Jewish Victim of Israeli Right-wing Terror Speaks Out...

[Editor's note: It is a sad way to enter the High Holidays, but for those of us who are religious Jews and believe that we have an obligation to repent not only for ourselves but for our community, it is important to pay attention when the same right-wing Jews who are murdering and causing pogroms against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank are now using their violence against peace-oriented intellectuals and writers inside Israel. It is striking that the U.S. media has largely ignored this story, though if the attack had been by an Arab you can be sure it would have been front page news.

In the past, we at Tikkun have received many threats, and our editor Rabbi Michael Lerner continues to be subject to vile attacks and distortions, plus actual death threats from right-wing Israelis. For those who believe that this is all just paranoia and nobody should take them seriously, the bomb that almost killed Tikkun author and Ha'aretz columnist Zeev Sternhell, one of the most famous historians who taught at the Hebrew University about French fascism and who has written in Tikkun about he dangers of the Israeli right and the way it has caused Israel to lose its way, should now be a confirmation that the verbal violence against peace advocates in the Jewish world in the U.S. not only leads American politicians to blindly follow AIPAC politics, but may constitute a real physical threat.

. What is needed now from soon-to-be-interim Prime Minister Tzipi Livni is what Ehud Olmert never delivered: not just more negotiations, but changing the facts of the ground by unilaterrally dismantling many West Bank settlements, removing the roadblocks that exist within the West Bank (not the ones leading to Israel inside the Green Line) and releasing from the prison camps thousands and thousands of Palestinians who have never been convicted of any crime and are held, tortured, and then released without ever having a chance to defend their innocence. Unless the facts on the ground change, and Israel makes dramatic steps against the settlers, the settlers will continue and escalate their violence against fellow Jews who want peace. Bring the settlers back within the Green Lines, and create facts of peace insted of facts of war. And provide resources for protection of the Jews most well-known for speaking out for peace. And yes, even writing this feels scary, because who knows what right-winger will read it and escalate their violence? But this is the kind of question Jews should be addressing during aseret yemey teshuva--the 10 days of repentance.


May we all be inscribed for a year in which the US, Israel, and all others on the planet make major leaps forward toward a world of peace, justice, ecological sanity, and generosity of spirit! Shana tova! ]


Prof. Zeev Sternhell Speaks Out from His Hospital Bed
Interview By Akiva Eldar in Ha'aretz, Sept.29, 2008 Tel Aviv Erev Rosh Hashanah


Professor Zeev Sternhell's house on Jerusalem's Agnon Street is easily located by the iron gate with the broken glass. Sternhell says the bombing could have ended with him having to have both legs amputated.

Fortunately, last Thursday night he and his wife Ziva had returned from abroad and their suitcases, left in the narrow hallway, separated him and the pipe bomb that had been attached to the door.

The living room is filled with flowers and the telephone doesn't stop ringing. The news is quoting ministers' statements from the cabinet meeting.
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Sternhell, while still in the hospital, drew a direct line between the state's surrender to the extreme right rampaging in the territories and the terrorist or organization that tried to kill him.

"What are those ministers talking about," he asks, when Vice Premier Haim Ramon blasts the government on the television news for fearing "those hooligans," as Ramon called them.

Sternhell: "Who has to deal with the outposts? Me? You? Who's to blame for the semi-autonomous state in the territories? Groups of settlers do whatever they feel like. Police officers and reserve soldiers go home with broken arms. How did they let things deteriorate to this lack of control in the West Bank? I told my students that not intervening for a weak child who needs help against a strong child is intervening for the strong child. Whoever fails to enforce the law and protect the Palestinians from the settlers who attack them is cooperating with the hooligans and lawbreakers."

The settlers argue that they are the weak child. Especially since the evacuation of the Gaza Strip.

"I understand exactly what it's like to be a refugee and I'm sorry the Gush Katif settlers were not allowed to build a new life within the Green Line. [But] every time the government takes a step in the right direction, like pulling out of Gaza, it hastens to console the settlers and promise them this will go no further.

