By Uri Avnery, 18.3.06
THE CENTRAL theme of this article is disgust. Therefore I
apologize in advance for the frequent use of this and similar words.
In the thesaurus I find
quite a number of synonyms: loathing, revulsion, dislike, nausea, distaste,
aversion, antipathy, abomination, repulsion, abhorrence, repugnance, odium,
detestation, and some more. They are all present in my feelings about the
action that took place in Jericho on Tuesday.
IT WAS abhorrent, first of all, because it was an
election propaganda gimmick. For a politician to send the army in to collect
votes is an abhorrent act. In this action, three people were killed. Many more
lives, Palestinian and Israeli, were put at risk.
The horrible cynicism of
the decision was plain for all to see. Even the voters noticed it: in a public
opinion poll two days later, 47% said that the decision was influenced by
electoral considerations, only 49% thought otherwise.
This is not the first
time for Ehud Olmert to walk over dead bodies on his way to power. As mayor of
Jerusalem, he pushed for the opening of a tunnel in the area of the Muslim
shrines, causing (as expected) dozens of casualties. Binyamin Netanyahu, his
accomplice at the time, is made of similar material.
Netanyahu, at least, was
once a combat soldier, who risked his own life in action. Much more distasteful
is a politician who sends others to risk their lives but takes great care not
to risk his own. This inglorious band also numbers George Bush and Dick Cheney,
two serial war-mongers.
Olmert had a problem.
His party was slowly sinking in the polls. As time passed, some of the Kadima
fans started to notice that Olmert, after all, is no Sharon. Sharon's glory
derives mainly from his being a victorious general, who walked around during
the Yom Kippur war with a large bandage around his head (to this very day it is
not quite clear what purpose it served). Olmert was in urgent need of a
military action that would provide him with the laurels of a tough military
commander, and would also help him shake off the nickname attached to him by
the Likud: Smolmert. (Smol, in Hebrew, means left.)
The trick paid off. In
the same poll, 20.7% of the voters said that the Jericho action persuaded them
to vote for Kadima, or, at least, reinforced their decision to do so.
In general, one should
beware of a civilian politician who succeeds a leader crowned with military
laurels. It is enough to mention the classic case of Anthony Eden, the heir of
Winston Churchill, who initiated the Suez war of October 1956.
WHAT DOES that war remind us about? The collusion.
The British wanted to
topple Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, because he had the temerity to expropriate the
property of the British shareholders of the Suez Canal Company. The French
wanted to bring him down because of his support for the Algerian war of
liberation. They conspired with David Ben-Gurion, who wanted to destroy the
newly re-equipped Egyptian army. The main middleman of the collusion was Shimon
Peres, now No. 2 on the Kadima list.
It worked like this:
Israeli paratroopers, commanded by Ariel Sharon (founder of Kadima), were
dropped near the Suez canal. Britain and France issued a fake ultimatum,
calling upon Egypt and Israel to withdraw their forces from the canal - a
preposterous demand, since the canal is deep in Egyptian territory. As agreed
beforehand, Israel refused, and then the British and French forces invaded the
canal area, leaving the Israeli army to take control of the entire Sinai
peninsula. The collusion was so primitive and obvious that it was uncovered at
once. End of Eden.
The Jericho affair is
incredibly similar: the British and the Americans pretended to fear for the
safety of their monitors, which were stationed in Jericho according to an
agreement which we shall touch upon later. They told Mahmoud Abbas that they
might withdraw them. At a time secretly agreed upon with the Israeli Prime
Minister, the British and American monitors went out and the Israeli army went
in. Preparations for the action had been going on for weeks.
One thing should be said
in favor of George Bush and Tony Blair (and his miserable Foreign Minister,
Jack Straw): they have returned the oldest profession in the world to the
oldest city in the world. The scarlet thread of Rahav the Harlot (Joshua,
2) leads to this act of prostitution.
