đŸ Archived View for library.inu.red âș file âș alfredo-m-bonanno-palestine-mon-amour.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 07:19:11. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
âĄïž Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Palestine, mon amour Author: Alfredo M. Bonanno Language: en Topics: Palestine Source: Retrieved on October 10, 2010 from http://digitalelephant.blogspot.com/2010/08/palestine-mon-amour.html Notes: Translated by Jean Weir
No one can understand what is happening in the land of Palestine, not
even those who have followed the sanguinary vicissitudes of the peoples
who have lived down there for so long. They face each other with hatred
and suspicion, not just men and women, children and old people, but the
very dust of the roads and the mud that covers them on rainy days, the
asphyxiating heat and the stench of the sultriness.
The âofficialâ terms of the controversy are well known. The Israelis
chased the Palestinians off their land, but this happened so long ago
that some of the people born in huts in the camps are now fifty years
old. Ridiculous arguments between States have resulted in pieces of land
being returned to the people who were driven away, but it is impossible
to live in them. In Israel if you donât work you go hungry. The colons
of the second Zionist wave got rich through the exploitation of a cheap
Palestinian work force and the free use of fields in territories that
should now constitute the new State of Palestine. But not only does all
that fail to grasp the essence of the problem, it does not even begin to
describe it. Perhaps it made sense at the time of the first popular
insurrection of the people of the âterritoriesâ, that of the stones. Now
things are moving towards an increasingly ferocious âLebanisationâ.
Neither party wants to retreat as this would lead to internal conflict,
a destructive civil war that would almost certainly give the adversary
victory on a military level.
And so they continue to attack each other in a never-ending cycle. Each
side uses the weapons they have at their disposal: the Palestinians blow
themselves up with their own bombs; the Israelis bomb houses in the
territories from planes. There are the pacification maps, the internal
agreements, the UN guarantees and Bushâs empty âsorrowâ.
The problem is developing at its own pace, one that can only be grasped
by someone who has familiarity with such situations, and it is becoming
chronic. Hatred becomes acute when one lives in conditions such as those
of the Palestinians, with prospects like theirs, i.e., none at all.
There is no hope for their children or for the future of the place where
they were born. And it is not true that this hatred, so ferocious and
incomprehensible to us, is nourished by integralist extremism. How is it
that most of the young people who blow themselves up with their own
bombs have completed their studies, have a degree or diploma â sometimes
obtained abroad â are family people, have children. What they donât have
is hope. They realize that there is nothing for them but a prospect of
hatred of an enemy that imprisons, bombs and tortures. On the other side
everyone lives in fear of being blown up as they go to work, dance in a
disco, lie asleep in their beds. Here again, blind hatred that sees no
alternative is pushing people to demand that the government use more
force in the repression. Even the most illuminated of the Israeli labour
party formed in Mapai in 1968, (one of the Zionist forces to support the
first settlements) have kept quiet for fear of losing their electoral
base. Many see the Likud (right wing party which means literally
âconsolidationâ) as the only force capable of leading the country
against the Palestinians.
To speak of peace under such conditions is just another way to wriggle
out of things with clean hands and a dirty conscience.
Organised massacres of Palestinians such as those by the
Christian-Maronites at Sabra and Chatila in September 1982, or (Black)
September 1970 organised by King Hussein of Jordan which lasted until
April 1971 resulting in 4,600 dead and 10,000 wounded, are still
possible. However, if carried out by Israel or one of its armed
intermedieries they would lead to a complete destabilisation of the
area. As I write, Israel has attacked some presumed Palestinian posting
in Syria; the present time is one of the worst.
There is no prospect of peace in sight. The ideal solution, at least as
far as all those who have the freedom of peoples at heart can see, would
be generalised insurrection. In other words, an intifada starting from
the Israeli people that is capable of destroying the institutions that
govern them and of proposing peace based on collaboration and mutual
respect to the Palestinian people directly, without intermedieries. But
for the time being this perspective is only a dream. We must prepare for
the worst.
Alfredo M. Bonanno
There is one thing about the struggle of the Palestinian people that has
touched and fascinated all those who have approached it: on the other
side of the barricade are the Jews, the persecuted of all times.
There is nothing strange about this, the persecuted have often become
persecutors. Just think of what happened to the early Christians in the
space of three centuries after they gained power and systematically
began to repress all dissonant voices. There have been many such cases
of about turns throughout history. Todayâs prisons are built on the
temples of the past. No political force in recent times has been able to
resist throwing itself into ruthless repression as soon as it reached
power, no matter how travailed its history. But the voice of reason is
not enough for us to gain an understanding the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict.
Jews have always been at the centre of attention and given rise to
either suspicion or sympathy, usually the former. Thrown out from
wherever they happened to be as a consequence of insinuation and
dreadful accusations, they always gained the sympathy of anyone with any
feelings â anyone, that is, who is against pogroms, mass murder, the
massacre of innocents and summary judgements based on impressions and
hearsay. The mental rigidity of the Jews, their vision of life based on
religious righteousness that sees the rest of the world as impure or
sinful, has often put such sympathies to the test. But the enormity of
the historical debt owed them, which in the second world war grew to the
point of becoming a methodical procedure that surpassed anything that
had ever been ever dreamed of till then, revived these sympathies and
constituted a new force of international cohesion capable of supporting
the case for Jewish settlements in Palestine.
Israel became a focus of international support for many reasons. The
massacre in the Nazi concentration camps, the socialist and libertarian
character of the early settlements, the theories of the first kibbutzim
based on libertarian communism, the original peaceful cohabitation with
the Arabs in response to the latterâs traditional hospitality. Then
interests emerged, particularly at the end of the Second World War. They
were based on the worldâs division into two opposing blocks, with
American interests on one side and Soviet ones on the other. It was a
question of economic interest in a geographical area which was rich in
oil fields, thereby attracting the attention of the great imperialist
States.
The Israelis accepted their role as gendarme of the western project of
world dominion, and began keeping an eye on the movements of the
surrounding Arab States. The latter often fought each other about the
management of the immense revenue from oil and became players on the
international chessboard, at times supporting, at others contrasting,
the opposition of the great States. It was the Zionist movement along
with the great Jewish-American and international, but mainly American,
lobbies that pushed the Jewish people along this road in the land of
Israel. They lead to an extremism hitherto unequalled in the whole of
political-religious history. The lobbies, which were capable of
conditioning American politics, particularly during the long years of
Republican power, forced the United States to push the small but fierce
Israel into the role of policeman of the Middle East.
All this rekindled anti-Semitism at world level, leading to an
indigestible collection of anti-Jewish theories. In this concentrate of
stupidity we find such historical revisionism as the theory that the
holocaust never existed, or that of Arab nationalists are incapable of
considering Israeli people as possible brothers and pacific cohabitants
of the same territory. For their part, the latter have survived a
thousand years of persecution and massacres yet have not benefited from
past experience. They have become hostages in the hands of a theocratic
State, one of the worst kinds of organisation to emerge from the mind of
man. Fear of being cast into the sea to take up the path of exile yet
again has thrown them into the arms of internal and external meddlers:
Zionist schemes at local and international level, and the strategies of
US world dominion.
An evil crescendo has been set in motion that nothing other than a
revolutionary process will be able to halt. No discussion is possible
and anyone who has experienced the concrete and theoretical reality of
the Jews, even for short spells, can confirm this. No theoretical
proposal will ever be able to undo the mechanism of encirclement and
fear. That situation has remained unchanged, even since the fall of the
Berlin wall and the thaw that came about after the dissolution of the
Warsaw Pact at the end of the twentieth century. Arab nationalist claims
in general and those of the Palestinians in particular cause too much
fear, and there is no lack of those who support the facile but
treacherous idea of âletâs throw them all into the seaâ on both sides.
The experience of the Palestinian State, or of the âPalestinian
authoritiesâ as some prefer to refer to it, also demonstrates this
impossibility. They failed to propose cohabitation based on reciprocal
respect along the lines of the libertarian communes, a sentiment that
has not completely disappeared in a certain Israeli left. This
corresponds in a slightly different way to the tradition of hospitality
and freedom of the Arab peoples â in the first place the Palestinians.
Instead they have taken the road mapped out by the politicians of the
PLO, in particular Arafat, true killer of the Palestinian peopleâs real
desire for freedom and artificer of a phantom State fit only to
guarantee the personal power of a little man afflicted with delusions of
grandeur.
The dice has been thrown, based on the fear that has intensified in the
Israeli field. An extension of the civil war in course right to the
centres of Israeli power could push things beyond the present level of
conflict. Each side is afraid of the other. The Israelis fear
Palestinian demands that would threaten their privileges (cheap labour,
houses expropriated from Arabs who were forced to leave, State benefits,
etc.). The Palestinians fear the Israelis who want to get rid of them,
and want to throw them off their land (and in large part already have
done), forcing them into exile in the concentration camps of the Lebanon
and Jordan. Fear is exacerbating the conditions of the conflict.
Palestinian suicide bombers packed with dynamite blow themselves up in
Israeli markets, buses and schools. The exalted Israeli religious Right
Wing in power have shown that the weapons with which they intend to face
âcohabitationâ with the Arab world â exploitation, control, repression,
â are just as bad.
It is impossible to turn the clock back. Too many dead in each family,
in each family group, in every sector of social life. Too much blood,
too much pain. All that cannot be eliminated with a handshake, or some
Camp David. In spite of the existence of the Israeli Left, yesterday in
power, today in opposition, the most emarginated class of Israelis, the
Sephardi (Jews originally from Africa therefore with a darker skin
colour but still of Jewish religion), are taking refuge in extreme Right
Wing positions rather than favouring talks and agreements based on equal
rights with the Palestinians. They are afraid they will lose the right
to stay in Israel and be forced back to the countries they came from,
where most of them would meet certain death. So it is not difficult to
understand why the most extreme members of the Jewish religious
organisations are of Sephardic origin and constitute the most ferocious
henchmen of the army and police employed in the repression.
On the other hand, there are the new Palestinian police â the
politicians of the PLO. These ill-omened offshoots of the new State have
taken up positions in the government of a people tormented by forty
years of exile and persecution, and are putting power in all its forms
into effect. They torture, kill, judge and sentence their own people
without hesitation. Comrades in struggle who participated in extremely
risky actions up until a few years ago have become judges, prison
guards, policemen, army commanders, bodyguards, secret services agents.
In the territories liberated by concession of the Israeli government,
the PLO has become the repressive force of a State that has not yet
reached the maximum of its governing capacity, but which has already
embarked on the road of all States. The roles are reversing, power is
renewing itself but the methods remain the same. But for the millions of
Palestinians still in the camps, the permanent exiles who have had their
land and identity taken from them, this way of doing things is called
betrayal. Hence their fear of seeing themselves imprisoned in
concentration camps for another half century, betrayed by their own
representatives (something that is very painful, I can tell you), as
well as being under the attack of Israeli raids and drawn into a
political game which they do not understand and whose possible outcome
they fail to see.
Once again the future is being conditioned by fear on both sides,
pushing them blindly forward in a clash that is getting worse. The
insurrection of the Palestinian people scares the politicians of Gaza
and the West Bank. More than anything it scares Arafat, as he is unable
to control it. It scares the Israeli government, but also scares the
Israeli people, and this is the important thing. Seeing themselves under
attack in their own homes where anyone likes to feel safe, they are
appealing to their governors and asking for stricter controls and a more
systematic repression. The circle is closing in.
It is not possible to make forecasts and anyway they could always be
refuted by unforeseen events.
To abandon a peopleâs dreams of freedom as they are being attacked and
destroyed by a theocratic State leaves a bitter taste in oneâs mouth.
