All Discussions Tagged 'Uri' - Peace for the Soul2024-03-29T13:17:02Zhttps://peaceformeandtheworld.ning.com/forum/topic/listForTag?tag=Uri&feed=yes&xn_auth=noUri Avnery made his transitiontag:peaceformeandtheworld.ning.com,2018-08-20:5143044:Topic:2563672018-08-20T20:14:40.672ZRosmarie Heusserhttps://peaceformeandtheworld.ning.com/profile/RosmarieHeusser
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<p>There are some people which should never pass over because they are so much needed in person in this world...∼ Uri Avnery was one of them! ∼ …</p>
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<p>There are some people which should never pass over because they are so much needed in person in this world...∼ Uri Avnery was one of them! ∼ </p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2311653550?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2311653550?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-full"/></a></p> The March of Follytag:peaceformeandtheworld.ning.com,2018-07-21:5143044:Topic:2552342018-07-21T21:48:15.783ZRosmarie Heusserhttps://peaceformeandtheworld.ning.com/profile/RosmarieHeusser
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<tbody><tr><td align="left" valign="top"><p><strong>Uri Avnery's Column</strong> 21/07/18</p>
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<p>ONE CAN look at events in Gaza through the left or through the right eye. One can condemn them as inhuman, cruel and mistaken, or justify them as necessary and unavoidable.</p>
<p>But there is one adjective that is beyond question: They are stupid.</p>
<p>If the late Barbara Tuchman were still alive, she might be tempted to add another…</p>
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<tbody><tr><td valign="top" align="left"><p><strong>Uri Avnery's Column</strong> 21/07/18</p>
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<p>ONE CAN look at events in Gaza through the left or through the right eye. One can condemn them as inhuman, cruel and mistaken, or justify them as necessary and unavoidable.</p>
<p>But there is one adjective that is beyond question: They are stupid.</p>
<p>If the late Barbara Tuchman were still alive, she might be tempted to add another chapter to her groundbreaking opus "The March of Folly": a chapter titled "Eyeless in Gaza".</p>
<p>THE LATEST episode in this epic started a few months ago, when independent activists in the Gaza Strip called for a march to the Israeli border, which Hamas supported. It was called "The Great March of Return", a symbolic gesture for the more than a million Arab residents who fled or were evicted from their homes in the land that became the State of Israel.</p>
<p>The Israeli authorities pretended to take this seriously. A frightening picture was painted for the Israeli public: 1.8 million Arabs, men, women and children, would throw themselves on the border fence, break through in many places, and storm Israel's cities and villages. Terrifying.</p>
<p>Israeli sharpshooters were posted along the border and ordered to shoot anyone who looked like a "ringleader". On several succeeding Fridays (the weekly Muslim holy day) more than 150 unarmed protesters, including many children, were shot dead, and many hundreds more severely wounded by gunfire, apart from those hurt by tear gas.</p>
<p>The Israeli argument was that the victims were shot while trying to "storm the fences". Actually, not a single such attempt was photographed, though hundreds of photographers were posted on both sides of the fence.</p>
<p>Facing a world-wide protest, the army changed its orders and now only rarely kills unarmed protesters. The Palestinians also changed their tactics: the main effort now is to fly children's kites with burning tails and set Israeli fields near the Strip on fire.</p>
<p>Since the wind almost always blows from the West to the East, that is an easy way to hurt Israel. Children can do it, and do. Now the Minister of Education demands that the air force bomb the children. The Chief of Staff refuses, arguing that this is "against the values of the Israeli army".</p>
<p>At present, half of our newspapers and TV newscasts are concerned with Gaza. Everybody seems to agree that sooner or later a full-fledged war will break out there.</p>
<p>THE MAIN feature of this exercise is its utter stupidity.</p>
<p>Every military action must have a political aim. As the German military thinker, Carl von Clausewitz, famously said: "War is but a continuation of politics by other means."</p>
<p>The Strip is 41 km long and 6 to 12 km wide. It is one of the most overcrowded places on earth. Nominally it belongs to the largely theoretical State of Palestine, like the West Bank, which is Israeli occupied. The Strip is in fact governed by the radical Muslim Hamas party.</p>
<p>In the past, masses of Palestinian workers from Gaza streamed into Israel every day. But since Hamas assumed power in the Strip, the Israeli government has imposed an almost total blockade on land and sea. The Egyptian dictatorship, a close ally of Israel and a deadly enemy of radical Islam, cooperates with Israel.</p>
<p>So what does Israel want? The preferred solution is to sink the entire strip and its population into the sea. Failing that, what can be done?</p>
<p>The last thing Israel wants is to annex the Strip with its huge population, which cannot be driven out. Also, Israel does not want to put up settlements in the Strip (the few which were set up were withdrawn by Ariel Sharon, who thought that it was not worthwhile to keep and defend them).</p>
<p>The real policy is to make life in Gaza so miserable, that the Gazans themselves will rise and throw the Hamas authorities out. With this in mind, the water supply is reduced to two hours a day, electricity the same. Employment hovers around 50%, wages beneath the minimum. It is a picture of total misery.</p>
<p>Since everything that reaches Gaza must come through Israel (or Egypt), supplies are often cut off completely for days as "punishment".</p>
<p>Alas, history shows that such methods seldom succeed. They only deepen the enmity. So what can be done?</p>
<p>THE ANSWER is incredibly simple: sit down, talk and come to an agreement.</p>
<p>Yes, but how can you sit down with a mortal enemy, whose official ideology totally rejects a Jewish State?</p>
<p>Islam, which (like every religion) has an answer to everything, recognizes something called a "Hudna", which is a lasting armistice. This can go on for many decades and is (religiously) kept.</p>
