The last time I tried to bring about peace was in March 1998. After
that, I gave up. Even this last effort was not made in the
framework of an intensive, committed and activist struggle for
peace. Rather, it was like the spring rain (the malkosh, in
Hebrew), which falls long after the rainy season has passed, or
like a stray shot fired haphazardly when the battle is already
over.
Nowadays I think it is obvious that someone who is in love with his
addiction is not going to be cured. Jews and Muslims, or Israelis
and Arabs, are addicted to the conflict between them like children
with behavioral disturbances, enjoying the exaggerated and
preferential treatment bestowed upon them and basking in the acute
existential sense provided by their involvement in the conflict.
They enjoy the contemporary status of righteous victim, which is
inherent in their belief that theirs is a "no-way-out"
situation.
The conflict, with its aroma of addiction to patriotism, also
provides legitimization for cynicism and corruption, for
exploitation and extortion, for ancient fears which serve to
enslave rather than to liberate. The conflict also provides
sweeping rationalization for every failure and every blunder, for a
sense of distorted identity that flees from any genuine attempt to
grapple with its traumatic past. To try and bring a bandage to
someone who is hypnotized by his wound, and to do this by symbolic
devices (which are meant to suddenly open the heart and melt it
once and for all) - this is not the labor of logic. I'll come back
to this point later.
Meeting Real Arabs
I met the first Arab in my life when I was 14 years old. I had seen
Arabs before in TV films on Friday afternoons (for years Israel TV
has screened these folkloristic and anachronistic films, mainly
from Egypt, enjoyed rather disparagingly by many Israelis - Ed.). I
saw Arabs sweeping the streets, laboring in construction, or
working behind the grill in restaurants.
However, my meeting with real, live Arabs (that is, people with
their own personalities, history, personal taste, dreams and
suffering) took place when, as a pupil, I happened by mistake to
see the storeroom where the school cleaning workers slept. It was
behind the classroom where the girls studied home economics (while
the boys, of course, learned carpentry). I saw mattresses on the
floor, so crowded that one touched the other, a coat folded as a
pillow, clothes hanging on a nail, and windows without any window
panes at all. My adolescent understanding that Na'im and Khalil
stay in the building after school hours, lie down on these
mattresses after their work day, and go home only at weekends -
made me do something about it. I took a step which looked like a
victory for a dreamer like myself who read too much Dickens, who
doesn't surrender to the "facts," to the "reality," to the
"establishment": so I stole from the pantry a tin of biscuits
(intended for a home economics class on "making cheesecake without
baking"), hid it under my shirt and put it down secretly on one of
the mattresses in the storeroom. I was undoubtedly a leftist.
Then Rabbi Kahane (a Jewish racist, born in the USA - Ed.) arrived.
In Israeli cities, the doors of Arab workers' rooms, which had been
locked at night by their Jewish employers, were torched. My friend,
a soldier in a combat unit in Lebanon, came home once a month to
argue with me about politics instead of broadening our "sexual
experience"; checkpoints were set up at the entrance to our cities
in order to control Arab workers who crossed the Green Line every
morning searching for work; stories appeared on the inside pages of
our newspapers about the brutality of the Border Police toward
Palestinians; I sat for my matriculation (Bagrut) exam and got a
mark of nine on Sören Kierkegaard, Agnon, Beckett, the Theatre
of the Absurd, new Hebrew poetry and Crime and Punishment.
Protesting
After that, I joined the army. I had a very bad time there. I tried
to commit suicide. I was released after being categorized
alternatively as "unsuitable for military service" or "a raging
pacifist." Arabs began to knife Israelis in the street. The
Intifada began [1987]. Yitzhak Rabin gave orders to break their
hands and legs. My friend Nahum was killed in a training accident
in the army. Four of us - Adar, Orna,Yael and I - joined the Haleah
Hakibbush (Down with the Occupation) movement, and it was this
organization that changed my life, even though I saw myself at the
age of twenty as one who is sick of organizations and as an
uncompromising individualist.
