Uri Avnery

Daniel Dworsky wrote: With all do respect to history and "claims" Some of these people have no where else to go. All parties should either stay home in safety or come home and be helped to resettle. Those with 58 year old keys to the homes they fled should be compensated. Settlements that were cynically set up in Palestine as a land grabbing ruse should be dismantled. The inhabitants of Itamar and Tapuach should be sedated like rogue polar bears and relocated on fantasy Island with Richardo Montobon and Amir Peretz in his new job. Everyone should get an electric car and a life supply of Prozac.

Bismillah,

Even my father-in-law would love to go home accompanied by his children to live the rest of his long life and die there on his own land, knowing that his children and grandchildren could continue to live on the land that he and they love.

The electric car sounds good, but rather than Prozac, most of them would rather have strong cups of Arabic coffee sipped under their olive trees.

Salaamu Alaykum

Edited by herjihad

Uri Avnery
2.9.06

           When Napoleon Won at Waterloo

NAPOLEON WON the battle of Waterloo. The German Wehrmacht won
World War II. The United States won in Vietnam, and the Soviets in
Afghanistan. The Zealots won against the Romans, and Ehud Olmert won
the Second Lebanon War.

You didn't know that? Well, during the last few days the Israeli media has
paraded a long series of experts, who did not leave any room for doubt:
the war has brought us huge achievements, Hizbullah was routed, Olmert
is the great victor.

The TV talk-show hosts and anchormen put their microphones at the
service of professors, publicity experts, "security personnel" and
"strategists" (a title not denoting generals, but advisers of politicians). All
of them agreed on the outcome: an honest-to-goodness victory.

Yesterday I switched on the TV and saw a person radiating self-assurance
and explaining how our victory in Lebanon opens the way for the
inevitable war with Iran. The analysis, composed almost entirely of
clich�s, was worthy of a high-school pupil. I was shocked to learn that
the man was a former chief of the Mossad. Anyway, we won this war and
we are going to win the next one.

So there is no need at all for a commission of inquiry. What is there to
inquire into? All we need is a few committees to clear up the minor slips
that occurred here and there.

Resignations are absolutely out. Why, what happened? Victors do not
resign! Did Napoleon resign after Waterloo? Did Presidents Johnson and
Nixon resign after what happened in Vietnam? Did the Zealots resign after
the destruction of the Temple?


JOKING ASIDE, the parade of Olmert's stooges on TV, on the radio and in
the newspapers tells us something. Not about the achievements of Olmert
as a statesman and strategist, but about the integrity of the media.

When the war broke out, the media people fell into line and and marched
in step as a propaganda battalion. All the media, without exception,
became organs of the war effort, fawning on Olmert, Peretz and Halutz,
waxing enthusiastic at the sight of the devastation in Lebanon and
singing the praises of the "steadfastness of the civilian population" in the
north of Israel. The public was exposed to an incessant rain of victory
reports, going on (literally) from early in the morning to late at night.

The government and army spokespersons, together with Olmert's spin
team, decided what to publish and when, and, more importantly, what to
suppress.

That found its expression in the "word laundry". Instead of accurate
words came misleading expressions: when heavy battles were raging in
Lebanon, the media spoke about "exchanges of fire". The cowardly
Hassan Nasrallah was "hiding" in his bunker, while our brave Chief-of-
Staff was directing operations from his underground command post
(nicknamed "the hole").

The chicken-hearted "terrorists" of Hizbullah were hiding behind women
and children and operating from within villages, quite unlike our Ministry
of Defense and General Staff which are located in the heart of the most
densely populated area in Israel. Our soldiers were not captured in a
military action, but "abducted" like the victims of gangsters, while our
army "arrests" the leaders of Hamas. Hizbullah, as is well known, is
"financed" by Iran and Syria, quite unlike Israel, which "receives generous
support" from our great friend and ally, the United States.