LIEUTENANT GENERAL Dan Halutz can be proud of this victory. In the
past, he became famous for saying that all he feels is a slight bump on his
wing when he drops a bomb on a civilian neighborhood, even if women and
children are also killed. After that he sleeps well, he said. Now he has won
real glory: with the help of dozens of tanks, gunships and heavy bulldozers he
has succeeded in capturing six unarmed prisoners in the tranquil, non-violent
little town that lives off tourism.
In the course of the
action, Halutz' soldiers created a disgusting picture that has sullied the
image of the Israeli army in the eyes of the hundreds of millions who saw it on
their screens. They ordered the Palestinian policemen and prisoners to take
their clothes off, and then let them be photographed, again and again - and
again and again - in their underpants. There was no need for that. The pretext,
that they might have hidden explosive belts on their body, was ridiculous under
these circumstances. And even if it had been necessary, it could surely have
been done far from the cameras. No doubt: the intention was to humiliate, to
debase, to satisfy sadistic tendencies.
A person can, perhaps,
get over beatings, or even torture. But he cannot ever forget humiliation,
especially when it was done in full view of his family, friends, colleagues and
all people around the world. How many new terrorists were born at that moment?
On that day I happened
to visit friends in a Palestinian village in the West Bank. We - my hosts and I
- were riveted to the TV screen (mainly Aljazeera). When these pictures
appeared, I could not look them in the eye for shame.
THE
ISRAELI
media had a ball. Not just a ball, they
went gaga for sheer joy. They contributed their special part to the loathsome
event and stood to attention behind the government. Like a flock of parrots,
unanimously repeating the mendacious official version.
It was a festival of
brain-washing. The "Murderers of Ze'evi" have been captured! It was
our national duty! We could not rest until they fell into our hands, dead or
alive!
These three words -
"Murderers of Ze'evi" - turned into a mantra. They were repeated
endlessly on radio and television, and appeared in the printed newspapers (all
of them!) and the speeches of the politicians (all of them!). That's how it is:
Israelis are "murdered", Palestinians are "eliminated".
Why, for Gods sake?
Rehavam Zee'vi, a cabinet minister at the time, preached day and night about
"transfer" - the euphemism for driving the Palestinians out of
Palestine. Compared to him, Jean-Marie le Pen in France and Joerg Haider in
Austria are bleeding-heart liberals. His targeted killing is no different from
the targeted killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin and scores of other Palestinian
leaders, including Abu-Ali Mustafa, the chief of the Popular Front, who was
allowed by Israel to return from Syria to the Palestinian territories after
Oslo.
This is part of the
endless chain of violence: The Israeli army killed Abu-Ali Mustafa. He was
succeeded by Ahmed Sa'adat, who, according to the Israeli security service,
ordered the killing of Rehavam Ze'evi in revenge, and whose capture was the aim
of the Jericho action. And so it goes on.
Let's be clear: I oppose
all murders. Theirs and ours. The murder of Abu-Ali Mustafa and the murder of
Rehavam Ze'evi. But whoever spills the blood of a Palestinian leader cannot
complain about the shedding of the blood of an Israeli one.
THERE IS still another side to the affair, which is no less
disgusting: the attitude towards the keeping of agreements.
Sa'adat and his
colleagues were held in Jericho in accordance with an agreement signed by
Israel. On the strength of it, they left the Mukata'a in Ramallah, during the
siege on Yasser Arafat, and entered the Palestinian jail in Jericho. The US and
the UK guaranteed their safety and undertook to monitor their imprisonment.
What has happened now in
Jericho is a blatant breach of the agreement. The miserable pretexts invented
in Jerusalem, London and Washington are an insult to the intelligence of a
10-year old.
Israeli governments
often regard the breach of an agreement as a patriotic act if it serves our
purpose. Agreements are binding only on the other side. This is not only a
primitive morality, it is also damaging to our national interests. Who will
sign an agreement with us, knowing that it obligates only him? How can Israel
convincingly demand that the Hamas leaders "accept all the
agreements" signed by the Palestinian Authority?
Many Israelis believe
that the Jericho action was a brilliant exercise. I found it simply loathsome.