"I'm suggesting an alternative to exclusive ownership of the land that justifies occupation. It would be based on a rational view of universal rights, especially the right to liberty and dignity, including for the Palestinians. This is the social-democratic approach that shaped 20th century Europe. It would strengthen Zionism, unlike the insistence on exclusivity over all the Land of Israel which rejects the other's rights, undermines the Zionist ideal, and is a proven prescription for disaster."

Are the extreme right wing and settlers anti-Zionists?

"Certainly. The right wing advocating the greater Israel is the real post-Zionist body. Whoever supports the occupation, i.e. a binational state, is no Zionist. This could also be said of politicians who drag their feet in negotiations intended to bring about a two-state solution for two nations. They're putting off this solution to the unforeseeable future, endangering the Jewish state's future."

Will you use the bombing to increase your influence?

"My job is to criticize. I have no intention of returning to politics. I'm glad my injury shocked the cabinet and Knesset. But what remains of [prime minister Yitzhak] Rabin's murder, which caused a much greater shock? A one-day annual festival.

The politicians must declare war on the extreme right and occupation - that's the swamp where those mosquitoes breed. Otherwise they won't even be a footnote in history."

As a member of the Zionist left and a historian specializing in 20th century fascism, are you pleased with the role of the Israeli left in the confrontation with the right?

"The Israeli left has made no political mark. It has good people, like [MK] Ophir Pines and [Education Minister] Yuli Tamir, but they have no impact on their party. No one is trying to shape the future of war and peace, or of social progress. Instead, the strong get stronger and the weak get weaker, even as the free market's mythology is crumbling around us and begging for state intervention to save it. This is the very moment when the left should rear up and proclaim its difference, remind us that the rightist ideology is a total failure and delivers only political, social and economic disaster. A left-wing party worthy of the name should be shouting from the rooftops by now."

In an interview with Haaretz six months ago you said your children's and grandchildren's future did not seem secure.

"I fear that unless an immediate change takes place, in 50 years my granddaughters will have no reason to live here. If we're doomed to be a minority in a multinational state, why live in Tel Aviv rather than California? For that I had to sacrifice so much? Our grandchildren will not understand the justification for the colonial reality here. That's the greatest danger to our society.

"Despite the difficulties my generation has experienced, we were always accompanied by the hope of a better future. My students don't have the feeling that next year will be better, they feel that tomorrow is not safe. We believed we were going in the right way, that justice was on our side.

"Today young people's conviction of that is crumbling. Occupation is rotting our society. The terrible violence in the territories is spilling over the Green Line. This is inevitable - different standards and laws for different people cannot exist without affecting all of society. I'm not seeking absolute justice, only an end to building a de facto apartheid, only to ensure the creation of a society that future generations will not be ashamed of."
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Uri Avnery
27.9.08

It Can Happen Here!

THE GERMAN name Sternhell means bright as the stars. The name fits: the positions of Professor Ze'ev Sternhell indeed stand out sharply against the darkness of the sky. He warns against Israeli fascism. This week, Israeli fascists laid a pipe-bomb at the entrance of his apartment and he was lightly injured.

The choice of victim seems surprising at first. But the perpetrators knew what they were doing.

They did not attack the activists who demonstrate every week against the Separation Wall in Bil'in and Na'alin. They did not attack the leftists who mobilize every year - this year, too - to help the Palestinians pick their olives near the most dangerous settlements. They did not attack the "Women in Black" who demonstrate every Friday, or the women of "Machsom Watch", who keep an eye on events at the army checkpoints. They attacked a person whose entire activity is in the academic field.

The struggles on the ground are essential. But their main purpose is to influence public opinion. That is the main battlefield, and there the man of letters has an important part to play.

On this battlefield, two visions confront each other, two visions that are as far apart as the West is from the East. On the one side: An enlightened Israel, modern, secular, liberal and democratic, living in peace and partnership with Palestine as an integral part of the region. On the other side: a fanatical Israel, religious, fascist, cut off from the region and civilized humanity, a people that "dwells alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations" (Numbers, 23:9), where "the sword will devour for ever" (2 Samuel 2:26).

