Red Rag Weekly Column
By: Gideon Spiro
11 August 2009 (English translation posted 17 August)
Translated by George Malent
The slaughter at the gay and lesbian club
The demonstration at Rabin Square in solidarity the with the gay and lesbian community one week after the massacre at that community’s youth centre in Tel Aviv, left me both proud and enraged.
Proud, because tens of thousands had come to protest against homophobia, an ugly manifestation of racism. Enraged, because the demonstration organizers huddled under the umbrella of the right-wing Israeli government and pushed aside people of the Left who are struggling against racism in all its forms. Former Knesset Member Issam Makhoul, who had requested to be one of the speakers, was rejected.
Adir Steiner, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai’s liaison to the gay and lesbian community, wanted to know what Issam would say. When Steiner learned that Issam would speak out against racism in all its forms, he was disqualified. Steiner as Selektor. For what did they need a prominent leader of the Arab community, who would spoil the beautiful show at which Likud ministers and the President of the State would appear? Among the speakers were Education Minister Gideon Saar and Culture Minister Limor Livnat, both from the right-wing faction of the Likud and supporters of the settlements and the apartheid regime in the Occupied territories. Issam would surely have exposed them both in all their nakedness. Hence the absurd spectacle of organizers of a demonstration against homophobia that endorsed the call to come out of the closet, calling for the Arab leader to be put into the closet.
When I heard the President Shimon Peres say “we are the people that received the commandment ‘Thou shalt not commit murder’ my flesh crawled. That man, whose hands are drenched in blood, who during the decades of his participation in government had transgressed innumerable times the commandment not to commit murder, presents himself as an innocent lamb to whom the sanctity of human life is a guiding light. Issam would certainly have reminded him of a few relevant things. For example, the Kfar Kana massacre in Lebanon during “Operation Grapes of Wrath” in 1996, in which over a hundred Lebanese civilians were killed, including women and children, who had sought shelter in a UN zone. Peres was the prime minister then. Who needs the Arab who will spoil the fun?
Many victims of racism are partners in racism when their communities are not affected. Gay and lesbian settlers are partners in racism against Arabs. Some of the Arab, Haredi [1], religious and Russian communities share homophobia. Haredis and Russians share hatred of Arabs, and so on. Only those on the Left present a coherent outlook against racism as such: whether it is against Haredis, the gay and lesbian community, Arabs, Mizrahim,[2] Ethiopians, refugees from Africa or migrant workers. To a person of the Left they are all members of the human community and deserving of equal rights.
We do not yet know the identity of the murderer who carried out the slaughter of the young people at the gay and lesbian youth club. But even without such detailed information, it is obvious to me that the Occupation was a significant factor behind the crime, which cut short the lives of Liz Trubishi, age 17, and Nir Katz, age 26, and wounded 11.
The Occupation has strengthened religious and national zealotry, converted all of Israel into a violent and intolerant society in which racism flourishes. Firearms are available to every schoolboy. Under such environmental conditions, inhibitions against the impulse to carry out a massacre become very frayed.
These things are true whether the murderer came from within the gay and lesbian community or whether the murderer was a religious nationalist.
Homophobia will not disappear because of one demonstration. Already the next day the talkbacks were full of threats and burning hate against the gay and lesbian community. One of those who sent threats on the Internet was identified as a Haredi Nahal [3] soldier. The chief military rabbi rebuked the army magazine “Bamahane” for covering the gay and lesbian issue. And the Haredis will continue to see homosexuality and lesbianism as an illness that should be treated as if it were avian flu (the brilliant idea of the ignorant racist Knesset Member Nissim Ze’ev of the Shas party).
Homophobia and religion are virtually Siamese twins. The holy scriptures of the three religions see homosexuality and lesbianism as a religious transgression to be punished by flogging and death. As long no religious authority arises who will modify what is written in the Bible and remove from it the prohibition on homosexuality and lesbianism, that violent microbe will continue to embitter our lives and claim victims. In order for that to happen, there must be a brilliant rabbi who will say that not everything God said, or what we attribute to Him, is holy. As long as the rabbis, imams and priests believe that the holy scriptures are the word of God, the likelihood such a revolutionary change is about as much as that of squaring a circle.
In the meantime, therefore, we have to continue with the sisyphean struggle against prejudice and ignorance. In the remote past I was of the view that there was no reason for a community to take pride in its sexual inclinations; but I was very quickly convinced that the expression of special pride is a legitimate means in the struggle of a discriminated-against and oppressed minority. The Blacks in the USA coined the slogan “Black is Beautiful” and the gay and lesbian community justly manifests pride in the features for which others seek to oppress or humiliate them.