Can so much blood, so much sacrifice, so many dead, all have been in
vain? Were we fooled into choosing which side to support in our more or
less radical intervention more or less in first person, once upon a
time, and are we still deluding ourselves today? Can it be that the
problem in finding the courage to attack the mechanism of the Israeli
war (the Jews again, or a poor persecuted people subjected to the
expansionist and military aims of a group of criminals in power?) is
that it has been faced the wrong way? Have the efforts of the past only
led to the shiny buttons of the new Palestinian police or the ferocious
sneer of a Sephardi Jew screaming âthrow them all into the sea!â? I
donât know.
This booklet does not attempt to give any answers. I thought it would be
more interesting to simply take up the problem once again.
I have aired these doubts in my heart over the past ten years in which
many of the following pieces were written, sometimes looking up at the
night sky and singling out stars of times gone by one by one. Their
light continues to shine unperturbed upon the woes of men.
Alfredo M. Bonanno
Catania, 17 December 1997
When Great Britain began to address the Jews towards Palestine in 1917,
you could already see in the declarations contained in a memorandum by
Lord Balfour how the interests of international Zionism were far more
important than the fate of â70,000 Arabs with all their desires and
prejudicesâ.
That moment marked the beginning of the ongoing occupation of
Palestinian land and the constitution of a ânational Jewish homelandâ,
reconstructed on historic and religious traces. By 1935 the Jews were
already 400,000 compared to 900,000 Arabs. When Israel as such was
constituted in 1948, the clashes, persecution and mass exodus of the
Arabs began. All Jewish immigrants were promised not only nationality,
but also one of the houses abandoned by the Arabs in their flight.
The new repressive politic imposed by the State of Israel came to take
the place of the preceding one of havlagh (limitation) and this needed
moral justification, also in order to convince many of the Jews who
still felt the Nazi repression on their skins.
This justification was found in the concept of shoah (catastrophe). Not
only that suffered at the hands of the Nazis but also that which
traverses the whole history of the Jewish people. In this way, the most
recent catastrophe, the extermination by the Third Reich, was linked to
the birth of the Israeli State: shoah vetekumah (catastrophe and
rebirth).
Another myth was also put into circulation again, that of heroism
(vagevurah) whose symbol was the insurrection of the Warsaw ghetto. It
was used to justify rebellion against a new possible catastrophe (the
return of the Arabs to their homes), and the concept of shoah vegevurah,
catastrophe and heroism, emerged.
These elements came to be combined within the Zionist movement in many
ways. Fed by extreme right wing propaganda and religious fanaticism,
they resulted in the homicidal mixture that was to sweep away the
egalitarian enthusiasm of a considerable part of the early immigrants in
the land of Israel.
Once freed from the Turks, the Palestinian Arabs did not want to be
dominated either by the English or the Zionist newcomers. But this
refusal concerned (and still concerns) the management of their lives by
a State, be it British or Israeli. They wanted to form a Palestinian
community composed of the various Arab realities in the region. But they
had nothing against the insertion of communities different to their own,
as happened in 1920 with the Armenians who had escaped Turkish
persecution. What they did not want, and do not want, was an Israeli (or
British) State to dominate them.
For this reason the Palestinians were not opposed to the settlement of
the Jews, at least not until the latter took the form of a Zionist
political movement aimed at establishing the Israeli State. And the
greater Arab opposition became, the more the Jewish State project became
obvious as it emerged from behind the egalitarian theories of free
federated agricultural communities.
There has always been opposition within the Zionist movement, including
a tendency that wants to constitute a kind of libertarian socialism in
the Middle East, particularly in Israel, and this still exists today in
some form or another. This tendency is against the constitution of the
Jewish State. It originated from the idea of a possible collaboration
between Arabs and Israelis, suggesting a clash that was more real than
the abstract one based on nationalist opposition (and producer of such
dire consequences). It was a question of making a distinction between
the model of a collectivised, free society (at least in perspective)
based on the productive structure of the kibbutzim, and the oppressive
model of society based on State capitalism of the Soviet kind. In fact a
free, selfmanaged, anti-State producersâ federation is still the only
way that a solution to the problem in the Middle East could be reached.
Little is known about the Palestinian problem in Europe, or the Israeli
one for that matter. Little is known of the many aspects of all the
sectors involved in the political and social clash in course from Iran
to the Lebanon, from Syria to Egypt; just as little is known about the
two peoples facing each other in Palestine and Israel.
News about the Palestinians is always tainted with ideological
prejudice. What we know has been supplied by official Palestinian
representatives who talk and act like a State government, so are not
very reliable.
The arrival of the Jews was undoubtedly a diplomatic and military
operation, but it should also be pointed out that before the war the
Palestinians were under Turkish domination so they were not totally
against this arrival. At first it seemed it might help resist the
domination led by the party of young Turks. Of course, that does not
justify the behaviour of the Israeli State and its need for military
expansion and violent occupation. But it does help us to understand the
desire of the Palestinians to free themselves from all dominion,
whatever that might be, yesterday the Turks, today Israel.
Today the common âSemiticâ element has been emphasized a great deal, but
we must understand that this means little beyond the fact that these
peoples are related linguistically. That is also negligible today, as
modern Hebrew is pronounced with attenuated guttural sounds, therefore
has become westernised. Those who pronounce it with the classical
guttural forms (close to Arab), for example the Jews from the Yemen, are
considered âpeasantsâ and backward.
Our knowledge of the Jews is also superficial. We know very little about
Jewish culture in Italy. More attention is paid to Hebraism, but this is
narrow and cultural more than anything, almost exclusively the work of
great Jewish authors such as Heine, Roth, etc. or Freud, who have
recently been rediscovered in this sense. The rest is hidden. The Hebrew
religion has been repressed and locked up in sacred places. Now, as far
as Jewishness is concerned, religion being inseparable from culture, it
derives that the latter has also been repressed. We know very little
about the relationship between religion and political power, the
function of the rabbi, the core of Hebrew religion that claims so much
space in the consciousness of the Israeli people. It is not by chance,
for example, that the Misnah and the Two Talmuds have never been
published in Italy.
The idea that we have of the Jew is therefore often that which has been
provided by anti-Semitic iconography.
One of the first and most successful Israeli military operations was
called âfait accompliâ and, considering it in the light of what happened
afterwards, it shows the mentality of the early pioneers clearly: men,
women and children who had little to lose and much to gain. They felt
(and some still feel), proud of the fact that they were willing to let
themselves be massacred, yet, in reality they have now become the
slaughterers. The horror of the passage from one side of this terrible
barricade to the other doesnât even touch them.
It should be pointed out that the Israeli people have acquired a natural
right to live undisturbed in their territory, no matter what their
origins as a people or of the territory itself. This is one of the main
points of the present analysis and, I think, of anyone struggling
alongside the Palestinian people without for this becoming an enemy of
the Israeli people. It is from the consolidation of such a natural right
that we can consider an occupation that took place, en masse, around
1947, and differentiate it from that which took place later in the
territories of West Bank and Gaza.
Israeli State propaganda tends to unite these two occupations, thus
allowing the heirs of Zionism to adopt an attitude of founder fathers
and continue to spread the equivocation of Eretz Israel. Present day
Zionists, who had considered themselves relegated to nostalgia by
history, now find themselves colonisers. What is the difference between
the occupation of Jaffa and that of Hebron according to these people?
Apart from Zionist intentions (one part of official Zionism), to build
the centralised State immediately it seems to me that there is a
fundamental difference. The original occupations were determined more
than anything by the arrival of the Luftmensch, wandering men forced
during exile to do marginal work or take up badly paid professions, who
had reached their âpromised landâ. They could, in fact, have limited
themselves to living alongside the Arabs, cultivating the land in
communities and libertarian socialist collectives. In spite of all the
problems related to the influx of a great mass of foreigners, this was
nevertheless an occupation of workers who, alone, dedicated themselves
to working the land, then extended production to other sectors of human
activity.
The occupation of Gaza the West Bank is quite different. The new
occupiers do not have the excuse of their fathersâ ideals, no matter how
disputable that might have been. They were attracted by the prosaic
seduction of large apartments at low prices only twenty minutes from
Jerusalem or one hour from Tel Aviv, unlimited cheap labour (the
inhabitants of the Arab ghettoes) and the chance not to work or be
Chaluzim (pioneers) any more but to become colonisers, exploiters of
other peopleâs work, that of poor people with no resources and no
future.
All this is justified through recall to the situation of necessity. Ein
Brera: we have no other choice! This ideology is now supported by the
Israeli government. It is also shared by the left of that political
formation, along with the ideology of pessimism, a fundamental aspect of
Jewish culture which we do not understand because we are not familiar
with it. It is a question of historical pessimism, of being convinced
that a primordial curse weighs on the people of Israel, so no matter
what they do they will suffer hostility on all sides and be left in
complete isolation.
Of course, this ideology derives from the millenarian isolation of the
Jews and the persecution they have suffered. But in reality it makes the
politics of the Israeli State extremist and irresponsible, and makes the
Israeli State itself even more dangerous than any other.
The State of Israel has sustained the highest military expenditure pro
capita in the world for decades. This means a lot. Prices rise
vertiginously every year, the balance of payments is billions of dollars
in debt and in 1994 it was more than half the gross national product.
The State budget nearly always equals the national product, when it does
not go way beyond it. The State of Israel can only face its commitments
thanks to foreign capital.
The inability to pay for its imports has made any autonomy of management
impossible, hence the total dependence on the USA. Things were different
before, but after the war of June 1967, and then again starting from
that of October 1973, dependence increased. The inflation in 1977â1978
used up practically all the countryâs resources.
On the basis of its Zionist culture, Israel is obliged to give a
homeland, as well as a basic standard of living (social security,
medicine, etc.) to all those who go there as Jews. That carries a huge
cost, quite out of proportion to its actual economic possibilities.
Ideological motives dominate economic choices. The need to maintain the
countryâs security is another reason why there are no strictly economic
policies. Always on the brink of war, they cannot take economic measures
that are too rigid and would reveal the class structure of Israeli
society. This exists but must be kept under âideological controlâ.
Military expenditure accounts for about 30 per cent of the whole of
production, whereas for other industrialised countries this does not
exceed 18 per cent in extreme cases. The army accounts for 15 per cent
of the national product and 20 per cent of the work force. Every man
between 22 and 55 years of age is obliged to do one month per year in
the army reserve units, a practice which leads to incalculable damage in
terms of industrial and productive costs.
As well as being helped by the United States, Israel receives funds from
the Jewish Diaspora. It is estimated that these amount to about 500
million dollars a year. Then there are the payments of the international
Israeli loan, which comes mainly from the United States.
Although Israel is a theocratic State with very strong âidealâ and
ideological motivations, considerable internal divisions exist, based on
class discrimination.
The main distinction is that between the Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews.
The former, also referred to as âblacksâ, in comparison to the âwhitesâ,
are from Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Tunisia, Syria, the Yemen, etc.
They suffer profound racial discrimination at the hands of the Ashkenazi
Jews from the West, who feel strengthened above all by the fact that
they suffered the catastrophe of the holocaust.
The Sephardis increased in number after being forced to flee their
countries of origin following the exacerbation of the Arab-Israeli
conflict. Of a culture that is profoundly different from the Western
one, they were more inclined towards the socialisation of production and
the acceptance of communitarian values. But they arrived at a time when
these values, which had existed for a long time in Israeli society, were
rapidly being supplanted by the demands of militarisation and forced
urbanisation. They were therefore implanted in the cities, underwent a
rapid forced Westernisation and ended up also being discriminated
against at a cultural and linguistic level.
