17 December 2011, Gush Shalom גוש שלום (Israel)
Uri Avnery
MY GOD, what a bizarre lot these Republican aspirants for the US presidency are!
What a sorry bunch of ignoramuses and downright crazies. Or, at best, what a bunch of cheats and cynics! (With the possible exception of the good doctor Ron Paul).
Is this the best a great and proud nation can produce? How frightening the thought that one of them may actually become the most powerful person in the world, with a finger on the biggest nuclear button!
BUT LET’S concentrate on the present front-runner. (Republicans seem to change front-runners like a fastidious beau changes socks.)
It’s Newt Gingrich. Remember him? The Speaker of the House who had an extra-marital affair with an intern while at the same time leading the campaign to impeach President Bill Clinton for having an affair with an intern.
But that’s not the point. The point is that this intellectual giant – named after Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest scientist ever – has discovered a great historical truth.
The original Newton discovered the Law of Gravity. Newton Leroy Gingrich has discovered something no less earth-shaking: there is an “invented” people around, referring to the Palestinians.
To which a humble Israeli like me might answer, in the best Hebrew slang: “Good morning, Eliyahu!” Thus we honor people who have made a great discovery which, unfortunately, has been discovered by others long before.
FROM ITS very beginning, the Zionist movement has denied the existence of the Palestinian people. It’s an article of faith.
The reason is obvious: if there exists a Palestinian people, then the country the Zionists were about to take over was not empty. Zionism would entail an injustice of historic proportions. Being very idealistic persons, the original Zionists found a way out of this moral dilemma: they simply denied its existence. The winning slogan was “A land without a people for a people without a land.”
So who were these curious human beings they met when they came to the country? Oh, ah, well, they were just people who happened to be there, but not “a” people.
Passers-by, so to speak. Later, the story goes, after we had made the desert bloom and turned an arid and neglected land into a paradise, Arabs from all over the region flocked to the country, and now they have the temerity – indeed the chutzpah – to claim that they constitute a Palestinian nation!
For many years after the founding of the State of Israel, this was the official line. Golda Meir famously exclaimed: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people!”
(To which I replied in the Knesset: “Mrs. Prime Minister, perhaps you are right. Perhaps there really is no Palestinian people. But if millions of people mistakenly believe that they are a people, and behave like a people, then they are a people.”)
A huge propaganda machine – both in Israel and abroad – was employed to “prove” that there was no Palestinian people. A lady called Joan Peters wrote a book (“From Time Immemorial”) proving that the riffraff calling themselves “Palestinians” had nothing to do with Palestine. They are nothing but interlopers and impostors. The book was immensely successful – until some experts took it apart and proved that the whole edifice of conclusive proofs was utter rubbish.
I myself have spent many hundreds of hours trying to convince Israeli and foreign audiences that there is a Palestinian people and that we have to make peace with them. Until one day the State of Israel recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the “Palestinian people”, and the argument was laid to rest.
Until Newt came along and, like a later-day Jesus, raised it from the dead.
OBVIOUSLY, HE is much too busy to read books. True, he was once a teacher of history, but for many years now he has been very busy speakering the Congress, making a fortune as an “adviser” of big corporations and now trying to become president.
Otherwise, he would probably have come across a brilliant historical book by Benedict Anderson, “Imagined Communities”, which asserts that all modern nations are invented.
Nationalism is a relatively recent historical phenomenon. When a community decides to become a nation, it has to reinvent itself. That means inventing a national past, reshuffling historical facts (and non-facts) in order to create a coherent picture of a nation existing since antiquity. Hermann the Cherusker, member of a Germanic tribe who betrayed his Roman employers, became a “national” hero. Religious refugees who landed in America and destroyed the native population became a “nation”. Members of an ethnic-religious Diaspora formed themselves into a “Jewish nation”. Many others did more or less the same.
Indeed, Newt would profit from reading a book by a Tel Aviv University professor, Shlomo Sand, a kosher Jew, whose Hebrew title speaks for itself: “When and How the Jewish People was Invented?”
Who are these Palestinians? About a hundred years ago, two young students in Istanbul, David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the future Prime Minister and President (respectively) of Israel, wrote a treatise about the Palestinians. The population of this country, they said, has never changed. Only small elites were sometimes deported. The towns and villages never moved, as their names prove. Canaanites became Israelites, then Jews and Samaritans, then Christian Byzantines. With the Arab conquest, they slowly adopted the religion of Islam and the Arabic Culture. These are today’s Palestinians. I tend to agree with them.
PARROTING THE straight Zionist propaganda line – by now discarded by most Zionists – Gingrich argues that there can be no Palestinian people because there never was a Palestinian state. The people in this country were just “Arabs” under Ottoman rule.
So what? I used to hear from French colonial masters that there is no Algerian people, because there never was an Algerian state, there was never even a united country called Algeria. Any takers for this theory now?
The name “Palestine” was mentioned by a Greek historian some 2500 years ago. A “Duke of Palestine” is mentioned in the Talmud. When the Arabs conquered the country, they called it “Filastin”, as they still do. The Arab national movement came into being all over the Arab world, including Palestine – at the same time as the Zionist movement – and strove for independence from the Ottoman Sultan.
For centuries, Palestine was considered a part of Greater Syria (the region known in Arabic as 'Sham'). There was no formal distinction between Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians and Jordanians. But when, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the European powers divided the Arab world between them, a state called Palestine became a fact under the British Mandate, and the Arab Palestinian people established themselves as a separate nation with a national flag of their own. Many peoples in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America did the same, even without asking Gingrich for confirmation.
It would certainly be ironic if the members of the “invented” Palestinian nation were expected to ask for recognition from the members of the “invented” Jewish/Israeli nation, at the demand of a member of the “invented” American nation, a person who, by the way, is of mixed German, English, Scottish and Irish stock.
Years ago, there was short-lived controversy about Palestinian textbooks. It was argued that they were anti-Semitic and incited to murder. That was laid to rest when it became clear that all Palestinian schoolbooks were cleared by the Israeli occupation authorities, and most were inherited from the previous Jordanian regime. But Gingrich does not shrink from resurrecting this corpse, too.
All Palestinians – men, women and children – are terrorists, he asserts, and Palestinian pupils learn at school how to kill us poor and helpless Israelis. Ah, what would we do without such stout defenders as Newt? What a pity that this week a photo of him, shaking the hand of Yasser Arafat, was published.
And please don’t show him the textbooks used in some of our schools, especially the religious ones!
IS IT really a waste of time to write about such nonsense?
It may seem so, but one cannot ignore the fact that the dispenser of these inanities may be tomorrow’s President of the United States of America. Given the economic situation, that is not as unlikely as it sounds.
As for now, Gingrich is doing immense damage to the national interests of the US. At this historic juncture, the masses at all the Tahrir Squares across the Arab world are wondering about America’s attitude. Newt’s answer contributes to a new and more profound anti-Americanism.
Alas, he is not the only extreme rightist seeking to embrace Israel. Israel has lately become the Mecca of all the world’s racists. This week we were honored by the visit of the husband of Marine Le Pen, leader of the French National Front. A pilgrimage to the Jewish State is now a must for any aspiring fascist.
One of our ancient sages coined the phrase: “Not for nothing does the starling go to the raven. It’s because they are of the same kind”.
Thanks. But sorry. They are not of my kind.
To quote another proverb: With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Mostrando postagens com marcador Tahrir. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Tahrir. Mostrar todas as postagens
quarta-feira, 21 de dezembro de 2011
domingo, 11 de setembro de 2011
CRISES WITH TURKEY AND EGYPT REPRESENT A POLITICAL TSUNAMI FOR ISRAEL
10 September 2011, Haaretz הארץ (Israel)
The political crisis has become a reality well before the Palestinians declare their independent state, writes Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn, leaving Israel isolated in facing Iran, Turkey and Egypt.
By Aluf Benn
The anxiety caused by the Arab Spring among the Israeli public became a reality this weekend, when protesters broke into the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, and expelled the Israeli diplomats from their country.
The embassy staff’s urgent evacuation in a special IAF plane in the wake of President Obama’s intervention is a stark reminder of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Seven months after the downfall of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, Egyptian protesters tore to shreds the Israeli flag, a symbol of peace between Egypt and its eastern neighbor, after 31 years. It seems that the flag will not return to the flagstaff anytime soon.
The historians who will write about the collapse of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty will start their stories during the twilight years of the Mubarak regime, when the government gradually lost control over the Sinai Peninsula, turning the desert into an abandoned frontier of weapons smuggling, human trafficking, and African refugees.
The demilitarization agreements, which removed the Egyptian army from Sinai and were slowly eroded following Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip, have accelerated sharply in the last several months. Time after time, Egypt requested and received permission to “temporarily” deploy more troops and weaponry along the border, in order to restore order and security in the region.
For the Egyptians, this was an opportunity to shake off the limitations imposed on them by the peace agreement, and regain their full sovereignty over the buffer zone that lies between the Suez Canal and the Negev.
In the 70s, when the peace accords were signed, the Egyptian military’s presence in Sinai posed a great security threat. Now, Egyptian soldiers seem like the lesser evil and an antidote to the much larger threat of a political and security vacuum across the border.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is concerned that the Sinai Peninsula will turn into a larger version of the Gaza Strip, full of weapons and launching pads aimed at Israeli territory. The fence that Israel is building along the Egyptian border is intended to ensure routine security measures aimed at preventing terrorists and refugees from spilling over the border. Israel will not be able to handle the strategic dangers that are bound to unfold on the other side.
The “embassy crisis” exploded in the wake of the killing of five Egyptian soldiers on August 18 during a border skirmish that came on the heels of a terrorist attack against Israeli civilians on their way to Eilat.
The Tahrir protesters and Egyptian politicians, frustrated with the slow pace of regime change, have directed their anger toward the most hated target in Cairo – the Israeli Embassy. Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s public expression of regret, and the Israeli promises to cooperate with Egypt in investigating the incident did not interest the Egyptian public.
The protests continued, and a week after the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador from Ankara on similar grounds - anger stemming from the killing of Turkish citizens aboard last year’s Gaza flotilla – the Israeli ambassador was expelled from Cairo. The only difference is that in Turkey, the government initiated the downgrading of ties, while in Egypt the people did so against the will of their rulers.
Netanyahu and his government have prided themselves on their steadfast commitment to national ideals, and the prime minster is convinced that he was right in refusing to apologize to the Turks for killing their citizens. According to his perspective, the Arab world scrutinizes Israel’s actions, and an apology to Turkey would be interpreted as a sign of unforgivable weakness.
But Netanyahu was not content with merely refusing to apologize. Instead of attempting to calm the conflict with Turkey, Israel was dragged into a dangerous battle with Ankara.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to send a Turkish naval fleet to accompany the next flotillas to Gaza, and Netanyahu responded with a widely-covered visit to an Israeli naval base. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who consistently outflanks Netanyahu from the right, suggests, publicly, that Israel aid the PKK Kurdish insurgency, in order to balance out Turkey’s support for Hamas.
Netanyahu and Lieberman are heroes of the media, but when the chips are down, it turns out that Israel has direct influence on Egypt. Thus, Netanyahu must resort to asking for help from Obama, his great opponent, in order to evacuate the embassy employees. Once again, it becomes clear that Israel cannot manage without help from the United States.
Netanyahu now hopes that Israel might be able to get close with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States, who also seek to block the possibility of an Arab Spring in the region. In the West, Netanyahu is hoping to circumvent Turkey by strengthening ties with Greece, Bulgaria and Romania. During his visit to the Balkans, he was shown photos and statues of national heros, sent to their deaths by the Ottoman Empire. A real basis for friendship.
These are but minor comforts. The political tsunami that Ehud Barak foresaw has come true prior to the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state in the UN. Israel is left isolated facing Iran, Turkey and Egypt, which in the past were considered close allies. Netanyahu is convinced that the Arab Spring uprisings are a decree of fate, leaving Israel with little to do but to stand firmly in its place.
Israel cannot prevent the rise of Erdogan or the fall of Mubarak, the same way that it cannot halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The fall of the American superpower is not Netanyahu’s fault. But he has not done a thing to mitigate the fallout from the aforementioned developments. Israel’s political and strategic positions are far worse under his leadership.
More on this topic
• Obama expresses 'great concern' to Netanyahu over Israeli Embassy attack
• Israeli diplomatic staff and families evacuated after Egyptians storm embassy in Cairo
• Arab Spring succeeded, it's Egypt that failed
The political crisis has become a reality well before the Palestinians declare their independent state, writes Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn, leaving Israel isolated in facing Iran, Turkey and Egypt.
By Aluf Benn
The anxiety caused by the Arab Spring among the Israeli public became a reality this weekend, when protesters broke into the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, and expelled the Israeli diplomats from their country.
The embassy staff’s urgent evacuation in a special IAF plane in the wake of President Obama’s intervention is a stark reminder of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Seven months after the downfall of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, Egyptian protesters tore to shreds the Israeli flag, a symbol of peace between Egypt and its eastern neighbor, after 31 years. It seems that the flag will not return to the flagstaff anytime soon.
The historians who will write about the collapse of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty will start their stories during the twilight years of the Mubarak regime, when the government gradually lost control over the Sinai Peninsula, turning the desert into an abandoned frontier of weapons smuggling, human trafficking, and African refugees.
The demilitarization agreements, which removed the Egyptian army from Sinai and were slowly eroded following Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip, have accelerated sharply in the last several months. Time after time, Egypt requested and received permission to “temporarily” deploy more troops and weaponry along the border, in order to restore order and security in the region.
For the Egyptians, this was an opportunity to shake off the limitations imposed on them by the peace agreement, and regain their full sovereignty over the buffer zone that lies between the Suez Canal and the Negev.
In the 70s, when the peace accords were signed, the Egyptian military’s presence in Sinai posed a great security threat. Now, Egyptian soldiers seem like the lesser evil and an antidote to the much larger threat of a political and security vacuum across the border.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is concerned that the Sinai Peninsula will turn into a larger version of the Gaza Strip, full of weapons and launching pads aimed at Israeli territory. The fence that Israel is building along the Egyptian border is intended to ensure routine security measures aimed at preventing terrorists and refugees from spilling over the border. Israel will not be able to handle the strategic dangers that are bound to unfold on the other side.
The “embassy crisis” exploded in the wake of the killing of five Egyptian soldiers on August 18 during a border skirmish that came on the heels of a terrorist attack against Israeli civilians on their way to Eilat.
The Tahrir protesters and Egyptian politicians, frustrated with the slow pace of regime change, have directed their anger toward the most hated target in Cairo – the Israeli Embassy. Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s public expression of regret, and the Israeli promises to cooperate with Egypt in investigating the incident did not interest the Egyptian public.
The protests continued, and a week after the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador from Ankara on similar grounds - anger stemming from the killing of Turkish citizens aboard last year’s Gaza flotilla – the Israeli ambassador was expelled from Cairo. The only difference is that in Turkey, the government initiated the downgrading of ties, while in Egypt the people did so against the will of their rulers.