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6 August
6 August is Hiroshima day. The day on which the first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
This year the 64th anniversary of the dropping of the bomb was observed. It is an important day in the struggle against nuclear arms and it is marked with conferences and gatherings all over the world. In Israel the day is ignored, because who wants to know that there are here people who oppose nuclear arms in general and Israel’s nuclear arms in particular, and who struggle for a Middle East free of atomic, biological and chemical weapons?
The mainstream press, the handmaiden of the Israeli nuclear establishment, did not report on the number of activities that took place on the anniversary.
And that is precisely what the free and uncensored voice of the Internet is for. Below is a much-abbreviated report on the activities in Israel.
On 4 August an evening was dedicated to the subject of the activism and the atom at the Rugatka club in Tel Aviv. The participants:
Aviv Sela, one of the owners of the club and the moderator of the evening, related his experiences from Germany where he participated in activism against nuclear arms.
Aaron Elberg spoke about the World March for Peace and Nonviolence, which will also pass through Israel.
Former Knesset Member Issam Makhoul spoke about the need for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons.
Gideon Spiro of the Israeli Committee for a Middle East Free from Atomic, Biological and Chemical Weapons spoke about anti-nuclear activism in Israel and support for Mordechai Vanunu.
Sharon Dolev of Greenpeace spoke about the need for an anti-nuclear movement in Israel on the path towards a nuclear-free world.
The evening was accompanied by an exhibition on the horrors of the Hiroshima bomb, and the film “A Mother’s Prayer” was shown.
The press was invited but ignored the event.
On the morning of 5 August demonstration took place in front of the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv that was organized by Greenpeace Israel, with the participation of the Israeli Committee for a Middle East Free from Atomic, Biological and Chemical Weapons. A few dozen demonstrators participated, who carried signs saying things like “Tel Aviv will not be Hiroshima”, “Amman will not be Hiroshima”, “Cairo will not be Hiroshima”, “Tehran will not be Hiroshima”, “Beirut will not be Hiroshima”.
During the demonstration a number of demonstrators lay on the sidewalk, their faces painted white, simulating nuclear bomb victims. The police were present, but did not interfere.
The press was invited but ignored the event.
On 6 August a conference under the heading “For a Middle East without nuclear arms and weapons of mass destruction” took place at the al-Maidan theatre in Haifa. The conference was organized by the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian and Israeli Studies, headed by former Knesset Member Issam Makhoul, and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
The conference was opened by Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav.
There were three sessions at the conference:
The first session: “Peace or atoms in the Middle East – the sources of the nuclear danger in the region and the initiatives for a nuclear weapons free world”. The speakers: Prof. Avishai Ehrlich of the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Jaffa; Gideon Spiro, journalist and a founder of the Israeli Committee for a Middle East Free from Atomic, Biological and Chemical Weapons, and Issam Makhoul, chairman of the Emil Touma Institute.
The second session: “The Israeli atom, the Dimona reactor and the environmental issue”. The speakers: Prof. Kalman Altman, professor emeritus at the faculty of physics of the Technion, Haifa; Knesset Member Dr. Dov Khenin, Chairman of the Social-Environmental Lobby of the Knesset; Dr. Edna Gorney, “Isha le-Isha” [“Woman to Woman”] Feminist Centre, Haifa, and Nuri al-Uqbi, chairman of the Centre for the Assistance and Defence of the Rights of the Bedouin in Israel.
Third session: “Silence and silencing around the Israel’s nuclear policy – is a public debate possible and desirable in Israel?” The speakers: Dr. Ruhama Marton, president of Physicians for Human Rights; Salman Natour, writer; Dr. Yehuda Atai, former researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies, Georgetown, and today an activist at the Israeli Committee for a Middle East Free from Atomic, Biological and Chemical Weapons, and Sharon Dolev, director of the nuclear campaign at Greenpeace Israel.