<p>For several years now, Hamas has been almost openly hinting that it is ready for a long Hudna. Egypt has volunteered to mediate. Our government has totally ignored the offer. A Hudna with the enemy? Out of the question! God forbid! Would be terribly unpopular politically!</p>
<p>But it would be the sensible thing to do. Stop all hostile acts from both sides, say for 50 years. Abolish the blockade. Build a real harbor in Gaza city. Allow free trade under some kind of military inspection. Same for an airport. Allow workers to find employment in Israel, instead of importing workers from China and Romania. Turn Gaza into a second Singapore. Allow free travel between Gaza and the West Bank by a bridge or an exterritorial highway. Help to restore unity between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.</p>
<p>WHY NOT? The very idea is rejected by an ordinary Israeli on sight.</p>
<p>A deal with Hamas? Impossible!!! Hamas wants to destroy Israel. Everybody knows that.</p>
<p>I hear this many times, and always wonder about the stupidity of people who repeat this.</p>
<p>How does a group of a few hundred thousand "destroy" one of the worlds most heavily armed states, a state that possesses nuclear bombs and submarines to deliver them? How? With kites?</p>
<p>Both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin pay us homage, the world's fascist dictators and liberal presidents come to visit. How can Hamas pose a mortal danger?</p>
<p>Why doesn't Hamas stop hostilities by itself? Hamas has competitors, which are even more radical. It does not dare to show any sign of weakness.</p>
<p>SOME DECADES ago the Arab world, on the initiative of Saudi Arabia, offered Israel peace under several conditions, all of them acceptable. Successive Israel governments have not only not accepted it, they have ignored it altogether.</p>
<p>There was some logic in this. The Israeli government wants to annex the West Bank. It wants to get the Arab population out, and replace them with Jewish settlers. It conducts this policy slowly, cautiously, but consistently.</p>
<p>It is a cruel policy, a detestable policy, yet it has some logic in it. If you really want to achieve this abominable aim, the methods may be adequate. But this does not apply to the Gaza Strip, which no one wants to annex. There, the methods are sheer folly.</p>
<p>THIS DOES not mean that the overall Israeli policy towards the Palestinians is any more wise. It is not.</p>
<p>Binyamin Netanyahu and his hand-picked stupid ministers have no policy. Or so it seems. In fact they do have an undeclared one: creeping annexation of the West Bank.</p>
<p>This is now going on at a quicker pace than before. The daily news gives the impression that the entire government machine is now concentrating on this project.</p>
<p>This will lead directly to an apartheid-style state, where a large Jewish minority will dominate an Arab majority.</p>
<p>For how long? One generation? Two? Three?</p>
<p>It has been said that a clever person is able to extricate himself from a trap into which a wise person would not have fallen in the first place.</p>
<p>Stupid people do not extricate themselves. They are not even aware of the trap.</p>
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<hr/> Strong as Deathtag:peaceformeandtheworld.ning.com,2018-06-01:5143044:Topic:2527552018-06-01T21:17:24.311ZRosmarie Heusserhttps://peaceformeandtheworld.ning.com/profile/RosmarieHeusser
<p><strong>Uri Avnery's Column</strong>, 02/06/18</p>
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<p>OH, GAZA. Strong as death is love.</p>
<p>I loved Gaza. That is a play on words. The Biblical Song of Songs says that love is strong as death. Strong in Hebrew is Aza. Aza is also the Hebrew name of Gaza.</p>
<p>I have spent many happy hours in Gaza. I had many friends there. From the leftist Dr. Haidar Abd al-Shafi to the Islamist Mahmoud al-Zahar, who is now the foreign minister of Hamas.</p>
<p>I was there when Yasser Arafat,…</p>
<p><strong>Uri Avnery's Column</strong>, 02/06/18</p>
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<p>OH, GAZA. Strong as death is love.</p>
<p>I loved Gaza. That is a play on words. The Biblical Song of Songs says that love is strong as death. Strong in Hebrew is Aza. Aza is also the Hebrew name of Gaza.</p>
<p>I have spent many happy hours in Gaza. I had many friends there. From the leftist Dr. Haidar Abd al-Shafi to the Islamist Mahmoud al-Zahar, who is now the foreign minister of Hamas.</p>
<p>I was there when Yasser Arafat, the son of a Gazan family, came home. They put me in the first row of the reception at the Rafah border, and that evening he received me at the hotel on the Gaza sea shore, seating me next to him on the stage during a press conference.</p>
<p>I met with a friendly attitude everywhere in the Gaza Strip, in the refugee camps and in the streets of Gaza City. Everywhere we talked about peace and about the place of Gaza in the future State of Palestine.</p>
<p>GOOD, BUT what about Hamas, the terrible arch-terrorist organization?</p>
<p>In the early 1990s, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin exiled 415 prominent Islamists from Gaza to Lebanon. The Lebanese did not let them in, so the exiles vegetated for a year in the open air on the border.</p>
<p>We protested against the expulsion and put up a tent camp opposite the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem. We stayed there for 45 days and nights, including some days in snow. In the camp were Jews and Arabs, including Israeli Arab Islamists. We spent the long days and nights in political discussions. What about? About peace, of course.</p>
<p>The Islamists were nice people, and treated my wife, Rachel, with utmost civility.</p>
<p>When the exiles were finally allowed home, a reception was held for them in the largest hall in Gaza. I was invited, together with a group of companions. I was asked to speak (in Hebrew, of course) and after that I was invited to a banquet.</p>
<p>I am recounting all this in order to describe the atmosphere at that time. In everything I said, I stressed that I was an Israeli patriot. I advocated peace between two states. Before the first Intifada (which started on December 9, 1987) Gaza was not a place of dark hatred. Far from it.</p>
<p>Masses of laborers crossed the checkpoints every morning in order to work in Israel, and so did the merchants who sold their wares in Israel, or crossed Israel on the way to Jordan, or got their merchandise through Israeli harbors.</p>