Ze'ev Sternhell is one of the outstanding guides of the enlightened vision. His positions are bright as the stars, resolute and incisive. Not a surprising target for the Neo-Nazi pipe-dreamers and pipe-bombers.


THE FIELD of Sternhell's academic expertise is the origins of Fascism, a subject that has occupied me all my life. The reasons for our interest are similar: Nazism left an indelible stamp on our childhood and fate. As a child, I witnessed the rise of Nazism in Germany. As a child, Sternhell saw it in Poland, when, after the death of his father, he lost his mother and sister in the Holocaust.

"He who has been scalded by boiling water is cautious even with cold water," a Hebrew adage goes. Those who experienced Fascism bursting into their lives in childhood are sensitive to the slightest symptom of the outbreak of this disease. In 1961 I wrote a book called "The Swastika" (which exists only in Hebrew), in which I tried to crack the code of the roots of Nazism. At the end of the book I posed the question: Can it happen here? My unequivocal answer was: Yes, indeed.

Because of this, I am sensitive to every warning sign in our society. As a journalist and magazine editor, I shone the searchlight on all such signs. As a political activist, I fought against them in the Knesset and in the street.

Sternhell, on his part, after a military career, is a pure academic. He uses the instruments of academia: research, teaching and publication. He strives for exact definitions, without seeking popularity or avoiding provocation. In one of his articles years ago he asserted that the violent response of the Palestinians to the settlements is quite natural. By this he attracted the lasting wrath of the settlers and the extreme Right, which made an effort to prevent him from receiving the Israel Prize, Israel's highest distinction.

Now the pipe-bombs are speaking.


WHO LAID the bomb? A lone individual? A group? A new underground? The terrorists from the settlements? That's for the police and the Shin-Bet to find out.

>From the public point of view, the matter is much more simple: it is quite clear in which flowerbed these poisonous weeds grow, which ideology serves as fertilizer, and who is spreading it.

Israeli Fascism is alive and kicking. It is growing in the flowerbed that produced the various religious-nationalist underground groups of the past: the group that tried to bomb the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount, the underground that tried to assassinate the Palestinian mayors, the "Kach" gang, the perpetrator of the Hebron massacre Baruch Goldstein, the murderer of peace activist Emil Gruenzweig, the murderer of Yitzhak Rabin and all the underground groups that were uncovered at an early stage before their deeds could bring them to public notice.

These acts cannot simply be attributed to individuals or "rogue groups". There exists a definite fascist fringe at the margin of Israel's political society. Its ideology is religious-nationalist, and its spiritual leaders are mostly "Rabbis", who formulate its world view and the practical application. These Jewish idolaters do not work in secret. On the contrary, they offer their wares on the open market.

This sector is concentrated in the "ideological" settlements. That does not mean that all settlers are fascists. But most fascists are settlers. They are concentrated in certain well-known settlements. By accident or not by accident, all these settlements are located in the heart of the West Bank, beyond the Separation Wall. The first of these, in the Hebron area, were installed with the help of "leftist" leader Yigal Allon, and in the Nablus area by "leftist" leader Shimon Peres.


DURING THE last months, there has been a marked increase in the number of incidents in which settlers attack Palestinians, soldiers, policemen and "leftists".

These acts are committed openly, in order to terrorize and deter. Settlers riot in the Palestinian villages whose lands they covet, or for revenge. These are "pogroms" in the classical sense of the term: riots by an armed mob intoxicated with hatred against helpless people, while the police and the army look on. The Pogromchiks destroy, injure and kill. These days it is happening more and more frequently.

In the few cases when the army or the police intervene, they do not turn on the settlers, but on the Israeli peace activists who come to help the beleaguered Palestinian farmers. The spokesmen of the Security Establishment and the commentators try to sound balanced and speak about "rioters from the Left and the Right". That is a false even handedness, which itself belongs to the Fascist arsenal of tricks.

The Settlers' pogroms are violent by nature, both in thought and deed, while the peace activists are non-violent on principle. If there is violence, it comes from the army and the border police, the pretext being that local boys have been throwing stones. What is not mentioned is that the well-protected soldiers and border policemen pursue the Palestinian demonstrators into the alleys of their villages.