They now constitute the poorest strata of Israeli society, and are the
most extreme in their hatred of the Arabs, particularly the
Palestinians, from who they fear retorsion along the lines of the
aggression they suffered in the countries they left behind. Their
greatest fear is that if some agreement is reached with the Palestinians
they might be sent back to their countries of origin where they no
longer have any roots and would immediately be enclosed in concentration
camps or massacred en masse. The dominant ideology being based on
religion and mysticism, a social uprising of the advanced industrial
kind would be unthinkable: mass demonstrations, clashes with the police,
mobilizations, etc., are not like elsewhere. That does not mean that
opposition does not exist within the present situation in the occupied
territories.
There have also been various attempts in the field of clandestine
structures, for example the Maâatz which carried out sabotage to give
echo to protest in the poorest areas. Illegal activities in the
traditional sense of the term have also increased a great deal in recent
years. The same can be said for petty crime and hooliganism in the
stadiums, imitating the large metropoli.
One characteristic of the poor areas of the capital is precisely a sense
of frustration and the feeling that life is meaningless, especially as
far as the young are concerned.
Everything seems quite contradictory. That does not mean that it would
be impossible to stimulate a mass struggle capable of taking up the
original values of libertarian socialism once again. Perhaps it is
necessary to take another look at the teachings of theoreticians of
communitarian Hebraism such as Martin Buber.
But in a situation of very hard struggle such as the Palestinian one, we
cannot limit ourselves to proposing the books of Buber or Kropotkin as a
solution to the problem. It is necessary to do more.
I think that the enemy number one, the main obstacle to overcome, is
today the State of Israel. It is for this that it is indispensable to
support the struggle of the Palestinian people.
I also think that a potential enemy of the Palestinian people and of the
Israeli people, are the PLO and the Palestinian State in formation. For
this I have never supported the PLO and their statist positions.
It is therefore necessary to be against both the Israeli State and the
Palestinian one.
It is necessary to support the constitution of a federation of workersâ
communities, both Palestinian and Israeli, free to federate themselves
as they wish, to give themselves programmes, to make their own
organisational and productive choices, beyond the rough interference of
the big States, in particular the USA.
Practical and ideal, as well as a productive and cultural collaboration
is necessary, between the Palestinian people and the Israeli one, to put
an end to a conflict of nation and race that has no reason to exist in
that, in these lands, there is room for both people, with their
differences of race, culture, religion and traditions.
It is necessary to be at the side of the Palestinian people, but also to
be with the Israeli people, especially the most disinherited and poor of
them, who an international politic of huge interests is pushing to
reciprocal massacre.
[âI nodi di un problema senza soluzioneâ, published in ProvocAzione
no.19, February 1989, pages 6-7 entitled âPalestinaâ]
There is a fairly widespread idea in circulation that tends to justify
the repressive action of the Israelis, seeing it in the context of the
whole movement of control and repression of the Palestinian people all
over the Middle East.
The Palestinians are massacred a little by everybody, Arabs included,
why should it only be the Israelis who should refuse to defend
themselves and put an end to it?
This is a classic thesis, one that is used when one wants to push
someone away from involvement in a precise struggle, in this case that
against the Israeli military machine as it is being used against the
Palestinians. In itself it could be said that this thesis could even be
shared by the Mosad, without a shadow of argument.
In the cultural craze (thatâs a manner of speaking) of wanting to get to
the bottom of things, it isnât realised that this thesis basically
justifies the massacre in the same way as colonialism was once justified
by saying that the âsavagesâ âif they had been left to themselves, would
have killed each otherâ. Even if this did, and still does, contain some
elements of truth, it is used like a defence for colonialism and serves
only to hide genocide and exploitation under an aura of false
humanitarianism.
Some comrades who surprisingly support this thesis see rebellion
anywhere except in the occupied territories. For them, the insurrection
of a whole people against the daily massacre of young boys, women and
children, against the destruction of their houses by the Israeli army,
against torture, extermination camps, etc., is only a nationalist
struggle, a way like any other to send the people to die for the
homeland, therefore not in any way relevant in terms of revolution.
One could just tell these lovers of truth to âgo to hellâ in no
uncertain way, considering it pointless to touch on an argument that, as
it is there before everybodyâs eyes, does not require to be spelt out in
three letter words.
As far as I am concerned, in a couple of direct and I hope simple words,
the situation is as follows. â There is a State (Israel) aggressive and
militarist like many others but which wants to kill a whole people (the
Palestinian one). There are politicians (Arafat etc.) who have presented
themselves of their own will and set themselves up as representatives of
this people with the sole aim of constituting a State which could
quickly become just as militarist and aggressive as the first. A
possible solution would be the dissolution of the Israeli State and the
prevention of the birth of the Palestinian State, all parallel to the
formation of free communes and other structures selfmanaged by
Palestinians and Jews together all with a right to the land and,
principally, reciprocal respect in the name of freedom.
This is certainly a simplistic and also utopian way to think, but I
donât believe that, as anarchists and given the situation, one could
come to support anything else.
To seek definitions and details in what is an extremely contradictory
context, and, even more, to seek to find responsibility on both sides in
order to lighten Israelâ position is bad taste to say the least, in my
opinion.
Letâs put aside the âcultural preoccupationâ for a moment, and perhaps
we will see things more clearly. The massacres that the Israelis are
carrying out to perfection are there in front of our very eyes. Whoever
tries to cover them up, to justify them or even only underestimate them,
shares responsibility for the massacre. In the same way the revolt of a
people on its knees is there before everybodyâs eyes.
Although the present and future enemies of the Palestinian and Israeli
people are many, there can be no doubt that its necessary to do
something to help the revolt of the Palestinians against Israeli
militarism. To do something means to move, to act here, immediately,
everywhere, striking Israeli interests and not stand arguing until the
last Palestinian is killed.
[âUna strana tesiâ, published in ProvocAzione no. 16, September 1988,
pages 6-7 entitled âNon chiudiamo gli occhiâ]
What the Israeli State is doing in the occupied territories of Gaza and
the West Bank is quite in keeping with the logic of wars of conquest
that soldiers learn in their training courses everywhere.
It would be quite normal for anarchists to unconditionally denounce what
is happening, were it not that they find themselves in an area that is
culturally strange to them.
If we were to talk about the situation in South Africa, for example,
everything would be a foregone conclusion. But it is quite a different
matter to denounce what the Israelis are doing. The reason is clear. The
Jews suffered the project of extermination put into act by the Nazis, so
by definition they deserve our sympathy.
No one is denying them that sympathy, which is also our own. Here it is
not a question of the Jews but of the Israeli State and, naturally,
those of its subjects who are lending themselves to the extermination of
the Palestinian people that is taking place.
The fact that there is a popular insurrection in course in the
territories and that at least one Palestinian is killed each day does
not help to make the situation any clearer. We have simply got used to
it. When we see the figures as a whole, things change.
During this last year [1988] 405 Palestinians were killed whereas a
source of the Israeli ministry of defence talks of 392 killings. Just
think, even taking the Israeli figures as good, it is a question of
nearly one death a day. For the Palestinian wounded they are talking
about 20,000, whereas the above mentioned ministry talks of 3,640.
At least ten wounded a day. On the other side, bearing in mind the data
of the Israeli defence ministry, 11 Israelis have been killed, with 402
colons and 703 soldiers wounded. The figures speak for themselves.
To these figures should be added (according to Israeli sources) 20,000
arrests, 4,000 imprisoned without trial, 5,521 prisoners in
concentration camps. 138 habitations destroyed by dynamite in reprisal,
32 expelled, 137 days of curfew in one year, with an uninterrupted
period of 42 days, and this is only for 1988.
On the other hand, the insurrection has cost Israel 250 million dollars
in additional military expenditure, 750 million dollars loss of the
gross national income, 14 per cent less tourism, an overall loss of over
25 per cent of the national income.
The insurrection is putting Israel in serious difficulty. And beyond the
strictly economic or political situation there is also, you might say,
the question of image. Israel is having recourse to means and procedures
that are damaging the sympathy and solidarity that the Jews had gained
as a result of their suffering and repression at the hands of power over
centuries. By becoming oppressors they have become ânastyâ and this
means a lot today.
One day in December 1987 the revolt exploded after four Palestinian
commuters were killed and seven wounded when their minibus was upturned
by an Israeli heavy military vehicle. The streets filled with boys and
youths. This is what came to be known as the Intifada. In the lead, on
the barricades, were the Shebab, the boys born in the shanty towns and
concentration camps under the military oppression of Israel after 1967.
From that day onwards, from these first four dead, the insurrection has
continued unabated.. [Seeing the situation now before going to press in
1998 thing havenât changed, the Intifada continues unabated.]
The means used by this insurrection are the classic ones that so many
political know-alls had declared out of date, given that we are in the
virtual post modern era. Revolt can only start off from what is
available, in this case, stones. Then sabotage, using rudimentary,
simple means, followed by the boycott of Israeli cigarettes and soft
drinks, followed by civil disobedience and strikes.
For its part, the Israeli State is hitting back hard. The same goes for
the colons who are shooting demonstrators and carrying out numerous acts
of vandalism in the villages.
Defenceless Palestinians are beaten to death. Four boys from the village
of Salim near Nablus were buried alive by Israeli soldiers. Poisonous
gases are used regularly with the result that over 1,800 Palestinian
women have been forced to have abortions. Water and electricity are cut
off in the insurgent villages. The spontaneous demonstration that took
place after the killing of Abu Jihad in Tunisia was stopped immediately
by the Israelis: sixteen dead. The telephones in the territories are cut
off. It is forbidden to cross the border. Petrol and diesel pumps are
blocked. The olive harvest is blocked. Plastic bullets, already tested
in Ireland by the English occupying army, have been introduced and are
used regularly.
Over the past few months [1989] another subtle form of destruction has
been discovered. Mysterious phosphorus devices in the form of chocolate
bars or toys have been left lying around in the occupied areas by
Israeli soldiers and colons in order to wound children. As soon as they
are picked up the objects explode. There were five such cases of
wounding in Nablus in the month of December alone . On November 10
[1988] 24 houses were razed to the ground by Jiftlik bulldozers in the
Jordan valley after the inhabitants were invited to gather up their poor
belongings in carts. One week earlier, fifteen blocks in Taibe were
dynamited. The inhabitants were all deported.
It is like seeing an exact replica of the Warsaw ghetto. Often history
repeats itself, even turned upside down.
For his part, Shamir has publicly declared that he intends to give ânew
impetusâ to the settlement of the colons in the occupied territories.
In spite of the evidence provided by these facts, there are still
people, even anarchists, for whom any excuse is good enough to justify
Israelâs repressive action. It would be well for comrades to see things
as they really are so that we can decide what needs to be done, here and
now.
[âLotta insurrezionale in Palestinaâ, published in ProvocAzione no. 18,
December 1988, page 3, entitled âRepressione e lotta insurrezionale in
Palestinaâ]
The fact that Palestinian people continue to die every day is no longer
news anywhere in the world.
A few lines are drowned in the sea of new problems, some of which,
unfortunately, register massacres of even greater dimension in other
parts of the world. Manâs favourite sport continues to be that of
killing and war.
Not being able to take an interest in everything that happens in the
world, one often turns oneâs attention to a particular situation and
tries to do something at the level of information if nothing else. That
is, one tries to redress the damage caused by the misinformation of the
press.
As far as the Palestinian question is concerned, we must emphasize the
importance of an insurrectional struggle that is putting one of the
strongest armies in the world in serious difficulty.
This obstinate will to freedom has been distorted by Zionist propaganda,
which is natural. But it has also been misrepresented by the propaganda
of all those who, although they say they are lovers of freedom and
truth, do not realise that those facing armed tanks or who find
themselves closed within a ghetto and submitted to continual
bombardments, do not have much time to reflect on great principles of
truth and freedom. In the first place, they must attack in order to
survive. They must defend themselves because they are being killed. They
cannot wait for the high priests of cultural research to find the way to
explain the deeper reasons that lie behind the movement of the tanks.