<p>SO HOW did we succeed – we, the State of Israel – in turning Gaza into what it is today?</p>
<p>In the summer of 2005 the then Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, decided to cut all ties with the Gaza Strip. "Arik", a soldier in his heart, decided that the costs of occupying the strip were higher than the benefits. He pulled the army and the settlers out and turned the strip over – to whom? To nobody.</p>
<p>Why to nobody? Why not to the PLO, which was already the recognized Palestinian authority? Why not within the framework of an agreement? Because Arik hated the Palestinians, the PLO and Arafat. He did not want to have anything to do with them. So he just left the strip.</p>
<p>But nature abhors a vacuum. A Palestinian authority came into being in Gaza. Democratic elections were held, and Hamas won in all of Palestine. Hamas is a religious-nationalist party which originally was furthered by the Israeli secret service (Shin Bet) in order to undermine the PLO. When the PLO did not accept the election results, Hamas in Gaza took power by force. Thus the present situation came into being.</p>
<p>DURING ALL this time we still had a positive option.</p>
<p>The Gaza Strip could have turned into a blooming island. Optimists spoke about a "Second Singapore". They spoke about a Gaza harbor, with due inspection of incoming goods either in Gaza or in a neutral port abroad. A Gaza airport, with appropriate security inspection, was built and used and then destroyed by Israel.</p>
<p>And what did the Israeli government do? The very opposite, of course.</p>
<p>The government subjected the Gaza Strip to a stringent blockade. All connections between the strip and the outside world were cut. Provisions could come only through Israel. Israel increased or decreased the import of essential necessities at its whim. The affair of the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which was bloodily stormed near the Gaza shore, emphasized the total isolation.</p>
<p>The Gaza population has now reached about two million. Most of them are refugees from Israel, who were driven out during the 1948 war. I cannot say that I am innocent – my army unit fought in the south of Palestine. I saw what was happening. I wrote about it.</p>
<p>The blockade created a vicious circle. Hamas and the smaller (and more extreme) organizations carried out acts of resistance (or "terror"). As a reaction, the Israeli government intensified the blockade. The Gazans answered with more violence. The blockade became worse. And so on, up to and including this week.</p>
<p>What about the southern border of the strip? Rather bizarrely, Egypt cooperates with the Israeli blockade. And not only because of the mutual sympathy between the Egyptian military dictator, Abd al-Fatah al-Sisi, and the Israeli rulers. There is also a political reason: The Sisi regime hates the Muslim Brothers, Its banned internal opposition, which is considered the parent organization of Hamas.</p>
<p>The PLO regime in the West Bank also cooperates with the Israeli blockade against Hamas, which is its main competitor within the Palestinian political framework.</p>
<p>Thus the Gaza Strip remains almost completely isolated, without friends. Except some idealists around the world, who are much too weak to make a difference. And, of course, Hezbollah and Iran.</p>
<p>NOW THERE prevails a kind of balance. The Gazan organizations carry out violent acts, which do no real damage to the State of Israel. The Israeli army does not have the appetite to occupy the strip again. And then the Palestinians discovered a new weapon: non-violent resistance.</p>
<p>Many years ago an Arab-American activist, a pupil of Martin Luther King, came to Palestine to preach this method. He found no takers and returned to the US. Then, at the beginning of the second Intifada, the Palestinians tried this method. The Israeli army reacted with live fire. The world saw a picture of a little boy shot while in the arms of his father. The army denied responsibility, as it always does. Non-violent resistance died with the boy. The Intifada demanded many victims.</p>
<p>Truth is that the Israeli army has no answer to non-violent resistance. In such a campaign, all the cards are in the hands of the Palestinians. World public opinion condemns Israel and praises the Palestinians. Therefore, the army's reaction is to open fire, in order to induce the Palestinians to start violent actions. With these the army knows how to deal.</p>
<p>Non-violent resistance is a very difficult method. It demands enormous willpower, strict self-control and moral superiority. Such qualities are to be found in Indian culture, which gave birth to a Gandhi, and within the black American community of Martin Luther King. There is no such tradition in the Muslim world.</p>
<p>Therefore it is doubly astonishing that the demonstrators on the Gaza border are now finding this power in their hearts. The events of Black Monday, May 14, surprised the world. Masses of unarmed human beings, men, women and children, braved the Israeli sharpshooters. They did not draw weapons. They did not "storm the fence", a lie spread by the huge Israeli propaganda apparatus. They stood exposed to the sharpshooters and were killed.</p>
<p>The Israeli army is convinced that the inhabitants of Gaza will not stand the test, that they will return to useless violence. Last Tuesday it seemed as if this assessment was right. One of the Gaza organizations carried out a "revenge action", launching more then a hundred mortar shells into Israel without causing any real damage. That was a useless gesture. Violent action has no chance whatsoever to hurt Israel. It only supplies ammunition to Israeli propaganda.</p>
<p>When one thinks about non-violent struggle, one should remember Amritsar. That is the name of an Indian town where in April 1919 soldiers under British command opened murderous fire for 10 consecutive minutes on Indian non-violent protesters, killing at least 379 and wounding about 1200. The name of the commander, Colonel Reginald Dyer, entered history, for eternal shame. British public opinion was shocked. Many historians believe that this was the beginning of the end of British rule in India.</p>
<p>"Black Monday" on the Gaza border reminds one of this episode.</p>
<p>HOW WILL this end?</p>
<p>Hamas has offered a Hudna for 40 years. A Hudna is a sacred armistice, which no Muslim is allowed to break.</p>
