Uri Avnery

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   Uri Avnery

9.2.08

                       An End Foreseen

A WISE person once said: "A fool learns from his experience. An intelligent 

person learns from the experience of others." To which one could add: 

"And an idiot does not even learn from his own experience."

So what can we learn from a book which shows that we do not learn from 

experience?

All this is building up to a recommendation for such a book. I don't 

recommend books as a rule, not even my own. But this time I feel the 

need to make an exception.

This is William Polk's book, "Violent Politics", which has recently appeared 

in the United States.

Polk was in Palestine in 1946, at the height of the struggle against the 

British occupation, and since then he has studied the history of liberation 

wars. In less than 300 pages he compares insurgencies, from the 

American Revolution to the wars in Afghanistan. His years on the 

planning staff of the State Department involved him with the Israeli-

Palestinian conflict. His conclusions are highly illuminating.   

I HAVE a special interest in this subject. When I joined the Irgun at age 

15, I was told to read books about previous liberation wars, especially the 

Polish and Irish ones. I diligently read every book I could lay my hands 

on, and have since followed the insurgencies and guerrilla wars 

throughout the world, such as those in Malaya, Kenya, South Yemen, 

South Africa, Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Vietnam and more. In one of them, 

the Algerian war of liberation, I had some personal involvement.

When I belonged to the Irgun, I worked at the office of an Oxford-

educated lawyer. One of our clients was a high British official of the 

Mandate government. He was an intelligent, pleasant and humorous 

person. I remember once, when he passed by, a thought crossing my 

mind: How can such intelligent people conduct such a foolish policy?

Since then, the more I have become became engrossed in other 

insurgencies, the stronger this wonderment has become. Is it possible 

that the very situation of occupation and resistance condemns the 

occupiers to st**id behavior, turning even the most intelligent into idiots?

Some years ago the BBC screened a long series about the process of 

liberation in the former British colonies, from India to the Caribbean 

islands. It devoted one episode to each colony. Former colonial 

administrators, officers of the occupation armies, liberation fighters and 

other eye-witnesses were interviewed at length. Very interesting and very 

depressing. 

Depressing - because the episodes repeated each other almost exactly. 

The rulers of every colony repeated the mistakes made by their 

predecessors in the previous episode. They harbored the same illusions 

and suffered the same defeats. Nobody learned any lesson from his 

predecessor, even when the predecessor was himself - as in the case of 

the British police officers who were transferred from Palestine to Kenya. 

In his compact book, Polk describes the main insurgencies of the last 200 

years, compares them with each other and draws the obvious 

conclusions.

EVERY INSURGENCY is, of course, unique and different from all others, 

because the backgrounds are different, as are the cultures of the 

occupied peoples and the occupiers. The British differ from the Dutch, 

and both from the French. George Washington was different from Tito, 

and Ho Chi Minh from Yasser Arafat. Yet in spite of this, there is an 

amazing similarity between all the liberation struggles.

For me, the main lesson is this: from the time the general public 

embraces the rebels, the victory of the rebellion is assured.

That is an iron rule: an insurgency supported by the public is bound to 

win, irrespective of the tactics adopted by the occupation regime. The 

occupier can kill indiscriminately or adopt more humane methods, torture 

captured freedom fighters to death or treat them as prisoners of war - 

nothing makes a difference in the long run. The last of the occupiers can 

board a ship in a solemn ceremony, like the British High Commissioner in 

Haifa, or fight for a place in the last helicopter, like the last American 

soldiers on the roof of the American embassy in Saigon - defeat was 

certain from the moment the insurgency had reached a certain point.

The real war against the occupation takes place in the minds of the 

occupied population. Therefore, the main task of the freedom fighter is 

not to fight against the occupation, as it may seem, but to win the hearts 

of his people. And on the other side, the main task of the occupier is not 

to kill the freedom fighters, but to prevent the population from embracing 

them. The battle is for the hearts and minds of the people, their thoughts 

and emotions.

That is one of the reasons why generals almost always fail in their 

struggle against liberation fighters. A military officer is the least suitable 

person for this task. All his upbringing, his whole way of thinking, all that 

he has learned is opposed to this central task. Napoleon, the military 

genius, failed in his effort to vanquish the freedom fighters in Spain 

(where the word guerrilla, little war, was originally coined), no less than 

the most st**id American general in Vietnam.

An army officer is a technician, trained to fulfill a particular job. That job 

is irrelevant to the struggle against a liberation movement, in spite of its 

superficial appropriateness. The fact that a house-painter deals with 

colors does  not make him into a portrait painter. An outstanding 

hydraulic engineer does not become a skilled plumber. A general does 

not understand the essence of a national insurgency, and therefore does 

not come to grips with its rules.

For example, a general measures his success by the number of enemies 

killed. But the fighting underground organization becomes stronger the 

more dead fighters it can present to the public, which identifies with the 

martyrs. A general learns to prepare for battle and win it, but his 

opponents, the guerrilla fighters, avoid battle altogether.

THE ICONIC Che Guevara well defined the stages which a classic war of 

liberation goes through: "At first, there is a partially armed band that 

takes refuge in some remote, hard-to-reach spot [or in an urban 

population, I would add]. It strikes a lucky blow against the authorities 

and is joined by a few more discontented farmers, young idealists, etc. 

It�contacts residents and conducts light hit-and-run attacks. As new 

recruits swell the ranks it takes on an enemy column and destroys its 

leading elements�Next the band sets up semi-permanent 

encampments�and adopts the characteristics of a government in 

miniature�" and so on.

In order to succeed all along the way, the insurgents need an idea that 

fires the enthusiasm of the population. The public unifies around them 

and provides aid, shelter and intelligence. From this stage on, everything 

that the occupation authorities do helps the insurgents. When the 

freedom fighters are killed, many others come forward and swell their 

ranks (as I did in my youth). When the occupiers impose collective 

punishment on the population, they just reinforce their hatred and their 

mutual assistance. When they succeed in capturing or killing the leaders 

of the liberation struggle, other leaders take their place - as the Hydra in 

Greek legend grew new heads for every one that Hercules chopped off. 

Frequently the occupation authorities succeed in causing a split among 

the freedom fighters and consider this a major victory. But all the factions 

go on fighting the occupier separately, competing with each other, as 

Fatah and Hamas are doing now. 

IT IS a pity that Polk did not devote a special chapter to the Israeli-

Palestinian conflict, but that is not really necessary. We can write it 

ourselves according to our understanding.

All along the 40 years of occupation, our political and military leaders 

have failed in the struggle against the Palestinian guerrilla war. They are 

neither more st**id nor more cruel than their predecessors - the Dutch 

in Indonesia, the British in Palestine, the French in Algeria, the Americans 

in Vietnam, the Soviets in Afghanistan. Our generals may top them all 

only in their arrogance - their belief that they are the smartest and that 

the "Jewish head" will invent new patents that all those Goyim could never 

think of.

From the time Yasser Arafat succeeded in winning the hearts of the 

Palestinian population and uniting them around the burning desire to rid 

themselves of the occupation, the struggle was already decided. If we had 

been wise, we would have come to a political settlement with him at the 

time. But our politicians and generals are not wiser than all the others. 

