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Peace Now, Now?! Well, Maybe Later
How the Peace Camp
'Vanished'
by Ran HaCohen
The last couple of weeks have
witnessed a real awakening of the Israeli peace camp. This heterogeneous
camp was beaten ideologically by the purported "generous offer" made by
former PM Barak, whose belligerent legacy,
as we argued earlier,
consisted (of hundreds of victims and) of telling the world that "there
was no partner for peace".
Following that maneuver,
preparing the hearts for the atrocities of the present Intifada, the
Israeli nationalistic media – especially the quality daily Ha'aretz
– continued Barak's work by publishing lengthy reports on the purportedly
"confused" or even "vanishing" peace camp. The recipe was very simple:
take an established mainstream Israeli nationalist with softy and/or lofty
manners, portray him as a lifelong peace activist persecuted for decades
for his courageous dissent, let him pour his usual anti-Palestinian
rhetoric, and publish it under an attractive title like "Amos Oz Regrets"
or "Yehoshua's Penitence". After such a front-page story would appear in
Ha'aretz's weekly magazine, you can be sure no one would attempt to
organise a peace rally for quite a while.
The Israeli peace camp did not
dissolve: it was banned by a concerted public campaign, a joint venture of
the government and the media. When people are told they have "vanished" or
are "confused", they turn their efforts, at best, to convincing themselves
and others that they exist; they have little energies for more than that.
THE RESURRECTION OF THE
PEACE CAMP
The last weeks have witnessed
a change. The single most important factor in it was a petition signed by
some 50 reserve soldiers and officers, saying that they
refuse to serve in the occupied
territories. This initiative became the focus of a heated public
debate. The military/political system – there is no real separation
between the two in Israel's "democracy" –
did its best to strangle the issue. The director of the public radio
even issued a ban on discussing the subject on air till further notice.
Counter-petitions of soldiers "proud to serve their country" were
published, with direct organisational and probably also financial
assistance from the army. The personal file of each of the refusers was
checked in an attempt to find some rubbish to throw. Chief-of-Staff Mofaz
blamed unnamed "political factors" of being behind the refusal; this
turned out to be a mistake, since politicians hastened to ask the highest
military commander to keep his hands out of politics.
Several commentators
criticised the fact that the discussion focused on the legitimacy of
refusal, stirring away from the actual atrocities that moved the refusers
to take their radical step. Though this is true, it should not obscure the
importance of the debate: whether the speaker opposes refusal or supports
it, the very discussion signals to ever more soldiers that refusal is an
option. Indeed, the number of
signatories is increasing steadily.
A rather unexpected, ambiguous
but still extremely influential opinion was voiced by the former head of
Israel's Security Services, Ami Ayalon – from the very top of Israel's
military echelons. Though Ayalon clearly rejected a general refusal to
serve in the territories, he said that as far as he was concerned, not too
many but rather too few soldiers were refusing blatantly illegal orders,
like shooting unarmed youth. "I am very worried by the number of
Palestinian children shot in the past year", he added.
WHAT IS THE PEACE CAMP?
There are two Israeli peace
camps. One peace camp wants peace with the Palestinians, without
occupation and without settlements. The other "peace camp" – I'll be using
quotes to refer to it – wants peace with the settlers, not with the
Palestinians. The issue of refusal is the very
Shibboleth dividing the two camps.
The hard-core of the "peace
camp" has traditionally been Meretz,
the left-liberal party whose main function is to stress the nationalistic
consensus by marking its dovish end. Under the authoritarian leadership of
Yossi Sarid (now entitled "leader of the opposition in the Knesset"),
Meretz's business has been to distract its voters' energies from
opposition to the occupation to anti-Semitically tinted hatred towards
orthodox Jews. With quite a few exceptions, Meretz is against
refusal, using such idiotic pretexts as "I cannot support refusal on the
Left and oppose it on the Right" (Sarid), hinting at right-wing Rabbis
urging soldiers to refuse if ordered to evacuate settlers. An absurd
argument, for sure – why not support justified refusals and oppose
unjustified ones? – but politics is not a matter of logic and integrity,
certainly not in the "peace camp".
HOW DOES PEACE NOW
FIT IN?
Maybe because of its memorable
logo, maybe because of good things it may have done when I was a child,
Peace Now is still considered,
especially in the US, as the incarnation of the Israeli peace camp.
Peace Now is a non-parliamentary movement, whose supporters are
more-or-less identical with the Meretz constituency. Now it is high
time to tell the truth: Peace Now is a marginal mainstream
movement, far from any dissent, not part of the Israeli peace camp, but
the very essence of the "peace camp". During the last eight years,
Peace Now has been virtually absent from the Israeli public sphere.
Its only activity worth mentioning is monitoring the expansion of the
settlements, a documentation project issuing a communication to the press
every few months.
A mass demonstration planned
for this Saturday (9 February) can clarify the issue. The rally –
postponed from last Saturday for technical reasons – is organised by an ad
hoc "coalition for peace" comprising an unprecedented large number of
bodies. Among the initiating organisations are Uri Avneri's
Gush Shalom,
Women's Coalition for
Peace,
Ta'ayush (Arab-Jewish Partnership),
The Israeli Committee Against House
Demolitions, The Monitoring Committee, which unites the
leaders of Israel's Arab citizens,
Yesh Gvul, the Jewish-Arab community
Neve Shalom, groups of students and lecturers at four Israeli
universities, The Association of Arab Students, Kvisa Sh'chora
(Gays and Lesbians Against the Occupation), The Druze Initiative
Committee and many others.
Several youth movements take
part in the coalition, among them the Meretz Youth (who take part
though their mother party does not!), the Communist Youth,
Hadash Youth and Balad
Youth. Never since the beginning of the present Intifada has there
been such a wide coalition for peace.
Among the speakers invited in
the rally are signatories of the refusal petition and others public
figures who support refusal. Though it was invited, Peace Now not
only refused to participate, it is now trying to sabotage the rally by
publishing big ads in the Israeli dailies announcing a demonstration a
week later and signing "coalition for peace", in an obvious attempt to
confuse demonstrators and tempt them to believe the rally was postponed
once again. If Peace Now's donors wonder where their money goes,
here is an answer: to pay for expensive whole-page ads aimed at splitting
and breaking the resistance to the Occupation and to Israel's war crimes
from within.
Ran HaCohen was
born in the Netherlands in 1964 and has grown up in Israel. He has B.A. in
Computer Science, M.A. in Comparative Literature and he presently works on
his PhD thesis. He lives in Tel-Aviv, teaches in the Department of
Comparative Literature in Tel-Aviv University. He also works as literary
translator (from German, English and Dutch), and as a literary critic for
the Israeli daily Yedioth Achronoth. His work
has been published widely in Israel. His column appears monthly at Antiwar.com.
Source:
by courtesy & © 2002 Antiwar.com & Ran HaCohen
by the same author:
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