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| Israel Shahak Articles |
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| The Deeper Significance of the Mass Expulsions |
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| Israel Shahak |
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Dr. Shahak, Holocaust survivor, and retired professor of chemistry at Hebrew
University in Jerusalem, is chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil
Rights.
The brutal expulsion of 415 Palestinians has had a deep and already evidently long-lasting impact on Israeli politics. As is known, this mass expulsion was carried out by Labor with the wholehearted support of the Zionist "left" as represented by the Meretz party. When properly digested by politically concerned Israeli Jews-far from few in number compared to the apolitical masses, although at present lacking a party to represent them-the expulsion may yet turn out to be more pregnant with consequences than any political event since the Six-Day War of 1967.
For the expulsion shatters the delusive hopes, lingering since 1967, that the entire camp comprising Labor and the "left" really desired a peace involving a compromise with the Palestinians and the Arab states, and a recognition that the Palestinians had some rights. Perhaps not the self-evident political rights such as the right to national independence, but at least individual rights, such as the right to be consulted about their own fate. Outside Israel the delusions to this effect still persist, especially in liberal circles. In Israel, however, the wholehearted support of the entire Zionist left, not only for the expulsion itself, but also for the government apologetics proffered in its justification, and for the infamous Israeli Supreme Court ruling which, besides finding the expulsion legal, virtually opened the gates to a mass transfer of the Palestinians from the territories, could not but lay all such delusions to rest.
No room is left anymore for doubting that the entire Israeli power elite views the Palestinians as mere objects of decisions reached by Israel either unilaterally, or in consultation with the United States, or, in possible cases of exceptional urgency, through paying some heed to the interests of Europe or other powers who support Israel's needs. But the Palestinians, along with the Lebanese and all other Arabs, are never to be consulted on matters vital to them. Such matters are to be determined by Israel alone, pending an American O.K. after the fact. The brazen violation of Lebanon's sovereignty by dumping the expelled Palestinians on its territory and then accusing the Lebanese government of "not letting the matter pass away" is the best case in point, with significance comparable to the expulsion itself. Rabin proclaimed this doctrine repeatedly, for example in his Knesset speech reporting "a compromise" reached with the United States. He then said: "I am concerned about the American attitudes (to Israel), but I could not care less about what the Palestinians may think about that agreement" (Yediot Ahronot, February 3, 1993). In the referred-to agreement with the United States the doctrine in question was formulated explicitly, in the provision specifying that the agreement will bind the United States irrespective of what may be the opinions of the Palestinians. The same holds true for another section of that agreement, stipulating that it is up to the Arab states to absorb the 300 expellees. No wonder the Israeli government has been presenting that agreement as its great accomplishment, a triumph of its doctrinal principles. The new Meretz minister Yossi Sarid (dubbed by the Hebrew press' satirists as "Rabin's private parrot"), hailed the agreement in his own fashion, saying that its main purpose was "to do Clinton a favor" and that the Palestinians were none of its concern (Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, February 3).
But in addition to this political doctrine, Israel also professes a "psychological" doctrine concerning the presumed "nature of the Arabs," as "known" to racist Israeli "experts." The two doctrines interplay in Israeli politics, reinforcing each other mutually. The "psychological" doctrine assumes that the Arabs respect and fear Israel because of the latter's resolve and highhandedness. Hence the doctrine commands Israel never to retreat, even for the sake of rectifying its past mistakes, or at least not to retreat before a considerable time lapse. As the former commander of the Israeli military Intelligence, General (reserves) Shlomo Gazit, argues in explaining the basic principles of Israeli policies (Yediot Ahronot, February 1): "The files of Hamas expellees should not be rechecked" because any "such recheck would amount to an admission of error on the (Israeli) authorities' part," whereas the Arabs must remain convinced that those authorities are infallible. "The blow" administered to the Palestinians by the expulsions will, according to Gazit, lose its force, unless "they are absolutely convinced that Israel never falters in standing fast by its decisions. Hence Israel must not only stick firmly to its decision to let no terrorists return ahead of the time Israel itself has fixed, but also to its determination to resort to mass expulsions or temporary removals whenever it perceives terror as increasing."
