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Zurich-November 2002
I was born in Kefar Warbourg, a small co-op village in the south of Israel in 1944. It was near the end of World War 2,
The British were still in charge of our colony. The Palestinians existed around our cities and villages but not as real people, with needs and wants.
We knew they were there to kill us.
When I was born my father was already crippled from going over a road mine. I do not remember any empathy in our family towards the Palestinians surrounding us. We then called them “Arabs”. The right wing in Israel still does. If you call the Palestinians “Arabs” you actually say that they are all one entity: Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and the Palestinians who live on our piece of land. If they are just “Arabs” they belong somewhere far away, not in our Jewish land.
We never saw the faces of the Arabs living among us, most Israelis never went to an Arab village. Amazingly I can see that the attitude did not change till today. We do not yet recognize their faces, their language (most Israelis don’t understand Arabic), we do not even know what is happening inside the Israeli Arab society, how they finish university but are denied jobs. We are mostly interested to know if they are going to vote or not.
The left wing is mostly interested in that question because the Israeli Arabs vote for the left.
We feel betrayed when they say that after October 2000, when 13 Israeli Arabs were killed in a demonstration under the Barak government, they don’t want to play the game anymore.
How can they do this to us? We ask, not realizing that never in the history of Israel were 13 citizens killed in demonstration before.
The Jewish police never shoot Jews in demonstrations, no matter how violent they may become. The first and only time they shot and killed was in an Israeli-Arab demonstration in October 2000.
I just wonder sometimes what would happen if the Swiss police were to shot and kill 13 Jews in a demonstration. Would we not cry out that Europe is turning anti-Semitic again?
I will speak a bit later about my fear of the rising anti-Semitism.
My parents came to Israel as Zionists from Moldavia in 1936. My mother managed to bring her whole family with her, but my father’s family, was murdered by the Nazis.
My parents were the founders of a Jewish settlement in Kefar Menachem. It was one of a few dozen called “Wall and Tower” settlements, because there was hardly more than that in the settlement. It was established to do exactly what the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza are doing now: create a new map with more Jews and less Arabs.
When the settlers of today say that they are the descendants of the same frame of thought as the Zionists that built my parents village, I say they are right, but what was essential in the days before we had our sovereign state is no longer essential when we are strong and vital.
We already set our borders once after fighting a bloody independence war.
Whatever we are doing now in the West Bank in Gaza are atrocities. This is commonly known in the world as “Ethnic Cleansing”.
The settler movement is not moral, not legal and it undermines our very existence.
Instead of creating a viable democratic state with a Jewish majority, we are destroying the state built by my parents, creating a monster of a creature that only survives on gunfire, and we are responsible now for the re-emergence of anti-Semitism all over the world.
I think that the days of this IsraeliState are numbered and it may sadly become a short episode in the history of the region.
I am willing even to say that I prefer that this kind of a Jewish Zionist State will not exist at all if it is destined to be an apartheid state.
We are now so intertwined together- the Palestinians and us that soon there will not be a two-state solution at all. Already now we exist on by the mercy of gunfire and an atomic bomb as a constant regional threat. This is not the normal life we set out to create for the Jews. We know that the Arabs will revenge. We know that we deserve it. We know that this state of things cannot go on. We know that we live on a “Respiratory Machine” of the American people and the minute they take out the plug we are left with the European society that does not favor our brutal ways.
We never expected the world to become Unbiased towards us, We though the holocaust effect will live forever.
We are wonderful at self-pity and never have any guilt feelings over anything we do.
Intelligent people in Israel know we are living on borrowed time but they deceive themselves as I did in the past to think that somehow something good will happen. There is no sign of that yet. .
For years and years I was stupid enough to think that things will somehow get better, counting on different charismatic leaders, holding the views held by my parents that security can only be gained by force and the Arabs don’t understand any other language.
My parents were very politically oriented people and the arguments in our house were loud and clear.
I had an extreme right wing uncle, a traditional communist uncle, and my parents in the middle, humble servants of ben-Gurion and the labor party.
Peace with the Arabs, any Arabs, was sort of a mantra at every Israeli home but I think that no one ever took it seriously. We were always preparing for the next war and I knew I wanted to be part of the action.
I think the first time I ever heard about the Palestinians wishes was in Hyde Park Corner in London in 1968.
It is unbelievable that the first time I heard of the “Palestinian Problem” was not in Israel but rather in Europe. I was already a Fighter Pilot in the victorious Israeli Air Force after the Six-Day War, I stood in the street and listened to a Palestinian student stating their case and I could not believe my ears.
It sounded suddenly like the sun is turning instead of the world turning. I was not instantly persuaded by their case, but I was alert and open to listen. It was before we started settling in the territories, and I thought we were really willing to hand them back.
I even thought the Palestinians were happy under Israeli occupation. That was the story then. It was that before I lost my leg in 1970 in the war of attrition, it was before we fought the bloodiest and the most miserable and unnecessary of our wars in 1973.
We were still sure of our government.
I am not going to tell the whole Israeli story to people who are active observant and probably know it all. I only wanted to say how stupid I was, and how long it took me to realize that we are cheating.
We never had the will to give the West Bank to Hussein, we never agreed to any offer.
We thought time will pass, the Palestinians will love living under occupation, they will ever have political aspirations, and they will work for us and be happy to raise their standard of living.
