"Every
Generation Of Arabs
Hates Israel More Than The Last"
By Uri Avnery
28 August, 2006
Gush Shalom
In
his latest speech, which infuriated so many people, Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad uttered a sentence that deserves attention: "Every
new Arab generation hates Israel more than the previous one."
Of all that has been said
about the Second Lebanon War, these are perhaps the most important words.
The main product of this
war is hatred. The pictures of death and destruction in Lebanon entered
every Arab home, indeed every Muslim home, from Indonesia to Morocco,
from Yemen to the Muslim ghettos in London and Berlin. Not for an hour,
not for a day, but for 33 successive days - day after day, hour after
hour. The mangled bodies of babies, the women weeping over the ruins
of their homes, Israeli children writing "greetings" on shells
about to be fired at villages, Ehud Olmert blabbering about "the
most moral army in the world" while the screen showed a heap of
bodies.
Israelis ignored these sights,
indeed they were scarcely shown on our TV. Of course, we could see them
on Aljazeera and some Western channels, but Israelis were much too busy
with the damage wrought in our Northern towns. Feelings of pity and
empathy for non-Jews have been blunted here a long time ago.
But it is a terrible mistake
to ignore this result of the war. It is far more important than the
stationing of a few thousand European troops along our border, with
the kind consent of Hizbullah. It may still be bothering generations
of Israelis, when the names Olmert and Halutz have long been forgotten,
and when even Nasrallah no longer remember the name Amir Peretz.
* * *
IN ORDER for the significance
of Assad's words to become clear, they have to be viewed in a historical
context.
The whole Zionist enterprise
has been compared to the transplantation of an organ into the body of
a human being. The natural immunity system rises up against the foreign
implant, the body mobilizes all its power to reject it. The doctors
use a heavy dosage of medicines in order to overcome the rejection.
That can go on for a long time, sometimes until the eventual death of
the body itself, including the transplant.
(Of course, this analogy,
like any other, should be treated cautiously. An analogy can help in
understanding things, but no more than that.)
The Zionist movement has
planted a foreign body in this country, which was then a part of the
Arab-Muslim space. The inhabitants of the country, and the entire Arab
region, rejected the Zionist entity. Meanwhile, the Jewish settlement
has taken roots and become an authentic new nation rooted in the country.
Its defensive power against the rejection has grown. This struggle has
been going on for 125 years, becoming more violent from generation to
generation. The last war was yet another episode.
* * *
WHAT IS our historic objective
in this confrontation?
A fool will say: to stand
up to the rejection with a growing dosage of medicaments, provided by
America and World Jewry. The greatest fools will add: There is no solution.
This situation will last forever. There is nothing to be done about
it but to defend ourselves in war after war after war. And the next
war is already knocking on the door.
The wise will say: our objective
is to cause the body to accept the transplant as one of its organs,
so that the immune system will no longer treat us as an enemy that must
be removed at any price. And if this is the aim, it must become the
main axis of our efforts. Meaning: each of our actions must be judged
according to a simple criterion: does it serve this aim or obstruct
it?
According to this criterion,
the Second Lebanon War was a disaster.
* * *
FIFTY NINE years ago, two
months before the outbreak of our War of Independence, I published a
booklet entitled "War or Peace in the Semitic Region". Its
opening words were:
"When our Zionist fathers
decided to set up a 'safe haven' in Palestine, they had a choice between
two ways:
"They could appear in
West Asia as a European conqueror, who sees himself as a bridge-head
of the 'white' race and a master of the 'natives', like the Spanish
Conquistadores and the Anglo-Saxon colonists in America. That is what
the Crusaders did in Palestine.
"The second way was
to consider themselves as an Asian nation returning to its home - a
nation that sees itself as an
heir to the political and cultural heritage of the Semitic race, and
which is prepared to join the peoples of the Semitic region in their
war of liberation from European exploitation."
As is well known, the State
of Israel, which was established a few months later, chose the first
way. It gave its hand to colonial France, tried to help Britain to return
to the Suez Canal and, since 1967, has become the little sister of the
United States.
That was not inevitable.
On the contrary, in the course of years there have been a growing number
of indications that the immune system of the Arab-Muslim body is starting
to incorporate the transplant - as a human body accepts the organ of
a close relative - and is ready to accept us. Such an indication was
the visit of Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem. Such was the peace treaty signed
with us by King Hussein, a descendent of the Prophet. And, most importantly,
the historic decision of Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian
people, to make peace with Israel.