Netanyahu and his government have prided themselves on their steadfast commitment to national ideals, and the prime minster is convinced that he was right in refusing to apologize to the Turks for killing their citizens. According to his perspective, the Arab world scrutinizes Israel’s actions, and an apology to Turkey would be interpreted as a sign of unforgivable weakness.
But Netanyahu was not content with merely refusing to apologize. Instead of attempting to calm the conflict with Turkey, Israel was dragged into a dangerous battle with Ankara.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to send a Turkish naval fleet to accompany the next flotillas to Gaza, and Netanyahu responded with a widely-covered visit to an Israeli naval base. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who consistently outflanks Netanyahu from the right, suggests, publicly, that Israel aid the PKK Kurdish insurgency, in order to balance out Turkey’s support for Hamas.
Netanyahu and Lieberman are heroes of the media, but when the chips are down, it turns out that Israel has direct influence on Egypt. Thus, Netanyahu must resort to asking for help from Obama, his great opponent, in order to evacuate the embassy employees. Once again, it becomes clear that Israel cannot manage without help from the United States.
Netanyahu now hopes that Israel might be able to get close with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States, who also seek to block the possibility of an Arab Spring in the region. In the West, Netanyahu is hoping to circumvent Turkey by strengthening ties with Greece, Bulgaria and Romania. During his visit to the Balkans, he was shown photos and statues of national heros, sent to their deaths by the Ottoman Empire. A real basis for friendship.
These are but minor comforts. The political tsunami that Ehud Barak foresaw has come true prior to the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state in the UN. Israel is left isolated facing Iran, Turkey and Egypt, which in the past were considered close allies. Netanyahu is convinced that the Arab Spring uprisings are a decree of fate, leaving Israel with little to do but to stand firmly in its place.
Israel cannot prevent the rise of Erdogan or the fall of Mubarak, the same way that it cannot halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The fall of the American superpower is not Netanyahu’s fault. But he has not done a thing to mitigate the fallout from the aforementioned developments. Israel’s political and strategic positions are far worse under his leadership.
• Obama expresses 'great concern' to Netanyahu over Israeli Embassy attack
• Israeli diplomatic staff and families evacuated after Egyptians storm embassy in Cairo
• Arab Spring succeeded, it's Egypt that failed
EGYPT UNREST, TURKEY ROW DEEPEN ISRAELI ISOLATION
10 September 2011, AFP
Al Ahram Online http://english.ahram.org.eg (Egypt)
Fractured diplomatic relations with Egypt and Turkey leave Israel increasingly isolated ahead of Palestinian moves to seek UN recognition
Already embroiled in a fierce diplomatic row with former ally Turkey, Israel found itself in fresh crisis Saturday with southern neighbour Egypt after crowds entered and trashed its Cairo embassy.
Israel has few friends in the Muslim world, and the chill on two fronts further deepens its isolation ahead of Palestinian plans to seek full membership in the United Nations.
The overnight attack on the Cairo diplomatic mission, in which crowds smashed through an external security wall, tossed embassy papers from balconies and tore down the Israeli flag, was the worst since Israel set up its mission in Egypt, the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Tel Aviv, in 1979.Along with Jordan it is still one of only two Arab states to host an Israeli ambassador.
Since former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's ouster in February following a popular revolt, activists have called for a revision of the peace treaty with Israel.
"The mob attack on the Israeli embassy is a serious incident," Israeli news website Ynet on Saturday quoted Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as saying.
"It was a painful blow to the peace between us and a grave violation of diplomatic norms," an Israeli official told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that a senior diplomat stayed behind in Egypt after the ambassador and his staff were evacuated, to maintain delicate ties with Egypt.
"We left the deputy ambassador to keep up contact with the Egyptian government," the official said.Israeli army radio said the remaining diplomat was "in a safe place."
"Peace between Israel and Egypt is a strategic interest of both countries and must be maintained despite the angry mob on the streets," Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni told Ynet.
Egypt declared a state of alert after police clashed with protesters who raided the building housing Israel's embassy.It was the latest episode in worsening relations between Egypt and Israel since the killing of five Egyptian policemen last month on their common border as Israel hunted alleged militants after a deadly attack.
Zvi Mazel, a former Israeli ambassador to Egypt, said that military ruler and current de facto head of state Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi was out of touch with grassroots demonstrators."It's a situation of total anarchy where there is nobody on the military committee, General Tantawi or his friends, who can go to the Egyptian people and say 'Enough, finish, we have a problem. We have to revive the economy, move forward'," Mazel told public radio.
"The Egyptian interim military government is weak, unable to have a dialogue with the Egyptian people," he added.
Israel's latest Egyptian woes came hard on the heels of the worst exchange yet with Turkey, after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday threatened to send warships to escort any Turkish vessels trying to breach Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.
On Friday, Netanyahu's office said that the cabinet had considered various responses to a further worsening of already stormy relations with Turkey, but had not taken action."Israel acts and will act responsibly and hopes that Turkey will also act in the same way," it said in a statement.
Israel and Turkey have been locked in a bitter dispute since May 2010 when Israeli naval commandos stormed a convoy of six ships trying to reach Gaza in defiance of the blockade, killing nine Turks.The crisis deepened over the past week with Turkey expelling the Israeli ambassador and axing military ties and defence trade.
The United States on Friday sought to calm the situation between two of its allies."We're urging both sides to refrain from provocative action," said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
The worst may be yet to come for Israel on the diplomatic front, as the Palestinians plan to make their bid for membership in the United Nations later this month.They are to announce soon if they will apply to the Security Council to become a full member of the UN or seek recognition by the General Assembly.
Israel opposes both options but acknowledges that the Palestinians are likely to win majority support in the General Assembly.
Al Ahram Online http://english.ahram.org.eg (Egypt)
Fractured diplomatic relations with Egypt and Turkey leave Israel increasingly isolated ahead of Palestinian moves to seek UN recognition
Already embroiled in a fierce diplomatic row with former ally Turkey, Israel found itself in fresh crisis Saturday with southern neighbour Egypt after crowds entered and trashed its Cairo embassy.
Israel has few friends in the Muslim world, and the chill on two fronts further deepens its isolation ahead of Palestinian plans to seek full membership in the United Nations.
The overnight attack on the Cairo diplomatic mission, in which crowds smashed through an external security wall, tossed embassy papers from balconies and tore down the Israeli flag, was the worst since Israel set up its mission in Egypt, the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Tel Aviv, in 1979.Along with Jordan it is still one of only two Arab states to host an Israeli ambassador.
Since former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's ouster in February following a popular revolt, activists have called for a revision of the peace treaty with Israel.
"The mob attack on the Israeli embassy is a serious incident," Israeli news website Ynet on Saturday quoted Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as saying.
"It was a painful blow to the peace between us and a grave violation of diplomatic norms," an Israeli official told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that a senior diplomat stayed behind in Egypt after the ambassador and his staff were evacuated, to maintain delicate ties with Egypt.
"We left the deputy ambassador to keep up contact with the Egyptian government," the official said.Israeli army radio said the remaining diplomat was "in a safe place."
"Peace between Israel and Egypt is a strategic interest of both countries and must be maintained despite the angry mob on the streets," Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni told Ynet.
Egypt declared a state of alert after police clashed with protesters who raided the building housing Israel's embassy.It was the latest episode in worsening relations between Egypt and Israel since the killing of five Egyptian policemen last month on their common border as Israel hunted alleged militants after a deadly attack.
Zvi Mazel, a former Israeli ambassador to Egypt, said that military ruler and current de facto head of state Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi was out of touch with grassroots demonstrators."It's a situation of total anarchy where there is nobody on the military committee, General Tantawi or his friends, who can go to the Egyptian people and say 'Enough, finish, we have a problem. We have to revive the economy, move forward'," Mazel told public radio.
"The Egyptian interim military government is weak, unable to have a dialogue with the Egyptian people," he added.
Israel's latest Egyptian woes came hard on the heels of the worst exchange yet with Turkey, after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday threatened to send warships to escort any Turkish vessels trying to breach Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.
On Friday, Netanyahu's office said that the cabinet had considered various responses to a further worsening of already stormy relations with Turkey, but had not taken action."Israel acts and will act responsibly and hopes that Turkey will also act in the same way," it said in a statement.
Israel and Turkey have been locked in a bitter dispute since May 2010 when Israeli naval commandos stormed a convoy of six ships trying to reach Gaza in defiance of the blockade, killing nine Turks.The crisis deepened over the past week with Turkey expelling the Israeli ambassador and axing military ties and defence trade.
The United States on Friday sought to calm the situation between two of its allies."We're urging both sides to refrain from provocative action," said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
The worst may be yet to come for Israel on the diplomatic front, as the Palestinians plan to make their bid for membership in the United Nations later this month.They are to announce soon if they will apply to the Security Council to become a full member of the UN or seek recognition by the General Assembly.
Israel opposes both options but acknowledges that the Palestinians are likely to win majority support in the General Assembly.
quinta-feira, 8 de setembro de 2011
WHAT WAY FORWARD FOR MASS SOCIAL STRUGGLES IN ISRAEL?
7 September 2011, World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org (Australia)
Nearly half a million people poured into the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and towns and cities across Israel on Saturday to raise the banner of “social justice” and protest against low wages and the rising costs of housing, food, transportation, education and other basic social necessities that are rendering life intolerable for the majority of the population.
Fueling the mass anger behind these protests is Israel’s ever-increasing social inequality that has handed huge profits to a handful of billionaire “tycoons,” even as millions face social deprivation. It is widely recognized that the policies of the right-wing regime of Benyamin Netanyahu are dictated by the interests and demands of a tiny plutocracy.
The sheer scale of the protests Saturday—encompassing 5.5 percent of Israel’s population of 7.75 million, the equivalent of 18 million people protesting in the US—underscores the movement’s profound historical significance.
More than six decades after the founding of the Israeli state, following continuous wars against neighboring Arab countries and more than 44 years of occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the demonstrations have served to undermine a central Zionist myth. They have exposed the fact that in Israel, as in every other country, it is the class question that is fundamental, not nationality, race, religion or ethnicity.
Moreover, Jewish workers in Israel are responding to the same historic crisis of global capitalism that produced the mass revolts that have swept the Middle East, toppling the Western-backed dictatorships of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt. Many of the protesters who pitched tents on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard and took to the streets of other towns and cities compared themselves to the Egyptian masses who occupied Tahrir Square.
This involves the embryonic consciousness that workers in Israel, just like in Egypt, are entering into a struggle that is international in its scope and that cannot be resolved within the confines of the national borders dividing the Middle East.
However, those in the leadership of these protests along with the Zionist union federation, Histadrut, which has backed them, and the various pseudo-left organizations that follow in its wake are determined to divert this movement back into the safe channels of Israel’s existing political setup.
This has been the significance from the outset of the insistence of the protests’ organizers on “no politics.” It had the same significance as similar proscriptions offered by the organizers of protests by Spain’s indignados: reinforcing the domination of the existing politics of the parties of the ruling elite and their servants in the union bureaucracy.
The leaders of the protest, together with the bureaucracy of Histadrut, have explicitly rejected any struggle to bring down the Netanyahu government. Instead, they have indicated their willingness to negotiate with this government, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, which has formed a committee for the purpose of presenting some cosmetic “reforms” based on moving around spending within the exiting Israeli budget, while leaving untouched the existing system of capitalist exploitation and social inequality.
In Israel, of course, the proscription of politics has additional and even more fatal implications. It excludes from a struggle waged in the name of equality and social justice the deep social oppression arising from the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; the fate of the millions of Palestinian refugees driven from their land; and the unequal status of Israel’s Arabs, 20 percent of the population, under a state that defines itself as Jewish.
It also leaves this movement defenseless in the face of the Netanyahu government’s invocation of alleged threats to Israel and appeals for Zionist unity to stifle social unrest. Netanyahu even exploited the protests over housing prices as the pretext to push ahead with more Zionist settlements around occupied East Jerusalem.
Finally, it prevents any real challenge to the vast diversion of social wealth into maintaining Israel’s massive military complex, which serves to intimidate the Palestinian people and all the countries of the Middle East.
In the wake of the fatal ambushes near the Sinai border last month, the following weekend’s protests were called off by the organizers. And it appears that the huge demonstrations last Saturday will not be repeated.
The decision to wind up this movement in September is hardly an accident. It coincides with a steady drumbeat of warnings from the Netanyahu government that the attempt this month by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority to secure recognition from the United Nations of Palestinian statehood will be accompanied by widespread violence.
As Israel’s reactionary foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, put it recently, “The Palestinian Authority is planning a bloodbath.”
In reality, it is the Israeli military apparatus that is preparing for a bloodbath and a new round of war. There is no evidence that Palestinian workers and youth see the bourgeois Palestinian leadership’s maneuvers at the UN as of vital import. This UN resolution will do no more to better their conditions than all the ones that have preceded it. And even if the UN were to grant statehood—which it will not—a national entity created on the irrational and economically unviable borders left by the carve-up of Palestine would resolve none of the social and democratic demands of the Palestinian people.
The Israeli regime makes such threats because it fears above all the undermining of the ideological basis of its rule, and an explosion of the class struggle throughout the Middle East. To forestall the threat of a unified struggle of the Jewish and Arab working class against imperialism, it is willing to take the most desperate and reckless measures, including war—a situation that highlights the deep political significance of a struggle to unify the workers of the Middle East.
The mass protests in Israel have shown that there exists the objective basis in the Israeli working class for such a policy. However, carrying forward these struggles against the ruling class’s policy of social reaction and war requires elaborating a new political program and forging new mass organizations of the working class on the perspective of socialist internationalism. This means building sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in Israel and Palestine, in Egypt, Tunisia and throughout the region, committed to a common fight a Socialist Federation of the Middle East.
Nearly half a million people poured into the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and towns and cities across Israel on Saturday to raise the banner of “social justice” and protest against low wages and the rising costs of housing, food, transportation, education and other basic social necessities that are rendering life intolerable for the majority of the population.
Fueling the mass anger behind these protests is Israel’s ever-increasing social inequality that has handed huge profits to a handful of billionaire “tycoons,” even as millions face social deprivation. It is widely recognized that the policies of the right-wing regime of Benyamin Netanyahu are dictated by the interests and demands of a tiny plutocracy.
The sheer scale of the protests Saturday—encompassing 5.5 percent of Israel’s population of 7.75 million, the equivalent of 18 million people protesting in the US—underscores the movement’s profound historical significance.
More than six decades after the founding of the Israeli state, following continuous wars against neighboring Arab countries and more than 44 years of occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the demonstrations have served to undermine a central Zionist myth. They have exposed the fact that in Israel, as in every other country, it is the class question that is fundamental, not nationality, race, religion or ethnicity.
