Fateful Triangle
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Aharon Yariv, former head of military intelligence, commented on “widely held opinions” in favor of exploiting a future war situation to expel 7-800,000 Arabs; such a plan exists, he said, and the means to execute it had been prepared.78 Another former intelligence chief, General Shlomo Gazit (now President of Ben-Gurion University), warned in a lecture at Hebrew University against evacuating any part of “historic Eretz Israel,” which must “remain entirely under Jewish control” as “a basically Jewish state.” It is therefore necessary to face “the problems of the Arabs of historic Eretz Israel.” He explained that “Israel regards this as a humanitarian, not a political problem, and it therefore follows that the solution for them must be found outside historic Eretz Israel.”79 Chalk up another one for Orwell.
Similar thoughts are expressed by Michael Walzer, though in this case with respect to the Arab citizens of Israel proper: since the original inhabitants of the land are “marginal to the nation,” their problems might be “smoothed” by the benevolent policy of “helping people to leave who have to leave,” he suggests.80 Walzer (then at Harvard, now at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton) is much respected in U.S. intellectual circles as a humanitarian and moral thinker.
All of this is entirely natural on the assumption of Zionists across the spectrum (with some exceptions) that the Arabs have no real ties to their homes in Palestine, and will be just as content—perhaps more so—outside of the land of the Jews. See chapter 3.
4.4 The Workforce and the Labor Alignment
Koteret Rashit, March 16, 1983, citing Weitz’s diaries and letters (published in 1965) and the Sharett diaries. See also TNCW, p. 236. As many Israeli doves had expected and feared, the 1967 war led to radical changes within Israel: a growing reliance on force and violence, alliance with “pariah states” such as South Africa, increased chauvinism, irrationality and religious fanaticism,81 and grandiose conceptions of Israel’s global mission. It has also predictably led to much heavier dependence on the U.S., service to U.S. global interests, and association with some of the most reactionary currents in American society.
At the same time, internal political changes have been taking place within Israel. Menachem Begin succeeded in mobilizing much of the “Oriental” (Sephardic) Jewish population—now a majority and becoming increasingly so—behind his chauvinistic and aggressive policies, though there is much diversity within this community and it is a great oversimplification, as we shall see, to contrast Sephardi hawks to Ashkenazi doves. These segments of the population had long regarded the Labor Party and its institutions as an oppressive bureaucracy, representing management and the hated kibbutzim, often islands of wealth and luxury alongside of “development towns”—notorious for their lack of development—for the Oriental Jews, many of whom serve as the labor force for kibbutz industry. The 1981 election campaign brought these feelings to sometimes violent expression and led to considerable soulsearching on what had gone wrong and some close attention to what was happening in the development towns. It was observed that support for Labor came primarily from the wealthy and educated, while the working class and underclass tended to support Begin. The question was raised why the kibbutz has become “the object of hate” in the development towns, the apparent answer being given by the comparison between kibbutz wealth and privilege and the conditions in working class areas, and by the “master and servant” relation between the kibbutzim and their exploited labor force from the development towns.82 These attitudes of the working class and underclass, incidentally, began to manifest themselves with considerable clarity just at the time when American democratic socialists, who previously had been remote from the Zionist movement, began to speak of Israel as a “model...for the democratic socialist hope of combining radical social change with political freedom.”83
Ha’aretz devoted a series of searching articles to the very visible anger of the Oriental community towards the Labor Alignment and their alienation from it, based on discussions with Alignment leaders, kibbutz members, and people in the development towns. This alienation and anger extend across social classes, and are “particularly harsh among the educated youth,” an under-represented minority in the Oriental Community. “The alienation between the inhabitants of the development towns and the kibbutzim began to appear visibly in the 1977 elections, but was revealed in all its ugliness in the last [1981] elections.”* It is, in fact, striking even within the Labor Alignment itself, where there is strong feeling against the kibbutzim for their “arrogance and “isolation’’ from the working classes in the development towns that provide much of their labor force. There is also growing opposition to the Histadrut (the socialist labor union, which plays a major role in Israeli society) on the part of the Oriental Jewish working class, which constitutes the majority of workers, though not officials and managers. Some studies indicate that Oriental Jewish workers consider that Likud represents them better than Labor does, by about two-to-one. Others show that Labor Alignment voters support it with little enthusiasm, for negative reasons, rather in the manner of most of the 27% of American voters who voted
* The timing is inexact. It began to appear, quite visibly, in the late 1960s. In fact, it was always reasonably clear. I recall personal incidents reflecting this antagonism in 1953, when I lived for a time in a kibbutz in Israel.
