as AIDS, tuberculosis and such. (And in this respect they resemble gays and lesbians, who, according to Yishai, are “sick people”.
Such a person would not remain a minister in the cabinet of the US or most European countries. In the homeland of the Nuremberg laws he would not even come close to a government position.
Recently, during the operation “Cast Lead”, Yishai demanded that we “bomb thousands of houses, to destroy Gaza” – which does not hinder him from denouncing Judge Richard Goldstone as an abominable anti-Semite. He himself, by the way, never risked his skin as a combat soldier – this national hero served as an NCO for religious services in a transport unit.
800 years ago, Rabbi Moshe Ben-Nahman, called Nahmanides, coined the phrase “Scoundrel with the permission of the Torah” - meaning a person who does despicable things which are not expressly forbidden in the Bible. I am not sure if even this appellation would fit Yishai, since the Bible forbids more than once the mistreatment of strangers – “Ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless and the widow” (Jer. 7:6), “He…loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment” (Deut. 10:18) and many other commandments to this effect.
BUT More important than Yishai himself is the phenomenon that he represents: the invocation of the demographic demon, which terrifies the country.
62 years after its foundation, the State of Israel is still living in fear of the “demographic danger”. It is afraid of its Arab citizens, and therefore discriminates against them in every sphere. It is afraid of the 400 thousand Russians who have come to this country with their Jewish relatives in accordance with the Law of Return, but whose mothers were not Jewish. Here is a built-in contradiction: while the Nativ operators are interested in maximizing the number of immigrants, Yishai and his people deny these very same immigrants the right to marry Jews or to be buried in Jewish graveyards. They serve in the army, but if they fall in action they cannot be buried next to their comrades.
Practically all Hebrew Israelis want a state with a Hebrew majority, where the Hebrew language, culture and tradition are cultivated. But many of us do not want a man-hunting, woman-hunting and child-hunting state, closed to asylum-seekers, where foreign workers who outstay their welcome must live in permanent fear, like our ancestors in the ghettoes.
In order to exorcise the demographic demon, my friends and I have applied to the courts and requested that the registration “Nation: Jewish” in the Ministry’s Register of Residents be replaced with “Nation: Israeli”. Our application was rejected by Judge Noam Solberg – the very same person the Minister of Justice is moving mountains to get appointed as Attorney General.
permlink: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1258253296
miércoles, 11 de noviembre de 2009
Mahmud Darwish - Cadáveres anónimos
Mahmud Darwish. “Cadáveres anónimos”
Trad. María Luisa Prieto
Cadáveres anónimos.
Ningún olvido los reúne,
Ningún recuerdo los separa…
Olvidados en la hierba invernal
Sobre la vía pública.
Entre dos largos relatos de bravura
Y sufrimiento.
“¡Yo soy la víctima!” “¡No. Yo soy
la única víctima!”. Ellos no replicaron:
“Una víctima no mata a otra.
Y en esta historia hay un asesino
Y una víctima”. Eran niños,
Recogían la nieve de los cipreses de Cristo
Y jugaban con los ángeles porque tenían
La misma edad... huían de la escuela
Para escapar de las matemáticas
Y la antigua poesía heroica. En las barreras,
Jugaban con los soldados
Al juego inocente de la muerte.
No les decían: dejad los fusiles
Y abrid las rutas para que la mariposa encuentre
A su madre cerca de la mañana,
Para que volemos con la mariposa
Fuera de los sueños, porque los sueños son estrechos
Para nuestras puertas. Eran niños,
Jugaban e inventaban un cuento para la rosa roja
Bajo la nieve, detrás de dos largos relatos
De bravura y sufrimiento.
Luego escapaban con los ángeles pequeños
Hacia un cielo límpido.
Trad. María Luisa Prieto
Cadáveres anónimos.
Ningún olvido los reúne,
Ningún recuerdo los separa…
Olvidados en la hierba invernal
Sobre la vía pública.
Entre dos largos relatos de bravura
Y sufrimiento.
“¡Yo soy la víctima!” “¡No. Yo soy
la única víctima!”. Ellos no replicaron:
“Una víctima no mata a otra.
Y en esta historia hay un asesino
Y una víctima”. Eran niños,
Recogían la nieve de los cipreses de Cristo
Y jugaban con los ángeles porque tenían
La misma edad... huían de la escuela
Para escapar de las matemáticas
Y la antigua poesía heroica. En las barreras,
Jugaban con los soldados
Al juego inocente de la muerte.
