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Posted on 10/27/2004 2:42:46 AM PDT by BlackJack
On the Road to Civil War
For over a quarter of a century Israeli society has allowed a cancer to grow unchecked. Only now has it begun to wake up to the danger, but it may be already too late.
Uri Avnery
Everybody in Israel is talking about the Next War. The most popular TV channel is running a whole series about it.
Not another war with the Arabs. Not the nuclear threat from Iran. Not the ongoing bloody confrontation with the Palestinians. The talk is about the coming civil war.
Only a few months ago, that would have sounded preposterous. Now, suddenly, is has become a possibility, and a very real one. Not another blown-up media sensation. Not yet another of Sharon’s political manipulations. Not just a new blackmail attempt by the settlers, but the real thing, in the flesh.
They talk about it at cabinet meetings and in the Knesset, on TV talk-shows, in editorials and the news pages. The Chief-of-Staff has publicly warned that the army may fall apart. One of the ministers says that the very existence of the State of Israel is in danger. Another minister prophesies a bloodbath like the Spanish civil war.
Quietly and not so quietly, the Shin Bet is taking precautions. The prison service has been ordered to prepare facilities for mass detentions. The army leadership is planning the call-up of 10 thousand reserve soldiers and starting to think about the steps they must take in the case of…
No, it’s a very real threat. On the face of it, it may seem to have appeared from nowhere. But whoever has eyes to see knew that it is going to happen, sooner or later.
The seeds of the civil war were sown when the first settlement was put up in the occupied territories. At the time, I told the Prime Minister in the Knesset: “You are laying a land mine. Some day you will have to dismantle it. As a former soldier, let me warn you that the dismantling of land mines is a very unpleasant job.” Since then, hundreds of mines have been laid. The minefields are being extended even now.
The process has been led by religious fundamentalists. Their declared aim, as they said then and never tire of repeating, is to drive all the Arabs out of the country that God promised us. And the land God promised us, as one of them reminded us on TV the other day, is not the “Palestine” of the British mandate, but the Promised Land - including Jordan, Lebanon and parts of Syria and Sinai. Quoting the Bible, another one declared that we have come to this country not only to inherit, but also to disinherit the others, to drive them out and take their place.
Since the then Minister of Defence, Shimon Peres, implanted the first settlement, Kedumim, in the middle of the Palestinian population on the West Bank, the settlements have spread like locusts. Every settlement has gradually stolen the lands and water of the neighboring Palestinian villages, uprooted their trees, blocked their roads and built new roads, barred to Palestinians. Almost all the settlements have spawned satellite outposts on the nearby hills.
This has never ceased, even after Sharon solemnly promised President Bush to dismantle the “outposts”. On the contrary, since then dozens of new one have sprung up, and not one has been dismantled. A recently published finding by the State Comptroller details how several government ministries actively and knowingly subverted the law in order to ensure continued clandestine government funding for settlement activities.
When we warned of the danger, we were told to relax. Only a small minority of the settlers, we were comforted, are fanatical kooks. These are indeed crazy and will forcibly resist any attempt to remove them. But that will not be a big problem, because the vast majority of Israeli citizens detest them and consider them nuttier than fruitcakes.
Most of the settlers, we were told, are not fanatics. They went there because the government presented them with expensive villas, which they could not even dream about in Israel proper. They were looking for “quality of life”. When the government tells them to move, they will take the compensation and move on.
This was a dangerous delusion. As Karl Marx observed, people’s consciousness is determined by their situation. The good Laborites who were implanted by the Labor government on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip now talk and behave like the worst followers of the late fascist rabbi Meir Kahane.
Moreover, we were told, even the weirdos recognize Israeli democracy. Nobody will raise his hands against soldiers of the Israeli army. When the government and the Knesset decide to evacuate settlements, they will obey. They may raise a ruckus and put up a show of resistance, as they did during the evacuation of the North Sinai settlements in 1982, but at the end of the day they will give in. After all, even in North Sinai not one single settler refused, in the end, to accept their compensation.
But this disdain for the settlers is no less dangerous than the disdain for the Arabs. What had been hidden all the time is now becoming clear: the settlers don’t give a damn for democracy and the institutions of the state. Their hard core spells it out: when the resolutions of the Knesset contradict the Halakha (Jewish religious law), the Halakha has priority. After all, the Knesset is just a gang of corrupt politicians. And what value have the secular laws, copied from the Goyim (Gentiles), compared to the word of God, blessed be his name?
Many settlers do not yet say so openly and pretend to be insulted when such attitudes are attributed to them, but in fact they are dragged along by the hard core that has already thrown off all the masks. They challenge not only the policy of the government, but Israeli democracy as such. They declare openly that their aim is to transform Israel from a democratic republic into a Halakhic one.
A State of Law is subject to the will of the majority, which enacts the laws and amends them as necessary. The State of the Halakha is subject to the Torah, revealed once and for all on Mount Sinai and unchangeable. Only a very small number of eminent rabbis have the authority to interpret the Halakha. That is, of course, the opposite of democracy. In any other country, these people would be called fascists. The religious coloration makes no difference.