Reports on the Palestinian problem have often been of this kind,
articles aimed at taking a distance and pointing out reciprocal rights
and wrongs aimed at diverting the possibility of a solidarity struggle
here and now into the simple and simplistic depths of cultural
discussion. Collaborationist and pacifying positions are not lacking,
even in Palestine. Tepid rethinking that will to do anything in order to
leave things as they are and allow the Jews to widen their settlements
even more and let the Palestinians carry on living in the ghettoes.
But in the field of the real struggle the Palestinians continue to die,
while on the other side, behind the insurmountable armour of their
tanks, the persecuted of yesterday are applying the same methods as
their old persecutors: destroy the houses of suspects, torture in the
prisons and concentration camps, deport, kill in the streets, and so on.
How the Palestinians consider collaboration with the enemy is shown in
the treatment reserved to those who collaborate with the Israeli army.
In the space of a few days, at the end of August [1988], four were
killed because they were informers in the pay of Israel. A few days
later, a fifth was hacked to pieces with an axe. Drastic measures,
certainly, but which give an idea of what these people are suffering.
When you get to certain levels, even feelings of pity and humanity begin
to disappear.
[âI Palestinesi continuano a morireâ, published in ProvocAzione no. 16,
September 1988, page 8]
A spontaneous revolt of Palestinian students and workers has broken out
in the Gaza strip in the occupied territories [1987] against the Israeli
colonisers. In particular it is addressed against the proprietors of the
industries and the managers of the economy of occupation and, of course,
the enemy army. In a short time barricades have been erected and stones
thrown against the Israeli military and civilians.
Soldiers and civilians (the colonisers of the occupation) have responded
with weapons, firing shots that were defined as intimidatory. The
result: one Palestinian dead and two wounded. A student was killed when
she was carrying out a road block against the Jewish residents in the
area with another fifty girls from a womenâs college of Manfulati.
[âContro i coloni israelianiâ, published in ProvocAzione no. 9 of
November 1987, page 16 entitled âA Gaza i Palestinesi insorgono contro i
coloni israeliâ]
Growing accustomed to horror is far more striking than horror itself.
Indignation quells and remains silent, and everything seems normal. This
is the case of the repression against the Palestinians in the occupied
territories.
One reason for this slow but constant habituation is the fact that the
Palestinian revolt, that of the stones and improvised weapons âis no
longer newsâ.
Another is the acceptance, on more than one side, of the reasons for the
conflict. Those on the side of the Palestinians are against those who
are on the side of the Israelis. Many hope, sometimes in good faith,
that things will work out in time and everything will resolve itself.
No matter how these âthingsâ come to an end and what solution is chosen,
nothing in the world will be able eradicate the horror of the past few
months [1989], the horror of martyr turned executioner, persecuted
turned persecutor. No matter how clever the defenders of Israel are â
and as we know these include a number of anarchists â we cannot forget
the Palestinian baby killed by gas in the refugee camp of Khan Yunis by
Israeli soldiers. We cannot forget the five year old child killed in
Nablus by plastic bullets or the 14 year old killed a few days earlier
while he was playing in front of his house, again shot by the Israeli
occupying army. We cannot forget the colon death squads which go out at
night and murder the young Palestinians considered responsible for the
rebellion.
Under such conditions the only thing that does surprise us is the
strange insistence on trying to cover up responsibilities. We can see
how this happens at a political level, but we donât see how it can
happen at the level of comrades who should show more sensitivity in
their defence of the persecuted, leaving aside subtle distinctions in
designating responsibility.
[âLâorrore dellâabitudine allâorroreâ, published in ProvocAzione no. 17,
November 1988, page 4, entitled âLâorroreâ]
The PLO have constituted a Palestinian State on the wave of the popular
insurrection in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank.
Many undoubtedly see this as something positive, but we can only see it
as a step backwards, a diversion from the direction that the Palestinian
struggle has taken in recent months.
The PLO bureaucracy has intervened in the struggle with the complicity
of the Islamic States who have high hopes for a Palestinian State in the
Middle East. In this way a serious impediment has been put on the
possibility of the struggle continuing to develop in an anti-State
direction, the only direction that takes into consideration the needs of
the Jewish people who have already settled in that area.
The presence of a Palestinian State, however unlikely that might seem
today, could not fail to lead to diplomatic and internally reached
agreements that would make any peaceful coexistence between the two
communities (Palestinian and Israeli) impossible. Yet both of them have
a right to live on their own land.
A Palestinian State could not fail to move in the direction of all
States: that of military reinforcement, armed intervention, and the
transformation of future diplomatic agreements into instruments of
threat and retaliation.
The path recently trodden by the Jews is there to show just how easy it
is to turn the exploited and oppressed into exploiters and oppressors by
regimenting them into the service of the State.
The Palestinian peopleâs liberation struggle over the past forty years
has had its dark moments, but even during the worst retaliatory actions
such as that at Lod airport, it has never lost the quality of a popular
revolt. Of course, the organisation was also just around the corner in
the past, but always in a way that was purely instrumental and which
could be discarded at any time. It in no way conditioned anyone in the
name of a precise legal code to be established with the agreement of all
nations.
We have no idea what the nations of the world, with the USA in the lead,
really could do for the Palestinian people who continue to be tortured
and killed. They will certainly not be able to affect the internal
problems of the Israeli State, due to the very international law that
makes all the States of the world sovereign, if nothing else. We will
find that Israel has the unquestionable ârightâ to continue to oppress
the Palestinian people, just as the latter will have the undeniable
ârightâ not to be oppressed, occupied, destroyed, killed, tortured,
etc.. Each will have its own ârightsâ, the defence of which will come
through the force of their own (and others) weapons. Everyone knows what
state of affairs that could lead to.
The newly constituted State could turn out to be a terrible obstacle in
the Palestinian peopleâs long and difficult road to liberation, if for
no other reason than because it is hard for those who suffer to
understand such things. The constitution of an organisation such as a
State is often seen as something positive. One feels stronger, one has
contractual power with all the other nations of the world on an equal
level. But is this not just a way to provide a semblance of negotiation,
and in reality to continue oppression? What if Arafatâs passion to
become head of State is no more than a diplomatic way of getting rid of
the problem?
No one can say that this is not what is in fact happening. After all,
the applause that greeted the Palestinian State in embryo has come from
all sides, from foreign diplomats to organisations of comrades who
certainly do not move in ministerial circles. What is the cause of this
cordiality of intent? In the first place, the fact that both ministers
and authoritarian revolutionaries are on the same wavelength: the size
of the organisation is what determines its strength, and from this
âstrengthâ comes victory. This kind of thing, which we could never
share, does not make us feel the joy that so many are expressing for the
birth of the Palestinian State.
But there is more. In our opinion, the Palestinian State will become an
optimal diplomatic interlocutor.
Pressure will be made through diplomatic channels. There will be an
attempt to make Israel understand what it does not want to understand,
closed as it is within its State logic. But what do all the other States
of the world really care about the lot of five million Palestinians?
The same goes for the authoritarian revolutionaries. What alternative
can they propose? Direct intervention against the Israeli State? Direct
support for the Palestinian insurrection in the occupied territories? Of
course not! Now that the State also exists for these latest pioneers of
âstructure at any costâ, there is a way for them to organise their
support for this shadow of previous examples. And so all their problems
will be solved.
We do not believe that the Algerian decision will improve the lot of the
Palestinian people, be it real or not. The only reality we can turn our
attention to and support is that of hundreds of young people who are
resisting the Israeli tanks that occupy their land by throwing stones.
This reality has nothing to do with diplomacy or the State.
[âNo allo Stato Palestineseâ, published in ProvocAzione no. 18, December
1988, pages 1-2]
I donât like quoting material and listing all the details of the
repression that the State puts into act to put a brake on the rebellion
of the oppressed. This is a typically Anglo Saxon affectation of little
use from the point of view of âwhat is to be doneâ. This time, however,
we feel we must make an exception. I think that a short list of the
particularly atrocious means that are being used [1989] against the
Palestinian insurrection in the occupied territories should throw any
individual with a minimum of dignity into profound consternation.
Normal tear gas bombs such as those used in Italy are charged with
chloroacetophenon, which is already dangerous at a certain concentration
in closed areas. Those used in Palestine are charged with
dichlorobezilidene, which is often lethal even in open areas if it
reaches a concentration of 1K per 50 cubic metres. Bear in mind that
children are most exposed to this danger, especially when they are in a
state of malnutrition as many Palestinian children are.
The old tear gas canister of about two and a half kilos capacity has
been replaced with the 606 Jumbo that uses four kilos of gas and by the
303 in rubber bullets which when fired bounce back spreading the gas and
cannot be picked up. Now the Israeli army also has the 909 version that
is fired up to 150 metres, uniting the effect of the gas to that of the
kinetic impact of the bomb on the body of whoever it reaches. This being
mainly a question of old people, women and children, it is easy to
imagine the consequences.
Rubber bullets, already tested in Northern Ireland, are now being used
regularly in Palestine, and over the past 22 months [June 1989] have
caused over 30 dead. These are single balls of rubber that take the
place of lead in 12 bore shotgun cartridges, that is 18mm calibre.
Sometimes these rubber bullets have a metal interior, so are nearly
always deadly at a distance of under 70 metres.
A machine of recent construction responds to the stones thrown by the
Palestinian youths with other stones, shot in volleys in great
quantities.
A contraption known as the âwashing machineâ mounted on an armoured car
throws out a spray of 200 litres of foam. This foam solidifies
immediately, burying alive those struck by the jet.
Control reconnoitres are now carried out by radio controlled helicopters
that can fly low without the risk that normal helicopters once ran of
being struck down even by two well aimed stones.
A special ultra-light lookout plane has been designed to survey the
countryside: a biplane costing just over 12 million. It flies at a speed
of 180 km an hour and requires only 16 hours flight training.
Automatic pilot lookout planes are also used, i.e. radio-controlled air
models upon which are mounted video cameras that send images to the
operational centre. They move at a speed of about 75 km an hour and fly
for not more than 25 minutes.
To these ultra-sophisticated means should be added the normal ones that
went into action from the first moment of the clashes. One of the best
equipped armies in the world is trying â moreover without succeeding â
to crush a defenceless people who are rebelling by throwing stones. All
the horrors of classical genocide have been used: mass deportation,
concentration camps, indiscriminate massacre, destruction of individual
houses or entire groups of houses, on the spot shootings, violence,
rape, attacks on mosques, attacks on the Red Cross, prearranged
massacres, the use of death squads made up of colons and plain clothes
soldiers. The list could go on, but it would be a list deja vu.
Careful, dear comrades, at this time the historic conditions of all
times are presenting themselves yet again, almost as though humanity, at
least in the short term, (a few millennium), cannot escape its round of
death. Many of those making historical distinctions today bring to mind
the bourgeoisie who, before the Paris Commune of 1871, lined up behind
Mazzini with his doubts then in the days of the massacre felt the need
to support their thesis by coming out into the streets to gouge out the
eyes of the dead communards with the points of their umbrellas. Just
like those fine people living near Dachau at the time of the
extermination of the Jews who presented an expose to the local
authorities because the smoke from the âfactoryâ was killing the birds
nesting in the surrounding trees. Just like those who are splitting
hairs and talking of the âpositive aspectsâ of Nazism today.
The important thing to note, yet again, is that there is a time for
in-depth examination and theory. But there is also a time when Minervaâs
bird must go to sleep, and that is the time for action and the
destruction of the enemy.