No les decían: dejad los fusiles
Y abrid las rutas para que la mariposa encuentre
A su madre cerca de la mañana,
Para que volemos con la mariposa
Fuera de los sueños, porque los sueños son estrechos
Para nuestras puertas. Eran niños,
Jugaban e inventaban un cuento para la rosa roja
Bajo la nieve, detrás de dos largos relatos
De bravura y sufrimiento.
Luego escapaban con los ángeles pequeños
Hacia un cielo límpido.
lunes, 9 de noviembre de 2009
IV Muestra de Derechos Humanos y cine invisible Ad Hocs, 2009
Están todos invitados del miércoles al sábado. El viernes 13 a las 16 hrs. se proyectarán los siguientes documentales "invisibilizados":Ø “Lo que Israel no quiere que veamos”. Jon Sistiaga. Reportajes Cuatro, España, 2008, 45 min.
Ø “Compensaciones por el horror”. Ochenta mil supervivientes del holocausto viven en condiciones de miseria en Israel. Guy Merzo y Orly Vilnai. Producciones Shamaim y Content, Israel, 2008. 50 min.
Ø Escuelas mixtas de palestinos y judíos. “Bridge over the wadi”, Heyman Brothers Films. 2006. 50 min.
Ø Abusos sexuales y el Vaticano, Up Roar for BBC, 2006. Reino Unido, 50 min.
Noticias de Gush Shalom: Avnery sobre Abbas y Obama, algo sobre el contrabando de armas y más sobre Teitel
Gracias a Eduardo Mosches por el envío.
Ad in Ha'aretz, Nov. 6, 20 09
Weeds
The police announced proudlyThe capture of theSettler-terrorist Ja’acov Teitel
full text: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/weekly_ad/1257415995
~~~
Uri Avnery
A Line in the Sand
MAHMOUD ABBAS is fed up. The day before yesterday he withdrew his candidacy for the coming presidential election in... Full English text in the end
Avnery columns' archive
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery
~~~
The arms smugglers of the State of Israel need not hide, need not put civilian cargoes in front for camouflage or raise all kinds of flags of convenience. Everything is perfectly legalat Adam's blog: http://adam-keller2.blogspot.com
מודעה ב"הארץ" 6 בנובםבר
עשבים שוטיםהמשטרה הודיעה בגאווהעל לכידת המתנחל המחבליעקב טייטל....
טכסט מלא: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/weekly_ad/1257416082
~~~
אורי אבנרי
קו בחוללאבו-מאזן נמאס. שלשום הודיע שלא יציג את מועמדותו מחדש לתפקיד נשיא הרשות הפלסטינית.אני מבין לנפשו.הוא מרגיש שבגדו... טכסט מלא
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery/1257655802
ארכיון מאמרים של אורי אבנרי
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery
~~~
מבריחי הנשק של מדינת ישראל לא צריכים להסתתר, לא צריכים להחביא מאחורי מטען אזרחי ולהניף כל מיני דגלים. הכל חוקי לחלוטין.
בבלוג של אדם : http://adam-keller1.blogspot.com
Ad in Ha'aretz, Nov. 6, 20 09
Weeds
The police announced proudlyThe capture of theSettler-terrorist Ja’acov Teitel
full text: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/weekly_ad/1257415995
~~~
Uri Avnery
A Line in the Sand
MAHMOUD ABBAS is fed up. The day before yesterday he withdrew his candidacy for the coming presidential election in... Full English text in the end
Avnery columns' archive
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery
~~~
The arms smugglers of the State of Israel need not hide, need not put civilian cargoes in front for camouflage or raise all kinds of flags of convenience. Everything is perfectly legalat Adam's blog: http://adam-keller2.blogspot.com
מודעה ב"הארץ" 6 בנובםבר
עשבים שוטיםהמשטרה הודיעה בגאווהעל לכידת המתנחל המחבליעקב טייטל....
טכסט מלא: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/weekly_ad/1257416082
~~~
אורי אבנרי
קו בחוללאבו-מאזן נמאס. שלשום הודיע שלא יציג את מועמדותו מחדש לתפקיד נשיא הרשות הפלסטינית.אני מבין לנפשו.הוא מרגיש שבגדו... טכסט מלא
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery/1257655802
ארכיון מאמרים של אורי אבנרי
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery
~~~
מבריחי הנשק של מדינת ישראל לא צריכים להסתתר, לא צריכים להחביא מאחורי מטען אזרחי ולהניף כל מיני דגלים. הכל חוקי לחלוטין.
