[GushShalom] Surrealistic but all too real - Avnery on price of war

[Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)]

GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 - http://www.gush-shalom.org/

[Uri Avnery analyses the eroded sensitivity of the Israeli state system noticeable even inside Israel proper. He could have 
added another surrealistic but all too real example. In Ha'aretz. April 18 appeared a short item: "'Firms win tender to fly 
out illegal aliens. Three tour companies won the tender issued by the Immigration Police for arranging flights to deport 
illegal aliens - Eshet Tours, Graber Tours and Ophir Tours. The main destinations will be Romania, Turkey, China, India, 
Ukraine, Thailand, and Nigeria. The number of aliens being expelled per year is estimated at 15,000-20,000. (Zohar 
Blumenkrantz). 
More information on this in itself hair-raising subject in today's Ha'aretz Hebrew: 
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArtPE.jhtml?itemNo=285418&contrassID=2&subContrassID=2&sbSubContrassI
D=0 ]
 

Uri Avnery
19.4.03

òáøéú áàúø 
http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/article245_heb.html

                       At Midnight, a Knock on the Door

     It was an almost unbelievable news story: in order to trim the national budget, the Ministry of Education had decided 
to dismiss hundreds of teachers. A private company got the job of delivering the bitter news to the dismissed teachers. 
Two days before Passover – one of the highpoints of the Jewish calendar, both for religious and sec
ular Jews, when 
families sit together around the table for the joyous Seder ceremony – the messengers of the compan
y spread out to do 
their job. They knocked on the doors at midnight and delivered the notices.
     Even the Israeli public, which does not get excited any more about anything, was shocked for a
 moment. How could 
such a thing happen? Couldn't they have waited until after the feast? What brutality!
     For me, it was much more than a mistake of some government office. This is a symbolic act, whi
ch reflects all that is 
wrong in today's Israel.
     First of all, the cruelty. It wasn't deliberate, of course. The Minister of Education did not 
tell the private contractor: 
hand them the notice in as painful a way as possible. The contractors, too, did not sit down and de
cide: let's do it just 
before Passover and knock on their doors in the middle of the night, like Stalin's secret police or
 our undercover soldiers 
in Nablus.
     No, nobody decided. Nobody thought about it. And that is really the most shocking part: the to
tal insensitivity.
     Even three or four years ago, this would not have been possible. Somebody would have intervene
d in time and 
shouted: "What are you doing? Are you crazy?"
     The Jews always defined themselves as "the compassionate sons of the compassionate". They beli
eved that 
compassion is a Jewish invention and quoted the old texts (such as the Sabbath injunction in the Te
n Commandments, 
ordering Jews to relieve their slaves and draft animals every seventh day.) Nietzsche, who abhorred
 pity, accused 
Judaism of creating a morality of pity.
     The new Hebrew society that was created in this country was always proud of its "mutual respon
sibility", the fact that 
nobody went hungry in our society, that the incapacitated, sick, old and unemployed were protected 
by the whole of 
society. Once, when I was asked what being a Jew meant to me in my childhood, I mentioned compassio
n, together 
with seeking justice, hating violence, striving for peace and loving education.
     Not any more. After two years of the al-Aksa intifada, the senses of Israeli society have beco
me almost completely 
blunted. The terrible things that happen daily in the occupied territories pass without mention. "C
losures" and curfews 
that last for months, hunger and thirst, sick people dying for lack of treatment, the demolition of
 homes and the uprooting 
of groves – these are "small change", routine matters. Men, women and children shot by snipers in t
heir homes and on 
the streets? Who cares. A young American woman crushed to death by a giant bulldozer while trying t
o prevent the 
demolition of a Palestinian home? So what. She deserved it, anyway. A stone-throwing Palestinian bo
y shot dead by a 
tank? Three lines in the paper. Maybe not even that.
     The callousness has spread from the occupied territories into Israel itself. Photos in the pap
er show people 
rummaging in garbage bins? Well, that's how it is. Government offices send hungry poor people to ge
t a free meal at 
private charities? Who cares.
     The new Minister of the Treasury, Binyamin Netanyahu, a man who receives 50 thousand dollars f
or a single lecture 
in the United States, has submitted an economic plan that hurts the poorest of the poor. It reduces
 monthly old-age 
allowances (to less than $300), child allowances, unemployment payments, subsidies for homes for re
tarded children 
and the elderly and the education and health budgets.
     Does the public revolt? Do masses of students take to the streets? Do the media explode in ang
er? Does the 
opposition in the Knesset (if there is such an animal) shake heaven and earth? Not at all. The Trad
e Union Federation 
(Histadrut), representing the strongest and richest workers' committees, threatens a general strike
. What else? Here and 
there a politician issues a statement, hoping to get into the headlines. Here and there a handful o
f people of conscience 
protest. Here and there a columnist writes an indignant article. And that's that. So the poor will 
be a little poorer and the 
rich a little richer. Big deal.
     When Netanyahu himself is asked about the plan, he takes to the well-established Israeli line:
 There is no alternative. 
The Israeli economy is sinking. It's all the fault of Arafat. The intifada has destroyed our econom
y, 
     And that is a new thing altogether with far-reaching implications.
     This needs an explanation: for more than five decades, Israeli society has enjoyed the sweet i
llusion that there is no 
connection at all between our policy towards the Arabs and our economic situation. This is a corner
stone of our national 
consciousness. 
     During my ten years in the Knesset, I made at least a hundred speeches on this one point. In e
conomic debates I 
pointed to the security policy and the occupation. In debates about security policy, I raised quest
ions about the 
economic price.
     Each one of these speeches aroused a furious and impatient reaction from all parts of the Hous
e. In security debates 
they shouted at me: "What has that to do with the economy? We are now speaking about terrorism!" In
 economic 
debates they shouted: "We are discussing the economy, so what are you dragging your Palestinians in
to this for!" (Only 
once in all those years, a Deputy Minister of the Treasury took me aside in the corridor and said: 
"You are the only one 
who made sense." (Not being an economist, I was flattered.) 
     This ignoring of the price of the war and the occupation has had curious results: the poorest 
people, the unemployed 
and the inhabitants of the run-down so-called "development towns" have always voted Likud. In the l
ast elections, they 
voted solidly for Sharon. They had only two demands: to screw the Arabs and to put an end to the ec
onomic crisis. They 
saw no contradiction between the two.
     But for some months now, there has been a change in public consciousness. In order to counter 
the accusation that 
the government's economic policy has caused the depression, the Sharon people have had to admit tha
t the intifada is 
the main cause, even if the worldwide crisis added to it. The intifada dealt a terrible blow to tou
rism, one of the most 
important sectors of our economy. Foreign investments, which are essential to economic growth, have
 all but stopped. 
The giant army necessary for the fight against the intifada, together with the settlers, devour a h
uge proportion of our 
GNP (many times more, per capita, than in the USA). 
     Some people believe that if the depression deepens, the "weak strata" (as the poor are called 
in Israel) will one day 
rise against the Sharon government, the masses will pour onto the streets and topple it. That may b
e too optimistic. But 
at least one can dream about the night when, at midnight, the people knock on the door of the gover
nment and hand it a 
notice of dismissal.       

--
Did you know (y)our protest was succesful? 
BBC was brought back to the Israeli screens. 
--
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