Uri Avnery
7.10.11
We, the
Traitors
"THERE ARE situations in which a
real patriot has no alternative but to be a traitor," wrote the
distinguished German journalist, the late Rudolf Augstein, in a review of one
of my books in the late 1980s.
“My Friend, the Enemy,"
described, among other things, my meeting with Yasser Arafat. It was the first
encounter between an Israeli and the leader of the Palestine Liberation
Organization. It was held in the heat of the battle for Beirut in 1982, and to
get it I had to cross enemy lines
In the 14 years leading up to that
initial meeting, I maintained regular contact with the PLO's leadership, though
it was officially defined, at that time, as a terrorist organization and
identified with the arch-terrorist Arafat. I reported those contacts to Yitzhak
Rabin, while he was prime minister (1974-77). Needless to say, it was only 11
years later that Israel concluded a treaty with the PLO, our prime minister
embraced Arafat and those ministers who wanted to put me on trial as a traitor
were themselves making pilgrimages to him.
WHEN AUGSTEIN wrote his comment, he
was thinking, especially, of Nazi Germany's most famous case of treason: the
1944 plot led by Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, an attempt to assassinate Adolf
Hitler.
Von Stauffenberg, a war hero who lost
an eye and several fingers in WWII, had many qualms before deciding to strike.
As a real patriot, he came to the conclusion that only the killing of Hitler
could save Germany from the approaching disaster of defeat, and the unnecessary
death of hundreds of thousands of people in a lost war. But he had sworn
allegiance to the Fuehrer, and as a devout Catholic he considered the breaking
of an oath to be a very grave matter. A rebellion in wartime was, of course,
treason.
Almost all Germans would agree today
that such an act of treason was moral and just. Hence, the street where the
German general staff headquarters was then situated, and in whose yard von
Stauffenberg was executed, is named for him today. Here, then, treason and
patriotism dwell together.
Claus von Stauffenberg was not a
leftist. On the contrary. he was a man of the Catholic right, very
conservative, a scion of many generations of a noble family. But more often, it
is left-wingers who face accusations of treason. That charge may be the curse
that rightists - worldwide, but particularly in Israel – most often level at
leftists: that they betray their people and their homeland.
According to the right-wing view, the
left undermines national resolve and helps an enemy that is scheming to destroy
us. The Left almost always opposes increasing the defense budget, preferring to
spend the money on social services such as education, health and welfare. It holds
the individual at a higher level of importance than the nation and the state.
It seeks peace and, to this end, is ready to make concessions to the enemy. In
the Israeli-Palestinian arena, it is ready to cede parts of the land that the
Almighty himself promised to the Jewish people. In short, despicable traitors.
The leftists in Israel and around the
world counter that they are the real patriots, for it is they who seek a
healthy society, which is the real foundation for national security. After all,
only citizens who feel part of the homeland and the state will support it
wholeheartedly.
Moreover, no state can wage endless
wars. The state and the individual need peace, for only in peace can a state
develop all its spiritual and material resources. According to the left, those
on the right cultivate feelings of hatred, fear and prejudice against aliens,
both those in other lands and among the minorities within the state.
In order to win the support of the
masses, the right seeks constant security tension and war adventures, an
atmosphere to justify their own distorted worldview. That is why the right wing
is a threat to the state and its citizens, and will ultimately bring about
national disaster, which in our case would be the destruction of the
"Third Temple" that is the renewed Jewish commonwealth. In short,
despicable racists.
OUR OWN history includes instances of
betrayal that long preceded that of the German von Stauffenberg.
Many years ago I had lunch with
someone who was then a key figure in the Israeli economy. During the conversation
I suggested that Shimon Bar Kochba, who led the failed Jewish uprising against
Rome, in 132-135 C.E., was a crazy adventurer, that the Zealots of the Great
Revolt who had preceded him were criminals and that the Maccabees too, before
them, had fought a murderous civil war.
The banker stared at me with a look of
endless astonishment in his clear blue eyes. He had never heard such strange
views. On the spot, I decided to write a series of articles on the subject.
