The Callused Camp
Yitzhak Laor, Ha-Ir, Tel Aviv, 20.10.2000
Two days after last Yom Kippur, Israel television's Channel Two
reported briefly of a condolence visit paid by a group of Hebrew
writers to a Nazareth family whose son had been killed by police
snipers and/or Jewish rioters from Upper Nazareth. The short piece
showed novelist A.B. Yehoshua consoling the bereaved Arab father: 'Now
you all have entered Israeli consciousness, because everyone is
already sick of Arafat and the Palestinians. Now you have entered the
consciousness.' Some condolences. This was before the helicopter
attacks on Ramallah and Gaza. Then came the publication of the
transcript of a conversation Yehoshua conducted on Dutch television
several weeks ago with Palestinian author Liana Bader (Ha-Ir,
13/10/2000) and shed light on more than the man's callused emotions.
This callousness is not just a psychological trait of an individual;
rather it is the stance of much of what is known as the "peace camp,"
or the Zionist Left. One must not identify with the suffering of the
Palestinians, because such identification positions the identifier on
one plane with Arabs, and places him in opposition to Barak's
government of horrors. It is important to note: were Bibi [Netanyahu]
or Sharon to conduct this malicious war, the calluses would recede,
and we would be hearing a different discourse, full of feelings,
pathos, and "authentic" compassion. Since one of the lessons drawn by
the Zionist left from the Lebanon War was 'not to abandon the streets
to the Left,' compassion to with the suffering - the main issue of the
peace camp for many years now - also turns into its complete opposite:
a wicked apathy to that suffering.
Another example: Two weeks ago, in the Hebrew daily Ma'ariv, a certain
literary critic, Nissim Calderon, ended an article he wrote (in which
he was mocking the 'fashion of identifying with the Other') with a
passage beginning in the following words: 'Today I know that until my
dying day I will remember the Palestinian whose arms were not
sufficient for protecting his son from the shooting." His arms were
not sufficient? To do what? Was his problem the length of his arms?
But in order not to state what this man's arms were insufficient for
(or who killed his child boy, or who did not order an investigation
into the killing, or who commanded over the operation, or how many
children have been shot since? Or whether there is an order to shoot
between the eyes, etc.) - in order to not to question such things, in
order to erase them, Calderon signed off his column with the
following unforgettable sentence: "And I will remember that he, too,
did not lose his son as a wretch, but rather as a political person -
with rights, sovereignty, and subject to criticism."
Aside from unfeeling stupidity, it is a sentence laden with lies. The
Palestinian father from the Gaza strip has no rights. Had he any
rights he would press charges against the soldiers. Nor does he have
any sovereignty (since the Oslo accords, sovereignty over all the
territories - including those under Palestinian control - was and
continues to be Israeli. The Palestinian authority receives its
authority from Israeli sovereignty.) But that this callused man
(usually investing his public activity to criticize the Left), wrote
the lines: "until my dying day," in order to say that he has criticism
of the father in whose arms the boy died, in other words as
counter-propaganda for the impact made by the pictures. Likkud
spokesmen also have such criticism, but they, at least, do not
stubbornly claim to be talking in the name of the peace camp, or the
'Left.' And this is exactly the function filled by people of this
type, Calderon or A.B. Yehoshoua: to appropriate the discourse of
critical opposition.
One can ask simple questions, such as 'Why did Barak allow Sharon to
go up on the Temple Mount?' or 'Why didn't Barak condemn the visit
after the event?' but to tell the truth, this is of no interest to
Barak's supporters on the 'left', despite the horrors he is
responsible for. They assume, usually, even if they are not conscious
racists, that there is only one central contradiction in our politics,
and this contradictions must be 'grasped' by the Palestinians as well
(and if they fail to grasp it, they are punished with rubber coated
metal bullets between the eyes): That there is only Barak or Bibi (=
Sharon). All the rest is of no significance.
If this is so, please tell us in what way is Barak better than Bibi?
In what way is he better than Bibi from the point of view of a
Palestinian child, from the point of view of a Palestinian peasant
whose olive trees were confiscated, or whose village's water was taken
to fill the swimming pool of the neighboring Jewish settlement, in
what way is he better for the Palestinians' closed off in Ramallah,
and in short: from a human being's point of view, Barak is no better
than Bibi.
But one must also respond to the colonialist mode of expression used
by Barak's dovish defenders - government minister Yuli Tamir, Prof.
Menachem Brinker, Prof. Avishai Margalit, and novelist Amos Oz: 'the
Palestinians could have obtained more from Barak than from Bibi." This
is the heart of the abscess known as: "if they give you - take. If
they strike you - run." What Barak would have "given" the
Palestinians was no better than the formula that killed the chance of
peace, that is the Beilin - Abu Mazen agreement. Remember this
formula well, even if you are "not in the mood" to "go into details."
Because of this formula, the Left was dragged into years of
disillusionment, as if peace were just around the corner, so its now
okay to mock the protestors, the demonstrations, "Women in Black," the
conscientious objectors, etc..
This formula slaughtered the Palestinians and knocked out the Israeli
Left: maximum land and a minimum number of Palestinians under Israeli
control, this is what the champions of 'territorial compromise' aimed
to achieve. This is what we are paying for now, and will pay for much
more. There is no peace with settlements in the territories. Full
stop.
Whoever was looking for an answer to the question why has the
so-called Left been preoccupied for the last several years with
"Bibi's corruption," or "the threat of Shas," [militant Mizrahi
Orthodox party] or "drafting the Orthodox into the army," can
certainly find the answer in the callused attitude exhibited toward
the horrors taking place in the territories now (since, honestly, what
is one horrific lynch compared with the killing of dozens of
demonstrators - including children - by snipers? What is Arab cruelty
compared with the "clean" aim of helicopters on demonstrators? And we
have been in this scene before, during the Intifada, the war in
Lebanon, the massive bombings of Sidon and then Beirut, and then the
agonized cry over terrorist bombings which only proved how "they are
barbaric" and "our hands are clean," etc.).
In the territories right now a war of liberation is taking place. The
Yugoslav nature of the reaction to this war is apparent in the strong
alliance - stronger than ever before - between the Jewish settlers,
the government and the army, and the radio and television inciting on
a totalitarian level (some of seniors commentators and editors would
not even have been hired even by Miloscevic's media in their worst
days). For those who haven't gotten it yet, the Oslo accords, as much
as they may have awakened our hopes, were always conceived in Israel,
including by the "Left," (just see the transcript of AB Yehoshua's on
Dutch TV) as the key to "our" security, "our" quiet, "our"
tranquility, "our peace of mind."
For years the Left demanded that the Palestinians break away from the
"refusal front" [Palestinian Leftist opposition] in order to recognize
the state of Israel. Since 1993, it has become the Israelis turn to
break away: to dismantle the settlements. The West Bank is thirsty
and unemployed, and the settlers - under the auspices of the state and
the IDF - are robbing the lands of the poor peasants, harassing, and
bothering them. Procuring territories is perceived as the Israeli
strategic aim of every one. The big bluff of the average, callused
Labor party supporter is that it is "necessary to compromise in the
middle." Where is the middle? In the middle of 'Greater Israel'?
No. In the middle of the territory they have left. This is the
pressure, which the intellectuals of the "callused camp" are helping
Barak to exert on Arafat. And really, what does the average Tel-Aviv
resident care about the lands of a poor peasant? What does he care
about a piece of land that bears a few olives, or bulgur, or thyme?
When he says, "I want to co-exist"? No. When his son, or nephew
explodes in a car bomb next to the mall.
