[Mb-civic] The US elections as open season for Israel & A One-Sided War

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Hear are two important articles by Uri Avnery, veteran Israeli journalist and peace 
activist....

The US elections as open season for Israel

By Uri Avnery

16 August 2004 "ICH" -- Once upon a time, an assistant to Levy
Eshkol, our [Israeli] late prime minister, rushed up to him and cried:
"Levy, a disaster! A drought has set in!"

"Where?" the prime minister asked anxiously, "in Texas?"

"No, here in Israel!" the man replied.

"Then there's nothing to worry about," Eshkol said dismissively.

Right from the beginning, the State of Israel has been critically
affected by events in the United States. "If America sneezes, Israel
catches cold," is the local version of the universal saying.

This is particularly true in the run-up to American elections. They can be
as important for Israel as our own, since the occupant of the White House
can influence the fate of Israel in many significant ways. But they have
an additional significance: the months before the American elections are a
kind of open season for Israel.

The basic assumption is that no candidate for the White House would
dare to provoke the American Jewish voters at election times. They are an
extremely well organized and highly motivated political bloc, ready to
donate heaps of money, which gives them political clout well beyond their
numbers.

Actually, there are now more Muslims than Jews in the United States,
but they are not organized, their motivation is weak, their willingness to
donate large amounts of money near zero. Their adherence to the
Palestinian cause, for example, cannot match the fierce loyalty of most of
the Jews to Israel. Moreover, in this the Jews are now joined by tens of
millions of evangelical Christian fundamentalists.

Israeli governments naturally time their most controversial moves to
coincide with the American elections. The more closely fought the
elections, the more attractive it is for Israeli planners and
adventurers.

The State of Israel unilaterally declared its independence in May 1948,
when Harry Truman's re-election campaign was in a critical condition.
David Ben Gurion made the decision against the advice of some of his
wisest colleagues, who warned him that the United States would oppose the
move with all its might. He bet on the inability of the American system to
do that during an election campaign.

At the time, Truman was desperately in need of money. Some Jewish
millionaires provided it. To show his gratitude, and against the express
advice of his secretary of state (George Marshall) and especially his
secretary of defence (James Forrestal), Truman immediately accorded the
new state de facto recognition. (Stalin trumped him and recognized Israel
de jure.)

Since then, this has been a repeating pattern. The Israeli government
ordered the army to attack in 1967 (starting the Six Day War) after
receiving an OK from President Lyndon Johnson, who at the time was still
hoping to be re-elected in 1968. The critical first year after that war,
when America failed to induce Israel to withdraw from the territories its
army had conquered, was, of course, an election year. Most of our present
troubles stem from that.

Only once did the calculation fail. In 1956 Ben Gurion colluded with
France and Britain against Egypt's Gamal Abd-el-Nasser. After
conquering the Sinai peninsula, Ben-Gurion declared the "Third Israeli
Kingdom". He was convinced that the Americans were preoccupied with their
election and would not interfere. He was wrong.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was standing for re-election, was
assured of a landslide majority. He did not need the Jewish vote. He was
also a man of principle. So he presented Ben- Gurion with what amounted to
an ultimatum: evacuate the Sinai or else. Four days after setting up his
"kingdom", Ben-Gurion announced its demise. But this was an exception.

Ariel Sharon, who considers himself a personal disciple of Ben-Gurion (as
does Shimon Peres), is basing his present policy on the same calculation.
President George W. Bush is fighting for his political life. He will not
dare to provoke a quarrel with Israel at this juncture. So from now until
November, Sharon can do much as he pleases.

President Bush's famous Road Map is dead. (I can hear him exclaiming:
"Road Map? What Road Map? The only map I need is of the road to the White
House!") His demand for a freeze on all building activity in the
settlements, "even for the natural increase", is becoming a joke. Sharon
has just openly flouted this by announcing plans for 600 new houses in the
Ma'aleh Adumim settlement.

Emissaries of the Security Council and the State Department (Zionist
Jews, by the way) are practically begging Sharon on their knees to
dismantle dozens of new settlements (referred to as outposts") put up
since he assumed power in 2001. Sharon has promised this to Bush many
times, in return for reversals of long-standing US policy. Sharon must be
hard put not to laugh in their faces.

However, Sharon does have a vital interest in Bush's re-election. He is
afraid of John Kerry, even if he says exactly the same as Bush on the
Israeli-Palestinian issue, and his grandfather's name was Cohen.
Experience has shown that there is no necessary correlation between what
politicians say before elections and what they do after them. That is the
other side of the election coin.

So Sharon may be induced to do something - anything at all - that will
allow Bush to claim the credit for a "historic breakthrough" in the Middle
East. Perhaps - who knows?  A week before the elections, three mobile
homes may be dismantled on some godforsaken hilltop in Samaria. Wow! 

Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist, writer and peace activist.