When the first Intifahada broke out in 1987 we were broken hearted. Only intelligent people like Rabin understood what was happening and turned their views around. I think that Amram Mizna, the new leader of the Labor Party is also a man that the first Intifada turned his views around.
In 1988, while serving as the commander of the West Bank, he suddenly left his very high position and went to study in the US. When he left he gave a letter to his soldiers saying to them that he thinks, “there is no military solution to the Palestinian uprising but only a political one”.
The military are not used to commanders saying that there are no military solutions to any thing. They always think there is something to be tried yet. These days Mizna is saying it louder and clearer.
He is saying that “we already tried and exhausted every military option. There is nothing more in the arsenal and things are just getting worse. We have to withdraw in 1 year leaving behind the settlements, most of them at least”.
No political leader of the labor party ever said this about the settlements and set a date. This probably means that he will not be elected, but at least the left will have a substantial leader.
Mizna is against the refusal to serve, but nevertheless I think this small movement influenced him, because he recognizes the people that started this movement came from the hard core of the military reserve.
If 500 people are willing to go to jail instead of serving in the West Bank and Gaza, it means that thousands more want to do the same but do not have the courage.
I read in the newspaper just a few days ago that there are thousands of defectors from service, who just leave in the middle of their regular service and go home. The explanation given by the military authorities for this new phenomenon is the economic situation. Soldiers leave the army in order to help their families make a living.
I don’t buy this explanation.
There were times in Israel when the economy was even worse. There were never any doubts then about the importance of serving.
It is a very extreme step in Israel to refuse or to defect.
I am not sure the defectors even know why it is suddenly legitimate to run away from duty, but I think the reason is that many don’t understand why they have to give up precious years and lives to protect the settlements.
I think this message got through. Just this week I read a pole indicating that 70 percent of the Israelis are favoring withdrawal from the occupied territories.
This is the reason way Sharon suddenly speaks of a PalestinianState.
He will never withdraw, but he knows he has to talk about it to gain votes.
It is suddenly very popular to withdraw, only everyone is afraid of actually doing it.
The settlers have frightened us for years.
Sharon is more a settler than anyone else, even more that Bibi Netanyahu. He himself built most of the settlements under different governments.
The settlements can not exist without constant babysitting by the Israeli army.
This is why I wrote my declaration of refusal to serve in the territories.
It was in January 2000,
It was after Ehud Barak sent Jet warplanes to bomb Rammallah.
As a retired pilot I thought this was crossing another red line. I thought the pilots should have
Refused to bomb a heavily populated city.
Since then it was done many more times. The pilots knew there was high risk of killing civilians in what they call “collateral damage” yet the head of the airforce, general Dan Chalutz who used to be a old friend of mine, said that he sleeps very well at night after giving this orders.
He was out to kill some terrorist in Gaza and he ordered to throw one ton bomb on this building, killing a few more families in the process.
This specific terrorist he was after has no real meaning Because everyone is replaceable and there is no shortage of terrorists in the Palestinian war, but what I am wondering is what it means about us.
Will airforce pilots be willing to bomb Israelis, Arab Israelis, in the near future, like they killed demonstrators in Oum-el Phachem in October 2000? Why not?
I don’t know if you understand what dose it means to declare that you refuse to serve to people from my background.
The Israelis in the audience probably understand this well.
There is nothing more important in the Israeli society, nothing that proves your bond to Israel more than the will to serve.
I know what happened to me after I declared my support for refusal.
I did not go to jail because I am too old to be called to service, but I was given the cold shoulder by many friends. In fact I have lost my social status altogether and I am no more considered part of the "group” I used to belong to.
There are few people I am still in contact with, but they never mention my “disease” or rather my betrayal. They try to avoid it.
I think that the young refuseniks pay a heavier price because they still have to find jobs and make careers, and they actually serve time in Jail.
They also have to actually desert their fellow fighters and leave them to sacrifice their lives without them. This is especially true for officers.
I constantly hear the argument that refusing to serve is undemocratic. I think this is bullshit. Only in a democracy one can refuse and make a difference, this is part of freedom of speech and thought.
No one can say that obeying the law is top priority no matter what. The free conscience is part of human nature, or should be, and in a democracy more so, because you are not executed if you disobey the law, you just go to jail.
The Israelis like to hold the stick from both ends: to pretend to be the only democracy in the region, and to act undemocratically in the territories. In my opinion a democracy cannot set its limits to certain territories. You cannot say we are a democracy up to exit 4 from the highway, and after that there is a different regime where the settlers live.
The conscience is something that is not aroused until a very late age. When I was young I never gave these issues a second thought.
That is why I respect the young Refuseniks so much.
Today most of the acts done by the army in the territories are illegal and immoral. Even the uprooting of olive trees to make way for tanks, to clear areas for roads, fences, for better road view.
It is done on a daily basis. No courts are involved. Bulldozers are the main weapons of fighting nowadays.
They tear down houses with no second opinion with any court orders.
In the territories we don’t even practice the basic checks and balances, every officer is a king. I am constantly amazed how all these people get up in the morning and go to work, knowing that their work is to destroy other people lives.
Brigadier general Dov zedaka, who was until lately the head of the civil administration in the west bank said that he knows that the army is “hyperactive” in destroying lands groves and houses, and he is afraid to be judged for these deeds in Hague, but unfortunately the fear of Hague is exaggerated.
AS long as America backs us nothing can scare us.