Uri Avnery

Uri Avnery
17.2.07          ; 

                      Facing Mecca

MUST A Native-American recognize the right of the United States of
America to exist?

Interesting question. The USA was established by Europeans who invaded
a continent that did not belong to them, eradicated most of the
indigenous population (the "Red Indians") in a prolonged campaign of
genocide, and exploited the labor of millions of slaves who had been
brutally torn from their lives in Africa. Not to mention what is going on
today. Must a Native-American - or indeed anybody at all - recognize the
right of such a state to exist?

But nobody raises the question. The United States does not give a damn if
anybody recognizes its right to exist or not. It does not demand this from
the countries with which it maintains relations.

Why? Because this is a ridiculous demand to start with.

OK, the United States is older than the State of Israel, as well as bigger
and more powerful. But countries that are not super-powers do not
demand this either. India, for example, is not expected to recognize
Pakistan's "right to exist", in spite of the fact that Pakistan was
established at the same time as Israel, and - like Israel - on an ethnic/
religious basis.


SO WHY is Hamas required to "recognize Israel's right to exist"?

When a state "recognizes" another state, it is a formal recognition, the
acknowledgement of an existing fact. It does not imply approval. The
Soviet Union was not required to recognize the existence of the USA as a
capitalist state. On the contrary, Nikita Khrushchev promised in 1956 to
"bury" it. The US certainly did not dream of recognizing at any time the
right of the Soviet Union to exist as a communist state.

So why is this weird demand addressed to the Palestinians? Why must
they recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish State?

I am an Israeli patriot, and I do not feel that I need anybody's recognition
of the right of my state to exist. If somebody is ready to make peace with
me, within borders and on conditions agreed upon in negotiations, that is
quite enough for me. I am prepared to leave the history, ideology and
theology of the matter to the theologians, ideologues and historians.

Perhaps after 60 years of the existence of Israel, and after we have
become a regional power, we are still so unsure of ourselves that we
crave for constant assurance of our right to exist - and of all people, from
those that we have been oppressing for the last 40 years. Perhaps it is the
mentality of the Ghetto that is still so deeply ingrained in us.

But the demand addressed now to the Palestinian Unity Government is far
from sincere. It has an ulterior political aim, indeed two: (a) to convince
the international community not to recognize the Palestinian government
that is about to be set up, and (b) to justify the refusal of the Israeli
government to enter into peace negotiations with it.

The British call this a "red herring" - a smelly fish that a fugitive drags
across the path in order to put the pursuing dogs off the trail.


WHEN I was young, Jewish people in Palestine used to talk about our
secret weapon: the Arab refusal. Every time somebody proposed some
peace plan, we relied on the Arab side to say "no". True, the Zionist
leadership was against any compromise that would have frozen the
existing situation and halted the momentum of the Zionist enterprise of
expansion and settlement. But the Zionist leaders used to say "yes" and
"we extend our hand for peace" - and rely on the Arabs to scuttle the
proposal.

That was successful for a hundred years, until Yasser Arafat changed the
rules, recognized Israel and signed the Oslo Accords, which stipulated
that the negotiations for the final borders between Israel and Palestine
must be concluded not later than 1999. To this very day, those
negotiations have not even started. Successive Israeli governments have
prevented it because they were not ready under any circumstances to fix
final borders. (The 2000 Camp David meeting was not a real negotiation -
Ehud Barak convened it without any preparation, dictated his terms to the
Palestinians and broke the dialogue off when they were refused.)


After the death of Arafat, the refusal became more and more difficult.
Arafat was always described as a terrorist, cheat and liar. But Mahmoud
Abbas was accepted by everybody as an honest person, who truly wanted
to achieve peace. Yet Ariel Sharon succeeded in avoiding any negotiations
with him. The "Unilateral Separation" served this end. President Bush
supported him with both hands.

Well, Sharon suffered his stroke, and Ehud Olmert took his place. And
then something happened that caused great joy in Jerusalem: the
Palestinians elected Hamas.