And so we shall go on killing, bombarding, destroying and exiling, in the 

foolish belief that if only we hit once again, the longed-for victory will 

appear at the end of the tunnel - only to perceive that the dark tunnel has 

led us into an even darker tunnel.

As always happens, when a liberation organization does not attain its 

objectives, another more extreme one springs up beside it or instead of it 

and wins the hearts of the people. Hamas-like organizations take over 

from Fatah-like ones. The colonial regime, which has not reached an 

agreement in time with the more moderate organization, is in the end 

compelled to come to terms with the more extreme one.

General Charles de Gaulle succeeded in making peace with the Algerian 

rebels before reaching that stage. One and a quarter million settlers 

heard one morning that the French army was going to pack up on a 

certain date and go home. The settlers, many of them of the fourth 

generation, ran for their lives without getting any compensation (unlike 

the Israeli settlers who left the Gaza Strip in 2005). But we have no de 

Gaulle. We are condemned to go on ad infinitum.  

If not for the terrible tragedies we witness every day, we could smile at 

the pathetic helplessness of our politicians and generals, who are rushing 

around without knowing where their salvation should come from. What to 

do? To starve all of them? That has led to the collapse of the wall on the 

Gaza-Egypt border. Kill their leaders? We have already killed Sheik Ahmed 

Yassin and countless others. To execute the "Grand Operation" and re-

occupy the entire Gaza strip? We have already conquered the Strip twice. 

This time we shall encounter much more capable guerrillas, who are even 

more rooted in the population. Every tank, every soldier will become a 

target. The hunter may well become the prey.

SO WHAT can we do that we have not already done?

First of all, to get every soldier and politician to read William Polk's book, 

together with one of the good books about the Algerian struggle.

Second, to do what all occupation regimes have done in the end in all the 

countries where the population has risen up: to reach a political 

settlement that both sides can live with and profit from. And get out.   

After all, the end is not in doubt. The only question is how much more 

killing, how much more destruction, how much more suffering must be 

caused before the occupiers arrive at the inescapable conclusion.

Every drop of blood spilt is a drop of blood wasted.  

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Daniel Dworsky Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Senior Member Joined: 17 March 2005 Location: Israel Status: Offline Points: 777	Post Options Post Reply Quote Daniel Dworsky Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 10 February 2008 at 5:22am
	Uri Avnery 9.2.08 An End Foreseen A WISE person once said: "A fool learns from his experience. An intelligent person learns from the experience of others." To which one could add: "And an idiot does not even learn from his own experience." So what can we learn from a book which shows that we do not learn from experience? All this is building up to a recommendation for such a book. I don't recommend books as a rule, not even my own. But this time I feel the need to make an exception. This is William Polk's book, "Violent Politics", which has recently appeared in the United States. Polk was in Palestine in 1946, at the height of the struggle against the British occupation, and since then he has studied the history of liberation wars. In less than 300 pages he compares insurgencies, from the American Revolution to the wars in Afghanistan. His years on the planning staff of the State Department involved him with the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. His conclusions are highly illuminating. I HAVE a special interest in this subject. When I joined the Irgun at age 15, I was told to read books about previous liberation wars, especially the Polish and Irish ones. I diligently read every book I could lay my hands on, and have since followed the insurgencies and guerrilla wars throughout the world, such as those in Malaya, Kenya, South Yemen, South Africa, Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Vietnam and more. In one of them, the Algerian war of liberation, I had some personal involvement. When I belonged to the Irgun, I worked at the office of an Oxford- educated lawyer. One of our clients was a high British official of the Mandate government. He was an intelligent, pleasant and humorous person. I remember once, when he passed by, a thought crossing my mind: How can such intelligent people conduct such a foolish policy? Since then, the more I have become became engrossed in other insurgencies, the stronger this wonderment has become. Is it possible that the very situation of occupation and resistance condemns the occupiers to stid behavior, turning even the most intelligent into idiots? Some years ago the BBC screened a long series about the process of liberation in the former British colonies, from India to the Caribbean islands. It devoted one episode to each colony. Former colonial administrators, officers of the occupation armies, liberation fighters and other eye-witnesses were interviewed at length. Very interesting and very depressing. Depressing - because the episodes repeated each other almost exactly. The rulers of every colony repeated the mistakes made by their predecessors in the previous episode. They harbored the same illusions and suffered the same defeats. Nobody learned any lesson from his predecessor, even when the predecessor was himself - as in the case of the British police officers who were transferred from Palestine to Kenya. In his compact book, Polk describes the main insurgencies of the last 200 years, compares them with each other and draws the obvious conclusions. EVERY INSURGENCY is, of course, unique and different from all others, because the backgrounds are different, as are the cultures of the occupied peoples and the occupiers. The British differ from the Dutch, and both from the French. George Washington was different from Tito, and Ho Chi Minh from Yasser Arafat. Yet in spite of this, there is an amazing similarity between all the liberation struggles. For me, the main lesson is this: from the time the general public embraces the rebels, the victory of the rebellion is assured. That is an iron rule: an insurgency supported by the public is bound to win, irrespective of the tactics adopted by the occupation regime. The occupier can kill indiscriminately or adopt more humane methods, torture captured freedom fighters to death or treat them as prisoners of war - nothing makes a difference in the long run. The last of the occupiers can board a ship in a solemn ceremony, like the British High Commissioner in Haifa, or fight for a place in the last helicopter, like the last American soldiers on the roof of the American embassy in Saigon - defeat was certain from the moment the insurgency had reached a certain point. The real war against the occupation takes place in the minds of the occupied population. Therefore, the main task of the freedom fighter is not to fight against the occupation, as it may seem, but to win the hearts of his people. And on the other side, the main task of the occupier is not to kill the freedom fighters, but to prevent the population from embracing them. The battle is for the hearts and minds of the people, their thoughts and emotions. That is one of the reasons why generals almost always fail in their struggle against liberation fighters. A military officer is the least suitable person for this task. All his upbringing, his whole way of thinking, all that he has learned is opposed to this central task. Napoleon, the military genius, failed in his effort to vanquish the freedom fighters in Spain (where the word guerrilla, little war, was originally coined), no less than the most stid American general in Vietnam. An army officer is a technician, trained to fulfill a particular job. That job is irrelevant to the struggle against a liberation movement, in spite of its superficial appropriateness. The fact that a house-painter deals with colors does not make him into a portrait painter. An outstanding hydraulic engineer does not become a skilled plumber. A general does not understand the essence of a national insurgency, and therefore does not come to grips with its rules. For example, a general measures his success by the number of enemies killed. But the fighting underground organization becomes stronger the more dead fighters it can present to the public, which identifies with the martyrs. A general learns to prepare for battle and win it, but his opponents, the guerrilla fighters, avoid battle altogether. THE ICONIC Che Guevara well defined the stages which a classic war of liberation goes through: "At first, there is a partially armed band that takes refuge in some remote, hard-to-reach spot [or in an urban population, I would add]. It strikes a lucky blow against the authorities and is joined by a few more discontented farmers, young idealists, etc. It�contacts residents and conducts light hit-and-run attacks. As new recruits swell the ranks it takes on an enemy column and destroys its leading elements�Next the band sets up semi-permanent encampments�and adopts the characteristics of a government in miniature�" and so on. In order to succeed all along the way, the insurgents need an idea that fires the enthusiasm of the population. The public unifies around them and provides aid, shelter and intelligence. From this stage on, everything that the occupation authorities do helps the insurgents. When the freedom fighters are killed, many others come forward and swell their ranks (as I did in my youth). When the occupiers impose collective punishment on the population, they just reinforce their hatred and their mutual assistance. When they succeed in capturing or killing the leaders of the liberation struggle, other leaders take their place - as the Hydra in Greek legend grew new heads for every one that Hercules chopped off. Frequently the occupation authorities succeed in causing a split among the freedom fighters and consider this a major victory. But all the factions go on fighting the occupier separately, competing with each other, as Fatah and Hamas are doing now. IT IS a pity that Polk did not devote a special chapter to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, but that is not really necessary. We can write it ourselves according to our understanding. All along the 40 years of occupation, our political and military leaders have failed in the struggle against the Palestinian guerrilla war. They are neither more st**id nor more cruel than their predecessors - the Dutch in Indonesia, the British in Palestine, the French in Algeria, the Americans in Vietnam, the Soviets in Afghanistan. Our generals may top them all only in their arrogance - their belief that they are the smartest and that the "Jewish head" will invent new patents that all those Goyim could never think of. From the time Yasser Arafat succeeded in winning the hearts of the Palestinian population and uniting them around the burning desire to rid themselves of the occupation, the struggle was already decided. If we had been wise, we would have come to a political settlement with him at the time. But our politicians and generals are not wiser than all the others. And so we shall go on killing, bombarding, destroying and exiling, in the foolish belief that if only we hit once again, the longed-for victory will appear at the end of the tunnel - only to perceive that the dark tunnel has led us into an even darker tunnel. As always happens, when a liberation organization does not attain its objectives, another more extreme one springs up beside it or instead of it and wins the hearts of the people. Hamas-like organizations take over from Fatah-like ones. The colonial regime, which has not reached an agreement in time with the more moderate organization, is in the end compelled to come to terms with the more extreme one. General Charles de Gaulle succeeded in making peace with the Algerian rebels before reaching that stage. One and a quarter million settlers heard one morning that the French army was going to pack up on a certain date and go home. The settlers, many of them of the fourth generation, ran for their lives without getting any compensation (unlike the Israeli settlers who left the Gaza Strip in 2005). But we have no de Gaulle. We are condemned to go on ad infinitum. If not for the terrible tragedies we witness every day, we could smile at the pathetic helplessness of our politicians and generals, who are rushing around without knowing where their salvation should come from. What to do? To starve all of them? That has led to the collapse of the wall on the Gaza-Egypt border. Kill their leaders? We have already killed Sheik Ahmed Yassin and countless others. To execute the "Grand Operation" and re- occupy the entire Gaza strip? We have already conquered the Strip twice. This time we shall encounter much more capable guerrillas, who are even more rooted in the population. Every tank, every soldier will become a target. The hunter may well become the prey. SO WHAT can we do that we have not already done? First of all, to get every soldier and politician to read William Polk's book, together with one of the good books about the Algerian struggle. Second, to do what all occupation regimes have done in the end in all the countries where the population has risen up: to reach a political settlement that both sides can live with and profit from. And get out. After all, the end is not in doubt. The only question is how much more killing, how much more destruction, how much more suffering must be caused before the occupiers arrive at the inescapable conclusion. Every drop of blood spilt is a drop of blood wasted.

