ZGram - 1/24/2002 - "The Paul Revere Series: Tell the Truth,
Shimon!" Open Letter by Gideon Levy
irimland@zundelsite.org
irimland@zundelsite.org
Thu, 24 Jan 2002 12:46:25 -0800
Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland
ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny
January 24, 2002
Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
Another voice of reason for my Paul Revere Series! This time it comes from
an Israeli civil servant, formerly an aide to Foreign Minister Shimon
Peres. It left me stunned when I read what Gideon Levy has to say.
There are voices of dissent to Sharon even in Israel itself that speak with
the eloquence of emergency, but like elsewhere, they are muffled by the
"War on Terrorism" hysteria - in Israel as elsewhere.
The intro comes from MER. The Open Letter itself appeared in today's Ha'aretz:
[START']
PERES, NOT PEACE-MAKER BUT CRIMINAL - Former Aide Charges
MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 24 January 2002:
Shimon Peres is one of the most slippery and crafty politicians
anywhere. This passionately insightful Open Letter to him, published today
in Israel's leading newspaper Ha'aretz by a former assistant, now a
courageous Israeli columnist, is right on target not only about Peres but
about the government he serves and the horrendous future being born in
today's bloodshed and despair.
Now there's no chance Shimon Peres is going to tell the truth -- he has
hardly any experience with that concept. Just six years ago when Peres was
acting Prime Minister in the wake of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin he
was responsible for attempting to cover-up the terrible Qana U.N.-base
Massacre, something for which he now finds himself facing possible European
indictment for war crimes -- a reasonable charge in view of the terrible
events that took place and the role then PM Peres personally played in it
all.
But this is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg; for there is so
much more that Peres is responsible for, so many coverups, so much
deception, so much repression, so much duplicity. Indeed that is why even
his own Knesset refused to elect him President a few years ago, a stunning
rebuke for a man who thought he had the job in his pocket. And thank God
his attempt to follow Egyptian Boutros Ghali as Secretary-General of the
U.N. in the heyday of the "peace process" was derailed, partly in the blood
and gore of Qana.
The grandest deception and greatest treachery of all has been the
Peres-inspired "Apartheid peace process", a Machiavellian scheme from the
very beginning to entrap the Palestinian people on reservations, and one
which has now erupted into an orgasm of even greater hatred and violence
than when it began. Twilight Zone
Tell the truth, Shimon
By Gideon Levy
[Ha'aretz - Thursday, January 24, 2002]: Shimon Peres: All the excuses
make no difference.
In the 24 years of our acquaintance, four of which I spent working as
your aide, this is the third time I have written you an open letter. In
1989, when you were finance minister in the Shamir government and the
first intifada was raging, I used these pages to write "A letter to a
former boss." Then, I told you that "for the first time in your life, you
have nothing left to lose - except the prospect of vanishing into thin
air." This was after you kept silent in the face of the IDF's conduct in
the intifada, in the face of the continuation of the occupation and
Israel's stubborn refusal to recognize the PLO as the representative of
the Palestinians. At the time, I believed that you thought differently
from Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin (known then as the "bone-breaker"),
but that you just weren't bold enough to speak up.
Eleven years later, in 2000, I wrote you another open letter. This was
after Oslo and the Rabin assassination, and after you again had lost an
election - this time, to the office of president. Then, I said: "Many
Israelis see you as a different person now. For them, you represent the
hope of something else." And now, as I write to you again, I have to say:
You no longer represent hope for anything.
The government of which you are a senior member, the foreign minister, is
no longer just a government of last resort in our history of governments
of last resort; this government is a government of crime. And partnership
in this crime is another matter. It is no longer possible to absolve you,
to give you credit for Oslo, to understand that your heart aches over
what is happening, and to know that you may even be bursting with rage
over what is happening and refraining from speaking out, from shouting
out, and most of all, from acting, only because of tactical
considerations, which you understand better than anyone.
No, your silence and inaction can no longer be justified by any excuse:
Shimon, you are a partner in crime. The fact that you might realize this in
your heart and, from time to time, even utter some feeble words of
condemnation, the fact that you are not prime minister and that America is
giving carte blanche right now, the fact that most of the people think
otherwise and that to quit and "chase after a Ha'aretz journalist," as you
put it, would be pointless - All of these excuses make no difference. You
continue to serve in a government with blood on its hands, whose
outstretched hand is still busy killing and jailing and humiliating, and
you are a partner to all of its deeds. Just as the Taliban foreign
minister is a part of the Taliban regime, you are a part of the Sharon
regime. Your responsibility does not fall far short of the prime
minister's. It is equal to that of the defense minister and the chief of
staff, whose actions you harshly criticize in private discussions. Always
in private discussions only.
