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مشاهدة النسخة كاملة : Kill A Hundred Turks And Rest…"



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03-23-2008, 05:32 PM
"Kill A Hundred Turks And Rest…"


URI AVNERY on 14 March, 2008

This is not a joke (and this is not a week for jokes). It is a lesson
in psychology. I was reminded of it when I read Ehud Olmert's
statement that more than anything else he was furious about the
outburst of joy in Gaza after the attack in Jerusalem, in which eight
yeshiva students were killed.


I WAS reminded this week of the old tale about a Jewish mother taking
leave of her son, who has been called up to serve in the Czar's army
against the Turks.

"Don't exert yourself too much," she admonishes him, "Kill a Turk and
rest. Kill another Turk and rest again…"

"But mother," he exclaims, "What if the Turk kills me?"

"Kill you?" she cries out, "Why? What have you done to him?"


This is not a joke (and this is not a week for jokes). It is a lesson
in psychology. I was reminded of it when I read Ehud Olmert's
statement that more than anything else he was furious about the
outburst of joy in Gaza after the attack in Jerusalem, in which eight
yeshiva students were killed.

Before that, last weekend, the Israeli army killed 120 Palestinians
in the Gaza Strip, half of them civilians, among them dozens of
children. That was not "kill a Turk and rest". That was "kill a
hundred Turks and rest". But Olmert does not understand.

THE FIVE-DAY WAR in Gaza (as a Hamas leader called it) was but
another short chapter in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. This
bloody monster is never satisfied, its appetite just grows with the
eating.

This chapter started with the "targeted liquidation" of five senior
militants inside the Gaza Strip. The "response" was a salvo of
rockets, and this time not only on Sderot, but also on Ashkelon and
Netivot. The "response" to the "response" was the army's incursion
and the wholesale killing.

The stated aim was, as always, to stop the launching of the rockets.
The means: killing a maximum of Palestinians, in order to teach them
a lesson. The decision was based on the traditional Israeli concept:
hit the civilian population again and again, until it overthrows its
leaders. This has been tried hundreds of times and has failed
hundreds of times.

As if an example for the folly of the propagators of this concept had
been lacking, it was provided on TV by ex-general Matan Vilnai, when
he said that the Palestinians are "bringing a Shoah on themselves".
The Hebrew word Shoah is known all over the world, where it has one
clear meaning: the Holocaust carried out by the Nazis against the
Jews. Vilnai's utterance spread like a bushfire throughout the Arab
world and set off a shock wave. I, too, received dozens of phone
calls and e-mail messages from all over the world. How to convince
people that in day-to-day Hebrew usage, Shoah means "only" a great
disaster, and that General Vilnai, a former candidate for Chief of
Staff, is not the most intelligent of people?

Some years ago, President Bush called for a "Crusade" against
terrorism. He had no idea that for hundreds of millions of Arabs, the
word "Crusade" brings to mind one of the biggest crimes in human
history, the appalling massacre committed by the original crusaders
against the Muslims (and Jews) in the alleys of Jerusalem. In an
intelligence contest between Bush and Vilnai, the outcome, if any,
would be in doubt.

VILNAI DOES not understand what the word "Shoah" means to others, and
Olmert does not understand why there is rejoicing in Gaza after the
attack on the yeshiva in Jerusalem. Wise men like these direct the
state, the government and the army. Wise men like these control
public opinion through the media. What is common to all of them:
blunted sensibilities to the feelings of anybody who is not
Jewish/Israeli. From this springs their inability to understand the
psychology of the other side, and hence the consequences of their own
words and actions.

This is also expressed in the inability to understand why the Hamas
people claimed victory in the five-Day War. What victory? After all,
only two Israeli soldiers and one Israeli civilian were killed, as
against 120 Palestinian dead, both fighters and civilians.

But this battle was fought between one of the strongest armies in the
world, equipped with the most modern arms on earth, and a few
thousand irregulars with primitive arms. If the battle ended in a
draw - and such a battle always ends in a draw - this is a great
victory for the weak side. In Lebanon War II and in the Gaza war.

(Binyamin Netanyahu made one of the most stupid statement this week,
when he demanded that "the Israeli army must move from attrition to
decision". In a struggle like this, there never is a decision.)

The real effect of such an operation is not expressed in material and
quantitative facts: so-and-so many dead, so-and-so many injured, so-
and-so much destroyed. It is expressed in psychological results that
cannot be measured, and therefore are inaccessible to the minds of
generals: how much hatred has been added to the seething pool, how
many new potential suicide bombers were produced, how many people
vowed revenge and became ticking bombs - like the Jerusalem
youngster, who woke up one bright morning this week, got himself a
weapon, went to the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, the mother of all
settlements, and killed as many as he could.

Now the political and military leadership of Israel sits down to
discuss what to do, how to "respond". No new idea has come up or will
come up, because not one of these politicians and generals is able to
bring up a new idea. They can only go back to the hundred things they
have already done, and that have failed a hundred times.