<p>I have already mentioned the Crusaders, who stayed in Palestine for almost 200 years (more then us, at this moment). They agreed to or entered into several Hudnas with the hostile Muslim states around them. The Arabs kept them strictly.</p>
<p>The question is: Is the Israeli government able to accept a Hudna? After inciting the masses of their followers and filling them with mortal hatred against the people of Gaza in general and Hamas in particular, would it dare to agree?</p>
<p>When the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are choked, lacking medicines, lacking enough food, lacking pure water, lacking electricity, will our government not fall into the trap of illusion and believe that now Hamas will collapse?</p>
<p>That will not happen, of course. As we sang in our youth: "No people withdraws from the trenches of their life!"</p>
<p>As the Jews themselves proved for centuries, there is no limit to what a people can endure when its very existence is at stake.</p>
<p>That's what history tells us.</p>
<p>MY HEART is with the people of Gaza.</p>
<p>I desire to ask their forgiveness, in my name and in the name of Israel, my country.</p>
<p>I am longing for the day when everything will change, the day when a wiser government will agree to a Hudna, open the border and let the people of Gaza return to the world.</p>
<p>Now, too, I love Gaza, with the love that the Bible says is as strong as death.</p> The Day of Shame 19/05/18tag:peaceformeandtheworld.ning.com,2018-05-24:5143044:Topic:2524742018-05-24T21:22:59.155ZRosmarie Heusserhttps://peaceformeandtheworld.ning.com/profile/RosmarieHeusser
<p><strong><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2311645293?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2311645293?profile=original" width="609"></img></a></strong> <strong>Uri Avnery's Column</strong></p>
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<tbody><tr><td width="332"><p>ON BLOODY MONDAY this week, when the number of Palestinian killed and wounded was rising by the hour, I asked myself: what would I have done if I had been a youngster of 15 in the Gaza Strip?</p>
<p>My answer was, without hesitation: I would have stood near the border…</p>
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<p><strong><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2311645293?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2311645293?profile=original" class="align-full" width="609"/></a></strong><strong>Uri Avnery's Column</strong></p>
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<tbody><tr><td width="332"><p>ON BLOODY MONDAY this week, when the number of Palestinian killed and wounded was rising by the hour, I asked myself: what would I have done if I had been a youngster of 15 in the Gaza Strip?</p>
<p>My answer was, without hesitation: I would have stood near the border fence and demonstrated, risking my life and limbs every minute.</p>
<p>How am I so sure?</p>
<p>Simple: I did the same when I was 15.</p>
<p>I was a member of the National Military Organization (the "Irgun"), an armed underground group labeled "terrorist".</p>
<p>Palestine was at the time under British occupation (called "mandate"). In May 1939, the British enacted a law limiting the right of Jews to acquire land. I received an order to be at a certain time at a certain spot near the sea shore of Tel Aviv in order to take part in a demonstration. I was to wait for a trumpet signal.</p>
<p>The trumpet sounded and we started the march down Allenby Road, then the city's main street. Near the main synagogue, somebody climbed the stairs and delivered an inflammatory speech. Then we marched on, to the end of the street, where the offices of the British administration were located. There we sang the national anthem, “Hatikvah”, while some adult members set fire to the offices.</p>
<p>Suddenly several lorries carrying British soldiers screeched to a halt, and a salvo of shots rang out. The British fired over our heads, and we ran away.</p>
<p>Remembering this event 79 years later, it crossed my mind that the boys of Gaza are greater heroes then we were then. They did not run away. They stood their ground for hours, while the death toll rose to 61 and the number of those wounded by live ammunition to some 1500, in addition to 1000 affected by gas.</p>
<p>ON THAT day, most TV stations in Israel and abroad split their screen. On the right, the events in Gaza. On the left, the inauguration of the US Embassy in Jerusalem.</p>
<p>In the 136th year of the Zionist-Palestinian war, that split screen is the picture of reality: the celebration in Jerusalem and the bloodbath in Gaza. Not on two different planets, not in two different continents, but hardly an hour's drive apart.</p>
<p>The celebration in Jerusalem started as a silly event. A bunch of suited males, inflated with self-importance, celebrating - what, exactly? The symbolic movement of an office from one town to another.</p>
<p>Jerusalem is a major bone of contention. Everybody knows that there will be no peace, not now, not ever, without a compromise there. For every Palestinian, every Arab, every Muslim throughout the world, it is unthinkable to give up Jerusalem. It is from there, according to Muslim tradition, that the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven, after tying his horse to the rock that is now the center of the holy places. After Mecca and Medina, Jerusalem is the third holiest place of Islam.</p>
<p>For the Jews, of course, Jerusalem means the place where, some 2000 years ago, there stood the temple built by King Herod, a cruel half-Jew. A remnant of an outer wall still stands there and is revered as the "Western Wall". It used to be called the "Wailing Wall", and is the holiest place of the Jews.</p>
<p>Statesmen have tried to square the circle and find a solution. The 1947 United Nations committee that decreed the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state – a solution enthusiastically endorsed by the Jewish leadership – suggested separating Jerusalem from both states and constituting it as a separate unit within what was supposed to be in fact a kind of confederation.</p>
<p>The war of 1948 resulted in a divided city, the Eastern part was occupied by the Arab side (the Kingdom of Jordan) and the Western part became the capital of Israel. (My modest part was to fight in the battle for the road.)</p>