There was, of course, a difference of night and day between Hizbullah
and us. How can one compare? After all, Hizbullah launched rockets at us
with the express intent of killing civilians, and did indeed kill some thirty
of them. While our military, "the most moral army in the world", took
great care not to hurt civilians, and therefore only about 800 Lebanese
civilians, half of them children, lost their lives in the bombardments which
were all directed at purely military targets.

No general could compare with the military correspondents and
commentators, who appeared daily on TV, striking impressive military
poses, who reported on the fighting and demanded a deeper advance into
Lebanon. Only very observant viewers noticed that they did not
accompany the fighters at all and did not share the dangers and pains of
battle, something that is essential for honest reporting in war. During the
entire war I saw only two correspondent's reports that really reflected the
spirit of the soldiers - one by Itay Angel and the other by Nahum Barnea.

The deaths of soldiers were generally announced only after midnight,
when most people were asleep. During the day the media spoke only
about soldiers being "hurt". The official pretext was that the army had
first to inform the families. That's true - but only for announcing the
names of the fallen soldiers. It does not apply at all to the number of the
dead. (The public quickly caught on and realized that "hurt" meant
"killed'.)


OF COURSE, among the almost one thousand people invited to the TV
studios during the war to air their views, there were next to no voices
criticizing the war itself. Two or three, who were invited for alibi
purposes, were shown up as ridiculous weirdos. Two or three Arab
citizens were also invited, but the talk-masters fell on them like hounds
on their prey.

For weeks, the media suppressed the fact that hundreds of thousands of
Israelis had abandoned the bombarded North, leaving only the poorest
behind. That would have shaken the legend of the "steadfastness of the
rear".

All the media (except the internet sites) completely suppressed the news
about the demonstrations against the war that took place almost daily
and that grew rapidly from dozens to hundreds, and from hundreds to
thousands. (Channel 1 alone devoted several seconds to the small
demonstration of Meretz and Peace Now that took place just before the
end of the war. Both had supported the war enthusiastically almost to the
finish.)

I don't say these things as a professor for communications or a
disgruntled politician. I am a media-person from head to foot. Since the
age of 17 I have been a working journalist, reporter, columnist and editor,
and I know very well how media with integrity should behave. (The only
prize I ever got in my own country was awarded by the Journalists'
Association for my "life work in journalism".)

I do not think, by the way, that the behavior of our media was worse than
that of their American colleagues at the start of the Iraq war, or the British
media during the ridiculous Falklands/Malvinas war. But the scandals of
others are no consolation for our own.

Against the background of this pervasive brainwashing, one has to salute
the few - who can be counted on the fingers of both hands - who did not
join the general chorus and did indeed voice criticism in the written
media, as much as they were allowed to. The names are well-known, and
I shall not list them here, for fear of overlooking somebody and
committing an unforgivable sin. They can hold their head high. The
trouble is that their comments appeared only in the op-ed pages, which
have a limited impact, and were completely absent from the news pages
and news programs, which shape public opinion on a daily basis.   

When the media people now passionately debate the need for all kinds of
inquiry commissions and examination committees, perhaps they should
set a personal example and establish a Commission of Inquiry to
investigate the actions of the media themselves at the time of supreme
test.


I N GOETHE'S "Faust", the devil presents himself as the "force that always
strives for the bad and always produces the good." I do not wish, God
forbid, to compare the media to the devil, but the result is the same: by
its enthusiastic support for the war, the media deepened the feeling of
failure that came afterwards and which may in the end have a beneficial
impact.

The media called Hizbullah a "terror organization", evoking the image of a
small group of "terrorists" with negligible capabilities. When it became
clear that this is an efficient and well-trained military force with brave and
determined fighters, effective missiles and other weapons, that could
hold out against our huge military machine for 33 days without breaking,
the disappointment was even more bitter.

After the media had glorified our military commanders as supermen and
treated every one of their boasts with adulation, almost as if they were
divine revelations, the disappointment was even greater when severe
failures in strategy, tactics, intelligence and logistics showed up in all
levels of the senior command.

That contributed to the profound change in public opinion that set in at
the end of the war. As elevated as the self-confidence had been, so deep
was the sense of failure. The Gods had failed. The intoxication of war was
replaced by the hangover of the morning after.

