Death as a Human Right

The beauty of freedom contains unpronounceable atrocities

What a day!

Who knows why they had to die?

The freedom to live contains the duty to kill.

Life in spite of everything – Gaza Sderot

Two cities separated by a little more than three kilometre. Millions experiencing the same fears and horrors. Violence nourishing the same hate. If you listen closely what people from both side tell you, you understand at first sight simple fact of life. Everybody wants to have to pursue happiness for her- and himself and their descendants. In conflict the most common point you can find among enemies is the way people mourn over the loss of a child. So while we are divided by race, colour, social class, sex, religion, nationality and abilities we still are the literally identical. Today such a sentence should not need to be written, at least not again. To be honest, it’s with a sad feeling that I write these lines. We are constantly reminded through the action of ourselves or through external events that it is far more natural, or at least seems, to behave violently than to overcome this impulse. It is important to note that it is through our intellect and our experiences that we overcome it. But, and this is a crucial point, we are the result of evolution, of a natural fight for survival, to put it far to simply we fight for the right to procreate, we do nothing more than to protect the future of our genes.

Arte TV followed several citizen of both cities during the month before the military incursion. It is a documentary revealing, at close observation, more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than many well known so-called ‘experts’.

See for yourself  – http://gaza-sderot.arte.tv/

Après moi, le déluge

The ongoing violence in Gaza, the siege, the humiliation and the apathy of world leaders create the next generation of terrorists. While it seems that the blood which is currently spilled in this round of violence is mostly Palestinian, it will be the state of Israel and its citizens who will carry the final burden. However, long sightedness is not an Israeli virtue.

Karl Marx informs us that shame is a revolutionary sentiment. Jean Paul Sartre encourages us to inform ourselves so to feel that sentiment. The first time I really understood this idea was in 2002. At that time I was still soldier in the IDF. When I was off duty I lived in Tel Aviv.

We, that is a bunch of new immigrants, shared a single room flat plus a roof top. Two (Palestinian) friends of us had lost their jobs and flats due to the intifada and we, as friends do, invited them to stay with us. This were uneasy days for them. They had to hide constantly. Every small excursion turned into an adventure. Countless times did we have to go to the Abu Kabir jail in Holon to pick up our friends after they had been arrested. It was also a time of intense discussions and mutual understanding. I wouldn’t want you to think that this was some kind of ‘humanitarian’ action. We were friends, first and foremost.

One Saturday in spring Adel’s cousin Abed came from Nablus looking for work. He had just turned 20 and had never left Nablus before. We accommodated ourselves to make one more sleeping spot. In the afternoon then we thought to go to the beach.  Avoiding the patrolling police squads we reached the sea. While I was walking into the water, someone grabbed my hand. I looked up. It was Adel’s cousin. With tears in his eyes he confessed to me that he saw the sea every day from his home but had never sat a foot into it. He was afraid. In this moment, for the first time I understood what the occupation meant. It meant to have a world full of possibilities untouchable, right behind a glass wall. In this very moment I felt ashamed like I’ve never did before.

People like Abed are an exception. While he felt the humiliation of the occupation every single day as a young man unable to provide for his family, he did not fall into blind hatred. This in itself is not an accomplishment. However, separation leads to ignorance and ignorance to hate. Many others chose another path. The path of resistance and violence. They fill the cells of our prisons, planning their revenges.

In the streets of Gaza, somewhere there is a boy. He grew up in eternal violence. Violence against Israel, but also between rival palestinian factions. On the one hand he recognizes the limits of the Palestinian resistance movements to face the IDF. On the other he sees the incapacity of Arab leaders to unite in the face of the attacks on Gaza. He observes the sly smiles of senior Fatah members, stating that Hamas has brought this upon itself. He hears the helpless UN security council stumbling. He knows, only through more violence, more resistance will he one day be free. Free to travel, free to educate himself and his children, free to pursue happiness.

The price tag for our security is his freedom.

Reporter

half of the population

so they can help and deliver

go to school

identifying with the aggressor

unable to protect the children

Religion in the Palestine-Israel conflict since 1967

by R. Azoulay

What role has religion played in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict especially since the Six Day War in 1967? First, it is important to clarify how the terms of Palestine/ Israel vary through different times.

Palestine refers to the period before 1948, from the Roman Empire to the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate. Israel refers to the period after 1948 with Jerusalem as its capital city, as of 1967, but without the temporarily occupied West bank and the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority refers to Gaza and the West bank, the territories annexed by Israel during 1967 that were subject to the negotiations of Oslo II and led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority and mutual recognition between Rabin and Arafat, but even more important led to the recognition of the mutual right of the two people to coexist in peace, security and self-determination in two sovereign states.