בבלוג של אדם : http://adam-keller1.blogspot.com
sábado, 7 de noviembre de 2009
El invierno que se avecina en Gaza: apoyo de Carter al informe Goldstone
Gracias a Néstor Braunstein por el envío.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/opinion/06iht-edcarter.html?ref=global
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/opinion/06iht-edcarter.html?ref=global
lunes, 2 de noviembre de 2009
Gush shalom... un ejército que tiene un Estado
Gracias a Eduardo Mosches por el envío
www.gush-shalom.org
Truth / Правда / אמת / حقيقة
English website http://zope.gush-shalom.org/index_en.html
Статьи Ури Авнери http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/ru/avnery
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/index_he.html אתר בעברית
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/ar/avnery اوري افنيري
Un ejército que tiene un Estado
Ad in Ha'aretz, Oct. 30, 20 09
AN ARMY THAT HAS A STATE
full text
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/weekly_ad/1256851918
מודעה ב"הארץ"30 באוקטובר צבא שיש לו מדינהטכסט מלא: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/weekly_ad/1256852200
~~~
Uri Avnery sobre Rabin
Uri Avnery
Count Me OutA YEAR before the Oslo agreement, I had a meeting with Yasser Arafat in Tunis. He was full of curiosity about... Full English text in the end
Avnery columns' archive http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery
להיות שם? לא, תודה!
שנה לפני חתימת הסכם-אוסלו ביקרתי את יאסר ערפאת בתוניס. הוא היה מלא סקרנות כלפי אישיותו של יצחק רבין, ראש-
ממשלנו... טכסט מלא http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery/1257023553 ארכיון
מאמרים של אורי אבנרי http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery
~~~
Fire on the Mount
at Adam's blog: http://adam-keller2.blogspot.com
אש על ההר בבלוג של אדם : http://adam-keller1.blogspot.com
A REAL PEACE PROCESS
Gush Shalom addresses J Street
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/press_releases/1256851306
חדש בפורום
אכן יש ויש...צפירה יונתן על ... נחשו מיhttp://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/archive/1257003355
Uri Avnery31.10.09
Count Me Out
A YEAR before the Oslo agreement, I had a meeting with Yasser Arafat in Tunis. He was full of curiosity about Yitzhak Rabin, who had just been elected Prime Minister.
I described him as well as I could and ended with the words: "He is as honest as a politician can be."
Arafat broke into laughter, and all the others present, among them Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Abed-Rabbo, joined in.
FOR THE sake of proper disclosure: I always liked Rabin as a human being. I especially liked some traits of his.
First of all: his honesty. This is such a rare quality among politicians that it stood out like an oasis in the desert. His mouth and his heart were one, as far as is possible in political life. He did not lie when he could possibly avoid it.
He was a decent human being. Witness the "dollar affair": when his term as Israeli ambassador in Washington DC came to an end, his wife Leah left behind a bank account, contrary to Israeli law at the time. When it was discovered, he protected his wife by assuming personal responsibility. At the time, unlike today, "assuming responsibility" was not an empty phrase. He left the Prime Minister’s office.
I liked even his most evident personality trait – his introversion. He was withdrawn, with few human contacts. Not a fellow-well-met back slapper, not one for lavishing compliments, indeed an anti-politician.
Also, I liked the way he told people straight to the face what he thought of them. Some of his expressions, in juicy Hebrew, have become part of Israeli folklore. Such as "indefatigable intriguer" (about Shimon Peres), "propellers" (about the settlers, meaning electric fans which spin noisily without going anywhere), "garbage of weaklings" (about people leaving Israel for good).
He had no small talk. In every conversation, he came to the point right at the start.
His H
One might imagine that these characteristics would alienate people. Quite to the contrary, people were attracted to him because of them. In a world of pretentious, garrulous, mendacious, back-slapping politicians, he was a refreshing rarity.
MORE THAN anything else, I respected Rabin for his dramatic change of outlook at the age of 70. The man who had been a soldier since he was 18, who had fought Arabs all his life, suddenly became a peace-fighter. And not just a fighter for peace in general, but for peace with the Palestinian people, whose very existence had always been denied by the leaders of Israel.