And who is that running in front of the mob clamoring for revenge, all the
way to the Place de la Guillotine? The media, of course.

I don't know of a single talk-show host, anchorman. commentator,
reporter or editor, who has confessed his guilt and begged for
forgiveness for his part in the brainwashing. Everything that was said,
written or photographed has been wiped off the slate. It just never
happened.

Now, when the damage cannot be repaired anymore, the media are
pushing to the head of those who demand the truth and clamor for
punishment for all the scandalous decisions that were taken by the
government and the general staff: prolonging the war unnecessarily after
the first six days, abandoning the rear, neglecting the reserves, not
sending the land army into Lebanon on day X and sending them into
Lebanon on day Y, not accepting G8's call for a cease-fire, and so on.

But, just a moment ---

During the last few days, the wheel may be turning again. What? We did
not lose the war after all? Wait, wait, we did win? Nasrallah has
apologized? (By strict orders from above, the full interview of Nasrallah
was not broadcast at all, but the one passage in which he admitted to a
mistake was broadcast over and over again.)

The sensitive nose of the media people has detected a change of the
wind. Some of them have already altered course. If there is a new wave in
public opinion, one should ride it, no?


WE CALL this the "Altalena Effect".

For those who don't know, or who have already forgotten: Altalena was a
small ship that arrived off the coast of Israel in the middle of the 1948
war, carrying a group of Irgun men and quantities of weapons, it was not
clear for whom. David Ben-Gurion was afraid of a putsch and ordered the
shelling of the ship, off the coast of Tel-Aviv. Some of the men were
killed, Menachem Begin, who had gone aboard, was pushed into the water
and saved. The ship sank, the Irgun was dispersed and its members
joined the new Israeli army.

29 years later Begin came to power. All the careerists joined him in haste.
And then it appeared, retroactively, that practically everybody had been
on board the Altalena. The little ship expanded into a huge aircraft carrier
- until the Likud lost power and Altalena shrunk back to the size of a
fishing boat.

The Second Lebanon War was a mighty Altalena. All the media crowded
onto its deck. But the day after the war was over, we learned that this was
an optical illusion: absolutely nobody had been there, except Captain
Olmert, First Officer Peretz and Helmsman Halutz. However, that can
change any minute now, if the trusting public can be convinced that we
won the war after all.

As has been said before: in Israel nothing changes, except the past.

Uri Avnery
6.9.06

                      "Left, But�"

I ONCE saw a nice sketch in a political cabaret: on the stage several
people were speaking in unconnected sentences, all of which ended with
the word "but". For example: "Some of my best friends are Jews, but�", "I
have nothing against blacks, but�", "I really detest racism, but�"

During the recent war, I frequently heard similar phrases: "I am a leftist,
but�" These words were invariably - but invariably! - followed by a
rightist statement.

It seems that we have a whole community of "leftists-but", who propose
the annihilation of entire Lebanese villages, the turning of Lebanon into a
heap of ruins, the destruction over the heads of its inhabitants of any
building where Hassan Nasrallah may (or may not) be staying. And, while
we are at it, also to wipe Gaza from the face of the earth.

Encountering such sentences on TV, on the radio and in the papers, I am
sometimes tempted to pray: Dear God, give me honest to goodness
fascists instead of these leftists-but.


WHILE ANALYZING the Second Lebanon War, it is impossible to ignore the
role played by the Leftists, with or without quotation marks, during the
fighting.

The day before yesterday I saw on TV an interview with the playwright
Joshua Sobol, a likeable person known as a regular leftist. He explained
that this war has brought us important benefits, and sang the praises of
the Minister of Defense, Amir Peretz.

Sobol is not alone. When the government started this war, an impressive
line-up of writers supported it. Amos Oz, A.B.Yehoshua and David
Grossman, who regularly appear as a political trio, were united again in
their support of the government and used all their considerable verbal
talents to justify the war. They were not satisfied with that: some days
after the beginning of the war, the three published a joint ad in the
papers, expressing their enthusiastic backing for the operation.

