Uri
Avnery
October 8, 2011
The More
Enemies, The More Honor
AN
OLD photo from World War I shows a company of German soldiers getting on the
train on their way to the front. On the wall of the car somebody had scribbled:
“viel Feind, viel Ehr’” (“The more enemies, the more Honor”.)
In
those days, at the very start of what was to be the First World War, country
after country was declaring war on Germany. The spirit of the graffito
reflected the hubris of the supreme commander, Kaiser Wilhelm, who relied on
the war plan of the legendary German General Staff. It was indeed an excellent
war plan, and as excellent war plans are apt to do, it started going awry right
from the beginning.
The
foolish Kaiser now has the heirs he deserves. Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister,
Moshe Ya’alon, a former army Chief of Staff whose intelligence is below the
average even of that rank, has announced that Israel could not possibly
apologize to Turkey, even though its national interests may demand it, because
it would hurt our “prestige”.
Many
enemies, much prestige.
It
seems that we shall soon run out of friends whom we can turn into enemies to
gather even more prestige.
LAST
WEEK a black cat came between Israel and its second best friend: Germany.
High-ranking
German officials confided to their Israeli colleagues that their Kanzlerin,
Angela Merkel, was “furious” when she heard that the Israeli government had
approved the building of 1100 housing units in Gilo, a neighborhood in occupied
East Jerusalem. Just a few days earlier, the Quartet had invited Israel and the
Palestinian Authority to restart negotiations and abstain from “provocations”.
If this is not a provocation, what is?
Merkel,
generally a woman of placid equanimity, did not keep her rage to herself. She
called Binyamin Netanyahu and gave him a severe dressing-down, something that
had never happened before.
Until
now, Germany has kept to a strict code of behavior towards Israel: after the
unspeakable crimes committed by the Nazis against the Jews, there could be no
criticism of any Israeli act, Germany would pay for a crucial component of
Israel’s armaments, Germany would suspend all moral criteria as far as the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict was concerned.
Not
any more, it seems. We may be losing our only second-best friend.
THE
CLASSIC example of “How to lose Friends and Alienate People” is, of course, our
affair with Turkey.
David
Ben-Gurion, the arch-architect of Israel, believed that peace with the Arabs
was neither possible nor desirable. He devised an alternative: a ring to
encircle the Arab world - an alliance of non-Arab allies. These included Iran
(under the Shah), Ethiopia (under Haile Selassie), several other African states
and, of course, Turkey (under the legacy of Kemal Ataturk).
Our
relations with Turkey developed over the years into a very close marriage,
especially cozy between the armed forces. Joint exercises, sales of lots of
arms, intelligence sharing. While Israel was helping the Iraqi Kurds against
Saddam Hussein, it helped Ankara to oppress the Turkish Kurds. Jerusalem
seriously considered laying a pipeline under the sea from Turkey to bring in
water, which Turkey has in abundance and Israel sorely needs.
Suddenly
everything changed. Turkish-Israeli relations foundered like a ship hit
squarely by a torpedo.
It
started when the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, abruptly got up
and left a public dialogue with Shimon Peres in Davos. Israelis could
understand that: not everybody can stand Peres.
But
Avigdor Lieberman’s Foreign Office decided to retaliate. His deputy, a genius
by the name of Danny Ayalon, summoned the Turkish ambassador to his office for
a rebuke and had him sit on a low sofa while towering above him on a high
chair. The ambassador did not notice, but little Danny proudly explained his
ploy to the assembled Israeli journalists. The Ambassador took his leave and
went home.
Turkey
reacted unofficially by sending the Mave Marmara to break the Gaza blockade.
Nine Turks were killed. Turkey was in uproar. Erdogan demanded an apology.
That’s where the prestige came in.
One
can argue, of course, that the whole business was a premeditated tactic of
Erdogan's to change course and dump Israel for other allies. If so, it was even
more stupid of our government to play into his hand.