Daniel Dworsky Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Senior Member Joined: 17 March 2005 Location: Israel Status: Offline Points: 777	Post Options Post Reply Quote Daniel Dworsky Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 21 January 2008 at 3:00pm
	GAZA: AN ISRAELI CALL FOR URGENT ACTION We, the Israeli organizations signed below, deplore the decision by the Israeli government to cut off vital supplies of electricity and fuel (and therefore water, since the pumps cannot work), as well as essential foodstuffs, medicines and other humanitarian supplies to the civilian population of Gaza. Such an action constitutes a clear and unequivocal crime against humanity. Prof. John Dugard, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, called the Israeli government�s actions �serious war crimes� for which its political and military officials should be prosecuted and punished. The killing of more than 40 civilians this past week violates, he said, �the strict prohibition on collective punishment contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention. It also violates one of the basic principles of international humanitarian law that military action must distinguish between military targets and civilian targets.� Indeed, the very legal framework invoked by the Israeli government to carry out this illegal and immoral act � declaring Gaza a �hostile entity� within a �conflict short of war� � has absolutely no standing in international law. We call on the Secretary General of the UN, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, to lead the Security Council to a decisive decision to end the siege on Gaza when it meets in emergency session on Wednesday. We call on the governments of the world, and in particular the American government and the European Parliament, to censure Israel�s actions and, in light of recent attempts to revive the diplomatic process, to end all attacks on civilians, including the continuing demolition of Palestinian homes at an alarming rate. We call upon the Jews of the world in whose name the Israeli government purports to speak, and upon their rabbis and communal leaders in particular, to speak out unequivocally against this offense to the very moral core of Jewish values. And we call upon the peoples of the world to let their officials and leaders know of their repudiation of this cruel, illegal and immoral act � an act that stands out in its cruelty even in an already oppressive Israeli Occupation. We condemn attacks on all civilians, and we acknowledge the suffering of the residents of Sderot. Still, those attacks do not justify the massive disproportionality of Israeli sanctions over a million and half civilians of Gaza, in particular in light of Israel�s oppressive 40 year occupation. Such violations of international law by a government are especially egregious and must be denounced and punished if the very system of human rights and international law is to be preserved. The Israeli government�s decision to punish Gaza�s civilian population, with all the human suffering that entails, constitutes State Terrorism against innocent people. Only when Israeli policy-makers are held accountable for their actions and international law upheld will a just peace be possible in the Middle East. The Alternative Information Center * Bat Tsafon * Gush Shalom * The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) * Physicians for Human Rights * The Women's Coalition for Peace