In the same vein, "a senior political source (probably the director general of the prime minister's office, Shimon Sheves) told Nahum Barnea that the mass expulsion had been intended "to shock psychologically the Palestinian masses." The source added that, in light of the information in the Israeli government's possession, this effect was indeed achieved (Yediot Ahronot, February 2). The achievement has been due to the fact "that they are now afraid that Israel may proceed to another mass expulsion as soon as tomorrow." As long as they stick to this salutary belief, "they will keep quiet."
Even more cogent is Meron Benvenisti's explanation of "psychological" reasons behind the expulsion, especially since he places them in a historical perspective (Haaretz, February 4). His analysis deserves to be quoted extensively:
Israeli attitudes (towards the Palestinians) have always rested on power. Israelis have always believed that they could blot out Palestinian hostility by displays of resolve. They have always believed that the Palestinians could be forced to accept the status quo by the use of naked power. Now, however, against all that logic, the Palestinian community refused to submit to brute force. By so doing, Palestinians dashed Israeli hopes that Israeli power alone could guarantee order on Israeli terms. . . . But a democratic society finds it difficult to reconcile itself with arbitrary use of naked power alone. Hence, it searches for excuses and self-justifications. At later stages of the expulsion affair, a number of apologias were proffered in a confused manner, of the same sort which throughout the history of Zionism have been regularly invoked to appease guilt. First, the use of force was said to be justified in self-defense against the threats to one's very survival. Second, the use of force was said to be justified in order to bring the enemy to his senses, to let him make a reasonable estimate of his chances of winning and to thus open an era of mutual understanding. Third, the use of force was said to be justified when it "conforms to the law." Fourth, anyone not sharing in the experience of the formation of Israeli Jewish society was said to be incapable of understanding the situation. Fifth, our problem was said to be not with the Arabs but with the world outside (the Middle East). All such apologias share something in common: they all seek to prove that a new status quo resulting from the expulsion needs to be treated in isolation and requires separate solutions.
Such apologias have been instrumental in shaping Israeli policies in the wake of the expulsion. First, it was imperative to make it axiomatic that the expulsion could not be reversed, because any reversal would amount to "our surrender" and to whetting the Palestinian appetite for our further concessions. Second, if humanitarian gestures intended to provide some relief to particular persons as individuals are permitted, any recognition of the existence of the Palestinians as a nation is strictly forbidden, for no other reason than the supposedly "proven" perpetual hostility of theirs toward us. Third, any negotiations intended to limit the damage done can be conducted only with the United States, never with the Palestinians themselves, since that would put us with them on an equal footing, and be interpreted by them as our concession, or even as our renunciation of arbitrary use of brute force against them.
I agree with this analysis wholeheartedly, but I wish to supplement it with two additional points. In the first place, every brutality and every injustice (the killings included) the Israeli authorities commit against the Arabs is deeply believed to be done in the best interest of the Arabs themselves. More than that: all such atrocities are believed to be committed for the purpose of "educating" the Arabs, even if the latter, because of their "Arab nature," remain unable to appreciate our educational intentions. Such beliefs may be judged insane, but in the history of the Zionist Labor movement they amount to a long-standing tradition. The torturers in the secret office Shabak and the murderers serving in the "special units," the majority of whom have been recruited from the ranks of the Zionist Labor movement, tend to genuinely believe in all such nonsense. A recent example of this is an interview with "a senior Shabak staffer" that appeared in Al Hamishmar (January 8), the organ of the Mapam party and now one of the constituent parts of Meretz. Straining himself to find some argument to justify the expulsion (which had been recommended by the Shabak in advance), he said that "had the elections been held today in the ranks of Shabak alone, a large majority would have voted either for the Labor party or for Meretz." Other branches of Israeli intelligence and the "elite units" of the Israeli army also tend to be "left-wing," in the sense of holding such beliefs. And, of course, so do the Labor and Meretz politicians.