THE FIRST step on the way out of this madness is the readiness to
question all our concepts and methods of the last 60 years and start
thinking again, right from the beginning.

That is always hard. That is even harder for us, because our
leadership has no freedom of thought - its thinking is very closely
tied to the thinking of the American leadership.

This week, a shocking document was published: David Rose's article in
Vanity Fair. It describes how US officials have in recent years
dictated every single step of the Palestinian leadership, down to the
most minute detail. Though the article does not touch the Israeli-
American relationship (in itself a surprising omission) it goes
without saying that the American course, including the smallest
items, is coordinated with the Israeli government.

Why shocking? These things were already known, in general terms. In
this respect, that article held no surprises: (a) The Americans
ordered Mahmoud Abbas to hold parliamentary elections, in order to
present Bush as bringing democracy to the Middle East. (b) Hamas won
a surprise victory. (c) The Americans imposed a boycott on the
Palestinians, in order to nullify the election results. (d) Abbas
diverted for a moment from the policy dictated to him and, under
Saudi auspices (and pressure), made an agreement with Hamas, (e) The
Americans put an end to this and compelled Abbas to turn over all
security services to Muhammad Dahlan, whom they had chosen for the
role of strongman in Palestine, (f) The Americans provided plenty of
money and arms to Dahlan, trained his men and ordered him to carry
out a military coup against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, (g) The elected
Hamas government forestalled the move and itself carried out an armed
counter-coup.

All this was known before. What is new is that the mixture of news,
rumors and intelligent guesses has now condensed into an
authoritative, well substantiated report, based on official US
documents. It testifies to the abysmal American ignorance, which
trumps even Israeli ignorance, of the internal Palestinian processes.

George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, the Zionist neocon Elliott Abrams and
the assortment of American generals innocent of any knowledge are
competing with Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak and our own
assorted generals, whose understanding reaches as far as the end of
the gun barrels of their tanks.

The Americans have in the meantime destroyed Dahlan by exposing him
publicly as their agent, on the lines of "he's a son-of-a-bitch, but
he is our son-of-a-bitch". This week Condoleezza dealt a mortal blow
to Abbas, too. He had announced in the morning that he was suspending
the (meaningless) peace negotiations with Israel, the very minimum he
could do in response to the Gaza atrocities. Rice, who received the
news while she was having breakfast in the exciting company of Livni,
immediately called Abbas and ordered him to cancel his announcement.
Abbas gave in, thus exposing himself to his people in all his
nakedness.

LOGIC WAS not given to the People of Israel on Mount Sinai, but
handed down from Mount Olympus to the ancient Greeks. In spite of
this drawback, let us try to apply it.

What is our government trying to achieve in Gaza? It wants to topple
Hamas rule (and incidentally also put an end to the launching of
rockets against Israel).

It tried to achieve this by imposing a total blockade on the
population, hoping that they would rise up and overthrow Hamas. This
failed. The alternative course is to re-occupy the entire Strip. That
would carry a high price in lives of soldiers, perhaps more than the
Israeli public is ready to pay. Also, it will not help, because Hamas
will return the moment the Israeli troops withdraw. (In accordance
with Mao Zedong's first rule for guerrillas: "When the enemy
advances, withdraw. When the enemy withdraws, advance.")

The only result of the Five-Day War is the strengthening of Hamas and
the rallying of the Palestinian people behind it - not just in the
Gaza Strip, but in the West Bank and Jerusalem, too. Their victory
celebration was justified. The launching of rockets did not stop. The
range of the rockets is increasing.

But let us assume that this policy had succeeded and that Hamas had
been broken. What then? Abbas and Dahlan could return only on top of
Israeli tanks, as subcontractors of the occupation. No insurance
company would cover their lives. And if they did not come back, there
would be chaos, out of which extreme forces would emerge the like of
which we cannot even imagine.

Conclusion: Hamas is there. It cannot be ignored. We have to reach a
cease-fire with it. Not a sham offer of "if they stop shooting first,
then we will stop shooting". A cease-fire, like a tango, needs two
participants. It must come out of a detailed agreement that will
include the cessation of all hostilities, armed and otherwise, in all
the territories.

The cease-fire will not hold if it is not accompanied by speeded-up
negotiations for a long-term armistice (hudna) and peace. Such
negotiations cannot be held with Fatah and not Hamas, nor with Hamas
and not Fatah. Therefore, what is needed is a Palestinian government
that includes both movements. It must bring in personalities who
enjoy the confidence of the entire Palestinian people, such as Marwan
Barghouti. That is the very opposite of the present Israeli-American
policy, which forbids Abbas even to talk with Hamas. In all the
Israeli leadership, as in all the American leadership, there is no
one who dares to spell this out openly. Therefore, what has been is
what will be.

We will kill a hundred Turks and rest. And from time to time, a Turk
will come and kill some of us. Why, for God's sake? What have we done
to them?

(Uri, is an Israeli author and activist. He is the head of the
Israeli peace movement, "Gush Shalom".)