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| Volume XIII, Fall 2006, Number 3 |
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BOOK REVIEW
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The Other Israel, Voices of Refusal and Dissent, Foreword by Tom Segev and Introduction by Anthony Lewis. Edited by Roane Carey and Jonathan Shainin. New Press: 2002. 224 pages, $22.95, hardcover.
Edward Corrigan
Immigration and refugee lawyer in London, Ontario, Canada.
The Other Israel, Voices of Refusal and Dissent presents the views of 28 leading Israeli activists and writers. This anthology also includes an introduction by Anthony Lewis, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and a former columnist for The New York Times. Mr. Lewis is currently the James Madison Visiting Professor at Columbia University. The editors are Roane Carey of The Nation and Jonathan Shainin of the New Press.
The book is divided into five parts: (1) The Setting; (2) Dissent; (3) Refusal; (4) The Escalation: Dispatches from the War of Occupation; and (5) The Resolution? The foreword is by the prominent Israeli writer Tom Segev, author of The Seventh Million and One Palestine Complete and a columnist for the Israeli daily Ha’aretz. The title refers to those Israelis opposed to the policies of the Israeli government toward the Palestinians. It was published in 2002, when the second Palestinian intifada was at its height. It is still very relevant today as the struggle between the Zionists and the Palestinians grinds on. Many in North America are not aware of these dissident voices.
Segev’s foreword recounts a story about Gabriel Stern, a journalist in Israel who supported coexistence between Jews and Palestinians. According to Segev, “Similar voices often figured in Israeli public discourse and were also prominent in the Hebrew press. The central point that readers of this collection should recognize is that its contributors are bolstered by a long tradition: Voices of dissent and Jewish humanism have accompanied the Zionist movement since its inception” (p. viii).
Segev discusses Ahad Ha’Am, who published an article in 1891 entitled, “The Truth from the Land of Israel.” He included the observation that Jewish settlers “treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly on their territories, beat them shamelessly for no sufficient reason, and boast at having done so” (p. ix). He attributed this behavior to a psychological cause: “They were slaves in their land of exile, and suddenly they find they have unlimited freedom, wild freedom . . . .This sudden change has produced in their hearts an inclination toward repressive despotism, as always occurs when ‘the slave becomes king’(p. ix). According to Segev,
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After the establishment of the state, there was no longer any point in arguing over the foundations of the Zionist outlook. The dissent was now focused mainly on the wrongs Israel was inflicting on its Arab citizens, which included further deportations and a series of restrictions on civil liberties, such as the military rule imposed on Israeli Arabs during the 1950s by the Ben-Gurion government (p. ix).
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Bringing us up to the present, Segev comments on the second Palestinian intifada, which erupted in September 2000. “The terror attacks against densely populated Israeli targets caused many Israelis to revert to a tribal, isolated, emotional and nationalistic mood” (p. xiii). This reversion created difficulties for the writers in this volume and, according to Segev, limits their influence. He quotes an Arab saying, “The dogs bark and the convoy marches on”:
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Why, then do we bark? . . . .Life in a society that is not being conducted in a manner that seems right to us, acts of wrongdoing, and sometimes even real war crimes perpetrated in our name arouse in us the need to at least leave behind a testimony that we were against it. In our vanity, we naturally believe that future generations will read our work, and it is important to us that they know: We were the good guys on this side of the border (p. xiii).
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The first essay in the anthology is “The Six-Day War’s Seventh Day,” by Michael Ben-Yair, a former attorney general of Israel. Ben-Yair describes Israel's rule over the Occupied Territories:
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The Six-day War was forced upon us; however, the war’s seventh day, which began on June 12, 1967, and has continued to this day, is the product of our choice. We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities. Passionately desiring to keep the occupied territories, we develop two judicial systems: one progressive, liberal in Israel and the other cruel, injurious in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day (p. 13).
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There is much debate on whether the war was "forced upon" Israel. Many Israeli leaders and scholars indicate that the Six-day War was a war of choice and that Israel chose to attack Egypt, seize the Golan Heights and occupy the West Bank, Gaza and Sinai, and encourage thousands of Arabs to flee. A CIA report also confirms that it was Israel that fired first (see “CIA Analysis of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War,” by David S. Robarge, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 49, No. I, 2005).
Ben-Yair says that there is a “black flag” hanging over Israel’s actions, a term used by Judge Binyamin Halevy in the 1958 trial of members of the Israeli Border Police who shot and killed nearly 50 Israeli Arab civilians from Kafr Kassem who were unaware that their village had been placed under curfew at the start of the 1956 Sinai War. Judge Halevy wrote, “The hallmark of manifest illegality is that it must wave like a black flag over the given order” (p. 14). Ben-Yair builds upon this image and states,
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Israel’s security cannot be based only on the sword; it must rather be based on our principles of moral justice and on peace with our neighbors, those living next door and those living a little farther away. An occupation regime undermines those principles of moral justice and prevents the attainment of peace. Thus, that regime endangers Israel’s existence (pp. 14-15).
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Tanya Reinhart in “The Second Half of 1948” critically analyses the two competing Israeli establishment strategies to deal with the Palestinian issue. The first is the Allon Plan, which consisted of annexation of 35-40 percent of the occupied territories; Reinhart describes it as “apartheid” (p. 18). The alternative policy — the Sharon Plan — involves the “transfer” or repetition of the expulsion of Palestinians that occurred in 1948. Reinhart terms it “the second half of 1948” (p. 19).
Reinhart discusses the ethnic cleansing that occurred in Israel in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. She notes that Allon believed it was impossible to repeat the 1948 solution of mass expulsion, “either for moral considerations or because world opinion would not allow this to happen again” (p. 16). According to Reinhart, Sharon and other rightwing Zionists in Israel believed that “it was possible to find a more acceptable and sophisticated way to achieve the 1948-style solution. It was only necessary to find another state for the Palestinians; ‘Jordan is Palestine’ was the phrase that Sharon coined” (p. 17). It is this debate that still rages in Israeli politics.
Jeff Halper in “The Key to Peace: Dismantling the Matrix of Control” describes Israel’s regime in the occupied territories and explains why the Palestinians had to reject Ehud Barak’s so-called "generous" peace offer that maintained the matrix of control and rendered a Palestinian state nonviable. Halper is a professor of anthropology and the coordinator of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions. This article is a well-researched and documented critique of Israeli occupation. He also contributed “An Israeli in Palestine,” a report of his experience protesting against Israel’s demolition of houses in the squalid Suafat refugee camp, now incorporated into Greater Jerusalem. Halper is pessimistic about a settlement. He thinks peace will not come from within Israel but will require outside pressure due to the attitude of most Israelis: “As if the Palestinians have the chutzpah to resist, as if they are the criminals, as if ‘we’ now have an opportunity to get even with ‘them,’ to extract revenge for not accepting our occupation....We will not resume negotiation until they stop the violence” (p. 96-97).
In “Politicus Interruptus,” Uri Avnery provides an insightful analysis of the collapse of the early Taba talks and examines “the lie” that blamed Arafat for their failure. According to Avnery, Arafat wanted to continue the negotiations, and Barak ordered his men home. Avnery is critical of the Israeli peace movement for so readily accepting the pronouncements of the Israeli government and blaming the Palestinians for the failure. He sets out the political context and documents the breakdown of the talks. When an agreement was close, Barak simply “freaked out,” and “when the agreement was at hand, Barak ordered the talks to be broken off. The actual pretext does not matter” (p. 43).
In a second article in the collection, “A Queue of Bombers,” Avnery blames the brutal suppression of the Palestinian population for inducing a helpless rage. Far from “destroying the infrastructure of terrorism,” they have built “a hot house for rearing suicide bombers” (p. 166).
Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations in St. Anthony’s College at Oxford University, contributes an essay titled “A Betrayal of History.” Shlaim is a distinguished Israeli scholar whose books include Collusion across the Jordan, War and Peace in the Middle East and The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. He quotes the French philosopher Ernest Renan: “A nation is a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbors” (p. 45). Shlaim wrote this article, which first appeared in The Guardian, in response to Benny Morris’s statements endorsing the expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948. Morris is renowned for documenting, from Israeli historical archives, that the Palestinians were massacred, raped and forcibly expelled from the newly created “Jewish State.” This is an excellent rebuttal to Morris’s arguments in support of “the expulsion” of the Palestinians after the so-called “rejection” of the Oslo peace process by the Palestinian Authority:
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Benny’s conclusion follows naturally from his deficient and defective account of the history of the last decade, and especially of the last two years. His conclusion is that the root problem today is the Palestinian leadership’s denial of the legitimacy of the Jewish state. The conclusion that I draw from my version of history is that the root problem today is the Jewish state’s continuing occupation of most of the Palestinian territories that it captured in June 1967 (p. 50).
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Shlaim also contributed “The Champion of Violent Solutions,” a critical analysis of Sharon’s policy. According to the author, “Sharon has revealed once again his true colors as a man wedded to military force as the only instrument of policy. The hallmarks of his career are mendacity, the most savage brutality toward Arab civilians, and a constant preference for force over diplomacy to solve political problems” (p. 67).
Of Sharon’s policy in the 1982 attack on Lebanon, Shlaim writes, “The invasion was not a defensive war but a war of deception” (p. 68). Later, he continues, “Ever the opportunist, Sharon was quick to jump on the bandwagon of America’s war against terror in the aftermath of September 11. Under this banner, Sharon has embarked on a sinister attempt to destroy the infrastructure of a future Palestinian state” (pp.69-70). Shlaim also outlines Sharon’s role in triggering the second intifada with his provocative visit to Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount on September 29, 2000.
“The problem of the Palestinian refugees bedevils those seeking an end to the conflict, which did not begin with the 1967 occupation and will not be over when the occupation is abolished. Reconciliation will be reached only when there is a compromise that encompasses the 1948 refugees” (p. 52). This quote is from “A Time of Occupation,” by Adi Ophir, professor of philosophy at Tel Aviv University. This essay is an analysis of the effect of the occupation on Israeli society. Ophir points out the conflict between “Jewish nationalism” and democracy and discusses how the failure of Oslo was exploited by the Zionist Right and led to a shift in Israeli society to support the occupation:
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The occupied party’s resistance to the occupier is its moral right. Its violent resistance to the occupation is a direct result of the violence of the occupation itself. Such violent resistance is perhaps immoral and perhaps unwise (under certain conditions it might be morally wrong precisely because it is unwise). But according to the legal and political tradition to which most of the political leadership in Israel belong, there is no doubt that such resistance or at least certain forms of it is legitimate. The Palestinians have no choice but to resist (p. 61).
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Baruch Kimmerling, professor of sociology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, contributes “J’Accuse.” His publications include The Interrupted System: Israeli Citizens in War and Routine Times; Palestinians: The Making of a People (with Joel Migdal) and The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Society and the Military. This essay is a powerful political statement modeled after Emile Zola's famous polemic against antisemitism in the Dreyfus case. It begins thus: “I ACCUSE my prime minister, Ariel Sharon, of creating a process that will not only intensify the reciprocal bloodshed, but which may lead to a regional war and the partial or nearly complete ethnic cleansing of Arabs in “Greater Israel’” (p. 76). Kimmerling uses the term “politicide” to describe the Israeli policy of systematically destroying the infrastructure of Palestinian society and a future state.
Gideon Levy, a columnist with the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, contibutes three articles to the collection. The first, “Tell the Truth, Shimon,” was published on January 25, 2002. It is an open letter as a former aide to Shimon Peres calling for Peres to resign from Sharon’s government: “This government is a ‘government of crime’ for the atrocities and targeted assassinations and war crimes committed against the Palestinians under occupation” (p. 78). This is a powerful indictment of the former Israeli Labor party leader and former prime minister, who talks about peace but through his actions supports an aggressive policy against the Palestinians.