My second point to supplement Benvenisti's analysis is that all "threats to Israel's survival" he refers to have at least since 1967 been sheer concoctions of Israeli official propaganda. True, there are many who still cling to the belief that Israel's survival is constantly threatened. But they are like dope addicts clinging to their fix, having lost all touch with reality. No matter how distorted those realities may be in Israeli propaganda, especially in communications originating from any branch of Israeli intelligence, the facts show something completely different. On the one hand, rather remote threats to Israel's survival do indeed exist, the best case being Iran, acquiring nuclear bombs and long-range missiles in order to possibly launch them against Israel. Paradoxically, however, Israel's survival is perceived as jeopardized by something else. Any Palestinian resistance, active or passive, military or commercial, is immediately decried as posing a threat to Israel's very existence. For example, a few weeks ago some Gazan vegetable merchants were found to be surreptitiously renting plots of land belonging to Jewish moshavim farmers and growing their own vegetables while "consuming the subsidized water to which only the Jews are entitled." If this ignominy is allowed to spread, said the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture backed by "other authorites" (which of course means Shabak), the very existence of Israel will be put at risk.
The Israeli bid for permanent occupation of the territories could have been recognized by Israeli Jews since 1967. Yet a large part of the nation has chosen to ignore those realities or to delude themselves about their nature. Before Likud's rise to power in 1977, it was customary to blame Golda Meir and the politicians of her generation for the failure to reach peace. Yet even considering her rigidity of mind, she pursued more moderate policies than either the Israeli army generals or the younger generation of Labor politicians like Rabin and Peres. For example, it was Golda Meir who in 1973 vetoed the chief of staffs ideas to use nuclear weapons against the Syrians. This needs to be compared with the overt advocacy of the use of nuclear weapons by Rabin and other Laborites. It has also been conveniently forgotten that the most abhorrent Israeli policies, like the settling of Palestinian areas within the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, or Israeli genocidal meddling in Central America or in countries like Zaire, began during the first government of Rabin in 1974-77, and that Peres as the defense minister in that government was no less involved in them than Rabin. After 1977 the Israeli moderates found it fashionable to put all the blame on Likud, even though Rabin during his long incumbency as defense minister (1984-90) could not be any less responsible. Before the 1988 elections Rabin was taking pride in the fact that he had demolished more Palestinian houses and expelled more individual Palestinians than any Likud defense minister. Yet his factually accurate boasts were soon explained away by nearly everybody concerned, and then conveniently forgotten. The PLO leadership, including Yasser Arafat himself, have fallen prey to such delusions apparently without any second thoughts. They have consistently portrayed the Labor and Zionist "left" as "the best hope for peace," thus interacting with Israeli delusions and reinforcing them. As this article will show, the expulsion affair produced a change, shattering such delusions, or at least proving them intellectually wanting in the extreme. At the same time institutions like the Supreme Court and the secret police, which used to be regarded as beyond reproach, are now exposed to the fiercest possible criticism. In fact, in the aftermath of the mass expulsion of Palestinians the Hebrew media no longer bow to any sacred cows.
The Israeli Supreme Court's record of servility toward Shabak and the Israeli army and of prejudice against the Palestinians and the Jews defending their rights is abysmal. Just a few days after the Six-Day War, the Supreme Court, following a solemn deliberation, pronounced the territories "liberated," without bothering to ask the inhabitants how they felt about it. The pronouncement accorded perfectly with the aforementioned Israeli doctrine that the Arabs are never to be consulted about their own affairs. As pointed out by Baruch Kimmerling ("The Supreme Court should withdraw from the Conquered Territories," Haaretz, January 29), "the Supreme Court long ago became the most important or perhaps even the only institution bestowing imagery of legality (which the public equates with 'legitimacy' and 'justice') to a great many acts of the [Israeli] conquest authorities which really contradict not only the principles of natural justice, but also the international conventions and even the legal norms which retain their force in the State of Israel." Kimmerling shows how, with one exception (the "Alon Moreh case"), the Supreme Court has, without demanding any proof, accepted all claims by army authorities or Shabak that their measures were "warranted by the security of the state," while dismissing all claims of Palestinian defendants to the contrary. As Kimmerling notes,
as a matter of routine, the Supreme Court professes its absolute trust in what is being said by whoever happens to be at a given time responsible for the state's security, be it the government representatives, the army or any other security-related agency. For example, if a former Chief of Staff contradicts in his testimony a local military government officer's claim to the effect of a supposed "security need" for anything done or desisted from being done, the Supreme Court will, as a rule, decide in favor of the latter as "actually in charge." Apart from what is defined as "security," in no other walk of life is the Supreme Court willing to refrain from exercising its own judgment so completely, to the point of even refusing to hear experts who do not represent the government. The very definition of what is covered by "security needs" has been left to the discretion of the executive branch.