[âOltre lâorrore, lo schifoâ, published in ProvocAzione no. 21, June
1989, page 5]
Acts of solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people have been
spreading recently. [1988]
The latest was that of the Coop council delegates in the Emilia and
Veneto regions, who in a letter to the management on April 12 , asked
for the acquisition of Israeli products, grapefruit, avocados dates, to
be suspended. The management, faithful to their market mentality,
replied, âTo impose political choices and evaluations on the consumer
through a preventive selection of products on sale would be a limitation
of freedom of choice and expression (sic)â. Ridiculous. Even more
ridiculous was the retraction of the factory council which, after a
meeting with the management, withdrew its request for a boycott and,
rather than pass on to more incisive forms of struggle, limited itself
to handing out a leaflet asking the consumer not to buy the product.
Basically, the firmâs position was accepted.
Someone else decided to choose different methods. Anonymous telephone
calls reached the editorial offices of various newspapers informing them
that a number of Jaffa grapefruit had been poisoned in solidarity with
the Palestinians in struggle. The news created considerable panic in
many parts of Italy.
It seems however that it was only a threat, given that analyses of the
grapefruit revealed no trace of poison.
Let us imagine what would happen if one were to start to attack the
interests of the Israeli State more seriously, not only its products but
also the companies that support them in some way, the travel agencies,
etc.
[âBoicottiamo i prodotti israelianiâ published in ProvocAzione no. 13,
April 1988, page 1]
If one thing can be noted concerning the Molotov against the
âLuxembourgâ bookshop in Turin, it is the total uniformity of reactions
to it. It really gives us pleasure to see how town, regional and State
authorities, no matter what side their parties are on, replied in unison
to condemn the âvile gesture of intimidation and intoleranceâ. It also
gives us pleasure to note how the various radical associations and
extremists of every shade including the autonomists of the Turin
collectives (we donât know if it was a question of all of them) and
dulcis in fundo the anarchists also joined this angelic choir. From what
appears in the newspapers, because all that we know at the moment has
been from the âwell informedâ papers, the âBerneriâ [anarchist] group in
Turin also seems to have felt the need to condemn the âresurgence of
Nazi racismâ. And this is plausible, if one bears in mind the content of
the communiques of the group âL. Fabbriâ of Forli and some Milanese
anarchist groups that we are reproducing in the note below. So much
uniformity of intent is truly comforting. For authorities and
ârevolutionariesâ to shake hands is something that shows there is hope
for the future.
We, on the contrary, have a few doubts. There are some things that we
donât know, and we admit that. Other things we know with certainty, so
we will speak out and not keep quiet out of conformity or fear.
What we donât know are the actual words of the communique. The fact that
it was signed â if what the newspapers reported is true â with a new
anarchist signature, âGruppo (o Gruppi?) anarchici rivoluzionarioâ
[Revolutionary Anarchist Groups] (some papers speak of ârevolutionary
anarchistsâ) certainly made indispensable the accompaniment of even a
brief sketch of analysis of the reasons behind the gesture â which exist
and which we will talk about here. The idea of simply making a phone
call using such a signature is the least credible part of the whole
affair. We donât know if the reference to the PLO (some speak of âlong
live the PLOâ) is true or not, and if it is, then this would become
another element of doubt. What anarchist would say such a thing? Can you
believe that a comrade does not know that the PLO is a fully functioning
government, (with its left and right) that manages a future State and
directs intelligence operations that are among the most advanced in the
Arab world? Of course not.
Given these admissions of ignorance, there are some things we do know.
We know perfectly well that the struggle against the excessive power of
Israel and its project to exterminate the Palestinian people (who have
little to do with the PLO) is not âa factâ that is only taking place in
that far off land. That is something that concerns all of us, all, that
is, who have the fate of man (and people) including the Israeli people
(who have little to do with the interests of the Israeli State), at
heart. And this leads some of us to want to intervene in deed, not only
with more or less symbolic gestures or with a battle of declarations
more or less condemning the fascists who dominate the Israeli State. We
are filled with indignation by the attacks by the Israeli police and
army on children, women and old people, a defenceless population
struggling to survive armed with only stones from ghettoes that are only
a distant reminder of what was once their place of daily life, just as
the comrades who drew up the above declaration certainly were. There,
that indignation is at the basis of our positive consideration of the
action. Yes, positive, even if we are the only ones to say so openly
(because as far as we know many comrades have declared themselves to be
personally in favour of the action). We are not afraid to admit that the
destruction of a pro-Israeli bookshop does not upset many people in the
face of such events.
Of course, we donât know if these comrades are anarchists or not, or
whether they are more or less aware of the history of anarchism and the
reasons and theories of anarchists (many comrades, especially the very
young ones, are anarchists before they even become aware of many of the
historical and theoretical questions at the root of anarchist action).
What we do know is that the objective under attack seems right to us.
Whoever defends the interests of the Israeli State at the present time
should be attacked, possibly with an opportune explanation of the
reasons why. On the other hand, anyone who defends the interests of the
Israeli people â which are undoubtedly also our own interests â at this
delicate time, seeing them as no different to those of the Palestinian
people, must be able to do so and be able to explain how, from a class
point of view, these interests differ from those of the Israeli State.
To simply exalt Jewish âcultureâ and religion, elements that are at the
basis of and perpetrate the existence of the State of Israel today,
merely renders service to the assassins who are not only massacring the
Palestinians but are also tyrannising and mystifying the Israeli people.
To get an idea of the climate in Turin we note that following the attack
on the âLuxembourgâ bookshop police raids were carried out against the
âEl Pasoâ squat. Moreover, some comrades were stopped that night while
fly-posting about El Pasoâs video program, and taken to police station
where they were held until 7am.
Here is the Forli text: âFollowing the news of the attack on the
âLuxembourgâ bookshop in Turin claimed by a so-called group of
ârevolutionary anarchistsâ, anarchist group âLuigi Fabbriâ of Forli
feels it a moral duty to take a position against this attack and the
claim that accompanied it. Against the attack, because they find it
senseless and anti-libertarian to use this kind of violence against
positions that are different and contrary to oneâs own. Against the
claim, because it considers it is against the principles of anarchism to
adhere to the militarist politics of the PLO. At the same time it
expresses solidarity with the Palestinian people who presently find
themselves oppressed by the militarism of the Israeli State. But such
solidarity must not be confused with feelings of anti-Jewish racism or
acts of unconditional violence against every manner of thinking that is
different to our own. To words we respond with words, beyond any
practice of censure and repression.â
Forli, 15 April 1988. Andrea Papi, for anarchist group âLuigi Fabbriâ.
Here is the Milan text: Following the attack carried out last night
against the Luxembourg bookshop in Turin belonging to Angelo Pezzana,
and considering that, according to the media, responsibility for the
attack was claimed by a âgroup of anarchistsâ, the present Milan
initiative sent Angelo Pezzana the following telegram. âWe express our
solidarity in the face of the vile attack on the Luxembourg bookshop,
yet another sign of anti-Semitism and intolerance against which
anarchists have always fought beyond any ideological differences we have
with you in the battle for the freedom of speechâ.
Editorial group âA Rivista Anarchicaâ Utopia Bookshop, Centro Studi
Libertari, Anarchist circle âPonte della Ghisolfaâ.
[âUna Molotov a Torinoâ, published in ProvocAzione no. 13, April 1988,
page 5]
A new form of attack has been used in the insurrection that has been
going on for over seven months in the occupied territories of Gaza and
the West Bank. As well as the persistence of clashes with the Israeli
occupying army, more than 20 fires have been started against Israeli
crops and woods. In spite of frequent ferocious controls by the Israeli
colons, several hundred hectares have been destroyed. A seed oil factory
and an irrigation plant have also been completely burnt out. Finally, a
textile factory in Tel Aviv has been torched. All this began in the
middle of June.
A few weeks before there were attacks against electricity plants and
high voltage pylons. These attacks caused blackouts in the most
important cities of Israel: Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Nablus, Bethlehem and
in the Gaza Strip itself.
For the nature lovers who get upset by news of forest fires and the
destruction of innocent plants, we would like to point out that there is
news from the Israeli side too. The Palestinians in revolt, armed with
only stones and a few Molotovs, are now faced with toxic gas which,
according to International Red Cross figures (an organism that is
certainly not on the side of the Palestinians), has caused dozens of
victims.
[âNuove iniziative palestinesiâ, published in ProvocAzione no. 15, July
1988]
The vicissitudes of Mein Kampf continue to stupefy. Following the
Bavarian Landâs attempt to block the publication of Hitlerâs book in
Denmark, it seems that in Israel the first translation in Yiddish by a
publisher specialised in university texts is about to come out in
Israel.
Young people should have first hand documentation, say the editors of
Academon editions. And Hitlerâs text certainly supplies this
documentation. Contrary to what those who deny the project to totally
exterminate the Jews are now saying, the book tells of what the Nazis
actually put into practice with detailed precision. But that could
constitute interests that are too narrow and barely credible, especially
when you take into account the fact that the Jewish managerial class is
extremely learned and knows many languages, especially German. They
could easily inform themselves without having recourse to a translation
in Yiddish.
Another reason could be the need to respond to a demand for the âbookâ
at mass level. This demand is not limited to that of the cultured
Ashkenazim in the Jewish State, but includes the more modest and
exploited Sephardi class who constitute the mass pushing for the
maintenance and development of wild colonisation of the occupied
Palestinian territories.
In the extraordinary mixture of ideas that exists today, there is
nothing strange about the fact that future readers of Mein Kampf will
precisely be Jews, black ones at that.
[âCome si diventa quelli di ieriâ, published in Canenero no. 16,
February 24 1995]
A police force is always a police force for the simple reason that a
State, even one in tatters such as the Palestinian one, is always a
State.
Now, for whoever in his time has struggled for the ideal of the
liberation of the Palestinian people (each in his own small way may have
given some contribution), the thing takes on a particular significance.
To think that comrades in struggle, a struggle that once spread like an
epidemic more or less everywhere in Europe and beyond, are now donning
the shiny buttoned uniform, a bad imitation of the English cops, is
quite indigestible.
But policemen do not just wear uniforms, they donât just polish their
buttons; they control, repress, beat and on occasion shoot and kill
without giving it a thought.
Gaza is not a large city, it has few tarmac roads and, as in so many
other parts of the Arab world, those there are look like little village
lanes. Arafatâs policemen are now present in the area where the Israeli
Shin Beth were once stationed. Not just policemen, but the court, the
prison, and the secret services. All small, not very efficient, but itâs
the thought that counts.
What has happened to the Intifada?
It goes on, of course, against the bosses old and new. So boys and girls
are arrested, taken to the multifunction building of Palestinian State
repression, interrogated by condescending investigators and judged by
improbable judges. They are also children, just a little more grown up,
born in the concentration camps. What can they say under the illuminated
strategic direction of the great Leader?
In the same way that it took us years to convince ourselves that the
Israelis were torturers even though they had just come through the
extermination camps, now goodness knows how long it will take to see
that the Palestinians, comrades once upon a time, can become torturers
today.
Reality evolves, and in evolving the masks men hide behind in order to
recite their roles change. But often the role behind the mask also
changes, without anyone noticing.
[âNon solo bottoniâ, published in Canenero no. 20, March 24 1995, page
2]
In Gaza the king is bare. The insurrection of stones and desperation is
now turning towards the new Palestinian police force which has been
armed by Arafat to maintain peace and order in the interests, in the
first place of the Israeli bosses.
Policemen are always policemen. The old fedayeen are becoming aware of
this to their cost. And along these dusty roads where many of us left
our hearts, the cry is desperation as never before.
[âLa polizia palestineseâ, published in Canenero no. 5, November 24
1994, page 7]
Many things are changing in Palestine. Many others have stayed as they
are. Poverty and hatred are rife as always, especially hatred of the
occupying forces, that is of the soldiers of Israel still present in the
Territories.
What could be more natural than to hate invaders? Only politicians who
have sold out to the enemy and contracted the possibility of an internal
government and a puppet of a State rather than the continuation of the
struggle, could think differently. Many Palestinians, are not prepared
to accept cohabitation based on the defence of the interests of the
strongest.