How wonderful! After all, both the US and Europe have designated Hamas
as a terrorist organization! Hamas is a part of the Shiite Axis of Evil! (They
are not Shiites, but who cares!) Hamas does not recognize Israel! Hamas
is trying to eliminate Mahmoud Abbas, the noble man of peace! It is clear
that with such a gang there is no need, nor would it make any sense, to
conduct negotiations about peace and borders.

And indeed, the US and their European satellites are boycotting the
Palestinian government and starving the Palestinian population. They
have set three conditions for lifting the blockade: (a) that the Palestinian
government and Hamas must recognize the right of the State of Israel to
exist, (b) they must stop "terrorism", and (c) they must undertake to fulfill
the agreements signed by the PLO.

On the face of it, that makes sense. In reality, none at all. Because all
these conditions are completely one-sided:

a) the Palestinians must recognize the right of Israel to exist (without
defining its borders, of course), but the Israeli government is not required
to recognize the right of a Palestinian state to exist at all.

(b) The Palestinians must put an end to "terrorism", but the Israeli
government is not required to stop its military operations in the
Palestinian territories and stop the building of settlements. The
"roadmap" does indeed say so, but that has been completely ignored by
everybody, including the Americans.

(c) The Palestinians must undertake to fulfill the agreements, but no such
undertaking is required from the Israeli government, which has broken
almost all provision of the Oslo agreement. Among others: the opening of
the "safe passages" between Gaza and the West Bank, the carrying out of
the third "redeployment" (withdrawal from Palestinian territories), the
treatment of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as one single territory, etc.
etc.

Since Hamas came to power, its leaders have understood the need to
become more flexible. They are very sensitive to the mood of their
people. The Palestinian population is longing for an end to the occupation
and for a life of peace. Therefore, step by step, Hamas has come nearer
to recognition of Israel. Their religious doctrine does not allow them to
declare this publicly (Jewish fundamentalists too cling to the word of God
"To your seed I have given this land") but it has been doing so indirectly.
Little steps, but a big revolution.

Hamas has announced its support for the establishment of a Palestinian
state bounded by the June 1967 borders - meaning: next to Israel and
not in place of Israel. (This week, ex-minister Kadura Fares repeated that
Hamas leader Khaled Mashal has confirmed this.) Hamas has given
Mahmoud Abbas a power of attorney to conduct the negotiations with
Israel and has undertaken in advance to accept any agreement ratified in
a referendum. Abbas, of course, clearly advocates the setting up of a
Palestinian state next to Israel, across the Green Line. There is no doubt
whatsoever that if such an agreement is achieved, the huge majority of
the Palestinian population will vote for it.

In Jerusalem, worry has set in. If this goes on, the world might even get
the impression that Hamas has changed, and then - God forbid - lift the
economic blockade on the Palestinian people.

Now the King of Saudi Arabia comes and disturbs Olmert's plans even
more.

In an impressive event, facing the holiest site of Islam, the king put an
end to the bloody strife between the Palestinian security organs and
prepared the ground for a Palestinian government of national unity.
Hamas undertook to respect the agreements signed by the PLO, including
the Oslo agreement, which is based on the mutual recognition of the
State of Israel and the PLO as representative of the Palestinian people.

The king has extracted the Palestinian issue from the embrace of Iran, to
which Hamas had turned because it had no alternative, and has returned
Hamas to the lap of the Sunni family. Since Saudi Arabia is the main ally
of the US in the Arab world, the king has put the Palestinian issue firmly
on the table of the Oval Room.

In Jerusalem, near panic broke out. This is the scariest of nightmares: the
fear that the unconditional support of the US and Europe for Israeli policy
will be reconsidered.

The panic had immediate results: "political circles" in Jerusalem
announced that they rejected the Mecca agreement out of hand. Then
second thoughts set in. Shimon Peres, long established master of the
"yes-but-no" method, convinced Olmert that the brazen "no" must be
replaced with a more subtle "no". For this purpose, the red herring was
again taken out of the freezer.

It is not enough that Hamas recognize Israel in practice. Israel insists that
its "right to exist" must also be recognized. Political recognition does not
suffice, ideological recognition is required. By this logic, one could also
demand that Khaled Mashal join the Zionist organization.