In the 1985 Nafsu case, it turned out that the Supreme Court had been for years routinely accepting as true the versions of Shabak agents who had been ordered to perjure themselves in their testimonies. As a rule, the perjuries consisted of denying interrogatory torture or maltreatment allegations of Palestinian defendants. Subsequently, however, the Supreme Court upheld the presidential pardon for the perjurers. The disclosure of the affair was due to intrigues within the ranks of Shabak, not to any suddenly aroused suspicions on the part of the judiciary. In spite of that disclosure, the Supreme Court's attitude of unlimited trust toward Shabak has not changed. Recently while hearing the petition to halt the expulsion, and later in its final ruling on the matter, the Supreme Court didn't hesitate to name all the 415 expellees as "Hamas members" and "dangerous terrorists" solely on the basis of Shabak's evidence. The investigations carried out by the Hebrew press (especially by the prestigious Haaretz correspondent Danny Rubinstein, who presented his findings in a series of articles) clearly showed the opposite. The majority of expellees were respected public figures involved in charity or community work, religious leaders of high standing, or intellectuals and academics. Available evidence points to their having been picked by the authorities for expulsion precisely because they enjoyed the respect of their communities. What the authorities apparently wanted was to further undermine the cohesiveness of Palestinian society. This has always been their goal.
By condemning the 415 without bothering to hear them, the Supreme Court indeed violated what Kimmerling refers to as "the principles of natural justice," which require that no one be condemned without being first heard. But the Supreme Court has thus also prejudiced the expellees' case in hearings before the so-called "appeal committees." These committees, appointed by the same power that ordered the expulsions, were mandated by the Supreme Court to hear the expellees' appeals, which the government was instructed to let them submit. But since the appellants' case has already been prejudiced, the "committees" can hardly be expected to do anything but rubber-stamp the expulsion decisions.
But Kimmerling accuses the Supreme Court of violating "international conventions" no less than "natural justice." In the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 there is a section which unconditionally prohibits displacement of anyone from an occupied territory to anywhere else. Israel's long-standing position has been that the section does not mean what it says. Israeli judges have opined that since the convention was enacted shortly after the defeat of the Nazis, it was "really" meant to prohibit only practices comparable to those of the Nazis. Hence the conclusion that any expulsion stopping short of the Nazi level of brutality would be legal. Needless to say, this opinion has hardly enjoyed popularity among authorities on international law. Lack of appreciation for their doctrine, however, has not deterred the Supreme Court judges. They have been careful not to go into any specifics about how the Israeli expulsions differed from those prohibited by the convention. And they have been remarkably generous in upholding the expulsions without bothering to set any upper limit on their number and thus at least preclude the possiblity of transferring all the Palestinians wholesale. Deep in their hearts, they perhaps think it makes all the difference whether the Jews are expellees or expellers: the former being bad, the latter good.
It is Amnon Birman (Kol Ha'ir, February 5) who, on the occasion of the Supreme Court's approval of the expulsion, specifically deals with the Court's attitude toward the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. He begins by observing that all the institutions formerly cherished in Israel as sacred cows are now held in contempt at least by those capable of exercising their judgment with some intelligence. He lists a number of examples, but concentrates on agencies most instrumental in engineering mass expulsions, namely "the security services, which, after having been tainted by some murky affairs, are now widely regarded as despicable in their methods, in their constant lies and prevarications, and on top of that as just useless." Birman's critique of the Supreme Court, however, breaks new ground, if only because the Court's attitude toward the Palestinians was only rarely criticized before the recent mass expulsion. Of main concern for Birman is the Court's refusal to take notice of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.
I read the verdict again and again, seeking an answer I had been sure to find there, but I didn't. I very much wanted to know whether the Court considered the expulsion to be permitted or not permitted by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. The convention is mentioned only once in the document, in a summary of the petitioners' claims. But after repeatedly reading its following pages, I found that the petitioners' argument that the expulsion violated the convention was neither accepted nor rejected. There was simply no answer to it, as if it had not been voiced.
