Uri
Avnery
October 22, 2011
Everybody’s
Son
THE
MOST sensible – I almost wrote “the only sensible” – sentence uttered this week
sprang from the lips of a 5-year old boy.
After
the prisoner swap, one of those smart-aleck TV reporters asked him: “Why did we
release 1027 Arabs for one Israeli soldier?” He expected, of course, the usual
answer: because one Israeli is worth a thousand Arabs.
The
little boy replied: “Because we caught many of them and they caught only one.”
FOR
MORE than a week, the whole of Israel was in a state of intoxication. Gilad
Shalit indeed ruled the country (Shalit means “ruler”). His pictures were
plastered all over the place like those of Comrade Kim in North Korea.
It
was one of those rare moments, when Israelis could be proud of themselves. Few
countries, if any, would have been prepared to exchange 1027 prisoners for one.
In most places, including the USA, it would have been politically impossible
for a leader to make such a decision.
In
a way it is a continuation of the Jewish ghetto tradition. The “Redemption of
Prisoners” is a sacred religious duty, born of the circumstances of a
persecuted and scattered community. If a Jew from Marseilles was captured by
Muslim corsairs to be sold on the market of Alexandria, it was the duty of Jews
in Cairo to pay the ransom and “redeem” him.
As
the ancient saying goes: “All Israel are guarantors for each other”.
Israelis
could (and did) look in the mirror and say “aren’t we wonderful?”
IMMEDIATELY
AFTER the Oslo agreement, Gush Shalom, the peace movement to which I belong,
proposed releasing all Palestinian prisoners at once. They are
prisoners-of-war, we said, and when the fighting ends, PoWs are sent home. This
would transmit a powerful human message of peace to every Palestinian town and
village. We organized a joint demonstration with the late Jerusalemite Arab
leader, Feisal Husseini, in front of Jeneid prison near Nablus. More than ten
thousand Palestinians and Israelis took part.
But
Israel has never recognized these Palestinians as prisoners-of-war. They are
considered common criminals, only worse.
This
week, the released prisoners were never referred to as “Palestinian fighters”,
or “militants”’ or just “Palestinians”. Every single newspaper and TV program,
from the elitist Haaretz to the most primitive tabloid, referred to them
exclusively as “murderers”, or, for good measure, “vile murderers”.
One
of the worst tyrannies on earth is the tyranny of words. Once a word becomes
entrenched, it directs thought and action. As the Bible has it: “Death and life
are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). Releasing a thousand enemy
fighters is one thing, releasing a thousand vile murderers is something else.
Some
of these prisoners have assisted suicide bombers in killing a lot of people.
Some have committed really atrocious acts – like the pretty young Palestinian
woman who used the internet to lure a love-sick Israeli boy of 15 into a trap,
where he was riddled with bullets. But others were sentenced to life for belonging
to an “illegal organization” and possessing arms, or for throwing an
ineffectual home made bomb at a bus hurting nobody.
Almost
all of them were convicted by military courts. As has been said, military
courts have the same relation to real courts as military music does to real
music.
All
of these prisoners, in Israeli parlance, have “blood on their hands”. But which
of us Israelis has no blood on his hands? Sure, a young woman soldier remotely
controlling a drone that kills a Palestinian suspect and his entire family has
no sticky blood on her hands. Neither has a pilot who drops a bomb on a
residential neighborhood and feels only “a slight bump on the wing”, as a
former Chief of Staff put it. (A Palestinian once told me: “Give me a tank or a
fighter plane, and I shall give up terrorism immediately.”)
The
main argument against the swap was that, according to Security Service
statistics, 15% of prisoners thus released become active “terrorists” again.
Perhaps. But the majority of them become active supporters of peace.
Practically all of my Palestinian friends are former prisoners, some of whom
were behind bars for 12 years and more. They learned Hebrew in prison, became
acquainted with Israeli life by watching television and even began to admire
some aspects of Israel, such as our parliamentary democracy. Most prisoners
just want to go home, settle down and found a family.
But
during the endless hours of waiting for Gilad’s return, all our TV stations
showed scenes of the killings in which the prisoners-to-be-released had been
involved, such as the young woman who drove a bomber to his destination. It was
a continuous tirade of hatred. Our warm admiration for our own virtue was
mingled with the chilling feeling that we are again the victims, compelled to
release vile murderers who are going to try and kill us again.
Yet
all these prisoners fervently believed that they had served their people in its
struggle for liberation. Like the famous song: “Shoot me as an Irish soldier /
Do not hang me like a dog / For I fought for Ireland’s freedom…” Nelson
Mandela, it should be remembered, was an active terrorist who languished in
prison for 28 years because he refused to sign a statement condemning
terrorism.
