Bush's Guru
By Uri Avnery
11 March, 2005
Counterpunch.org
An
American and a Soviet soldier meet in Berlin in 1945 and get into an
argument abhout which of their countries is more democratic.
"Why,"
the American said, "I can stand in the middle of Times Square and
shout 'President Truman is a scoundrel' and nothing will happen to me!"
"Big deal,"
the Russian retorted, "I can stand in the middle of Red Square
and shout 'Truman is a scoundrel' and nothing will happen to me!"
It is perhaps this
story that inspired Natan Sharansky's theory that the ultimate test
of democracy is that a person can stand in the town square and denounce
his government, without anything happening to him. True, but rather
simplistic, I would say. Simplistic enough to catch the imagination
of that other great thinker, George W. Bush.
When Israelis heard
for the first time about Bush citing Sharansky as his guide and mentor,
they gasped in disbelief. Sharansky? Our Sharansky?
To explain this
reaction, one has to go back a little bit. We first heard of Natan Sharansky
(actually Anatoliy Shcharansky, but the name was simplified and Hebrewized
when he came here) as a "dissident" in the Soviet Union. After
attracting international attention in Moscow, he was arrested by the
KGB and sentenced for treason, in what looked like a particularly clumsy
attempt to silence him. As we heard it, he was not broken in the hell
of the Gulag but remained a proud fighter for his rights and ideas.
A huge international campaign demanded his release.
In the end the Soviets
decided to get rid of him and exchanged him for a valuable Soviet spy
held in America. The picture of this small but upright figure crossing
the bridge in Berlin has remained imprinted in our memories.
We waited for his
arrival in Israel with bated breath. Here he was: a great, authentic
hero, the man who had single-handedly defeated the Soviet colossus,
a modern David defying mighty Goliath.
Seeing him in the
flesh was an anti-climax. For a hero, he looked singularly unimpressive.
But appearances mislead, don't they?
At the airport,
Anatoliy, now Natan, was reunited with his wife, another famous dissident.
Since she had already achieved a certain notoriety in Israel as a fanatical
right-winger and religious extremist, her connection with the human-rights
activist seemed incongruous.
The real disillusionment,
at least for me, started with the Husseini affair. Some good soul arranged
a meeting between the great dissident and Feisal Husseini, the leader
of the Arab community in East Jerusalem, a fighter for Palestinian human
rights and a real humanist. Sharansky agreed, but at the last moment
retracted, claiming that he had not known that Husseini belonged to
the PLO. (Which is rather like not knowing that Bush is an American.)
At the time I wrote
an article about him under the heading "Shafansky". "Shafan"
is Hebrew for rabbit, the symbol of cowardice.
From then on, the
great human rights fighter gradually became an uncompromising activist
against the human (and any other) rights of the Palestinians in the
occupied territories.
First he established
a party of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, achieved a respectable
election result and joined a coalition headed by the Labor Party. But
after some time his party started falling apart. He tried to save it
by resigning from the government of Ehud Barak, on the grounds that
it had made too many concessions to the Palestinians over Jerusalem.
Finally, in an admission
of political bankruptcy, he joined the Likud. He is now a quite unimportant
member of the government, calling himself grandly "Minister for
Jerusalem", but serving actually as a Minister without Portfolio,
who has been put, pro forma, in charge of Jerusalem affairs.
In the meantime,
he has suffered some unpleasantness. Another famous immigrant from Russia
published an extremely critical book about him, alleging that he had
never been a prominent dissident, but that his importance had been deliberately
inflated by the KGB in order to exchange him for its genuinely important
agent in the American prison. Also, the book insinuates that his role
behind bars was considerably less heroic than advertised.
Sharansky sued for
libel and won, but only after the indignity of hearing some other prominent
former dissidents testify against him.
Throughout the years,
Sharansky in line with many "Russian" immigrants
was drifting to the extreme right. Already as Housing Minister, he had
systematically enlarged the settlements on expropriated Arab land in
the West Bank, trampling on the human and national rights of the Palestinians.
Now he belongs to the Likud "rebels", the group of extreme
right-wingers who are trying to undermine Ariel Sharon's "disengagement"
plan and prevent the dismantling of settlements.
For years now, he
has peddled the idea that peace with the Arabs is impossible until they
become democratic. In Israel, this was dismissed as just another propaganda
gimmick serving the Israeli government's opposition to any peace that
would mean an end to the occupation. Since Sharansky is totally ignorant
of Arab affairs and has probably never had a serious conversation with
an Arab, it is hard for Israelis to take him seriously. As far as I
know, nobody does, not even among Rightists.
His highly unoriginal
contention that "democracies do not make war against other democracies"
is a perfect alibi for the United States to attack Iraq, Syria and Iran,
which are, after all, no democracies (while dictatorships like Pakistan
and Turkmenistan remain good friends).
The idea that the
teachings of this particular political philosopher are the guiding star
of the mightiest leader in the world, the commander of the biggest military
machine in history, is rather frightening.
Uri Avnery is an
Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the
writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal.
He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book The Politics
of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at: [email protected].
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