[GushShalom] 'Revenge of a Child', Uri Avnery (+ action update)

[Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)]

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     Gush Shalom
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[] Olive harvest update + bus details re tomorrow.
[] 'Revenge of a Child' - Uri  Avnery on Metzer killing


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[] Olive harvest update + bus details re tomorrow.

- Another day of "very last" olive picking at Enabous village, where yesterday Israeli 
activist Or Gerlitz was wounded at his head by settler violence. 
Coming back today to the same place with increased numbers (some 60 people from 
the Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem area - on a busy Friday morning), was initiated by 
Ta'ayush, with the help of Gush Shalom and RHR.

The Gush Shalom email staff was part of a group which was made to wait one and a 
half hour by the army. All the time we could see settlers near the trees, protected by 
soldiers. Only after a lot of phone calls with higher ups, press etc. came the order that 
we were allowed in. And indeed, suddenly no settlers to be seen.
Then we found out that there wasn't much to be done anymore. Most of the olives had 
already been stolen by the settlers in the past weeks. We could only pick what olives 
had been left on the trees - which involved climbing to the high branches, which were 
neglected by the lazy settlers, and engaging in acrobatics and contortions to get 
bunches of olives from the ends of swaying branches.
Our arrival enabled the owner of the grove to get into his land  for the first time in two 
years; on all earlier occasions that he tried, he found armed settlers threatening or 
ctually shooting at him. 

- Coming home we found on the answering machine the call from individual harvest 
specialist Yakov Manor (09-7670801/7678457/050-733276) for tomorrow's olive harvest:
bus from Jerusalem, at 7.30 from Gan Hapa'amon
bus from Tel-Aviv, at 8.30 from Arlosorov Railway station.

A harvest is also planned for Monday. 
For details call Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom 02-6710892
 