Moreover, Jewish workers in Israel are responding to the same historic crisis of global capitalism that produced the mass revolts that have swept the Middle East, toppling the Western-backed dictatorships of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt. Many of the protesters who pitched tents on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard and took to the streets of other towns and cities compared themselves to the Egyptian masses who occupied Tahrir Square.
This involves the embryonic consciousness that workers in Israel, just like in Egypt, are entering into a struggle that is international in its scope and that cannot be resolved within the confines of the national borders dividing the Middle East.
However, those in the leadership of these protests along with the Zionist union federation, Histadrut, which has backed them, and the various pseudo-left organizations that follow in its wake are determined to divert this movement back into the safe channels of Israel’s existing political setup.
This has been the significance from the outset of the insistence of the protests’ organizers on “no politics.” It had the same significance as similar proscriptions offered by the organizers of protests by Spain’s indignados: reinforcing the domination of the existing politics of the parties of the ruling elite and their servants in the union bureaucracy.
The leaders of the protest, together with the bureaucracy of Histadrut, have explicitly rejected any struggle to bring down the Netanyahu government. Instead, they have indicated their willingness to negotiate with this government, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, which has formed a committee for the purpose of presenting some cosmetic “reforms” based on moving around spending within the exiting Israeli budget, while leaving untouched the existing system of capitalist exploitation and social inequality.
In Israel, of course, the proscription of politics has additional and even more fatal implications. It excludes from a struggle waged in the name of equality and social justice the deep social oppression arising from the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; the fate of the millions of Palestinian refugees driven from their land; and the unequal status of Israel’s Arabs, 20 percent of the population, under a state that defines itself as Jewish.
It also leaves this movement defenseless in the face of the Netanyahu government’s invocation of alleged threats to Israel and appeals for Zionist unity to stifle social unrest. Netanyahu even exploited the protests over housing prices as the pretext to push ahead with more Zionist settlements around occupied East Jerusalem.
Finally, it prevents any real challenge to the vast diversion of social wealth into maintaining Israel’s massive military complex, which serves to intimidate the Palestinian people and all the countries of the Middle East.
In the wake of the fatal ambushes near the Sinai border last month, the following weekend’s protests were called off by the organizers. And it appears that the huge demonstrations last Saturday will not be repeated.
The decision to wind up this movement in September is hardly an accident. It coincides with a steady drumbeat of warnings from the Netanyahu government that the attempt this month by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority to secure recognition from the United Nations of Palestinian statehood will be accompanied by widespread violence.
As Israel’s reactionary foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, put it recently, “The Palestinian Authority is planning a bloodbath.”
In reality, it is the Israeli military apparatus that is preparing for a bloodbath and a new round of war. There is no evidence that Palestinian workers and youth see the bourgeois Palestinian leadership’s maneuvers at the UN as of vital import. This UN resolution will do no more to better their conditions than all the ones that have preceded it. And even if the UN were to grant statehood—which it will not—a national entity created on the irrational and economically unviable borders left by the carve-up of Palestine would resolve none of the social and democratic demands of the Palestinian people.
The Israeli regime makes such threats because it fears above all the undermining of the ideological basis of its rule, and an explosion of the class struggle throughout the Middle East. To forestall the threat of a unified struggle of the Jewish and Arab working class against imperialism, it is willing to take the most desperate and reckless measures, including war—a situation that highlights the deep political significance of a struggle to unify the workers of the Middle East.
The mass protests in Israel have shown that there exists the objective basis in the Israeli working class for such a policy. However, carrying forward these struggles against the ruling class’s policy of social reaction and war requires elaborating a new political program and forging new mass organizations of the working class on the perspective of socialist internationalism. This means building sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in Israel and Palestine, in Egypt, Tunisia and throughout the region, committed to a common fight a Socialist Federation of the Middle East.
quinta-feira, 25 de agosto de 2011
ALGUNES OBSERVACIONS SOBRE LES PROTESTES D`ISRAEL
24 agost 2011, En Lluita http://www.enlluita.org (Catalunya/España)
Per Lenin's Tomb. Recentment hi ha hagut protestes massives i vagues a Israel. Hi ha fins i tot un intent de reproduir l’efecte de Tahrir amb campaments de protesta establerts a Jerusalem. Alguns al si de l’esquerra són, naturalment, molt pessimistes pel que fa a aquests esdeveniments. Al cap i a la fi, l’esquerra israeliana ha mostrat molt rarament signes de voler superar de veres la injustícia colonial/racial que rau en el cor del projecte sionista. Les protestes actuals no mostren cap indici de desenvolupament d’una postura antiocupació, ni molt menys antiapartheid —al contrari. Per raons diverses, la qüestió colonial ni tan sols es menciona a pesar que està íntimament relacionada amb els problemes que han motivat les protestes. Amb tota probabilitat l’Estat d’Israel tractarà de resoldre l’antagonisme social desplaçant-lo a l’àmbit colonial —més assentaments, més robatori de matèries primes, probablement una altra guerra d’expansió. I atès el xovinisme i el racisme de la gran majoria dels israelians, sens dubte és lícit pensar que aquests podrien estar d’acord amb aquesta línia d’actuació. Això no obstant, l’única manera d’analitzar correctament la situació és a través d’una comprensió dels antagonismes de classe d’Israel i la seva relació amb el projecte colonial. Des del meu punt de vista, el millor anàlisi ens el proporcionen Moshe Machover i Akiva Orr. El nucli del seu argument és que, a diferència de moltes de les societats imperialistes, la dinàmica colonial predomina per sobre dels antagonismes interns de classe.
Certament, tots els nivells de la societat israeliana, des dels sindicats als sistemes educatius, les forces armades i els partits polítics dominants, estan implicats en el sistema de l’apartheid. Això fou cert des del començament mateix en les formes germinals que adoptà l’Estat d’Israel en el període del Mandat Britànic. Israel és una societat de colons i aquest fet té enormes implicacions per al desenvolupament de la consciència de classe. Mentre Israel es desenvolupi sobre la base de la construcció d’assentaments colonials, mentre la gent identifiqui els seus interessos amb l’expansió del colonialisme, les possibilitats que la classe obrera desenvolupi una capacitat revolucionària independent seran ben poques. No només es tracta d’una societat d’assentaments colonials, sinó que també hi juga un paper important el recolzament amb recursos materials que rep per part de l’imperialisme dels EUA. En aquest àmbit, Israel ha gaudit de grans avantatges en relació als seus rivals regionals, fet pel qual ha disposat habitualment d’una major capacitat per contenir els antagonismes socials. De fet, trobem un cert tipus d’assistencialisme colonial en els fonaments del sionisme. Inclús Jabotinsky, el sant de la dreta israeliana, va sostenir que cada colon havia de tenir una casa, alimentació, educació, roba i medicaments —requisits essencials en el seu temps, puix que gran part de la societat estava formada per immigrants molt recents. En l’era neoliberal, aquesta perspectiva s’ha vist erosionada i debilitada, amb algunes conseqüències importants de què tractaré més endavant. Això no obstant, Israel és únic entre els països d’Orient Mitjà i l’Àfrica del Nord (MENA en el seu acrònim en anglès), en el sentit que és una economia no-exportadora de petroli amb una renda per càpita elevada. Amb una de les majors densitats de població de la regió, és capaç de satisfer les necessitats de tots els ciutadans, encara que decideixi no fer-ho. En una regió coneguda per la inseguretat alimentària i la creixent escassesa d’aigua, Israel manté una economia d’alta tecnologia amb un gran sector financer i, per no pas pocs dels seus ciutadans, un pròsper estil de vida. També s’hi troben un bon nombre dels principals multimilionaris del món. Gran part d’aquesta riquesa deriva directament de l’expropiació dels palestins, ja sigui d’aigua o de béns immobles. En aquestes circumstàncies, amb el colonialisme com una característica generalitzada de la societat israeliana, central en la seva legitimació i sense impugnació per part de cap gran partit polític ni mitjà de comunicació, és il•lusori esperar que la classe obrera israeliana esdevingui una força capaç d’encapçalar la superació del racialitzat sistema capitalista en el qual es troba immersa.
Es deriven importants conseqüències estratègiques d’un anàlisi de Machover y Orr. Si l’antagonisme de classe és dominant, llavors l’esquerra hauria de centrar el seu activisme prioritàriament en l’organització de la classe obrera israeliana com a clau per superar el projecte colonial. L’autoorganització d’aquesta classe obrera seria fonamental per aconseguir la caiguda d’aquest sistema colonial. Per contra, si la dinàmica colonial predomina, llavors Machover y Orr tenen raó en concloure que “dementre el sionisme sigui políticament i ideològica dominant dins d’aquesta societat i constitueixi el marc acceptat de la política, no hi ha cap possibilitat per a la classe obrera israeliana de convertir-se en un moviment revolucionari de classe.” En aquest cas, l’única solució és un aixecament revolucionari regional.
L’extraordinari començament d’una tal revolta regional s’ha fet palès des del gener d’enguany. No hi ha dubte que de llavors ençà la posició regional d’Israel s’ha debilitat. A nivell internacional, aquesta rebel•lió ha conduit al proisraelià Obama a demanar el retorn a les fronteres anteriors a 1967 en un intent de salvar la dominació estatunidenca de l’Orient Mitjà. Tot i així, aquest gest no s’ha d’exagerar. Ara per ara és molt germinal i, llevat que la revolució s’aprofundeixi i s’estengui encara més, és poc probable que els EUA prenguin mesures serioses per frenar el seu gos guardià local. Nogensmenys, el debilitament de la posició regional d’Israel és real. I això sens dubte augmenta el risc d’una escalada de l’agressió regional que eventualment es pogués acabar duent a terme. També és important el fet que la revolta àrab hagi establert el precedent de les protestes d’Israel i s’hagi produït per algunes de les mateixes circumstàncies en termes de recessió global. Però, per suposat, mentre que la revolució àrab ha tingut fins ara una poderosa dinàmica antiimperialista (no de manera uniforme, però sí en línies generals), qualsevol possible dinàmica antiimperialista o fins i tot de “pau” en les protestes d’Israel es troba encara, en el millor dels casos, latent. Amb tot, hi ha aspectes de l’economia colonial d’Israel que estan vinculats a l’agudització de les divisions socials. En termes generals, són els palestins els que suporten els costos de l’ocupació. Tanmateix existeixen alguns antagonismes potencials que són d’interès.
En primer lloc, l’Estat d’Israel inverteix molt en el desenvolupament dels assentaments, la qual cosa requereix un grau inusual d’inversió en l’aparell repressiu. Necessàriament ha de desviar recursos del desenvolupament “intern”, inclús si la rendibilitat a llarg termini de la colonització s’espera que superi els costos. L’oposició entre la inversió en matèria militar i la inversió en matèria de benestar és un dels temes que ha sorgit en els últims debats a Israel. En segon lloc, la concentració del poder de classe que té lloc a Israel està vinculada amb el poder colonial. Per exemple, el problema específic en el centre de les protestes dels últims dies és l’habitatge. El sistema d’habitatge públic fou desenvolupat sobre una base colonial —literalment construint sobre terres i propietats palestines. El sistema actual permet als promotors i contractistes, els quals s’han enriquit enormement gràcies a la totalitat del projecte colonial (vegis el cas de l’empresa immobiliària israeliana “Colony”), paralitzar deliberadament els projectes urbanístics aprovats a fi d’inflar els preus. La decisió de Netanyahu de concedir l’estatus de “desenvolupament preferencial” als assentaments de colons a Cisjordània també ha ajudat a desviar la construcció d’habitatges als territoris fronterers.
La solució de Netanyahu és un “mercat lliure” —la reforma del sector de l’habitatge vers una major privatització. Els manifestants s’han negat a acceptar les seves propostes i, en conseqüència, és probable que aquestes continuïn. Aquest fet apunta a la forma com, sota el neoliberalisme, els antagonismes de classe d’Israel s’han aguditzat fins a cert punt. L’Estat del Benestar s’ha deteriorat i la taxa d’explotació de la classe treballadora ha augmentat de manera espectacular. Un estudi recent realitzat a Israel mostrava com “l’israelià mitjà treballa 12 anys abans que la seva remuneració acumulada sigui equivalent al salari mensual d’un CEO d’una gran empresa.” La desocupació és alta a Israel, sector que juntament amb el de la “improductivitat” és el de més ràpid creixement entre els treballadors. Abans de les últimes protestes, la resposta predominant dels treballadors israelians a aquesta situació havia sigut un viratge a la dreta, al prosionisme. L’extrema dreta va augmentar el seu poder, impulsada significativament pel suport dels immigrants russos, mentre que la immensa majoria dels treballadors israelians es podia comptar entre aquells que donaven suport als bestials actes d’agressió de l’Estat, com per exemple l’Operació Plom Fos. L’Estat s’havia fet més obscenament autoritari i racista, sovint sense gaires senyals de protesta. En qualsevol cas, però, les coses no continuaran d’aquesta manera. Com hem vist, la dreta disposa de mitjans per racialitzar la transició cap a una forma més salvatge d’apartheid capitalista —consideris aquesta diatriba extraordinàriament racista publicada al Los Angeles Times, sense cap tipus d’ironia o crítica, per un destacat economista israelià. L’argument és que els àrabs i els ultraortodoxos jueus són mandrosos i actuen com un llast per a l’economia. Segons ell, l’Estat del Benestar els estaria permetent ser mandrosos —i qualsevol pot imaginar quin tipus de polítiques poden implementar-se sobre la base d’uns arguments com aquests.
Però aquestes protestes constitueixen una forma de lluita de classes que té el potencial de debilitar l’extrema dreta i, si es desenvolupen fins a un cert nivell, portar la política a una crisi que debiliti el control sobre els palestins. L’Estat d’Israel tractarà, sense cap mena de dubte, de resoldre aquest conflicte transferint l’antagonisme a l’esfera colonial i fins i tot podria decidir-se a iniciar una nova guerra d’agressió. Però aquesta mena de solucions poden topar-se amb límits força seriosos, especialment si la revolta àrab s’aprofundeix i s’estén (des d’aquest punt de vista, el que està succeint ara a Hama i Tahrir és molt important). Certament, un atac israelià contra Iran podria ser suïcida i estúpid. Per tant, les opcions són limitades.
