[Peace] A very thoughtful piece by an Israeli patriot and peace
activist
Belden Fields
a-fields at uiuc.edu
Sun Apr 8 11:33:37 CDT 2007
Begin forwarded message:
> From: "Gush Shalom" <otherisr at actcom.co.il>
> Date: April 8, 2007 8:29:33 AM CDT
> To: intl at mailman.gush-shalom.org
> Subject: Avnery challenges the Shabak / Prisoners exchange now
>
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> 40 years of occupation
> It is a shame and it MUST end.
> We want to rub it in
> During the whole first week of June.
> Your donation will make a difference.
> 40 שנים לבושה.
> שבוע מלא לא ניתן לציבור
> לברוח מן האמת הנוראה הזאת.
> השבוע הראשון של יוני.
> התרומה שלך משנה
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> *
> FOR NOTHING
>
> Gush Shalom ad published in Haaretz, March 30,
> 2007מודעת "גוש שלום" ב"הארץ", 30 במרס,
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>
> *
> We all have blood on our hands - prisoner exchange now!
> Press release, April 8 2007 הודעה לעתונות, 8
> באפריל
> לכולנו יש דם על הידיים - חילופי
> שבויים עכשיו!
> *
> אורי אבנרי
> שב"כ שלום
> Shalom, Shin Bet
> Uri Avnery
>
> RECENTLY, THE CHIEF of the Shin Bet declared that the "Israeli
> Arabs", a fifth of Israel's population, constitute a danger to the
> state.
> He requested permission for the General Security Service to act
> against anyone who aims at changing the official designation of
> Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state" - even if they use
> nothing but completely legal means.
> It follows that In the view of the chief of the Security Service, a
> central figure in the Israeli leadership, the task of the Shin Bet
> (now commonly known in Israel as Shabak) is not only to protect the
> state from spies and terrorists, but also from any challenge to its
> ideological designation, like the KGB in the former Soviet Union
> and the Stasi in communist East Germany. (The excellent Oscar-
> winning movie "The Life of the Others", now screening in Israel,
> shows how this worked in practice.)
>
> ALL THIS is reminiscent of things past. Rather naively, I had
> thought that they belonged to bygone days which could never return.
> Two weeks ago, the Israeli tabloid Yedioth Aharonoth published an
> interview with the lawyer Arieh Hadar, nicknamed Pashosh, a former
> chief of the interrogation department of the Shin Bet.
> Pashosh disclosed that "In the 50s, the great enemies of the Labor
> Party - and therefore of Issar Harel, the chief of the security
> services, the Shin Bet and the Mossad - were Uri Avnery and his
> weekly magazine, Haolam Hazeh. Avnery called the Shin Bet "the
> Apparatus of Darkness", and Issar was convinced that Uri Avnery
> would destroy the state. Avnery and his magazine were under
> constant surveillance. A colleague of mine earned himself quick
> promotion by recruiting an employee of Haolam Hazeh's printing
> press. Every week, this employee gave him a smuggled copy of the
> magazine a day before its official publication date. My colleague
> gave it to Issar, who brought it every week personally to Ben-Gurion."
> Pashosh added: "Issar had the Shin Bet publish a competing
> magazine, disguised as privately owned. The aim was to destroy
> Avnery."
> These revelations were not news to me. Years ago, Issar Harel
> himself disclosed that he regarded me as "Enemy No. 1 of the
> regime". It may be remembered that in those days, three bombs were
> laid in our editorial offices and printing plant and two employees
> were injured. The fingers of both my hands were broken in an
> (unsuccessful) attempt to kidnap me. None of these crimes was ever
> solved.
> In 1977, after coming to power, Menachem Begin revealed in an
> interview that at the end of the 50s Issar Harel approached him and
> told him that he had proposed to the Prime Minister, David Ben-
> Gurion, to put me in "administrative detention" - arrest without
> trial and without time limit. Ben-Gurion agreed, but posed a
> condition: that Begin, then the leader of the opposition, agree to
> it too, so that it could be done quietly. Begin demanded that Issar
> show him the evidence that I was a traitor, otherwise, he said, not
> only would he not agree, but he would raise hell. Issar never
> mentioned the matter again.
> Begin did not leave it at that. He sent me his trusted lieutenant,
> Yaakov Meridor, to warn me. In spite of the extreme difference of
> opinion between us, which found its expression many times in
> Knesset debates, Begin accepted me, it seems, as an Israeli patriot.
>
> THE QUESTION is, of course, why Ben-Gurion and the security service
> chief considered me "Enemy No. 1 of the regime".
> That brings us to the subject now raised again by the Shin Bet chief.
> I attacked Ben-Gurion on many subjects: the total domination of all
> affairs in the country by the Labor Party (then called Mapai), the
> corruption that was then starting to infect the ruling class, the
> discrimination suffered by Jewish immigrants from Oriental
> countries, the religious coercion, etc.
> But the pivot of this struggle was the definition of Israel as a
> "Jewish state".
> What is a "Jewish state"? That was never made clear. A state whose
> citizens are all Jewish? A state that belongs to Jews only? The
> "state of the Jewish people", which also belongs to millions of
> Jews who do not live here and are citizens of the US, Argentina and
> France? A state ruled by the Jewish religion? A state that
> expresses Jewish values (and if so, which ones?)