If one thinks that peace is more important for Israel than expansion and
settlements, one must welcome the change in the position of Hamas - as
expressed in the Mecca agreement - and encourage it to continue along
this road. The king of Saudi Arabia, who has already convinced the
leaders of all Arab countries to recognize Israel in exchange for the
establishment of the state of Palestine across the Green Line, should be
warmly congratulated.

But if one opposes peace because it would fix the final borders of Israel
and allow for no more expansion, one will do everything to convince the
Americans and Europeans to continue with the boycott on the Palestinian
government and the blockade of the Palestinian people.


The day after tomorrow, Condoleezza Rice will convene a meeting of
Olmert and Abbas in Jerusalem.

The Americans now have a problem. On one side, they need the Saudi
king. Not only does he sit on huge oil reservoirs, but he is also the
center-piece of the "moderate Sunni bloc". If the king tells Bush that the
solution of the Palestinian problem is needed in order to dam the spread
of Iranian influence across the Middle East, his words will carry a lot of
weight. If Bush is planning a military attack on Iran, as it seems he is, it is
important for him to have the united support of the Sunnis.

On the other side, the pro-Israel lobby - both Jewish and Christian - is
very important for Bush. It is vital for him to be able to count on the
"Christian base" of the Republican Party, which is composed of
fundamentalists who support the extreme Right in Israel, come what may.

So what is to be done? Nothing. For this nothing, Condi found an apt
diplomatic slogan, taken from up-to-date American slang: "New Political
Horizons".

Clearly, she did not ponder on the meaning of these words. Because the
horizon is the symbol of a goal that will never be reached: the more you
approach it, the more it recedes.

Uri Avnery
3.2.07

                      Fatal Kiss

IT SOUNDS like a promo for a second rate soap opera: a 21- year old
woman appears with a much older celebrity, who grabs her, forces a kiss
on her and pushes his tongue into her mouth.

This scene has been occupying the attention of the Israeli public for
months now, more than any other topic, except perhaps the allegation
that the President of the State sexually assaulted several of his
employees. The war and its consequences have been pushed aside.

The interest stems, of course, from the identity of kisser and kissee: Haim
Ramon was at the time Minister of Justice and a central figure in the
government; the young woman, who was identified only as H., was a
lieutenant in the office of the "military secretary" of the Prime Minister, an
important military-political liaison point. The fatal encounter took place
at the Prime Minister's office, shortly before a cabinet meeting.

This week, three judges - two female, one male - unanimously found
Ramon guilty of an indecent act. It seems that the prosecution will not
call for the maximum penalty - three years in prison - but the political
career of Ramon has, so it seems, come to an end.

This might have been nothing more than a juicy piece of gossip, except
for one small detail, which has hardly been mentioned: the fateful kiss
took place in the room adjacent to that where a cabinet meeting was due
to start, and in which it was decided to start the war in Lebanon.

A short time before that, the Chief-of-Staff, Dan Halutz, also found the
time and energy for an un-warlike act: he called his broker and instructed
him to sell his shares.

The background must be remembered: a few hours earlier, Hizbullah
fighters had crossed the border and captured two Israeli soldiers. Two
soldiers had been killed during the operation, and six more died in
pursuit of the captors. Obviously the cabinet was about to decide upon a
military operation in which many soldiers and civilians, Israeli and
Lebanese, would lose their lives. Yet the supreme commander of the army
was handling his shares and a prominent minister was handling a female
soldier.


IN THE course of the 1948 war, I wrote reports of the battles from the
point of view of a simple soldier. After the war, when I was collecting
these reports for a book, it crossed my mind that it would be interesting
to add a description of the war as seen from the point of view of the
commander, who had made the decisions that affected our fate.

I approached my brigade chief, a commander highly admired by all of us,
and he gave me a detailed description of the campaigns. Before my eyes,
a different war unfolded. True, the place names and the battles were the
same, but there was no similarity between our war, the war in which the
fighters' main concern was to survive from day to day, and the war of the
high command, which moved figures on the board in an intricate game of
chess with the enemy commanders. The difference between the two levels
fascinated me. Perhaps it was that which helped to make the book, "In the
Fields of the Philistines, 1948", into a run-away bestseller.

