Face Facts: Israel is Losing a War and her Ethics

Face Facts: Israel is Losing a War and her Ethics
Saul Landau
Progreso Weekly, 15 March 2002

After the creation of a Jewish State in 1947, following in the wake of Nazi atrocities against Jews, some Israelis believed that Jews and
Palestinians could - indeed would have to - share the same small piece of land and thus live together in peace. Extremists, however, thought they could expel the Palestinians, or make life so miserable for them that they would have to leave. Millions of Palestinians did flee or were informally expelled but millions remained. Irresponsible heads of neighboring Arab states also played a bellicose role in the early conflict and refused to take in many of the Palestinian refugees.

Almost fifty five years after the birth of Israel, Premier Ariel Sharon retains his conviction that by increasing Palestinian suffering he can
force them to either surrender any claims to independence and sovereignty in some not too distant future - and then live in Bantustan like territories; or make their lives so uncomfortable they will leave.

Unlike the framing of the issue by pro-Israel groups here, who claim to represent American Jews, the current Middle East blood bath has nothing to do with Israeli survival or with supposed plans by Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat to drive the Jews into the sea. Quite the opposite! Sharon
has convinced his backers at home and abroad that Israel should deploy its military to accomplish the task that should have been completed in the 1940s: expel the Palestinians. In 1982, Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon tried the military ploy to attack the Palestinians in Lebanon. That maneuver cost Israel many lives and much prestige. This time, Prime Minister Sharon has insisted, the Israeli military will attain its historic goal and rid the historic territory of Palestine of Palestinians.

TV and newspaper reports, however, appear to contradict Sharon's strategy. Instead of yielding to the power of Israeli tanks blasting
away with cannons and machine guns and F-15s firing rockets at civilian targets in West Bank and Gaza cities and refugee camps, the Palestinians appear to have increased their will to resist.

The military barrage, the inability of people to work, or obtain food and water, attend schools or have access to hospitals and electricity has hardened the very people it was supposed to soften. Indeed, hundreds if not thousands of Palestinians have declared themselves ready to die, to commit suicide for their cause, and there is reason to believe that Sharon's display of naked military power has increased the number of potential suicide bombers and resistance fighters.

This fact, of course, raises the uncomfortable but logical question: what power does threatening people with death hold if they have already volunteered to die? Few Israelis, I think, would undertake certain death missions. As Israeli writer and war veteran Uri Avnery writes: "Palestinians know full well that they are fighting for their very existence; Israelis know that they are fighting for the settlements and bankrupt politicians". He refers to the settlements built in the midst of occupied Palestinian land.

The right wing Sharon's strategy not only hovers on the edge of bankruptcy, but threatens Israel's fragile sense of cohesion and its
western way of life. Israelis don't go to the movies, cafes, theater; they stay home, fearing suicide bombers. Israeli parents with kids in the military worry daily that their kids will not come home alive or in one piece. "Will it be my son's tank that hits the land mine?" And for how long must this continue?

Journalists quote Israelis who feel queasy about the images they see on TV, about what their military is doing to a civilian population. And those Israelis who do not chant slogans like "Kill all Arabs" - or think that way - have begun to have serious qualms about a "war" in which their soldiers react to stone throwing teenagers by firing missiles from jets and helicopter gun ships.

Israeli TV shows photos of blindfolded prisoners. Sharon even invited TV photographers to capture images at a Palestinian Refugee Camp of how Israelis brutalize their captives. The news shows hundreds of young to middle aged Palestinian men with their wrists locked in handcuffs,
blindfolds covering their eyes. Heavily armed Israeli troops then push them toward an "interrogation center".

Children watch their fathers and older brothers bound, blindfolded and occasionally spat on by uniformed Israelis. Reporters simply refer to these places occupied by Israeli armed forces as "refugee camps". They don't report that many of the families in these sordid locations have lived there since 1948 when the Israelis drove them from their homes.

Not all Israelis see these images positively, however. Outside of his extreme right-wing constituency that has always backed his
expel-the-Arabs stance, Sharon emerges as a dangerous man, a loose cannon.

