>Subject: I urge you to read this in its entirety
>Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2002 15:42:53 PST
>
>Passover Eve, 2002
>
>An Open Letter to American Jews
>
>By Assaf Oron [Israeli army reservist]
>
>Dear People,
>
>Yesterday I was informed of an interesting phenomenon: a peace-supporting
>Jewish
>organization called Tikkun published an ad in favor of us, the Israeli
>reservist
>refuseniks [now over 1,000 Iraeli soldiers officers & generals], and was
>immediately
>bombarded with hate mails and phones from other American Jews. What is more
>
>interesting is that even other Jews considering themselves supporters of
>peace have
>denounced the Tikkun ad, to the extent that some of the Tikkun Advisory
>Board
>members are resigning in order to minimize the personal damage to
>themselves. This
>has so saddened, alarmed and angered me, that I find myself setting aside a
>half-day
>at the eve of Passover, and writing this open letter to you all. As is my
>habit, it is quite
>long, so please bear with me.
>
>Most of the 'civilized' attacks, so I understand, were seemingly aimed at
>this or that
>detail of the Tikkun ad. This is nothing new to me. Over the past two
>months
>since we
>came out with our own ad, I've heard and read so many specific arguments
>about
>specific aspects of our act. They range from petty nit-picking to plain
>ludicrous, and
>each and every one of them can be refuted to dust in a matter of minutes.
>But the
>moment you refute them, new specific arguments sprout up like mushrooms. It
>is clear
>that there is something very general and non-specific behind all this
>criticism.
>Therefore, if you allow me, I will start from the general and only later
>turn to a couple of
>these specific issues.
>
>The general theme is the tribal theme. A very very loud voice (and in
>Israel
>nowadays,
>it is the only voice that is allowed to be fully heard) keeps shouting that
>we are in the
>midst of a war between two tribes: a tribe of human beings, of pure good --
>the Israelis
>-- and a tribe of sub-human beings, of pure evil -- the Palestinians. This
>voice is so
>loud, that it has found its way even to the op-ed pages of the New York
>Times (William
>Safire, March 24 or 25). To those who find this black-and-white picture a
>bit hard to
>believe, the same voice shouts that this is a war of life and death. Only
>one tribe will
>survive, and so even if we are not purely good, we must lay morality and
>conscience to
>sleep, shut up and fight to kill--or else, the Palestinians will throw us
>into the sea.
>
>Does this ring a bell to you? It does to me. As a little child growing up
>in
>Israel under
>Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan, all I heard was that the Arabs are inhuman
>monsters
>who want to throw us into the sea, they understand only force, and since
>our
>
>wonderful IDF has won the Six Day War they know not to mess with us anymore
>--or
>else. And of course, we must keep the Liberated Territories to ourselves,
>because
>there's no one to talk with. Then came the Yom Kippur war, and for a child
>of 7 it was
>the perfect proof that indeed the Arabs want to throw us into the sea, and
>what a
>great opportunity it was for our glorious IDF to teach them a lesson. I
>prayed for the
>war to continue to its natural and final end --the complete surrender of
>all
>Arab armies.
>I was too small to evaluate, then, how the war really ended; all these
>cease-fires and
>talks were too complicated and boring, much more boring than a war.
>
>And it seemed humiliating that WE should withdraw in these cease-fires; I
>remember
>that the re-opening of the Suez Canal was portrayed in our mass media as a
>kind of
>defeat.
>
>A few years passed and a funny thing happened: those throw-us-into-the-sea
>Arabs
>came to talk with us, and in exchange for all of Sinai they would sign a
>full peace. The
>IDF chief of staff (the late Motte Gur, later a Labor Party minister)
>shouted that it is a
>hoax, that we should not believe Saadat, but the politicians had to sign.
>Already a
>teenager, I went and protested against the withdrawal from Sinai. It seemed
>strange to
>me that most of the demonstrators were orthodox Jews. After all, it was a
>purely logical
>issue: the Arabs are not to be trusted, that's what we've learned from day
>one. Well,
>lucky for the country, the government and the majority of the people
>employed a
>different logic, and the peace with Egypt was not missed.
