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CounterPunch
September
17, 2002
The Other Israel:
Voices
of Refusal and Dissent
by Kathleen Christison
former
CIA political analyst
A very close friend, non-Jewish, recently told
me that, although she does not sympathize with much that Israel
has done to the Palestinians in the last few months, she generally
supports Israel in the conflict because so many of her friends
are Jewish, and many of them are deeply worried about Israel's
existence in the face of Palestinian depredations. I refrained
from asking her at the time, but the question still haunts me,
just which Jews she is supporting. Are they her friends who apparently
do represent the mainstream of American Jewry these days, who
ignore Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories and think
of Palestinians only as terrorists, Israelis only as victims,
and the Palestinian intifada as another pogrom, with no root
causes other than Jew-hatred? Or are they  perhaps those Jews who send hate mail
to any who criticize the Israeli occupation and who threatened
death to the family of Adam Shapiro, a young Jewish man from
Brooklyn who daily risks his life to protect Palestinians under
Israeli siege in the West Bank? Or, at the other end of the spectrum,
are they those Jews--Israelis and Americans--who know clearly
what the occupation is, what it means to Palestinians and what
it does to Israel, and have been courageously speaking out against
the murderous policies of the Israeli government?
Editors Roane Carey, copy chief at The
Nation magazine, and Jonathan Shainin, a staffer at The New Press,
have gathered a collection of articles by over two dozen of those
clear-eyed, courageous Israelis in a new book, The
Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent. Carey also
edited The
New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid, published
a year ago, which still stands as perhaps the only accurate depiction
of the Palestinian uprising, its root causes, and the failures
of U.S. and Israeli policy that led to it. As with that earlier
book, this one is particularly well edited and, unlike many edited
collections, is uniformly well written and on point.
This is the story of Israel's war against
the Palestinian nation as told by Israelis who oppose it--who
oppose their country's oppressive policies and fear that they
are destroying not only the Palestinians but Israel itself. These
Israelis have shown themselves uniquely able to see past the
national myths that blind most Israelis to their own misguided
polices and sustain the blind faith of Israel's American friends
in another myth, that of Israel's enduring "goodness."
Beginning with a foreword by journalist and historian Tom Segev
and an introduction by former New York Times columnist
Anthony Lewis (the only non-Israeli in the collection), the book
gathers articles by 28 contributors, including novelist David
Grossman; commentator Meron Benvenisti; historians like Avi Shlaim
and Ilan Pappe; academics like Jeff Halper, Baruch Kimmerling,
Neve Gordon, and Ze'ev Sternhell; Haaretz journalists
Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, who both have a long record of reporting
on the daily reality of the occupation for Palestinians; several
military officers who have refused duty in the occupied territories;
and activists such as Uri Avnery and Gila Svirsky. Avnery, Halper,
Gordon, and several others of the authors are frequent contributors
to CounterPunch.
Just about everything you ever wanted
to know about the occupation, about Israel's efforts to consolidate
its control, about its treatment of the Palestinians, about its
long-range goals, is here, frankly laid out without excuses or
rationalization, without spin. Anthony Lewis begins with an introduction
that baldly defines Israel's policy as the permanent assertion
of control over and colonization of the occupied territories--a
policy that he says guarantees both Palestinian hatred and Israeli
insecurity. The Israeli writers take the same direct approach:
Michael Ben-Yair, a former Israeli attorney general, asserts
that after 1967 Israel "enthusiastically chose to become
a colonial society" and thus transformed itself from a moral
society to one that oppresses another people.
Tanya Reinhart, an academic and commentator,
follows with the conclusion that, 54 years after Israel's creation
and 35 years after its occupation of the territories, nothing
has changed in the Israeli polity. Two approaches compete for
predominance today, as they did in 1948, she contends. The choice
is between apartheid, which is the left's preference and was
the basis of the Oslo peace process, and the mass expulsion of
Palestinians, as occurred in 1948, which is the plan of Ariel
Sharon and the right wing. But, Reinhart says, because nations
today don't openly start wars to grab land, it has been  necessary for Israel to manufacture
a case showing that the Palestinians are unwilling to live in
peace and threaten Israel's very existence. Ehud Barak built
that case after the Camp David summit collapsed two years ago,
and conditions are now ripe for executing Sharon's plan--"the
second half of 1948," as Israel's chief of staff now openly
calls it.
Leading peace activist Jeff Halper, who
founded and heads an organization opposing Israeli demolition
of Palestinian homes, presents a detailed analysis, with maps,
of how Israel worked to assure its continued control over the
territories throughout the peace process. Israel never intended
to relinquish control voluntarily, Halper says, and so it developed
"a matrix of control." During the years of the peace
process, this system allowed Israel to hide the reality of the
occupation by lowering its military profile and relinquishing
control over the Palestinian population, while in actuality maintaining
control over the land, dominating every aspect of Palestinian
life, and portraying any Palestinian opposition as aggression
against which all repressive measures were justified to assure
Israeli security. He provides facts and figures on land confiscated,
trees uprooted, homes demolished, industrial wastes dumped, numbers
of settlers and settlements, miles of Israeli-only roads, and
dollars of U.S. funding.
