Uri Avnery
27.9.08
It Can Happen Here!
THE GERMAN name Sternhell means bright as the stars. The name fits: the
positions of Professor Ze'ev Sternhell
indeed stand out sharply against the darkness of the sky. He warns against
Israeli fascism. This week, Israeli fascists laid a pipe-bomb at the entrance
of his apartment and he was lightly injured.
The choice of victim
seems surprising at first. But the perpetrators knew what they were doing.
They did not attack the
activists who demonstrate every week against the Separation Wall in Bil'in and Na'alin. They did not
attack the leftists who mobilize every year - this year, too - to help the
Palestinians pick their olives near the most dangerous settlements. They did not
attack the "Women in Black" who demonstrate every Friday, or the
women of "Machsom Watch", who keep an eye
on events at the army checkpoints. They attacked a person whose entire activity
is in the academic field.
The struggles on the
ground are essential. But their main purpose is to influence public opinion.
That is the main battlefield, and there the man of letters has an important part
to play.
On this battlefield, two visions
confront each other, two visions that are as far apart as the West is from the
East. On the one side: An enlightened
Ze'ev Sternhell is one of
the outstanding guides of the enlightened vision. His positions are bright as
the stars, resolute and incisive. Not a surprising target for the Neo-Nazi pipe-dreamers
and pipe-bombers.
THE FIELD of Sternhell's academic expertise is the origins of Fascism, a
subject that has occupied me all my life. The reasons for our interest are
similar: Nazism left an indelible stamp on our childhood and fate. As a child, I
witnessed the rise of Nazism in
"He who has been scalded
by boiling water is cautious even with cold water," a Hebrew adage goes. Those
who experienced Fascism bursting into their lives in childhood are sensitive to
the slightest symptom of the outbreak of this disease. In 1961 I wrote a book
called "The Swastika" (which exists only in Hebrew), in which I tried
to crack the code of the roots of Nazism. At the end of the book I posed the
question: Can it happen here? My unequivocal answer was: Yes, indeed.
Because of this, I am
sensitive to every warning sign in our society. As a journalist and magazine
editor, I shone the searchlight on all such signs. As a political activist, I fought
against them in the Knesset and in the street.
Sternhell, on his part, after a military career, is a
pure academic. He uses the instruments of academia: research, teaching and
publication. He strives for exact definitions, without seeking popularity or
avoiding provocation. In one of his articles years ago he asserted that the
violent response of the Palestinians to the settlements is quite natural. By
this he attracted the lasting wrath of the settlers and the extreme Right,
which made an effort to prevent him from receiving the Israel Prize,
Now the pipe-bombs are
speaking.
WHO LAID the bomb? A lone individual? A group? A new underground? The terrorists from the
settlements? That's for the police and the Shin-Bet to find out.
From the public point of
view, the matter is much more simple: it is quite
clear in which flowerbed these poisonous weeds grow, which ideology serves as fertilizer,
and who is spreading it.
Israeli Fascism is alive
and kicking. It is growing in the flowerbed that produced the various
religious-nationalist underground groups of the past: the group that tried to
bomb the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount, the underground that tried to
assassinate the Palestinian mayors, the "Kach"
gang, the perpetrator of the Hebron massacre Baruch Goldstein, the murderer of
peace activist Emil Gruenzweig, the murderer of
Yitzhak Rabin and all the underground groups that were uncovered at an early
stage before their deeds could bring them to public notice.
These acts cannot simply
be attributed to individuals or "rogue groups". There exists a definite
fascist fringe at the margin of
This sector is
concentrated in the "ideological" settlements. That does not mean that
all settlers are fascists. But most fascists are settlers. They are
concentrated in certain well-known settlements. By accident or not by accident,
all these settlements are located in the heart of the
DURING THE last months,
there has been a marked increase in the number of incidents in which settlers attack
Palestinians, soldiers, policemen and "leftists".
These acts are committed
openly, in order to terrorize and deter. Settlers riot in the Palestinian
villages whose lands they covet, or for revenge. These are "pogroms"
in the classical sense of the term: riots by an armed mob intoxicated with hatred
against helpless people, while the police and the army look on. The Pogromchiks destroy, injure and kill. These days it is
happening more and more frequently.
In the few cases when the
army or the police intervene, they do not turn on the settlers, but on the
Israeli peace activists who come to help the beleaguered Palestinian farmers.
The spokesmen of the Security Establishment and the commentators try to sound
balanced and speak about "rioters from the Left and the Right". That
is a false even handedness, which itself belongs to the Fascist arsenal of
tricks.
The Settlers' pogroms are
violent by nature, both in thought and deed, while the peace activists are
non-violent on principle. If there is violence, it comes from the army and the
border police, the pretext being that local boys have been throwing stones.
What is not mentioned is that the well-protected soldiers and border policemen pursue
the Palestinian demonstrators into the alleys of their villages.
The "boldness"
of the extreme right-wing thugs - or "rightist activists" as the
media insist on calling them courteously - is increasing by the day. They do
whatever they want, knowing full well that no harm will befall them. The police
do not interfere, since anyhow the courts will not mete out meaningful
punishment.
ANYBODY WHO knows the
history of Nazism is familiar with the shameful role played by the courts and
the other law-enforcement agencies in the German republic vis-à-vis the
law-breakers whose declared purpose was to put an end to the democratic system.
The judges imposed ludicrously light penalties on Nazi rioters, whom they
considered "misguided patriots", while treating Communist rioters as foreign
agents and traitors.
Now we are experiencing
this phenomenon here. The law-breaking settlers get symbolic sentences, while
Palestinians who are accused of much lesser offenses get harsh penalties.
Nowadays, even a settler who sets his dog on a company commander goes free, as does
a settler who breaks the bones of a battalion chief.
The army's internal justice system can only be
called monstrous: the commander who held up a bleeding woman in labor at a checkpoint causing
the death of the child, was punished with two weeks detention. The commander
who told a soldier to shoot a handcuffed Palestinian prisoner in the leg was
"transferred", meaning that this war criminal can serve in another unit.
DOES THE increase in the
number and severity of such incidents testify to the increasing power of
Israeli Fascism? At first sight, one might get this impression.
However, on second
thought I think that the opposite is true.
The fanatical settlers know
that they have lost the support of public opinion in
Much as the Nazis hated
the German republic, these fanatics are starting to hate the State of Israel. And with good reason. They see that they have no place in a
national consensus that is solidifying around the concept of "Two States
for Two peoples", whether it is being accepted for negative reasons, such
as demographic fears or the burdens of occupation, or for positive reasons,
such as the hope for peace and prosperity after the withdrawal from the
occupied territories.
The discussion about the
borders is still going on, but the majority sees the Separation Wall as the
future border. (As we made clear right from the beginning, the wall was not really
being constructed in order to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers, as was
claimed, but as a future border between the two states.)
The Israeli establishment
wants to annex the lands between the wall and the Green Line, and is prepared
to give the Palestinians Israeli areas in return. What does this tell the
settlers?
Most settlers live in
settlements near the Green Line, which according to this concept will be joined
to
The great majority of the
extreme settlers, those motivated by a religious-Fascist ideology, live in the
small settlements east of the wall, which must be dismantled when peace comes.
This is a small minority even among the settlers, supported by a radical
minority on the extreme right. That is where violent Israeli Fascism is
growing.
ONCE UPON a time it
seemed that a Red Line ran parallel to the Green Line - that
nationalist-religious terrorism would hurt "only" Palestinians, not
Israelis. Even Rabbi Meir Kahane,
a born fascist, said so.
That illusion was shattered
with the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. Israeli Fascism was found to be like any
other classical Fascism, which thunders against the "foreign enemy"
but directs its terrorism against the "enemy within". The pipe-bomb
at the entrance of Sternhell's home must turn on all
the red lights, as it joins the murder of Emil Gruenzweig
and the threats on the lives of other conspicuous peace activists.
The decisive battle, the
battle for
I do not believe that
Fascism will win in our society. I believe in the strength of