>
>But the throw-us-into-the-sea paradigm immediately found new fields for
>play. There
>was an inconvenient reality on the Northern border, and even though the
>forces on
>the other side (Palestinians 'Phew') had strictly adhered to a secret
>cease-fire for about
>a year, they were Arabs and therefore could not be trusted. So we talked
>ourselves
>into invading Lebanon and setting up a friendlier regime there. The
>mastermind of the
>invasion was defense minister Ariel Sharon, and Shimon Peres, then head of
>opposition, voted together with his party in favor of the invasion. Only
>later, when it
>turned sour, and after many refuseniks already sat in jail, would the main
>opposition
>turn against the whole affair. For me at 16 it was also a turning point.
>When I
>understood that the government had lied to me in order to sell me this war,
>I turned
>from 'center-rightist' to 'leftist'.
>
>Sadly enough, it has taken me almost 20 more years, in a slow and painful
>process, to
>understand how deeply the lies and self-delusion are rooted in our
>collective
>perception of reality.
>
>Anyway, when Peres withdrew most of our forces from Lebanon in 1985, the
>Arabs
>could still not be trusted. And so, to soothe our endless paranoia and
>suspicion, we
>created that perpetual source of death and crime ironically known as "the
>Security
>Zone." It took many years, a lot of blood and Four Mothers -- against
>almost
>all
>politicians, generals, and columnists -- to finally pull us out of Lebanon.
>In the long and
>hard way, we learned that even the Lebanese are human beings whose rights
>must
>be respected. But not the Palestinians. Because the Palestinians are too
>painfully
>close, like a rival sibling (and, may I add, because they have always been
>so weak),
>we have singled them out for a special treatment. Having them under our
>rule, we've
>allowed ourselves to trample them like dirt, like dogs. We've been doing it
>even to our
>own Palestinian citizens (especially before 1966), but we have perfected
>our
>treatment
>in this strange no man's land created in 1967, and known as the Occupied
>Territories.
>There we have created an entirely hallucinatory reality, in which the true
>humans,
>members of the Nation of Masters, could move and settle freely and safely,
>while the
>sub-humans, the Nation of Slaves, were shoved into the corners, and kept
>invisible
>and controlled under our IDF boots. I know. I've been there. I was taught
>how to do
>this, back in the mid-1980's.
>
>I did and witnessed as a matter of fact, deeds that I'm ashamed to remember
>to this
>day. And fortunately for me, I did not have to witness or do anything truly
>
>"pornographic", as some friends of mine experienced. Since 1987, this
>cruel,
>
>impossible, unnatural, insulting reality in the Territories has been
>exploding in our face.
>But because of our unshakeable belief that the Palestinians are monsters
>who
>want to
>throw us into the sea, we reacted by trying to maintain what we've created
>at all costs.
>This meant of course employing more and more and more force, with the
>natural result
>of receiving more and more and more force in return. When a fledgling and
>hesitating
>peace process tried to work its way through this mess, one major factor
>(perhaps THE
>factor) that undermined it and voided its meaning was our establishment's
>endless fear
>and suspicion of The Other. To resolve this fear and suspicion, we chose
>the
>insane
>route of demanding full control of The Other throughout the process. When
>this Other
>finally decided that we're cheating him out of his freedom (and having too
>many mental
>disorders of his own to accommodate ours as well), violence erupted, and
>all
>our
>ancient instincts woke up.
>
>There they are, we said inrelief, now we see their true face again. The
>Arabs want to
>throw us into the sea. There's no one to talk with ('no partner", in our
>beloved ex-PM's
>words), and they understand only force. And so we responded as we know and
>love,
>with more and more and more force. This time, the effect was that of
>putting
>out a fire
>with a barrel of gasoline. And that's the moment when I said to myself, NO,
>I'm not
>playing this game anymore.
>
>But what about the existential threat, you may ask? Well I ask you, have
>you
>not
>eyes? Don't you see our tanks strolling in Palestinian streets every other
>day? Don't
>you see our helicopters hovering over their neighborhoods choosing which
>window to
>shoot a missile into? What type of existential need are we answering in
>trampling the
>Palestinians? Prevention of terror, I hear you say. Let me use the
>wonderful
>words of
>my friend Ishay Rosen-Zvi: You are fighting against terror? What a joke.