Moral philosopher Adi Ophir contributes
a pointed essay on why most of the Israeli left, having anesthetized
themselves to the occupation, have been able to turn against
the Palestinians and ally themselves with the Israeli right since
the intifada began. The part of the left "that quickly slid
to the right," he says, "had never internalized the
fact that the occupation is the point of departure; that ending
the occupation is a condition of reconciliation--not vice versa."
Few Israelis, Ophir writes, ever grasped "the intensity
of the expectations" that the Oslo agreement had engendered
among Palestinians, nor the intensity of their frustration when
Oslo proved to be a vehicle not for ending but for perpetuating
the occupation regime.
Several other contributors make the same
point about Israel's obliviousness to the Palestinians and the
impact of the occupation on them. A former military officer and
physician observes that, if there are no terrorist attacks, "we
don't even remember that the Palestinians exist." In a second
article, Halper laments that "Israel is a self-contained
bubble with a self-contained and exclusively Jewish narrative."
As a result, he says, "I find it impossible to convey to
my own people, my own neighbors (good people all), what occupation
means, why they should feel responsible and resist with me."
He has despaired of "ever convincing my own people that
a just peace is the way."
These are strong indictments of Israeli
self-absorption and myopia--and of the myopia of Americans and
U.S. policymakers who follow Israel's lead unquestioningly--but
they are shared by virtually every writer in this collection.
None is very optimistic about the future. Historian Ilan Pappe
says he draws courage from past examples of Jewish solidarity
with independence and civil rights movements, and he urges Israelis
"to break the mirror that shows them a superior moral body,"
but there's little hint of optimism in his call.
In fact, the book is at once deeply discouraging
and very heartening. On the one hand, it is clear from reading
these tales of increasing Israeli violations of human and national
rights that the situation is a long way from improving, the conflict
a long way from resolution. The general tenor of discourse in
both Israel and the U.S. indicates, moreover, that these voices
still constitute only a tiny minority. On the other hand, the
very fact of this book with its numerous contributors is a welcome
sign of change perhaps coming. Here is a large enough collection
of noted Israelis that they cannot simply be dismissed as self-hating
Jews or left-wing kooks. It is encouraging that this wide array
of concerned individuals from a wide field of interests have
not only not succumbed to the disillusionment that has silenced
most of the Israeli peace camp but have begun to attract others
to their cause. The numbers of reservists refusing duty in the
West Bank and Gaza grow daily; the number of Americans desirous
of hearing the real story of the occupation grows slowly.
The book carries an undeniable authority
that should make readers take notice. Those who try to deflect
criticism of Israeli policy by crying anti-Semitism cannot credibly
do that when there are so many thoughtful Israelis who feel as
these writers do. Those who charge that criticism endangers Israel's
security, that anyone who criticizes Israel does not care whether
it survives, cannot credibly do that when the critics are Israelis
for whom Israel's survival is a vital personal interest. These
articles also put the lie to the soothing assurances of Israel's
American apologists--political commentators, Israeli supporters
throughout the country, and even policymakers--who attempt to
deflect criticism by insisting that Israel longs for peace, wants
and has long tried to give the territories to the Palestinians,
but that it is Palestinians who cannot be satisfied just with
a part of Palestine and have launched a campaign of terror to
destroy Israel.
Whether this dissent in Israel has an
impact on policy there or in the U.S. remains to be seen. One
would hope that this book itself will have an impact, although
in his introduction, Segev notes that voices of dissent are often
cynically exploited by Israeli leaders to demonstrate how good
Israel is, how often it examines its conscience, how often it
is pained by what it must do to guarantee Israel's existence.
Israelis call this "shoot and cry"; apparently, as
long as you wring your hands, anything goes. As a result, says
Segev, dissenters end up, paradoxically, facilitating the perpetuation
of the occupation and expansion of settlements. Meron Benvenisti
concludes that, no matter what influence his own and others'
dissent has and no matter when the conflict ends, no one will
win. There are never any victors in intercommunal conflicts,
he says--only losers, all nursing horrific memories, profound
hatred, and "the bitter taste of missed opportunities."
The importance of this book is that it
tells an entirely different story from the one monopolizing discourse
in the United States. Carey and Shainin write in an editors'
note that the book is an act of solidarity with those Israelis
brave enough to risk their compatriots' ostracism, as well as
a recognition of their contribution. They deserve this tribute.
There are no better spokesmen for all that is good in Jewish
humanism and Jewish thinking--for, as the editors say, "the
cause of decency." If the conflict is ever resolved, it
will be through the efforts of these activists and people like
them.
Kathleen Christison worked for 16 years as a political analyst with
the CIA, dealing first with Vietnam and then with the Middle
East for her last seven years with the Agency before resigning
in 1979. Since leaving the CIA, she has been a free-lance writer,
dealing primarily with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her
book, "Perceptions
of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy,"
was published by the University of California Press and reissued
in paperback with an update in October 2001. A second book, "The
Wound of Dispossession: Telling the Palestinian Story,"
was published in March 2002. Both Kathy and her husband Bill,
also a former CIA analyst, are regular contributors to the CounterPunch
website.
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