The religious-rightist rebels are powerfully motivated. Many of them believe in most xenophobic interpretations of the Kabbala, which, state that secular Jews are really Amalekites who succeeded in infiltrating the People of Israel at the time of the exodus from Egypt. God Himself has commanded, as everyone knows, the eradication of Amalek from the face of the earth. Can there be a more perfect ideological basis for civil war?
Why has this become a threat at this point in time? It is not yet clear whether Sharon really intends to dismantle the few settlements in the Gaza Strip. But as the settlers see it, even the idea of removing one single settlement is a casus belli. It attacks everything that is holy to them. Sharon tried to convince them that it is only a ploy – to sacrifice a few small settlements in order to save all the others. In vain.
In preparation for the Great Rebellion, the settlers have unveiled their potential. The most eminent rabbis of the “Religious Zionist movement” have declared that the evacuation of a settlement is a sin against God and have called upon the soldiers to refuse orders. Hundreds of rabbis, including the rabbis of the settlements and the rabbis of the religious units in the army have joined the call.
The voice of the few opponents is being drowned out. They quote the Talmudic saying “the law of the kingdom is law”, meaning that every government has to be obeyed, much as Christians are required to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, etc. But who listens to these “moderate rabbis” now?
The conquest of the army from the inside began long ago. The “arrangement” with the “yeshivot hesder”, that serve in the army as separate units, has allowed the entry of a stable of Trojan horses into the IDF, including its officer corps. In any confrontation between their rabbis and their army commanders, the majority of the soldiers of the yeshivas will obey the rabbis.
The fact that the settlers and the Hesder Yeshiva have systematically penetrated the ranks of the officers’ corps means that they can attempt barratry, potentially even more dangerous than mutiny.
The right-wing refusal to obey orders is unlike the left-wing conscientious objection. The leftist refusal is a personal stand, the rightist refusal a collective mutiny. On the left, a few hundred refused to serve the occupation, on the right, many thousands, even tens of thousands, will obey their rabbis’ orders to refuse. As the Chief-of-Staff has warned, the army may disintegrate.
Altogether, the settlers, together with their close allies in Israel including the yeshiva students, may amount to something like half a million people, a mighty phalanx for rebellion.
As of now, the settlers are only using this threat as an instrument for blackmail and deterrence, in order to choke off any thought of evacuating settlements and territories. But if the blackmail does not do the job, the Great Rebellion is just a matter of time.
So, if I understand this, the author is arguing that the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the near east, and specifically the disputed territories, is to be considered permanent and nonreversible.
Any Israelis with an urge to kick out the Arabs in the disputed territories, however, is beyond the pale.
Well, your media already have a HUGE story to cover, with the election taking place in just a few days. From what I've seen on TV, the Likud in general and Sharon in particular may have painted themselves in a very, very difficult corner.
As for real civil war, I think it's an exaggeration. The Israelis have enough enemies outside their borders to invite chaos by full-scale civil war. But the country could be in for its biggest political crisis ever, and this time whatever the Palis do will bring fuel to the fire.
Interesting article. Good post.
ping
Yeeesh.... as if we didn't have enough on our plate to worry about...
Ping. I'm guessing this is from a source that is non-othordox...
I don't think the withdrawl from Gaza will be enough to prompt a civil war.
It will, however, scar the country. And if any future government attempts to do the same in the much larger and populated West Bank, then it could lead to an actual civil war.
I'm not so sure that would be a bad thing, because it wouldn't nessissarily be very violent.
The settlers, and their supporters, could leave the army, with their weapons, and say "we will defend ourselves".
I doubt that the State of Israel will fight, as the North did in the American Civil War, to keep the settlers (the equivilant to the South) in the country. The main difference being the North didn't want to lose the land and population of the South. Israel wants to give up the West Bank anyways, and thus wouldn't fight to keep it, just to give it away later.
Uri Avnery is a staple of the Israeli far left, one of the founders of the peace (at any cost) movement.
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But wouldn't that mean having two weaker Jewish nations where there once was a single strong one ? The settlers can take their personal weapons, but they won't have artillery guns, tanks, fighter-bombers, reconnaissance drones, all of which they'll need as they'll face an even deadlier threat (comparatively) from their Arab neighbors.
The seeds of civil war have been sown by those Israelis who've agreed to and supported partition.
Avnery is a well known old idiot. Not just an old idiot, but loony left old idiot. A Marxist, in other words. What else would an old Marxist idiot dream of, if not a revolution and a civil war?
Well given that the article is by Uri Avnery...
I ask all FReepers to pray for the safety of my son in the IDF, who is on duty in the Jordan Valley.
FRmail me to be added or removed from this Judaic/pro-Israel ping list.
WARNING: This is a high volume ping list
They showed some graffiti sprayed recently that said (in Hebrew)"We killed Rabin we'll kill Sharon"
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,136737,00.html
Thanks.
"We killed Rabin we'll kill Sharon"
Those who write graffiti like this are just murderous scum. The way to remove an elected leader is to hold another election and elect someone else, not to murder someone for his political deeds.
Should've had a barf alert warning in the title. This article is soooooo LEFT that I'm surprised it didn't have the name PERES written under it, sheesh. Yes, all evils in Israel are because of the settlers. Kill them all, and then we will have peace with those wonderful, innocent, palestinians. Yeah, right.
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