The "boldness" of the extreme right-wing thugs - or "rightist activists" as the media insist on calling them courteously - is increasing by the day. They do whatever they want, knowing full well that no harm will befall them. The police do not interfere, since anyhow the courts will not mete out meaningful punishment.


ANYBODY WHO knows the history of Nazism is familiar with the shameful role played by the courts and the other law-enforcement agencies in the German republic vis-à-vis the law-breakers whose declared purpose was to put an end to the democratic system. The judges imposed ludicrously light penalties on Nazi rioters, whom they considered "misguided patriots", while treating Communist rioters as foreign agents and traitors.

Now we are experiencing this phenomenon here. The law-breaking settlers get symbolic sentences, while Palestinians who are accused of much lesser offenses get harsh penalties. Nowadays, even a settler who sets his dog on a company commander goes free, as does a settler who breaks the bones of a battalion chief.

The army's internal justice system can only be called monstrous: the commander who held up a bleeding woman in labor at a checkpoint causing the death of the child, was punished with two weeks detention. The commander who told a soldier to shoot a handcuffed Palestinian prisoner in the leg was "transferred", meaning that this war criminal can serve in another unit.


DOES THE increase in the number and severity of such incidents testify to the increasing power of Israeli Fascism? At first sight, one might get this impression.

However, on second thought I think that the opposite is true.

The fanatical settlers know that they have lost the support of public opinion in Israel, and that ordinary people consider them dangerous thugs. Their actions, as seen on television, arouse distaste, even abhorrence. The vision of "All of Eretz-Israel" has not only lost altitude - it has crashed on the ground of reality. The Zealots are acting out of weakness and frustration.

Much as the Nazis hated the German republic, these fanatics are starting to hate the State of Israel. And with good reason. They see that they have no place in a national consensus that is solidifying around the concept of "Two States for Two peoples", whether it is being accepted for negative reasons, such as demographic fears or the burdens of occupation, or for positive reasons, such as the hope for peace and prosperity after the withdrawal from the occupied territories.

The discussion about the borders is still going on, but the majority sees the Separation Wall as the future border. (As we made clear right from the beginning, the wall was not really being constructed in order to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers, as was claimed, but as a future border between the two states.)

The Israeli establishment wants to annex the lands between the wall and the Green Line, and is prepared to give the Palestinians Israeli areas in return. What does this tell the settlers?

Most settlers live in settlements near the Green Line, which according to this concept will be joined to Israel. These are, not by accident, the non-ideological "lifestyle" settlers, those who were looking for cheap apartments and "quality of life" at a short distance from Tel-Aviv or Jerusalem. These settlers will, probably, agree in the end to any peace that leaves them in Israel.

The great majority of the extreme settlers, those motivated by a religious-Fascist ideology, live in the small settlements east of the wall, which must be dismantled when peace comes. This is a small minority even among the settlers, supported by a radical minority on the extreme right. That is where violent Israeli Fascism is growing.


ONCE UPON a time it seemed that a Red Line ran parallel to the Green Line - that nationalist-religious terrorism would hurt "only" Palestinians, not Israelis. Even Rabbi Meir Kahane, a born fascist, said so.

That illusion was shattered with the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. Israeli Fascism was found to be like any other classical Fascism, which thunders against the "foreign enemy" but directs its terrorism against the "enemy within". The pipe-bomb at the entrance of Sternhell's home must turn on all the red lights, as it joins the murder of Emil Gruenzweig and the threats on the lives of other conspicuous peace activists.

The decisive battle, the battle for Israel, is entering a new phase - much more violent, much more dangerous. But more serious than any danger to individuals is the danger to Israeli society as a whole. Especially if it does not mobilize all its resources - government, police, Security Service, the law, the courts, the media and the educational system - for an all out battle against this danger.

I do not believe that Fascism will win in our society. I believe in the strength of Israel democracy. But if I am pushed into a corner and asked: "Can it happen here?" I am bound to answer: "Yes, it can."

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