In “On the Eve of the War,” Levy describes the desperate situation of the Palestinians: “Their villages are locked behind iron gates and steel chains with metal locks; the keys are in the hands of the Israel Defense Forces” (p. 168). Levy asks, “Is there such a great distance between these iron gates and the gates of the concentration camps of our own history” (p. 169)?
Gideon Levy’s third contribution to the anthology is “The People’s War.” He opposes the war against the Palestinians and laments the support Sharon receives from the Israeli population: “What is the infrastructure of terrorism if not the occupation, the despair and the hatred? How will the shattering blow we have delivered against the entire Palestinian population help in the war against terrorism? How will it advance the peace, or at least the security of Israelis” (p. 178)? He also criticizes the Israeli press: “This is a dark time in Israel. The damage we are causing ourselves will in part be irreversible. In the not so distant future, when it becomes clear that this war was pointless, the meaningful voices of opposition will begin to be heard. But they will be too few and too late” (p. 179).
“You Can Continue with the Liquidations,” by Shulamit Aloni, is also part of the anthology. Aloni founded Israel’s civil rights movement in 1973. She served as a member of the Knesset from 1974 to 1996 and was minister of communication and arts and science technology for the Meretz party from 1992 to 1996. She advocates separation of religion and state in “the Jewish State.” Aloni’s attack on Ariel Sharon's policies is summarized as follows: “There are no negotiations, there will not be peace, the settlements will expand and get stronger, and we will be able to continue liquidating, demolishing, and uprooting” (p. 85). She also notes that Arafat in 1988 and later the PLO National Council endorsed UN Resolutions 242 and 338, which explicitly recognized the 1967 “Green Line” borders of Israel. Aloni writes that the Palestinians “gave up on greater Palestine and recognized the existence of the State of Israel” (p. 86). Aloni comments on the situation in Israel and the occupation:
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Whoever claims that the settlements are Israel’s catastrophe from a security and economic point of view is not an antisemite but a patriot. Whoever says that this government has committed crimes against humanity is not an antisemite but an honest and humane person. Whoever condemns the demolition of houses in Rafah and Jerusalem, opposes the provocative liquidations and the fostering of ferment in the area so that we can avoid going to the negotiating table, does so out of love for their homeland (p. 87).
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Yigal Bronner contributes “A Journey to Beit Jala.” He teaches Sanskrit and South Asian studies at Tel Aviv University and is an activist in Ta’ayush, the Arab-Jewish partnership. His essay describes how Israeli Jews came together in an organization and delivered humanitarian aid to a Palestinian village. It puts a human face on the occupation and shows that not all Israelis support it. Many try to help undo the damage that is being inflicted on the Palestinians. Bronner notes, “ . . . being a Palestinian man these days automatically makes you suspect, and the most trivial actions, such as leaving your home, turn you into a criminal” (p. 91).
“The Enemy Within," is a piece by Neve Gordon, former director of Physicians for Human Rights, Israel, who teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva. Gordon argues that Sharon was exploiting the tragic events of 9/11 to pursue his campaign against the Palestinians.
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This suggests that a visceral instinct has taken over the national psyche, marginalizing and repressing all forms of political reasoning. Many years from now people may ask (just as we wonder about other times and places) how it was that a whole population did not realize what was happening. Israel’s gravest danger today is not the Palestinian Authority or even Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but the one it faces from within: fascism. The fascistization of politics takes many forms, some more apparent than others. Perhaps most conspicuous is the dramatic change in the Israeli landscape. A few months following the eruption of the second Intifada, thousands of billboards, posters, bumper stickers and graffiti began to appear, with slogans like “No Arabs, No Assaults,” “Expel Arafat,” “Kahane Was Right,” and “The Criminals of Oslo Should Be Brought to Justice.” It was shocking, at the time, that slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had been criminalized by his own people (p. 100).
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Gordon continues, “This kind of blatant racism is now common in Israel; it feeds off the widespread fear of suicide bombings, which have also managed to change the Jerusalem landscape. Downtown streets are almost empty, and most businesses have been seriously hurt because of the dramatic decline in clientele” (p. 101).