All the great writers who wrote about war - from Leo Tolstoy ("War and
Peace") to Erich Maria Remarque ("All Quiet on the Western Front") and
Norman Mailer ("The Naked and the Dead") highlighted this huge
difference. The soldier crawls through the thorns, sinks into the mud and
cowers in his foxhole; the commanders move arrows on the map.

For the simple soldier, and even more so for the civilian, it is difficult to
penetrate the mental world of a general who decides upon an operation,
knowing that there will be so and so many "casualties", dead and
wounded. But after all, that is his profession: to weigh the gains of a
move against the expected losses. He receives the order to capture Hill
246 and works out a plan, which he expects will cost the lives of a
hundred or so of his soldiers. While he is calculating, those hundred
soldiers are horsing around, talking with their parents on the phone,
trying to catch some sleep.


I AM not writing this in a philosophical or literary mood, but in order to
draw attention to the unbearable lightness with which politicians and
generals decide on starting a war. The shares of Halutz and the kiss of
Ramon are but symptoms of this phenomenon.

The day before yesterday, Ehud Olmert appeared before the Board of
Inquiry (which he had appointed himself) and described how his cabinet
decided to start the Second Lebanon War. The testimony is being kept
secret, but it may be assumed that Olmert did not forget to express his
condolences to the bereaved families and his hopes for the speedy
recovery of the wounded. But did any of his ministers really weigh the
price of the operation in human lives - on our side and on the other? Did
the Chief-of-Staff, who had just disposed of his shares, raise the subject?
Was the Minister of Justice, who had just enjoyed a little adventure with
consequences he could not dream of, in an appropriately serious mood?

This is not a uniquely Israeli problem. Did George W. Bush and his clique
of Neo-Conservatives really consider the casualties, when they decided to
invade Iraq? Let's ignore for a moment the lies they spread, the fabricated
stories about "weapons of mass destruction", the imaginary connections
between Saddam and Osama and all the other falsehoods and deceptions.
Let's concentrate only on the two real aims of the war (which we exposed
at the time): (a) to get their hands on the oil of Iraq and the entire region,
including the Caspian, and (b) to place an American garrison in the heart
of the Middle East.

If Bush had to face a Board of Inquiry in Washington DC as Olmert did in
Tel-Aviv, he would certainly be asked some questions (which this column
asked in real time): Did you consider how many soldiers and civilians
would be killed and wounded? What led you to think that the invading
army would be received with showers of flowers? Why did you believe that
the Air Force would determine the issue so that the ground forces would
have to play only a minor role? Did you imagine that the planned little war
would still be going on three years and more later? Did you take into
consideration that the Iraqi state would be blown to pieces and that the
three peoples living there would soon be at each other's throats? Did you
expect that the war would strengthen Iran's position in the Middle East? In
short, did you have any idea at all of the place that you were about to
invade?

Clearly, nobody with any influence in the US government raised these
questions at the time. A foolish and power-drunk president, a rapacious
vice-president and a cabal of arrogant and ignorant ideological fanatics
decided upon an adventure whose end is not in sight even now. And
afterwards the statesmen and strategists went to their elegant restaurants
to enjoy sumptuous meals, while the 3000 US soldiers who have been
killed up to now spent the day in blissful ignorance of what was going on
at the highest level. The media and the senators, of course, were ecstatic.


IT'S NOT the past I am writing about, but the future.

At this moment, people in Washington and in Jerusalem are thinking
about a war in Iran. Not if it should be started, but when and how.

If this is to be an American war, its consequences will be many times
more grievous than the war in Iraq. Iran is a very hard nut. The Iranian
people are united. They have a glorious national tradition, a highly
developed national pride and a tough religious ideology. One can bomb
their oil facilities, but it is a big country, not dependent on a
sophisticated infrastructure, and it cannot be subdued by bombing alone.
There will be no alternative to a military attack on the ground.

Bush is already preparing the war. This week he instructed his soldiers in
Iraq to hunt down and kill all "Iranian agents" there. That is reminiscent of
the infamous "Kommissarbefehl" of June 6, 1941, on the eve of the
German invasion of the Soviet Union, in which Adolf Hitler ordered the
summary execution of every captured political commissar of the Red
Army. Since the commissars were uniformed soldiers, every commander
who carried out the order became a war criminal.