Birman says that the Supreme Court studiously ignored the international conventions, as if they had no relevance to mass expulsions. Yet curiously, after having approved the expulsion, the Court did not hesitate to insert a long quote from its earlier verdict containing a vague expectation that Israeli officials in the territories
. . . would behave better than what the norms of international conventions require. Trying to be more Catholic than the Pope is always intended to impress the people. Still, the fact remains that the question of the expulsion's permissibility or impermissibility by international law was not answered. Instead, the judges paid much attention to minutiae, such as the right [of the expellees] to be heard prior to their expulsion, which implied their acceptance of the expulsion itself as a fact. But what about the legality of that fact? While approving the expulsion, the Supreme Court judges preferred not to discuss its legality at all. Were it not so sad, this could even be quite funny.
Few commentators have criticized the Supreme Court as fiercely as Birman. Most remarkably, however, for the first time in Israel's history, the ranks of the Supreme Court's critics were joined by some highly respected retired judges. Let me quote only the retired president of the Tel Aviv District Court, Binyamin Cohen (interview with Oded Lifshitz, Al Hamishmar, January 29). He assesses the Israeli occupation authorities and judiciary as "worse than the British." He pokes fun at the Supreme Court's preoccupation with "the right of being heard," supposedly granted the expellees after the fact, commenting that it amounts to "enabling mass expulsion," insofar as this right is granted the expellees thereafter. Cohen also argues that the Supreme Court's approval of "an expulsion to a country with which the expellees had no legal links and which is not under Israeli control implies the lack of any legal obstacles against expelling Palestinians in the future to Antarctica and settling them on glaciers in the company of penguins." My private informants anticipate that the next Israeli expulsion may well be into some no-man's land. Concretely, they anticipate that a chunk of Lebanon (or Jordan if King Hussein will not be obliging enough) may be conquered and cordoned off by the Israeli troops from the rest of the invaded country for the sake of dumping the expellees there. In any event, there would now be nothing illegal in it. Since Cohen makes an issue of the legalization of "any exile destination" by the Supreme Court, he apparently suspects the same. Indeed, an Israeli Siberia for Palestinian "terrorists" and "saboteurs of peace" is now a distinct possibility. It is even quite likely.
Another problem is the Supreme Court's disregard for elementary rules of natural justice, concretely by the adversary nature of judicial procedure, which commands the judge to relate to legal arguments advanced by both contending sides. For the Supreme Court, however, the Palestinians are not an adversary. As Kimmerling puts it, their claims, even when supported by Jewish experts, have no standing. Those mindful of the Supreme Court's past record, as my friends and I myself are, had actually expected the expulsion verdict to be no different than it turned out to be. Yet curiously, most Israeli opponents of expulsion, and of those who vacillated in their judgment, professed all their trust in the Supreme Court. Even the PLO leadership tended to trust it. As already noted, the verdict shattered such illusions. Hence its political importance. It does not mean, however, that everybody's illusions have been shattered. Most Israeli Jews, along with their power elite, including its "leftist" component, tend to persist in them.
Another sacred cow that was slaughtered in Israel by its role in the mass expulsions was the secret police, Shabak. I have already quoted Birman's opinion of this organization. But his opinions about the quality of the Israeli security services are widely shared by commentators who are very far from dovish, who might have even stoutly defended the recent mass expulsion as just or necessary. One of them is Amnon Abramovitz, a hawk par excellence. He pokes fun mercilessly at Shabak's recent claims to the effect of having uncovered a "Hamas center" in the United States (Maariv, February 5). He says that for him it is by no means clear whether the detention of three American citizens on the charges of supplying money to Hamas ''was carried out by the General Security Service or by a Service of Publicity Seekers." He speculates that the whole affair was fabricated for the consumption of the Americans. Abramovitz also comments on Shabak's recurrent announcements that Hamas has already collapsed. He believes that such announcements "must be intended to convince Hamas members that they have already been defeated." But subject to his particular derision is Shabak's claim "repeated every morning" that "proof of the expulsion's great success can be seen in the fact that Hamas members in the territories are now shaving off their beards out of fear. Why does the Shabak need to reiterate that story every morning? After all, whoever shaves off his beard must shave every morning. But while Hamas members may shave out of fear, an aftershave is being sprayed on them by Israeli spokesmen eager to celebrate their great success." Now, people do shave off their beards in the territories, but only because under Rabin, beard-wearing Palestinians tend of late to be increasingly picked by the soldiers and Shabak agents for beating, harassment and humiliations. (Palestinian Christians have also been shaving off their beards, no less so than the Muslims.) This goes along with the better-publicized increase in incidences of child-killing in the territories.