The public memory, one of the most effective instruments of the establishment, is trying nowadays to obliterate this chapter. Throughout the country one can buy postcards showing Rabin shaking hands with King Hussein at the signing of the Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement, but it is almost impossible to find a card showing Rabin with Arafat at the Oslo agreement signing ceremony. Never happened.
As I have recounted before, I was an eye-witness to his inner revolution. >From 1969 on, until after the Oslo agreement, we had a running debate about the Palestinian issue - at the Washington embassy, at parties where we met casually (generally at the bar), in the Prime Minister’s office and at his private home.
In one 1969 conversation, he objected strenuously to any dealings with the Palestinians. One sentence imprinted itself upon my mind: "I want an open border, not a secure border" (a play of words in Hebrew). At the time, his former commander, Yigal Alon, was spreading the slogan "secure borders", in order to justify extensive annexations of occupied territory. Rabin wanted an open border between Israel and the West Bank, which he intended to give back to King Hussein. After this conversation, I wrote him that the border would be open only if there was a Palestinian state on the other side, because then the economic realities would compel both states – Israel and Palestine – to maintain close relations.
In 1975, after the start of my secret contacts with the PLO, I went to brief him (in accordance with the express wishes of the PLO). In the conversation that took place at the Prime Minister’s office, I tried to convince him to give up the "Jordanian option", which I had always considered silly. He refused adamantly. "We must make peace with Hussein," he told me. "After he has signed, I don’t care if the king is toppled." Like Shimon Peres and many others, he entertained the illusion that the king would give up East Jerusalem.
I told him that I could not follow the logic of this line of thought. Let’s imagine that the king signed and was then overthrown. What next? The PLO would take over a state extending from Tulkarm to the approaches of Baghdad, in which four Arab armies could easily assemble. Was that, I asked, what he wanted?
In this conversation, too, one sentence imprinted itself on my mind: "I will not take the smallest step towards the Palestinians, because the first step would lead inevitably to the creation of a Palestinian state, and I don’t want that." In the end he told me: "I oppose what you are doing, but I will not prevent you from meeting with them. If these meetings reveal things to you that you think the Israeli Prime Minister should know about, my door is open." That was Rabin all over. The contacts, of course, broke the law.
After that I brought him several messages from Arafat, conveyed to me by the PLO representative in London, Sa’id Hamami. Arafat proposed small mutual gestures. Rabin refused all of them.
Consequently I was all the more impressed by Oslo. Later Rabin explained to me, one Shabbat at his private apartment, how he arrived there: King Hussein had resigned his responsibility for the West Bank. The "village leagues", set up by Israel as pliant "representatives" of the Palestinians, were a dismal failure. As Minister of Defense he summoned local Palestinian leaders for individual consultations, and one after another they told him that their political address was in Tunis. After that, at the Madrid conference, Israel agreed to negotiate with a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, but then the Jordanians told them that all Palestinian matters must be discussed with the Palestinian members alone. But at every meeting, the Palestinian delegates asked for a pause in order to call Tunis and get instructions from Arafat. Rabin’s conclusion: if all decisions are made by Arafat anyhow, why not talk with him directly?
It has always been said that Rabin had an "analytical mind". He did not have much of an imagination, but he viewed facts soberly, analyzed them logically and drew his conclusions.
IF SO, why did the Oslo agreement fail?
The practical reasons are easy to see. From the beginning, the agreement was build on shaky foundations, because it lacked the main thing: a clear definition of the final objective of the process.
For Arafat it was self-evident that the agreed "interim stages" would lead to an independent Palestinian state in the whole of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with perhaps some minor exchanges of territory. East Jerusalem, including of course the Holy Shrines, was to become the capital of Palestine. The settlements would be dismantled. I am convinced that he would have been satisfied with a symbolic return of a limited number of refugees to Israel proper.
That was Arafat’s price for giving up 78% of the country, and no Palestinian leader, present or future, could be satisfied with less.
But Rabin’s aim was unclear, perhaps even to himself. At the time he was not yet ready to accept a Palestinian state. Absent an agreed destination, all the "interim phases" went awry. Every step caused new conflicts. (As I wrote at the time, when traveling from Paris to Berlin, one can stop at interim stations. When traveling from Paris to Madrid, one can also stop at interim stations - but they will be quite different ones.)