Daniel Dworsky Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Senior Member Joined: 17 March 2005 Location: Israel Status: Offline Points: 777	Post Options Post Reply Quote Daniel Dworsky Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 22 December 2007 at 4:46pm
	Uri Avnery 22.12.07 Help! A Cease Fire! FORGET THE Qassams. Forget the mortar shells. They are nothing compared with what Hamas launched at us this week: The chief of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniyeh, has approached an Israeli newspaper and proposed a cease-fire. No more Qassams, no more mortars, no suicide bombings, no Israeli military incursions into the Strip, no "targeted liquidations" of leaders. A total cease-fire. And not only in the Gaza Strip, but in the West Bank, too. The military leadership exploded in anger. Who does he think he is, that bastard? That he can stop us with such dirty tricks? THIS IS the second time within a few days that an attempt has been made to thwart our war plans. Two weeks ago, the American intelligence community declared, in an authoritative report, that Iran had stopped its attempt to produce a nuclear bomb as early as four years ago. Instead of heaving a sigh of relief, Israeli officials reacted with undisguised anger. Since then, all the commentators in Israel, as well as our huge network of hired pens around the world, have tried to undermine this document. It is mendacious, without foundation, motivated by a hidden, sinister agenda. But miraculously, the report survived unscathed. It has not even been scratched. The report, so it seems, has swept from the table any possibility of an American and/or Israeli military attack on Iran. Now comes the peace initiative of Haniyeh and endangers the strategy of our military establishment towards the Gaza Strip. Again, the army choir gets going. Generals in uniform and out of uniform, military correspondents, political correspondents, commentators of all stripes and genders, politicians from left and right - all are attacking the Haniyeh offer. The message is: it must not be accepted under any circumstances! It should not even be considered! On the contrary: the offer shows that Hamas is about to break, and therefore the war against it must be intensified, the blockade on Gaza must be tightened, more leaders must be killed - indeed, why not kill Haniyeh himself? What are we waiting for? A paradox inherent in the conflict since its beginning is at work here: if the Palestinians are strong, it is dangerous to make peace with them. If they are weak, there is no need to make peace with them. Either way, they must be broken. "There is nothing to talk about!" Ehud Olmert declared at once. So everything is alright, the bloodletting can go on. AND IT IS indeed going on. In the Gaza Strip and around it, a cruel little war is being waged. As usual, each side claims that it is only reacting to the atrocities of the other side. The Israeli side claims that it is responding to the Qassams and mortars. What sovereign state could tolerate being bombarded by deadly missiles from the other side of the border? True, thousands of missiles have killed only a tiny number of people. More than 100 times as many are killed and injured on the roads. But the Qassams are sowing terror, the inhabitants of Sderot and the surrounding area demand revenge and reinforcement for their houses, which would cost a fortune. If the Qassams were really bothering our political and military leaders, they would have jumped at the cease-fire offer. But the leaders don't really care about what's happening to the Sderot population, out on the geographical and political "periphery", far from the center of the country. It carries no political or economic weight. In the eyes of the leadership, its suffering is, all in all, tolerable. It also has an important positive side: it provides an ideal pretext for the actions of the army. THE ISRAELI strategic aim in Gaza is not to put an end to the Qassams. It would still be the same if not a single Qassam fell on Israel. The real aim is to break the Palestinians, which means breaking Hamas. The method is simple, even primitive: to tighten the blockade on land, on sea and in the air, until the situation in the Strip becomes absolutely intolerable. The total stoppage of supplies, except the very minimum necessary to prevent starvation, has reduced life to an inhuman level. There are effectively no imports or exports, economic life has ground to a standstill, the cost of living has risen sky-high. The supply of fuel has already been reduced by half, and is planned to sink even lower. The water supply can be cut at will. Military activity is gradually increasing. The Israeli army conducts daily incursions, employing tanks and armored bulldozers, in order to nibble at the margins of the inhabited areas and draw the Palestinian fighters into a face to face confrontation. Every day, from five to ten Palestinian fighters are being killed, together with some civilians. Every day, inhabitants are being abducted in order to extract information from them. The declared purpose is attrition, to harry and wear down, and perhaps also to prepare for the re-conquest of the Strip - even if the army chiefs want to avoid this at almost any price. One after another, the Palestinian leaders and commanders are being killed from the air. Every point in the Strip is exposed to Israeli airplanes, helicopter gunships and drones. Up-to-date technology makes it possible to track the "children of death", those marked for killing, and a wide net of informers and agents, some of them under duress, which has been built up well in advance, completes the picture. The army chiefs hope that by tightening all these screws they can push the local population to rise up against Hamas and the other fighting organizations. All Palestinian opposition to the occupation will collapse. The entire Palestinian people will raise their hands in surrender and submit to the mercies of the occupation, which will be able to do as it pleases - expropriate lands, enlarge settlements, set up walls and roadblocks, slice up the West Bank into a series of semi-autonomous enclaves. In this Israeli plan, the job reserved for the Palestinian Authority is to act as subcontractors for Israeli security, in return for a stream of money that will safeguard its control of the enclaves. At the end of this phase of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Palestinian people are supposed to be cut to pieces and helpless in face of the Israeli expansion. The historic clash between the unstoppable force (the Zionist enterprise) and the immovable object (the Palestinian population) will end with the crushing of Palestinian opposition. IN ORDER to succeed in this, a sophisticated diplomatic game must be played. Under no circumstances may the support of the international community be lost. On the contrary, the entire world, led by the US and EU, must support Israel and look upon its actions as a just struggle against Palestinian terrorism, itself an integral part of "international terrorism". The Annapolis conference, and afterwards the Paris meeting, were important steps in this direction. Almost the whole world, including most of the Arab world, has fallen into step with the Israeli plan - perhaps innocently, perhaps cynically. Events after Annapolis developed as expected: no negotiations have started, both side are just playing with images. The very first day after Annapolis, the Israeli government announced huge building projects beyond the Green Line. When Condoleezza Rice mumbled some words of opposition, it was announced that the plans had been shelved. In fact they continue at full speed. How do Olmert and his colleagues fool the whole world? Benjamin Disraeli once said about a certain British politician: "The Right Honourable Gentleman surprised his opponents bathing in the sea and took away their clothes." We, the pioneers of the Two-State Solution, can say this about our government. It has stolen our flag and wrapped it around itself in order to hide its intentions. At long last, there now exists a world-wide consensus that peace in our region must be based on the co-existence of the State of Israel and the State of Palestine. Our government has slipped into it and is exploiting this agreement with another aim altogether: the rule of Israel in the whole country and the turning of the Palestinian population centers into a series of Bantustans. This is, in fact, a One-State-Solution (Greater Israel) in the guise of the Two-State Solution. CAN THIS plan succeed? The battle of Gaza is in full swing. In spite of the huge military superiority of the Israeli army, it is not one-sided. Even the Israeli commanders point out that the Hamas forces are getting stronger. They train hard, their weapons are getting more effective and they show a lot of courage and determination. It seems that the falling of their commanders and fighters in a steady bloodletting is not affecting their morale. That is one of the reasons why the Israeli army is shrinking back from re-conquering the Gaza Strip. Inside the Strip, both the main organizations enjoy wide public support - the demonstration to commemorate Yassir Arafat organized by Fatah and the counter-demonstration of Hamas each drew hundreds of thousands of participants. But it seems that the great majority of the Palestinian public wants national unity in order to fight together against the occupation. They do not want religious compulsion, but neither will they tolerate a leadership that cooperates with the occupation. The government may be very mistaken in counting on the obedience of Fatah. Competing with Hamas, Fatah may surprise us by becoming a fighting organization once again. The stream of money flowing into the Authority may not prevent this. Ze'ev Jabotinsky was wiser than Tony Blair when he said 85 years ago that you cannot buy a whole people. If the Israeli army invades Gaza in order to re-conquer it, the population will stand behind the fighters. Nobody can know how it will react if the economic misery gets worse. The results may be unexpected. Experience with other liberation movements indicates that misery can break a population, but it can also strengthen it. This is, simply put, an existential test for the Palestinian people - perhaps the most severe since 1948. It is also a test for the shrewd policy of Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni and the army chiefs. So a cease-fire is not likely to come into effect. At first Olmert rejected one out of hand. Then this was denied. Then the denial was denied. The inhabitants of Sderot would probably have been glad to accept a cease-fire. But then, who bothers to ask them.