As a Holocaust survivor, I recall how at an early stage of the Nazi occupation of Poland, in 1939, well before the Jews were rounded up into the ghettoes, Nazi soldiers often beat up or harassed particularly those Jews (and occasionally Poles) who wore beards. As a consequence, many Jews shaved off their beards to escape being picked up for a beating. Selective persecution of beard-wearing Jews also occurred in other periods of Jewish history. This resemblance between what the most savage of antisemites were once doing to the Jews and what the authorities of the "Jewish state" now boast of doing to the Arabs is striking. This fact also vindicates Professor Yeshayahu Leibovitz's frequent use of the term "Judeo-Nazis." The whole story of the putative Shabak success in prompting Palestinians to shave off their beards can only be treated as a symptom of the Nazification of the Israeli polity (and especially of its "left" component). As long as the United States continues to support Israel, it can only be surmised that this tendency will culminate either in a transfer or in another Holocaust, to be trumpeted as done "for the sake of the peace process."
Only slightly less a hawk than Abramovitz, Alex Fishman is even more scathing about Shabak's incompetence ("Shabak's spectacles," Hadashot, February 5). He dryly observes that "in its publicity stunts, Shabak has not been particularly concerned with accuracy," because "in Shabak's view what matters is not what actually happens but what the media say about it." The list of Fishman's examples of Shabak's misrepresentations of its failures as successes is rather lengthy. No wonder he credits Shabak's great success "in the capacity of an impresario of spectacles" for the consumption of the Americans. He recommends that Shabak "establish a new department in partnership with the prime minister's office, to be named 'department of happenings, press conferences and fake exhibitions of "hostile" clothes discovered in the mosques'." Shabak's incompetence has been recognized by most professional commentators of the Hebrew press.
But the real question is, how can Israel persist in its policies. There are many reasons for it, the most important being the continuing and even steadily increasing flow of American financial aid and political support. The economic editor of Yediot Ahronot, Sever Plotzker, known for his access to competent informants in both Washington and Jerusalem, is an all-out hawk. Relying on the data of a staunchly pro-Israeli American expert, Professor Stanley Fisher (January 31), Plotzker relates that "in 1992 Israel's trade deficit amounted to $8.5 billion, and even if security-linked imports and the interest on debts are subtracted from that sum, it still amounts to $6 billion, which is the record trade deficit in Israeli history." By the way, "the interest on debts" refers only to commercial loans, because the "loans" which Israel borrows from the United States are being repaid by so-called "U.S. economic aid."
How can Israel afford to accumulate so huge a trade deficit, which, relative to the country's population, beats all world records? Plotzker admits that "even a large Western state would find it difficult to cope with a trade deficit of such magnitude" and that "had the burden of this deficit lain on us alone, our economy would soon virtually collapse." But, as he notes cheerfully, "The deficit is most generously covered in its entirety by the U.S.: i.e., U.S. government and U.S. Jewry." The information about U.S. Jewry is not accurate. As the Hebrew press recurrently reports and government ministers occasionally admit, only a small fraction of the enormous sums of money donated by American Jews "to Israel" (a convenient term insofar as the U.S. income-tax authorities are concerned) actually reaches Israel. A short time ago Shimon Peres admitted that "only a small fraction" of Israel Bonds money reaches Israel, whereas the remainder is "spent within the U.S." American Jewish donations "to Israel" scarcely suffice to cover the expenses of Israeli propaganda and pro-Israeli lobbying within the United States and, as my information sources infer, the expenses of Israeli intelligence operations in various countries. The trade deficit is therefore covered almost in its entirety by the U.S. government, which means by the American taxpayer, whereas the role of organized U.S. Jewry largely amounts to picking the pockets of their neighbors to extract steadily growing amounts needed to balance the Israeli budget.
Incidentally, Plotzker's own data point to the absence of any foreign investment in Israel in recent years. The flood of "cheap money" from the United States may not be the only factor deterring foreign investors, but it certainly is a major deterrent, even if Plotzker would not say it straight out. Interestingly, Plotzker's economic views are ultra-Reaganist. Logically, such views, whether Plotzker's or of like-minded Americans, should dictate opposition to the flood of "cheap money" to Israel. But in matters concerning Israel, neither American conservatives nor liberals adhere to principles they urge be applied elsewhere, the United States included. Their hypocrisy helps build Israeli influence in the United States.