<p>No one liked the division of the city. So my friends and I devised a third solution, which by now has become a world consensus: keep the city united on the municipal level and divide it politically: the West as capital of the State of Israel, the East as capital of the State of Palestine. The leader of the local Palestinians, Faisal al-Husseini, the scion of a most distinguished local Palestinian family and the son of a national hero who was killed not far from my position in the same battle, endorsed this formula publicly. Yasser Arafat gave me his tacit consent.</p>
<p>If President Donald Trump had declared West Jerusalem the capital of Israel and moved his embassy there, almost nobody would have got excited. By omitting the word "West", Trump ignited a fire. Perhaps without realizing what he was doing, and probably not giving a damn.</p>
<p>For me, the moving of the US embassy means nothing. It is a symbolic act that does not change reality. If and when peace does come, no one will care about some stupid act of a half-forgotten US president. Inshallah.</p>
<p>SO THERE they were, this bunch of self-important nobodies, Israelis, Americans and those in-between, having their little festival, while rivers of blood were flowing in Gaza. Human beings were killed by the dozen and wounded by the thousand.</p>
<p>The ceremony started as a cynical meeting, which quickly became grotesque, and ended in being sinister. Nero fiddling while Rome was burning.</p>
<p>When the last hug was exchanged and the last compliment paid (especially to the graceful Ivanka), Gaza remained what it was – a huge concentration camp with severely overcrowded hospitals, lacking medicines and food, drinkable water and electricity.</p>
<p><strong>A ridiculous world-wide propaganda campaign was let loose to counter the world-wide condemnation. For example: the story that the terrorist Hamas had compelled the Gazans to go and demonstrate – as if anyone could be compelled to risk their life in a demonstration.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Or: the story that Hamas paid every demonstrator 50 dollars. Would you risk your life for 50 dollars? Would anybody?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Or: The soldiers had no choice but to kill them, because they were storming the border fence. Actually, no one did so – the huge concentration of Israeli army brigades would have easily prevented it without shooting.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Almost forgotten was a small news item from the days before: Hamas had discreetly offered a Hudna for ten years. A Hudna is a sacred armistice, never to be broken. The Crusaders, our remote predecessors, had many Hudnas with their Arab enemies during their 200-year stay here.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Israeli leaders immediately rejected the offer.</strong></p>
<p>SO WHY were the soldiers ordered to kill? It is the same logic that has animated countless occupation regimes throughout history: make the "natives" so afraid that they will give up. Alas, the results have almost always been the very opposite: the oppressed have become more hardened, more resolute. This is happening now.</p>
<p>Bloody Monday may well be seen in future as the day when the Palestinians regained their national pride, their will to stand up and fight for their independence.</p>
<p>Strangely, the next day – the main day of the planned protest, Naqba Day - only two demonstrators were killed. Israeli diplomats abroad, facing world-wide indignation, had probably sent home SOS messages. Clearly the Israeli army had changed its orders. Non-lethal means were used and sufficed.</p>
<p>MY CONSCIENCE does not allow me to conclude this without some self-criticism.</p>
<p>I would have expected that all of Israel's renowned writers would publish a thundering joint condemnation while the shooting was still going on. It did not happen.</p>
<p>The political "opposition" was contemptible. No word from the Labor party. No word from Ya'ir Lapid. The new leader of the Meretz party, Tamar Sandberg, did at least boycott the Jerusalem celebration. Labor and Lapid did not even do that.</p>
<p>I would have expected that the dozens of our brave peace organizations would unite in a dramatic act of condemnation, an act that would arouse the world. It did not happen. Perhaps they were in a state of shock.</p>
<p>The next day, the excellent boys and girls of the peace groups demonstrated opposite the Likud office in Tel Aviv. Some 500 took part. Far, far from the hundreds of thousands who demonstrated some years ago against the price of cottage cheese.</p>
<p>In short: we did not do our duty. I accuse myself as much as I accuse everybody else.</p>
<p>We must prepare at once for the next atrocity. We must organize for mass action now!</p>
<p>BUT WHAT topped everything was the huge machine of brain-washing that was set in motion. For many years I have not experienced anything like it.</p>
<p>Almost all the so-called "military correspondents" acted like army propaganda agents. Day by day they helped the army to spread lies and falsifications. The public had no alternative but to believe every word. Nobody told them otherwise.</p>
<p>The same is true for almost all other means of communication, program presenters, announcers and correspondents. They willingly became government liars. Probably many of them were ordered to do so by their bosses. Not a glorious chapter.</p>
<p>After the day of blood, when the army was faced with world condemnation and had to stop shooting ("only" killing two unarmed demonstrators) all Israeli media were united in declaring this a great Israeli victory.</p>
<p>Israel had to open the crossings and send food and medicines to Gaza. Egypt had to open its Gaza crossing and accept many hundreds of wounded for operations and other treatment.</p>
<p>The Day of Shame has passed. Until the next time.</p>
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<p><span> </span></p> Uri Avnery's Column about Donald Trumptag:peaceformeandtheworld.ning.com,2017-01-23:5143044:Topic:2447542017-01-23T22:22:02.903ZRosmarie Heusserhttps://peaceformeandtheworld.ning.com/profile/RosmarieHeusser
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2311640928?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-center" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2311640928?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"></img></a></p>
