[GushShalom] Somber picture + a bit of hope from... opinion polls

[Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)]

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     Gush Shalom
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International release, March 2, 2003

[] Sharon's government-making portrayed by Uri Avnery
[] Hans Lebrecht on the new government, and how further
[] Who shall we blame it on, Yitzhak Laor 
[] Israeli poll on Iraq War 
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[] Pick a Card - Uri Avnery depicts Sharon

Uri Avnery
1.3.03

      Pick a card
    
     Ariel Sharon is like one of those sleight-of-hand tricksters 
you see on the pavements of European cities. They mix three 
cards before your eyes, ask you to pick on of them, turn them 
upside down and ask you to guess which one is the card you 
have chosen. You are absolutely sure that you know where 
the card is – and you are wrong. Always.
     How does the man do it? Elementary, dear Watson: he 
keeps up an incessant prattle and diverts your attention for the 
fraction of a second – and at this moment he changes the 
layout of the cards. 
     Therefore, never (but never!) pay attention to what Sharon 
says. The sole object of all his utterances is to divert your 
attention. One has to watch his hands and not avert one's 
eyes from them for a second.  
     If Sharon had been a contemporary of Voltaire, one could 
have thought that the great French philosopher meant him 
when he said: "Men use thought only to justify their wrong-
doings, and words only to conceal their thoughts."
     This has not changed since Ben-Gurion, the first patron of 
Sharon's career, wrote in his diary that Sharon is a habitual 
liar. But the word "liar" is out of place. The sleight-of-hand 
artist on the pavement is not a liar. He uses words as an 
instrument of his craft, the way a soldier uses smoke bombs.
      For three months Sharon prattled about his strong desire 
to set up a National Unity Government, in which the Labor 
Party would serve as a cornerstone. This is necessary, he 
repeated again and again, in order to allow him to set out on 
the road to peace. This slogan was the centerpiece of his 
election campaign. Many voted for him in order to have him as 
the head of a government in which Labor would be a major 
component. (Many others voted for the Shinui party, which 
also promised a "secular" government headed by Sharon and 
Labor.)
     Now everybody can see that Sharon's promises were 
nothing but a smoke-screen. At the end, Sharon has created 
exactly the government he intended to set up right from the 
beginning: a government of the radical right that will do the 
things the words were designed to hide. At most he was ready 
to imprison the Labor party in this government, shackled hand 
and foot, to act as a fig-leaf.
     Amram Mitzna has to be commended for refusing to fall 
into this trap. When Sharon tried to divert his attention by his 
prattle about peace, Mitzna demanded that he put his words 
in writing and sign them. Sharon threw him out.
     If there had been a competition for the nomination of the 
four most extreme anti-Palestinian chauvinists in Israel, the 
winners would surely have been Ariel Sharon, Effy Eytam, 
Avigdor Liberman and Tommy Lapid. And here they are, 
wonder of wonders, by sheer accident, the four senior partners 
in the new government.  (Other candidates for the title would 
have been Benny Eilon, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Olmert, 
Tsachi Hanegbi and Uzi Landau, all of them ministers in the 
new government.)
     The story does not end with the launching of the 
government. It is only starting. Witness his speech in the 
Knesset, introducing his new government to the Knesset. He 
concluded with a touching personal confession: entering the 
76th year of his life (it was the day after his birthday), he has 
no greater desire than to bring tranquility and peace to our 
people. When Sharon speaks about peace, it is time to run for 
cover.
     Now, when the cards lie again on the pavement with their 
faces up, all the commentators in Israel and the world realize 
that their guesses were wrong again. Because this is the 
most rightwing, the most nationalistic, the most extreme, the 
most war-like government Israel has ever had. If someone 
would set up a government consisting of the  French Jean-
Marie Le Pen, the Austrian Joerg Haider, the Russian 
Jirinowsky and the Dutch Fortuyn in Europe, it would have 
looked like a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals compared to this 
one. The Europeans can only incite, but Sharon and his 
partners can act. 
     This is a government of the settlers. The most prominent 
representative of the settlers, General Effy Eytam, a man so 
extreme that even the army could not stand him, got the 
ministry that is the most important for the settlers: housing. 
He will build thousands of new homes in the settlements. 
Sharon will neither "freeze" the settlements nor dismantle 
them. Quite to the contrary, the settlement campaign will get 
new impetus.
     Some people compare the settlers to the "tail wagging the 
dog", they believe that this small minority imposes its will on 
the government. That is an utterly false way of judging reality. 
In the Sharon era, the government views the settlers as its 
shock troops. The settlements are the most important weapon 
in the war against the Palestinian people.
     Also wrong are those who believe that Sharon has no 
vision. He certainly has one. And what a vision it is! He does 
indeed want to enter history as the man who realized the 
dream of generations. But this is not the dream of peace, 
about which he prattles day and night. Peace interests him as 
last year's snow. He strives for an aim that seems to him 
vastly more important: to fulfil the aim of Zionism as he 
understands it: to create a Jewish state that will comprise (at 
least) all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan 
river, and if possible without Arabs.
     When one understands the aim, the composition of the 
new government is eminently reasonable. It is custom-made. 
Sharon at the helm. The army in the hands of Shaul Mofaz, 
the most brutal Arab-fighter of them all. The police in charge of 
Tsachi Hanegby, a rowdy whose career began with pogroms 
against Arab students at the university. Eytam building 
housing units in the settlements. Liberman, himself a settler, 
responsible for the roads. The treasury, that must finance all 
this, in the hands of Netanyahu.
     In his maiden speech, Mitzna asked of Sharon to stop 
comparing himself to de Gaulle. For decades, Sharon has 
encouraged commentators at home and abroad to spread the 
legend that at any moment this tough, battle-scared general 
will turn out to be the Israeli edition of the great Frenchman 
who ceded all of Algeria to the "terrorists", while evacuating a 
million French settlers.
     Sharon – a de Gaulle? Stop listening to the prattle. Just 
look at his hands! 