How is religion used? Intentionally and symbolically. How does religion influence the achievement of political goals? Which segments of both societies have experienced an increase in the importance of religion since 1967 and has it had direct influence on the conflict? I will concentrate more deeply on interactions between Islam and Judaism since 1967.

One issue may be brought up right at the beginning. Using and emphasizing history as the foundation for claims over Palestine/ Israel provides endless possible nationalist claims, as Palestine was ruled by various empires and people across different eras in history. Or as a Jewish lawyer al-Kabir from Baghdad commented in the Iraqi times in 1936; “If one goes reconstituting history two thousand years back there is no reason why one should not go further back,… and presently have the world ruled by militant archaeology”. Of course, most Sephardic Jews, as al-Kabir, had neither experienced the brutal Pogroms in Eastern Europe nor would most of the Sephardic Jews have to experience the Holocaust to come.

It is important to remember that in Judaism there is no single, highest authority. This fact provides ground to very diverse groups and attitudes within the Jewish religious tradition. However, in the early 20th century Zionists were predominantly secular Jews. Orthodox Jews appeared to resist to the idea of a Jewish homeland without the installment of Jewish law, the “halakha”. Influenced by the spirit of colonial period secular Zionist groups even discussed the possibility of other locations for the Jewish homeland, such as the British Uganda Proposal first proposed by Chamberlain, who sought to give territory in British East Africa, more precisely the Mau Plateau in what is today modern Kenya. Besides the fact that Jews had no historical nor religious connection to the Mau Plateau in British East Africa, looking back on the disastrous outcomes of the colonial era it is more than questionable if such a decision would have led to peaceful coexistence.

However, after the Balfour declaration, no Zionist could anymore think of another homeland for the Jewish people than Palestine. Not only secular Jews called for resettlement in Palestine. For example, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, was among the first religious thinkers to advocate political activism for Palestine in the form of resettlement. Jerusalem seems to have had a very special place in the hearts and minds of Jews throughout the two thousand years of Jewish Diaspora. Nevertheless, during the first half of the twentieth century the symbolic importance of Jerusalem increased stedily and saw efforts being made by Zionist organizations to buy holy Jewish pilgrimage sites, such as the Wailing Wall from the Muslim trust that owned it.

According to scholars the nationalist claims of the Muslim majority of Palestine are based on a religio-legal concept called waqf, translated into trusteeship. It is understood that God has permanently entrusted Palestine to the Muslim people. This is maybe best exemplified in the words of Sultan Abd al-Hamid of the Ottoman Empire in his response to Theodore Herzl’s offer to buy Palestine for twenty million lire. “Please advise him never to mention this ever. … It does not belong to me. It belongs to my people. My people acquired this Ottoman Empire by their blood”.

However, the Palestinian nationalist movements were initially also mostly secular. In fact, the radical Islamic organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad were “a reaction to both; the spread of Islamic political activism and the increasing role of religious mobilization in Jewish nationalism” of the 1980s. We can see that prior to 1967 religious identification and symbolism was not as central to the main nationalist movements on both sides.

While I do not want to explore the reasons why, where, when and how the conflicts between Jews and Muslims began in general, since there is an endless number of reasons, but their impact on the conflict is most of the time contested from one side or the other; beginning with the Balfour, respectively McMahon declaration over to the UN proposition in 1947 to the displacement of Palestinian civilians in the early years of the state of Israel. Nevertheless, it seems that there wasn’t a political and diplomatic will neither on the side of the Palestinian leadership nor on the side of the surrounding Arab countries to tolerate the creation of a Jewish national-state, alongside the proposed Palestinian state. This is crucial because failure to accept the UN proposal has made return to normal terms very complicated since. With the Israeli declaration of independence and the following war, the civilian Palestinian population was the main victim of aggressions and confrontations between the new state of Israel and its surrounding Arab neighbours.

So what changed in 1967? The crucial event of this year in the Middle East was the Six Day War. The end of the Six Day War seems to have been the beginning of a new sort of conflict. The Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, Gaza and the West Bank were conquered and occupied by the Israeli army, but at the centre of these dramatic days was the liberation or occupation, depending on the standpoint, of East Jerusalem and the control over its religious sites sacred to all three monotheistic traditions. This had several far reaching consequences.