Israelis
(probably like most peoples) are quite unable to put themselves into the shoes
of their adversaries. This makes it practically impossible to pursue an
intelligent policy, particularly on this issue.
HOW
WAS Binyamin Netanyahu brought to bend?
The
hero of the campaign is Noam Shalit, the father. An introverted person,
withdrawn and shy of publicity, he came out and fought for his son every single
day during these five years and four months. So did the mother. They literally
saved his life. They succeeded in raising a mass movement without precedent in
the annals of the state.
It
helped that Gilad looks like everybody’s son. He is a shy young man with an
engaging smile that could be seen on each of the stills and videos from before
the capture. He was youngish looking, thin and unassuming. Five years later,
this week, he still looked the same, only very pale.
If
our intelligence services had been able to locate him, they would have
undoubtedly tried to liberate him by force. This could well have been his death
sentence, as happened so often in the past. The fact that they could not find
him, despite their hundreds of agents in the Gaza Strip, is a remarkable
achievement for Hamas. It explains why he was kept in strict isolation and was
not allowed to meet anyone.
Israelis
were relieved to discover, on his release, that he seemed to be in good
condition, healthy and alert. From the few sentences he voiced on his way in
Egypt, he had been provided with radio and TV and knew about his parents’
efforts.
From
the moment he set foot on Israeli soil, almost nothing about the way he was
treated was allowed to come out. Where was he kept? How was the food? Did his
captors talk with him? What did he think about them? Did he learn Arabic? Up to
now, not a word about that, probably because it might throw some positive light
on Hamas. He will certainly be thoroughly briefed before being allowed to
speak.
FOREIGN
CORRESPONDENTS repeatedly asked me this week whether the deal had opened the
way to a new peace process. As far as the public mood is concerned, the very
opposite is true.
The
same journalists asked me if Binyamin Netanyahu had not been disturbed by the
fact that the swap was bound to strengthen Hamas and deal a grievous blow to
Mahmoud Abbas. They were flabbergasted by my answer: that this was one of its
main purposes, if not the main one.
The
master stroke was a stroke against Abbas.
Abbas’
moves in the UN have profoundly disturbed our right-wing government. Even if
the only practical outcome is a resolution of the General Assembly to recognize
the State of Palestine as an observer state, it will be a major step towards a
real Palestinian state.
This
government, like all our governments since the foundation of Israel – only more
so – is dead set against Palestinian statehood. It would put an end to the
dream of a Greater Israel up to the Jordan River, compel us to give back a
great chunk of the Land-God-Promised-Us and evacuate scores of settlements.
For
Netanyahu and Co. this is the real danger. Hamas poses no danger at all. What
can they do? Launch a few rockets, kill a few people – so what? In no year has
“terrorism” killed as many as half the people dying on our roads. Israel can
deal with that. The Hamas regime would probably not be running the Gaza Strip
in the first place if Israel had not cut the Strip off from the West Bank,
contrary to its solemn undertaking in Oslo to create four safe passages. None
was ever opened.
That,
by the way, also explains the timing. Why did Netanyahu agree now to something
he has violently opposed all his life? Because Abbas, the featherless chicken,
has suddenly turned into an eagle.
On
the day of the swap, Abbas made a speech. It sounded rather flat. For the
average Palestinian, the case was quite simple: Abbas, with all his Israeli and
American friends, has got no one released for years. Hamas, using force, has
released more than a thousand, including Fatah members. Ergo: “Israel
understands only the language of force”.
THE
VAST majority of Israelis supported the deal, though convinced that the vile
murderers will try again to kill us.
Never
were the lines of division as clear as this time: some 25% opposed it. These
included all the extreme right-wing, all the settlers and almost all the
national-religious. All the others – the huge camp of the center and left, the
secular, liberal and moderate religious - supported it.
This
is the Israeli mainstream on which the hopes for the future are resting. If
Netanyahu had proposed a peace agreement with the Palestinians this week, and
if he had been supported by the chiefs of the army, the Mossad and the Security
Service (as he was this week), the same majority would have supported him.
As
for the prisoners – another 4000 are still held in Israeli prisons, and this
number is liable to grow again. The opponents of the deal are quite right in
saying that it will provide Palestinian organizations with a strong incentive
to renew their efforts to capture Israeli soldiers in order to get more
prisoners released.
If
all of Israel is drunk with emotion because one boy has been returned to his
family – what about 4000 families on the other side? Unfortunately, ordinary
Israelis don’t put the question this way. They have got used to seeing the
Palestinian prisoners only as bargaining chips.
How
to thwart the efforts to capture more soldiers? There is only one alternative:
to open a credible way to have them released by agreement.
Such
as by peace, if you can excuse the expression.