[] Hans Lebrecht on the new government, and how further

THE  NEW  SHARON  GOVERNMENT:
COMBINATION  OF  FUNDAMENTALIST  CHAUVINISM,  
WAR MONGERY  AND  ANTI-SOCIAL  CAPITALISM

by Hans Lebrecht
hlebr at trendline.co.il


  "The new Sharon government is the most right-radical and 
dangerous one for Israel and the whole Middle East 
government Israel has had yet since the inauguration of the 
State of Israel 55 years ago.  Its coalition is a combination of 
fundamentalist chauvinism, war mongery and brutal 'neoliberal' 
anti-social capitalism, which will add to the 3 ½ Million 
oppressed and starving Palestinians at least 1 ½ starving 
Israeli children and more poverty stricken families".  This, the 
Knesset Member Issam Mahoul of the Hadash Front and 
General Secretary of the CP Israel stated during the plenary 
Knesset debate before the second Sharon Government was 
sworn in on late Thursday  (February 27) night.  The Knesset 
voted confidence in the new Sharon government of 24 
Ministers by a majority of 66 against 48.  Opposition came 
from the ultra-orthodox Haredi Sephardi Shas and Ashkenazi 
Thora Jew parties, and from Labor, Meretz, Hadasch and Arab 
Union benches.  The coalition is composed of Likud, Shinui 
(Change) NRP and National Union parties.

Mahoul pointed further out that Sharon in his presentation of 
his new government and its guidelines is blabbering about a 
way to peace under certain circumstances, in fact meaning 
the fullest capitulation of the Palestinian people and its 
elected leadership under the dictates of Sharon & Co.  "This 
reminds me of the American hero of freedom and democracy 
Dr. Martin Luther King, who minted the word: There is no way 
to peace, Peace itself is the way to be treaded on".  The way 
Sharon and his new coalition companions, among them 
pronounced racist-fascist elements seated on ministerial 
armchairs, the declared aim of whom is to escalate the land-
robbing settlement policy for the entire Palestinian land by 
Jewish Nationalists and transferring the Palestinians from their 
homeland, will  remove Israel farther away from peace in 
general, and in particular from economic recovery for the 
working and petty middle class masses.  This is a government 
of regional war-mongers and collaborators with the Bush war 
lords, a government which seeks to peruse the coming war 
crime against Iraq in order to lead its own criminal war of 
annihilation against the Palestinian people, Mahoul stated.  
Sharon's presented guidelines falsely promise to extract Israel 
from its present deep economic and social crisis. The means 
of it, as these guidelines predict, are ever more drastic cuts of 
expenditures on social welfare, inhuman cuts of old-age 
pensions, restrictions on unemployment payments, children 
allowances, general health funds, education etc. etc..  The 
new Finance Minister Netanyahu has already promised to 
enhance the privatization of most still existing national 
enterprises and civil services, which will deepen mass 
unemployment and poverty, while enhance profits for capitalist 
investors and restrict services for the rich only. 