That explains the spread of resistance, which presents itself almost
uniformly under the insignia of Hamas, inside the same newborn State of
Palestine. This is certainly the most consistent armed group of the
present time. It is doted with considerable means, as became evident in
the explosion a few days ago [1995] that blew up a whole arsenal.
Thereâs nothing easier in that region than to find a young boy between
twelve and sixteen, born and brought up in the poverty and violence of
the concentration camps, who is disposed to listening to arguments
against Arafat and his project of a free Palestine coexisting with a
free Israel. Nothing could be easier than to push these boys to carry
out a suicide bombing.
That is what those of the Izz al-din al hassam, the armed wing of God,
who are not boys but religious fanatics, are preparing the former for â
a holy death in the war against the infidels.
Twenty-five years ago, in conditions that were certainly not any better
than those of the present time, the struggle of the Palestinians was
based almost entirely upon a different kind of indoctrination, the
Marxist one.
At that time intermediaries with long beards promised them help in the
form of money and weapons; now Islamic priests are promising eternal
life in a paradise full of Uri.
[âDa Marx alle Uriâ, published in Canenero, no. 22, April 7 1995, page
2]
The foothills in the eastern part of Jerusalem permit a certain coolness
which is often difficult to find elsewhere, down town and in the narrow
streets of the centre. Naturally, it is the rich who live there.
The expansion towards the east is therefore that of the upper-class
settlers. The poor Sephardi donât live on the hills. Now even the
Palestinian residents donât live there any more. In fact the process of
expropriation is widening further and further. Many of the Arab villages
of the perimeter, especially in the northern and eastern outskirts, have
been included in the urban belt by the mayor of the city and are
considered to be an integral part of Jerusalem, so subject to
expropriation. This procedure is often facilitated by accusing the
original residents of belonging to, supporting or at least knowing,
Palestinian extremists.
This is similar to a technique once used by the Nazis in Germany to
throw Jews out of their property. The vast majority of Israelis (irony
of the sort this hyper-conservative majority is not only composed of
Ashkenazim but also, and Iâd say mainly, of Sephardi, i.e. the poorest
sector of the Jewish population) agree with this policy of confiscation
and annexing. They are convinced that they will thus be able to put an
end to the Palestiniansâ dream of considering Jerusalem their capital.
For his part, Moshe Zimmerman, head of the department of German studies
at the Jewish university of Jerusalem, has declared that most of the
Jewish boys who have grown up in Hebron in the West Bank, therefore in
the ex-occupied territories now under Palestinian jurisdiction, are
convinced that they belong to a superior race, in exactly the same way
as the Hitler youth did.
The professor documented this information using research carried out on
various songs and poetry that a number of children of Hebron composed in
honour of Baruch Goldstein, author of the massacre at the tomb of the
patriarchs some months ago. [1995]
Mosche Zimmerman, who recently edited the Hebrew edition of Hitlerâs
Mein Kampf , replied to those who accused him of favouring the spread of
the Nazi ideology, that racism had already been spread among the Jews
through Bible readings by the extremists of Zionism.
[âLâaspetto ovio dellâimpensabileâ, published in Canenero no. 25, May 5
1995, page 9.]
The use of summary trials by the Palestinian judiciary that has begun to
function in Gaza is now current. Torture and terrible prison conditions
are also everyday facts that people cannot get used to. Everything seems
to be turning out to be useful to maintaining the ghost of power that
Arafat has found himself with. A shred of power which, like all power,
always functions the same way: by imprisoning, torturing, killing.
I know that many will find this hard to believe. What is left of the
revolution of their dreams? What about the sacrifices and so many dead?
Was it all in vain?
Of course, for those who deluded themselves that the construction of a
Palestinian State was the easiest way, or the lesser of two evils, to
the liberation of the Palestinian people, the delusion must be a hard
one. Not so for the present writer who, having had the possibility to
deepen his knowledge of the composition of Arafatâs leadership, has long
been denouncing its conservative ideology and its practice of control
and repression.
Dressed up in his uniform of âguerrilla behind the linesâ, old Yasser is
practically bare today. He has nothing left to put on the scales but the
excessive stupidity of a few components of the Hamas. Unable to see how
they will be able to do without Iran and the integriste Islamic
international, they have continued with the same obtusity throughout the
decades in the same way as other Palestinian forces in the past who
could not see how to do without Marxism (and also the help in weapons
and money that came from the countries of the East) used to do.
He could take the road of increasingly ferocious repression. In this way
Arafat would end up isolated from his own people and favour the
development of integrisme, the other side of the coin being the sad
fanatical end to any possibility of freedom and peace. Or he could
become a more and more automated gendarme of the Israelis as they get
him to do all their dirty work.
What would remain of Palestinian culture and the open, free mentality of
a people who, not too long ago, welcomed the first settlements of the
Jews in a friendly and hospitable way, inviting them to work together in
cohabitation? This mentality and disposition of spirit still exists in
Palestinian ideas and culture today, but for how long? The job done
yesterday to destroy all cohabitation and impose their absolute dominion
on their ancient hosts, is being continued by those who simply want to
upturn this situation and impose their own absolute power.
Any battle between aspiring dominators passes over a mountain of
corpses. In such cases the hangman is always at work.
When we acquired the ideology of progress in the eighteenth century we
ended up with a substandard product: the illusion that this progress
could only be the work of lay beliefs that had cast religion aside. In
other words, the thinkers of the Enlightenment with Voltaire in the
lead, believed that by eliminating religious faith war, hatred,
persecution and massacre would also be reduced.
One could see a return to this premise, reinforced brainlessly, in the
whole so-called culture of the left around the end of the sixties. It
went from wild anticlericalism and atheism to a kind of dialogue with
the progressive forces of Catholicism and Protestantism. This typical
cultural illusion was the result of nationalist scientism. At the
beginning of the sixties I pointed out that neither simple atheism or a
anticlericalism are sufficient when they are no more than expressions of
blind rationalism. It is necessary for man to evolve his refusal of God
with his own personal responsibility and individual engagement in the
struggle against authority. The State and God as Proudhon rightly said,
go hand in hand and help each other. But this responsibilisation of the
individual did not materialise and God was transferred from heaven to
earth with all his baggage. He was denied in the name of science or
reason, or even worse in the name of party or State. In some places
religion was abolished by ministerial decree.
The progressive illusion presented this as a step forward in the
ineluctable road of theoretical development. Better to have museums,
libraries, swimming pools and conference rooms in place of churches.
Better, without a doubt, because churches are not only places that
impart teaching that is injurious to human dignity, but are also
occasions for reinforcing the most authoritarian and repressive forces.
Very well, but if religion were to be suppressed by ministerial decree
in the name of automatic thinking and we were to see this as positive
because it is moving in the direction of freedom, i.e. moving towards a
future that cannot fail to be anarchist, then we are mistaken.
Unfortunately it is by no means certain that history is moving towards
anarchy. Bovioâs phrase should be seen within the positivist ideology of
his time. The struggle against religion must be carried out along with a
struggle against the State. This cannot be delegated to a new kind of
Bismarckian âkulturekampfâ. It would turn out to be a tragedy like the
first. The feelings of the oppressed would easily find the way to
religion intended as comfort of the humble, hope of a better life, at
least in the beyond, and, enhanced with an aura of martyrdom, the task
of priests (of every kind) would be simplified. Nothing better for the
resurgence of integrismes, with all their consequences of rigid
conditioning, people who see the madonna, mass demonstrations, etc.
That is why a struggle against God and the Church, atheism and the
consequent anticlericalism, must always start off from a correct class
viewpoint. It must start from an analysis of economic reality that
cannot be considered as something extraneous to be delegated to history
that necessarily moves in the direction of progress. Intellectuals have
always made this unsubstantiated claim. They think that they can limit
themselves to a specific atheist or anticlerical critique, while it is
up to others to interest themselves in concrete revolutionary action.
That demonstrates the poverty and cowardice of intellectuals and those
who, not being intellectuals due to their superficial dilettante
studies, let themselves be fascinated without understanding.
Barbarism is not a thing of the past, it does not belong to a museum of
horrors that we have put behind us, it strides alongside us. It is not
only resurgent integrisme, neofascism or anti-Semitism, but is the new
world order. This barbarism is mainly based on a discrimination that is
becoming more and more evident, not only between countries, but also
between classes within each State. A blind belief in a science that is
incapable of saving man and perhaps even the planet is the barbarism
that has quietly contributed to the accumulation of atomic weapons and
lethal gases with the same inventive capacity with which it has produced
new medicines and diseases. Ideas that support an animistic subterranean
mechanism that has been digging away on account of the poor and
exploited throughout the course of history is also barbarism. These are
beliefs that cannot check spreading integrisme. All the great masses,
especially in the Islamic and eastern countries, but also in Italy, who
are reaching a vision of the world economic situation following the
political modifications of the past few months, could fall victim to
their own hopes and other peopleâs swindles. The Algerian lays, with
their corresponding moderates in other Islamic countries, cannot
confront this wave of integrisme with ideological chatter, they can only
do it by improving peopleâs economic conditions. Often this is not done
because international interests and objective conditions prevent any
possibility of it happening.
Religious integrisme is also developing in eastern countries following
the changes that came about in the âactualâ communist States, something
quite different to communism as we mean it, but thatâs another question.
Here, the thrust of Wojtilian integrisme is pushing various local
versions to reappear including, indirectly, the Islamic version and the
ensuing nationalist tensions are of considerable importance. There is
also an awakening in Italy of integriste Catholicism in local movements
that could grow and eventually link up with the Catholic movements.
A possible increase in religious integrisme should not be
underestimated. We must develop effective instruments of critique in
order to avoid the determinist equivocation that has always ended up
furthering the constitution of State dictatorships (fascist and
communist), or that of a scientific rationalism which has brought the
world to the present conditions of impoverishment and destruction. We
are up against a rebirth of religion not only in mass manifestations
which indicate a state of ill-being, but also a reinforcing of the power
of the various Churches, with all the negative consequences that the
latter are always capable of.
That is why it is always good to begin to struggle right away without
waiting for someone else to do it in our place.
Anti-Semitism has expressed itself in various ways, both theoretically
and in deed throughout the centuries. It has been built into historical
and philosophical reflection aimed at showing the reasons for the hatred
of a people considered a non-people, and expressed in practices of
annihilation, pogroms and genocide.
This irrational movement of fear and uncertainty concerning the Jews has
taken two forms throughout history. The first, more ancient and
articulate, is religious, the second, more schematic and recent, is
racist. If the outcome of these two aberrations has often been
identical, the starting points or the use of certain means of attack and
destruction against the people of ancient Israel now spread all over the
world, were not.
I know that there is a Catholic âblood theoryâ that was developed
immediately after the Spanish âconquestâ with the aim of unmasking,
conversions to Catholicism that were considered instrumental. But,
within the ambit of Christian theology this was always subordinated to
the theory that supported the idea of the âgreat coupâ, i.e. the killing
of God. On the other hand, the racist thesis developed in more recent
times put forward pseudo-scientific claims in order to justify the need
to destroy the Jews. Not only Jews, as in the same thesis it was also
considered necessary to reduce people who were not Jews but were
considered inferior, like the Slav peoples, to subhuman status. It has
been said that the Nazis unleashed the third world war with the invasion
of Russia because of a clash between methods (for example the presence
of political commissars in the army, mass elimination of prisoners,
etc.) and aims, i.e. vast movements of peoples, submitting masses of
people to a condition of slavery, etc.