First, with the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank more than a million Palestinians came under Israeli control. Second, for the Muslim the loss of the sovereignty over the holy sites through the occupation of Jerusalem by Israel seems to have turned a regional, political conflict over territory into a religious war. Religious identity and symbolic became increasingly important. Not surprising then, that the Yom Kippur War in 1973 was launched on the most distinct Jewish holy day. The implementation of Jewish settlement in these years around the Palestinian cities is another example of how religion was used to legitimate occupation. It was promoted in form of the strongly ideological notion of expanding the boundaries according to the biblical Israel. The longer the occupation of Palestinian land continued the more the paradox between a Jewish and democratic state became apparent. If Palestinians were granted full citizenship, within a few years the state would have an Arab majority and would cease to be Jewish in its traits, character, ethos and legislation. If, on the other hand, Palestinians were denied citizenship an civil rights in order to preserve the Jewish character of the state, Israel would find itself in the uncomfortable situation of being a democracy only for Jews, and an apartheid regime for the rest of its inhabitants.

Unfortunately, it seems that Israel has chosen to remain an essentially Jewish state, and although I wouldn’t go that far and call the Israeli government an apartheid regime, remembering the fact that all Israeli citizens may vote and be elected, it seems that institutionally Jews are being favored. The 1990’s saw at the same time an Israeli government under Rabin reaching out and recognizing the Palestinian cause and Baruch Goldstein “opening fire on worshipers gathered in a Muslim holy site… killing 29 people and injuring a further 150”. For many radical, militant Jews Rabin betrayed the biblical Israel. These events culminated on the 4th of November 1995, when Yitzhak Rabin was shot by a Jewish fanatic named Yigal Amir after one of the biggeest Peace rallies ever held in Tel Aviv.

The phenomenon of militant Judaism as the Gush Emunim combines both “Orthodoxy and Zionism”. Striving for an expanded Jewish state, this right wing religious group has pushed for the extension of Jewish settlements into Palestinian territory and does not recognize the rights of non-Jews (Palestinians) to exist in a sovereign state.

On the Palestinian side there has been a radicalization since the first Intifada in 1987. Since then religion has become increasingly important. Islamic movements such as the Islamic Jihad or the Hamas have promoted the “notion of Palestine as an Islamic state, within which Jews would be a tolerated minority”. This reveals an interesting point; the difference between anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist. If the Jews would have renounced to political sovereignty they would have been tolerated by the Muslim population. We will never know whether under such circumstances Jews and Muslims would effectively have lived peacefully alongside each other.

Hamas is using distinct anti-Jewish rhetoric, as described in a leaflet published in 1988 the Jews are “brothers of the apes, assassins of the prophets, bloodsuckers, warmongers [and] only Islam can break the Jews and destroy their dream”. But the possibly most fundamental characteristic of the ideology of Hamas is the concept of “shahid” or “martyr” used to justify suicidal bomb attacks on Jewish civilians. This also involves the notion of “jihad”. We all saw the images of mothers sending their son into death of a “shahid”. Suicide bombings as an act of martyrdom seem to be so deeply embedded that the prohibition of Islamic law to both suicide and the killing of non-combatants is simply not respected.

In conclusion, it seems as both radical religious groups represented for a long period a small but influential minority in their societies. While the ongoing conflict has reduced the wide Israeli public support for settlements, the ongoing violence has further radicalized Palestinian society. In general it seems that during the 1990’s an opportunity to achieve peace was missed. The efforts of politicians in the name of the majority of the populations were torpedoed by small radical groups such as Hamas or the Gush Emunim.

The usage of religious symbols and reinterpretation of texts contain the potential to fool some segments of the population and to use them accordingly to achieve political goals. For example, to secure settlements on the Israeli side or to frighten and terrorize on the Palestinian side. Recent events have shown that the region is deeper then ever splitted across religious boundaries.

The overwhelming victory of Hamas at the Palestinian elections, has cast a shadow over a possible return to the negotiation table. Further the recent incursion of Israel into Gaza has not helped to stabilize the region. The renewed warfare with the Shiite Hezbollah (Party of God) in Lebanon is promising further bloodshed and retaliation.

In order to end on a more positive note I would like to cite in my opinion a great visionary man, who understood the need of both people to achieve long-lasting peace. “We say to you today in a loud and a clear voice: enough of blood and tears. Enough” because the “pain of peace is preferable to the agony of war” .

Tastes of Revolution

Three Cohiba Siglo VI cigars

One bottle of Vodka Stolichnaya

Potatoes and more potatoes

The smell of gunpowder, the cries of children

Red as blood