Israel Palestine Infos
Uri Avnery
November
20. 2010
Who’s Laughing?
“A DISASTER!” the
courtiers of the King of
That was 173 years ago.
The king had suspended the liberal constitution enacted by his predecessor.
“So what,” the king
replied, “Tarts, dancers and professors I can always buy.”
This story was told me by
Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who was himself a professor of half a dozen vastly
different disciplines, from bio-chemistry to the philosophy of science. He held
many of his colleagues in profound contempt.
He told me this story
when we were talking about one professor in particular: Shlomo Avineri, who had
just agreed to serve as Director General of the Foreign Office under Minister
Yigal Alon. Alon was the author of the “Alon Plan”, which provided for the
annexation of wide stretches of occupied territory.
THIS WEEK, Avineri
published an article under the headline “Fascism? You make me laugh!”
What made him laugh? The
ridiculous (for him) argument that there exist fascist tendencies in
Avineri is a respected
professor, an expert on Hegel and Zionism. He is also a valiant warrior against
“post-Zionists” and other miscreants who criticize classical Zionism.
I guess that if in 1923
somebody had told his father in the Polish town of Bielsko that in the Bavarian
town of Munich an oddball with a funny little moustache was telling people about
his plan to become the dictator of Germany and invade Poland, he, too, would
have exclaimed: “You make me laugh!”
In those days in
At the time, these groups
were laughed at. How could anyone imagine that a civilized country, the nation
of Goethe, Schiller and Kant – and, indeed, Hegel – would hoist these crazies
into power?
Over the next few years,
many of those who had laughed found themselves in concentration camps, where
they had ample time to meditate and tell themselves: if we had acted to stop the
fascists in time, instead of laughing, this would not have happened.
ON THE day Avineri was
struggling not to laugh, another un-funny item was published.
It reported that a
delegation of “Senior Peace Now Members”, led by Director-General Yariv
Oppenheimer, had met with Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.
The occurrence of this
meeting gives rise to some questions. Even more so does its aim.
Danny Ayalon captured the
attention of the world when he summoned the Turkish ambassador and sat him on a
low sofa, while loudly explaining to the Israeli reporters present that his
intention was to humiliate
It is difficult to probe
the depth of foolishness of this infantile deed and of the man who did it. The
public humiliation of a proud nation, which holds a key position in our region,
set off to a long chain of events: Turkish public opinion turned against Israel,
a Turkish ship sailed for Gaza and its violent interception caused a world-wide
storm, Turkey is realigning itself with Iran and Syria – and the story is not
over yet. True, Ayalon did not cause all this by himself, but he definitely
deserves his share of the glory.
So how did it enter the
minds of these “Senior Peace Now Members” to meet this man of all people, and
thus bestow legitimacy on him?
And not only on him. It
could be argued that Ayalon is exposed as the village idiot, so that no amount
of legitimacy would stick to him. But behind Ayalon there looms the man who
appointed him: the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Avigdor Lieberman.
Lieberman is an
international symbol of racism, a settler and defender of settlers, the
principal assistant in Binyamin Netanyahu’s efforts to obstruct peace and
eternalize the occupation. At this very moment he is providing Netanyahu with
the pretext to object to the freeze of the settlements and torpedo the peace
negotiations with the Palestinians.
Dozens of foreign
ministers refuse to meet with Lieberman. No Arab leader agrees to shake his
hand. Egyptians loathe him, for Palestinians he is the
symbol of evil. He cannot show his face in respectable international society.
So, for heaven’s sake,
what caused the “Senior Peace Now Members” to legitimize this person?
THE TOPIC of the meeting
is even more amazing. As reported, the Peace Now people proposed “cooperation”
with the Foreign Office. It would be good for you, they told their host, to
distribute Peace Now material around the world, in order to show that
In other words: the
“Senior Peace Now Members” are prepared to serve as fig leaves for Netanyahu’s
government and for Lieberman’s Foreign Office. They offer them an alibi.
The Peace Now movement
enjoys a very positive reputation all over the world. People remember them for
the giant protest demonstration after the Sabra and Shatila massacre. The
impression is widespread that it is the sole peace movement in
This is what makes this
meeting so dangerous. Many across the world will tell themselves: if Peace Now
meets with Lieberman’s people and offers them cooperation, they can’t be so bad.
Thus, Peace Now is
serving Lieberman as Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak are serving Netanyahu. And as
Shlomo Avineri, in his time, served Yigal Alon. The King of
HOW DID Peace Now reach
this point?
I am not against the
movement. On the contrary, I appreciate very much its struggle against the
settlements. True, they did not join the boycott of the products of the
settlements which we started 12 years ago, but they are monitoring the
construction activities in the settlements and bringing them to the attention of
the world. This is an important and very laudable action.
The trouble is that the
movement, which could once call hundreds of thousands onto the streets, finds it
hard nowadays to mobilize even a few hundred.
This can be attributed to
the general collapse of the Israeli peace movement since 2000, when Ehud Barak
declared that “We Have No Partner For Peace”. But the case of Peace Now merits
special analysis.
The movement came into
being in 1978, when it seemed that Menachem Begin was dragging his feet and was
not responding positively enough to Anwar Sadat’s historic peace initiative.
Begin, a lawyer by profession and character, haggled over every little detail,
and there was a danger that the unique opportunity would be missed. The
demonstrations of the young Peace Now helped to push Begin in the right
direction.
The zenith of Peace Now’s
success was the “demonstration of the 400 thousand” after the Sabra and Shatila
massacre in the First
But this success had a
price. On the eve of the war, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, the leaders of the
Labor Party, went to see Begin and urged him to start the war. And here, lo and
behold, these two appeared as the main speakers at the Peace Now protest. It was
a deal: Peace Now gave the two a kosher certificate, and the Labor Party brought
the (then) masses of its adherents to the square.
It reminded me of the
deal made by Faust with Mephistopheles: in return for worldly success, he sold
his soul.
THE STRATEGY of Peace Now
was not altogether without logic.
This was explained by
Tzali Reshef, who was the real leader of the movement for several decades. In
1992, when Rabin deported 415 Islamic activists to the
We indulged in this
luxury, put up the tents and stayed there day and night in subzero temperatures.
(It was in those very tents that Gush Shalom was born.) Throughout the years,
Peace Now gradually adopted our positions, but always after a delay of months or
years. Thus, they belatedly adopted the two-state solution, the need to talk
with the PLO, the principle of two capitals in
This strategy would have
been legitimate and even justified – had it proved effective. But in real life,
the opposite happened: the masses left Peace Now, and the movement is now, like
all of us, engaged in a desperate rearguard battle against the rising Rightist
tide.
And unlike Professor
Avineri – I feel no inclination to laugh.