[GushShalom] A Very One-Sided War - Uri Avnery

[Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)]

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

A Very One-Sided War -- Uri Avnery 

21.8.04 
     "For all I care, they can starve to death!" announced Tzahi Hanegbi, 
after Palestinian prisoners declared an open-ended hunger strike against 
prison conditions. Thus the Minister for Internal Security added another 
memorable phrase to the lexicon of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
     Hanegbi became famous (or infamous) for the first time when, as a 
student activist, he was caught on camera with his friends hunting Arab 
students with bicycle chains. At the time I published a photo of him that 
would not have shamed German or Polish students in the 1930s. With a 
small difference: in the 30s the Jews were the pursued, now they were the 
pursuers.
     In the meantime, Hanegbi has changed like many young radicals - he 
has turned into an unrestrained careerist. He has become a minister, 
wearing elegant suits even on hot summer days and walking with the 
typical, self-important gait of a cabinet minister. Now he even supports 
Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan, much to the distress of his mother, 
Geula Cohen, an extreme-right militant who has not changed her spots.
     But beneath the minister's suit and the statesman's robe, Tzahi has 
remained Tzahi, as evidenced by the total inhumanity of his statement 
about the prisoners for whose well-being he is officially responsible. 
His influence is not limited to words: the current prison crisis was 
caused by his appointment of a new Director of Prisons, who immediately 
proceeded to create intolerable conditions for the Palestinian prisoners.
      Let's not dwell too much on the personality of the honorable 
minister. It is much more important to turn our thoughts to the strike 
itself.
     Its basic cause is a particularly Israeli invention: the one-sided 
war.
     The IDF generals declare again and again that we are at war. The 
state of war permits them to commit acts like "targeted eliminations", 
which, in any other situation, would be called murder. But in a war, one 
kills the enemy without court proceedings. And in general, the killing 
and wounding of people, demolition of homes, uprooting of plantations and 
all the other acts of the occupiers that have become daily occurrences 
are being justified by the state of war. 
     But this is a very special war, because it confers rights only on 
the fighters of one side. On the other side, there is no war, no 
fighters, and no rights of fighters, but only criminals, terrorists, 
murderers. 
     Why?
     Once there was a clear distinction: one was a soldier if one wore a 
uniform; if one did not wear a uniform, one was a criminal. Soldiers of 
an invading army were allowed to execute local inhabitants who fired at 
them on the spot. But in the middle of the 20th century, things changed. 
A worldwide consensus accepted that the members of the French resistance 
and the Russian and Yugoslav partisans and their like were fighters and 
therefore entitled to the international protection accorded to legitimate 
fighters. International conventions and the rules of war were amended 
accordingly.
      So what is the difference between soldiers and terrorists? Well, 
the occupiers say, there is a tremendous difference: Soldiers fight 
soldiers, terrorists hurt innocent civilians.
     Really? The pilot who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and 
killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians - was he a soldier or just 
a criminal, a terrorist? And what were the pilots who destroyed whole 
cities, like Hamburg and Dresden, when there was no valid military 
necessity anymore? The declared aim was to break the will of the German 
civilian population and compel them to capitulate. Were the commanders of 
the British and American air forces terrorists (as the Nazis indeed 
called them, inventing the term "Terrorflieger")?
     What is the difference between an American pilot who drops a bomb on 
a Baghdad market and the Iraqi terrorist, who lays a bomb in the same 
market? The fact that the pilot has a uniform? Or that he drops his bomb 
from a distance and does not see the children he is killing?
       I am not saying this, of course, to justify the killing of 
civilians. Indeed, I strongly condemn it, whoever the perpetrators may be 
- soldiers, guerrillas, pilots above or terrorists below. One law for all.
     Soldiers who are captured become prisoners-of-war, entitled to many 
rights guaranteed by international conventions. A particular 
international organization - the Red Cross - oversees this. P0Ws are not 
held for punishment or revenge, but solely in order to prevent them from 
returning to the battlefield. They are released when peace comes. 
     Underground fighters captured by their enemies are often tried as 
criminals. Not only are they not entitled to the rights of POWs, but in 
Israel their prison conditions are even worse than the inhuman conditions 
inflicted on Israeli criminals. The American have learned from us, and 
President George W. Bush has been sending Afghan fighters to an infamous 
prison set up for them in Guantanamo, where they are deprived of all 
human rights, both the rights of POWs and the rights of ordinary criminal 
prisoners.
     Years ago, when the Hebrew underground organizations were fighting 
the British regime in Palestine, we demanded that our prisoners be 
accorded the rights of POWs. The British did not accept this, but in 
practice prisoners were generally treated as if they were POWs. The 
captured underground fighters could enrol for correspondence courses, and 
in fact, many of them completed their studies in law and other 
professions in British prison camps.
     One of the prisoners at that time was Geula Cohen, Tzahi Hanegbi's 
mother. It would be interesting to know how she and her Stern Group 
comrades would have reacted if a British police commander had declared 
that he didn't give a damn if she died in prison. Probably they would 
have tried to assassinate him. Fortunately, the British behaved 
otherwise. They even brought her to a hospital for treatment (where she 
promptly escaped with the help of Arab villagers.)
     Towards the Irish underground fighters, the British took a different 
line. When they declared a hunger strike, Margaret Thatcher let them 
starve to death. This episode, on top of her attitude towards workers and 
the needy, contributed to her image as an inhuman person.
     A humane treatment of political prisoners is preferable even for 
purely pragmatic reasons. Ex-prisoners are now filling the upper ranks of 
the Palestinian Authority. Men who have spent 10, 15 and even 20 years in 
Israeli jails have become political leaders, ministers and mayors.  They 
speak fluent Hebrew and know Israel well. Almost all of them now belong 
to the moderate Palestinian camp, advocating co-existence between Israel 
and a Palestinian state. They also head the forces seeking democracy and 
reforms in the Palestinian Authority. The fair treatment they got at the 
time by the prison personnel must have contributed to this.
     But for me, the main thing is that the State of Israel should not 
look like Tzahi Hanegbi and his ilk. It is important for me that human 
beings - Palestinians as much as Israelis - should not starve to death in 
Israeli prisons. It is important for me that prisoners - whether Israelis 
or Palestinians - should be accorded humane conditions.
     If Tzahi Hanegbi were in prison, I would be demanding the same even 
for him. 

# Truth against Truth - opposite views on the history of the conflict
  in 101 steps 

Hebrew / òáøéú
http://www.gush-shalom.org/Docs/Truth_Heb.pdf

English
http://www.gush-shalom.org/Docs/Truth_Eng.pdf


# Boycott List of Settlement Products (newly updated)
  Now also with list of settlements
   
Hebrew / òáøéú
http://gush-shalom.org/Boycott/boycheb.htm

English
http://gush-shalom.org/Boycott/boyceng.htm

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http://www.gush-shalom.org/english/index.html (English)
http://www.gush-shalom.org/arabic/index.html (selected articles in Arabic)

with
\\photos of recent actions 
\\the weekly Gush Shalom ad 
\\the columns of Uri Avnery 
\\Gush Shalom's history & action chronicle  
\\position papers & analysis (in "documents")
\\and a lot more

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