A més, un altre dels efectes del neoliberalisme fou el desenvolupament d’una “comunitat autònoma de negocis”, una elit més o menys cohesionada que devia ben poc a les institucions tradicionals de la societat israeliana, que progressivament va dirigir els seus negocis a l’exterior i que empenyé l’Estat a avançar cap a les negociacions directes amb la OLP amb l’objectiu d’arribar a un acord per a la protecció de la supremacia israeliana (El model de la “governabilitat” Palestina que va sorgir d’Oslo es constituïa així com una reestructuració neoliberal del colonialisme israelià). Històricament, l’Estat havia assumit el paper de la creació d’una burgesia jueva, ja que aquesta no existia com a tal a la Palestina d’abans de la creació d’Israel. Durant dècades, l’Estat havia mantingut un acord corporatiu amb la racista federació sindical Histradut, incorporant-la en els seus plans de desenvolupament i aconseguint el Partit Laborista un important domini electoral. Destacats sectors de capital foren desenvolupats segons el model “laborista sionista”. La nova crisi d’aquest model es resolgué parcialment amb el projecte de colonització de 1967, el qual donava accés a recursos, mà d’obra barata i un mercat domèstic més ampli al capital israelià. Aquesta estratègia va dissipar els conflictes interns de classe fent dels palestins ocupats l’escalafó més baix de la societat israeliana. Malgrat tot, Israel tampoc es va escapar de la crisi global del fordisme, així que emprengué una sèrie de respostes similars a les dutes a terme a la resta del món —privatització d’indústries estatals, desregulació dels mercats, apertura dels mercats d’importació i focalització en els d’exportació, foment de les finances. El canvi d’un Estat de desenvolupament impulsat a un de regit per la privatització i l’acumulació financaritzada fou acompanyat per un canvi en la dominació del Likud i consolidat amb el Pla d’Estabilització Econòmica de 1985 (sobre aquest tema, vegeu Adán Hanieh).
Aquest procés ha permès el sorgiment d’un sector privat orientat als negocis capitalistes i, consegüentment, ha obert algunes fissures potencials entre els diferents sectors de la classe dominant israeliana. L’exèrcit segueix essent la institució suprema i dominant en la societat i segueix oferint moltes oportunitats rendibles per al capital israelià. Amb tot i això, els seus interessos estan cada cop més en contradicció amb els de la més àmplia classe capitalista del país. La segona intifada palestina, per exemple —provocada per les incursions de l’exèrcit israelià i el fracàs dels palestins a l’hora d’aconseguir un mínim indici de justícia del procés d’Oslo—, va generar al capital israelià la pèrdua d’importants beneficis potencials. La reputació de la supremacia militar de l’exèrcit d’Israel ha significat durant molt de temps la promesa que podria extirpar qualsevol problema. Realment, però, els límits del poder militar es mostraren molt clarament al Líban l’any 2006.
Perquè a Israel la dinàmica colonial encara predomina, i perquè la gran majoria dels treballadors israelians no han començat a trencar amb el sionisme, i de fet molts raonablement podrien pretendre obtenir-ne algun benefici, l’evolució dels antagonismes socials i les fissures al si de l’elit depenen principalment del context regional. Si la Primavera Àrab continua i es radicalitza, és possible que presenciem un debilitament de la posició d’Israel, de la seva utilitat per a Washington i de la seva capacitat per sostenir les polítiques militars —unes polítiques que importants sectors de la classe dominant ja consideren una càrrega—, fet que al seu torn obriria perspectives de grans lluites socials a Israel. De no ser així, llavors sospito que la classe dominant israeliana pot resoldre les seves dificultats a costa dels palestins i donar un pas més en el camí cap a algun tipus de feixisme.
Lenin's Tomb es el pseudònim i el nom del blog on publica un company del Socialist Workers Party organització germana d'En lluita a Gran Bretanya.
Traduït per Ivan Montejo
Per Lenin's Tomb. Recentment hi ha hagut protestes massives i vagues a Israel. Hi ha fins i tot un intent de reproduir l’efecte de Tahrir amb campaments de protesta establerts a Jerusalem. Alguns al si de l’esquerra són, naturalment, molt pessimistes pel que fa a aquests esdeveniments. Al cap i a la fi, l’esquerra israeliana ha mostrat molt rarament signes de voler superar de veres la injustícia colonial/racial que rau en el cor del projecte sionista. Les protestes actuals no mostren cap indici de desenvolupament d’una postura antiocupació, ni molt menys antiapartheid —al contrari. Per raons diverses, la qüestió colonial ni tan sols es menciona a pesar que està íntimament relacionada amb els problemes que han motivat les protestes. Amb tota probabilitat l’Estat d’Israel tractarà de resoldre l’antagonisme social desplaçant-lo a l’àmbit colonial —més assentaments, més robatori de matèries primes, probablement una altra guerra d’expansió. I atès el xovinisme i el racisme de la gran majoria dels israelians, sens dubte és lícit pensar que aquests podrien estar d’acord amb aquesta línia d’actuació. Això no obstant, l’única manera d’analitzar correctament la situació és a través d’una comprensió dels antagonismes de classe d’Israel i la seva relació amb el projecte colonial. Des del meu punt de vista, el millor anàlisi ens el proporcionen Moshe Machover i Akiva Orr. El nucli del seu argument és que, a diferència de moltes de les societats imperialistes, la dinàmica colonial predomina per sobre dels antagonismes interns de classe.
Certament, tots els nivells de la societat israeliana, des dels sindicats als sistemes educatius, les forces armades i els partits polítics dominants, estan implicats en el sistema de l’apartheid. Això fou cert des del començament mateix en les formes germinals que adoptà l’Estat d’Israel en el període del Mandat Britànic. Israel és una societat de colons i aquest fet té enormes implicacions per al desenvolupament de la consciència de classe. Mentre Israel es desenvolupi sobre la base de la construcció d’assentaments colonials, mentre la gent identifiqui els seus interessos amb l’expansió del colonialisme, les possibilitats que la classe obrera desenvolupi una capacitat revolucionària independent seran ben poques. No només es tracta d’una societat d’assentaments colonials, sinó que també hi juga un paper important el recolzament amb recursos materials que rep per part de l’imperialisme dels EUA. En aquest àmbit, Israel ha gaudit de grans avantatges en relació als seus rivals regionals, fet pel qual ha disposat habitualment d’una major capacitat per contenir els antagonismes socials. De fet, trobem un cert tipus d’assistencialisme colonial en els fonaments del sionisme. Inclús Jabotinsky, el sant de la dreta israeliana, va sostenir que cada colon havia de tenir una casa, alimentació, educació, roba i medicaments —requisits essencials en el seu temps, puix que gran part de la societat estava formada per immigrants molt recents. En l’era neoliberal, aquesta perspectiva s’ha vist erosionada i debilitada, amb algunes conseqüències importants de què tractaré més endavant. Això no obstant, Israel és únic entre els països d’Orient Mitjà i l’Àfrica del Nord (MENA en el seu acrònim en anglès), en el sentit que és una economia no-exportadora de petroli amb una renda per càpita elevada. Amb una de les majors densitats de població de la regió, és capaç de satisfer les necessitats de tots els ciutadans, encara que decideixi no fer-ho. En una regió coneguda per la inseguretat alimentària i la creixent escassesa d’aigua, Israel manté una economia d’alta tecnologia amb un gran sector financer i, per no pas pocs dels seus ciutadans, un pròsper estil de vida. També s’hi troben un bon nombre dels principals multimilionaris del món. Gran part d’aquesta riquesa deriva directament de l’expropiació dels palestins, ja sigui d’aigua o de béns immobles. En aquestes circumstàncies, amb el colonialisme com una característica generalitzada de la societat israeliana, central en la seva legitimació i sense impugnació per part de cap gran partit polític ni mitjà de comunicació, és il•lusori esperar que la classe obrera israeliana esdevingui una força capaç d’encapçalar la superació del racialitzat sistema capitalista en el qual es troba immersa.
Es deriven importants conseqüències estratègiques d’un anàlisi de Machover y Orr. Si l’antagonisme de classe és dominant, llavors l’esquerra hauria de centrar el seu activisme prioritàriament en l’organització de la classe obrera israeliana com a clau per superar el projecte colonial. L’autoorganització d’aquesta classe obrera seria fonamental per aconseguir la caiguda d’aquest sistema colonial. Per contra, si la dinàmica colonial predomina, llavors Machover y Orr tenen raó en concloure que “dementre el sionisme sigui políticament i ideològica dominant dins d’aquesta societat i constitueixi el marc acceptat de la política, no hi ha cap possibilitat per a la classe obrera israeliana de convertir-se en un moviment revolucionari de classe.” En aquest cas, l’única solució és un aixecament revolucionari regional.
L’extraordinari començament d’una tal revolta regional s’ha fet palès des del gener d’enguany. No hi ha dubte que de llavors ençà la posició regional d’Israel s’ha debilitat. A nivell internacional, aquesta rebel•lió ha conduit al proisraelià Obama a demanar el retorn a les fronteres anteriors a 1967 en un intent de salvar la dominació estatunidenca de l’Orient Mitjà. Tot i així, aquest gest no s’ha d’exagerar. Ara per ara és molt germinal i, llevat que la revolució s’aprofundeixi i s’estengui encara més, és poc probable que els EUA prenguin mesures serioses per frenar el seu gos guardià local. Nogensmenys, el debilitament de la posició regional d’Israel és real. I això sens dubte augmenta el risc d’una escalada de l’agressió regional que eventualment es pogués acabar duent a terme. També és important el fet que la revolta àrab hagi establert el precedent de les protestes d’Israel i s’hagi produït per algunes de les mateixes circumstàncies en termes de recessió global. Però, per suposat, mentre que la revolució àrab ha tingut fins ara una poderosa dinàmica antiimperialista (no de manera uniforme, però sí en línies generals), qualsevol possible dinàmica antiimperialista o fins i tot de “pau” en les protestes d’Israel es troba encara, en el millor dels casos, latent. Amb tot, hi ha aspectes de l’economia colonial d’Israel que estan vinculats a l’agudització de les divisions socials. En termes generals, són els palestins els que suporten els costos de l’ocupació. Tanmateix existeixen alguns antagonismes potencials que són d’interès.
En primer lloc, l’Estat d’Israel inverteix molt en el desenvolupament dels assentaments, la qual cosa requereix un grau inusual d’inversió en l’aparell repressiu. Necessàriament ha de desviar recursos del desenvolupament “intern”, inclús si la rendibilitat a llarg termini de la colonització s’espera que superi els costos. L’oposició entre la inversió en matèria militar i la inversió en matèria de benestar és un dels temes que ha sorgit en els últims debats a Israel. En segon lloc, la concentració del poder de classe que té lloc a Israel està vinculada amb el poder colonial. Per exemple, el problema específic en el centre de les protestes dels últims dies és l’habitatge. El sistema d’habitatge públic fou desenvolupat sobre una base colonial —literalment construint sobre terres i propietats palestines. El sistema actual permet als promotors i contractistes, els quals s’han enriquit enormement gràcies a la totalitat del projecte colonial (vegis el cas de l’empresa immobiliària israeliana “Colony”), paralitzar deliberadament els projectes urbanístics aprovats a fi d’inflar els preus. La decisió de Netanyahu de concedir l’estatus de “desenvolupament preferencial” als assentaments de colons a Cisjordània també ha ajudat a desviar la construcció d’habitatges als territoris fronterers.
La solució de Netanyahu és un “mercat lliure” —la reforma del sector de l’habitatge vers una major privatització. Els manifestants s’han negat a acceptar les seves propostes i, en conseqüència, és probable que aquestes continuïn. Aquest fet apunta a la forma com, sota el neoliberalisme, els antagonismes de classe d’Israel s’han aguditzat fins a cert punt. L’Estat del Benestar s’ha deteriorat i la taxa d’explotació de la classe treballadora ha augmentat de manera espectacular. Un estudi recent realitzat a Israel mostrava com “l’israelià mitjà treballa 12 anys abans que la seva remuneració acumulada sigui equivalent al salari mensual d’un CEO d’una gran empresa.” La desocupació és alta a Israel, sector que juntament amb el de la “improductivitat” és el de més ràpid creixement entre els treballadors. Abans de les últimes protestes, la resposta predominant dels treballadors israelians a aquesta situació havia sigut un viratge a la dreta, al prosionisme. L’extrema dreta va augmentar el seu poder, impulsada significativament pel suport dels immigrants russos, mentre que la immensa majoria dels treballadors israelians es podia comptar entre aquells que donaven suport als bestials actes d’agressió de l’Estat, com per exemple l’Operació Plom Fos. L’Estat s’havia fet més obscenament autoritari i racista, sovint sense gaires senyals de protesta. En qualsevol cas, però, les coses no continuaran d’aquesta manera. Com hem vist, la dreta disposa de mitjans per racialitzar la transició cap a una forma més salvatge d’apartheid capitalista —consideris aquesta diatriba extraordinàriament racista publicada al Los Angeles Times, sense cap tipus d’ironia o crítica, per un destacat economista israelià. L’argument és que els àrabs i els ultraortodoxos jueus són mandrosos i actuen com un llast per a l’economia. Segons ell, l’Estat del Benestar els estaria permetent ser mandrosos —i qualsevol pot imaginar quin tipus de polítiques poden implementar-se sobre la base d’uns arguments com aquests.
Però aquestes protestes constitueixen una forma de lluita de classes que té el potencial de debilitar l’extrema dreta i, si es desenvolupen fins a un cert nivell, portar la política a una crisi que debiliti el control sobre els palestins. L’Estat d’Israel tractarà, sense cap mena de dubte, de resoldre aquest conflicte transferint l’antagonisme a l’esfera colonial i fins i tot podria decidir-se a iniciar una nova guerra d’agressió. Però aquesta mena de solucions poden topar-se amb límits força seriosos, especialment si la revolta àrab s’aprofundeix i s’estén (des d’aquest punt de vista, el que està succeint ara a Hama i Tahrir és molt important). Certament, un atac israelià contra Iran podria ser suïcida i estúpid. Per tant, les opcions són limitades.
A més, un altre dels efectes del neoliberalisme fou el desenvolupament d’una “comunitat autònoma de negocis”, una elit més o menys cohesionada que devia ben poc a les institucions tradicionals de la societat israeliana, que progressivament va dirigir els seus negocis a l’exterior i que empenyé l’Estat a avançar cap a les negociacions directes amb la OLP amb l’objectiu d’arribar a un acord per a la protecció de la supremacia israeliana (El model de la “governabilitat” Palestina que va sorgir d’Oslo es constituïa així com una reestructuració neoliberal del colonialisme israelià). Històricament, l’Estat havia assumit el paper de la creació d’una burgesia jueva, ja que aquesta no existia com a tal a la Palestina d’abans de la creació d’Israel. Durant dècades, l’Estat havia mantingut un acord corporatiu amb la racista federació sindical Histradut, incorporant-la en els seus plans de desenvolupament i aconseguint el Partit Laborista un important domini electoral. Destacats sectors de capital foren desenvolupats segons el model “laborista sionista”. La nova crisi d’aquest model es resolgué parcialment amb el projecte de colonització de 1967, el qual donava accés a recursos, mà d’obra barata i un mercat domèstic més ampli al capital israelià. Aquesta estratègia va dissipar els conflictes interns de classe fent dels palestins ocupats l’escalafó més baix de la societat israeliana. Malgrat tot, Israel tampoc es va escapar de la crisi global del fordisme, així que emprengué una sèrie de respostes similars a les dutes a terme a la resta del món —privatització d’indústries estatals, desregulació dels mercats, apertura dels mercats d’importació i focalització en els d’exportació, foment de les finances. El canvi d’un Estat de desenvolupament impulsat a un de regit per la privatització i l’acumulació financaritzada fou acompanyat per un canvi en la dominació del Likud i consolidat amb el Pla d’Estabilització Econòmica de 1985 (sobre aquest tema, vegeu Adán Hanieh).