During that period there were many protest organizations against
the Lebanon war. The 21st Year (Academics Against the Occupation);
Yesh Gvul (There Is a Limit - soldiers refusing to serve in Lebanon
and in the occupied territories); Dai Lakibbush (Enough of the
Occupation, a protest movement of Communist and leftist groups); Or
Adom (Red Light - Palestinians who suffered at the hands of the
police); two separate organizations of physicians and of rabbis for
human rights; Hafarperet (Mole - a youth movement), etc. But the
main thing for me was Derech Hanitzotz (Path of the Spark), and its
unofficial faction, Haleah Hakibbush.
We knew nothing of Marxism, Trotskyism or Leninism. We had yet to
learn of dialectical materialism or even of trade unionism. (After
all, none of this had been included in our matriculation
curriculum.) In this ephemeral and frighteningly serious
organization, I understood for the first time the full significance
of the number 48 [1948]. No longer was 67 [1967] the ultimate code
with which to decipher all our social, economic, national,
territorial and collective-emotional woes. The very establishment
of the State of Israel, in essence an apartheid state, is the heart
of the problem. Those who believe that a temporary error was made
by beautiful people who had to cut down trees and couldn't help the
splinters flying, miss the point. This isn't only a conflict over
land and water, or over national pride or freedom of religion. It
is the impossible mixture of everything together, merging
uncompromising utopianism with outright commercial bargaining, both
combined with territorial fears and religious incitement.
In the "Down with the Occupation" movement, we argued a lot, heard
lectures on the People's Republic of China, Nicaragua and the USSR;
prepared hundreds of protest placards, and tried to achieve
cooperation with parallel Palestinian groups. I became an
anti-Zionist, one of those who believe that injustice is inherent
in the Zionist motivation as such, and it is not a question of some
wild growth that we will soon get round to uprooting. The group's
radical-revolutionary consciousness descended in my case upon
spiritually hungry earth, on the beginnings of what had, up to now,
been an amorphous sense of justice.
It took time for me to develop a longing for the absurd, for the
ironical, for the double-entendre, for paradoxes lacking solution;
and it took time for the semantic precision, which is the "red"
substitute for a sense of humor and for sex, to tire me out. Until
this weariness took over, I was the complete political activist. I
traveled to the Erez checkpoint in the Gaza Strip, with offerings
of rice and infants' milk powder for the Palestinians; I
demonstrated opposite the offices of the Defense Ministry in Tel
Aviv against the demolition of Palestinian houses; I traveled to
the Military Court in Lydda to see the proceedings of a military
trial of Palestinians who had no citizenship; I shouted slogans
outside "Prison No. 6" to encourage young Israelis from the "There
Is a Limit" movement who were imprisoned there; I helped distribute
study materials to Palestinian pupils whose schools had been closed
down during the Intifada by the Israeli authorities; I went to
Qalqiliya to protest against the closure that prevented
Palestinians from working in Israel; I wrote articles against
administrative detention (prison without trial) of Palestinians and
lamenting the death of the child Hilmi Soussa; I edited a special
paper on the massacre by the Israeli artillery of more than one
hundred Lebanese civilians at Kufr Qana [April 1996]; I
contributed, as an artist, to an exhibition on "Thirty years of
occupation," and against the evacuation by the Tel Aviv-Jaffa
Municipality of Arabs from a Jaffa neighborhood; I prepared tens of
posters; I sprayed slogans on walls; I made innumerable telephone
calls; I got people to sign petitions and I contributed part of my
salary to the cause; I protested against the appropriation of Arab
lands in Galilee; I warned against the use of torture in Israeli
prisons; I went to Hebron University on the anniversary of the
death of Che Guevara; I took a course in Arabic in Gaza.