This is why Plotzker is right when he says that the Security Council debates on the expulsions are an empty exercise:
Even if the members of [the] Security Council turn out to be hypocritical and unjust enough to impose on us economic sanctions in retribution for the expulsion which we were both forced and entitled to carry out, this will be devoid of importance. In the first place, it can never happen, because the U.S. can be presumed to foil it. The only thing that matters is therefore the nature of Israeli relations with the Clinton administration. As long as Rabin is clever enough to establish and maintain amicable relations with the Clinton administration, [the] Israeli economy is secure. But if he fails in it, we are in trouble, with or without the U.N.
It cannot be doubted that the unconditional American support for Rabin's policies, guaranteed by the agreement discussed above, is bound to seriously paralyze any potential Israeli opposition. Yitzhak La'or (Haaretz, February 9) sees a precedent for that in the events of June 1982: "During the first week after the expulsion, public discussions were highly reminiscent of what had been said in the first days after the invasion of Lebanon." Pursuing his analogy further, La'or notes that while in 1982 the protests against the invasion were spreading, "those who in 1982 opposed Israeli withdrawal [from Lebanon] tended to persist in their opposition to this crucial demand until three years later," that is, until the Lebanese guerrillas in 1984-85 had already inflicted heavy and steady casualties on Israeli troops. From the fall of 1982 until the beginning of 1984, Lebanese resistance to the Israeli conquest was still rather meager, and Israel benefitted from firm U.S. support (though not as firm as now). During all that time, except for a short period after the Sabra and Shatila massacres, Israeli opposition to the war was rather contained, even though that war involved a conquest of about a third of the Lebanese territory and an indirect control over the second third via an alliance with the Phalangists (with whom Sharon, backed by the United States, conducted a "peace process" that culminated in a properly signed "peace treaty"). For one long year, Israeli domestic opposition was severely undermined by a dramatic increase in U.S. financial aid to Israel, for which both houses of Congress voted by huge majorities barely weeks after the Sabra and Shatila massacres. Israeli opposition to the continuing occupation of roughly a third of Lebanese territory grew in strength only as a result of the steady successes of Lebanese resistance to the Israeli conquest. La'or's observations apply mainly to those whom he labels "side steppers:" i.e., those ready to support the conquest when convenient and turning against it when it became unprofitable and incurred heavy losses.
We can already see the portents of similar developments in regard to the Palestinians. The point at which some earlier supporters of the mass expulsion began, for pragmatic reasons, to change their minds can be identified with a degree of exactitude. A successful guerrilla attack by Hamas on an Israeli patrol in the settlement Ganey-Tal in the Gaza Strip, killing two Israeli soldiers, was an event which upset the "side steppers." After that attack, the entire Hebrew press began to voice doubts as to whether the expulsion had achieved its purpose. Symptomatic in this respect was the lead article in Hadashot (January 31), signed by Aharon Barnea:
Yesterday's guerrilla operation should prompt us to most seriously reconsider the question whether the expulsion had served its purpose. The attack can be cited as evidence in favor of those who have always claimed that the expulsion, besides having been decided in a spur-of-the-moment fashion, could in no way contribute to the solution of Israeli problems in the territories. . . .
[W]e should pay heed to the fact that, like all Hamas' guerrilla operations prior to the expulsion, yesterday's operation was targeted at the soldiers. We cannot accuse them of practicing random terror which hits innocent women and children, because they don't.
Barnea's is a slightly disguised challenge to two Israeli pet "theories" that are supposed to explain the expulsions: that Hamas was "a terrorist organization" and that "the expulsions were intended to help the PLO."
It is sad to conclude that the only way to make the situation more tolerable, if not more equitable, is through the use of force in strength sufficient to impress Israeli Jews enough to make them renounce at least some of their cherished articles of faith. This could be done relatively humanely by stopping the flow of money to Israel and thus exerting political pressure on it. This, however, is not in the cards under Clinton, less so than under Bush. In view of that, only two realistic prospects remain: the increasingly effective Palestinian and Lebanese armed resistance (against which, however, Israel may escalate its retaliations to the point of a major war) or the perpetuation of the Israeli conquest and the aggravation of its forms of oppression. |
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