>The
>Israeli
>government, in its policies of Occupation, has turned the Territories into
>a
>greenhouse
>for growing terror!!! We have sown the seeds, grown them, nurtured them --
>and then
>our blood is spilled, and the centrist-right-wing politicians reap the
>benefits. Indeed,
>terror is the right-wing politician's best friend. You know what? When you
>treat millions
>of people like sub-humans for so long, some of them will find inhuman
>strategies to
>fight back. Isn't that what the Zionists, and other Jewish revolutionaries,
>argued about
>a hundred years ago in order to explain the questionable strategies of
>survival that
>Jews used in Europe? Didn't our forefathers say, Let us live like human
>beings, and
>see how we'll act just like other human beings? So here's the deal. I hope
>that the first
>part of this letter made it clear that I don't buy the "they want to throw
>us into the sea"
>crap. It's just a collective self-delusion of ours. But more importantly, I
>don't see tribes. I
>see people, human beings. I believe that the Palestinians are human beings
>like us.
>What a concept, eh? And before everything else, before EVERYTHING else, we
>must
>treat them like human beings without demanding anything in return. And no
>(to all
>die-hard Barak fans), throwing them a couple of crumbs in which they can
>set
>up pitiful,
>completely controlled Bantustans in between our settlements and bypass
>roads, and
>believing it to be a great act of "generosity', does NOT come close to
>answering this
>basic requirement. This requirement is NOT negotiable; moreover, in a
>perfect
>demonstration of historical justice, it is a vital requirement for the
>survival of our own
>State.
>
>After that, and based on the lessons of modern history, especially that of
>the
>Arab-Israeli conflict (as was briefly described above), I do believe that
>the Palestinians
>will calm down, and that the elusive "Security" and peace will finally come
>upon us (as
>it did, incidentally, for almost two whole years between Wye 1998 and Camp
>David
>2000). I don't have any insurance policy for that (well --almost none,
>except the solemn
>promise of the entire Arab world), but remember - I have this funny notion
>that they are
>human beings. In any case, we are seeing now all too well what type of
>insurance
>policy the opposite paradigm is providing us. In the meanwhile, I refuse to
>be a terrorist
>in my tribe's name. Because that's what it is: not a "war against terror',
>as our
>propaganda machine tries to sell. This is a war OF terror, a war in which,
>in return for
>Palestinian guerrilla and terror, we employ the IDF in two types of terror.
>The more
>visible one are the violent acts of killing and destruction, those which
>some people still
>try to explain away as "surgical acts of defense." The worse type of terror
>is the silent
>one, which has continued unabated since 1967 and through the entire Oslo
>process.
>It is the terror of Occupation, of humiliation on a personal and collective
>basis, of
>deprivation and legalized robbery, of alternating exploitation and
>starvation. This is the
>mass of the iceberg, the terror that is itself a long-term greenhouse for
>counter-terror.
>And I simply refuse to be a terrorist and criminal, even if the entire
>tribe
>denounces me.
>That leads me to the first specific subject: are we, the refuseniks, being
>persecuted
>and denounced, or are we enjoying the wonderful Israeli tolerance and
>democracy
>and exploiting it to make trouble? Well, I must admit that this is not yet
>the USSR or
>Pinochet's Chile, and at least the Jews here enjoy a relative democracy
>(describing it
>as vibrant or tolerant would be a gross error, but that is a different
>subject altogether;
>maybe in another letter). I first must point out that the government and
>IDF
>also enjoy
>the image of 'letting us speak', and it serves them well. Secondly, in a
>rather
>sophisticated manner the establishment (with the generous and voluntary
>help
>of the
>mass media) is effectively shutting us up. The media has decided for us
>that
>there is
>no opposition. Thus, a demonstration of 20,000 is reported in 5 seconds at
>the
>late-night edition, and a demonstration of 500 outside a military prison is
>completely
>ignored.