Righteous Anger
The fact that, for its part, the occupation showed no signs of
ending caused me deep spiritual damage. Then came the Oslo
agreement [1993] and it put an end to most of the protest
movements. The placards held aloft were now lowered and the
demonstrators went home, since from then on "everything would be
ok." In reality, these agreements don't assure most of those rights
for which the Palestinian freedom fighters and their Israeli
supporters fought, but this did not give rise to a wave of
protests. The agreements photographed well and it looked as if
things were moving in the direction of historical compromise. I was
paralyzed by my mighty disappointment with the Israeli left over
its failure to concern itself with the question - how would
Palestinian life look after the establishment of the Palestinian
Authority?
Most of the above protest campaign, in which I played a minor role
and which appeared to me to be so powerful and full of just and
even righteous anger, was for the main part a matter of
conscience-cleansing. From the moment that Yitzhak Rabin took over
the business of salving their consciences, people gurgled with the
utmost happiness and went back to business as usual. The
disappointment over the left-wing party Meretz, which two months
after joining Rabin's coalition government signed expulsion orders
against Palestinians, was startling and incapacitating. The bodies
called "left" in Israel are no less patriotic and security-oriented
than those called "right." The differences only concern nuances
over concepts regarding how best to achieve supreme security; how
the country should preserve its strength; how to achieve "newspeak"
and smooth over the language of apartheid more effectively and
without disturbance. There is no essential difference between Begin
and Rabin and Bibi and Barak, apart from the style of government
and paranoid poetry as against short military barks.
Merely a Student with a Bleeding Heart
And I, in my total war for peace, was always playing the small
parts. I couldn't represent the victims against a heartless
judicial system, because I'm not a lawyer. I couldn't provide free
medical treatment for needy children, because I'm not a doctor. I
was neither an academic nor a rabbi, nor a man who gets induction
papers from the army that he can burn in a public square in front
of a TV camera. I was merely an art student with a bleeding heart
and a clenched fist, so that my contribution to driving out the
evil was focused on preparing artistic placards, phoning people
about activities, and my own physical presence at demonstrations
and protests. I believed that one person, then another and then
another, proliferated into a popular revolt. Afterwards, as a
journalist, too, my work on political subjects didn't amount to
much, because I wrote in the cultural section about entertainment
and provided information on innovations in the contemporary white,
Western world. I was told tactfully that people were tired of the
injustice of the occupation. Next...
Now came the understanding that in the Middle East there is not
only a fundamental cleavage in interpreting the reality, but also
completely different schedules (that is, entirely different
histories) and a double conception of time and space as parallel
lines. None of these can meet. The idea of protest strikes opposite
the Defense Ministry appears pathetic in the era of the Internet.
The former power of people massing in the city square had come to
an end. The struggle for justice became a matter for a few appeals
to the Supreme Court (for instance, against the torture and illegal
imprisonment of Palestinians), and for a handful of newspaper
editors (who continued to report on prison without trial, on
closure, on the demolition of houses and deportation of
Palestinians). Whether they succeed or fail, these are struggles
from which the public is neutralized since, regardless of its
attitude, the public becomes a mere passive client.
The question of justice has been put in the hands of Arafat and
Barak, who are meant to engineer a sufferable way of life for all
of us. Anyone who ever cared about the conflict, in all its
variations and clashes, retreated in disgust. The spiral process of
disenchantment is not only the result of social apathy. It is
something principled, political, of people fed up with newspeak,
with the policy of "separation" from the Palestinians; it is the
accumulated disgust of people who saw, time and again, that they
lack the strength to prevent the brutal destruction of human life;
it is the helpless revulsion of people from their being defiled,
from what the media feeds them, from the arrogant and
self-righteous hunger for power, from the mixing together of
moralization and violence in the form of sanctimoniousness which
has spread far and wide in Israeli society.
Seeking Alternatives
There is a whole generation of young Israelis, with an ability for
principled political thinking, which rebelled against the dictates
of the social agenda, that one must take an interest in Israel's
realpolitik. They rejected this option of participation in the
discussion proposed to them as a result of their understanding of
what it is: it is a discussion which does not succeed in
extricating itself from militarism, reciprocal racism and
destruction. Accordingly, they are pushed into growing engagement
in their private, rather than their public, life. They find
alternative public activity, be it discussions on the Internet or
participating in trance parties. These enable an alternative human
comradeship, non-violence, accepting everyone without
discrimination, and the ability to communicate with others directly
and immediately.