Aquest procés ha permès el sorgiment d’un sector privat orientat als negocis capitalistes i, consegüentment, ha obert algunes fissures potencials entre els diferents sectors de la classe dominant israeliana. L’exèrcit segueix essent la institució suprema i dominant en la societat i segueix oferint moltes oportunitats rendibles per al capital israelià. Amb tot i això, els seus interessos estan cada cop més en contradicció amb els de la més àmplia classe capitalista del país. La segona intifada palestina, per exemple —provocada per les incursions de l’exèrcit israelià i el fracàs dels palestins a l’hora d’aconseguir un mínim indici de justícia del procés d’Oslo—, va generar al capital israelià la pèrdua d’importants beneficis potencials. La reputació de la supremacia militar de l’exèrcit d’Israel ha significat durant molt de temps la promesa que podria extirpar qualsevol problema. Realment, però, els límits del poder militar es mostraren molt clarament al Líban l’any 2006.
Perquè a Israel la dinàmica colonial encara predomina, i perquè la gran majoria dels treballadors israelians no han començat a trencar amb el sionisme, i de fet molts raonablement podrien pretendre obtenir-ne algun benefici, l’evolució dels antagonismes socials i les fissures al si de l’elit depenen principalment del context regional. Si la Primavera Àrab continua i es radicalitza, és possible que presenciem un debilitament de la posició d’Israel, de la seva utilitat per a Washington i de la seva capacitat per sostenir les polítiques militars —unes polítiques que importants sectors de la classe dominant ja consideren una càrrega—, fet que al seu torn obriria perspectives de grans lluites socials a Israel. De no ser així, llavors sospito que la classe dominant israeliana pot resoldre les seves dificultats a costa dels palestins i donar un pas més en el camí cap a algun tipus de feixisme.
Lenin's Tomb es el pseudònim i el nom del blog on publica un company del Socialist Workers Party organització germana d'En lluita a Gran Bretanya.
Traduït per Ivan Montejo
terça-feira, 9 de agosto de 2011
J14 MAY CHALLENGE SOMETHING EVEN DEEPER THAN THE OCCUPATION
7 August 2011, + 972 http://972mag.com (Israel)
Dimi Reider*
The social justice demonstrations have been accused of ignoring the key issue of the occupation. But their tremendous groundswell of solidarity and cooperation is slowly gnawing at something even more significant than that – the principle of separation, of which the occupation is just one exercise.
Placard citing the Tahrir slogan of "Go!" and reading "Egypt is Here" at the J14 rally. Photo: Oren Ziv, Activestills.org
One of the most impressive aspects of the J14 movement is how quickly it is snowballing, drawing more and more groups and communities into a torrent of discontent. Pouring out into the streets is everything that Israelis, of all national identities, creeds and most classes complained about for years: The climbing rents, the rising prices on fuel, the parenting costs, the free-fall in the quality of public education, the overworked, unsustainable healthcare system, the complete and utter detachment of most politicians, on most levels, from most of the nation.
All this has been obfuscated for decades by the conflict, by a perpetual state of emergency; one of the benefits from leaving the occupation outside the protests, for now, was to neutralise the entire discourse of militarist fear-mongering. Contrary to what Dahlia and Joseph wrote last week, the government so far utterly failed to convince the people military needs must come before social justice; Iran has largely vanished from the news pages, and attempts to scare Israelis with references to a possible escalation with Lebanon or the Palestinian are relegated to third, fourth and fifth places in the headlines, with the texts often written in a sarcastic tone rarely employed in Israeli media on “serious” military matters.
Over the past week, though, the Palestinians themselves have begun gaining presence in the protests; not as an external threat or exclusively as monolithic victims of a monolithic Israel, but as a part and parcel of the protest movement, with their demands to rectify injustices unique to the Palestinians organically integrating with demands made by the protests on behalf of all Israelis.
First, a tent titled “1948″ was pitched on Rothschild boulevard, housing Palestinian and Jewish activists determined to discuss Palestinian collective rights and Palestinian grievances as a legitimate part of the protests. They activists tell me the arguments are exhaustive, wild and sometimes downright strange; but unlike the ultra-right activists who tried pitching a tent calling for a Jewish Tel Aviv and hoisting homophobic signs, the 1948 tenters were not pushed out, and are fast becoming part of the fabric of this “apolitical” protest.
A few days after the 1948 tent was pitched, the council of the protests – democratically elected delegates from 40 protest camps across the country – published their list of demands, including, startlingly, two of the key social justice issues unique to the Palestinians within Israel: Sweeping recognition of unrecognised Bedouin villages in the Negev; and expanding the municipal borders of Palestinian towns and villages to allow for natural development. The demands chimed in perfectly with the initial drive of the protest – lack of affordable housing.
The demands chimed in perfectly with the initial drive of the protest – lack of affordable housing. Neither issue has ever been included in the list of demands of a national, non-sectarian movement capable of bringing 300,000 people out into the streets.
And, finally, on Wednesday, residents of the Jewish poverty-stricken neighbourhood of Hatikva, many of them dyed-in-the-wool Likud activists, signed a covenant of cooperation with the Palestinian and Jewish Jaffa protesters, many of them activists with Jewish-Palestinian Hadash and nationalist-Palestinian Balad. They agreed they had more in common with each other than with the middle class national leadership of the protest, and that while not wishing to break apart from the J14 movement, they thought their unique demands would be better heard if they act together. At the rally, they marched together, arguing bitterly at times but sticking to each other, eventually even chanting mixed Hebrew and Arabic renditions of slogans from Tahrir.
Yesteday’s mega-rally was also where Palestinian partnership in the protests came to a head, when writer Odeh Bisharat spoke to nearly 300,000 people – overwhelmingly, centrist Israelis Jews – of the grievances of Palestinians in Israel and was met with raucous applause. I’ll return to that moment a little further below, but before that, perhaps I should explain why I think the participation of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the protests has more bearing on the conflict than any concentrated attempt to rally the crowds against the occupation.
On the most practical level, if the protesters had begun by blaming all of Israel’s social and political woes on the occupation, none of the breathtaking events of the past three weeks would have happened. They would have been written off as Israel-hating lefties and cast aside, just like every attempt to get mainstream Israelis to care for Palestinians before caring for themselves was cast aside for at least the past decade.
Altruist causes can rarely raise people to a sustained and genuine popular struggle against their own governments, and attempts to rally Israelis to the Palestinian cause for selfish reasons – i.e. for our own soldiers’ sake or because of the demographic time bomb – smacked of hypocrisy and ethnic nationalism; hypocrisy is a poor magnet for popular support, while ethnic nationalism is the natural instrument of the Right, not of the Left, which wields it awkwardly and usually to its own detriment.
It should be admitted, 11 years after the second Intifada, 18 years after the beginning of the peace process, that the Israeli left has utterly and abjectly failed to seriously enthuse Israelis in the project of ending the occupation. There was never a choice between a social struggle focused on the occupation and a social struggle temporarily putting the conflict aside, because the first attempt would have flopped . There was nothing to be gained by trying the same thing again for the Nth time. There have been many important victories in battles, but on the whole, the two-state left (as opposed to the two-state right) has lost the war.
The Occupation is just part of a bigger problem
But these were the tactical considerations valid only for the beginning of the protests. Social injustice does not exist in a vacuum, most certainly not in a conflict zone – and the problem in Israel-Palestine is much wider and deeper than the occupation. The occupation may be the most acute and violent injustice going on, and, like Aziz and I wrote in our New York Times op-ed last week, it’s certainly the greatest single obstacle to social justice on either side of the Green Line. But it’s still only one expression of an organising principle that has governed all of Israel-Palestine for at least the past sixty years: Separation.
Israel-Palestine today is, for all intents and purposes, a single political entity, with a single de-facto sovereign – the government in Jerusalem, but the populations this government controls, are divided into several levels of privilege. The broad outlines of the hierarchy are well-known – at the bottom are Palestinians of ‘67, who can’t even vote for the regime that governs most areas of their lives and are subject to military and bureaucratic violence on a day to day basis; Palestinians of ‘48, who can vote but are strongly and consistently discriminated and lack collective rights (which is a Jewish privilege); and finally the Israeli Jews.
But separation runs deeper than that: It employs and amplifies cultural and economic privilege to fracture each broad group into sub-groups, separating Druze from Bedouins from Palestinians, Ramallah residents from residents of Hebron, city residents from villagers, established residents from refugees; and within Jewish society, Mizrachis from Ashkenazis, settlers from green-line residents of Israel, ultra-Orthodox from secular, Russians from native-born Israelis, Ethiopians from everyone else, and so on.
The separation system is so chaotic even its privileges are far from self evident: ultra-Orthodox and settlers are seen as the communities most benefiting from the status quo, but it is important to remember the actual socio-economic standing of both is rather weak, and many in both are not only beneficiaries, but also hostages – the ultra-Orthodox to sectorial parties, the settlers to the occupation. And the occupation itself is just an instrument of separation: Its long term purpose is to acquire maximum land with a minimum of Palestinian on it, but for the past 40 years it mainly ensured half the population under the control of a certain government would have no recourse or representation with that government on any level.
And while the issue of the occupation remains to be engaged with directly in the #j14 movement, the very dynamic of the protests is already gnawing at the foundation on which the occupation rests – the separation axiom. Haggai Matar is a veteran anti-occupation activist, with a prison term for conscientious objection to serve in the IDF and countless West Bank protests under his belt. There are few people in Israel more committed to ending the occupation than him. And yet this is how he writes of yesterday’s rally:
Odeh Bisharat, the first Arab to address the mass rallies, greeted the enormous audience before him and reminded them that the struggle for social justice has always been the struggle of the Arab community, which has suffered from inequality, discrimination, state-level racism and house demolitions in Ramle, Lod, Jaffa and Al-Araqib. Not only was this met with ovation from a huge crowd of well over a hundred thousand people, but the masses actually chanted: “Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies.” And later, in a short clip of interviews from protest camps across the country, Jews and Arabs spoke, and a number of them, including even one religious Jew, repeatedly said that “it’s time for this state to be a state for all its citizens.” A state for all its citizens. As a broad, popular demand. Who would have believed it.
It would be seriously far-fetched to assume the protesters are deliberately trying to pull down the entire meshwork of rifts and boundaries. But one of the many unexpected consequences of this movement – indeed, the movement itself is an avalanche of completely unexpected consequences – is that these boundaries are beginning to blur and to seem less relevant than what brings people together. We have failed to end the occupation by confronting it head on, but the boundary-breaking, de-segregating movement could, conceivably, undermine it.
Like Noam wrote earlier today, it’s still too soon to tell where the movement will eventually go, and “it can even bring Israel further to the right; it certainly won’t be the first time in history in which social unrest led to the rise of rightwing demagogue – but right now, it is creating a space for a new conversation. Limited as this space may be, it’s so much more than we had just a month ago.” The slow erosion of separation lines means there are also possibilities opening up for new conversation about the Jewish-Palestinian divide – including the occupation.
*Dmitry (Dimi) Reider is a journalist and photographer working from Israel and the Palestinian territories. His work had appeared in the New York Times,The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, and Index on Censorship, etc.
Dimi Reider*
The social justice demonstrations have been accused of ignoring the key issue of the occupation. But their tremendous groundswell of solidarity and cooperation is slowly gnawing at something even more significant than that – the principle of separation, of which the occupation is just one exercise.
One of the most impressive aspects of the J14 movement is how quickly it is snowballing, drawing more and more groups and communities into a torrent of discontent. Pouring out into the streets is everything that Israelis, of all national identities, creeds and most classes complained about for years: The climbing rents, the rising prices on fuel, the parenting costs, the free-fall in the quality of public education, the overworked, unsustainable healthcare system, the complete and utter detachment of most politicians, on most levels, from most of the nation.
All this has been obfuscated for decades by the conflict, by a perpetual state of emergency; one of the benefits from leaving the occupation outside the protests, for now, was to neutralise the entire discourse of militarist fear-mongering. Contrary to what Dahlia and Joseph wrote last week, the government so far utterly failed to convince the people military needs must come before social justice; Iran has largely vanished from the news pages, and attempts to scare Israelis with references to a possible escalation with Lebanon or the Palestinian are relegated to third, fourth and fifth places in the headlines, with the texts often written in a sarcastic tone rarely employed in Israeli media on “serious” military matters.
Over the past week, though, the Palestinians themselves have begun gaining presence in the protests; not as an external threat or exclusively as monolithic victims of a monolithic Israel, but as a part and parcel of the protest movement, with their demands to rectify injustices unique to the Palestinians organically integrating with demands made by the protests on behalf of all Israelis.
First, a tent titled “1948″ was pitched on Rothschild boulevard, housing Palestinian and Jewish activists determined to discuss Palestinian collective rights and Palestinian grievances as a legitimate part of the protests. They activists tell me the arguments are exhaustive, wild and sometimes downright strange; but unlike the ultra-right activists who tried pitching a tent calling for a Jewish Tel Aviv and hoisting homophobic signs, the 1948 tenters were not pushed out, and are fast becoming part of the fabric of this “apolitical” protest.
A few days after the 1948 tent was pitched, the council of the protests – democratically elected delegates from 40 protest camps across the country – published their list of demands, including, startlingly, two of the key social justice issues unique to the Palestinians within Israel: Sweeping recognition of unrecognised Bedouin villages in the Negev; and expanding the municipal borders of Palestinian towns and villages to allow for natural development. The demands chimed in perfectly with the initial drive of the protest – lack of affordable housing.
The demands chimed in perfectly with the initial drive of the protest – lack of affordable housing. Neither issue has ever been included in the list of demands of a national, non-sectarian movement capable of bringing 300,000 people out into the streets.
And, finally, on Wednesday, residents of the Jewish poverty-stricken neighbourhood of Hatikva, many of them dyed-in-the-wool Likud activists, signed a covenant of cooperation with the Palestinian and Jewish Jaffa protesters, many of them activists with Jewish-Palestinian Hadash and nationalist-Palestinian Balad. They agreed they had more in common with each other than with the middle class national leadership of the protest, and that while not wishing to break apart from the J14 movement, they thought their unique demands would be better heard if they act together. At the rally, they marched together, arguing bitterly at times but sticking to each other, eventually even chanting mixed Hebrew and Arabic renditions of slogans from Tahrir.