Daniel Dworsky Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Senior Member Joined: 17 March 2005 Location: Israel Status: Offline Points: 777	Post Options Post Reply Quote Daniel Dworsky Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 24 November 2007 at 2:08pm
	Uri Avnery 24.11.07 Omelettes into Eggs &n bsp; I WAS awakened from deep sleep by the noise. There was a commotion outside, which was getting louder by the minute. The shout of excited people. An eruption of joy. I stuck my nose outside the door of my Haifa hotel room. I was told enthusiastically that the United Nations General Assembly had just decided to partition the country. I went back into my room and closed the door behind me. I had no desire to join the celebrations. November 29, 1947 - a day that changed our lives forever. At this historic moment, how could I feel lonely, alienated and most of all - sad? I was sad because I love all of this country - Nablus and Hebron no less than Tel-Aviv and Rosh-Pina. I was sad because I knew that blood, much blood, would be shed. But it was mainly a question of my political outlook. I was 24 years old. Two years before, I and a group of friends had set up a political-ideological group that aroused intense anger in the Yishuv (the Hebrew population in Palestine). Our ideas, which provoked a very strong reaction, were regarded as a dangerous heresy. The "Young Palestine Circle" ("Eretz-Yisrael Hatz'ira" in Hebrew) published occasional issues of a magazine called "ba-Ma'avak" ("In the Struggle"), and was therefore generally known as "the ba-Ma'avak Group") advocating a revolutionary new ideology, whose main points were: - We, the young generation that had grown up in this country, were a new nation. - Our language and culture meant we should be called the Hebrew Nation. - Zionism gave birth to this nation, and had thereby fulfilled its mission. - From here on, Zionism has no further role to play. It is a hindrance to the free development of the new nation, and should be dismantled, like the scaffolding after a house is built. - The new Hebrew nation is indeed a part of the Jewish people - as the new Australian nation, for example, is a part of the Anglo-Saxon people - but has a separate identity, its own interests and a new culture. - The Hebrew nation belongs to the country, and is a natural ally of the Arab national movement. Both national movements are rooted in the country and its history, from the ancient Semitic civilization to the present. - The new Hebrew nation does not belong to Europe and the "West", but to awakening Asia and the Semitic Region - a term we invented in order to distance ourselves from the European-colonial term "Middle East". - The new Hebrew nation must integrate itself in the region, as a full and equal partner. Together with all the nations of the Semitic Region, it strives for the liberation of the region from the colonial empires. WITH THIS world view, we naturally opposed the partition of the country. Two months before the UN partition resolution, in September 1947, I published a pamphlet called "War or Peace in the Semitic Region", in which I proposed a completely different plan: that the Hebrew national movement and the Palestinian-Arab national movement combine into one single national movement and establish a joint state in the whole of Palestine, based on the love of the country (patriotism, in the real sense). This was far from the "bi-national" idea, which had important adherents in those days. I never believed in this. Two different nations, each of which clings to its own national vision, cannot live together in one state. Our vision was based on the creation of a new, joint nation, with a Hebrew and an Arab component. We hastily translated the essence of the pamphlet into English and Arabic, and I went to distribute it to the editorial offices of the Arab newspapers in Jaffa. It was no longer the town I had known from earlier days, when my work (clerk in a law office) frequently took me to the government offices there. The atmosphere felt dark and ominous. WITH THE expected UN resolution looming, we decided to publish a special issue of ba-Ma'avak devoted completely to it. A student of the Haifa Technical University volunteered to supply a drawing for the front page, and that's why I found myself at that fateful moment in that small Haifa hotel. I couldn't go back to sleep again. I got up and, in the excitement of the moment, wrote a poem that was published in that special issue. The first verse went like this: "I swear to you, motherland, / On this bitter day of your humiliation, / Great and united / You will rise from the dust. / The cruel wound / Will burn in the hearts of your sons / Until your flags / Will wave from the sea to the desert." One of our group composed a melody, and we sang it in the following days, as we bade farewell to our dreams. THE MOMENT the UN resolution was adopted, it was clear that our world had changed completely, that an era had come to an end and a new epoch had begun, both in the life of the country and also in the life of every one of us. We hurriedly pasted on the walls a large poster warning of a "Semitic Fraticidal War"' but the war was already on. When the first bullet was fired, the possibility of creating the joint, united single country was shattered. I am proud of my ability to adapt rapidly to extreme changes. The first time I had to do this was when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and my life changed abruptly and completely. I was then nine years old, and everything that had happened before was dead for me. I started a new life in Palestine. On November 29, 1947, it was happening again - to me and to all of us. As the well-known saying has it, one can make an omelette from eggs, but not eggs from an omelette. Banal, perhaps, but how very true. The moment the Hebrew-Arab war started, the possibility that the two nations would live together in one state expired. Wars change reality. I joined the "Haganah Battalions", the forerunner of the IDF. As a soldier in the special commando unit that was later called "Samson's Foxes", I saw the war as it was - bitter, cruel, inhuman. First we faced the Palestinian fighters, later the fighters of the wider Arab world. I passed through dozens of Arab villages, many abandoned in the storm of battle, many others whose inhabitants were driven out after being occupied. It was an ethnic war. In the first months, no Arabs were left behind our lines, no Jews were left behind the Arab lines. Both sides committed many atrocities. In the beginning of the war, we saw the pictures of the heads of our comrades paraded on stakes through the Old City of Jerusalem. We saw the massacre committed by the Irgun and the Stern Group in Deir Yassin. We knew that if we were captured, we would be slaughtered, and the Arab fighters knew they could expect the same. The longer the war dragged on, the more I became convinced of the reality of the Palestinian nation, with which we must make peace at the end of the war, a peace based on partnership between the two peoples. While the war was still going on, I expressed this view in a number of articles that were published at the time in Haaretz. Immediately after the fighting was over, when I was still in uniform convalescing from my wounds, I started meeting with two young Arabs (both of whom were later elected to the Knesset) in order to plan a common path. I could not have imagined that 60 years later this effort would still not be over. NOWADAYS, THE IDEA appears here and there of turning the omelette back into the egg, of dismantling the State of Israel and the State-of- Palestine-to-be, and establishing a single state, as we sang at that time: "from the sea to the desert". This is presented as a fresh new idea, but it is actually an attempt to turn the wheel back and to bring back to life an idea that is irrevocably obsolete. In human history, that just does not happen. What has been forged in blood and fire in wars and intifadas, - the State of Israel and the Palestinian national movement - will not just disappear. After a war, states can achieve peace and partnership, like Germany and France, but they do not merge into one state. I am not a nostalgic type. I look back at the ideas of my younger days, and try to analyze what has been superseded and what is left. The ideas of the "Ba-Ma'avak group" were indeed revolutionary and bold - but could they have been put into practice? Looking back, it is clear to me that the "Joint State" idea was already unrealistic when we brought it up. Perhaps it would have been possible one or two generations earlier. But by the middle of the 40s, the situation of the two peoples had changed decisively. There was no escaping from the partition of the country. I believe that we were right in our historical approach: that we must identify with the region we are living in, cooperate with the Arab national movement and enter into a partnership with the Palestinian nation. As long as we see ourselves as a part of Europe and/or the USA, we are not able to achieve peace. And certainly not if we consider ourselves soldiers in a crusade against the Islamic civilization and the Arab peoples. As we said then, before the partition resolution: the Palestinian people exists. Even after 60 years, in which they have suffered catastrophes which few other peoples have ever experienced, the Palestinian people clings to its country with unparalleled fortitude. True, the dream of living together in one state is dead, and will not come to life again. But I have no doubt that after the Palestinian state comes into being, the two states will find ways to live together in close partnership. The walls will be thrown down, the fences will be dismantled, the border will be opened, and the reality of the common country will overcome all obstacles. The flags of the country - the two flags of the two states - will indeed wave side by side. The UN resolution of November 29, 1947, was one of the most intelligent in the annals of that organization. As one who strenuously opposed it, I recognize its wisdom.