Their support was not purely passive. Amos Oz, a writer with
considerable literary prestige throughout the world, wrote an article in
favor of the war, which appeared in several respected foreign
newspapers. I wouldn't be surprised if "somebody" helped to distribute it.
His two comrades, too, were active in propagating the war, together with
a long row of writers like Yoram Kaniuk, assorted artists and intellectuals,
real or imagined. All of them volunteered for the propaganda reserves
without waiting to be drafted.

I doubt that the war would have attained its monstrous dimensions
without the massive support of Leftists-but, which made it possible to
form a "wall to wall consensus ", ignoring the protest of the consistent
peace camp. This consensus carried away the Meretz party, whose guru
Amos Oz is, and Peace Now, in whose mass rallies Amos Oz used to be
the main speaker (when they were still able to stage mass rallies).

Some people are now pretending that this group was really against the
war. To whit: some days before the end they published a second tripartite
ad, this time calling for its termination. At the same time, Meretz and
Peace Now also changed course. But not one of them apologized or
showed remorse for their prior support for the killing and devastation.
Their new position was: the war was indeed very good, but now the time
has come to put an end to it.


WHAT IS the logic of this position?

The government decided on the attack in apparent response to the action
of Hizbullah, which captured two Israeli soldiers on the Israeli side of the
border and proposed exchanging them for Lebanese prisoners held in
Israel. In this action, several comrades of the captured soldiers were
killed, and some more soldiers died when their tank hit a mine while
pursuing the captors on the Lebanese side of the border.

The Israeli public reacted, of course, with fury and cries for revenge. But
one would have expected intellectuals, and especially "leftist" ones, to
keep a cool head, even - and perhaps especially - during times of
emotional upheaval. In similar circumstances, even Ariel Sharon avoided
extreme reactions and agreed to exchange prisoners.

Those who did not possess the courage for that ("oz" in Hebrew means
strength and courage), or those who really believed that the Hizbullah
action must be met with a strong reaction, could have justified a limited
military reprisal. On that day it was legitimate to join those who
demanded such a reasonable reaction. But already after 48 hours, it was
clear that the reaction was not proportional but massive. It was not
designed to "send a message" to Hizbullah and all the Lebanese people
that such a provocation would not go unpunished. It had quite different
aims.

On the second or third day of the war, it was already quite clear to any
thinking person - and don't intellectuals pride themselves on being just
that? - that this was a real war, which went far beyond the problem of the
two captured soldiers. The systematic bombardment of the Lebanese
infrastructure bore witness to the fact that it was prepared well in
advance and that its aim was the annihilation of Hizbullah and the
changing of the political realities in Lebanon. For that it was enough to
listen to the declarations of Olmert, Peretz and Halutz.


THAT WAS the real test of the intellectuals. One can forgive them for their
first reaction. One can say that they were carried away, as happens to
people at the beginning of a war. One can say that they did not
understand the context (a terrible accusation, when thrown in the face of
intellectuals). But from the third day on, such justifications and excuses
do not stand up anymore.

The army chiefs did not hide the horrible devastation they were causing
in Lebanon - on the contrary, they boasted about it. It was clear that
appalling suffering was being caused to hundreds of thousands, that
civilians were being killed in large numbers, that many, many people were
losing all their possessions in the villages and towns that were being
systematically destroyed. At the same time, great suffering was caused to
the population of Northern Israel.

How could writers with a conscience, and even more so "leftists" with a
humane outlook, keep quiet while these atrocities were being committed?
How could they go on serving the propaganda machine of the war?

True, the writers could not know that already on the sixth day of the war
the army chiefs had told the government that all achievable aims of the
war had by now been achieved, and that nothing more could be attained
(such as the return of the prisoners, the restoration of the army's
deterring power, the disarming of Hizbullah etc.) In other words, that
even from a purely military point of view, there was no point continuing
the horror, which nevertheless went on for another 27 days and nights.
But if any protest from the famous writers, even a faint one, had been
heard, it could have induced the political and military leaders to think
again. But there was no such protest.