Yesteday’s mega-rally was also where Palestinian partnership in the protests came to a head, when writer Odeh Bisharat spoke to nearly 300,000 people – overwhelmingly, centrist Israelis Jews – of the grievances of Palestinians in Israel and was met with raucous applause. I’ll return to that moment a little further below, but before that, perhaps I should explain why I think the participation of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the protests has more bearing on the conflict than any concentrated attempt to rally the crowds against the occupation.
On the most practical level, if the protesters had begun by blaming all of Israel’s social and political woes on the occupation, none of the breathtaking events of the past three weeks would have happened. They would have been written off as Israel-hating lefties and cast aside, just like every attempt to get mainstream Israelis to care for Palestinians before caring for themselves was cast aside for at least the past decade.
Altruist causes can rarely raise people to a sustained and genuine popular struggle against their own governments, and attempts to rally Israelis to the Palestinian cause for selfish reasons – i.e. for our own soldiers’ sake or because of the demographic time bomb – smacked of hypocrisy and ethnic nationalism; hypocrisy is a poor magnet for popular support, while ethnic nationalism is the natural instrument of the Right, not of the Left, which wields it awkwardly and usually to its own detriment.
It should be admitted, 11 years after the second Intifada, 18 years after the beginning of the peace process, that the Israeli left has utterly and abjectly failed to seriously enthuse Israelis in the project of ending the occupation. There was never a choice between a social struggle focused on the occupation and a social struggle temporarily putting the conflict aside, because the first attempt would have flopped . There was nothing to be gained by trying the same thing again for the Nth time. There have been many important victories in battles, but on the whole, the two-state left (as opposed to the two-state right) has lost the war.
The Occupation is just part of a bigger problem
But these were the tactical considerations valid only for the beginning of the protests. Social injustice does not exist in a vacuum, most certainly not in a conflict zone – and the problem in Israel-Palestine is much wider and deeper than the occupation. The occupation may be the most acute and violent injustice going on, and, like Aziz and I wrote in our New York Times op-ed last week, it’s certainly the greatest single obstacle to social justice on either side of the Green Line. But it’s still only one expression of an organising principle that has governed all of Israel-Palestine for at least the past sixty years: Separation.
Israel-Palestine today is, for all intents and purposes, a single political entity, with a single de-facto sovereign – the government in Jerusalem, but the populations this government controls, are divided into several levels of privilege. The broad outlines of the hierarchy are well-known – at the bottom are Palestinians of ‘67, who can’t even vote for the regime that governs most areas of their lives and are subject to military and bureaucratic violence on a day to day basis; Palestinians of ‘48, who can vote but are strongly and consistently discriminated and lack collective rights (which is a Jewish privilege); and finally the Israeli Jews.
But separation runs deeper than that: It employs and amplifies cultural and economic privilege to fracture each broad group into sub-groups, separating Druze from Bedouins from Palestinians, Ramallah residents from residents of Hebron, city residents from villagers, established residents from refugees; and within Jewish society, Mizrachis from Ashkenazis, settlers from green-line residents of Israel, ultra-Orthodox from secular, Russians from native-born Israelis, Ethiopians from everyone else, and so on.
The separation system is so chaotic even its privileges are far from self evident: ultra-Orthodox and settlers are seen as the communities most benefiting from the status quo, but it is important to remember the actual socio-economic standing of both is rather weak, and many in both are not only beneficiaries, but also hostages – the ultra-Orthodox to sectorial parties, the settlers to the occupation. And the occupation itself is just an instrument of separation: Its long term purpose is to acquire maximum land with a minimum of Palestinian on it, but for the past 40 years it mainly ensured half the population under the control of a certain government would have no recourse or representation with that government on any level.
And while the issue of the occupation remains to be engaged with directly in the #j14 movement, the very dynamic of the protests is already gnawing at the foundation on which the occupation rests – the separation axiom. Haggai Matar is a veteran anti-occupation activist, with a prison term for conscientious objection to serve in the IDF and countless West Bank protests under his belt. There are few people in Israel more committed to ending the occupation than him. And yet this is how he writes of yesterday’s rally:
Odeh Bisharat, the first Arab to address the mass rallies, greeted the enormous audience before him and reminded them that the struggle for social justice has always been the struggle of the Arab community, which has suffered from inequality, discrimination, state-level racism and house demolitions in Ramle, Lod, Jaffa and Al-Araqib. Not only was this met with ovation from a huge crowd of well over a hundred thousand people, but the masses actually chanted: “Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies.” And later, in a short clip of interviews from protest camps across the country, Jews and Arabs spoke, and a number of them, including even one religious Jew, repeatedly said that “it’s time for this state to be a state for all its citizens.” A state for all its citizens. As a broad, popular demand. Who would have believed it.
It would be seriously far-fetched to assume the protesters are deliberately trying to pull down the entire meshwork of rifts and boundaries. But one of the many unexpected consequences of this movement – indeed, the movement itself is an avalanche of completely unexpected consequences – is that these boundaries are beginning to blur and to seem less relevant than what brings people together. We have failed to end the occupation by confronting it head on, but the boundary-breaking, de-segregating movement could, conceivably, undermine it.
Like Noam wrote earlier today, it’s still too soon to tell where the movement will eventually go, and “it can even bring Israel further to the right; it certainly won’t be the first time in history in which social unrest led to the rise of rightwing demagogue – but right now, it is creating a space for a new conversation. Limited as this space may be, it’s so much more than we had just a month ago.” The slow erosion of separation lines means there are also possibilities opening up for new conversation about the Jewish-Palestinian divide – including the occupation.
*Dmitry (Dimi) Reider is a journalist and photographer working from Israel and the Palestinian territories. His work had appeared in the New York Times,The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, and Index on Censorship, etc.
sexta-feira, 5 de agosto de 2011
THREE PERSPECTIVES ON THE AMAZING GROWTH OF TENT CITIES OF PROTEST ACROSS ISRAELI SOCIETY
6 August 2011, Tikkun תיקון http://www.tikkun.org (USA)
Uri Avnery אורי אבנרי
“How Goodly Are Thy Tents”
FIRST OF all, a warning.
Tent cities are springing up all over Israel. A social protest movement is gathering momentum. At some point in the near future, it may endanger the right-wing government.
At that point, there will be a temptation – perhaps an irresistible temptation – to “warm up the borders”. To start a nice little war. Call on the youth of Israel, the same young people now manning (and womanning) the tents, to go and defend the fatherland.
Nothing easier than that. A small provocation, a platoon crossing the border “to prevent the launching of a rocket”, a fire fight, a salvo of rockets – and lo and behold, a war. End of protest.
In September, just a few weeks from now, the Palestinians intend to apply to the UN for the recognition of the State of Palestine. Our politicians and generals are chanting in unison that this will cause a crisis – Palestinians in the occupied territories may rise in protest against the occupation, violent demonstrations may ensue, the army will be compelled to shoot – and lo and behold, a war. End of protest.
THREE WEEKS ago I was interviewed one morning by a Dutch journalist. At the end, she asked: “You are describing an awful situation. The extreme right-wing controls the Knesset and is enacting abominable anti-democratic laws. The people are indifferent and apathetic. There is no opposition to speak of. And yet you exude a spirit of optimism. How come?”
I answered that I have faith in the people of Israel. Contrary to appearances, we are a sane people. Some time, somewhere, a new movement will arise and change the situation. It may happen in a week, in a month, in a year. But it will come.
On that very same day, just a few hours later, a young woman called Daphne Liff, with an improbable man’s hat perched on her flowing hair, said to herself: “Enough!”
She had been evicted by her landlady because she couldn’t afford the rent. She set up a tent in Rothschild Boulevard, a long, tree-lined thoroughfare in the center of Tel Aviv. The news spread through facebook, and within an hour, dozens of tents had sprung up. Within a week, there were some 400 tents, spread out in a double line more than a mile long.
Similar tent-cities sprang up in Jerusalem, Haifa and a dozen smaller towns. The next Saturday, tens of thousands joined protest marches in Tel Aviv and elsewhere. Last Saturday, they numbered more than 150,000.
This”] has now become the center of Israeli life. The Rothschild tent city has assumed a life of its own –a cross between Tahrir Square and Woodstock, with a touch of Hyde Park corner thrown in for good measure. The mood is indescribably upbeat, masses of people come to visit and return home full of enthusiasm and hope. Everybody can feel that something momentous is happening.
Seeing the tents, I was reminded of the words of Balaam, who was sent by the king of Moab to curse the children of Israel in the desert (Numbers 24) and instead exclaimed: “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, Oh Israel!”
IT ALL started in a remote little town in Tunisia, when an unlicensed market vendor was arrested by a policewoman. It seems that in the ensuing altercation, the woman struck the man in the face, a terrible humiliation for a Tunisian man. He set himself on fire. What followed is history: the revolution in Tunisia, regime change in Egypt, uprisings all over the Middle East.
The Israeli government saw all this with growing concern – but they didn’t imagine that there might be an effect in Israel itself. Israeli society, with its ingrained contempt for Arabs, could hardly be expected to follow suit.
But follow suit it did. People in the street spoke with growing admiration of the Arab revolt. It showed that people acting together could dare to confront leaders far more fearsome than our bumbling Binyamin Netanyahu.
Some of the most popular posters on the tents were “Rothschild corner Tahrir” and, in a Hebrew rhyme, “Tahrir – Not only in Cahir” – Cahir being the Hebrew version of al-Cahira, the Arabic name for Cairo. And also: “Mubarak, Assad, Netanyahu”.
In Tahrir Square, the central slogan was “The People Want to Overthrow the Regime”. In conscious emulation, the central slogan of the tent cities is “The People Want Social Justice”.
WHO ARE these people? What exactly do they want?
It started with a demand for “Affordable Housing”. Rents in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and elsewhere are extremely high, after years of Government neglect. But the protest soon engulfed other subjects: the high price of foodstuffs and gasoline, the low wages . The ridiculously low salaries of physicians and teachers, the deterioration of the education and health services. There is a general feeling that 18 tycoons control everything, including the politicians. (Politicians who dared to show up in the tent cities were chased away.) They could have quoted an American saying: “Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”
A selection of the slogans gives an impression:
We want a welfare state!
Fighting for the home!
Justice, not charity!
If the government is against the people, the people are against the government!
Bibi, this is not the US Congress, you will not buy us with empty words!
If you don’t join our war, we shall not fight your wars!
Give us our state back!
Three partners with three salaries cannot pay for three rooms!
The answer to privatization: revolution!
We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, we are slaves to Bibi in Israel!
I have no other homeland!
Bibi, go home, we'll pay for the gas!
Overthrow swinish capitalism!
Be practical, demand the impossible!
WHAT IS missing in this array of slogans? Of course: the occupation, the settlements, the huge expenditure on the military.
This is by design. The organizers, anonymous young men and women – mainly women – are very determined not to be branded as “leftists”. They know that bringing up the occupation would provide Netanyahu with an easy weapon, split the tent-dwellers and derail the protests.
We in the peace movement know and respect this. All of us are exercising strenuous self-restraint, so that Netanyahu will not succeed in marginalizing the movement and depicting it as a plot to overthrow the right-wing government.
As I wrote in an article in Haaretz: No need to push the protesters. In due course, they will reach the conclusion that the money for the major reforms they demand can only come from stopping the settlements and cutting the huge military budget by hundreds of billions – and that is possible only in peace. (To help them along, we published a large ad, saying: “It’s quite simple – money for the settlements OR money for housing, health services and education”).
Voltaire said that “the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give it to the other”. This government takes the money of decent citizens to give it to the settlers.
WHO ARE they, these enthusiastic demonstrators, who seemingly have come from nowhere?
They are the young generation of the middle class, who go out to work, take home average salaries and “cannot finish the month”, as the Israeli expression goes. Mothers who cannot go to work because they have nowhere to leave their babies.
University students who cannot get a room in the dormitories or afford accomodation in the city. And especially young people who want to marry but cannot afford to buy an apartment, even with the help of their parents. (One tent bore the sign: “Even this tent was bought by our parents”)
All this in a flourishing economy, which has been spared the pains of the world-wide economic crisis and boasts an enviable unemployment rate of just 5%.
If pressed, most of the protesters would declare themselves to be “social-democrats”. They are the very opposite of the Tea Party in the US: they want a welfare state, they blame privatization for many of their ills, they want the government to interfere and to act. Whether they want to admit it or not, the very essence of their demands and attitudes is classically leftist (the term created in the French Revolution because the adherents of these ideals sat on the left side of the speaker in the National Assembly). They are the essence of what Left means - (though in Israel, the terms “Left” and “Right” have until now been largely identified with questions of war and peace).
WHERE WILL it go from here?
No one can say. When asked about the impact of the French Revolution, Zhou Enlai famously said: “It’s too early to say.” Here we are witnessing an event still in progress, perhaps even still beginning.
It has already produced a huge change. For weeks now, the public and the media have stopped talking about the borders, the Iranian bomb and the security situation. Instead, the talk is now almost completely about the social situation, the minimum wage, the injustice of indirect taxes, the housing construction crisis.
Under pressure, the amorphous leadership of the protest has drawn up a list of concrete demands. Among others: government building of houses for rent, raising taxes on the rich and the corporations, free education from the age of three months [sic], a raise in the salary of physicians, police and fire-fighters, school classes of no more than 21 pupils, breaking the monopolies controlled by a few tycoons, and so on.
So where from here? There are many possibilities, both good and bad.
Netanyahu can try to buy off the protest with some minor concessions – some billions here, some billions there. This will confront the protesters with the choice of the Indian boy in the movie about becoming a millionaire: take the money and quit, or risk all on answering yet another question.
Or: the movement may continue to gather momentum and force major changes, such as shifting the burden from indirect to direct taxation.
Some rabid optimists (like myself) may even dream of the emergence of a new authentic political party to fill the gaping void on the left side of the political spectrum.
I STARTED with a warning, and I must end with another one: this movement has raised immense hopes. If it fails, it may leave behind an atmosphere of despondency and despair – a mood that will drive those who can to seek a better life somewhere else.
Uri Avnery אורי אבנרי
“How Goodly Are Thy Tents”
FIRST OF all, a warning.
Tent cities are springing up all over Israel. A social protest movement is gathering momentum. At some point in the near future, it may endanger the right-wing government.
At that point, there will be a temptation – perhaps an irresistible temptation – to “warm up the borders”. To start a nice little war. Call on the youth of Israel, the same young people now manning (and womanning) the tents, to go and defend the fatherland.
Nothing easier than that. A small provocation, a platoon crossing the border “to prevent the launching of a rocket”, a fire fight, a salvo of rockets – and lo and behold, a war. End of protest.
In September, just a few weeks from now, the Palestinians intend to apply to the UN for the recognition of the State of Palestine. Our politicians and generals are chanting in unison that this will cause a crisis – Palestinians in the occupied territories may rise in protest against the occupation, violent demonstrations may ensue, the army will be compelled to shoot – and lo and behold, a war. End of protest.
