On the Israeli elections

Two days after the general election on Tuesday (February 10), it was clear that even after all of the soldiers' votes had been counted today evening (Thursday, February 12) the mandate distribution in the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) was not altered.

Following the final votes' count, center-right Kadima remained with 28 mandates, rightist Likud was close behind with 27 mandates, the racist Israel Beiteinu party was the third biggest party with 15 mandates, Labor received only 13 mandates, Shas had 11 mandates and Meretz only 3 mandates.   Hadash (the Democratic Peace and Equality Front – Communist Party of Israel) has increased its influence to four mandates. Hadash Chairman MK Mohammad Barakeh said he was "very happy". "This is still serious progress" he said.

Israel's military offensive against Palestinians in Gaza Strip and the major protest demonstrations organized by Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel and the progressive and militant peace forces lead by Hadash, focused the election campaign on two main issues: what should be the Israeli peace and security policy and what should be the relationship between the state and its Arab-Palestinian minority.

Those issues split the Israeli population and led to the disappearance, for all intents and purposes, of the center-left Zionist agenda. According to Israeli law, the creation of a coalition government is granted to the head of the faction who has the greatest chance of forming a majority coalition – in other words, not necessarily the leader of the party who received the most votes.

Despite the added force, MK Barakeh said Hadash would not join any government. "When we speak with the president, we will tell him our vision of a future state. I think he's smart enough to realize that this vision does not exist under any possible government." Barakeh also said: "We may have only four mandates, but we bear the burden of being the spearhead against Liebermanization". "People who were worried about racist Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Yvette Lieberman realized that they shouldn't stop at the Zionist social-democratic Meretz party station, but stop at the more radical and militant Hadash station," he added.  

MK Dov Henin expressed optimism about his party's support among the young generation of voters, and added "In the one hand, there is a new Israeli consensus that clearly rejects any further steps in the peace process. Under certain circumstances this center will be willing to continue negotiations with the current Palestinian Authority, but it will be unwilling to make any significant concessions. On the other hand, the Arab-Palestinian minority of Israel rejected the violent policies that characterize the occupation policy of the government. In addition, Hadash and the Communist Party managed to mobilize a not negligible portion of the Jewish-Israeli young population for their political and social agenda. It further led to the eradication of the well-intentioned do-gooder liberals from the political map. Parties like Meretz got certain political support in kibbutzim and from the Tel Aviv middle class, but their message proved irrelevant to the majority Arab-Palestinian citizens and the Left activists both Jews and Arabs".

The foreseen instability of the future governing coalition, the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories and the current capitalist crisis, suggests that there may be elections again within the next two years. "It is imperative that, facing those elections, the Arab-Palestinian citizens and the militant left unite and present an alternative to the growing fascist forces in the Israeli society" said MK Khenin. "A new generation of young people has entered Israeli politics," he continued, "They are open and critical, and in Hadash and the Communist Party they have found a real alternative to old Zionist politics."

"Meretz suffered a total and resounding failure with its automatic support for the decision to go to war in Gaza. We had more than enough supporters of the war, both at its inception and as it continued – after all, the representatives of Labor and Kadima led this war in the government. Meretz did not provide an alternative, at any rate not a humanistic one.

"That is precisely what also happened to Meretz two years ago, during the Second Lebanon War. Support for one erroneous war could be attributed to naivety; support for two erroneous wars indicates carelessness.

"The only right to existence of a party like Meretz is in its being a courageous and true alternative that gives voice to clear and precise positions. When this voice becomes blurred and turns into nothing more than a weak echo of the positions of the large parties in the center and on the left, its role becomes redundant.

"The voters of the left therefore have no reason to support a party whose positions are flaccid. In a war of the type waged in Gaza it is not enough to express criticism post factum, as the leaders of Meretz are doing now.

"Their test came during the first week of the war, and they failed that test. Even the reinforcements in the form of the New Movement with its plethora of intellectuals did not prevent the failure.