for Ronald Reagan, according to electoral analyses here. The leadership is particularly disliked. While 30% of the electorate support the Alignment, only 4% support its leader, Shimon Peres, “a shocking attitude.” Among Oriental Jewish workers from the development towns who are employed in the kibbutzim, 70% voted for Likud, as compared with a 60% Likud vote in the Oriental community as a whole, a reflection of the “servant-master” relation between the Oriental Jewish proletariat and “the two socialist institutions that serve as the showwindow of the Labor party,” the Histadrut and the kibbutzim. The kibbutzim are hated by the working class particularly for their attitudes of “arrogance” and “bossism,” and for “the impossibility of establishing real human relations with kibbutz members.” The hatred is in fact “increasing” (referring to the development town Beit Shean). In the last elections, the vote for Likud increased beyond the national average in regions where there was a concentration of kibbutzim alongside of Oriental Jewish communities in moshavim (semi-collectivized communities) and development towns.
Another source of bitterness is memories of how the refugees from the Arab countries were received and treated in the Ma’abarot (transitional resettlement camps) in Israel. One educated Oriental Jewish businessman who “succeeded in breaking out of the circle of poverty and distress” (a 1951 immigrant from Libya) recalls that in his Ma’abara, “all the managerial positions were held by Ashkenazim [Europeans]. The bosses were only Ashkenazim.” “When we arrived in the Ma’abara,” he reports, “there were many Poles and Rumanians among us, but after a few months you would see how whole communities of them disappeared, while we remained stuck in place.” The Ashkenazim were associated with the Labor Party (Mapai). “They treated us like third class citizens. They subjected us to extensive brainwashing, and wanted to break our connection with our culture and our traditions [a longstanding and frequently expressed complaint]. Our social structure broke down—it was their fault.” “There is real hatred, hatred for what was done by the Alignment, which is seen by a whole generation as the successor to Mapai from a cultural, economic and social class standpoint.” “Mapai also destroyed us from the point of view of our selfimage. That will not be forgotten easily.” He complains, characteristically, that the Labor Party organized the lives of the Oriental Jews in the Ma’abarot “the way they organize the lives of the Arabs in Gaza today.” When the immigration of Russian Jews began, these tensions became far worse, because of the comparison between the “de luxe” treatment of these European immigrants and the long-standing oppression and impoverishment of the Jews from Arab countries.84
Tamar Maroz presents a detailed and illuminating record o
f working class and lower middle class attitudes as expressed in the Oriental communities, among a group that she regards, with some plausibility, as “the silent majority.” The lines are rather sharply drawn: Begin is a “messiah,” a “hero,” ‘‘one of us,” “honest,’’ a man of the people who lives simply in a rented apartment, a “real Jew.” Peres, the head of the Labor Party, is a “capitalist,” a commonly repeated insult; the people of the Labor Alignment are swindlers, bureaucrats, the “establishment,” “careerists.” Likud is “anti-establishment.” Begin “is concerned for the workers”; Labor, in contrast, is not. Its “development towns” were constructed as working class slums for kibbutz industry, where the rich kibbutzniks are the managers and “do nothing.” Begin cares about the Oriental community; Labor has contempt for them. Defense Minister Sharon is also a hero, who doesn’t fear and pander to the Americans, as Labor does; he should be the next head of the government, and it is a disgrace that he was forced to resign as Defense Minister. There can be no peace with the Arabs: “if we don’t fight, they will destroy us”; “a good Arab is a dead Arab.” Peace Now are traitors and have contempt for the religious values of the people. “Begin is our father, and ‘Peace Now’ is our enemy.” The Likud “lifted up the weak, for whom the Alignment (Ma’arach) showed no concern.” The opinions she records verbatim are forceful, and have an ominous ring.85
The contempt of Europe-based Labor Zionism for the Oriental Jews and their “Arab culture” is notorious. It may reflect the widely-expressed fear of “Levantinization” in what the settlers anticipated would be a modern European society, as well as the felt need to denigrate Arab society and culture in general as a justification for taking back “the Land of Israel” from its temporary occupiers and the parallel need to demonstrate that the Oriental Jews were rescued by Zionism from a miserable existence. Whatever the causes of these attitudes towards the “human dust,” as they were sometimes called, a serious price is now being paid by the Labor Alignment.