THREE WEEKS ago I was interviewed one morning by a Dutch journalist. At the end, she asked: “You are describing an awful situation. The extreme right-wing controls the Knesset and is enacting abominable anti-democratic laws. The people are indifferent and apathetic. There is no opposition to speak of. And yet you exude a spirit of optimism. How come?”
I answered that I have faith in the people of Israel. Contrary to appearances, we are a sane people. Some time, somewhere, a new movement will arise and change the situation. It may happen in a week, in a month, in a year. But it will come.
On that very same day, just a few hours later, a young woman called Daphne Liff, with an improbable man’s hat perched on her flowing hair, said to herself: “Enough!”
She had been evicted by her landlady because she couldn’t afford the rent. She set up a tent in Rothschild Boulevard, a long, tree-lined thoroughfare in the center of Tel Aviv. The news spread through facebook, and within an hour, dozens of tents had sprung up. Within a week, there were some 400 tents, spread out in a double line more than a mile long.
Similar tent-cities sprang up in Jerusalem, Haifa and a dozen smaller towns. The next Saturday, tens of thousands joined protest marches in Tel Aviv and elsewhere. Last Saturday, they numbered more than 150,000.
This”] has now become the center of Israeli life. The Rothschild tent city has assumed a life of its own –a cross between Tahrir Square and Woodstock, with a touch of Hyde Park corner thrown in for good measure. The mood is indescribably upbeat, masses of people come to visit and return home full of enthusiasm and hope. Everybody can feel that something momentous is happening.
Seeing the tents, I was reminded of the words of Balaam, who was sent by the king of Moab to curse the children of Israel in the desert (Numbers 24) and instead exclaimed: “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, Oh Israel!”
IT ALL started in a remote little town in Tunisia, when an unlicensed market vendor was arrested by a policewoman. It seems that in the ensuing altercation, the woman struck the man in the face, a terrible humiliation for a Tunisian man. He set himself on fire. What followed is history: the revolution in Tunisia, regime change in Egypt, uprisings all over the Middle East.
The Israeli government saw all this with growing concern – but they didn’t imagine that there might be an effect in Israel itself. Israeli society, with its ingrained contempt for Arabs, could hardly be expected to follow suit.
But follow suit it did. People in the street spoke with growing admiration of the Arab revolt. It showed that people acting together could dare to confront leaders far more fearsome than our bumbling Binyamin Netanyahu.
Some of the most popular posters on the tents were “Rothschild corner Tahrir” and, in a Hebrew rhyme, “Tahrir – Not only in Cahir” – Cahir being the Hebrew version of al-Cahira, the Arabic name for Cairo. And also: “Mubarak, Assad, Netanyahu”.
In Tahrir Square, the central slogan was “The People Want to Overthrow the Regime”. In conscious emulation, the central slogan of the tent cities is “The People Want Social Justice”.
WHO ARE these people? What exactly do they want?
It started with a demand for “Affordable Housing”. Rents in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and elsewhere are extremely high, after years of Government neglect. But the protest soon engulfed other subjects: the high price of foodstuffs and gasoline, the low wages . The ridiculously low salaries of physicians and teachers, the deterioration of the education and health services. There is a general feeling that 18 tycoons control everything, including the politicians. (Politicians who dared to show up in the tent cities were chased away.) They could have quoted an American saying: “Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”
A selection of the slogans gives an impression:
We want a welfare state!
Fighting for the home!
Justice, not charity!
If the government is against the people, the people are against the government!
Bibi, this is not the US Congress, you will not buy us with empty words!
If you don’t join our war, we shall not fight your wars!
Give us our state back!
Three partners with three salaries cannot pay for three rooms!
The answer to privatization: revolution!
We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, we are slaves to Bibi in Israel!
I have no other homeland!
Bibi, go home, we'll pay for the gas!
Overthrow swinish capitalism!
Be practical, demand the impossible!
WHAT IS missing in this array of slogans? Of course: the occupation, the settlements, the huge expenditure on the military.
This is by design. The organizers, anonymous young men and women – mainly women – are very determined not to be branded as “leftists”. They know that bringing up the occupation would provide Netanyahu with an easy weapon, split the tent-dwellers and derail the protests.
We in the peace movement know and respect this. All of us are exercising strenuous self-restraint, so that Netanyahu will not succeed in marginalizing the movement and depicting it as a plot to overthrow the right-wing government.
As I wrote in an article in Haaretz: No need to push the protesters. In due course, they will reach the conclusion that the money for the major reforms they demand can only come from stopping the settlements and cutting the huge military budget by hundreds of billions – and that is possible only in peace. (To help them along, we published a large ad, saying: “It’s quite simple – money for the settlements OR money for housing, health services and education”).
Voltaire said that “the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give it to the other”. This government takes the money of decent citizens to give it to the settlers.
WHO ARE they, these enthusiastic demonstrators, who seemingly have come from nowhere?
They are the young generation of the middle class, who go out to work, take home average salaries and “cannot finish the month”, as the Israeli expression goes. Mothers who cannot go to work because they have nowhere to leave their babies.
University students who cannot get a room in the dormitories or afford accomodation in the city. And especially young people who want to marry but cannot afford to buy an apartment, even with the help of their parents. (One tent bore the sign: “Even this tent was bought by our parents”)
All this in a flourishing economy, which has been spared the pains of the world-wide economic crisis and boasts an enviable unemployment rate of just 5%.
If pressed, most of the protesters would declare themselves to be “social-democrats”. They are the very opposite of the Tea Party in the US: they want a welfare state, they blame privatization for many of their ills, they want the government to interfere and to act. Whether they want to admit it or not, the very essence of their demands and attitudes is classically leftist (the term created in the French Revolution because the adherents of these ideals sat on the left side of the speaker in the National Assembly). They are the essence of what Left means - (though in Israel, the terms “Left” and “Right” have until now been largely identified with questions of war and peace).
WHERE WILL it go from here?
No one can say. When asked about the impact of the French Revolution, Zhou Enlai famously said: “It’s too early to say.” Here we are witnessing an event still in progress, perhaps even still beginning.
It has already produced a huge change. For weeks now, the public and the media have stopped talking about the borders, the Iranian bomb and the security situation. Instead, the talk is now almost completely about the social situation, the minimum wage, the injustice of indirect taxes, the housing construction crisis.
Under pressure, the amorphous leadership of the protest has drawn up a list of concrete demands. Among others: government building of houses for rent, raising taxes on the rich and the corporations, free education from the age of three months [sic], a raise in the salary of physicians, police and fire-fighters, school classes of no more than 21 pupils, breaking the monopolies controlled by a few tycoons, and so on.
So where from here? There are many possibilities, both good and bad.
Netanyahu can try to buy off the protest with some minor concessions – some billions here, some billions there. This will confront the protesters with the choice of the Indian boy in the movie about becoming a millionaire: take the money and quit, or risk all on answering yet another question.
Or: the movement may continue to gather momentum and force major changes, such as shifting the burden from indirect to direct taxation.
Some rabid optimists (like myself) may even dream of the emergence of a new authentic political party to fill the gaping void on the left side of the political spectrum.
I STARTED with a warning, and I must end with another one: this movement has raised immense hopes. If it fails, it may leave behind an atmosphere of despondency and despair – a mood that will drive those who can to seek a better life somewhere else.
quarta-feira, 3 de agosto de 2011
Israël : l’éternel combattant de la paix Uri Avnery garde espoir
2 août 2011, Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS) http://www.france-palestine.org (France)
Jerusalem (AFP) — Uri Avnery, figure emblématique du camp de la paix en Israël, garde l’espoir chevillé au corps à 87 ans, bien que l’ultra nationalisme ait le vent en poupe, que les perspectives d’accord avec les Palestiniens s’éloignent et que la gauche perde élection après élection.
"Je reste optimiste car je crois à la capacité de ce peuple (israélien) de changer de cap", confie Uri Avnery.
En revanche, cet octogénaire ne mâche pas ses mots contre les dirigeants politiques, dont il dénonce l’intransigeance aussi bien envers les Palestiniens que dans le domaine social.
Il décèle dans la lutte populaire contre la hausse vertigineuse des prix du logement "la naissance d’une nouvelle gauche, très différente de celle d’antan".
"Quand des gens descendent dans la rue en scandant +le peuple veut la justice sociale+, en reprenant des slogans de la place Tahrir du Caire, leur lutte va bien au-delà de la question de l’habitat", souligne-t-il, en référence aux révoltes dans le monde arabe.
Peu importe, selon lui, que ce mouvement ne lie pas la lutte sociale à celle pour la paix : "en fin de compte, il y viendra, car nous dilapidons des sommes astronomiques pour entretenir la machine de guerre et la colonisation".
Dès le lendemain de la première guerre israélo-arabe de 1948, ce journaliste a fait campagne pour la création d’un Etat palestinien aux côtés d’Israël. Si plus de six décennies plus tard, cet Etat n’a toujours pas vu le jour, M. Avnery n’estime pas pour autant avoir prêché dans le désert.
"Nous n’étions pas plus de cent à travers le monde en 1949 à promouvoir cette idée. Aujourd’hui, le monde entier la soutient et c’est même le cas de la majorité des Israéliens".
Dans ce contexte, il souhaite ardemment une reconnaissance en septembre de l’ONU sous une forme ou une autre d’un Etat palestinien.
Il juge "capital un soutien de la France" et plus largement de l’Europe à cette initiative, quand bien même "elle buttera sur un veto américain au Conseil de sécurité".
Il refuse de voir dans la colonisation juive "un fait accompli irréversible" et se dit convaincu que l’immense majorité des Israéliens optera pour le démantèlement des colonies en échange d’une "paix véritable", malgré l’implantation de plus d’un demi-million d’Israéliens en Cisjordanie et à Jérusalem-Est.
Cultivant le paradoxe, ce militant de la paix, qui se définit comme "post-sioniste", est un patriote israélien, qui a longtemps éprouvé un véritable amour envers l’armée israélienne.
Mais, souligne-t-il, "c’était quand Tsahal était une armée du peuple qui n’avait pas été corrompue par l’occupation". Aujourd’hui il s’inquiète de la montée en puissance au sein du corps des officiers "de nationalistes religieux qui prennent leurs ordres de rabbins".
Il est atterré par les changements qui se sont produits dans la société israélienne : "l’ultra capitalisme régnant, le pouvoir concentré dans 20 familles, des services publics (santé et éducation) qui se dégradent".
Né en 1923 en Allemagne, Uri Avnery a immigré à l’âge de dix ans en Palestine avec sa famille, fuyant le nazisme.
En 1950, il fonde un hebdomadaire indépendant Haolam Hazeh, dont il sera le rédacteur durant quarante ans. Ce journal anti-conformisme, seul à l’époque à ne pas être organe d’un parti, aura une influence considérable sur la presse israélienne.
En 1969, il est élu à la Knesset sur une liste indépendante. Il y siègera huit ans. En 1982, il fait scandale en rencontrant le chef historique palestinien Yasser Arafat, à Beyrouth, assiégé par l’armée israélienne.
Dans sa jeunesse, il a appartenu à l’Irgoun, organisation clandestine de droite qui menait à coups de bombes la lutte contre les Britanniques et les Arabes.
Il ne regrette rien : "Je luttais pour la liberté de mon peuple contre l’occupant britannique. Pour les mêmes motifs, j’ai toujours pensé que les Palestiniens ont droit à leur indépendance".
Jerusalem (AFP) — Uri Avnery, figure emblématique du camp de la paix en Israël, garde l’espoir chevillé au corps à 87 ans, bien que l’ultra nationalisme ait le vent en poupe, que les perspectives d’accord avec les Palestiniens s’éloignent et que la gauche perde élection après élection.
"Je reste optimiste car je crois à la capacité de ce peuple (israélien) de changer de cap", confie Uri Avnery.
En revanche, cet octogénaire ne mâche pas ses mots contre les dirigeants politiques, dont il dénonce l’intransigeance aussi bien envers les Palestiniens que dans le domaine social.
Il décèle dans la lutte populaire contre la hausse vertigineuse des prix du logement "la naissance d’une nouvelle gauche, très différente de celle d’antan".
"Quand des gens descendent dans la rue en scandant +le peuple veut la justice sociale+, en reprenant des slogans de la place Tahrir du Caire, leur lutte va bien au-delà de la question de l’habitat", souligne-t-il, en référence aux révoltes dans le monde arabe.
Peu importe, selon lui, que ce mouvement ne lie pas la lutte sociale à celle pour la paix : "en fin de compte, il y viendra, car nous dilapidons des sommes astronomiques pour entretenir la machine de guerre et la colonisation".
Dès le lendemain de la première guerre israélo-arabe de 1948, ce journaliste a fait campagne pour la création d’un Etat palestinien aux côtés d’Israël. Si plus de six décennies plus tard, cet Etat n’a toujours pas vu le jour, M. Avnery n’estime pas pour autant avoir prêché dans le désert.
"Nous n’étions pas plus de cent à travers le monde en 1949 à promouvoir cette idée. Aujourd’hui, le monde entier la soutient et c’est même le cas de la majorité des Israéliens".
Dans ce contexte, il souhaite ardemment une reconnaissance en septembre de l’ONU sous une forme ou une autre d’un Etat palestinien.
Il juge "capital un soutien de la France" et plus largement de l’Europe à cette initiative, quand bien même "elle buttera sur un veto américain au Conseil de sécurité".
Il refuse de voir dans la colonisation juive "un fait accompli irréversible" et se dit convaincu que l’immense majorité des Israéliens optera pour le démantèlement des colonies en échange d’une "paix véritable", malgré l’implantation de plus d’un demi-million d’Israéliens en Cisjordanie et à Jérusalem-Est.
Cultivant le paradoxe, ce militant de la paix, qui se définit comme "post-sioniste", est un patriote israélien, qui a longtemps éprouvé un véritable amour envers l’armée israélienne.
Mais, souligne-t-il, "c’était quand Tsahal était une armée du peuple qui n’avait pas été corrompue par l’occupation". Aujourd’hui il s’inquiète de la montée en puissance au sein du corps des officiers "de nationalistes religieux qui prennent leurs ordres de rabbins".
Il est atterré par les changements qui se sont produits dans la société israélienne : "l’ultra capitalisme régnant, le pouvoir concentré dans 20 familles, des services publics (santé et éducation) qui se dégradent".
Né en 1923 en Allemagne, Uri Avnery a immigré à l’âge de dix ans en Palestine avec sa famille, fuyant le nazisme.
En 1950, il fonde un hebdomadaire indépendant Haolam Hazeh, dont il sera le rédacteur durant quarante ans. Ce journal anti-conformisme, seul à l’époque à ne pas être organe d’un parti, aura une influence considérable sur la presse israélienne.
En 1969, il est élu à la Knesset sur une liste indépendante. Il y siègera huit ans. En 1982, il fait scandale en rencontrant le chef historique palestinien Yasser Arafat, à Beyrouth, assiégé par l’armée israélienne.
