|
Yesh Gvul (There Is a Limit!)
By William C. Carlotti, Vermont
I would love to have the comfort of Mr. Marvin Peyser’s unabashed support of Israel so that my view of the world would be constrained within the anti-Israel/ pro-Israel dichotomy with which he brands the various contributors to the pages of The Voice [Israel Needs a Partner-in-Peace, February 7]. The fact of the matter is, however, that using the "anti-Israel" or "anti-Semitic" label against those who oppose the malevolent policies and actions of the Sharonite/ Likudian zealots in the Israeli government is no more or no less than a jingoism similar to the labeling of American critics of the policies of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Wolfowitz and Pearle as "traitors."
The Sharonite/ Likudian zealots are the self-proclaimed opponents to recognizing the Palestinian state, and the self-proclaimed proponents of the establishment of armed Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. Mr. Peyser directly supports these policies under the guise of an Ehud Barak "peace plan" that Nelson Mandela has described as the creation of a "bantustan" South African-style fragmentation of Palestine; a "peace plan" which embodies Mr. Peyser’s sentiment that "A Palestinian State Would Be a Disaster for the World" [August 2, 2002]; a "peace plan" which, if implemented in accord with Mr. Peyser’s statement that "God made a covenant with Abraham and later reaffirmed this covenant with Isaac and Jacob, promising their descendants the land of Israel forever" [The Path of Implacable Hatred, June 22, 2001], would extend Israeli territory, by biblical edict, over the whole of Palestine.
In the comfort of Mr. Peyser’s dichotomy I could then brand Amnesty International as anti-Israel because it wrote, on December 18, 2002, in a letter to Shaul Mofaz, Israeli Minister of Defense: "Members of the Israeli Defense Forces who commit grave human rights violations and war crimes, such as killing children and other unarmed civilians, recklessly shooting and shelling densely populated residential areas or blowing up houses on top of people and leaving them to die under the rubble are not brought to justice and held accountable for their act."
Such a comfort would then make it possible for me to brand as anti-Israel Amnesty International’s statement that: "… conscripts and reservists who refuse to serve, precisely to avoid participating in such acts, are sent to jail for months." The refusenik soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces sent to jail include a notably high ratio of combat officers (ranking from sergeant to major) who have served with distinction (196 in jail at last count). And then I would also, in such a comfort with Mr. Peyser, be able to write that: "… Israel is a flourishing democracy, the only one in the area, and free speech is a cherished right."
Such a comfort would then also make it possible for me to brand as anti-Israel the petition of Jewish Israeli High School (Shiministim) seniors who wrote a letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that was most recently annotated with additional signers in April of 2002: "We, the undersigned, youths who grew up and were brought up in Israel, are about to be called to serve in the IDF. We protest before you against the aggressive and racist policy, pursued by the Israeli government and its army, and inform you that we do not intend to take part in the execution of this policy. We strongly resist Israel’s pounding of human rights, land expropriation, arrests, executions without trial, house demolition, closure, torture, and the prevention of health care that are only some of the crimes that the State of Israel carries out in blunt violation of international conventions it has ratified … Therefore, we will obey our conscience and refuse to take part in acts of oppression against the Palestinian people …"
Such a comfort would make it possible for me to brand as anti-Israel the statement of Bishop Desmond Tutu, who has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize: "I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when white police officers prevented us from moving about … But you know as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal (in the U.S.), and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic … I am not even anti-white, despite the madness of that group. And how did it come about that the Israeli government was collaborating with the apartheid government on security measures?"
And I would continue in my comfort to brand as anti-Israel Bishop Tutu’s statement: "My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short? Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten their collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon?"
Such a comfort would then make it possible for me to brand as anti-Israel the words of my Vermont neighbor Jules Rabin, who wrote: "The numerical disparity between Palestinian injured and Israeli injured, if we are to listen to the tolling of the bells, is far greater than the disparity between their respective deaths, on the order of 12 or 15 Palestinians for every Israeli; while the disparity in property damage, to the disadvantage of Palestinians, is incalculably large … suicide bombings perpetrated on Israeli soil by both bereaved and berserked Palestinians have on the average occurred once a week, with the destruction of a bus here, a café there … each one a lone and compact horror. But the really widespread destruction of war, the kind wrought by massive fire from tanks, helicopter gunships and planes, and by behemoth armored bulldozers, in punitive assaults that run for hours and sometimes days through wide swaths of territory, falls entirely on Palestinian soil and communities … Has Israeli statecraft, finally, become so sealed up and armored in its astounding proficiency and has the nation of Israel become so intoxicated with the seductive powers of nationhood, that memory of the events of the 1930s and '40s that once scoured our Jewish flesh can have no place whatsoever in controlling our Jewish thoughts and actions today?"
These supporters of Israel, like myself, reject the comfort of Mr. Peyser’s dichotomy that, in its pernicious simplicity, offers the subtle temptation of form without substance, enhanced by the drumbeat of 30-second soundbites and carefully crafted headlines that mask an imperial-style colonialism perpetuated in our name and in the name of the Jewish people.
From this writer’s point of view, there come times in the history of nations when events compel them to bring their actions to the test of first principles. At such times the truly patriotic citizen is forced into a searching and momentous comparison of national ideals with immediate national purposes and policies. Upon the decisions made at these crisis points depends the fate of the nation—whether it shall rise farther towards its ideals, or sink away from them. Nor can the decisions be evaded. For better or for worse, for good or for evil, for growth or decay, for advance or retreat, in harmony with national ideals or in defiance of them, the decisions must be made.
As it stands now, the triumvirate embodied in the leadership of Bush, Blair and Sharon is proceeding with knowledge, with deliberation, and with intention (including its estimates of civilian casualties that they call "collateral damage" but which under law, given the estimates, are in fact "deliberate disregard") to enact policies that are confessedly hostile—including massive assaults in the midst of civilian populations with nighttime blanket bombings. These technological nightmares will make the bombings of Hanoi look like Fourth of July firecrackers in comparison, while the actions taken under cover of the Patriot Act will make the Palmer raids of the 1920s and the McCarthyite travesty and tragedy of the 1950s look like traffic stops.
All of which are matters that are in defiance of any of the national ideals or moral imperatives that they purport to uphold.
|
|