WHEN
THE Arab Spring broke out, Turkey jumped on the bandwagon and proposed a
Turkish-Egyptian axis, reminiscent of the good old days of the Ottoman empire.
Israel, on the other hand, stuck to its customary line.
Instead
of realizing what was happening, our government clung to the shattered
dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. If it had come out immediately and
wholeheartedly in favor of the revolution, it could, perhaps, have gained a
foothold in Egyptian public opinion, which had come to detest Mubarak as a well
paid American lackey who helped Israel in starving a million and a half Arab
brothers in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli
intelligence did not realize that we were facing a historic earthquake that
would change the region. Actually, it never foresees or understands events in
the Arab world, being blinded by its contempt for Arabs.
The
result was that Egyptian crowds attacked the Israeli embassy, forcing the
ambassador and his staff to flee the country, and that saboteurs repeatedly
blew up the pipeline that transports Egyptian gas to Israel at very low prices
(probably negotiated after due bribes were paid to the right people.)
People
here are now saying that the Egyptian public has always been against the peace
with Israel, through no fault of ours. That is quite untrue. I was in Cairo a
few days after Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem and found the Egyptian
capital delirious with joy. Countless Israelis have visited Egypt since then
and have been received always and everywhere with utmost friendliness. It was
only when Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories became more and
more oppressive that Egyptians started to feel betrayed.
Lieberman
and Co. have lost Turkey and are losing Egypt, our two stalwart allies in the
region, and have insulted, humiliated and trodden on the toes of a dozen other
nations. But they have undoubtedly gained much prestige.
PEOPLE
WHO look for logic in politics often arrive at conspiracy theories.
When
the present government coalition was set up, Lieberman asked for the ministries
of immigrants’ absorption, justice, interior security (police) and foreign
affairs.
Immigrants
– that was natural. His voters are mainly immigrants from the former Soviet
Union. Justice and police – also natural. The police are conducting an endless
investigation against him concerning mysterious funds that he and his very
young daughter have received from Eastern European sources.
But
the foreign office? What for? Why not the far more prestigious Ministry of
Defense or the immensely powerful finance ministry?
One
of my acquaintances has come up with a theory: what if the Russians…
Lieberman
spends a lot of his time in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and his native Moldova.
Who else but Russia has an interest in destroying the international standing of
Israel, one of the closest allies of the United States? Wouldn’t it have been
rational for Vladimir Putin to…
But
that is, of course, a joke. Not only is Lieberman known as an upright Israeli
patriot, so patriotic that no one can stand next to him, but no handler in
Moscow would accept as his agent a man with shifty eyes, who speaks with a
thick Russian accent.
No,
there must be another reason. But which?
A
FOREIGN journalist asked me the other day: “but what do they think?”
“They”
– Netanyahu, Lieberman et al – are losing all our remaining friends,
humiliating Barack Obama on the way. They sabotage the resumption of peace
negotiations. They sprinkle settlements everywhere.
If
the Two-State solution is finally made impossible, what remains? A unified
state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan? What kind of state would that be?
They are dead set against a bi-national state, which would be the total
negation of Zionism. An apartheid state? How long could that last?
The
only “rational”[] alternative would be total ethnic cleansing, the driving out
of 5.5 million Palestinians from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel
proper. Is that possible? Would the world tolerate it, unless it is distracted
by an invasion from Mars?
The
answer is: “they” just don’t think very much at all. Israelis have been
conditioned by their experience to think in the very short term. As the
Americans say: “A statesman thinks about the next generation, a politician
thinks about the next election.” Or as the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann used
to say: “The future will come and care for the future”.
There
is no national debate, only a vague desire to keep everything. Rightist
Zionists want to hold on to all of historical Palestine, leftist Zionists want
to hold on to as much of it as possible. That’s as far as the thinking goes.
The
ancient Hebrew sages said: “Who is the bravest hero? He who turns his enemy
into a friend.” The modern sages who govern us have turned this around: “Who
has the most prestige? He who turns his friend into an enemy.”
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