Now, even the most uncritical supporters in Washington see Israeli behavior as a liability to US future plans, re pursuing Al Qaeda,
bombing Iraq and extending the "war against terrorism" to still other parts of the Muslim world. President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell demand that Sharon rein in his military or else.

Sharon has agreed, but before US envoy he's trying to kill as many Palestinians as possible before US rep Anthony Zinni arrives and the cease fire takes effect. The Bush crowd obliged Sharon by waiting more than a week before ordering Zinni to return. Bush had initially given Sharon the go ahead for his military assault. Now, given US plans and hopes to widen the "war against terrorism" to include Iraq and other Muslim nations, the Bush planners must try to rein in the impulsive Sharon lest they lose all support in the Muslim world for their offensive against Muslim terrorists. (It should be noted that when Bush says terrorists he really means Muslims and perhaps members of Colombia's FARC. He doesn't mean terrorist who target Cuba's Fidel Castro, for example).

But most important, Sharon's war effort against the Palestinians has neither succeeded nor heightened Sharon's popularity. According to Israeli polls, the bloody events of the last few months have caused the majority of Israelis to disapprove of Sharon's brute-force-uber-alles policies. Hundreds of veteran reserve officers have refused to serve in a campaign they see as immoral to the core. What a change from last year when Sharon won election by saying that he the tough guy could definitively win the war, and finally resolve the Palestinian issue in favor of Jewish residents.

Sharon has also miscalculated the impact of his policy to isolate Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. By demonstrating that he could virtually imprison Arafat in his own home, over the last month, he showed how truly weak the Palestinian authority is; but in the world of public opinion he also rescued a failed leader who was heading toward the scrap heap of history. Palestinians, according to their own polls, had begun to tire of Arafat's bumbling over the decades, but now, thanks to Sharon's heavy handedness, Arafat has emerged as an old man who shares the suffering of all Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli occupiers.

Israelis have paid a heavy national price for occupying Palestinian land. As the Israeli death toll mounts and as Palestinian deaths and
suffering reach new heights, the stain on Israel's image abroad spreads as well. Ads denouncing Sharon's tactics have appeared in prestigious US newspapers and each day I receive email appeals from different Jewish groups to protest against the outrageous and immoral behavior of the Israeli government.

The Sharon government appears unable to maintain its support at home or abroad. If the Labor Party pulls out of the coalition it will force new elections and, as polls indicate, Sharon is unlikely to win again. More than 1500 have died in this short war between a powerful Israeli
military and Palestinian civilians or suicide bombers and resistance fighters.

The United States, which has treated Israel as the most special of all its allies, lavishing it with aid and military equipment, now sees its
own interests in stopping Sharon's aggressive behavior and supporting the peace plan proposed by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah. Under this plan, the Arab world would recognize Israel and establish normal relations with it, in return for Israel's recognition of clear boundaries (pre 1967) and a Palestinian state. It sounds reasonable and just. But as Avnery points out: "Thirty five years of occupation and settlement have eroded Israel's ability to reason, leaving instead a mixture of arrogance and folly".

Jewish theologian Marc Ellis of Baylor University agrees. Israelis have become so warlike, he thinks, that they should "replace the Torah and Arch of the Covenant in the synagogue with a liturgical representation of a helicopter gunship". Until Israel began to demand that its soldiers act like occupiers, usurp other people's land, raze houses, assassinate individuals, there existed a unique Jewish ethic, a code of conduct that defined justice and equity for Jewish people. Thanks to Israeli policies, Ellis argues, that special conscience that has endured for millennia, has nearly vanished.

Perhaps, I think, Israelis can save their souls and get peace in their land if they stop the war, end the occupation and treat the Saudi peace plan seriously, not just as another blueprint they can circumvent as they have with all previous plans, but as a chance to save a great people's ethic, the essence of Judaism. Once Sharon and his nasty and hateful ideologues leave the seat of power, it should not take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out that Jews and Palestinians will eventually have to share this land and to do so they must establish a way of living together- in peace.

Copyright 2002 Radio Progreso