"Despite all the self-justification and twisting and turning on the part of its leaders, voting for Meretz is no different from voting for the Labor Party, certainly not with regard to the supreme test of a politician's mettle – his judgment".
 
 
Thursday, February 5, 2009

"The Hebrew-language blogger Ori Katzir made a survey of 92 prominent political bloggers. According to the final breakdown, the Green Movement-Meimad leads with 30 supporters, while Hadash comes in second with 27. It is the polar opposite of the opinion polls, which show Likud leading and Avigdor Lieberman's hardline Yisrael Beiteinu poised to tie with Labour.

"Hadash's rise among liberal-left, urban Jewish voters is particularly interesting. By definition a non-Zionist party that attracted most of its support from Arabs, Hadash traditionally won three or four seats in the 120-seat Knesset. Even in ultra-liberal Tel Aviv, a vote for Hadash was, until these elections, considered a radical vote.

"Now this has changed, partly because of the recently ended Gaza military offensive, and partly because Dov Khenin, number three on the Hadash list, recently ran a failed but vigorous campaign for mayor of Tel Aviv.

"Khenin's campaign brought together a diverse list of candidates that ran the gamut from Mizrachi Likud supporters to Arab feminists; the unifying factors were affordable housing, clean air and green public spaces. With that campaign, they succeeded in gathering enough support to threaten the three-term incumbent. Khenin garnered most of his support from local bloggers, who campaigned on his behalf via social media such as YouTube and Facebook. Many of them spent a lot of time with Khenin, and were impressed by the soft-spoken, modest politician and his social-democratic, inclusive agenda.

"But it was the Gaza war that seems to have been a deciding factor for many of its new supporters – Hadash was the only party that led opposition to the war from the very first day of the offensive. English-language Israeli bloggers tend to be heavily weighted with new immigrants whose political opinions are to the right of the mainstream, so I have taken the following sampling from the Hebrew blogosphere, which is larger and more active. Gil Rimon, a screenwriter and journalist, writes: 'When all the parties vote for war, it's good to know that there is one political home that makes my voice heard.'

"Journalist Dror Feuer bases his position on Hadash's Jewish-Arab partnership – arguing that it is particularly important to raise the flag of equality now "when the artillery cannons have barely gone quiet and the atmosphere is as anti-cooperation as it has ever been." Itamar Shaaltiel says there are many things that bother him about Hadash – including its communist roots and its habit of sending Jewish candidates to speak to Jewish voters, and Arab candidates to Arab voters – but he is voting for them because Hadash is the only party that opposed the war.

"For Uri Sabach the issue is the same: 'The reason is very simple: I do not want my representatives in the Knesset voting automatically for the next war (and believe me, there will be another war). I want them to vote automatically against. To my sorrow, I can no longer trust Meretz [the leftwing party formerly led by Yossi Beilin]. Meretz is very good at being quiet when we are going to war, hugging our brave soldiers during the war, and crying over the results after it's all over'."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2009/feb/03/israel-election-bloggers

"We are the secured room for all those who fear the onslaught of 'Liebermanization'," said Hadash chairman, Knesset Member Mohammad Barakeh. "Unfortunately, 'Liebermanization' is not limited to the man himself and has permeated through Israeli society."

The party feels that the racism suffered by Israeli Arabs is growing by the day, citing the Central Elections Committee's decision to disqualify two Arab parties, a decision later overturned by the High Court of Justice – as a prominent example.

The move, said the party, was part of a long-term trend aimed at demonizing the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel portraying it as the enemy. That sentiment, said a party source, was the reason for the new, aggressive counter-campaign.

"This (trend) is destructive to the Israeli society," said MK Dov Khenin. "That is why Hadash, which is the complete opposite of Lieberman, decided to rally all the democratic and liberal forces in Israel against racism and 'transferism.' We know that there are plenty who oppose Liebermanization."

"The racist discourse seems to be increasing with corruption. The saying that fascism is the scoundrel's last resort, fits Lieberman and his followers like a glove," added Barakeh

"I'm worried about the big picture. The mandates his is expected to get are a manifestation of Liebermanization within Israeli society. The fight against racism goes beyond the election campaign. Unfortunately, it is evident in every aspect of our lives." 

