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Ira
Chernus
PROFESSOR OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER
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ISRAELIS SEE THEIR OWN NATION AS “NEIGHBORHOOD BULLY”
You can see Lebanon from my sister’s
backyard. She and her family and
thousands of others in northern Israel
live with a constant roar of gun fire -- mostly from Israeli cannons aiming to
kill Lebanese, occasionally from a Hezbollah shell that might land on
them.
But the real threat to Israel doesn’t come from Lebanese
rockets. The real threat comes from the
Israelis themselves -- and the rest of the world -- forgetting how and why this
war started.
Israel
does not go to war just to retrieve kidnapped soldiers. In the past, it has
been ready to ransom them by returning Palestinian and Lebanese captives that
it holds, just as the kidnappers ask. So why war now? For answers I’ve turned to Jewish writers in Israel’s top
newspaper, Ha’aretz.
Last month the two main Palestinian
factions, Hamas and Fatah,
agreed to form a united government and offer Israel a plan for permanent
peace. A Ha’aretz
columnist observed at the time that the peace offer “should have sparked a wave
of positive reactions from Jerusalem
… But Jerusalem's ear as usual is blocked to any sound that might advance the
peace process.” Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert still insists on his unilateral “convergence”
plan, which is merely “a plan to perpetuate the occupation, only under
conditions more convenient for Israel.
Moreover, at the end of the plan, if it is ever executed, even more settlers
will live in the occupied territories than live there now.”
For the Israeli government, another Ha’aretz columnist
wrote, “it is best that the Palestinians remain
extremists because then no one will ask the government of Israel to negotiate with them. How
do we ensure that the Palestinians remain radical? We simply strike at them,
over and over.” So Israel
responded to the Palestinian offer of negotiated peace with an allout assault on Gaza. That’s how and why it all began.
Now words from Jewish writers in Ha’aretz in the past week:
“The Israel Defense Forces once again
looks like the neighborhood bully. … One and only one language is spoken by Israel, the language of force. The IDF absorbed two painful blows, which were particularly
humiliating, and in their wake went into a war that is all about restoring its
lost dignity.”
“The camouflage concealing the war's real
goals was ripped off by this defense minister [Peretz],
who says what he means: ‘[Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah
is going to get it so bad that he will never forget the name Amir Peretz,’ he bragged, like a
typical bully.”
“[Prime Minister] Olmert's
cocktail of remarks has included threats (‘We'll grit
our teeth and knock them silly,’ and ‘We'll have these Hamas
leaders weeping and wailing. No one who messes with us is going to get off scot free.’")
“Lior Horev, Olmert's strategic
adviser, says: ‘Such fundamental issues as self-image and standing in the
international arena are critically challenged.’”
“Releasing prisoners will make us look like
suckers.”
“Another generation of impassioned youngsters
is growing up around us and screaming over the Internet: ‘Stick it to them.’ … On
television there still will be the same generals, with the same conception,
with the same short and limited range of strategic understanding, and they will
win the same enthusiasm from the public that just wants to ‘stick it to them.’ This trigger finger thought in terms of ‘who will stick more to whom.’"
“While we're in no hurry to get to the
negotiating table, we're eager to get to the battlefield and the killing
without delay, without taking any time to think. That deepens suspicions that
we need a war every few years, with terrifying repetition, even if afterward we
end up back in exactly the same position.”
Why need a war every few years? Turn for a moment from Ha’aretz,
often called the Hebrew equivalent of the New York Times, to the real New York
Times, where Israeli novelist Etgar Keret pulled back the curtain. Among Israeli Jews, Keret
wrote, after the attack on Lebanon
began, “there was a small gleam in almost everyone’s eyes, a kind of
unconscious breath of relief. … We long
for a real war to take the place of all those exhausting years of intifada when there was no black or white, only gray … Once
again, we’re a small country surrounded by enemies, fighting for our lives, not
a strong, occupying country forced to fight daily against a civilian
population. So is it any wonder that we’re all secretly just a tiny bit
relieved?”
The idea of Israel as a
tiny victim fighting for its life may be comforting for Israelis, but it is an
illusion. My sister and her family are obviously scared, with good reason. Some
Israelis have died, and every life is precious. But she goes to work every day
as usual. It sounds like her biggest immediate problem is her dog, who trembles
and whimpers at the continual sound of Israeli gunfire. “Massive wave of Katyushas strikes northern Israel; No injuries reported,” she
reads in the latest Ha’aretz headline.
On the other side
of the border, my brother-in-law writes, “most of the Shi'ite villages and towns that
have been pounded are destroyed. … The Israelis have continually pounded the Shi'ite Dahia neighborhood [of Beirut], a Hezbollah
stronghold, into rubble. The entire population, numbering
perhaps up to two hundred thousand people were compelled to abandon
their homes.” Well over 200 civilians
have already died, and the Israeli Air Force talks about weeks more of the
same.
The best writers
in Ha’aretz know that some day Israel must give up its bullying, and that means
giving up its illusions: the fiction
that Israel
is an innocent victim, merely responding to unprovoked aggression, and the vain
hope that brutal force can restore an insecure bully’s wounded pride. As long as that lethal brew of illusion
dominates Israel’s public
mind and mood, Israeli bombs will keep on killing in Lebanon
and Gaza, and
the victims will fight back, endangering Israeli lives too.
Ha’aretz readers have been told the bottom line truth. The
cause of this war -- and all of Israel’s
problems -- is its refusal to negotiate an end to the occupation of Palestine. “On the southern [Gaza] front we have
continued waging a dubious war with no clear objective, wrapped up with
intercessions and excuses that do not manage to hide our refusal to speak with
the Palestinians.” “There is no basic justice in
adhering to occupied territory.” “The
siege on the Hamas government is not weakening it. On
the contrary, it is boosting support for it.”
“Israel has no
option in the long run other than withdrawing from the territories and from the
occupation. … Israel's interest is for the Palestinians to live a life of plenty and
well-being.” But if this Israeli
government “sinks into the destructive, meaningless routines that characterized
its predecessors, the rest of the decade will turn into a disaster zone.”