It is quite certain that if the United States does go to war, the Iranian
people will rally behind their government. They will draw the conclusion
that everything their leaders told them about the West was true. The
opposition, which has lately raised its head, will fall silent and disappear.
The big-mouthed president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose wisdom is
now being questioned by many of his own people, will turn overnight into
a national hero. It will be a war of many years, and many thousands of
American soldiers - not to mention Iranians - will fall.

President Bush may hesitate and pass the task over to Israel. Lately,
Olmert has hinted that it was the Americans who pushed him into the
Lebanon war. They believed that the Israeli army would defeat Hizbullah
easily, and that this would help the American clients in Beirut. (A similar
foolish calculation caused the Americans to give their blessing to Sharon's
First Lebanon War in 1982.)

Nowadays, our politicians and generals speak freely about the inevitable
attack on Iran. The pro-Israeli lobby in the US, both Jewish and Christian,
is toiling mightily to push American public opinion in this direction. All
these gentlemen and ladies, in their comfortable villas far from the
prospective battlefields, yearn for a war which will cost the lives of the
sons and daughters - of other people.

The advocates of the war declare that it is necessary in order to prevent a
"Second Holocaust". That has already become a mantra. This week,
Jacques Chirac nearly exploded it, when he expressed the self-evident:
that if an Iranian nuclear bomb were launched at Israel, Israel would wipe
Tehran from the face of the earth. The Iranian rulers are not mad and the
"balance of terror" will do its job. But the "friends" of Israel and the USA
started to pelt Chirac with verbal rocks, and he hastily retracted.


LET'S ASSUME for a moment that the Israeli Air force, with the help of the
American naval forces that are now being steadily built up in the Persian
Gulf, succeeds in bombing targets in Iran. What will happen then?

Iranian missiles will rain down on Tel-Aviv and Haifa. The promise of our
Air Force to destroy them on the ground is worth no more than the
similar promises we heard about Lebanon. In order to defend Israel,
American soldiers would have to go into Iran. Israel's account would be
debited with every casualty. If Israel is, God forbid, the first to use a
nuclear bomb there, the shame will last forever.

The masses of the Arab - indeed the entire Muslim world, both Sunnis
and Shiites, will rally around Iran. The Sunni heads of state, who are
embracing Israel now in secret, will run away in panic. We shall be left
alone to face the revenge that will come sooner or later. Will we be able to
rely on the heirs of Bush, who may be less reckless and more inclined to
listen to world public opinion, which will inevitably blame us for this
whole adventure?

Iran is not a second Iraq, neither is it Hizbullah multiplied by ten. It is an
entirely different story.

But is anyone here thinking about it seriously? Will the successors of the
share-selling Chief-of-Staff and the tongue-pushing minister be more
thoughtful? Or will they decide upon a new military adventure with the
same unbearable lightness?

Jazzak Allah Khayr Brother Daniel.  An anti-racist speech like this one needs to be widely read and heard.  With all that he knows, Mr. Averny stilll hopes for a brighter future.  Amazing and Inspiring.

Dokhtar'em, he is the most amazing of all men, women and children (you know, they are the best ones in our world!) I have ever come to know or know of. I have no idea how and from where does he get all that noble energy. Just a gift of nature, perhaps.

It is not in the vested American interests to let the peoples in this area to live in peace or even evolve some decent or noble living systems. Their is good reason for the west to be dead scared of the combined energies and the natural resources of these people who have far more practice of living together than our Masters would have us believe.

This area will never be at peace as long as the Brits and the U S have their fingers in it.

BUT, all of this will change. One day, peace shall rise. I know this since I know the Uris and the Daniels of my world.