The new leader of the parliamentary opposition, Labor chair 
Amram Mitzna, promised in his first appearance on the 
Knesset rostrum to lead a fighting opposition with a clear 
political alternative to the Sharon anti-peace and anti-social 
policy.  "We promise, while voting for any government step 
which would   forward peace initiatives, we shall fight any anti-
peace step, and to do all in our might to shorten as fast as 
possible the term of office of this catastrophic Sharon 
government, to replace it for a government of peace and 
prosperity for Israel", he said.  Among other proposals, Mitzna 
demanded to take steps to a clear separation between Israel 
and the Palestinian territories by speeding up the security 
fence, and withdrawing altogether from the Gaza Strip.

 "The inner-Likud exchange and allocations for ministerial 
posts points to Sharon's applied 'divert-and-rule' principle", the 
most-read Yedioth Aharonot daily remarks.  As the most 
remarkable example for this the paper points to, is the switch 
of offices between the Sharon-camp faithful hitherto treasurer 
Shalom for the Foreign Office and the Sharon rival Netanyahu 
from Foreign Office to the treasury.  Many other political 
observers point also to the fact that the incorporation of the 
"Greater Land-of-Israel" National-Religious NRP and the 
radical right National Union Party into the government coalition 
would make any attempt towards real peace steps 
impossible. This might well bring the Sharon government into 
conflict with the Bush administration's own interests in the 
region, as well as with the interests of the European Union, 
the largest trade partner of Israel.  Both these coalition parties 
have inscribed in their platforms enhancement of Jewish 
settlement in the Palestinian areas, as well as increased state 
coffers' financial assistance to settlement development.  This 
contradicts any promise for furthering peace and, with growing 
expenditures for the military cover defending those 
settlements, also turn any promise for economic recovery into 
a farce.  On top of all this, media commentators point out, that 
Sharon has appointed a police Minister who has a criminal 
record, sentenced for organizing racist hoodlum attacks upon 
Arab students, and himself having been investigated by his 
now subordinate police officers for suspicion of corruption and 
bribery. Moreover, Sharon and his sons' investigations for 
many billion-dollar corruption, money laundering and foul 
financing of election funds, are still on the table.   

In a public opinion poll, taken after the inauguration of the new 
Sharon government, 52 percent of the polled persons 
expressed their dissatisfaction with  it and its composition.  
53 percent doubted, that this government would be able to 
solve Israel's security and economic problems. 72 percent told 
the pollers that this government would not last longer than two 
years, or even less.  True, the fact that this is the 30th 
government of Israel during the 55 years of the State's 
existence,  shows that on the average no government lasted 
longer than one year and eight months.   

More than ever, the new situation demands a united struggle 
of all forces of peace and democracy, for human and civil and 
equal rights for all citizens, in order to topple as soon as 
possible this anti-peace and anti-social government and its 
policy.  This Unity of peace forces demands also from the now 
opposition Labor and Meretz parties, the leading forces in the 
large Shalom-Akhshav (Peace-Now) movement, to stop their 
rejection to join the Coalition of (29) consequent peace 
movements and organization, only because some of the 
latter's components are not to their liking, such as the 
conscientious objectors who refuse military service in the 
occupied territories, or pacifists who object to military service, 
all of whom prefer jail to partaking in oppressing another 
people. 

[] Who shall we blame it on, Yitzhak Laor

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n04/print/laor01_.html 

[] Israeli poll on Iraq War 

Ma'ariv opinion poll - Feb. 28.

Question: In the past few days, two draft resolutions were 
presented to to UN Security Council. One implies the opening 
of war against Iraq, the other - continuation of the weapons 
inspectors' work and a peaceable solution. To which 
of these two resolutions are you more inclined?

Among all Israelis (Jewish & Arab)

Opening war - 45%
Continuation of the inspectors' work - 49%
Don't know - 6%

Among the Jewish Israelis sampled :

war - 51%
inspectors - 44%


Among the Arab Israelis sampled:

war - 8%
inspectors - 75%

Veteran commentator Chemi Shalev remarked: "It seems that 
with the prolongation of the waiting period for the American 
assault on Iraq, and increasing part of the Israeli public gets 
cold feet and tend to prefer (Good Heavens!) the peaceable 
solutions and weapons inspectors advocated by the much-
defamed France. As with their attitude towards the 
Palestinians, the people seem torn between the wish for a 
peace process and the desire to 'teach the Arabs a lesson'."
 
Needless to say, the anti-war portion of the Israeli public 
opinion is very much underrepresented in the formal political 
and parliamentary system, though its voice is increasingly 
heard on the mainstream media. (On March 1, the weekly 
International News Magazine of Channel-1 Israeli TV devoted a 
considerable part of its coverage to the US anti-war 
movement, which would not have happened a few weeks ago.) 

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