------
GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033  www.gush-shalom.org/

A Very One-Sided War -- Uri Avnery 

21.8.04 
     "For all I care, they can starve to death!" announced Tzahi Hanegbi,
after Palestinian prisoners declared an open-ended hunger strike against
prison conditions. Thus the Minister for Internal Security added another
memorable phrase to the lexicon of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
     Hanegbi became famous (or infamous) for the first time when, as a
student activist, he was caught on camera with his friends hunting Arab
students with bicycle chains. At the time I published a photo of him that
would not have shamed German or Polish students in the 1930s. With a small
difference: in the 30s the Jews were the pursued, now they were the
pursuers.
     In the meantime, Hanegbi has changed like many young radicals - he
has turned into an unrestrained careerist. He has become a minister,
wearing elegant suits even on hot summer days and walking with the
typical, self-important gait of a cabinet minister. Now he even supports
Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan, much to the distress of his mother,
Geula Cohen, an extreme-right militant who has not changed her spots.
     But beneath the minister's suit and the statesman's robe, Tzahi has
remained Tzahi, as evidenced by the total inhumanity of his statement
about the prisoners for whose well-being he is officially responsible. His
influence is not limited to words: the current prison crisis was caused by
his appointment of a new Director of Prisons, who immediately proceeded to
create intolerable conditions for the Palestinian prisoners.
      Let's not dwell too much on the personality of the honorable 
minister. It is much more important to turn our thoughts to the strike
itself.
     Its basic cause is a particularly Israeli invention: the one-sided war.
     The IDF generals declare again and again that we are at war. The
state of war permits them to commit acts like "targeted eliminations",
which, in any other situation, would be called murder. But in a war, one
kills the enemy without court proceedings. And in general, the killing and
wounding of people, demolition of homes, uprooting of plantations and all
the other acts of the occupiers that have become daily occurrences are
being justified by the state of war. 
     But this is a very special war, because it confers rights only on the
fighters of one side. On the other side, there is no war, no fighters, and
no rights of fighters, but only criminals, terrorists, murderers. 
     Why?
     Once there was a clear distinction: one was a soldier if one wore a
uniform; if one did not wear a uniform, one was a criminal. Soldiers of an
invading army were allowed to execute local inhabitants who fired at them
on the spot. But in the middle of the 20th century, things changed. A
worldwide consensus accepted that the members of the French resistance and
the Russian and Yugoslav partisans and their like were fighters and
therefore entitled to the international protection accorded to legitimate
fighters. International conventions and the rules of war were amended
accordingly.
      So what is the difference between soldiers and terrorists? Well, the
occupiers say, there is a tremendous difference: Soldiers fight soldiers,
terrorists hurt innocent civilians.
     Really? The pilot who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and 
killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians - was he a soldier or just
a criminal, a terrorist? And what were the pilots who destroyed whole
cities, like Hamburg and Dresden, when there was no valid military
necessity anymore? The declared aim was to break the will of the German
civilian population and compel them to capitulate. Were the commanders of
the British and American air forces terrorists (as the Nazis indeed called
them, inventing the term "Terrorflieger")?
     What is the difference between an American pilot who drops a bomb on
a Baghdad market and the Iraqi terrorist, who lays a bomb in the same
market? The fact that the pilot has a uniform? Or that he drops his bomb
from a distance and does not see the children he is killing?
       I am not saying this, of course, to justify the killing of 
civilians. Indeed, I strongly condemn it, whoever the perpetrators may be
- soldiers, guerrillas, pilots above or terrorists below. One law for all.
     Soldiers who are captured become prisoners-of-war, entitled to many
rights guaranteed by international conventions. A particular international
organization - the Red Cross - oversees this. P0Ws are not held for
punishment or revenge, but solely in order to prevent them from returning
to the battlefield. They are released when peace comes. 
     Underground fighters captured by their enemies are often tried as
criminals. Not only are they not entitled to the rights of POWs, but in
Israel their prison conditions are even worse than the inhuman conditions
inflicted on Israeli criminals. The American have learned from us, and
President George W. Bush has been sending Afghan fighters to an infamous
prison set up for them in Guantanamo, where they are deprived of all human
rights, both the rights of POWs and the rights of ordinary criminal
prisoners.
     Years ago, when the Hebrew underground organizations were fighting
the British regime in Palestine, we demanded that our prisoners be
accorded the rights of POWs. The British did not accept this, but in
practice prisoners were generally treated as if they were POWs. The
captured underground fighters could enrol for correspondence courses, and
in fact, many of them completed their studies in law and other professions
in British prison camps.
     One of the prisoners at that time was Geula Cohen, Tzahi Hanegbi's
mother. It would be interesting to know how she and her Stern Group
comrades would have reacted if a British police commander had declared
that he didn't give a damn if she died in prison. Probably they would have
tried to assassinate him. Fortunately, the British behaved otherwise. They
even brought her to a hospital for treatment (where she promptly escaped
with the help of Arab villagers.)
     Towards the Irish underground fighters, the British took a different
line. When they declared a hunger strike, Margaret Thatcher let them
starve to death. This episode, on top of her attitude towards workers and
the needy, contributed to her image as an inhuman person.
     A humane treatment of political prisoners is preferable even for
purely pragmatic reasons. Ex-prisoners are now filling the upper ranks of
the Palestinian Authority. Men who have spent 10, 15 and even 20 years in
Israeli jails have become political leaders, ministers and mayors.  They
speak fluent Hebrew and know Israel well. Almost all of them now belong to
the moderate Palestinian camp, advocating co-existence between Israel and
a Palestinian state. They also head the forces seeking democracy and
reforms in the Palestinian Authority. The fair treatment they got at the
time by the prison personnel must have contributed to this.
     But for me, the main thing is that the State of Israel should not
look like Tzahi Hanegbi and his ilk. It is important for me that human
beings - Palestinians as much as Israelis - should not starve to death in
Israeli prisons. It is important for me that prisoners - whether Israelis
or Palestinians - should be accorded humane conditions.
     If Tzahi Hanegbi were in prison, I would be demanding the same even
for him. 

--



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