>
>The fact that right now there are over a dozen refuseniks in jail -- the
>lrgest number in
>twenty years -- is hidden from the Israeli public. The story of Captain
>(resrv.) Itai Haviv
>and Sergeant (resrv.) Yair Yeffeth, who demanded a full military trial in
>which they
>could prove that refusal is innocence and that the order to serve in the
>Territories is
>illegal, was not told anywhere except for a brief mention in the back pages
>of Haaretz.
>So the public, of course, didn't learn that the IDF evaded answering these
>demands,
>and that Itai Haviv will spend the Seder night in prison following a
>‘disciplinary hearing.'
>I hope the readers are intelligent enough to know that if the media wanted,
>these
>stories would make the headlines. Still, you keep hearing about us. That's
>the key
>word, ABOUT us. But you don't hear us. You just hear people explaining,
>analyzing,
>mostly (in a ratio of 99 to 1) attacking us. We have become the perfect
>'hate hour'
>figures, to reunite the tribe against (have you read 1984?) Petty
>"volunteer" groups
>who organized against us, a mayor who called upon local governments not to
>hire us,
>and a group of industrialists who called employers to fire us, have all won
>their moment
>in the spotlight. No one cared to mention that these are blatantly illegal
>calls (no, ‘the
>law' is remembered only when we 'break' it). No one has tried to set limits
>to this
>discussion. Moreover, the prime minister in one of his rare public
>addresses
>blamed us
>for the wave of terror (us, not his catastrophic policies). The IDF chief
>of
>staff can't stop
>talking about us; he sees us as a bunch of inciters with a hidden agenda.
>So,
>ironically, the only thing protecting us from long-term ‘gulag'
>imprisonment
>and from
>losing our jobs is public opinion - the rather large pockets of support and
>sympathy
>among key sectors in the Israeli public, and yes, support ads such as the
>one
>published by Tikkun. The moment the government or IDF will think the lights
>are out,
>and no one sees or cares -- they will find or invent the 'legal' clause
>(Israeli politicians
>are experts in this) and throw those they believe to be our "leaders" to
>jail for long
>terms. Remember, even poor Abie Nathan was thrown in for two years, just
>because
>he dared speak with PLO personnel about peace. But that's nothing, because
>the
>moment our government will sense a "lights out" situation - a huge terror
>attack, an
>American attack on Iraq - there will be a horrible bloodbath in the
>Territories, compared
>to which the last year and a half will be remembered as a happy picnic.
>
>And that brings me to the second specific issue, that of the Nazi allusion.
>Some
>readers thought that the way the Tikkun ad said "obeying orders" was an
>allusion to
>Nazi murderers' claim that they were "just obeying orders." Rabbi Lerner
>has
>rightly
>pointed out to these readers, that automatic execution of orders is a
>characteristic of
>all dictatorship, not just the Nazi one, while refusal on moral grounds is
>a
>sign of
>democracy. I agree, but let me be less polite and politically correct.
>After
>all, it's just my
>country that's going up in smoke as I write. What is this? Does Israel have
>the
>exclusive monopoly of labeling all its rivals as Nazis, and everyone else
>has to shut up,
>even when reality starts speaking for itself? Parties that support the
>essentially Nazi
>idea of deporting all Palestinians from the country, have been part of our
>Knesset and
>our "legitimate" political map since 1984. Recent opinion polls show that
>35% of the
>Jewish public now supports this "solution", as it is sometimes called.
>Leaders, Rabbis,
>and just plain folk feel free to call openly in the mass media to eradicate
>Palestinian
>cities with or without their tenants. Last weekend, Gen. (res.) Effi Eitam,
>fresh out of
>the military and all ready to take the leadership of the religious public
>and become a
>deputy or alternative to Netanyahu, received a flattering cover story on
>Haaretz
>supplement. He unfolded his chilling ideology, calling to expel those
>Palestinians who
>don't want to remain in the Galilee and West Bank as serfs, to Jordan, and
>from Gaza
>to Sinai. And he said this: why should us, the country poorest in land
>resources, bear
>the burden of solving the Palestinian problem?