Daniel Dworsky Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Senior Member Joined: 17 March 2005 Location: Israel Status: Offline Points: 777	Post Options Post Reply Quote Daniel Dworsky Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 27 October 2007 at 2:49pm
	Uri Avnery 27.10.07 12 Years Later THE PRESIDENT of the Knesset invited me to take part in the special Knesset session to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. I debated with myself whether to accept the invitation. On the one hand, I would like to honor the man and the achievements of his last years. I liked him. On the other hand, I had no wish to listen to a eulogy delivered by Shimon Peres, the man who pretended to follow Rabin's path and who buried the Oslo agreement out of sheer cowardice. And even less to a eulogy from Ehud Olmert, one of the people who led the incitement campaign against the Oslo agreement and its authors. And still less to a eulogy from Binyamin Netanyahu, who stood on the balcony while the picture of Rabin in SS uniform was paraded below. IN THE END, I DECIDED to stay away from this orgy of sanctimonious hypocrisy. I did not go to the Knesset. Instead I sat at home watching the sea and thinking about the man. About the young Yitzhak Rabin, who joined the Palmach (the pre- independence "regular forces"). The commander who drove the Arabs from their homes in the 1948 war. The Chief of Staff who called, on us, after the Six-Day War, to honor the enemy dead. The Prime Minister who did more for education than any of his predecessors or successors. The Prime Minister who allowed me to continue my secret contacts with the PLO leaders, when this constituted a serious crime. The Defense Minister who called on the soldiers to "break their arms and legs", an order that was meticulously carried out. The man who recognized the PLO and shook the hand of Yasser Arafat. He was all of these, and the list goes on. More than anything, he was the typical representative of my generation, the "generation of 1948" - and not by accident was this generation defined by a war. It was the era of innocence. The innocence of the fighters and of the Yishuv (the Hebrew society in pre-state Palestine). In retrospect, the events of that time - the actions of the underground organizations, the operations of the war - take on a different aspect, a picture with many shadows. But it must be remembered: that is not how they looked to us when they happened. Not at all. Rabin personified the innocence of the generation which believed with all their hearts that they were sacrificing their lives for a cause more just than any other - the existence of the Yishuv, the salvation of the Jews of Europe, our fight for national independence. Without this absolute belief, coupled with total ignorance of the other side, we would not have stood the test of 1948 - a test in which a significant proportion of our age- group was killed or wounded. This generation idealized a certain personality type - the "Sabra" (literally: prickly pear plant), a mythical figure that had an immense influence in shaping the generation. (I myself played some part in nursing this myth). The Sabra was supposed to be upright, both physically and mentally, free of the complexes of the "exile" Jews (the term "exilic" was the most insulting appellation in our lexicon). The "Sabra" was honest, truthful, practical, natural, someone who always comes straight to the point and despises hollow mannerisms, empty talk and histrionic phrases, which we referred to colloquially as "Zionism". Before we knew about the Holocaust, "exile" Jews and everything connected with them were treated with scorn, even contempt. As if all by itself, a clear terminological distinction appeared: the "Hebrew" Yishuv and the "Jewish" religion, the "Hebrew" kibbutz and the "Jewish" shtetl (in the Diaspora), "Hebrew labor (as in the name of the then dominant trade union, "the General Organization of the Hebrew Workers in Eretz-Yisrael") and "Jewish" luft-gesheften (Yiddish for nebulous transactions), "Hebrew" workers and "Jewish" speculators. Yitzhak Rabin was the ultimate Sabra: a handsome youngster who sacrificed his private ambition (to study hydraulic engineering) in order to serve the nation, to become a fighter and to command fighters, to act and leave the discussion of ideology to the old people. He was reputed to possess an "analytical mind", because of his ability to examine a given situation and find practical solutions. The other side of the coin was his lack of imagination. He dealt with reality, and could not imagine a different reality. (Abba Eban, who hated his guts, told me in his malicious way: "Analysis means dissecting. Rabin can take things apart, but he cannot put them together again.") He was withdrawn, perhaps shy, and drew back from bodily contact, slaps on the back and public embraces. Some called him an "autist'. But he was not overbearing, certainly not arrogant. After a few glasses (always Scotch) he opened up a little, and at parties he could smile his somewhat crooked smile and become quite friendly. IF HE HAD died in 1970, we would remember him only as a soldier, a successful brigade commander in the 1948 war, the best Chief-of-Staff the Israeli army ever had, the architect of the incredible victory of the Six- day War. But that was only one chapter in his eventful life. A rare thing happened: at the age of 70 he did something that even 30-year olds are generally unable to do: he completely changed his world view and abandoned the certainties that had hitherto governed his life. To this amazing change I was a witness. In 1969, when he was serving as Israeli ambassador in Washington, we talked for the first time about the Palestinian issue. He completely rejected the idea of peace with the Palestinians. I still remember a sentence of his from this conversation: "I don't care for secure borders, I want open borders." (In Hebrew, a play on words: batuach means secure, patuach means open.) "Secure borders" was at the time the slogan of annexationists. Rabin meant an open border with Jordan, and once said: "I don't care if I need a visa to go to Hebron." After that we met from time to time - in his office, in the Prime Minister's residence, at his private home and at parties - and the conversation always came back to the Palestinian issue. His attitude remained negative. So I know how extreme a change it was. I don�t believe that it was I who influenced him - at most I planted, perhaps, a few seeds. He himself explained the change to me later as a series of logical deductions: when he was Defense Minister, he met with local Palestinian personalities. In one-to-one conversations they were amenable, but when they were in a group, they were tough and told him that they took their directions from the PLO. After that came the Madrid conference. Israel gave in to pressure and agreed to negotiate with a Jordanian delegation that included Palestinian members. Once there, the Jordanians refused to deal with Palestinian issues, and so the Palestinians became in practice an independent Palestinian delegation. Feisal Husseini, their real leader, was not allowed into the conference room because he was a Jerusalemite. The delegation members went to the other room from time to time to consult with him, and at the end of every day, they told the Israelis that they had to call Tunis to get instructions from Yasser Arafat. "This became too ridiculous for me," Rabin told me in his straightforward way, "If everything depends on Arafat anyhow, why not talk with him directly?" That was the background of Oslo. HOW DID Rabin's Oslo ship get stuck on a sandbank? I believe that much of the fault lies with Rabin himself. He really wanted to achieve peace with the Palestinians. But before his eyes he had no route to the objective, and no clear picture of the objective itself. The change was too sharp. Like Israeli society in general, he was unable to free himself overnight from the fears, mistrust, superstitions and prejudices accumulated over 120 years of conflict. That is why he did not do the one thing that could have led the ship of Oslo to a safe haven: to use the momentum and achieve peace in a bold and rapid move. He did not know the famous dictum of David Lloyd- George concerning peace with Ireland: "You cannot cross an abyss with two jumps." The makeup of his personality had a negative impact on the process. He was by nature cautious, slow, averse to dramatic gestures (unlike Menachem Begin, for example). This resulted in the fatal weakness of the Oslo agreement: the final aim was not spelled out. The two decisive words - "Palestinian State" - do not appear at all. This omission led to its collapse. While the two sides wasted months and years haggling over every single detail of the endless "interim" steps, the anti-peace forces in Israel had time to recover and unite. Led by the settlers and the ultra-right, they were sustained by the hatreds and anxieties bred by the long war. In military terms: Rabin was like a general who succeeds in breaking through the front - and, instead of pouring his forces into the breach and forcing a decision, hesitates and stays put, allowing the opposing forces to regroup and form a new front. In other words, he routed the forces of war, but allowed them to reunite and mount a counter-attack. For this he paid with his life. THE MURDER of Rabin changed the history of Israel, much as the murder of the Austrian crown-prince in Sarajevo in 1914 changed the history of the world. Nobody is irreplaceable, they say, but no second Rabin has been found - no one with his honesty, with his courage, with his logical mind. This week, Ehud Olmert declared that he was continuing on the path of Rabin, but he represents the very opposite: the opposite of honesty, the opposite of courage, the opposite of logic (not to mention his propensity for embracing people and slapping them on the back.) Rabin really wanted to move forward towards peace. Slowly-slowly, with stubborn haggling, but also with consistency and persistence. Olmert's aims are quite different. He wants a "peace process" that has no end - babbling, meetings, conferences, without any movement, while in the meantime the occupation is continuing, annexation is creeping forward, settlements are enlarging and the hopes and chances for the two peoples are evaporating. �� The Annapolis conference fits perfectly into this scheme: hollow declarations, another conference without results, a meaningless exhibition. Some say that the most important thing is to talk, because "when you are talking you are not shooting." That is a dangerous illusion. In our case, the opposite is true: when you talk for the sake of talking while the occupation deepens, despair is gaining ground and the shooting has never really stopped. The failure of Annapolis may well trigger the outbreak of the Third Intifada.