Dans sa jeunesse, il a appartenu à l’Irgoun, organisation clandestine de droite qui menait à coups de bombes la lutte contre les Britanniques et les Arabes.
Il ne regrette rien : "Je luttais pour la liberté de mon peuple contre l’occupant britannique. Pour les mêmes motifs, j’ai toujours pensé que les Palestiniens ont droit à leur indépendance".
sexta-feira, 22 de julho de 2011
THE CHARGE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES or - Baksheesh for the Doorkeeper
23 July 2011, Gush Shalom גוש שלום http://zope.gush-shalom.org (Israel)
Uri Avnery אורי אבנרי
A Riddle: Which fleet did not reach its destination but fulfilled its mission?
Well, it’s this year’s Gaza solidarity flotilla.
It could be said, of course, that last year’s “little fleet” – that’s what the word means in Spanish, much as “guerrilla” means “little war” – is also a reasonable candidate . It never reached Gaza, but the commander of the Israeli navy could well repeat the words of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, whose victory over the Romans was so costly that he is said to have exclaimed: “Another such victory, and I am lost!”
Flotilla 1 did not reach Gaza. But the naval commando attack on it, which cost the lives of nine Turkish activists, aroused such an outcry that our government saw itself compelled to loosen its land blockade of the Gaza Strip significantly.
The repercussions of this action have not yet died down. The very important relations between the Israeli and Turkish militaries are still ruptured, with Turkey demanding an apology and indemnities. The victims’ families are pursuing criminal and civil proceedings in several countries. An ongoing headache.
Flotilla 2 reached its end this week, when a huge naval action led to the capture of 1 (one!) little French yacht and the detention of its sailors, journalists and activists –all 16 (sixteen) of them. Even our tame broadcasters could not help themselves from sneering: “Why didn’t they send an aircraft carrier?”
The 14 boats that were prevented from sailing, and the one that did sail, not only kept our entire navy on alert for weeks, but also helped to keep the Gaza blockade in the news. And that, after all, was the whole point of the exercise.
WHAT HAPPENED to the 14 boats which did not sail?
Incredible as it sounds, the Greek navy and Coast Guard forcibly prevented them from leaving Greek ports. There existed no lawful grounds for this, nor was there any pretense of legality.
It would be no exaggeration to say that the Greek navy was acting under orders from the Israeli Chief of Staff. A proud sea-faring nation with a nautical history of thousands of years (“nautical” even happens to be a Greek word) degraded itself to perform illegal actions to please Israel.
It also ignored acts of sabotage carried out by naval commandos – guess whose - against the boats in Greek harbors.
At the same time, the Turkish government, the defiant sponsor of the Mavi Marmara, the ship on which the Turkish activists were killed last year, prevented the same ship from sailing this year.
Also at the same time, groups of pro-Palestinian activists who tried to reach the West Bank by air were stopped on their way. Since there is no direct access to the West Bank by land, sea or air except through Israeli territory or Israeli checkpoints, they had to travel via Ben-Gurion International Airport, Israel’s gateway to the world. Most did not make it: under instructions from our government, all international airlines blocked these passengers at check-in, using “blacklists” provided by our government.
It seems that the long arm of our diligent security service reaches everywhere, and that its orders are obeyed by countries large and small.
A HUNDRED years ago, the secret police of the Russian Czar, the dreaded “Okhrana”, forged a document called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”.
(In those times, the secret police everywhere was still called Secret Police, before being dignified as “Security Services”.)
The document reported a secret meeting of rabbis in the old Jewish cemetery of Prague, to decide upon strategy to secure Jewish rule over the world. It was a crude falsification, which lifted entire passages verbatim from a novel written decades earlier.
In its pages, the real situation of the Jews was grotesquely distorted – they actually had no power at all. In fact, when Adolf Hitler – who used the Protocols for his propaganda – set in motion the Final Solution, almost nobody in the whole world lifted a finger to help the Jews. Even US Jews were afraid to raise their voices.
But if the authors of the falsification were to return to the scene of their crime today, they would rub their eyes in disbelief: this figment of their sick imagination looks like coming true. The Jewish State – as Zionists like to call us – can order around Greek naval authorities, get Turkey to climb down, instruct half a dozen European states to stop passengers at their airports.
How do we do it? There is a simple answer, consisting of three letters: USA.
ISRAEL HAS become a kind of Kafkaesque doorkeeper to the world’s sole remaining superpower.
Through its immense influence on the American political system, and especially on the Congress, Israel can levy a political tax on anyone who needs something from the US. Greece is bankrupt and desperately needs American and European help. Turkey is a partner of the US in NATO. No European country wants to quarrel with the US. Ergo: they all need to give us a little political baksheesh.
To cement this relationship, Glenn Beck, the obnoxious protégé of Rupert Murdoch, visited us and was enthusiastically received in the Knesset, where he told us “not to be afraid”, because he (and, by implication, Fox and all of America) was supporting us to the hilt.
IT IS because of this that a few lines, which appeared this week in the New York Times, caused near panic in Jerusalem.
The NYT is, perhaps, the most “pro-Israel” paper in the whole world, including Israel itself. Anti-Semites call it the Jew York Times. Many of its editorial writers are ardent Zionists. A news story critical of Israeli policies has almost no chance of appearing there. No mention of the Israeli peace movement. No mention of the dozens of demonstrations in Israel against Lebanon War II and the Cast Lead operation. Self-censorship is supreme.
But this week, the NYT published a blistering editorial criticizing Israel. The reason: the “Boycott Law”, passed by the right-wing Knesset majority, which forbids Israelis to call for a boycott of the settlements. The editorial practically repeats what I said in last week’s article: that the law is blatantly anti-democratic and violates basic human rights. The more so, since it comes on top of a whole series of anti-democratic laws that were enacted in the last few months. Israel is in danger of losing its title as the “Only Democracy in the Middle East”.
Suddenly, all the red lights in Jerusalem started to blink furiously. Help! We are going to lose our only political asset in the world, the pillar of our strength, the basis of our national security, the rock of our existence.
THE RESULT was immediate. On Wednesday, the right-wing clique that now controls the Knesset, under the leadership of Avigdor Lieberman, brought to final vote a resolution that would appoint two Committees of Inquiry into the financial resources of human-rights NGOs. Not all NGOs, only “leftist” ones. This was another item on the long list of McCarthyist measures, many of which have already been adopted and many more of which are waiting for their turn.
The day before, Binyamin Netanyahu appeared specially in the Knesset to assure his followers that he fully approved, and indeed had sponsored, the Boycott Law. But after the NYT editorial, when the Commission of Inquiry resolution came up, Netanyahu and almost all his cabinet ministers voted against it. The religious factions disappeared from the Knesset. The resolution was voted down by a 2 to 1 majority.
But one ominous fact emerged: Apart from Netanyahu and his captive ministers, all the Likud members present voted for the resolution. This included all the young leaders of the party – the coming generation of Likud bosses.
If the Likud remains in power – this group of ultra-rightists,[] will be the government of Israel within ten years. And to hell with the New York Times.
FORTUNATELY, THERE are signs that a new phenomenon is in the making.
It started innocently with a successful consumer strike on cottage cheese, in order to compel a cartel of fat cats to reduce prices. This has been followed by a mass action by young couples, mostly university students, against the impossibly high prices of apartments.
A group of protesters put up tents in the center of Tel Aviv and have now been living there for over a week. Soon after, such encampments sprang up all over the country, from Kiryat Shmona on the Lebanese border to Beer Sheva in the Negev.
It is much too early to tell whether this is a short-term protest or the beginning of an Israeli Tahrir Square phenomenon. But it clearly shows that the takeover of Israel by a neo-fascist grouping is not a foregone conclusion. The fight is on.
Perhaps - just perhaps! - even the New York Times could be starting to report on the reality of our country.
Uri Avnery אורי אבנרי
A Riddle: Which fleet did not reach its destination but fulfilled its mission?
Well, it’s this year’s Gaza solidarity flotilla.
It could be said, of course, that last year’s “little fleet” – that’s what the word means in Spanish, much as “guerrilla” means “little war” – is also a reasonable candidate . It never reached Gaza, but the commander of the Israeli navy could well repeat the words of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, whose victory over the Romans was so costly that he is said to have exclaimed: “Another such victory, and I am lost!”
Flotilla 1 did not reach Gaza. But the naval commando attack on it, which cost the lives of nine Turkish activists, aroused such an outcry that our government saw itself compelled to loosen its land blockade of the Gaza Strip significantly.
The repercussions of this action have not yet died down. The very important relations between the Israeli and Turkish militaries are still ruptured, with Turkey demanding an apology and indemnities. The victims’ families are pursuing criminal and civil proceedings in several countries. An ongoing headache.
Flotilla 2 reached its end this week, when a huge naval action led to the capture of 1 (one!) little French yacht and the detention of its sailors, journalists and activists –all 16 (sixteen) of them. Even our tame broadcasters could not help themselves from sneering: “Why didn’t they send an aircraft carrier?”
The 14 boats that were prevented from sailing, and the one that did sail, not only kept our entire navy on alert for weeks, but also helped to keep the Gaza blockade in the news. And that, after all, was the whole point of the exercise.
WHAT HAPPENED to the 14 boats which did not sail?
Incredible as it sounds, the Greek navy and Coast Guard forcibly prevented them from leaving Greek ports. There existed no lawful grounds for this, nor was there any pretense of legality.
It would be no exaggeration to say that the Greek navy was acting under orders from the Israeli Chief of Staff. A proud sea-faring nation with a nautical history of thousands of years (“nautical” even happens to be a Greek word) degraded itself to perform illegal actions to please Israel.
It also ignored acts of sabotage carried out by naval commandos – guess whose - against the boats in Greek harbors.
At the same time, the Turkish government, the defiant sponsor of the Mavi Marmara, the ship on which the Turkish activists were killed last year, prevented the same ship from sailing this year.
Also at the same time, groups of pro-Palestinian activists who tried to reach the West Bank by air were stopped on their way. Since there is no direct access to the West Bank by land, sea or air except through Israeli territory or Israeli checkpoints, they had to travel via Ben-Gurion International Airport, Israel’s gateway to the world. Most did not make it: under instructions from our government, all international airlines blocked these passengers at check-in, using “blacklists” provided by our government.
It seems that the long arm of our diligent security service reaches everywhere, and that its orders are obeyed by countries large and small.
A HUNDRED years ago, the secret police of the Russian Czar, the dreaded “Okhrana”, forged a document called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”.
(In those times, the secret police everywhere was still called Secret Police, before being dignified as “Security Services”.)
The document reported a secret meeting of rabbis in the old Jewish cemetery of Prague, to decide upon strategy to secure Jewish rule over the world. It was a crude falsification, which lifted entire passages verbatim from a novel written decades earlier.
In its pages, the real situation of the Jews was grotesquely distorted – they actually had no power at all. In fact, when Adolf Hitler – who used the Protocols for his propaganda – set in motion the Final Solution, almost nobody in the whole world lifted a finger to help the Jews. Even US Jews were afraid to raise their voices.
But if the authors of the falsification were to return to the scene of their crime today, they would rub their eyes in disbelief: this figment of their sick imagination looks like coming true. The Jewish State – as Zionists like to call us – can order around Greek naval authorities, get Turkey to climb down, instruct half a dozen European states to stop passengers at their airports.
How do we do it? There is a simple answer, consisting of three letters: USA.
ISRAEL HAS become a kind of Kafkaesque doorkeeper to the world’s sole remaining superpower.
Through its immense influence on the American political system, and especially on the Congress, Israel can levy a political tax on anyone who needs something from the US. Greece is bankrupt and desperately needs American and European help. Turkey is a partner of the US in NATO. No European country wants to quarrel with the US. Ergo: they all need to give us a little political baksheesh.
To cement this relationship, Glenn Beck, the obnoxious protégé of Rupert Murdoch, visited us and was enthusiastically received in the Knesset, where he told us “not to be afraid”, because he (and, by implication, Fox and all of America) was supporting us to the hilt.
IT IS because of this that a few lines, which appeared this week in the New York Times, caused near panic in Jerusalem.
The NYT is, perhaps, the most “pro-Israel” paper in the whole world, including Israel itself. Anti-Semites call it the Jew York Times. Many of its editorial writers are ardent Zionists. A news story critical of Israeli policies has almost no chance of appearing there. No mention of the Israeli peace movement. No mention of the dozens of demonstrations in Israel against Lebanon War II and the Cast Lead operation. Self-censorship is supreme.
But this week, the NYT published a blistering editorial criticizing Israel. The reason: the “Boycott Law”, passed by the right-wing Knesset majority, which forbids Israelis to call for a boycott of the settlements. The editorial practically repeats what I said in last week’s article: that the law is blatantly anti-democratic and violates basic human rights. The more so, since it comes on top of a whole series of anti-democratic laws that were enacted in the last few months. Israel is in danger of losing its title as the “Only Democracy in the Middle East”.
Suddenly, all the red lights in Jerusalem started to blink furiously. Help! We are going to lose our only political asset in the world, the pillar of our strength, the basis of our national security, the rock of our existence.
THE RESULT was immediate. On Wednesday, the right-wing clique that now controls the Knesset, under the leadership of Avigdor Lieberman, brought to final vote a resolution that would appoint two Committees of Inquiry into the financial resources of human-rights NGOs. Not all NGOs, only “leftist” ones. This was another item on the long list of McCarthyist measures, many of which have already been adopted and many more of which are waiting for their turn.
The day before, Binyamin Netanyahu appeared specially in the Knesset to assure his followers that he fully approved, and indeed had sponsored, the Boycott Law. But after the NYT editorial, when the Commission of Inquiry resolution came up, Netanyahu and almost all his cabinet ministers voted against it. The religious factions disappeared from the Knesset. The resolution was voted down by a 2 to 1 majority.
But one ominous fact emerged: Apart from Netanyahu and his captive ministers, all the Likud members present voted for the resolution. This included all the young leaders of the party – the coming generation of Likud bosses.
If the Likud remains in power – this group of ultra-rightists,[] will be the government of Israel within ten years. And to hell with the New York Times.
FORTUNATELY, THERE are signs that a new phenomenon is in the making.
It started innocently with a successful consumer strike on cottage cheese, in order to compel a cartel of fat cats to reduce prices. This has been followed by a mass action by young couples, mostly university students, against the impossibly high prices of apartments.
A group of protesters put up tents in the center of Tel Aviv and have now been living there for over a week. Soon after, such encampments sprang up all over the country, from Kiryat Shmona on the Lebanese border to Beer Sheva in the Negev.
It is much too early to tell whether this is a short-term protest or the beginning of an Israeli Tahrir Square phenomenon. But it clearly shows that the takeover of Israel by a neo-fascist grouping is not a foregone conclusion. The fight is on.
Perhaps - just perhaps! - even the New York Times could be starting to report on the reality of our country.
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