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<p><strong><span style="color: #ff0000;">Being There</span></strong></p>
<p>21/01/17</p>
<p> </p>
<p>PERHAPS HE is lying all the time.</p>
<p>Perhaps he is lying about being a liar.</p>
<p>Perhaps he is cheating about being a cheat.</p>
<p>Perhaps he is just posing as an impostor.</p>
<p>Perhaps he has misled us all about his misleading.</p>
<p>Perhaps he is a…</p>
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<p></p>
<p><strong><span style="color: #ff0000;">Being There</span></strong></p>
<p>21/01/17</p>
<p> </p>
<p>PERHAPS HE is lying all the time.</p>
<p>Perhaps he is lying about being a liar.</p>
<p>Perhaps he is cheating about being a cheat.</p>
<p>Perhaps he is just posing as an impostor.</p>
<p>Perhaps he has misled us all about his misleading.</p>
<p>Perhaps he is a very shrewd manipulator, who has led us all into believing that he is a megalomaniac simpleton.</p>
<p>Well, today is President Donald Trump's first day in office.</p>
<p>PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP – we must get used to these three words.</p>
<p>The only one thing that can be said with some certainty is that nothing is certain. That this man is totally unpredictable. That we are in for four years of uncertainty, waking up every morning wondering what he is up to today.</p>
<p>He will be the entertainer-president. As he was the entertainer-candidate. I confess that every morning, when I took into my hand the daily newspaper, the first thing I was looking for was the latest item about Trump. What did he do? What did he say? Whatever it was, it was always entertaining.</p>
<p>The question is: do we really want the most powerful man in the world to be an entertainer? Or an overblown egomaniac? Or a totally self-absorbed narcissist? A man who knows nothing and believes that he can solve everything?</p>
<p>This is a dangerous world. From today on, it will be a lot more dangerous.</p>
<p>LET'S THINK for a moment about the Red Button.</p>
<p>There are several Red Buttons around the world, and several fingers of leaders (including ours) hovering over them. Thinking about Trump's finger makes me nervous.</p>
<p>Some of the most terrible wars in history were started by nincompoops.</p>
<p>Think about Word War I, with its many millions of dead, started by a nobody, a Serbian fanatic.</p>
<p>World War II, with its many tens of millions of dead, was started by Adolf Hitler, a quite primitive person. When he crossed the border into Poland, he did not dream of starting a world war. Until the very last moment he did not believe that Great Britain, an “Aryan” country he admired, would declare war on him.</p>
<p>President Trump seems to know nothing about history. Nor about much else, except real estate and making money. He also does not seem to really listen to others when making decisions. Wow.</p>
<p>Some 45 years ago I read a book by a Polish-American writer, Jerzy Kosinsky, called "Being There". It was about a mentally handicapped gardener whose rich boss died and left him alone. All his knowledge was confined to gardening and television.</p>
<p>By some accident he became involved in politics. His simple answers to all questions were conceived as profoundly wise. Things like: You have to water the roots if you want to have sweet fruit</p>
<p>He climbed the political ladder to the top, become the advisor to the President. I don't remember if he actually became president. Trump did.</p>
<p>CURIOUSLY ENOUGH, I remember a German movie I saw when I was nine years old. Not a very important or sophisticated one. Yet here I remember, 84 years later.</p>
<p>It's about a young man of very good family, who falls in love with the daughter of an ordinary carpenter. His family absolutely refuses to allow him to marry the daughter of such a lowly handyman.</p>
<p>One evening the old carpenter sits in his pub and discovers a fly in his beer. He hits his huge fist on the table and cries out: "This swinishness must end!"</p>
<p>For a moment there is silence. Then shouts of "Bravo!" come from all directions.</p>
<p>The suitor seizes the opportunity. He founds a party, makes deals, runs the old man for elections and in the end – that was still the Weimar republic – gets him elected as prime minister.</p>
<p>Now the young suitor's family is happy to have him marry the girl, but her father adamantly refuses. "Who are you to marry the daughter of the Prime Minister?" he asks.</p>
<p>Out for revenge, the suitor, who also writes the Prime Minister's speeches, changes the pages in the middle of one of the old man’s speeches in the Reichstag. So the old man announces "I am a total failure, I am a complete idiot…"</p>
<p>I don't remember the end.</p>
<p><strong><span style="color: #ff0000;">Who is the young man who directed Trump's campaign? His Jewish son-in-law, of course, Jared Kushner.</span></strong></p>
<p><strong><span style="color: #ff0000;">Kushner, like Trump, is a real estate dealer. Like Trump, he was born rich, and devoted his life to getting richer. Now he is Trump's main political advisor.</span></strong></p>
<p><strong><span style="color: #ff0000;">Kushner is also an ardent Zionist. That means that he wouldn't dream of coming and settling in Israel, but instead supports the most fanatical elements in this country.</span></strong></p>
<p>It seems to be a rule that the further a Jew is removed from the past and future battlefields of Israel, the more fanatically Zionist he is. This Jared is very far removed.</p>
<p>One of his pieces of advice, it seems, was to appoint as US ambassador to Israel another rich Jew, David Friedman. This person is such a fanatical right-wing Zionist that he is financially involved in the settlement Beit El ("House of God"), one of the most right-wing colonies in the West Bank. Some would call it fascist.</p>
<p>A diplomatic curiosity: the Israeli ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, and the US ambassador to Israel are both ultra-right US-born Jewish Zionists. If they changed places, no one would notice.</p>
<p>LET ME remind readers what these settlements are all about.</p>
<p>When the Israeli army conquered the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in 1967, they were as populated as the US Midwest. Much of the land belonged to private farmers or absentee landlords, and the rest was "government land".</p>
<p>During Ottoman times, the land reserves of the villages and towns were registered in the name of the Sultan, whose heir was the British High Commissioner, whose heir was the Jordan monarch, whose heir is now the commander of the Israeli occupation army.</p>