[] 'Revenge of a Child' - Uri  Avnery on Metzer killing

Uri Avnery
16.11.02
                               Revenge of a Child

     Since last Sunday, a question has been running around in my head and troubling 
my sleep: What induced the young Palestinian, who broke into Kibbutz Metzer, to aim 
his weapon at a mother and her two little children and kill them?
     In war one does not kill children. That is a fundamental human instinct, common to 
all peoples and all cultures. Even a Palestinian who wants to take revenge for the 
hundreds of children killed by the Israeli army should not take revenge on children. No 
moral commandment says "a child for a child". 
     The persons who do these things are not known as crazy killers, blood-thirsty from 
birth. In almost all interviews with relatives and neighbors they are described as quite 
ordinary, non-violent individuals. Many of them are not religious fanatics. Indeed, 
Sirkhan Sirkhan, the man who committed the deed in Metzer, belonged to Fatah, a 
secular movement.
     These persons belong to all social classes; some come from poor families who 
have reached the threshold of hunger, but others come from middle class families, 
university students, educated people. Their genes are not different from ours.
     So what makes them do these things? What makes other Palestinians justify 
them?
     In order to cope, one has to understand, and that does not mean to justify. Nothing 
in the world can justify a Palestinian who shoots at a child in his mother's embrace, 
just as nothing can justify an Israeli who drops a bomb on a house in which a child is 
sleeping in his bed.  As the Hebrew poet Bialik wrote a hundred years ago, after the 
Kishinev pogrom: "Even Satan has not yet invented the revenge for the blood of a little 
child."
     But without understanding, it is impossible to cope. The chiefs of the IDF have a 
simple solution: hit, hit, hit. Kill the attackers. Kill their commanders.  Kill the leaders 
of their organizations. Demolish the homes of their families and exile their relatives. 
But, wonder of wonders, these methods achieve the opposite. After the huge IDF 
bulldozer flattens the "terrorist infrastructure", destroying-killing-uprooting everything on 
its way, within days a new "infrastructure" comes into being. According to the 
announcements of the IDF itself, since operation "Protective Shield" there have been 
some fifty warnings of imminent attacks every day.
     The reason for this can be summed up in one word: rage.
     Terrible rage, that fills the soul of a human being, leaving no space for anything 
else. Rage that dominates the person's whole life, making life itself unimportant. Rage 
that wipes out all limitations, eclipses all values, breaks the chains of family and 
responsibility. Rage that a person wakes up with in the morning, goes to sleep with in 
the evening, dreams about at night. Rage that tells a person: get up, take a weapon or 
an explosive belt, go to their homes and kill, kill, kill, no matter what the 
consequences.
     An ordinary Israeli, who has never been in the Palestinian territories, cannot even 
imagine the reasons for this rage. Our media totally ignore  the events there, or 
describe them in small, sweetened doses. The average Israeli knows somehow that 
the Palestinians suffer (it's their own fault, of course), but he has no idea what's really 
happening there. It doesn't concern him, anyhow.
     Homes are demolished. A merchant, lawyer, ordinary craftsman, respected in his 
community, turns overnight into a "homeless", he and his children and grandchildren. 
Each one of them a potential suicide bomber.
     Fruit-trees are being uprooted in their thousands. For the officer, it's just a tree, an 
obstacle. For the owners, it's the blood of his heart, the heritage of his forefathers, 
years of toil, the livelihood of his family. Each one of them a potential suicide bomber.
     On a hill between the villages a gang of thugs has put up an "outpost". The army 
arrives to defend them. When the villagers come to till their fields, they are shot at. 
They are forbidden to work in all fields and groves within a one or two kilometers range, 
so that the security of the outpost will not be endangered. The peasants see from afar, 
with longing eyes, how their fruit is rotting on the trees, how their fields are being 
covered by thorns and thistles waist high, while their children have nothing to eat. 
Each one of them a potential suicide bomber.  
     People are killed. Their torn bodies lie in the streets, for everyone to see. Some of 
them are "martyrs" who chose their lot. But many others - men, women, children - are 
killed "by mistake", "accidentally", "trying to escape", "were close to the source of 
fire" - and all the hundred and one pretexts of professional spokesmen. The IDF does 
not apologize, officers and soldiers are never convicted, because "that's how things are 
in war". But each of the people killed has parents, brothers, sons, cousins. Each one 
of them a potential suicide bomber.
     Beyond these are the families living on the fringes of hunger, suffering from severe 
malnutrition. Fathers who cannot bring food to their children feel despair. Each one of 
them a potential suicide bomber.
     Hundred of thousands are kept under curfew for weeks and months on end, eight 
persons cooped up in two or three rooms, a living hell difficult to imagine, while outside 
the settlers have a ball, protected by the soldiers. A vicious circle: yesterday's 
bombers caused the curfew, the curfew creates the bombers of tomorrow.
     And beyond all these, the total humiliation which every Palestinian, without 
distinction of age, gender or social standing, experiences every moment of his life. Not 
an abstract humiliation, but an altogether concrete one. To be dependent for life and 
death on the whim of an 18-year old boy in the street and at one of the innumerable 
checkpoints that a Palestinian has to pass wherever he goes, while gangs of settlers 
pass freely and "visit" their villages, damage property, pick the olives in their groves, 
set fire to the trees. 
     An Israeli who has not seen it cannot  imagine such a life, a situation of "every 
bastard a king" and "the slave who has becomes master", a situation of curses and 
pushes at best, threats with weapons in many cases, actual shooting in some. Not to 
mention the sick on the way to dialysis, the pregnant women on the way to hospital, 
students who don't get to their classes, children who can't reach their schools. The 
youngsters who see their venerable grandfather publicly humiliated by some boy in 
uniform with a runny nose. Each one of them a potential suicide bomber.
     A normal Israeli cannot imagine all this. After all, the soldiers are nice boys, the 
sons of all of us, only yesterday they were schoolboys. But when one takes these 
nice boys and puts them in uniforms, pushes them through the military machine and 
puts them into a situation of occupation, something happens to them. Many try to 
keep their human face in impossible circumstances, many others become order-
fulfilling robots. And always, in every company, there are some disturbed people who 
flourish in this situation and do repulsive things, knowing that their officers will turn a 
blind eye or wink approvingly.
     All this does not justify the killing of children in the arms of their mother. But it 
helps to grasp why this is happening, and why this will go on happening as long as the 
occupation lasts.

Gush Shalom
pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033
info at gush-shalom.org
telefax: 03-5565804
mobile phone: 056-709603

---
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