The development towns were generally established in remote areas, often along the border, where they were not only neglected but also subject to vicious (and, furthermore, tactically idiotic) terrorist attacks by the PLO, particularly in the early 1970s. Michael Elkins described one such “frontline settlement.” Avivim, after a particularly brutal attack on a school bus in which 12 children were killed (20 Lebanese civilians were killed in retaliatory shelling of the Lebanese town of Bint Jubeil, which appears to have been selected at random). He describes the “rubblestrewn road that is Avivim’s main street” where he talked with “a ragged. pinched-faced kid,” and the “jerry-built shacks thrown together in 1963 when the Jewish Agency—following Israel’s policy of populating its borders—settled about 60 families of unskilled immigrants from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco in this inhospitable place” where the settlers live “out of sight and out of mind of most Israelis.” One “typical” story of suffering was told by a settler who said: “We starve here, we get sick here. I don’t want to stay here—nobody wants to stay. It is an awful place, nobody cares about us.” Israeli officials allege that “this negative attitude was the result of the shocking school-bus incident—and strictly a temporary phenomenon.” But Elkins’s “own feeling was that many Israelis living in the frontier villages are profoundly unhappy with their lot—and not primarily because of the Arab commando attacks, but because of what the settlers judge to be the lack of concern for their welfare by other, more affluent Israelis.” He quotes one who says: “We won’t be driven out of this area by the Fatah…but the cold hearts of our own people in Tel Aviv—that can drive us out.”86
Similar stories can be told concerning the larger towns established for the Oriental Jews, who support Begin in what they see as revenge against their oppressors of the Labor Alignment. The bitterness and violence of the 1981 electoral campaign, which evoked memories of Germany and Austria in the early 1930s among older citizens,87 was a reflection of these conflicts. The bitterness is so great that Labor Party leader Shimon Peres was literally unable to speak in the northern city of Kiryat Shemona, even with hundreds of security officers present to maintain order. Crowds shouting “Begin King of Israel”88 and other slogans drowned him out, and the few supporters—”hated visitors from the nearby kibbutzim”—were barely in evidence.89
In the older cities too there is serious disaffection within the Oriental Jewish community. Anti-Ashkenazi hatred erupted in a dramatic fashion when police arrived with a bulldozer to demolish a room added without a permit to a small house in a Tel Aviv slum, leading to the fatal shooting of one member of the family. In response, swastikas were painted on houses in wealthy Ashkenazic neighborhoods, along with such slogans as “Ashkenazim to Auschwitz, Treblinka and Dachau,” “The Sephardic Revolution Has Begun,” and the like. In an investigation of the situation in Tiberias, Leah Etgar found a group of about 300 young men of Moroccan origin, mostly unemployed and preparing for violence—murder if necessary—directed against Arabs and Jews who employ them. In general, they “love Begin, because he is a great man— and hate the Labor Alignment, which during its rule did nothing for the Moroccans while now there is at least food, television, and stereophonic radios.” Again, the kibbutzim are a prime irritant. One man fired from Kelet Afikim “hates the kibbutzim.” He claims that they discriminate against the Moroccan Jews. “They ask if they are Moroccans and if they voted for the Likud, and that is the end of the job... They hate us and we hate them.” But the primary hatred is directed against Arabs, their competitors in the job market who agree to accept work for very low wages or that Jews do not want, as servants or in hotels, or jobs that require work on the Sabbath, excluded for these men from religious families. “Only the Arabs have money and they go to the movies and your heart breaks.” Your “heart also breaks” when you are compelled to ride by bus and see Arabs in their private cars. “Something really tears you up inside.” Others complain that Arabs not only take their work but steal their girl friends. “What girl will go out with a Jewish man who has no work, honor or livelihood. They even take our women, the scoundrels.” One can see “the hatred in the eyes.” All agree that there is “no solution” except “to exterminate the Arabs, because they are ruining the lives of the Jews.” These men feel that “they have no choice, except to proceed to violence.” They have already demonstrated at the town buildings against the increase in the Arab population in the city, and they now want to gather arms, and are preparing “to pick up boards and sticks and to break the heads of the others [the Arabs].”