Arafat was conscious of the faults of the agreement. He told his people that it was "the best possible agreement in the worst possible circumstances". But he believed that the dynamics of the peace process would overcome the obstacles on the way. So did I. We were both wrong.
After the signing, Rabin began to hesitate. Instead of rushing forwards to create facts, he dithered. This gave the opposing forces in Israel time to recoup from the shock, regroup and start a counterattack, which ended in his assassination.
Perhaps this mistake could have been foreseen. Rabin was by nature a cautious person. He was conscious of the heavy responsibility that rested on his shoulders. He had no taste for drama, unlike Begin, nor was he blessed with a vivid imagination, like Herzl. For better and for worse, he lived in the real world. He had no idea how to change it, though he knew that he had to do just that.
BUT THESE explanations are only the foam upon the waves. Deep under the surface, powerful currents were at work. They pushed Rabin off course and in the end they swallowed him.
Rabin was a child of the classic Zionist ideology. He never rebelled against it. He carried in his body the genetic code of the Zionist movement, a movement whose aim from the beginning was to turn the Land of Israel into an exclusively Jewish state, which denied the very existence of the Arab Palestinian people and whose logic ultimately meant their displacement.
Like most of his generation in the country, he absorbed this ideology with his mother’s milk, and was raised on it throughout. It shaped his ideas so thoroughly that he was not even aware of it. At the critical juncture of his life, he fell victim to an insoluble inner contradiction: his analytical mind told him to make peace with the Palestinians, to "give up" a part of the country and to dismantle the settlements, while his Zionist genetic heritage opposed this with all its might. That manifested itself visibly at the Oslo agreement signing ceremony: he offered his hand to Arafat because his mind commanded it, but all his body language expressed rejection.
It is impossible to make peace without a basic mental and emotional commitment to peace. Impossible to change the direction of a historic movement without reassessing its history. Impossible for a leader to steer his people towards a total change (as Ataturk did in Turkey, for example) if he is not completely devoted to the change himself. Impossible to make peace with an enemy without understanding his truth.
Rabin’s inner convictions continued to evolve after Oslo. Between him and Arafat, mutual respect grew. Perhaps he would have arrived, in his slow and cautious way, at the necessary mental change. The assassin and his handlers must have been afraid of this and decided to forestall it.
Rabin’s failure will find its expression at the memorial rally next week at the very place where we witnessed his murder, 14 years ago. The main speakers will be two of the gravediggers of the Oslo agreement, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak, as well as Tzipi Livni and Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who belonged to the forces that created the climate for the murder. Rabin, I assume, will turn in his grave.
Will I be there? Not me, thank you very much.
permlink: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1257023364
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www.gush-shalom.org
Truth / Правда / אמת / حقيقة
English website http://zope.gush-shalom.org/index_en.html
Статьи Ури Авнери http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/ru/avnery
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/index_he.html אתר בעברית
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/ar/avnery اوري افنيري
Un ejército que tiene un Estado
Ad in Ha'aretz, Oct. 30, 20 09
AN ARMY THAT HAS A STATE
full text
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/weekly_ad/1256851918
מודעה ב"הארץ"30 באוקטובר צבא שיש לו מדינהטכסט מלא: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/weekly_ad/1256852200
~~~
Uri Avnery sobre Rabin
Uri Avnery
Count Me OutA YEAR before the Oslo agreement, I had a meeting with Yasser Arafat in Tunis. He was full of curiosity about... Full English text in the end
Avnery columns' archive http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery
להיות שם? לא, תודה!
שנה לפני חתימת הסכם-אוסלו ביקרתי את יאסר ערפאת בתוניס. הוא היה מלא סקרנות כלפי אישיותו של יצחק רבין, ראש-
ממשלנו... טכסט מלא http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery/1257023553 ארכיון
מאמרים של אורי אבנרי http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/avnery
~~~
Fire on the Mount
at Adam's blog: http://adam-keller2.blogspot.com
אש על ההר בבלוג של אדם : http://adam-keller1.blogspot.com
A REAL PEACE PROCESS
Gush Shalom addresses J Street
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/press_releases/1256851306
חדש בפורום
אכן יש ויש...צפירה יונתן על ... נחשו מיhttp://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/he/channels/archive/1257003355
Uri Avnery31.10.09
Count Me Out
A YEAR before the Oslo agreement, I had a meeting with Yasser Arafat in Tunis. He was full of curiosity about Yitzhak Rabin, who had just been elected Prime Minister.