<p>Now the Israeli settlers come and just take this land, private or "government" owned, and turn it into their homes. No payment to anyone. Sheer robbery.</p>
<p>Now Americans like Friedman, Kushner el al. come and encourage the settlers to steal even more, even offering money to help them along.</p>
<p>History tells us that such things don't last forever. Sooner or later such things end in a bloodbath. But on that day, Friedman. Kushner and Trump will be far, far away.</p>
<p>SO WHY am I now writing about Trump?</p>
<p>Well, first of all because it’s a Historic Day. I don't like Historic Days. I remember such a day when young men with festive torches and arcane symbols on their arms were parading through Berlin.</p>
<p>But there is also another reason I don't want to write about Israel just now.</p>
<p>We are in the middle of the biggest scandal in Israel's history. The Prime Minister and the owner of our largest mass-circulation newspaper are being investigated for bribery, and so are foreign tycoons who have kept Binyamin Netanyahu supplied for years with the world's most expensive cigars and his wife with the world's most expensive pink champagne. (It's the "pink" that provides the added gossip value).</p>
<p>No, I am not going to write about this now. Sorry.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2311648430?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2311648430?profile=original" width="336" class="align-right"/></a></p> The War for Nothingtag:peaceformeandtheworld.ning.com,2014-09-04:5143044:Topic:2211922014-09-04T21:04:07.641ZRosmarie Heusserhttps://peaceformeandtheworld.ning.com/profile/RosmarieHeusser
<p>Uri Avnery's Column 30/08/14</p>
<p><b>The War for Nothing</b></p>
<p>AFTER 50 DAYS, the war is over. Hallelujah.</p>
<p>On the Israeli side: 71 dead, among them 66 soldiers, 1 child.</p>
<p>On the Palestinian side: 2,143 dead, 577 of them children, 263 women, 102 elderly. 11,230 injured. 10,800 buildings destroyed. 8,000 partially destroyed. About 40,000 damaged homes. Among the damaged buildings: 277 schools, 10 hospitals, 70 mosques, 2 churches. Also, 12 West Bank demonstrators, mostly…</p>
<p>Uri Avnery's Column 30/08/14</p>
<p><b>The War for Nothing</b></p>
<p>AFTER 50 DAYS, the war is over. Hallelujah.</p>
<p>On the Israeli side: 71 dead, among them 66 soldiers, 1 child.</p>
<p>On the Palestinian side: 2,143 dead, 577 of them children, 263 women, 102 elderly. 11,230 injured. 10,800 buildings destroyed. 8,000 partially destroyed. About 40,000 damaged homes. Among the damaged buildings: 277 schools, 10 hospitals, 70 mosques, 2 churches. Also, 12 West Bank demonstrators, mostly children, who were shot.</p>
<p>So what was it all about?</p>
<p>The honest answer is: About nothing.</p>
<p>Neither side wanted it. Neither side started it. It just so happened.</p>
<p>LET US recapitulate the events, before they are forgotten.</p>
<p>Two young Arab men kidnapped three young Israeli religious students near the West Bank town of Hebron. The kidnappers belonged to the Hamas movement, but acted on their own. Their purpose was to exchange their captives for Palestinian prisoners. Liberating prisoners is now the highest ambition of every Palestinian militant.</p>
<p>The kidnappers were amateurs, and their plan miscarried from the beginning. They panicked when one student used his mobile phone and then they shot the hostages. All of Israel was in an uproar. The kidnappers have not yet been found.</p>
<p>The Israeli security forces used the opportunity to implement a prepared plan. All known Hamas activists in the West Bank were arrested, as well as all the former prisoners who were released as part of the deal to free the Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit. For Hamas this was the violation of an agreement.</p>
<p>The Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip could not keep quiet while their comrades in the West Bank were being imprisoned. It reacted by launching rockets at Israeli towns and villages.</p>
<p>The Israeli government could not keep quiet while its towns and villages were bombarded. It responded with a heavy bombardment of the Gaza strip from the air.</p>
<p>From there on, it was just an endless festival of death and destruction. The war was crying out for a purpose.</p>
<p>Hamas then did something that was, in my opinion, a cardinal mistake. It used some of the clandestine tunnels which it had built under the border fence to attack Israeli targets. Israelis suddenly became aware of this danger that the army had belittled. The purposeless war acquired a purpose: It became the War Against the “Terror-Tunnels". The infantry was sent into the Gaza Strip to search out and destroy them.</p>
<p>Eighty thousand soldiers entered Strip. After destroying all the known tunnels, they had nothing to do except stand around and act as targets.</p>
<p>The next logical step would have been to move forward and conquer the entire Gaza Strip, some 45 km long and an average of 6 km wide, with 1.8 million inhabitants. Four times larger than Manhattan island with about the same population.</p>
<p>But the Israeli army detested the idea of conquering the Strip for the third time (after 1956 and 1967). The last time it left, the soldiers sang "Goodbye Gaza, and not to see you again!" Predictions of military casualties were high, many more than Israeli society was ready to suffer, in spite of all the patriotic hyperbole.</p>
<p>The war deteriorated into an orgy of killing and destroying, with both sides "dancing on the blood", blessing every bomb and missile, completely oblivious to the suffering caused to the human beings on the other side. And still without any realizable aim.</p>
<p>IF CLAUSEWITZ was right about war being but a continuation of policy by other means, then every war must have a clear political aim.</p>
<p>For Hamas, the aim was clear and simple: Lift the blockade on Gaza.</p>
<p>For Israel there was none. Binyamin Netanyahu defined his aim as "Calm in return for Calm". But we had that before it all started.</p>
<p>Some of his cabinet colleagues demanded to "go to the end" and occupy the entire strip. The army command objected, and one cannot fight a war against the wishes of the army command. So everyone stood around waiting for Godot.</p>
<p>What brought about the final ceasefire agreement?</p>