> Furthermore - who is a Jew, in this context? After many
> hesitations, the Knesset adopted the religious definition: a Jew is
> a person born to a Jewish mother or who has converted to the Jewish
> faith, and who has not adopted another religion. The contradiction
> between the definition of Judaism as a religion and the assertion
> that the Jews are a nation was solved by adopting the fiction that
> with us, unlike other nations, religion and nation are one and the
> same.
> The term "Jewish state" is nebulous. It can be interpreted in
> several ways. When one adds the word "democratic", it becomes an
> oxymoron - if a state belongs only to a part of its population it
> is not democratic, and if it is democratic then it cannot belong to
> a part of its population, even if they compose the majority.
> Instructing the Security Service - our name for the secret police -
> to act against those who strive by legal means to change the
> "Jewish state" definition - simply means to cripple Israeli
> democracy. It is one of the basic principles of democracy that
> everyone has the right to propagate his views and convince people
> to change the laws and the constitution, as long as only legal
> means are used. If he or she succeeds in convincing the majority of
> the citizens, the desired change comes about.
> Activating the secret police to abort this process would mean
> turning Israel into a police state. Not a "democracy protecting
> itself", but, rather, a state protecting itself from democracy.
>
> I HOPE that the State of Israel remains a state with a Hebrew
> majority, that the Hebrew language will remain its main language,
> that it will express the modern Hebrew society and its culture and
> also keep alive the Jewish tradition of generations past. (About
> the Arab side of the matter - see below.)
> But it must not do so by force, by way of oppression, by using the
> secret police and other means of compulsion. Natural processes must
> be allowed to work freely, whatever the results. We are not the
> only nation in the world in this situation.
> If Israel is an attractive country, natural increase will rise and
> many will knock on its doors, people who desire to join our nation.
> The Israeli nation - unlike the Jewish religion - can in principle
> absorb everyone who wants to belong to it.
> The relationship between a modern state and its citizens must be
> based on one consideration only: citizenship. The state belongs to
> all its citizens, and all of them must be equal before the law.
> That is what the 1948 Declaration of Independence promised: "The
> State of Israel… will ensure complete equality of social and
> political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion,
> race or sex."
> Some Israelis use the term "nation-state" as a pretext to oppress
> the Arab minority. They think about a nation-state in the spirit of
> the late 19th and early 20th century. In Poland, for example, where
> many of Israel's founders were born, the state fought against large
> communities of its own citizens - Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Jews and
> others.
> The most extreme example was the Nazi state, which was based on the
> idea that the individual exists only as a part of his nation, as a
> mere cell in the national organism. This model drowned in blood and
> has been besmirched for all eternity by the horrors of the Holocaust.
> Today the model that appeals to many is the American one. The
> American nation includes everybody who holds a US passport. A
> person who receives American citizenship - whether Mexican, Korean,
> Indian or Nigerian - at that moment joins the American nation and
> becomes an heir to George Washington, Abe Lincoln and Franklin D.
> Roosevelt.
> All modern nations are moving towards this model, each according to
> its own rhythm. Poland, too, now belongs to the EU, where millions
> of people are moving from country to country without restrictions.
> In most countries there now live millions of foreigners who are
> gradually being absorbed into the national population. Their
> children grow up with the local culture and the local language and
> study in the local schools. Without this massive reinforcement,
> many Western societies could not exist any more, as far as the
> economy and demography are concerned.
> Will Israel, which misses no opportunity to describe itself as a
> Western country, turn its back on this reality and adopt the model
> of Pakistan, a state that was founded - at the same time as Israel
> - on an ethnic-religious basis?
>
> MY IDENTITY consists of many different layers.
> I am a human being, and as a human being I am a citizen of the
> world, bearing responsibility for the entire planet. I am committed
> to humanist values, to the ecology of the globe, to freedom, peace
> and justice for all. I hope that in the not too distant future,
> these values will be guaranteed by an effective world order.
> I am a member of the Israeli nation, together with all the other
> people who hold an Israeli passport. Israel is my state. I want it
> living in peace, secure, flourishing and respected throughout the
> world. I want a state in which it is good to live, and of which I
> can be proud.
> I am a son of the Jewish people. I am an heir to Jewish tradition,
> much as Australians and Canadians are heirs to the Anglo-Saxon
> tradition. There are Jewish values in which I believe, values of
> justice, peace and non-violence, which are very different from the
> values of the settlers in Yitzhar and Tapuah. I am close to the
> Jews around the world, and I am very glad that Jews around the
> world feel close to Israel. That is an emotional matter, which
> should not concern the state.
> When the State of Israel really belongs, practically and
> officially, to all its citizens, it will be much easier for the
> Arabs here to decide on their status. If they choose to belong to
> the Israeli nation, much as Hispanics in the US belong to the
> American nation, that will be fine. If they prefer the status of a
> national minority, they should enjoy the rights of such a minority
> in a modern state. Either way, the Arabic language and Arab culture
> must be fully recognized by the state. The affinity of the Arab
> citizens with the Palestinian people and the Arab world must be
> considered just as legitimate as the affinity of the Hebrew
> citizens with the Jewish people throughout the world.
>
> THAT IS my view. I intend to advocate it by all the legal means at
> my disposal in the democratic state that I helped to establish.
> And if the Shin Bet does not like it, well, that is a pity. I just
> hope that they will not put me under administrative detention
> because of it.
>
>
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