Daniel Dworsky Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Senior Member Joined: 17 March 2005 Location: Israel Status: Offline Points: 777	Post Options Post Reply Quote Daniel Dworsky Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 13 October 2007 at 11:23am
	The Mother of all Pretexts 13/10/07 � WHEN I hear mention of the "Clash of Civilizations" I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. To laugh, because it is such a silly notion. To cry, because it is liable to cause untold disasters. To cry even more, because our leaders are exploiting this slogan as a pretext for sabotaging any possibility of an Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. It is just one more in a long line of pretexts. WHY WAS the Zionist movement in need of excuses to justify the way it treated the Palestinian people? At its birth, it was an idealistic movement. It laid great weight on its moral basis. Not just in order to convince the world, but above all in order to set its own conscience at rest. From early childhood we learned about the pioneers, many of them sons and daughters of well-to-do and well-educated families, who left behind a comfortable life in Europe in order to start a new life in a far-away and - by the standards of the time - primitive country. Here, in a savage climate they were not used to, often hungry and sick, they performed bone-breaking physical labor under a brutal sun. For that, they needed an absolute belief in the rightness of their cause. Not only did they believe in the need to save the Jews of Europe from persecution and pogroms, but also in the creation of a society so just as never seen before, an egalitarian society that would be a model for the entire world. Leo Tolstoy was no less important for them than Theodor Herzl. The kibbutz and the moshav were symbols of the whole enterprise. But this idealistic movement aimed at settling in a country inhabited by another people. How to bridge this contradiction between its sublime ideals and the fact that their realization necessitated the expulsion of the people of the land? The easiest way was to repress the problem altogether, ignoring its very existence: the land, we told ourselves, was empty, there was no people living here at all. That was the justification that served as a bridge over the moral abyss. Only one of the Founding Fathers of the Zionist movement was courageous enough to call a spade a spade. Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote as early as 80 years ago that it was impossible to deceive the Palestinian people (whose existence he recognized) and to buy their consent to the Zionist aspirations. We are white settlers colonizing the land of the native people, he said, and there is no chance whatsoever that the natives will resign themselves to this voluntarily. They will resist violently, like all the native peoples in the European colonies. Therefore we need an "Iron Wall" to protect the Zionist enterprise. When Jabotinsky was told that his approach was immoral, he replied that the Jews were trying to save themselves from the disaster threatening them in Europe, and, therefore, their morality trumped the morality of the Arabs in Palestine. Most Zionists were not prepared to accept this force-oriented approach. They searched fervently for a moral justification they could live with. Thus started the long quest for justifications - with each pretext supplanting the previous one, according to the changing spiritual fashions in the world. THE FIRST justification was precisely the one mocked by Jabotinsky: we were actually coming to benefit the Arabs. We shall redeem them from their primitive living conditions, from ignorance and disease. We shall teach them modern methods of agriculture and bring them advanced medicine. Everything - except employment, because we needed every job for the Jews we were bringing here, which we were transforming from ghetto-Jews into a people of workers and tillers of the soil. When the ungrateful Arabs went on to resist our grand project, in spite of all the benefits we were supposedly bringing them, we found a Marxist justification: It's not the Arabs who oppose us, but only the "effendis". The rich Arabs, the great landowners, are afraid that the glowing example of the egalitarian Hebrew community would attract the exploited Arab proletariat and cause them to rise against their oppressors. That, too, did not work for long, perhaps because the Arabs saw how the Zionists bought the land from those very same "effendis" and drove out the tenants who had been cultivating it for generations. The rise of the Nazis in Europe brought masses of Jews to the country. The Arab public saw how the land was being withdrawn from under their feet, and started a rebellion against the British and the Jews in 1936. Why, the Arabs asked, should they pay for the persecution of the Jews by the Europeans? But the Arab Revolt gave us a new justification: the Arabs support the Nazis. And indeed, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, was photographed sitting next to Hitler. Some people "discovered" that the Mufti was the real instigator of the Holocaust. (Years later it was revealed that Hitler had detested the Mufti, who had no influence whatsoever over the Nazis.) World War II came to an end, to be followed by the 1948 war. Half of the vanquished Palestinian people became refugees. That did not trouble the Zionist conscience, because everybody knew: They ran away of their own free will. Their leaders had called upon them to leave their homes, to return later with the victorious Arab armies. True, no evidence was ever found to support this absurd claim, but it has sufficed to soothe our conscience to this day. It may be asked: why were the refugees not allowed to come back to their homes once the war was over? Well, it was they who in 1947 rejected the UN partition plan and started the war. If because of this they lost 78% of their country, they have only themselves to blame. Then came the Cold War. We were, of course, on the side of the "Free World", while the great Arab leader, Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, got his weapons from the Soviet bloc. (True, in the 1948 war the Soviet arms flowed to us, but that's not important.) It was quite clear: No use talking with the Arabs, because they support Communist tyranny. But the Soviet bloc collapsed. "The terrorist organization called PLO", as Menachem Begin used to call it, recognized Israel and signed the Oslo agreement. A new justification had to be found for our unwillingness to give back the occupied territories to the Palestinian people. The salvation came from America: a professor named Samuel Huntington wrote a book about the "Clash of Civilizations". And so we found the mother of all pretexts. THE ARCH-ENEMY, according to this theory, is Islam. Western Civilization, Judeo-Christian, liberal, democratic, tolerant, is under attacked from the Islamic monster, fanatical, terrorist, murderous. Islam is murderous by nature. Actually, "Muslim" and "terrorist" are synonymous. Every Muslim is a terrorist, every terrorist a Muslim. A sceptic might ask: How did it happen that the wonderful Western culture gave birth to the Inquisition, the pogroms, the burning of witches, the annihilation of the Native Americans, the Holocaust, the ethnic cleansings and other atrocities without number - but that was in the past. Now Western culture is the embodiment of freedom and progress. Professor Huntington was not thinking about us in particular. His task was to satisfy a peculiar American craving: the American empire always needs a virtual, world-embracing enemy, a single enemy which includes all the opponents of the United States around the world. The Communists delivered the goods - the whole world was divided between Good Guys (the Americans and their supporters) and Bad Guys (the Commies). Everybody who opposed American interests was automatically a Communist - Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Salvador Allende in Chile, Fidel Castro in Cuba, while the masters of Apartheid, the death squads of Augusto Pinochet and the secret police of the Shah of Iran belonged, like us, to the Free World. When the Communist empire collapsed, America was suddenly left without a world-wide enemy. This vacuum has now been filled by the Muslims-Terrorists. Not only Osama bin Laden, but also the Chechnyan freedom fighters, the angry North-African youth of the Paris banlieus, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the insurgents in the Philippines. Thus the American world view rearranged itself: a good world (Western Civilization) and a bad world (Islamic civilization). Diplomats still take care to make a distinction between "radical Islamists" and "moderate Muslims", but that is only for appearances' sake. Between ourselves, we know of course that they are all Osama bin Ladens. They are all the same. This way, a huge part of the world, composed of manifold and very different countries, and a great religion, with many different and even opposing tendencies (like Christianity, like Judaism), which has given the world unmatched scientific and cultural treasures, is thrown into one and the same pot. THIS WORLD VIEW is tailored for us. Indeed, the world of the clashing civilizations is, for us, the best of all possible worlds. The struggle between Israel and the Palestinians is no longer a conflict between the Zionist movement, which came to settle in this country, and the Palestinian people, which inhabited it. No, it has been from the very beginning a part of a world-wide struggle which does not stem from our aspirations and actions. The assault of terrorist Islam on the Western world did not start because of us. Our conscience can be entirely clean - we are among the good guys of this world. This is now the line of argument of official Israel: the Palestinians elected Hamas, a murderous Islamic movement. (If it didn't exist, it would have to be invented - and indeed, some people assert it was created from the start by our secret service.) Hamas is terroristic, and so is Hizbullah. Perhaps Mahmoud Abbas is not a terrorist himself, but he is weak and Hamas is about to take sole control over all Palestinian territories. So we cannot talk with them. We have no partner. Actually, we cannot possibly have a partner, because we belong to Western Civilization, which Islam wants to eradicate. IN HIS book "Der Judenstaat", Theodor Herzl, the official Israeli "Prophet of the State", prophesied this development, too. This is what he wrote in 1896: "For Europe we shall constitute (in Palestine) a part of the wall against Asia, we shall serve as a vanguard of culture against barbarism." Herzl was thinking of a metaphoric wall, but in the meantime we have put up a very real one. For many, this is not just a Separation Wall between Israel and Palestine. It is a part of the world-wide wall between the West and Islam, the front-line of the Clash of Civilizations. Beyond the wall there are not men, women and children, not a conquered and oppressed Palestinian population, not choked towns and villages like Abu-Dis, a- Ram, Bil'in and Qalqilia. No, beyond the wall there are a billion terrorists, multitudes of blood-thirsty Muslims, who have only one desire in life: to throw us into the sea, simply because we are Jews, part of Judeo- Christian Civilization. With an official position like that - who is there to talk to? What is there to talk about? What is the point of meeting in Annapolis or anywhere else? And what is left to us to do - to cry or to laugh?