When the writers did wake up after all, in the 5th (fifth!) week of the war,
and called for its termination, it was too late. There was no need for them
anymore. The cumbersome machinery of the UN was already engaged in
achieving the cessation of hostilities.

One tragic event was the death in combat of David Grossman's son, Uri,
in those last hours of the war.


WHAT CAUSED the "Left-but" to behave like that?

One can find superficial reasons. It is very hard for leftists to rise up
against a government in which the Labor party plays an important role.
That was also true in 2000, when the Labor leader, Ehud Barak, wrecked
the Camp David summit and returned with the fatal slogan: "We have no
partner! There is no one to talk with!"

But that was not true in the First Lebanon War, in 1982, when the Likud
was in power. Because even then the "Left-but", under the leadership of
Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, did support the war. During the siege of
Beirut, Rabin was the guest of Sharon, and, standing on the ruins,
proposed cutting off the supply of water and medicines to the population
of the besieged Western part of the city (where I was meeting with Yasser
Arafat at the same time). Only after the third week of the war, did Peace
Now join the protest against it.

After the Sabra and Shatila massacre, Peace Now called for the protest
rally on which its reputation has rested since - the rally with the fabled
400 thousand protesters. That was its brightest spot and the beginning of
its eclipse. Because, in order to assure the dimensions of the
demonstration, Peace Now made a pact - not with the devil, but with
hypocrisy. In return for the help of the Labor Party, they invited Peres and
Rabin to be the main speakers - in spite of the fact that on the eve of the
war, the two had met with Menachem Begin and publicly requested him to
invade Lebanon.


BUT THERE are more profound causes for the behavior of the "Left-but" in
times of war.

From the beginning of the Jewish Labor Movement in the country, the Left
has suffered from an internal contradiction: it was both socialist and
nationalist. Of the two components, nationalism was by far the more
important. Therefore, membership in the trade union organization
(Histadrut) was based on a strictly national classification: not a single
Arab was allowed to become a member in the body whose official name
was "The General Organization of the Hebrew Workers in Eretz-Israel".
Only years after the foundation of the State of Israel were Arabs allowed
to join.

One of the most important tasks of the Histadrut was to prevent by all
means, including violence, the employment of Arabs in Jewish working
places. For that, blood was shed.

That is true also for the most glorious of socialist creations: the kibbutz.
No Arab was ever allowed to become a member. That was no accident:
the kibbutzim saw themselves not only as a realization of a socialist
dream, but also as fortresses in the Jewish struggle for the country. The
creation of a new kibbutz, like Hanita on the Lebanese border in 1938,
was celebrated as a national victory.

The most leftist part of the kibbutz movement, Hashomer Hatsa'ir, (the
basis of the late Mapam party, now Meretz) had an official slogan: "For
Zionism, Socialism and the Brotherhood of Peoples". The order was not
accidental, either: it expressed the real priorities. Hashomer Hatsa'ir did
indeed adore Stalin, "the sun of the peoples", until his death, but its main
creations were the settlements, generally on land bought from rich
absentee landowners, after the Fellahin, who had tended them for
generations, had been evicted. After the founding of Israel, the Hashomer
Hatza'ir kibbutzim were settled on the lands of the refugees and lands
expropriated from the Arab citizens of Israel proper. The kibbutz Bar'am
is sitting on the land of the village Bir'am, from which the Arab
inhabitants were evicted after the end of the fighting in 1948. Much
Zionism, very little Brotherhood of Peoples.

In every real test, this internal contradiction of the "Zionist Left" (as they
like to call themselves) becomes obvious. That is the root of the split
personality of the "Left-but".

When the guns are roaring and the flag goes up the pole, the "Left-but"
stands at attention and salutes.

Servie�s cryptogram (#23):

Gush Emunim (Avigdor Eskin) est Gush Shalom (Uri Avnery) inversus.  (Israel�s Gush Emunim, or �Block of the Faithful,� as respresented by Avigdor Eskin (and others) is Gush Shalom, or �The Peace Block,� inverted.)