Gordon notes, “As the new placards suggest, Arab citizens themselves are also under constant attack, particularly by right-wing Jewish politicians who have been exploiting the pervasive fear to foment a form of fervent nationalism informed by racism.” Effi Eitam, the new leader of the National Religious party, and a minister in Sharon’s government, has characterized Palestinian citizens of Israel as “a cancer,” as if they were a tumor that needed to be rooted out. “Arabs,” Eitam claims, “will never have political rule in the country, not sovereignty, not an army, not any part, grain, or alleyway of the Land of Israel,” which to Eitam “includes the West Bank and Gaza Strip. His views have now been legitimized and have a following within the Jewish population” (p. 103).
“Break the Mirror Now” is by Israeli historian IIan Pappé, a senior lecturer at Haifa University and the academic director of the Research Institute for Peace at Givat Haviva. The author of The Making of Israeli Conflict, 1948-1951 and The Israel-Palestine Question, Pappe is one of Israel's “new historians,” who have documented the systematic expulsion of the Palestinians from Israel in the 1948 war. He writes, “Israel in 1948 was built on 56 percent of Palestine allocated to it by the UN, and an additional 22 percent occupied by force. Most of the roughly 900,000 Palestinians living in the newly formed state were expelled by force, their villages destroyed and their city neighborhoods settled by Jewish immigrants. Israel’s creation was thus enabled by military power, ethnic cleansing and the de-Arabization of the country” (p. 110).
Pappé writes about Israel's “war on terrorism:”
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Shocked by the human bombs that have produced a sense of personal insecurity and a rising death toll, the Israeli public in general is unable and unwilling to look through the catastrophic plans of the man [Sharon] they have elected democratically by an unprecedented majority. His posturing also caters to the dormant, racist and ethnocentric attitudes of the vast majority of Jews, nurtured over the years by Israel’s educational and cultural systems. . . . The evils of occupation are reorganized but mainly as corrupting Jewish society, not as crimes against the local population, and definitely not as a continuous evil that began with the ethnic cleansing of 1948 (pp. 113-114).
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Pappé also indicates that the position of Israelis who speak out against the occupation or academics and “new historians” who challenge the myths of Israel’s founding is difficult:
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We are treated as insane at best, and at worst as traitors, even by those who claim to uphold the values of free speech and opinion in Israel. I am analyzing such a posture not from the point of view of risk or retribution, but rather from that of effectiveness: How can people like myself, so alienated by their own society and so revolted by what it and its government are doing, be effective in changing local public opinion (p. 115)?
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Yitzhak Laor is a prominent Israeli author and poet who teaches at Tel Aviv University. In “After Jenin,” he discusses the linkage between the “dirty war” in Lebanon and the ruthlessness of the campaign against the Palestinians. Laor analyzes the perverse comparison of the Jews under Nazi persecution to the situation in Jenin, in which the Israeli army is seen as the victim of the besieged Palestinian refuges:
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The military logic to explain this behavior says: “We have the power and we have to exercise it, or otherwise our existence is in danger.” But the only danger is the one facing the Palestinians. Gas chambers are not the only way to destroy a nation. It is enough to destroy its social tissue, to starve dozens of villages, to induce high rates of infant mortality. The West Bank is going through a Gaza-ization. Please don’t shrug your shoulders. The one thing that might help destroy the consensus in Israel is pressure from the West, on which the Israeli elite is dependent in so many ways (p. 120).
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Yigal Shochat is the author of “Red Line, Green Line, Black Flag,” also found in this anthology. A former Israeli pilot who was shot down and lost a leg in the 1970 War of Attrition with Egypt, Shochat rose to the position of surgeon general of the Israeli Air Force.” The article discusses illegal “black flag” orders that are not supposed to be obeyed. He also refers to the trial of the Israeli border police who massacred Palestinians at Kafr Kassem as a “black flag,” operation. Shochat compares it to the suppression of the Palestinian uprising against the continuing Israeli occupation. He is opposed to bombing civilians and notes the concern expressed by Israeli officers about being tried for war crimes. According to Shochat, Israeli pilots need to expand the “black flag” concept: “In my opinion, pilots need to examine closely the order they get, ask a lot of questions about the goal, and refuse to obey any orders they consider immoral” (p. 127). Shochat defends the right to refuse to serve in the territories, but not to refuse to serve in the defense of Israel.