A similar story is reported by Michal Meron from the town of Netivot near Gaza (“ugly,” “dirty,” largely inhabited by Sephardis). This was in March 1983, after the dismissal of Sharon as Defense Minister; the young men here “no long call Begin King, now Sharon is King of Israel.” Meron interviews many of them, lounging around billiard parlors, dressed in designer jeans and leather jackets, virtually all unemployed and refusing the employment (for example, packing fruits and vegetables) that is offered to them. They despise the Ashkenazim and the Peace Now activists; one is sorry that he did not have the chance to throw the grenade that killed a Peace Now demonstrator in Jerusalem in February. But their hatred for the “Araboushim” (a term of contempt for Arabs, with connotations similar to “kike” or “nigger”) is far deeper and more intense. “I hate Arabs because on account of them I am unemployed,” because they work at “half the wages” we would accept and “twice as hard.” “For money they will do anything.” “The Arab has no honor and the Jew does, that’s the problem.” “With my own hands I would kill all of them, they are animals,” one man says while the others laugh, “their hatred of Arabs uniting them in a special manner.” “A good Arab is a dead Arab,” they repeat.90
Cases of attacks on Arabs are sometimes reported in the press—e.g., the beating of an Arab hospital worker in Gedera by two armed men who threatened “to do much worse things if he does not leave Gedera.”91 Some who have close contacts with the Ar
ab community allege that such incidents are not uncommon, but are generally unreported (in this case, the victim was threatened with death if he went to the police). It has also been widely observed that attitudes are more reactionary among the young*—the universities, for example, have been dominated by student groups that engage in such activities as breaking up Arab social events with clubs and chains92—so that the prospects are for an intensification of chauvinism and violence. The
* To mention another indication, a recent poll shows that 40% of 14-15 yearolds oppose equal rights for Communists, Arabs, and released prisoners. Davar, Aug. 6, 1982. In fact, 65% of the population favor imposing further constraints on reporting in radio and television; Davar, Al Hamishmar. March 20, 1983.
tendencies since 1967 are rather clear, as are their causes.
5. The Ways of the Conqueror 5.1 The West Bank
T
he religious settlers in the West Bank, operating freely with army support, take pride in creating a pogrom-like atmosphere among the Arabs, who must be trained not to “raise their heads,” this being the only way to treat Arabs, who “adore power” and will live
in peace with the Jews only when “we show him that we are strong.” How? “We enter a village, shoot a bit at windows, warn the villagers and return to the settlement. We don’t kidnap people, but it can happen that we catch a boy who had been throwing stones, take him back with us, beat him a bit and give him over to the Army to finish the job.” The same West Bank settler also explains how official investigators act to protect Jews who shoot to hit and to kill (including firing at children). This particular interview ended because the settler—a friend of the journalist—”was in a hurry to get back home before the Sabbath.”93