<p>Both sides were exhausted. On the Israeli side, the feather that broke the camel's back was the plight of the settlement around the Gaza Strip, called the "Gaza envelope". Under the unceasing barrage of short-range rockets and – even worse – mortar shells that cost next to nothing, the inhabitants, mostly kibbutz members, started to move quitetly to safer regions.</p>
<p>That was almost sacrilege. One of the founding myths of Israel was that in the 1948 war, in which the state was born, Arab villagers and townspeople ran away when they were shot at, while our settlements stood firm even in the midst of hell.</p>
<p>That was not entirely so. Several kibbutzim were evacuated by order of the army when their defense became impossible. In several others, women and children were sent away, while men were ordered to stay on and fight with the soldiers. But on the whole, Israeli settlements stood fast and fought.</p>
<p>But 1948 was an ethnic war for territory. Land evacuated was lost forever (or at least until the next war). This time, the whole rationale was different.</p>
<p>LIFE IN the "envelope" became impossible. Sirens sounded several times within the hour, and everybody had 15 seconds to find shelter. The clamor for evacuation became open and loud. Hundreds of families moved away. The myth was abandoned and the government was compelled to organize a mass movement. That did not look like victory.</p>
<p>The Palestinian side underwent a terrible ordeal. About 400 thousand people had to leave their homes. Whole families found shelter in UN buildings, several families in a room or in a corner of the courtyard, without electricity and with very little water, mothers with 6, 7 or 8 children.</p>
<p>(Imagine what that means: A family, poor or wealthy, has to leave its home within minutes, unable to take anything, no clothes, no money, no family albums, just to gather the children and run, while behind them the home collapses. A whole life's work and memories destroyed in seconds. The young men were long gone, living in secret underground tunnels, preparing for the crucial fight.)</p>
<p>It is almost a wonder that under these conditions, the Hamas government and command structure did function. Orders passed from hidden leaders to hidden cells, contacts were maintained with leaders abroad and between different organizations, while spy drones circled overhead and killed any civil leader or commander who showed his face.</p>
<p>After the action to kill the Hamas military Commander in Chief, Mohammad Deif (which succeeded or failed, we don't know), Hamas started to shoot the informers without whom such actions are impossible. (In my days as a junior terrorist, we did the same.)</p>
<p>But with all their remarkable ingenuity, Hamas could not go on forever. Their large stocks of rockets and mortar shells were being depleted. They also needed an end.</p>
<p>The result? Clearly a draw. But, as I have said before, if a small resistance organization achieves a draw against one of the mightiest military machines in the world, it has cause to celebrate – as it indeed did, last Monday, the 50th day of the War for Nothing.</p>
<p>WHAT DID the two sides lose?</p>
<p>The Palestinians sustained huge material losses. Thousand of homes were destroyed in order to break their spirit, some with some slim pretext, others without any. In the last days, the Air Force systematically brought down the luxurious high-rise buildings in the center of Gaza.</p>
<p>Palestinian human losses were also enormous. Israelis did not shed any tears.</p>
<p>On the Israeli side, human and material losses where comparatively light. Economic losses were significant, but bearable. It is the unseen losses that count.</p>
<p>The delegitimization of Israel throughout the world is accelerating. Millions of people have seen the daily pictures coming out of Gaza, and, consciously or unconsciously, their image of Israel has changed. For many, the brave little country has turned into a brutal monster.</p>
<p>Anti-Semitism, we are told, is dangerously on the rise. Israel claims to be the Nation-State of the Jewish People, and most Jews defend Israel and identify with it. The new rage against Israel sometimes looks like old-time anti-Semitism, and sometimes is.</p>
<p>We don't know how many Jews will be driven by anti-Semitism to Israel. Nor do we know how many Israelis will be driven by the eternal war from Israel to Germany, the US or Canada.</p>
<p>One tends to overlook the most dangerous aspect. A huge mass of hatred has been created in Gaza. How many of the children we saw running with their mothers from their homes will become the "terrorists" of tomorrow?</p>
<p>Millions of children throughout the Arab world have seen the pictures beamed daily into their homes by Aljazeera, and become bitter haters of Israel. Aljazeera is a world power. While its English-language edition tried to be moderate, the Arab edition had no brakes - hour after hour its reports showed the heartbreaking pictures from Gaza, the children killed, the homes destroyed.</p>
<p>On the other side, the generations-old enmity of Arab governments towards Israel has been broken. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and all the Gulf States (except Qatar) are openly collaborating now with Israel.</p>
<p>Can this bear political fruit in the future? It could, if our government were really interested in peace.</p>
<p>In Israel itself, fascism, vile and unmistakable, has raised its ugly head. "Death to the Arabs" and "Death to the Leftists" have become legitimate battle-cries. Some of this foul wave will hopefully recede, but some may remain and become a regular feature.</p>
<p>Netanyahu's personal fortunes are clouded. During the war his popularity ratings rose sharply. Now they are in a free fall. It is not enough to make speeches about victory. Victory must be seen. If possible, without a microscope.</p>
<p>WAR IS a matter of power. The reality created on the battlefield is generally reflected in the political results. If the battle ends in a draw, the political result will also be a draw.</p>
<p>Celebrating a similar triumph long ago, Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, remarked: “Another such victory and we will be lost!”</p>
<p>Uri Avnery</p>
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<p>Source: <a href="http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1409319940" target="_blank">Uri Avnery's Column</a></p>
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