The detentions are additionally part of Israel’s mostly successful campaign to conceal internal popular protests against Israeli attacks on Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of people throughout Israel, both Arabs and Jews, have taken to the streets in public protest against Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Protests throughout Israel have occurred almost every day since Israel commenced attacks on 27 December; the Arab Higher Monitoring Committee has organized three massive demonstrations in Palestinian towns and villages in northern and southern Israel, attending by over 200,000 people, and the Coalition against the War has initiated local and national demonstrations with tens of thousands of participants, mostly members of Hadash and the Communist Party of Israel, in Tel-Aviv and other mayor cities. The concerted campaign by the Israeli government and Zionist political parties from the “left-wing” Meretz through the far right has succeeded, however, in creating a local and international illusion that there exists no opposition to the military attacks within Israel.

There is a background and a history to this killing, this slaughter that is taking place in Gaza: the colonial relations between Jews and Palestinians in Israel that began many years before the creation of the State of Israel. Particularly astonishing is the ratio of killed over the years and especially in the Gaza war, which stands at about 1 (Israeli) to 100 (Palestinians). That ratio is not coincidental, but well describes the balance that is considered normal in colonial wars.

The writer and scholar Sven Lindqvist discussed that subject in his book “Exterminate All The Brutes”, which was published 15 years ago in English. Lindqvist set out to research European colonialism in Africa at the end of the 19^th century. If we wish better to understand colonial oppression and the methods it employs these days against the Palestinian people in Gaza, then we would do well to consult this book.

By way of example, Lindqvist describes the battle between the English army and the army of the Dervishes in Omdurman (Sudan). That war was waged by the British empire in order to re-conquer Sudan. Lindqvist borrowed some of his descriptions from Winston Churchill, who was then a young military correspondent for an English newspaper. In that battle a large native army (the “Derwvishes”) was destroyed by a colonial army that was small but equipped with the best military technology of the day. The English had Maxim guns, which had a much longer range than that of the antiquated rifles that the Dervishes carried and therefore they could snipe at the native army before the latter even perceived their presence.

The mounted Dervishes, according to Churchill’s description, were courageous and furiously charged against the English army, but nearly all of them were killed before they made direct contact with the English soldiers. In the course of the battles the British army sustained hardly any losses. The British press at the time published pictures of hand-to-hand fighting between the Darwishes and the English, but they were forgeries – no such battles took place.

Lindqvist concludes: “In the Omdurman battle the entire Sudanese army was destroyed without even reaching shooting-range of their enemy. The arts of killing from a distance had turned become a European ‘specialty’ ”. The British cannons were particularly efficacious against defenceless villages. Lindqvist also writes: the Europeans became the “gods of the cannons”, who felled victims long before their adversaries could get to them. The European expansion into Asia and Africa, writes Lindqvist, opened a new period of imperialism. “Military superiority was perceived among too many Europeans as intellectual and even biological superiority as well”.

The English colonialist campaign of that time resembles the air campaign against Gaza in another important respect as well: the Israeli admiration for the “extraordinary achievement” of the slaughter in Gaza. Back then, too, England received the reports about the victory with great euphoria. The commander of the campaign Lord Kitchener was received by the Queen and all Britain cheered.

The colonial powers mostly fought against the natives from a position of absolute military advantage. In view of that, they could not understand how the natives dared to resist at all. Europeans ascribed the natives’ resistance to stupidity and the natural primitiveness of their race. The real motivation of the locals – the strong desire to be free of their oppressors – the colonialists were never able to understand.

The colonial format in our region has its source in the continuing Zionist colonial war that has been going on for over a hundred years, but intensified after the conquests of 1967.

