[E-rundbrief] Info 256 - Avnery on orange march in Israel

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 256 - Uri Avnery: The March of the Orange Shirts. 
Wöchentliche Kommentare zum israelisch-plästinensíschen   Konflikt 
(23.7.2005). Der Marsch der israelischen Siedler mit ihren orangenen 
T-Shirts gegen den israelischen Staat und die Parallelen zum Niedergang der 
Weimarer Republik 1934. Das blamable Schweigen führender linker 
israelischer Intellektueller.

Bad Ischl, 24.7.2005

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

===========================================================

The March of the Orange Shirts

Uri Avnery

23.7.05

For some weeks now, a red light has been flickering in my mind, 
illuminating a word in large Gothic letters: Weimar.

As a 9-year old I saw with my own eyes the collapse of the German republic 
that came into being after World War I. It was generally referred to as the 
Weimar Republic, because its constitution was written in the town of the 
two towering figures of German Kultur, Goethe and Schiller. Some months 
after its breakdown, we fled Germany and thus our lives were saved.

Since then, the sights and sounds of the collapse of the republic are 
engraved in my mind. I have read hundreds of books about this event. The 
big question that has been haunting me ever since and which has remained 
unanswered to this day is: How could such a thing happen? How could a gang 
of thugs with an inhuman ideology take over a state that, in its time, was 
perhaps the most cultured country in the world?

On the eve of the Eichmann trial, in 1960, I wrote a book on this, 
concluding with the question: Can it happen here?

Today, there is no escape from the terrible answer: Yes, it can happen 
here. If we behave like the people of Weimar, we shall suffer the same fate 
as the people of Weimar.


In the past I have often hesitated to use this analogy. We have a taboo 
concerning Nazi Germany. Since nothing in the world can compare with the 
Holocaust, no comparisons should be made with Germany of that time.

Only rarely has this taboo been broken. David Ben-Gurion once called 
Menachem Begin "a disciple of Hitler". Begin for his part called Yasser 
Arafat "the Arab Hitler", and before that, Gamal Abd-el-Nasser was referred 
to in Israel as "Hitler on the Nile". Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, in his 
usual provocative way, spoke about "Judeo-Nazis" and compared the special 
units of the Israeli army to the SS. But these were exceptions. Generally, 
the taboo was observed.

  Not any more. In their fight against the "rotten" Israeli democracy, the 
settlers have adopted the Holocaust symbols. They are ostentatiously 
wearing the Yellow Star that was imposed by the Nazis on the Jews before 
their extermination, only substituting orange for yellow. They inscribe 
their forearm with their identity number, like the numbers the Nazis 
tattooed on the Auschwitz prisoners. They call the government the 
"Judenrat", after the Jewish councils appointed by the Nazis in the 
ghettoes, and liken the evacuation of the settlers from Gush Katif to the 
deportation of the Jews to the death camps. All this live on television.

So, there is no reason anymore for not calling the spade a spade: a large 
fascist camp is now threatening Israeli democracy.

What happened last week in Israel was not a legitimate "protest", nor a 
democratic endeavor to influence public opinion in order to change the 
decisions of the government and the Knesset. It was not even a campaign of 
civil disobedience by a minority trying to force the reversal of a decision 
of the majority.

It is much more: the beginning of an attempt to overturn by force the 
democratic system itself.



Confronting Israeli democracy now is the hard core of the settlers, which 
practically all the settlers accept as their spokemen. This week we saw 
tens of thousands of them, and there is no escape from the realization that 
this is a revolutionary movement with a revolutionary ideology using 
revolutionary means.

What is this ideology? It was proclaimed loudly, again and again, by the 
central spokesmen of the movement: God gave us this country. All the land 
and its fruits belong to us. Anybody who gives away even one square meter 
of it to foreigners (meaning the Arabs, who have been living here for many 
generations) is violating the commandments of the Torah. The Torah is 
binding. All government decisions, Knesset laws and court judgments are 
null and void if they contravene the word of God, as conveyed to us by the 
rabbis who stand above the cabinet ministers, the Knesset members, the 
Supreme Court judges and the army commanders. Like in Khomeini's 
fundamentalist Iran.