Daniel Dworsky Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Senior Member Joined: 17 March 2005 Location: Israel Status: Offline Points: 777	Post Options Post Reply Quote Daniel Dworsky Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 09 October 2007 at 5:01pm
	Thanks guys, I've been really busy. The summer has been back to back performances. I'm back to work teaching as well which I find much more fun. Over the summer I had the pleasure of working with Wisam Asad a brilliant Ud player from Nazareth. I'm featuring him on an energetic instrumental piece recorded in front of a live audience. The Cd will be out in Dec or in Jan - the 2008th year of their lord. : ). Most of the album is recorded live ( as opposed to what? Dead?) Another treat is the participation of Garner Thomas If you haven't heard this guy you should. All three of us were on fire Garner is incredible. He has the best Tenor Sax sound I've ever heard. We had maybe two rehearsals I just let him blow... It was unbelievable. Wisam conducts the Palestine Israel Peace youth orchestra Edward Said of blessed memory and Daniel Barenboim initiated this project a few years back with some success. I'll keep You all posted when CD 5 is released The editing is taking forever. Uri had some success in Biliin last month The Government actually gave these people back some of their land. The news coming out of Gaza is the same - not good. Rather than provoking the powers that be I've been more concerned about getting chronic care patients in and out for treatment. The political issues have never captured my imagination as much as children in the middle of chemotherapy or receiving care for injuries that have been inflicted on them by my people. Our national health care is a lumbering bureaucratic nightmare to be sure for everyone but these kids should not have to wait at check-posts. Its too much after way too much.

Cassandra Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Senior Member Joined: 30 May 2006 Location: Spain Status: Offline Points: 293	Post Options Post Reply Quote Cassandra Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 01 October 2007 at 2:06pm
	Daniel: I second Whisper. I do not post all that often these days, but I do "listen and learn". Your voice has been much missed. Hope all is well with you. Cassie