Tom Segev, a nearly isolated voice among the clamour of the patriotic chorus, chose recently (Haaretz, 19 December 2008) to present some old truths about of the Jewish-Arab conflict and he was not afraid to mention the Zionist ideology as the source of our incorrect assumptions about the Palestinians:

“Israel struck at the Palestinians in order to ‘teach them a lesson’”. This is the premise that has accompanied the Zionist enterprise from its inception: we represent progress and enlightenment, rational sophistication and morality; the Arabs are a primitive and tempestuous rabble, ignorant youths who must be educated and taught to understand. All this, of course, through the system of ‘the carrot and the stick’”.

Segev continues: “The bombing of Gaza is supposed to eliminate the ‘Hamas regime’; that too is in accordance with assumption that has accompanied the Zionist movement from its inception, according to which it is possible to place a ‘moderate’ leadership in control of the Palestinians, that will make concessions on their national aspirations. We are just defending ourselves here”.

Segev subsequently emphasizes:

“The struggle, however, is not against a terrorist organization that took the residents of Gaza hostage, but a national religious movement that has many followers. From the dawn of the Zionist presence in Eretz Israel [Palestine] there has not yet been a military action that has advanced negotiations with the Palestinians”.

In addition to military actions, Segev also recalls programmes for settling Arab families from Gaza in the West Bank after the Six Day War. (I remember that version: as soon as the battles ended Israeli Prime Minister Eshkol investigated whether it would be possible to "transfer" the Arabs of Gaza to Iraq and in their place to settle Jews in Gaza).

The ground action: how will it end?

Recently the second stage of the “Gaza war” began. The press reports that army representatives told the political echelon that they had already run out of targets and therefore it was necessary to proceed to a military invasion deep into the Strip. Combat conditions will now be a little different from what they were in the first stage of the conflict, because it is expected that there will be tangible contact between the sides. Still, even under those conditions – as was also the case in the second Lebanon war – the balance of force will still be such that it will be far from an equal battle between the combatant sides. Most of the losses that the Palestinian fighters are sustaining have been caused as a result of remote-control war: from the air, the sea, and the land (artillery). In the ground stage the battle is also not between equal sides. The colonial format that Israel has imposed on the Gazan resistance fighters continues to exist: on one side a large modern army with elaborate technological equipment and on the other side lightly-equipped guerrilla groups.

Mountains of texts have already piled up about the history of Israel’s war in Gaza: who started the story? Did the Arabs come to settle in Jewish Gaza or the opposite? Who was a settler within a crowded area and took 20% of its land and a substantial part of its water reserves? Who prevented the creation of an industrial infrastructure and even electricity generating stations and afterwards complains that "we" are providing electricity even though the Gazans are shooting at us? And who left Gaza “without paying” and still complains that they have not thanked us for it? So far those question marks also remain hanging over subjects like the debate over how each side acquires its military equipment: through tunnels (smuggling! Contraband!), or through the seaports and airports in Israel (legitimate and respectable), or who violated the lull (“tahdiya”) and afterwards played the robbed Cossack when they started to fire missiles at him.

We shall pass over many additional questions without discussion: who kills peaceable civilians with premeditation and who killed three or four times as many civilians, and now a hundred times as many, but does it “unintentionally”? Here for example, are some facts from a "Betselem" report: In seven years from the launching of the first qassam up to the beginning of the present attack on Gaza 13 Israelis have been killed. In the same period Israel killed 2,990 Palestinians, including 634 children. In total during that period Israel killed 4,781 people in Gaza and the West Bank. A large proportion of the killed were civilians, including women and children. Those facts should be taken into account when we grapple with the question of who are the terrorists here or what is the extent of “Hamas terror” compared to the “state terror” of Israel.

In all these issues, for all their importance, the root of the problem is not to be found. The root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was and remains to this day the relations between the conqueror and the conquered, the oppressor and the oppressed, the besieger and the besieged, colonialist and native.

In the Occupied Territories, the State of Israel would like to see only subjugated Palestinians, who will not dare to raise their heads in the face of its ongoing control over their lives. Those who desire true and sustainable peace between the peoples should know, that the end of the Palestinian resistance and the contracting of peace will come only after the elimination of colonialism in all its forms.