They were published serially in Haolam Hazeh, and did not cause an uproar.
Some time later, however, Yehoshafat
Harkabi, a former head of Military Intelligence and at the time a historian at
the Hebrew University, wrote a book in the same vein, and the dam burst.
The Zealots' rebellion against Rome,
he wrote, was an act of madness. In present-day terms, they could be called
extreme right-wingers. Sensible people such as King Herod Agrippa II warned
about the futility of the adventure
against the huge military might of the Roman superpower. But the Zealots
silenced those voices, murdered whoever spoke against the revolt and seized
control over the Jewish community. When the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, in
70 C.E., Zealot groups burned one another's stores of grain, certain that they
were not needed because the Almighty himself would redeem his holy city.
One of the sensible people who
remained in the city-gone-mad was Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai; he rightly
predicted what would happen. Ben Zakkai pretended to be dead, had himself smuggled
out of town in a coffin, approached the Roman commander and requested
permission to settle in Yavneh and open a spiritual center there.
This was out-and-out treason:
deserting the front, cowardice, maintaining contact with the enemy,
collaboration. When I was an adolescent, I was a member of the Irgun pre-state
underground, and we organized a mock trial for him. He was found guilty of
treason and sentenced to death. The Zealots were our heroes.
But the Jewish people's collective
wisdom in fact hailed Ben-Zakkai's treason. His move is widely seen as enabling
the survival of Judaism during the 2,000 years of Diaspora. In other words: His
treason saved the people. His act was the patriotic one. The Jewish community
was able to remain on its land and flourish until the appearance of the next
madman, Bar Kochba, another member of the extreme right, to use today's
terminology.
The historical verdict on the
Maccabees is more positive. They are favorably etched in the Jewish
consciousness, whereas the Zealots' activities are recalled in the mourning of
Tisha B'Av. The Maccabees' activities, on the other hand, are celebrated during
the holiday of Hanukkah, and the Zionist movement has hailed them as freedom
fighters who liberated the Jews from oppressive alien rulers.
And indeed, in contrast with the
Zealots and Bar Kochba, the Maccabees had a realistic view of the political
situation of their day. They made alliances and managed the rebellion wisely.
But the Maccabees' war, in the second century B.C.E., was first and foremost a
civil war. We say the Maccabees conducted a murderous campaign against the
Hellenists - but who were the Hellenists? They were the people who adopted the
most enlightened and advanced culture of their day, approximately equivalent to
American or general Western culture today.
The "national religious"
camp of those days and the counterparts of today's “hilltop youth” regarded the
Hellenists as traitors, precisely the way today's leftists are branded. (This,
however, did not stop the Hasmonaean kings, who succeeded the Maccabees, from
adopting Greek culture themselves, as some of their names show ).
MANY CENTURIES later, the baton of
crazy messianism passed to Shabbetai Zvi.
His teachings captivated, with the
speed of wildfire, the Jewish masses around the world. Only a small number of
Jews dared oppose this madness, and they were the "traitors" of those
days. When the bubble burst, and the so-called messiah converted to Islam, it
became clear that his opponents had been right. But this did not move the
masses to embrace them. On the contrary, as Gershom Scholem tells us, after
Shabbetai Zvi's disgrace, the hatred for his opponents became still more bitter.
And we still haven't mentioned the
arch-traitor, the prophet Jeremiah, who preached surrender. He was a real
defeatist, and for this, the right-wing rulers of sixth and seventh century
B.C.E. Judah tossed him into a pit of mud. Yet, his words were incorporated
into the Bible while those of his adversaries were forgotten.
ONE CAN draw countless examples from
the histories of other peoples too. At times of crisis, the real patriots,
those who call for peace and compromise, - in short the "lefties," -
are considered traitors, whereas the nationalists of all types, the warmongers,
the inciters of hatred, are perceived as patriots.
It is of them that the British man of
letters Samuel Johnson said that "patriotism is the last refuge of a
scoundrel."