“Ruling Over a Hostile Population” is the contribution of Shamai Leibowitz, an attorney in Tel Aviv. Leibowitz uses the Bible and Jewish religious texts to argue that collective punishment, attacks against civilians and the killing of children in refugee camps are violations of Jewish law. He argues that there is no justification for harming innocents; this is a basic tenet of justice. He is the grandson of Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a renowned scholar of Judaism and philosophy, the editor of several volumes of the Encyclopedia Hebraica and a leading critic of Israeli policy in the occupied territories. The grandfather wrote about the damage that the occupation would do to Israel and the resulting Nazification of Israeli society. The grandson writes,
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There ain’t no such animal as an enlightened occupation. The rule over three million antagonistic people, stripped of their rights, will necessitate, nolens volens, cruelty on our part. It will require us to violate normative prohibitions of Jewish law. Therefore the refusal to participate in actions that are directly related to the occupation is a religious imperative. We hope that every soldier in the standing army and in the reserve, will ponder these dilemmas and draw conclusions himself (p. 149).
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Leibowitz also argues, “Obedience to the state is not the ultimate Jewish value....Questions of immorality and illegality waft above the orders to serve in the territories. We must continue to serve in the IDF as a defense army, but not as an occupying force committing crimes against humanity” (p. 150).
In “Hidden Weapons Factories,” the celebrated Ha'aretz analyst Amira Hass provides numerous examples of abuse committed by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints, which she describes as “hidden weapons factories” that create thousands of Palestinians willing to die for their cause. In her second contribution, “Are the Occupied Protecting the Occupier?” Hass depicts the asymmetry of power between “one of the strongest armies of the world” and the Palestinians, who want to take up arms and fight for what they are convinced is their “War of Independence.” Hass also discusses the illusion of Palestinian sovereignty, belied by Israel's total control of the occupied territories (pp. 162).
Ze’ev Sternhell teaches political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and is the author of The Birth of Fascist Ideology and The Founding Myths of Israel. His “Balata Has Fallen,” attacks the comparison between the Israeli soldiers fighting the 1973 War and a campaign to suppress the Palestinian “War of Independence.” Noting that the Jewish settlers call the war the Rosh Hashanah War, he asserts, “This half-baked attempt to create symmetry between a just war and a campaign of colonialist suppression is not merely a curiosity; it is the desecration of the memory of those who fell in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.” (p. 160).
Sternhell's second article is “In Ramallah We Founded Palestine,” an analysis of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and Sharon's campaign to break the Palestinian national movement. He addresses the futility of using force to crush a popular uprising:
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All the primitive methods of using force and more force against the popular uprising have already been tried by occupying armies in the last century. The result has always been the same: Guerrilla fighters who enjoy the support of the population can easily drag a regular army, heavy-handed and insensitive, into actions that arouse even more hatred. It has always been the case that acts of oppression have only increased resistance (p. 174).
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David Grossman, a prominent Israeli writer whose books include The Yellow Wind and Sleeping on the Wire: Conversations with Palestinians in Israel, contributes “Hail, Caesar!” It is a sardonic tribute to Ariel Sharon’s leadership in the satirical style of Jonathan Swift. Grossman writes, “You will force our enemies to love us, no matter what we do to them. You will get rid of their leader and install someone else in his place, someone submissive and obedient. And then, in a wink, the hearts of our enemies will fill with love for us. They will forgive us for all our misdeeds, and even justify them and realize that they had a purpose” (p. 195).
