Uri Avnery
3.5.08
"…Namely the State
of
EVERY TIME I hear the voice of David Ben-Gurion uttering the words
"Therefore we are gathered here…"
I think of Issar Barsky, a charming youngster, the little brother of a girl-friend
of mine.
The last time we met was in front of the dining hall of Kibbutz Hulda, on Friday, May 14, 1948.
In the coming night my company was to attack al-Qubab,
an Arab village on the road to
Frankly, none of us was very interested in speeches by politicians in Tel
Aviv. The city seemed so far away. The state, we knew, was here with us. If the
Arabs were to win, there would be no state and no us. If we won, there would be
a state. We were young and self-confident, and did not doubt for a moment that
we would win.
But there was one detail that I was really curious about: what was the
new state to be called?
So I hastened to the dining hall. Ben-Gurion's unmistakable voice was blaring from the radio. When he reached
the words "…namely the State of Israel" I had had enough and left.
Outside I came across Issar. He was in another
company, which was to attack another village that night. I told him about the
name of the state and said "take care of yourself!"
Some days later he was killed. So I remember him as he was then: a boy of
THE CLOSER we come to the
grandiose 60th anniversary festivities, the more I am troubled by the question:
if Issar were to open his eyes and see us, still a
boy of 19, what would he think of the state that was officially established on
that day?
He would see a state that has developed beyond his wildest dreams. From a
small community of 635,000 souls (more than 6000 of whom would die with him in
that war) we have grown to more than seven million. The two great miracles we
have wrought - the revival of the Hebrew language and the institution of Israeli
democracy - continue to be a reality. Our economy is strong and in some fields
- such a hi-tech - we are in the world super-league. Issar
would be excited and proud.
But he would also feel that something had gone wrong in our society. The
Kibbutz where we put up our little bivouac tents that day has become an
economic enterprise, like any other. The social solidarity, of which we were so
proud, has collapsed. Masses of adults and children live below the poverty
line, old people, the sick and the unemployed are left to fend for themselves.
The gap between rich and poor is one of the widest in the developed world. And our
society, that once raised the banner of equality and justice, just clucks its collective
tongue and moves on to other matters.
Most of all he would be shocked to discover that the brutal war, which killed
him and wounded me, together with thousands of others, is still going on at full
blast. It determines the entire life of the nation. It fills the first pages of
the newspapers and heads the news bulletins.
That our army, the army that really was "we", has become
something quite different, an army whose main occupation us to oppress another
people.
THAT NIGHT we indeed attacked al-Qubab. When we
entered the village, it was already deserted. I broke into one of the homes.
The pot was still warm, food was on the table. On one of the shelves I found
some photos: a man who had obviously just combed his hair, a village woman, two
small children. I still have them with me.
I assume that the village which was attacked by Issar
that night presented a similar picture. The villagers - men, women, children -
fled at the last moment, leaving their whole life behind them.
There is no escape from the historic fact:
And so the war goes on.
WITH THE 60th Independence Day
approaching, a committee sat down to choose an emblem for the event. The one they
came up with looks like something for Coca
Cola or the Eurovision song contest.
The real emblem of the state is quite different, and no committee of
bureaucrats has had to invent it. It is fixed to the ground and can be seen
from afar: The Wall. The Separation Wall.
Separation between whom, between what?
Apparently between Israeli Kfar Sava and neighboring
Palestinian Qalqiliyah, between Modi'in
Illit and Bil'in. Between
the State of Israel (and some more grabbed land) and the
In the fevered imagination of those who believe in the "clash of
civilizations", whether George Bush or Osama Bin-Laden - the Wall is the
border between the two titans of history, Western civilization and Islamic
civilization, two mortal enemies fighting a war of Gog and Magog.
Our Wall has become the front-line between these two worlds.
The wall is not just a structure of concrete and wire. More than anything
else, the wall - like every such wall - is an ideological statement, a
declaration of intent, a mental reality. The builders declare that they belong,
body and soul, to one camp, the Western one, and that on the other side of the
wall there begins the opposing world, the enemy, the masses of Arabs and other
Muslims.
When was that decided? Who made the decision? How?
102 years ago, Theodor Herzl wrote in his ground-breaking oeuvre, Der Judenstaat, which gave birth
to the Zionist movement, a sentence fraught with significance: "For Europe
we shall constitute there [in
Thus, in 22 German words, the world-view of Zionism, and our place in it,
was laid down. And now, after a delay of four generations, the physical wall is
following the path of the mental one.
The picture is bright and clear: We are essentially a part of Europe (like
North America), a part of culture, which is entirely European. On the other
side: Asia, a barbaric continent, empty of culture, including the Muslim and
Arab world.
One can understand Herzl's world view. He was a man of the 19th century, and
he wrote his treatise when white Imperialism was at its zenith. He admired it
with all his soul. He endeavored (in vain) to arrange a meeting with Cecil
Rhodes, the man who symbolized British colonialism. He approached Joseph
Chamberlain, the British Colonial Secretary, who offered him Uganda, then a
British colony. At the same time, he also admired the German Kaiser and his so
well-ordered Reich, which carried out a horrible genocide in South-West Africa
in the year of Herzl's death.
Herzl's maxim did not remain an abstract thought. The Zionist movement followed
it from the first moment on, and the
State of Israel continues to do so to this very day.
COULD IT have been different? Could we have become a part of the region? Could
we have become a kind of cultural Switzerland, an independent island between
East and West, bridging and mediating between the two?
One month before the outbreak of the 1948 war, seven months before the State
of Israel was officially founded, I published a booklet entitled "War or
Peace in the Semitic Region". It began with the words:
"When our Zionist
fathers decided to set up a "safe haven" in Palestine, they had the
choice between two paths:
"They could appear in
West Asia as a European conqueror, who sees himself as a bridgehead of the
'white' race and master of the 'natives', like the Spanish conquistadores and
the Anglo-Saxon colonialists in America. Like, in their time, the Crusaders in
Palestine.
"The other path was to
see themselves as an Asian people returning to its homeland - seeing themselves
as an heir to the political and cultural tradition of the Semitic region."
The history of this country has seen dozens of invasions. They can be divided
into two main categories.
There were the invaders who came from the West, such as the Philistines, the
Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, Napoleon and the British. Such an invasion
establishes a bridgehead, and its mental outlook is that of a bridgehead. The
region beyond is hostile territory, its inhabitants enemies who have to be
oppressed or destroyed. In the end, all of these invaders were expelled.
And there were the invaders who came from the East, such as the Emorites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians and the
Arabs. They conquered the land and became part of it, influenced its culture and
were influenced by it, and in the end struck roots.
The ancient Israelites were of the second category. Even if there is some
doubt about the Exodus from Egypt as described in the Books of Moses, or
the Conquest of Canaan as described in the Book of Joshua, it is
reasonable to assume that they were tribes that came in from the desert and
infiltrated between the fortified Canaanite towns, which they could not conquer,
as indeed described in Judges 1.
The Zionists, on the other hand, were of the first category. They brought
with them the world-view of a bridgehead, a vanguard of Europe. This world-view
gave birth to the Wall as a national symbol. It has to be changed entirely.
ONE OF our national peculiarities is a form of discussion where all the
participants, whether from the Left or from the Right, use the clinching
argument: "If we don't do this and this, the state will cease to
exist!" Can one imagine such an argument in France, Britain or the USA?
This is a symptom of "Crusader" anxiety. Even though the
Crusaders stayed in this country for almost 200 years and produced eight
generations of "natives", they were never really sure of their
continued existence here.
I am not worried about the existence of the State of Israel. It will
exist as long as states exist. The question is:
What kind of state will it be?
A state of permanent war, the terror of its neighbors, where violence pervades
all spheres of life, where the rich flourish and the poor live in misery; a
state that will be deserted by the best of its children?
Or a state that lives in peace with its neighbors, to their mutual benefit;
a modern society with equal rights for all its citizens and without poverty; a
state that invests its resources in science and culture, industry and the
environment; where future generations will want to live; a source of pride for
all its citizens?
That can be our objective for the next 60 years. I think this is what Issar would have wanted, too.