It was a fascinating conference, which covered the nuclear issue in its various aspects. The speakers, each one from their own angle, emphasized the danger entailed for Israel and the region by a nuclear arms race, an Israeli military adventure against Iran, which could cause a nuclear holocaust, and the environmental threat posed by the Dimona reactor. All agreed that there is no such thing as “responsible hands” when it comes to nuclear arms, and that the most responsible hands in that domain are those that hold no nuclear arms. No one disagreed with the words of the writer Salman Natour, who said that Mordechai Vanunu, who exposed the what was going on at the Dimona reactor, had rendered a service to the democratic principle of the public’s right to know and raised consciousness about the dangers stemming from the production of nuclear arms in Israel, he is a moral man, and Shimon Peres, the President of the State, who was among those who established the reactor, is not a moral man. It is an intolerable situation that the moral man is punished by Israel, and continues to suffer from restrictions imposed on him, while the immoral man holds the office of President of the State and received a Nobel Peace Prize. The conference was moderated by the journalist Iman al-Kassem Suleiman.
I hope that the words spoken by the participants in the conference will be published in book form and widely distributed, also to serve scholars and students as a counterweight to the establishment brainwashing on the subject.
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The mobilized press
A few days ago Israel’s highest-circulation newspaper Yediot Aharonot came out with a front-page headline “The test of combat and evasion”. The newspaper became the mouthpiece of the Manpower Directorate of the Israeli army, publishing two tables on the fifty high schools at which the number of students who enlist in combat units is highest, and the fifty schools where the number who enlist in combat units is lowest.
The story was published on Friday, in which the weekend supplement appears, and which has a much higher circulation than weekday editions.
The headline left no doubt, the evaders are bad. They do join the army but they manage not to go to the front lines of combat. The good ones of course are the combat soldiers, those who among other things commit war crimes, like the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, and the dirty work of oppressing and harassing the Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories.
Has the army taken over the newspaper or has the newspaper simply been swept off its feet by the charm of the army? It doesn’t really make much difference, because the military correspondents are in any case emissaries of the army. No newspaper in Israel can appoint a military correspondent without the clearance of the army. The rule of the lactating cow and the suckling calf is operating here.
Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai was quite upset when he saw the two tables. Of the schools in at which there is a high rate of enlistment in combat units, not one is in Tel Aviv. Dreadful. The mayor didn’t waste any time. He met with the general responsible for education in the army and came to an understanding with him about ways to “ameliorate the situation” and at the same time the mayor ordered the director of the municipal education department to prepare a plan to increase the motivation of Tel Aviv schoolchildren to enlist in combat units.
Why was Huldai upset? Because he too is a general. That’s how it is in Israel. The office of mayor in Israel is one of the functions that is most sought after by generals who retire from the army. Huldai was a combat pilot and attained the rank of general. Did General Huldai exhibit such expeditiousness and resolution when the achievements of Israeli schoolchildren shown to be low in international rankings? Did he get equally excited when it emerged that many schoolchildren in Israel are ignorant? To the best of my knowledge – no. Ignorant or not, the important thing is that they enlist in combat units and learn well how to kill.
The tables reveal another interesting fact. The largest number of enlistees in combat units come from two sectors of the population: kibbutz movement schools, most of them affiliated with the Zionist Left, and settlement schools of the Zionist Right, with a distinct fascist tinge. Those two are seemingly opposite, but in fact they converge with education that converts the army into an additional god. Real idolatry. No doubt the Minister of Defence, General Barak, he too is a product of the kibbutz movement and one of the great settlement-builders, is pleased with this Zionist convergence of Left and Right, the difference between which is totally blurred by the military service process.
Gideon Levy, a journalist for Haaretz, whom no one could accuse of being remiss in speaking out against the Occupation, criticized the publication in Yediot Aharonot, but he modified his critique with the statement that “Military service is a necessity” (Haaretz, 10 August 2009).
Really? Israel faces no military threat whatsoever. Israel is threatened by no one, including Iran. On the contrary, Israel is the one that is threatening others and constitutes a danger to its neighbours and to itself. For years now the Israeli army has not been a defence army, but an army of Occupation that is eroding Israel from within. The more youths who refuse to be cannon-fodder for the Israeli government’s adventures, the better will be the chances of getting out of the quagmire we’re in. Then, perhaps, the army will become a defence army again.
[1] Haredi Jews (or Haredim or Haredis) are extremely observant religious Jews, the men among whom typically wear black pants and suit-jackets or caftans, wide-brimmed hats and beards. They are sometimes called Hasidim, though in fact not all Haredis are Hasidic – trans.
[2] Mizrahim literally means “Easterners”, but in Israel the term is routinely applied to Jews from Islamic countries in general, including those from Morocco, which is well to the west of Israel and the lands of origin of most Jewish communities, and the very name of which – “al-Maghrib” – is literally “the west” in Arabic – trans.
[3] An infantry brigade in the Israeli army – trans.
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