I described him as well as I could and ended with the words: "He is as honest as a politician can be."
Arafat broke into laughter, and all the others present, among them Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Abed-Rabbo, joined in.
FOR THE sake of proper disclosure: I always liked Rabin as a human being. I especially liked some traits of his.
First of all: his honesty. This is such a rare quality among politicians that it stood out like an oasis in the desert. His mouth and his heart were one, as far as is possible in political life. He did not lie when he could possibly avoid it.
He was a decent human being. Witness the "dollar affair": when his term as Israeli ambassador in Washington DC came to an end, his wife Leah left behind a bank account, contrary to Israeli law at the time. When it was discovered, he protected his wife by assuming personal responsibility. At the time, unlike today, "assuming responsibility" was not an empty phrase. He left the Prime Minister’s office.
I liked even his most evident personality trait – his introversion. He was withdrawn, with few human contacts. Not a fellow-well-met back slapper, not one for lavishing compliments, indeed an anti-politician.
Also, I liked the way he told people straight to the face what he thought of them. Some of his expressions, in juicy Hebrew, have become part of Israeli folklore. Such as "indefatigable intriguer" (about Shimon Peres), "propellers" (about the settlers, meaning electric fans which spin noisily without going anywhere), "garbage of weaklings" (about people leaving Israel for good).
He had no small talk. In every conversation, he came to the point right at the start.
His H
One might imagine that these characteristics would alienate people. Quite to the contrary, people were attracted to him because of them. In a world of pretentious, garrulous, mendacious, back-slapping politicians, he was a refreshing rarity.
MORE THAN anything else, I respected Rabin for his dramatic change of outlook at the age of 70. The man who had been a soldier since he was 18, who had fought Arabs all his life, suddenly became a peace-fighter. And not just a fighter for peace in general, but for peace with the Palestinian people, whose very existence had always been denied by the leaders of Israel.
The public memory, one of the most effective instruments of the establishment, is trying nowadays to obliterate this chapter. Throughout the country one can buy postcards showing Rabin shaking hands with King Hussein at the signing of the Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement, but it is almost impossible to find a card showing Rabin with Arafat at the Oslo agreement signing ceremony. Never happened.
As I have recounted before, I was an eye-witness to his inner revolution. >From 1969 on, until after the Oslo agreement, we had a running debate about the Palestinian issue - at the Washington embassy, at parties where we met casually (generally at the bar), in the Prime Minister’s office and at his private home.
In one 1969 conversation, he objected strenuously to any dealings with the Palestinians. One sentence imprinted itself upon my mind: "I want an open border, not a secure border" (a play of words in Hebrew). At the time, his former commander, Yigal Alon, was spreading the slogan "secure borders", in order to justify extensive annexations of occupied territory. Rabin wanted an open border between Israel and the West Bank, which he intended to give back to King Hussein. After this conversation, I wrote him that the border would be open only if there was a Palestinian state on the other side, because then the economic realities would compel both states – Israel and Palestine – to maintain close relations.
In 1975, after the start of my secret contacts with the PLO, I went to brief him (in accordance with the express wishes of the PLO). In the conversation that took place at the Prime Minister’s office, I tried to convince him to give up the "Jordanian option", which I had always considered silly. He refused adamantly. "We must make peace with Hussein," he told me. "After he has signed, I don’t care if the king is toppled." Like Shimon Peres and many others, he entertained the illusion that the king would give up East Jerusalem.
I told him that I could not follow the logic of this line of thought. Let’s imagine that the king signed and was then overthrown. What next? The PLO would take over a state extending from Tulkarm to the approaches of Baghdad, in which four Arab armies could easily assemble. Was that, I asked, what he wanted?
In this conversation, too, one sentence imprinted itself on my mind: "I will not take the smallest step towards the Palestinians, because the first step would lead inevitably to the creation of a Palestinian state, and I don’t want that." In the end he told me: "I oppose what you are doing, but I will not prevent you from meeting with them. If these meetings reveal things to you that you think the Israeli Prime Minister should know about, my door is open." That was Rabin all over. The contacts, of course, broke the law.
After that I brought him several messages from Arafat, conveyed to me by the PLO representative in London, Sa’id Hamami. Arafat proposed small mutual gestures. Rabin refused all of them.
