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The Chosen Pariah
Israel's Complaint
by Ran HaCohen
Life
in the Israel is so difficult – and it's not just because of the hot and
humid summer. No, it's the neighbours, they are the real trouble. It's so
hard to be the only democracy in the Middle East, surrounded by all those
bloodthirsty Arab dictatorships.
Prime Minister Shimon Peres
(Nobel Prize Winner for Peace) said it all back in 1996: "In a Middle
Eastern feast you have a simple choice: either you are one of the diners,
or you end up as the dinner itself." He said it when he sent the Israeli
army to bomb Lebanon (known as Operation Grapes of Wrath), killing
hundreds and forcing half a million civilians to flee from their homes.
You cannot blame Peres: blame the Middle East.
Luckily, there are better
places on earth. Benjamin Netanyahu was very aware of that. Asked whether
he believed in peace in the Middle East, Bibi always answered: "We are not
in Scandinavia." Scandinavia is different. There, people are polite,
peaceful and friendly. They don't smoke the hookah and they don't stab you
in the back. And they don't fight each other. Never in history was there a
war in Scandinavia. Trust Netanyahu on that: his father, whom he is said
to consult daily, is a well-known historian. He should know.
Ask every Israeli: Israel's
geographic location is a historic mistake. One old theory blamed Moses'
bad ears: God told him to go to Canada, but he heard Canaan instead. But
nowadays, most Israelis would be more than satisfied with a location in
the North Sea, next to Scandinavia. Good neighbours, plenty of room in the
ocean, lots of oil underneath. Culturally speaking, this is the right
place for peaceful, civilised, modern Israel – not in the midst of those
warlike, barbaric and primitive Arabs. If we were there, we would have no
troubles whatsoever.
But now the world is going
crazy. Israel sends a new ambassador to its natural environment,
Scandinavia – and not to Norway, cursed forever for its capital Oslo; and
not to the suspiciously neutral Sweden; but to Denmark (to wonderful
Copenhagen), the only Scandinavian country that bravely saved all its Jews
from the Nazis. It's Scandinavian, it's peaceful, it's not anti-Semitic –
the ideal place for an Israeli. But those silly Danes, what do they do?
Instead of giving Ambassador Carmi Gillon the warmest welcome, as the lost
son who returns from the backward Levant to his true home in the civilised
West, the Danes warn him that he may be arrested upon arrival and put on
trial for the crime of torture!
Janus Face
Israel
seems to be extremely embarrassed by those accusations. So embarrassed,
that little has been written about it.
Eitan Haber, journalist and Rabin's mythological spokesman, came out
with a column (in Hebrew only) claiming more-or-less that Gillon was just
obeying orders. Sounds suspiciously familiar from another context.
Haaretz (27.7) – an extremely nationalistic newspaper with the
very opposite image – published a uniquely confused editorial, trying to
anchor Haber's embarrassing argument to the principle of state
sovereignty. Interesting: a so-called "liberal" newspaper, committed to
undermining the State's politico-economic sovereignty in favour of
globalism, patriotically defends its legal sovereignty when Human Rights
are at stake. Not protecting Human Rights: protecting torturers and war
criminals who breach them.
Such poor arguments can almost
be forgiven, considering the intensity of Israel's shock. Imagine: on the
one hand, the country's long-cultivated, arrogant self-image as Western,
modern and just, with the implied mirror-image of the Arabs as primitive,
untrustworthy and evil: Edward Said's
Orientalism is Israel's manual. On the other hand, Israel's
growing notoriety in the West: Prime Minister Sharon is facing a war
crimes trial in Belgium for his part in the massacre of Sabra and Shatila.
Carmi Gillon, former head of Israel's security service, may be arrested in
Denmark for torture.
Haaretz (26.7) also reports that Israel's Foreign Ministry "has
begun "mapping" the criminal justice systems of European countries, trying
to identify "problematic states" where prominent officials in the Israeli
security services might face legal action because of wide-ranging local
authority to prosecute suspected human rights violations.
How can Israel cope with the
cognitive dissonance caused by this contradictory image?
Anti-Semitism
In a
way, the tension has always existed. The Jews saw themselves as God's
Chosen People, but were treated by the Christians as pariah. Imputations
of "anti-Semitism" are therefore one of the very first weapons invoked.
Sometimes it's utterly absurd.
Elderly relatives of mine were in the Netherlands several months ago, when
Israel captured a boat carrying weapons from Lebanon to Gaza. The Israeli
army organised a solemn press conference, exhibiting all the weapons in
Haifa's seaport with the captured boat in the background, like an open-air
museum. The Israeli media celebrated the occasion for weeks. The Dutch
media seems to have been less impressed. "Anti-Semites!" my relatives
said. "They did mention it, but showed pictures of a tiny dinghy!" One can
only wonder: Did Dutch television really cut out the actual boat from the
film, putting a 17th century Ruisdael dinghy instead? Or had the Israeli
propaganda-machine turned the actual dinghy into a formidable destroyer,
in my relatives' minds?