A large part of this camp openly adheres to the teachings of Meir Kahane, 
whose face was displayed everywhere by marching settlers on their shirts, 
flags and posters. Kahane publicly preached what many of the settlers, and 
perhaps most of them, say in private: that God not only promised us this 
country, but also commanded us (in the book of Joshua) to eradicate the 
non-Jewish inhabitants. They have no place here. If they cannot be 
terrorized into leaving by themselves ("voluntary transfer"), they must be 
eliminated. In the words of one of the rabbis on TV this week, if they 
don't leave, they must "pay the price". This includes, of course, also the 
million and a quarter Arab citizens of Israel proper.

One of the leaders of the march, Tsviki Bar-Hai, declared on TV: "The 
struggle is about the character of the state."

Ninety-nine percent of the many thousands seen on TV this week wore kippas, 
and many of them had beards and peyoth. The women wore long skirts and had 
their hair covered. All of them are "born-again Jews" or belong to the 
"national-religious" camp - a nationalist-messianic sect that believes that 
it is paving the way for "redemption". It must be clearly understood: in 
Israel, the Jewish religion has undergone a mutation that has completely 
changed its face.

There is no agreed scientific definition of "fascism". I define it as 
having the following attributes: the belief in a superior people (master 
Volk, chosen people, superior race), a complete absence of moral 
obligations toward others, a totalitarian ideology, the negation of the 
individual except as a part of the nation, contempt for democracy and a 
cult of violence. According to this definition, a large proportion of the 
settlers are fascists.



It has been said about the Weimar Republic that it was not overthrown by 
the "brown shirts", but collapsed by itself, because at the moment of truth 
almost no one was prepared to stand up and defend it.

Last week, thousands of "orange shirts" marched towards Gush Katif, in a 
distant echo of the 1920 "March on Rome" by Benito Mussolini's "black 
shirts" that overthrew the Italian democracy. Some 20 thousand soldiers and 
police were mobilized to stop them. On the face of it, the army and police 
won, since the orange shirts did not reach the Gaza strip. But for three 
days, under the blazing sun, the rebels put on public display their 
determination, unity and discipline.

There was a cacophony of voices. The settler men and women shouted, their 
brainwashed children screamed, the red-faced, sweating babies cried in 
their mothers' arms, the leaders made speeches, army and police officers 
yelled orders. Only one voice was absent: the voice of the Israeli public.

During these three fateful days, not one of the leading intellectuals, no 
writer like S. Yishar, Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua or David Grossman, no 
important professor, no poet or artist raised their voice against the 
settlers and their allies. The many personalities who had fallen in the 
past into the trap of "conciliation" with the settlers and "cultural pacts" 
with the extreme religious right did not dare to extricate themselves now 
and point out the great danger to the democratic state. One of their 
excuses was that they did not wish to be seen as supporting Ariel Sharon.

None of the big public organizations - from the Bar Association and the 
Chambers of Commerce to the Journalists' Association and the academic 
bodies - found it necessary to raise their voice in defense of democracy, 
while the orange militants were flooding all the TV channels, which made no 
attempt to present other views. The Silence of the Sheep. The silence of 
Weimar.

I hope that all this will change when the confrontation approaches its 
climax. I hope that Israeli democracy will find in itself the hidden 
strength that was so tragically lacking in Weimar. But this will not happen 
if courageous people do not sound the trumpet, and if the silent majority 
does not abandon its silence and demonstrate its stand in voice and color.

Otherwise, the "March on Gush Katif" will be only a foretaste of the "March 
on Jerusalem".

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
     Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
     Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
     Wolfgangerstr. 26, A-4820 Bad Ischl, Austria,
     fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
     Impressum in: http://www.begegnungszentrum.at
Spenden-Konto Nr. 0600-970305 (Blz. 20314) Sparkasse Bad Ischl, 
Geschäftsstelle Pfandl
IBAN: AT922031400600970305    BIC: SKBIAT21XXX