A footnote for the future
By
Meron Benvenisti
Ha'aretz, December 13, 2001
There is a feeling that is familiar to anyone who reads accounts of
history's catastrophes - profound sorrow and impotent rage at the
myopia, arrogance, stupidity, cowardice, irrelevant considerations,
and sloppy thinking that sets leaders on the path to disaster. A
reader painfully pinches himself - the writing was on the wall, the
signs were so clear and the results were so predictable that it is
simply impossible to believe that the catastrophe was allowed to
indeed happen. And so, with the wisdom of hindsight, the reader looks
for explanations. Was there a flawed concept, a failure to lead, or a
long- term social and cultural process?
There is a similar feeling of impending tragedy and impotent outrage
over the events of the last two weeks that show how steep our slippery
slope has become. The decline is not necessarily measured by the
numbers of dead and wounded, the brutality of the closures and sieges,
or assassinations planned and "accidental." No - it is measured by the
uninhibited and shameless harnessing of the security forces to
ideological chauvinist goals that have nothing to do with "security"
and indeed sabotage it.
The rate of the slide is measured by how quickly people proud of their
free thinking and moderation, are ready to join the chorus of
propaganda, or even lead it. The efficiency of the military measures
can be argued, the legal and normative restrictions of "the war on
terror" can be suspended. But how can one explain the series of
military actions whose only purpose was to humiliate the Palestinian
collective, deny its legitimacy, and destroy its infrastructure?
Humiliating Palestinians at checkpoints is a serious matter, but might
be excusable because of the need to crack down on the movement of
terrorists. But humiliating, denouncing, and calling for the blood of
the national leader, father of their nation and symbol of their
nationhood, is another thing entirely. What pressing security need was
there in the destruction of the chairman's helicopters - piles of junk
already out of commission - if not the urgent urge to humiliate Yasser
Arafat?
What was the purpose of bombing an empty building in Ramallah, other
than knowing Arafat was nearby and someone could have the sadistic
pleasure of making him hide under his desk? Why doesn't the choir of
security experts abusing the Palestinian leader and calling for his
"removal" also include those voices who know very well that his
disappearance would create chaos that would make the current situation
look almost like paradise?
Where are the intellectuals to warn against the primitive
anthromorphology of distilling the conflict into nothing more than one
man who has been turned into a hybrid of fearsome demon and a mockable
scarecrow? What vital operational need was there in the barbaric
break- in to the Palestinian Authority's Central Bureau of Statistics,
stealing its data, if not the desire to deny the Palestinians the
tools for independent social research? And where were their Israeli
colleagues and academics who neither protested nor demanded an
explanation that went beyond the ridiculous claim of "support for
terrorist activity"?
The same claims were made about the Orient House takeover a few months
ago and the PLO archive in Beirut 20 years ago. The excuses expose the
ideological goal, not the security needs, of the Israeli government in
recent weeks - defining the Palestinian national movement and its
institutions as a terrorist movement and therefore an illegitimate
collective.
That's the real meaning of Ariel Sharon's war on "the Oslo disaster" -
it's not a war on the articles of the agreements. It is the very
recognition of the PLO as the national movement of the Palestinian
people that Sharon is still fighting.
He persuaded people who loathe violence to criticize Arafat's
leadership, and to believe there is no partner, thus harnessing them
to the "ideology" that in the Land of Israel there's only one
legitimate collective, the Jewish people. The rest are a ragtag mass
led by murdering gangsters.
Sharon hopes that getting rid of Arafat and destroying the PA will
lead to general disintegration, that the regime will be captured by
gangsters so he can say, I told you so. The Labor Party's cowardly
ministers, the confused silence of the ideological opposition on the
left, Arafat's own weak leadership, and the accumulation of anger,
hatred, and desire for revenge, could lead to Sharon's ideology coming
true, bringing down disaster on the heads of everyone here.
The involved observer can only pinch himself until it hurts, but the
sorrow and impotent anger aren't being felt in retrospect, so they are
unbearable. There's nothing left to do but express those feelings in
real time. At least, when the historian one day writes the chronicles
of the disaster, he'll be able to add a footnote in which are quoted
the lamentations of the prophets of doom about the path to disaster.