But only the Catholic anti-Semitic tradition has reserved particular
attention to Jewish cemeteries. Behind the macabre, pointless and stupid
gesture of Carpentras stands the whole Catholic culture of the past two
thousand years. The practice of disinterring the dead was normal for
Catholicism, and was used in the case of heretics whose corpse was
disinterred and impaled on a suitable stand with the aim of proceeding
to its trial before the tribunals of the Inquisition. Often, as Saint
John Chrisostomo himself solicits, this was necessary in order to get
rid of the corpses of converted Jews from consecrated places. There was
subsequently proof (with what means you can imagine) of the
instrumentality of the abjuration, their confession having been aimed at
avoiding persecution. In this case the disinterred corpses were thrown
en masse into a common grave beyond the sacred land and covered with
limestone. As far as I can remember such practices of disinterment are
also supported in the terrible letters of Saint Girolamo, one of the
worst fanatics of Christian and Catholic hagiographics, and in the far
more calm and thoughtful writings of Saint Ambrose, teacher and charmer
of Saint Augustine.
Without going too far back in time, there is documentation of a sad
debate held during the Second Vatican Council, where the proposal to
remove the prayer âPro perfidis judacisâ from Friday mass was met with
many objections and gave rise to a kind of organic treatment of modern
Catholic anti-Semitism
It is not easy to answer this question, nor do these old reflections
claim to do so. The question, precisely because it can be developed in
many ways, turns out to be badly phrased, at least for the rational
mentality that we all carry with us like a shopping bag.
It is easier to answer questions like: what does the Jew do? What is his
religious, political, cultural, social, sexual behaviour like? Many have
amused themselves by attempting to answer all these questions. Sociology
is the science that has an answer for every stupid question.
Yet, deep down, there is still a certain uneasiness in many of us. Old
and not so old reading matter, especially novels with personages from
Rebecca to Rocambole are there to suggest a particular figure to us. We
can almost see this figure, follow it in our mindâs eye. The way this
disquieting picture presents itself creates a certain apprehension. The
Jew does not emerge very well from this sketch. For goodness sake, we
are democratic, possibilist and anti-racist before anything else. We are
also progressive. In a word, we are good people of the left, respectful
of equality and ready to openly defend the oppressed with all our
strength. Yet there is a subtle feeling of uneasiness inside us. The
fact is that we understand why the Jew has always been degraded,
humiliated, hunted down, killed. We understand, but we donât know how to
explain it exactly.
There must be something about the Jew. That is the conclusion we come
to. And it is this conviction, something obscure and never quite
revealed in detail, that underlies anti-Semitism.
I donât hate Jews. I even find it hard to imagine how it was possible
first to theorise, then put into practice, their systematic
extermination. My blood runs cold when I come across some barely legible
anti-Jewish piece of writing, yet I canât get rid of this uneasiness.
I know perfectly well that Jews are men like everyone else, that they
share the same passions as the rest, make the same mistakes. There are
rich and poor Jews like everyone else in the world, intelligent and
stupid, according to how original chaos decided in the absolute lack of
rules and predestination.
I know all that, but I donât feel comfortable all the same. Jews are
mean. Come on, letâs be serious! What kind of talk is that? I put it
aside. Thereâs no doubt that this is stupid nonsense, but I hear it
around me repeatedly, on the tram, or in the emphatically democratic
elaboration of gossip known as mass media. This generalisation
strengthens my idea (who knows when I heard this about being mean for
the first time), it must go back to my childhood. Jews are mean. For
goodness sake! Enough of this rubbish. And yet, thereâs no bad joke
anywhere that doesnât make reference to this. Comrades make no
exception, except in cases where they gruffly raise their heads,
unsmiling. They are just being politically correct, but thatâs another
story. And the Scottish, and the Genovese? They are also mean. Who has
not had such an experience in life? Nearly everyone, and nearly everyone
will tell you that they have found, equally distributed, spendthrift
Genovese and mean Genovese, and will laugh at the joke âif a Genovese
throws himself out of the window, follow himâ. But nobody laughs if the
same joke is made about a Jew. Here there is something that stops us.
It would be wrong to think that these preoccupations are unimportant. In
fact, they are part of the weaponry of ridicule that has been put into
to effect for centuries by anti-Semitism, along with stories about a
God-killing people and the Jewsâ hatred of the world that is not Jewish
like themselves. There is no reasoning behind these statements, and on
the other hand, no reasoning would ever be able to refute it entirely.
To say that the Jews are not a race is to say something so obvious as to
be absolutely stupid. We can simply look at the heterogeneity of the
components that make up Israel today to see that immediately. Yet not
only anti-Semites but many people who do not have any specific ideas
about Jews but are just generally suspicious of them, as always happens
with those one doesnât know, consider them a separate race. Separate,
thatâs the point.
Even the Jews themselves donât consider themselves a race, but they do
indeed consider themselves to be something separate. Try to say that the
Jews are the same as everybody else and you will see that. Although for
some this is simply a banality, for others it is a gross mistake, and
the Jews themselves are among them. In a word, the Jew does not consider
himself to be like other people. First of all, before being a human
being he is always a Jew: he is a Jewish human being.
This fact is linked to his Jewish religion and, in particular, to the
peculiar force with which tradition is expressed in this religion. The
main, profoundly comic, thesis of anti-Semitism is that a German Jew
could never understand Goethe because he is extraneous to the Germanic
spirit, or for the same reason a French Jew could never understand
Racine. Yet exactly the opposite thesis seems to me to be more founded,
that which says, here for the first time as far as I know, that anyone
who is not Jewish cannot imagine the spirit of Hebraism.
Just because the Prussian anarchist revolutionary Rocker studied Yiddish
to organise the London Jews does not mean to say that he understood the
problem of Hebraism.
And so the thesis maintained by Sartre in his time that the Jew is a man
whom others consider to be Jewish, is partly true.
Isolation, the ghettoes, the exclusive attribute originally granted by
the Christian church of being allowed, to deal in money, othersâ
contempt, all that does not make up the Jew. This is just what
anti-Semitism uses to build âitsâ imaginary figure of the latter. The
rest they do themselves, and it is this rest that we have to bear in
mind.
They say that the Jew cannot constitute a religious unit because his
story over 25 centuries has been studded with continual dissolutions.
They say that instead of effective links, i.e. relationships that
materialise in actual communities and not just in the fictitious
solution of some political State or other, there have always been
sentimental bonds between groups. At times these have been quite
fantastic, ideal links. Compared to a strong religion like Christianity
that was capable of facing the reforms and fractures with the East
without losing its essence and strengthened itself both as a whole and
as a political force, Hebraism has become more and more spiritual in an
intimist religion with a strong symbolic force. This permits the life of
political groupings around it, borrowing them from its own surly
integriste totalitarianism.
These analyses are mainly mistaken. They are mistaken in that in the
various Diaspora, from Babylonian captivity to Persian domination, up to
the Roman conquest, then throughout history in various local historical
situations, the Jews have always kept a separate identity. This identity
has been saved almost exclusively due to the religious filter. According
to some, western analyses with an evolved political viewpoint such as
that of the perspicacious Machievelli, instead of weakening the various
communities strengthened them, but in their own way. The original
Christian movement had already made a radical distinction between Jewish
migratory groups and those in Judea and the prevalence of an extremely
intimist religious form, considered weak by the usual political
analysts. This was so weak that it turns out to have been capable of
going through the whole of the Middle Ages and conveying great wealth of
ideas, art, experience of life, theological and mystic reflections, a
heritage that permeates the whole of Hebraism in spite of migratory
repartition.
Gradually tradition takes the place of national heritage as such. The
German Jew felt German and was shocked by his radical enucleation from
the social body carried out at the hands of the Nazis. But this feeling
German belonged to a kind of separate, public sphere, and in more
intimate, far stronger sphere he felt Jewish.
In fact, right from the first phase in the constitution of the Israeli
State most Jews never felt a lack of an effective historical base. On
the contrary, they experienced an immediate, uninterrupted link with the
places of the promised land. They only grasped the sign of the return
and the prophecy maintained, the great confirmation of how much this was
an inevitable sign of God in the same way as the catastrophes of the
Diaspora and the Holocaust were also signs of the particular
relationship of God with his chosen people.
Here it is interesting to say something about the rationalist revolt
that lasted from the middle of the last century to the early decades of
this one. This is the haskalah (culture) movement. The clash between
this movement of poets, musicians, mathematicians, scientists and
historians and the supporters of the Jewish tradition was hard and led
to publishing aimed at rationally examining events of everyday life.
They also took their critique to within the walls of the ghettos, at
times with a crude but effective realism. The thrust towards a better,
more just, spiritually enriched world contrasted dramatically with crude
descriptions of the grey reality of the ghetto made up of humiliation
and a flattening of religious tradition. We can understand this contrast
better through the satire of Jehudah Loeb Gordon, Joseph Pel and Ischq
Ertel, who attack the superstitious and ridiculous sides of the cult.
The review by Peres Smolenskin, âHa-Shacharâ, âThe Morningâ, sketches
the panorama of the Russian Jewish ghettoes and attacks not only aspects
of religious fanaticism, but also the disturbing sides of their model of
daily life. Yet this satire did not reach the crux of the question, it
did not touch the presumed ârevelationâ of the absolute God who leads
Israel to victory. No critic ever dared push himself so far. Even the
atheist writings of Roger Martin du Gard prefer to attack Christianity,
particularly Catholicism, but never touch the Talmud. In the numerous
anticlerical writings of the Jews the rabbi is never taken into
consideration.
Already, with the intensification of the pogroms at the end of the last
century, especially in Russia, this critical literary vein began to
dampen its style. A re-evaluation of the traditional values of Hebraism
began to take over, and it is easy to understand why: in the face of
repression and catastrophe the Jews find themselves united yet again,
precisely in the Holocaust.
The heirs of the haskalah were thus the initiators of the Hibbat Sion
Love of Zion movement which was to adopt an increasingly nationalist
outlook. One of the main ideologues of Zionism is the Ukrainian Ahad
haâam (Asher Ginzberg) who in his book Al Parashat Derakim (At the
Crossroads), founded Zionism in its spiritual and theoretical aspect.
Being a continuation of critical rationalism this nationalist vein also
includes a critique of Jewish daily life, even using a certain humour
concerning the average Jewâs way of thinking, underlining the tics and
many of the paradoxical aspects that I mentioned earlier.
Unity continued to grow from strength to strength in the land of
Palestine. Not just political unity, which perhaps did not correspond
with the hopes of the early colons, the only ones who deserve this name,
but community-based, social and religious. This last point, which has
never been fully examined by the so-called lay writers of the movement
of the national rebirth, has now become absolutely prevalent.
It seems to me to be more exact to say that the Jew is he who considers
himself Jewish and therefore acts and behaves on the basis of his Jewish
consciousness. In this the religious motive has an essential, if not
dominant, place. To reinforce his conviction of being Jewish is also,
and this is not of a secondary importance, the behaviour of others who,
in considering him such adopt certain attitudes towards him that give
the original aspects the consolidation of a real social status.
To take the Jewish condition from the Jew, his life in that tradition,
his feeling of belonging to an ideal and religious rather than national
community even when he does not physically find himself in the State of
Israel, would be to alienate him. And to do that could be just as
disastrous an operation as that which attempts to reduce the differences
between men in the name of a badly understood egalitarianism.
Equality is an idea based on justice, freedom and truth. Like all ideas
which really are such and are not just the fruit of opinions put in
motion by the game of daily information, it must continually be made
oneâs own. There is no final definition, position to be taken, or
programmatic declaration. In a word, there is nothing that can
absolutely close him up in a formula that is valid once and for all.
Nothing can make the Jew become equal to me. I am not Jewish, I lack
that strong experience, that intimate connection with something that is
other than the possible religious experiences that I have in my non
Jewish world. And I cannot substitute this lack with the simple decision
to read the texts of the Hasidim or the myths of the cabbalah. The
exceptional fact, and I think that every Jew would agree with me, is
that I am not Jewish.