 

Daniel Dworsky wrote: Uri Avnery 23.12.06                 Sorry, Wrong Continent A FEW weeks ago, the 15th Asian games, the "Asiad", was held in Qatar. The Israeli media treated the event with a mixture of derision and pity. Some kind of picturesque Asian circus. Our television showed an exotic horseman with a keffiyeh at the opening ceremony, riding his noble Arab steed up a steep staircase to light the Olympic flame. And that was that. One question was not asked at all in any of the media: why are we not there? Does Israel not lie in Asia? That was not even considered. We? In Asia? How come? WHEN I followed the event on Aljazeera television, I suddenly remembered a private anniversary that had slipped my memory. Exactly 60 years ago a small number of young people founded a group that called itself in Hebrew "Young Eretz-Israel" and in Arabic "Young Palestine". With money out of our own pockets (at the time we were all quite poor) we published occasional issues of a periodical we called Bamaavak ("In the struggle"). Bamaavak stirred up a lot of stormy waves, because it voiced infuriatingly heretical opinions. Contrary to the dominant Zionist narrative, it asserted that we, the young generation growing up in the country, constituted a new nation, the Hebrew nation. Unlike the somewhat similar group of "Canaanites", that preceded us, we proclaimed that (a) the new nation is a part of the Jewish people, much as Australia is a part of the Anglo-Saxon people, and (b) that we are a sister-nation to the resurgent Arab nation in the country and throughout the region. And, no less important: that since the new Hebrew nation was born in the country, and the country belongs to Asia, we are an Asian nation, a natural ally to all the Asian and African nations that strive for liberation from colonialism. On Wednesday, March 19, 1947, a few months after the first edition of Bamaavak had appeared, the Hebrew daily Haboker reported: "On the occasion of the opening of the Pan-Asian Conference (in New Delhi), the group Young Eretz Israel has sent a cable to Jawaharlal Nehru reading: 'Please receive the congratulations of the Eretz-Israeli youth for your historic initiative. May the aspirations for freedom of the peoples of New Asia, inspired by your heroic example, become united. Long live the united and arising Young Asia, the vanguard of fraternity and progress'."    A similar news story appeared on the same day on the front page of the Palestine Post (the predecessor of the Jerusalem Post), with the names of the signatories: Uri Avnery, Amos Elon and Ben-Ami Gur. Bamaavak appeared from time to time, whenever we had enough money, up to the outbreak of the 1948 war. In the Hebrew press, more than a hundred reactions were published, almost all of them negative, many of them vituperative. The famous writer Moshe Shamir, then a left-winger, made a neat play on words, calling us Bamat-Avak ("stage of dust"). When the war broke out, this whole chapter was overshadowed and forgotten. But almost all we said 60 years ago remains relevant today. And the most relevant question is: To what continent does the State of Israel actually belong? I BELIEVE that one of the most profound causes for the historic conflict between us and the Arab world in general, and the Palestinian people in particular, is the fact that the Zionist movement declared, from its very first day, that it did not belong to the region in which we live. Perhaps that is one of the reasons for the fact that even after four generations, this wound has not healed. In his book "The Jewish State", the founding document of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl famously wrote: "For Europe we shall be (in Palestine) a part of the wall against Asia�the vanguard of culture against barbarism�" This attitude is typical for the whole history of Zionism and the State of Israel up to the present day. Indeed, a few weeks ago the Israeli ambassador to Australia declared that "Asia belongs to the yellow race, while we are Whites and have no slit eyes. " One can perhaps forgive Herzl, a quintessential European, who lived in an era when imperialism dominated European thought. But today, four generations later, those forming public opinion in Israel, people born in the country, continue along the same path. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak declared that Israel is "a villa in the middle of the jungle" (the Arab jungle, of course), and this attitude is shared by practically all our politicians. Tsipi Livni likes to talk about the "dangerous neighborhood" in which we are living, and the chief advisor of Ariel Sharon once said that there will be no peace until "the Palestinians turn into Finns." Our soccer and basketball teams play in the European leagues, the Eurovision song contest is a national event in Israel, 95% of our political activity is focused on Europe and North America. But the phenomenon extends far beyond the political arena - this is a "world view" in the literal sense. In our world, Israel is a part of Europe. In the 50s, when I was the editor of the news magazine Haolam Hazeh, I once published a cartoon that I am still proud of: it showed the map of the Eastern Mediterranean, with an arm projecting from Greece and holding scissors that cut Israel off from Asia. It is a pity that I did not add a second