Or they leave the State of Israel in the hope that it will be less
bad in a new country, or that what is bad there won't destroy them.
They reject the fact that the comradeship, communication and
acceptance are superficial and quite unable to stand the test of a
dynamic and diversified reality. The critics of their position
claim that they are escapists, living in an illusory balloon, and
that they fail to confront moral dilemmas. This is, of course,
true. However, contemporary Israeli society doesn't offer them any
other relevant option. In the last resort, the "escapism" is likely
to emerge as the beginning of an anti-war society, even if the
reasons are that war is irrelevant (and not unjust).
In other words, let us assume that this is a segment of the
population which is yuppie, nouveau riche, egocentric, blatantly
capitalistic, for whom national conflicts merely disturb their life
routine - and not an ideological population, fighting for freedom
and believing in human rights. Nevertheless, as a group, it is
preferable to self-righteous people who open fire and weep at the
same time (a phrase used by some Israeli circles to criticize
self-styled peaceniks in the army - Ed.), preferable to ideologues
who send other people to battle, and preferable to those who
believe in Fascism-on-the-way-to-democracy. At any rate, the
"escapists" harm nobody. Their principled refusal to accept the
ruling super-Zionist national agenda automatically makes them into
non-activists, according to prevalent concepts. The advantage to be
found in these dissident laggards is that they necessarily present
the current discussion in terms of different, new and pertinent
criteria. There is no longer only one option for Israel's
existence, namely taking up a position on a particular side of the
existing barricades. The barricade is no longer taken for granted.
Consciously or not, with their very rejection of the abnormality of
our society, they strengthen the longing for a normal civil
society.
Pessimist, Ineffective, Bored
I am one of them - helpless and bored with chewing the cud in
endless discussions on long-exhausted subjects. I don't believe
that most of those involved sincerely want to reach understanding
and solutions which, if adequate security arrangements are assured,
will enable many people to live in dignity. The immoral strength
given to the Jews in Israel to rule over the lives of Arabs
(Muslims and Christians) in Israel is such that I do not believe
that the rulers will agree to give it up. The power to rule, to
humiliate, to determine the other's fate, to search, to open, to
close, to change, to move, to prevent others from moving, to
neglect, to imprison, to free, to imprison again, to destroy, to
starve, to censor, to investigate, to accuse and so on - this is an
addictive power. It is impossible to cure addicts when they
themselves don't want to be cured. And there is certainly no point
in replacing them with other addicts of force.
The State of Israel is a nuclear power, sells arms and trains
armies, an apartheid state presenting itself as a victim fearing
for its very existence. It is so threatened by youths with stones
that it establishes an additional and degenerate judicial system,
parallel to the civil system, so as to put these youths into
prison. The State of Israel is a colonialist state, going to war to
win a few more meters, which it takes away from the owners of olive
groves and pastures. At the same time, it claims to be ready to
retreat from the territories it conquered only if exaggerated
security arrangements are assured.
The State of Israel arrests people at airports and in newspaper
offices, bans information which doesn't correspond with its own
viewpoint as master, but presents itself both as peace-loving and
as the only democracy in the Middle East. I know that this is the
state where I live. I see this. I see the Palestinian Authority
too. I am pessimistic. I am ineffective and bored and I think these
feelings aren't only my personal problem or that of similar people
of my generation. On the contrary, what we have here is a vital and
principled political problem of disintegration.
In March 1998, I went to Gaza for an Arabic course at the Ibrahim
Language School. I don't have a talent for languages and the only
sentence which remains in my memory is the first one I learned: Ana
sakna fi funduq Omar al-Mukhtar (I am staying at the Omar
al-Mukhtar Hotel). This is what we were to say if we got lost.
<