The kibbutz movement spread like wildfire with the increase in the
arrival of Jews in the land of Palestine after the end of the second
world war. What had begun as an experiment became a serious attempt to
restructure society on the basis of linking up new organisational
models. These models used theoretical and practical experiences of the
past, but found themselves faced with quite a new problem due to the
considerable dimensions that it was beginning to take.
In this way the communitarian village was born, productive communities
proposing an integration of agriculture, industry and crafts. These
communes united in a confederation, thereby overcoming the problem of
isolation, one of the points considered by Kropotkin to be a reason for
the non-functioning of communes.
A number of theoretical and practical experiences precede this
communitarian village, but much was improvised by the colons who, at
least in the beginning, also tried to make the Palestinian Arab people
participate fully in their initiatives. Dreams abound in this early
stage. Utopian fantasy also: a new society seems to be dawning, based on
new family and personal relationships. A new human being, a new world
perhaps, were the more or less declared objectives.
The first pioneers, the Chaluzim, had something of the sort in mind both
in theory and in practice. But right from the start there was a
contradiction in this network of free communities that wanted to extend
over the whole territory. Even then it was possible to see the
appearance of the national idea, the reconstitution of the Jewish State
on a territorial and national basis, sowing the seeds of every future
evil.
The fact that many of these Chaluzim had socialist aspirations is not as
important as has often been maintained. The theories of Owen and King
were also present along with those of Proudhon, Kropotkin and Landauer,
who were far more important for this specific question. But that is not
the point.
The kwuza, village communities, were thus destined to be absorbed by the
State and to follow, albeit in a different way, the tragic destiny of
the Spanish collectives. Kropotkinâs theories on the Russian mir and
artel, the reading of Marxâs and his attempts to explain the functioning
and destiny of the agricultural communities (important are the replies
to the questions of Vera Zasulic), were not sufficient to resolve the
problems posed by the new reality. State englobement became inevitable
when the kwuza stopped creating new interests and producing a real
communitarian life rich in problems but capable of finding solutions. By
adapting to simply carrying out daily tasks the initial impulse
gradually burnt itself out. As soon as the Chaluziut began to be
self-satisfied, i.e. a little elite which claimed to be the original
colonisers, defeat was not long in arriving.
This broke out with the increment of the crisis in the whole settlement
in the land of Palestine. The country of the alija the ascent, became
the country of the enrichment of little groups with no ideals. Alongside
the original Chaluziut, who still had a clear vision of their own
socialist motivation, another incomplete Chaluziut gradually emerged
that simply wanted a better standard of living in the land considered to
be âof their fathersâ. The racist division between Ashkenazi and
Sephardi became more and more evident and important as the arrival of
black Jews increased. As the communities grew and differentiated
themselves, they became more and more detached from their original
ideals.
Not that these new arrivals did not fulfil their obligation to work. On
the contrary, the Sephardim were often the most radical in their
commitment made (also when they become policemen they are among the most
rigid and adhere closest to the rules). But their main interest was
their own survival, here and now, in the best possible way. They also
had to avoid the risk of failure which would have forced them to return
to their land of origin where only death awaited them. At first there
were ideals of communitarian federalist socialism in many of these
productive structures, letâs say of a new stamp. These were coordinated
nationally, saw the participation of the Palestinian Arabs and were
without the presence of a State, but were soon to disappear.
We must not think that this condition only applies to the Kibbutzim; the
moschawim industrial working colonies, found themselves in a similar
situation. Many of them have abandoned their original, individualist
composition. This is not in order to establish a deeper agreement with
and become socially federated with other similar forms, but on the
contrary so as to establish a direct relationship with and therefore
direct subsidy from, the Israeli State.
Of all that went before, only the ashes remain.
[1986]
Here at the end of the eighties there has been a move towards communes
as an alternative lifestyle running parallel to increasing difficulties
in the social struggle. The road to revolution seems to be blocked, with
no victory of progressive and revolutionary forces over conservative
State reaction in view. So these communes are not just considered ideal
situations, they claim to satisfy fundamental personal and collective
needs, or have ethnic and cultural motivation. In a word, they have
become a point of reference for many, away from the traditional division
between the personal and political.
It cannot be denied that behind these alternative desires there had been
a growing need for diversity. As hopes for a profound change in the
social structure disappeared, there was concern not to let oneself be
submerged by rampant restructuring and spreading desistence.
Consequently there has been a tendency to continue the struggle by
respecting oneâs own basic needs.
Talking of the Comunidad del sur, Ruben Prieto says, âThese new societal
formations organise social action to selfmanage funds, production and
consumption, as well as various services, or come together on the basis
of particular needs. Through all this, in a way marginal (but at the
same time opposed to dominant values and the power apparatus) ferment,
one can see the emergence of a new credible and verifiable utopian
discourse. In their most radical realisation, communes aim to promote
individual identity and free organisational forms, a re-evaluation of
autonomy, participation and creativity, and lack of faith in any project
of development based on the technologies of capitalist development, with
a strong accent on the culture of daily life, action from the base to
the vertex and the particular to the generalâ. R. Prieto, âLa Comunidad
del surâ in âVolontĂ â n. 3, 1989, p.56)
It is possible to draw very general principles from this passage that
anyone could agree with precisely because they are not specific.
Basically, what should characterise a commune that is separate from
State interference should be its diversity, i.e. the diversity of its
aims, not its simple existence as a commune separate from the rest of
the social system. What we are saying might seem banal but it actually
touches on the most important aspect of the problem. The question today
is not so much whether to live in a commune or not, something that also
has its difficult side â and its going against the prevailing model of
normality. It means living in a different way, living oneâs life
differently. It does not mean that one simply lives the same life as the
slaves of capital at a different, often worse, pace, making individual
efforts that often amount to super-exploitation under other names and
ideologies.
I think that the problem of communes needs to be gone into in depth. For
example, the next step could be to look at the problem from the outside.
The commune is all very well, but for what? Now we are reaching the crux
of the matter. A productive, agricultural or city commune, could become
a survival community. By working at it this objective could more or less
be achieved. But what objective exactly? The reproduction of oneself as
a working animal, producer, thatâs all, only the other side of the
ghetto. There must be an ideal in our motivation, something more than a
mere call to struggle against the State and society. It is vital that
this pulsion, this utopian thrust, be inherent in the communitarian
dimension if we choose such an instrument. We must have chosen this
instrument because through it we want to come out from society and upset
others with our diversity â all others, even those who know nothing
about communitarian organisation. But our diversity cannot simply be
summed up in belonging to a commune because such an existence is nearly
always so miserable as to incite pity rather than set an example. It
must therefore be something else.
The following passage by Buenfil shows how far one is from the problem
raised here: âThe ecological society will necessarily be egalitarian and
decentralised, not hierarchical. It is in this context that the project
of new kinds of social groups, communes and communities, civil voluntary
associations and networks of cooperatives exist. Up until now it was
thought that it is best to carry out such experiments in the country.
Instead we must start to conceive them in the cities, as collectives,
consumersâ and artisansâ cooperatives, new tribes, bands, area
associations, workersâ councils, holistic schools and clinics. In this
way it will be possible to build a parallel society that replaces the
competitive nuclear, ecocide, militarised, super-industrialised and
imperialist society pacifically (A. R. Buenfil, âI tempi delle comuniâ
in VolontĂ no. 3/1989, p. 108â109. )There, this passage being
ideological, superficial, philosophically necessitated and stupidly
mechanistic, it amounts to the most limited and insignificant that can
be said on the subject at the present time.
All that not being possible, there being nothing to put peacefully in
place of society, or the State that defends it militarily as though it
were an old woman whose chair one was trying to steal. We are left with
the question: what should the diversity of communitarian life consist
of, given that it cannot simply be the commune itself, which is not
diversity at all? The communes of the past century and their supporters
were aware of this problem and addressed all their efforts in that
direction. For example, free love became a problem within the problem, a
utopia within the technical problem of keeping the community going.
[1989]
Too much light that night. We needed the darkness of accomplice
short-cuts, solitary paths, to lift oneâs hand, to find the courage to
lift oneâs hand and make darkness in oneâs heart.
How quell the hatred if there is only them, other than the forgotten
lies and weakness? Wondrously spellbound, move forward with trembling
lantern, full of curiosity, learning, knowing. But it is the song of the
frogs that takes me back into the mud, from where I have not moved for a
long time, waiting, like the snake.
Recurring liturgies expand time in the ceremonial, awaiting the miracle
that transforms steel into love. An idea of beauty, from the single
drops of nitroglycerine. Silence. I put the pieces carefully back into
the sheaths, it will be for another time.
The black wing of the crow has glittered enough. Now that the light is
coming I see the far off window clearly, a breach in the almost
destroyed building. A shadow mourns the death of his friend, then he
gets up and looks at the sun low on the horizon before dying in turn.
Too slow, she ended up sitting on the ground, adjusting the little dress
over her infirm legs. It seemed she wasnât breathing, immobile amongst
the fallen leaves of the high branches. The shador hid the irrevocable
tears.
In the end we remained alone, waiting. We had to telephone, before it
was too late. The other was silent, looking at the lighthouse not far
away, the lighthouse of dreams, closed from all sides. High sunlit walls
underlined the jarring lack of light. Life was dying in there; if life
is hope there was none left in there. Only the logic of the torturers.
Good causes are not recognised. If you look them carefully in the face,
they are no longer good. They suffocate with justification that had not
been requested, they beg to stay on the surface, not to push the knife
in, or cry.
Backs to the wall, surrounded on all sides, at the bend in the road
after the bridge, not a chance, and they are happy.
The two latest decisions of Netanyahuâs Israeli government were to
extend the Jewsâ settling from the East to places West of the city of
Jerusalem occupied by the Arab Palestinians, and to continue to favour
the settling of new colons in the occupied territories.
On the purely political level of international politics, these two
decisions were resolved in net violation of the Oslo agreements, which
does not surprises us in the least. There is not one agreement with the
United states and the European Union, that Israel has not failed to
comply with it in its strategy of its own reinforcement and the
destruction of the Palestinian people, and here we will make no
particular note of it here.
But these two decisions, at a time when world political signals seemed
to be advising Netanyahu to soften his falcon politics, lead us to
understand, better than any theoretical discourse, what this government
is about, what price the Israeli State is disposed to pay to keep true
to its own military and religious programmes.
The only move that the powerful United States have managed to make (the
Jewish lobby in that country remains strong and continues to condition
this kind of decision) was that of bland dissent from this war politic,
declaring themselves extraneous to it (at least in words) and suggesting
to the European Union to do something to dissuade the Israelis from
going ahead, without however taking too extreme measures such as an
embargo like that put on Libya and Iraq.
In fact, at this moment The West Bank and Gaza are under a statute of
dependence on Israel and, from the economic point of view, they have
transformed themselves into an a bottomless pit that costs far more that
what the collaborating European States, and Israel itself, on the
financial level, should be disposed to paying.
But Israel cannot budge even a centimetre. Its whole politic, especially
over the past few years, seems to the eyes of the so-called objective
observer, to be suicide, and in fact it is, but it is not so for a Jew.
No need to comment on the mistake of thinking that things would be any
different if in place of a right in Israel there was a left. It would be
the same, perhaps in a less rigid way more fitting to the weak position
of this anomalous State on the chessboard of international equilibrium.
That clears the chatter of those who consider possible an alternative to
the Israeli situation, while leaving the unshakeable theocentric
characteristics of this State standing. Off the two: either the
theocentric Israeli State disappears, giving life to another federalist
kind of formation that is open to the possibility of a communitarian
cohabitation with the Arab Palestinians and eventually with other
peoples, or the Jews will be moving towards a catastrophe once again.
But perhaps the shoah is precisely what they are waiting for, according
to the forecasts of their profits. How can you disavow them?