But after every huge step
forward, there came an Israeli step backward. It is as if the transplant
rejects the body's acceptance of it. As if it has become so accustomed
to being rejected, that it does all it can to induce the body to reject
it even more.
It is against this background
that one should weigh the words spoken by Assad Jr., a member of the
new Arab generation, at the end of the recent war.
* * *
AFTER EVERY single one of
the war aims put forward by our government had evaporated, one after
the other, another reason was brought up: this war was a part of the
"clash of civilizations", the great campaign of the Western
world and its lofty values against the barbarian darkness of the Islamic
world.
That reminds one, of course,
of the words written 110 years ago by the father of modern Zionism,
Theodor Herzl, in the founding document of the Zionist movement: "In
Palestinewe shall constitute for Europe a part of the wall against Asia,
and serve as the vanguard of civilization against barbarism." Without
knowing, Olmert almost repeated this formula in his justification of
his war, in order to please President Bush.
It happens from time to time
in the United States that somebody invents an empty but easily digested
slogan, which then dominates the public discourse for some time. It
seems that the more stupid the slogan is, the better its chances of
becoming the guiding light for academia and the media - until another
slogan appears and supersedes it. The latest example is the slogan "Clash
of Civilizations", coined by Samuel P. Huntington in 1993 (taking
over from the "End of History").
What clash of ideas is there
between Muslim Indonesia and Christian Chile? What eternal struggle
between Poland and Morocco? What is it that unifies Malaysia and Kosovo,
two Muslim nations? Or two Christian nations like Sweden and Ethiopia?
In what way are the ideas
of the West more sublime than those of the East? The Jews that fled
the flames of the auto-da-fe of the Christian Inquisition in Spain were
received with open arms by the Muslim Ottoman Empire. The most cultured
of European nations democratically elected Adolf Hitler as its leader
and perpetrated the Holocaust, without the Pope raising his voice in
protest.
In what way are the spiritual
values of the United States, today's Empire of the West, superior to
those of India and China, the rising stars of the East? Huntington himself
was compelled to admit: "The West won the world not by the superiority
of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in
applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners
never do." In the West, too, women won the vote only in the 20th
century, and slavery was abolished there only in the second half of
the 19th. And in the leading nation of the West, fundamentalism is now
also raising its head.
What interest, for goodness
sake, have we in volunteering to be a political and military vanguard
of the West in this imagined clash?
* * *
THE TRUTH is, of course,
that this entire story of the clash of civilizations is nothing but
an ideological cover for something that has no connection with ideas
and values: the determination of the United States to dominate the world's
resources, and especially oil.
The Second Lebanon War is
considered by many as a "War by Proxy". That's to say: Hizbullah
is the Dobermann of Iran, we are the Rottweiler of America. Hizbullah
gets money, rockets and support from the Islamic Republic, we get money,
cluster bombs and support from the United States of America.
That is certainly exaggerated.
Hizbullah is an authentic Lebanese movement, deeply rooted in the Shiite
community. The Israeli government has its own interests (the occupied
territories) that do not depend on America. But there is no doubt that
there is much truth in the argument that this was also a war by substitutes.
The US is fighting against
Iran, because Iran has a key role in the region where the most important
oil reserves in the world are located. Not only does Iran itself sit
on huge oil deposits, but through its revolutionary Islamic ideology
it also menaces American control over the near-by oil countries. The
declining resource oil becomes more and more essential in the modern
economy. He who controls the oil controls the world.
The US would viciously attack
Iran even it were peopled with pigmies devoted to the religion of the
Dalai Lama. There is a shocking similarity between George W. Bush and
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, The one has personal conversations with Jesus,
the other has a line to Allah. But the name of the game is domination.
What interest do we have
to get involved in this struggle? What interest do we have in being
regarded - accurately - as the servants of the greatest enemy of the
Muslim world in general and the Arab world in particular?
We want to live here in 100
years, in 500 years. Our most basic national interests demand that we
extend our hands to the Arab nations that accept us, and act together
with them for the rehabilitation of this region. That was true 59 years
ago, and that will be true 59 years hence.
Little politicians like Olmert,
Peretz and Halutz are unable to think in these terms. They can hardly
see as far as the end of their noses. But where are the intellectuals,
who should be more far-sighted?
Bashar al-Assad may not be
one of the world's Great Thinkers. But his remark should certainly give
us pause for thought.
Uri Avnery
is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom.