[GushShalom] WARNING: Sharon - wounded animal

[Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)]

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

[] Sharon - wounded animal 
[] The Golem Turns on his Creator 
[] Sharon's doomed gamble
    Adam Keller review's the last months in 'The Other Israel'  
    new issue out this week; free sample option 

[The settlers took over Sharon's Likud powerbase; the PM remains as a 
lame duck. With so many still prolonging the "Sharon - Magician" / 
"Sharon - Israeli de Gaulle" myths we decided already now to spread the 
following assessment, which will appear as ad in our fixed corner Friday 
Ha'aretz. p.2. You find here also the comment of Uri Avnery, and the 
announcement of Adam Keller's analysis of the last months.]

[] Sharon - wounded animal 

Hebrew at request &  soon at the site
òáøéú òì ôé á÷ùä àå á÷øåá áàúø

WARNING!

Sharon is now a wounded animal.
A wounded animal is a dangerous animal.

His Plan is dead. He is incapable of getting another plan adopted.
He is powerless to evacuate even one single settlement.

His sole way out is to embark on spectacular military operations.
There is no limit to the bloody deeds he may now launch in order to 
survive.
					~~~


[] The Golem Turns on his Creator 

Hebrew at request &  soon at the site
òáøéú òì ôé á÷ùä àå á÷øåá áàúø

Uri Avnery
4.5.04
		The Golem Turns on his Creator

     In Jewish legend, the Golem was a man-made creature endowed with 
enormous strength. Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, also know as the Maharal, 
created him of clay and gave him life by putting a piece of paper with 
the secret name of God under his tongue.
     The Golem helped the Jews defend themselves against anti-Semitic 
rioters, but one day he turned against his creator. He sowed ruin and 
destruction, until, at the last moment, the rabbi succeeded in extracting 
the piece of paper from his mouth. The Golem turned back into a heap of 
clay.
     Ariel Sharon is not a rabbi and the Kabbalah is a closed book to 
him. But he has created a Golem: the settlement movement in the occupied 
territories.
     He was sure that the Golem would serve him. After all, the settlers 
owe him everything. It was he who nursed them for decades, diverted 
funding to them on a massive scale, put at their service all the 
political positions he occupied one after the other: the ministries of 
agriculture, defense, foreign affairs, housing, industry and trade, 
infrastructure, and, finally, the Prime Minister's office.
     (I remember about 25 years ago, visiting Sharon at home in the 
preparation of a biographical essay I was writing about him. My wife and 
I were sitting in the kitchen with Lilly Sharon, who served us her 
delicacies, when I noticed that the chiefs of the settlers were sitting 
in the adjoining room. Sharon himself went back and forth between us, 
sharing his time with us equally. Even at that early stage the settlers 
clearly treated him as their patron.)
     During all these years, ever since he served as the Commanding 
General of the Southern Sector in the early 70s, he preached to everybody 
he met, Israelis and foreigners alike, the gospel of the settlements, 
spreading maps in front of them (he always has maps) and demanding that 
they act. According to him, it was vitally important to set up 
settlements in order to turn all of Eretz Israel - from the Mediterranean 
Sea to the Jordan River, at least - into a Jewish State, to tear the 
Palestinian territories into ribbons and prevent the creation of a 
Palestinian state, which would be an obstacle to the achievements of the 
full aims of Zionism.
     Like a bulldozer without brakes, Sharon leveled all opposition. He 
saw to it that tens of billions of dollars were turned over to the 
settlements (the exact amount cannot be ascertained, being hidden in 
various corners of the budget), bent the laws to their benefit and 
enlisted the officers of the army in their service. In this way, a 
closely woven network of settlements and special roads came into being, 
with perhaps 250,000 settlers (who is counting?)
     When he coined the slogan "unilateral disengagement", it never 
occurred to him that the settlers might oppose him. Don't they owe him? 
Are they not his pampered children? Aren't they eternally in his debt?
      Sharon offered them a deal that seemed to him eminently reasonable 
(as it had once looked to Yossi Beilin, who invented it, and then to Ehud 
Barak, who tried to implement it): Give up the isolated settlements, with 
a few tens of thousands of settlers, in order to secure the future of the 
big settlement blocks, with 80% of the settlers, which will be 
incorporated into Israel. Sacrifice some fingers in order to save the 
whole body. This way not only do we save the settlement enterprise, but 
we also gain the better part of the West Bank.
     But the Golem, once the piece of paper is under his tongue, 
demonstrates a logic of his own. He does not intend to give up the dozens 
of small settlements, especially as that is were the hard core of 
Messianic fanatics lives. He also understood that the evacuation of the 
first settlement would create a precedent that would endanger all the 
others. The real settlers may have nothing but contempt for the Gush 
Katif "settlers", who are first and foremost calculating businessmen, but 
they understand the crucial importance of the battle for Gush Katif.
    Like the Maharal, Sharon underrated his Golem. He treated him as a 
servant. How could he respect a creature that he had created with his own 
hands? Now he is learning that it is much easier to create a Golem than 
to reverse the process.
     In the surfeit of interviews that Sharon gave last weekend, he 
declared that the settlers are only a small minority of the people. And 
indeed, even according to the settlers themselves, they constitute less 
than 4% of the citizens of Israel. But the numbers do not reflect their 
actual power. In a democratic society, a small, fanatical and highly 
motivated minority can influence matters more than a big but apathetic 
and flabby majority.
     Sharon speculated on the unpopularity of the settlers in Israel. 
They are violent and unruly; they speak, dress and behave differently, 
even their body-language is different. The ordinary Israeli sees them as 
a bizarre sect. Also, at long last is has dawned on the Israelis that the 
settlements are devouring the billions that are needed for Israel's 
economic and social recovery.
     But in the course of the decades, the settlers have set up an 
extensive apparatus of control and propaganda. Patiently, they have 
infiltrated the army, where they now occupy the key positions once held 
by Kibbutzniks. Their independent media are expanding, while the Left has 
in the course of the years given up literally all their independent 
media. The settlers are in possession of huge funds, not only the money 
that flows to them through hundreds of channels from the state coffers, 
and not only the lavish donations from American Jewish multi-
millionaires, but also from the plentiful resources of the American 
Christian evangelists.
     One may well ask: what foolishness possessed Sharon, when he 
proposed that the Likud members, of all people, should decide on his 
plan? Did he not realize that this is the only arena where the settlers 
can command superior forces? 
     Why? As usual with victory-drunk generals: out of sheer arrogance 
and contempt for the opponent. At the pinnacle of political power, he 
disparaged the settlers. He did not dream of the mass home visits. He 
underrated their emotional appeal and their well-oiled logistic machine, 
that was created with the money of the state.
     Most of the settlers constitute a disciplined body. Like any 
messianic sect, they unquestioningly obey their commanders, the "Yesha 
rabbis" (Yesha is the Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and Gaza.) This 
is a totalitarian structure, in the true sense of the term: total faith, 
total organization, total discipline.
     "My head supports the Sharon plan, but my heart supports the 
settlers," a Likud member confessed. That is quite natural: when a 
settler pair with attached baby (there is always a baby attached!) knocks 
at the door and asks: "Do you want to evict us from our home?" - how can 
he resist? After all, from the day he was born he has heard that the 
national aim is to possess the whole of Eretz Israel, that the settlers 
are the salt of the earth, that one can ignore the rest of the world - 
and suddenly this man, Sharon, comes and says the opposite?
     Yet it must be remembered that less than 2% of the Israeli 
electorate voted against the Sharon plan in this party referendum. (In 
the last elections, the Likud received less than 30% of the votes. Less 
then a quarter of these are Likud members, who were entitled to take part 
in the referendum. Of these, less than half did actually vote, and of 
these, less than 60% voted against the plan. These, together with the 
settlers who are not Likud members, compose the Golem.)
     One good thing has come from this referendum: suddenly the public 
has woken up and seen the Golem that has come to life in their midst. 
>From the first moment, the writing was on the wall: the settler movement 
is sucking the marrow from the state, it is an obstacle to peace, it is a 
danger to Israeli democracy and to the future of the state itself. Now 
the general public, too, sees the danger represented by this rampaging 
Golem.
    It is not too late to remove the piece of paper from beneath the 
Golem's tongue. Not yet!
					~~~

[] Sharon's doomed gamble
    Adam Keller review's the last months in 'The Other Israel'  
    new issue out this week; free sample option 

The Other Israel (April/May issue, 28 pages) will come out this week, 
containing a 10-page overview of the past months, detailing the political 
and  socio-economic factors pressuring  upon Sharon which forced him to 
come up with "something", and which predetermined the failure of his 
insincere proposal. 

Also, as usual: reports on the struggles of the peace movement by 
Participant Observers. This issue concentrating especially on the ongoing 
struggle against the Separation Wall; an in-depth interview with the 
Anarchists who take part in the anti-Wall intifada; but also: a 
description of the judicial struggle by concerned citizens, among them 
senior retired military officers who present affidavist against the Wall; 
welcoming Vanunu; trials and struggles of male and female refusers, etc.
 
For a one time free sample: send your postal address to 
otherisr at actcom.co.il.