drawing, showing Israel being attached to the shore of France or, preferably, Miami. These days it would be hard to find anybody who would assert that Asia - India, China - is barbarian. But it is easy to find people in Israel, and throughout the West, who believe that the Arab world, and indeed the entire Muslim world, is a "jungle". With such an attitude, one cannot make peace. After all, one does not make peace with poisonous snakes and ravenous leopards. In the Bamaavak days, we coined the slogan "Integration in the Semitic Region". But how can one integrate oneself in a region that is seen as a jungle? A WORLD VIEW is not an academic matter. It has a huge impact on actual life. It influences people when it is conscious, and even more so when it is unconscious. It shapes the practical decisions, without the decision- makers being aware of it. Politicians, too, are only human beings (if that), and their actions are directed by their hidden beliefs. In Israel we are used to consider unquestioned "conceptsias" as the mother of all our mistakes and defeats. But is such an assumption any different from the expression of an unconscious world-view? The world-view influences many aspects of the state. It is the core of the education system, which forms the mind of the next generation. We have perhaps the only education system in the world that does not teach the history of its homeland. In our schools, very little is taught about the past of the country. Instead, what is taught is the history of "the Jewish people". This starts with the ancient Israelite kingdoms before the sixth century BC ("the First Temple"), then the Jewish community in the country before the beginning of the Christian era and for some years after ("the Second Temple"). Then it leaves the country and dwells on the Jewish Diaspora for some thousands of years, until the beginning of the Zionist settlement. For almost 2000 years, the annals of the country disappear from the school. I once talked about this in a speech in the Knesset. I said that an Israeli child born in the country, whether Jewish or Arab, should study the history of the country, including all its periods and peoples: Canaanites, Israelites, Hellenists, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Mamelukes, Turks, British, Palestinians, Israelis and more. In addition they could be taught the story of the Jews in the diaspora, too. The Minister of Education responded humorously and insisted on calling me, from then on, "the Mameluke".    LATELY IT has become fashionable for politicians and commentators in Israel to speak about the danger of annihilation that hovers, or so they claim, over Israel. It is hardly believable: the State of Israel is a regional superpower, its economy is robust and developing, its technological level is one of the most advanced in the world, its army is stronger than all the Arab armies combined, it has a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons. Even if the Iranians were to obtain a bomb of their own, they would be mad to use it, for fear of Israeli retaliation. So where does this fear of annihilation come from in the 59th year of the state? A part of it surely emanates from the memory of the Holocaust, which is deeply imprinted in the national mentality. But another part comes from the feeling of not belonging, of temporariness, of the lack of roots. That has, of course, domestic implications, too. Consciousness also affects practical interests. The assertion that we are a European people automatically reinforces the position of our ruling class, which is still overwhelmingly Ashkenazi-European, over and against the majority of the citizens of Israel, who are of Asian-African Jewish and Palestinian-Arab descent. The profound disdain for their culture, which has accompanied the state from its first day, facilitates discrimination against them in many fields. A CHANGE affecting the consciousness of a community is not a short- term proposition. It cannot be achieved by decree. This is a slow and gradual process. But at some stage we shall have to start it, and first of all in the education system. I started my booklet "War or Peace in the Semitic Region", which was published in October 1947, just a few weeks before the outbreak of the 1948 war, with the words:     "When our Zionist fathers decided to set up a 'safe home' in Eretz Israel, they had the choice between two roads: they could appear in West Asia as a European conqueror, who sees himself as a beachhead of the 'white' race and a master of the 'natives'�(or) see themselves as an Asian nation returning to its homeland." When I wrote these words, the rise of Asia was still a dream. World War II had ended just two years before, and the United States looked like an omnipotent superpower. But now a quiet revolution of huge proportions is taking place. The nations of Asia, with China and India in the lead, are becoming economic and political powers. Should we not gradually move toward this camp? That brochure, 60 years ago, ended with the words of a Hebrew song: "We stand and face the rising sun / To the East our homeward path�"

Salaams,

Jazzak Allah Khayr Brother Daniel.  An anti-racist speech like this one needs to be widely read and heard.  With all that he knows, Mr. Averny stilll hopes for a brighter future.  Amazing and Inspiring.