Anti-Semitism certainly exists
– on the right, on the left and in the centre. It must be fought wherever
it is found. But this does not mean that Anti-Semitism causes every
criticism of Israel. Using accusations of Anti-Semitism as a fig-leaf is
morally and politically wrong. Europeans (and the West in general) may
indeed like to find faults with Israel, to clear a bad conscience for two
millennia of dubious hospitality towards Jews, culminating in the
Holocaust. But these "special relations" between the West and Israel have
more than one side. The West may be looking for opportunities to cast
Israel as pariah, but it also treats it as a nation of Chosen People – and
is encouraged to do so by smug Israel itself.
Why can Israeli teams play –
and win – in the European Basketball League? Why can Israel participate in
– and win – the European Song Contest? Why can Israel join the European
block in the United Nations? Because Israel is in the Middle East, in
Asia, just by mistake? Did Israel – Netanyahu especially – ever reject
millions of dollars and political support given by European and,
especially, American fundamentalist Christian sects that believe that the
Jews are God's Chosen People and that once all Jews return to the Holy
Land, Jesus will come (and christianise us all, Alleluia)? If Israel
claims to be European, it cannot bargain for a Middle-Eastern discount. If
it willingly enjoys privileges as a nation of God's Chosen People, it
cannot complain when treated like a pariah. This sword is double-edged.
Hypocrisy
Fortunately,
"anti-Semitism" is not (yet?) used too often in Israel's diplomatic
discourse. Official Israel prefers to accuse the Europeans of "hypocrisy";
this term is echoed in each and every reference to the issue. In Israel's
new Book of Law, the capital vice of Hypocrisy seems to dwarf such minor
faults as Torture or War Crimes.
It's not always clear what
Israelis mean by "hypocrisy." President Katzav
(Haaretz, 26.7), for example, explained that "the Danish
government hadn't touched off an international outcry in the wake of
recent incidents in which Palestinians [...] beat Israeli soldiers to
death in a Ramallah 'lynching'." Not very convincing: the Palestinians
held responsible for the lynching have meanwhile been kidnapped by Israel
and sent to jail, not to a fjord cruise. One can hardly blame the Danes
for not arresting them.
"Diplomatic sources in
Jerusalem" quoted in
Haaretz (27.7) also say that "focusing on Gillon is
hypocritical. Denmark, said sources in the Foreign Ministry, never took
action against two former heads of organisations that conducted torture:
Yasser Arafat and Vladimir Putin."
This argument is true and
valid. Justice – nationally, and even more so internationally – is
selective. Decisions always involve political considerations, which may be
termed "hypocrisy." The West cannot treat a superpower the way it treats a
smaller country. Sometimes it's wise realpolitik (do we really want
a nuclear world war for Tibet?), sometimes it's hypocrisy informed by
political and financial interests.
The Gulf War was such a case.
Its noble cause was ostensibly to protect Kuwait's sovereignty, but was
President Bush senior truly blind to the oil-fields in the region? Why
didn't the United States attack Indonesia when it invaded East Timor, not
to mention Israel and all its occupied territories? Where was the Israeli
outcry when the US hypocritically attacked Iraq? There was none. Israel
supported Operation Desert Storm – and for pure, moral reasons, of course.
It is true: Europe and the
West are full of double-standards and hypocrisy. Dutch people are outraged
when Sharon's responsibility for the 1982 massacre of Sabra and Shatila is
compared with that of their own former Defence Minister, Joris Voorhoeve,
whose "peacekeeping" troops failed to protect Muslims in Srebenica
(Bosnia) in 1995. I wonder when Americans responsible for bombing Iraq and
the Balkans with depleted uranium will be brought to trial for
radioactively polluting the environment for decades. But hypocrisy seems
to be inherent to politics, and Israel is no exception.
In the Name of the Victims
We now
know that many of the ideals of the Enlightenment were contaminated by
Eurocentrism, by white racism, by colonialist interests and you name it.
Does this mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater and do away
with Human Rights and International Law altogether? For my part, I would
rather live in a world where some war criminals are punished and others –
alas – get away with it, than in a world where all war criminals enjoy
immunity.
So go for Sharon, Belgium. Go
for Gillon, Denmark. Go for each and every Israeli official, officer,
pilot, soldier, and secret service agent. Go for Arafat if you like, go
for Putin if you can, and don't forget your own European and American war
criminals. Make the world a hell for anyone responsible for murder
and torture.
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 & © 2001
Antiwar.com & Ran HaCohen
by the same author:
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