>
>Well I don't know about you, but I remember some of the Nazi rhetoric in
>that dark
>period between the Kristallnacht of 1938 and the beginning of the war, when
>Jews
>were expelled from Germany but could find no safe haven anywhere else. When
>I see
>a retired IDF general and rising political star use the exact same Nazi
>rhetoric on
>Israel's most "liberal" newspaper, without any criticism by his interviewer
>or the editors --
>my hair just stands on my head in horror.
>
>Let's move from the political scene back to the ground. My friend, Captain
>(Res.) Dan
>Tamir, decided to refuse to serve in the Territories about a year ago,
>after
>he realized
>what he'd done as a reserve regiment's intelligence officer a few weeks
>before that. He
>realized he had laid out the plans to convert a large Palestinian town into
>a closed
>ghetto. You can find his full statement on our website, www.seruv.org.il.
>The vast
>majority of Palestinians in the Territories now starve in such ghettos; in
>those days of
>mercy when they are allowed to leave them by foot and perhaps catch a taxi,
>these
>taxis are forbidden from using most of the paved roads in the region.
>
>But why listen to a "leftist"? Let's hear it from senior IDF officers. One
>of the top
>commanders in the Territories was quoted in Haaretz (Jan. 25) as saying
>that
>in order
>to prepare for potential battles in dense urban neighborhoods, the IDF must
>learn, if
>necessary, how the German army "operated" in the Warsaw Ghetto.
>
>A week later, the reporter confirmed this quote and the fact that this is a
>widespread
>opinion in the IDF, and went further to morally defend it. A small number
>of
>people,
>including myself, tried to raise a scandal over this. One letter to the
>editor was
>published in Haaretz. A much tougher letter, which I wrote, was never
>published, nor
>was my plea for a phone discussion with an editor ever answered. The issue
>just died
>down. No one in Israel or in the Jewish public abroad was interested.
>
>Where were all these holy souls, who now scold Tikkun because they
>indirectly allude
>to the Nazi horror, where were they all when a senior IDF officer proudly
>called, "in
>order to beat the Palestinians, let's be Judeo-Nazis"? In my letter to
>Haaretz I went
>further. Knowing the IDF mentality and adding one to one, I concluded that
>the IDF is
>operationally prepared to invade refugee camps - an utter, indefensible war
>crime -
>and through this leak to the press it is starting to pressure the
>government
>and
>prepare the public opinion for the invasion. The letter was not published.
>It was sent
>on February 2. A few weeks later we all saw the horrors of the refugee camp
>invasions
>and the bloody revenge attacks that followed culminating on Passover eve.
>And you
>know what? Army generals and colonels morally and professionally pat
>themselves on
>the back, because these invasions "prevented terror", and killed only
>dozens
>and not
>thousands. (Note: in fact, the major reason limiting the bloodshed was the
>"terrorists"
>responsible decision not to turn the camps into all-out battlegrounds. But
>this may
>change in the next round.)
>
>In truth, I have little hope that the Israeli public will wake up. The
>Israeli public, in its
>fear and confusion, has made a decision (aided by the politicians and mass
>media) to
>go to sleep and wake up only ‘after it is all over'. But it won't be over,
>because while
>our mind sleeps our muscles tighten the death grip, instead of doing the
>only sensible
>thing (which requires an open mind) -- which is to let go. Will you guys
>join the
>hypocrite mobs who sing lullabies to Israel and pounce upon the refuseniks,
>upon
>Tikkun, to shut us up? Or will you finally take responsibility and be the
>true friends that
>Israel needs now -- even if it means not being "nice" to Israel for a
>while?
>As you sit
>tonight at the Seder table, please remember the dozen or so refuseniks that
>spend
>this Seder in a military jail.
>
>More importantly, please remember the thousand or so people, three quarters
>
>Palestinians and one quarter Israelis, who were here with us a year ago and
>have
>been murdered. Most of them could have been here with us, if you and we had
>acted
>sooner. We have now acted, done what little we can do. Please think of the
>many
>thousands that may be doomed soon, if you continue sitting on the fence.
>May
>you
>have a happy Holiday of Freedom,
>
>Please help us struggle free from fear, racism, hatred and the deaths they
>produce.
>Yours,
>
>Assaf Oron
>
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