Tom Segev, a prominent Israeli author, reviews the history of the concept of “transfer,” or ethnic cleansing, of the Arabs from the Jewish state. He outlines the idea’s growing legitimacy in Israeli political discourse, surveying the transfer of the Arabs in 1948 and 1967. He also describes the proposed plan to transfer or expel the Arabs from the Galilee in 1956:
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Leaders of the Zionist movement discussed the transfer idea; up to the War of Independence it was only written and spoken about, but there is a link between the idea and the Palestinian tragedy of 1948. In advance of the Sinai operation of 1956, plans were drawn up for the mass expulsion of Israeli Arabs from the “Triangle” [a heavily Arab region of central Israel].
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In the Six-day War, nearly a quarter-million Palestinians from the West Bank moved to Jordan, many by force. It wasn’t easy for them to return, and not all managed to do so. This is where the danger lies when the possibility of transfer becomes part of the political discourse, when it seemingly becomes a legitimate subject. Like military orders that have a black flag hanging over their illegality, there are ideas that should have black flags over them (p. 203).
The checkpoint issue is further elaborated in “The Checkpoints of Arrogance,” by Meron Benvenisti, former deputy major of Jerusalem. Benvenisti attacks the logic of building Jewish settlements in the heart of Arab populations. He describes the function of Israeli checkpoints and their design as a mechanism for controlling the Palestinians. Based on the “arrogant reliance on the mentality of subservience,” the vulnerability of the checkpoints belies their so-called security function:
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The checkpoints will remain the main point of contact and friction between the occupying power and the rebellious population, not because they serve any security purpose, but because their function is to send a message of force and authority, to inspire fear, and to symbolize the downtrodden nature and inferiority of those under the occupation (pp. 156-7).
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Benvenisti adds, “Colonial regimes have always been based on the arrogance of a few soldiers controlling the lives of millions of subjects through minimal use of force and reliance on a ‘deterrence’ that perpetuates the inferiority of those under their rule. Such regimes can last as long as the subjects agree to behave in accordance with the dictates from above.” But, as Benvenisti notes, “the moment the rules of the game are broken and the checkpoints turn from displays of control into barricades of revolt, small groups of soldiers do not have a chance of remaining anything more than props for their commanders’ arrogant contempt” (p. 157).
Benvenisti also contributes the last essay in the anthology “The Turning Point.” He discusses the time “when the opposition to war and bloodshed turns from treachery into a legitimate, indeed proper approach, when the moral condemnation of acts of war becomes politically correct and when the phrase, ‘a war for our homes’ changes from being a battle cry into blathering nonsense” (p. 205). Benvenisti writes, “Experience shows that manipulating values to justify the sacrifice of human lives can never succeed, because the survival instinct is stronger than the manipulation. Eventually, the cynicism of inflated, counterfeit patriotism is revealed, as happened in the Lebanon war” (p. 206). He ends with the following statement:
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When the time comes, and the curtain is pulled away from this phony patriotism, it will turn out that the fifth Israel-Palestine war (after the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt, the 1948 war, the Lebanon war, and the first intifada) will truly have been another battle in the war for independence; not Israel’s, as Ariel Sharon claims, but that of the Palestinians. And nobody, neither side, will win that war, because in conflicts between communities there are no victors, only losers. All that will remain will be horrific memories, the profound hatred, the calls for vengeance, and the bitter taste of missed opportunities, since it almost, almost could have been different (p. 206).
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Two small points of criticism: Although a number of the Jewish Israeli writers discuss the situation of Israeli Arabs in the “Jewish State,” it would have been interesting to hear the perspective of Israeli Arabs on the campaign against the Palestinians. In addition, the book is also almost entirely composed of Ashkenazi or European Jewish criticism. Absent is the perspective of the Mizrahi (Sephardic) or Arab Jews; yet the divide between European Jews and Middle Eastern Jews is one of the most important social cleavages in Israel. Contributions from the Arab Jewish component of the Jewish state would have been a valuable addition to the collection. This omission also points to a weakness in the Left and the peace movement in Israel.
This anthology, however, presents an excellent sample of dissenting opinion in Israel. It deserves to be circulated widely. Opinion leaders in the West and the rest of the world need to be made aware that many Israelis, and a significant portion of Israel’s intellectual and cultural elite, are strongly opposed to Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians.
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