Consequently I was all the more impressed by Oslo. Later Rabin explained to me, one Shabbat at his private apartment, how he arrived there: King Hussein had resigned his responsibility for the West Bank. The "village leagues", set up by Israel as pliant "representatives" of the Palestinians, were a dismal failure. As Minister of Defense he summoned local Palestinian leaders for individual consultations, and one after another they told him that their political address was in Tunis. After that, at the Madrid conference, Israel agreed to negotiate with a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, but then the Jordanians told them that all Palestinian matters must be discussed with the Palestinian members alone. But at every meeting, the Palestinian delegates asked for a pause in order to call Tunis and get instructions from Arafat. Rabin’s conclusion: if all decisions are made by Arafat anyhow, why not talk with him directly?
It has always been said that Rabin had an "analytical mind". He did not have much of an imagination, but he viewed facts soberly, analyzed them logically and drew his conclusions.
IF SO, why did the Oslo agreement fail?
The practical reasons are easy to see. From the beginning, the agreement was build on shaky foundations, because it lacked the main thing: a clear definition of the final objective of the process.
For Arafat it was self-evident that the agreed "interim stages" would lead to an independent Palestinian state in the whole of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with perhaps some minor exchanges of territory. East Jerusalem, including of course the Holy Shrines, was to become the capital of Palestine. The settlements would be dismantled. I am convinced that he would have been satisfied with a symbolic return of a limited number of refugees to Israel proper.
That was Arafat’s price for giving up 78% of the country, and no Palestinian leader, present or future, could be satisfied with less.
But Rabin’s aim was unclear, perhaps even to himself. At the time he was not yet ready to accept a Palestinian state. Absent an agreed destination, all the "interim phases" went awry. Every step caused new conflicts. (As I wrote at the time, when traveling from Paris to Berlin, one can stop at interim stations. When traveling from Paris to Madrid, one can also stop at interim stations - but they will be quite different ones.)
Arafat was conscious of the faults of the agreement. He told his people that it was "the best possible agreement in the worst possible circumstances". But he believed that the dynamics of the peace process would overcome the obstacles on the way. So did I. We were both wrong.
After the signing, Rabin began to hesitate. Instead of rushing forwards to create facts, he dithered. This gave the opposing forces in Israel time to recoup from the shock, regroup and start a counterattack, which ended in his assassination.
Perhaps this mistake could have been foreseen. Rabin was by nature a cautious person. He was conscious of the heavy responsibility that rested on his shoulders. He had no taste for drama, unlike Begin, nor was he blessed with a vivid imagination, like Herzl. For better and for worse, he lived in the real world. He had no idea how to change it, though he knew that he had to do just that.
BUT THESE explanations are only the foam upon the waves. Deep under the surface, powerful currents were at work. They pushed Rabin off course and in the end they swallowed him.
Rabin was a child of the classic Zionist ideology. He never rebelled against it. He carried in his body the genetic code of the Zionist movement, a movement whose aim from the beginning was to turn the Land of Israel into an exclusively Jewish state, which denied the very existence of the Arab Palestinian people and whose logic ultimately meant their displacement.
Like most of his generation in the country, he absorbed this ideology with his mother’s milk, and was raised on it throughout. It shaped his ideas so thoroughly that he was not even aware of it. At the critical juncture of his life, he fell victim to an insoluble inner contradiction: his analytical mind told him to make peace with the Palestinians, to "give up" a part of the country and to dismantle the settlements, while his Zionist genetic heritage opposed this with all its might. That manifested itself visibly at the Oslo agreement signing ceremony: he offered his hand to Arafat because his mind commanded it, but all his body language expressed rejection.
It is impossible to make peace without a basic mental and emotional commitment to peace. Impossible to change the direction of a historic movement without reassessing its history. Impossible for a leader to steer his people towards a total change (as Ataturk did in Turkey, for example) if he is not completely devoted to the change himself. Impossible to make peace with an enemy without understanding his truth.
Rabin’s inner convictions continued to evolve after Oslo. Between him and Arafat, mutual respect grew. Perhaps he would have arrived, in his slow and cautious way, at the necessary mental change. The assassin and his handlers must have been afraid of this and decided to forestall it.
Rabin’s failure will find its expression at the memorial rally next week at the very place where we witnessed his murder, 14 years ago. The main speakers will be two of the gravediggers of the Oslo agreement, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak, as well as Tzipi Livni and Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who belonged to the forces that created the climate for the murder. Rabin, I assume, will turn in his grave.
Will I be there? Not me, thank you very much.
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