You say you heard about the assassination of Raed Karmi, after three weeks
of Palestinian quiet, on the radio. From your perspective, that's enough to
exempt you from responsibility for the deed and even from having to express
criticism of it. While the IDF was reoccupying Tul Karm, you were with Bill
Clinton. When asked about it, you mumbled something incoherent. Following
the house demolitions in Rafah, you bit your lip and kept silent. One could
assume that the blowing up of the radio station was not your cup of tea
either. But you bear the terrible responsibility for all of these things,
for all of these actions that cannot be defined as anything other than war
crimes.
Ask your brother-in-law, Prof. Rafi Walden, the head of surgery at Sheba
Medical Center, who sometimes travels to the territories as a volunteer
with Physicians for Human Rights, and he'll tell you what you're a
partner to. He'll tell you about the women in labor - not just one or
two, not just the rare exception - who can't get to the hospital because
of the cruelty of the IDF of which you were once so proud, and whose
babies die right after they deliver them. He'll tell you about the cancer
patients prevented from getting to Jordan for treatment. No, they cannot
even go to Jordan - for "security reasons."
He'll tell you about the hospitals in Bethlehem that were shelled by the
IDF. He'll tell you about the doctors and nurses who sleep in the hospital
because they can't get home. He'll tell you about the dialysis patients
forced to spend hours jostled about while traveling makeshift routes three
times a week in a desperate attempt to reach the machines that their lives
depend on. He'll tell you about the patients denied crucial medical
treatment because of the closure and about the ambulances prevented from
passing through checkpoints, even when they're carrying critically ill
passengers. He'll tell you about the people who have died at the
checkpoints and about those who died at home because they didn't dare to
approach the checkpoints - which are now made up of menacing tanks in the
middle of the road, or mounds of dirt and cement blocks that cannot be
budged - even for someone on the brink of death.
You have imprisoned an entire people for over a year with a degree of
cruelty unprecedented in the history of the Israeli occupation. Your
government is trampling three million people, leaving them with no
semblance of normal life. No going to the market, no going to work, no
going to school, no visiting a sick uncle. Nothing. No going anywhere,
and no coming back from anywhere. No day or night. Danger lurks
everywhere, and everywhere there is another checkpoint, choking off life.
An entire nation already partly outstretched its hand in peace, no less
than we have - you know this well - It has had its fill of suffering,
from the Nakba in 1948, through the 1967 occupation and the siege of
2002, and it wants exactly the same things that Israelis want for
themselves - a little quiet, a little security and a drop of national
pride. To a man, this entire people now wakes up each morning to a gaping
abyss of despair, unemployment and deprivation - now with tanks parked at
the end of the street, too.
You were always forgiven for all this - but no longer. Someone who is a
partner in a government that deliberately sabotages every Palestinian
effort to achieve quiet, that utterly humiliates their leaders, for whom
vengeance is the sole motivating force, which cynically exploits the
world's post-September 11 blindness and obtuseness to do as it pleases -
can no longer be forgiven. True, you do not agree with everything this
government wants to do, but what does that matter? You're inside - you're
an accessory, as in any other crime. I sometimes see you answering a
reporter's question about your government's latest despicable deed. The
look on your face (and I'm pretty familiar with your expressions after
all these years) suggests unease, even disgust. And then you give one of
your evasive, hint-laden and not quite direct answers. You mumble
something and try to extricate yourself by means of some awkward
wordplay. Like what happened this week when you were standing next to
Clinton and were asked about the occupation of Tul Karm and you said
nothing - nothing - and just waited for the question to pass, to be left
alone so you could go back to talking about peace and vision.
When asked about the assassinations, the demolitions, the humiliation of
Arafat and his scandalous confinement, the destruction of the Dahaniya
airport or the festival of the munitions display in Eilat, you furrow your
brow and give half an answer. But that's not enough anymore.
Now is the time for a straight, honest and truthful answer - or nothing.
Now is the time to say that the occupation of Tul Karm was a foolish
move, that the assassination of Raed Karmi was intended to renew the
violence and that the destruction of the houses in Rafah was a war crime
- or to be Ariel Sharon. This is not the time for subtlety, for hidden
meanings, for veiled criticism in private - because, here on the outside,
a terrible disaster is underway, and a great ill wind is blowing and
laying waste to everything.
Shall I give you an example? A few days ago, you were quoted as saying
(privately, again) that it was hard for you to criticize the government's
actions when the United States wasn't doing so. What kind of pathetic
excuse is that? What does the fact that there is a predatory
administration in the U.S. that has no counterbalancing power in the
world, that does as it pleases and lets Israel do as it pleases, have to
do with your principled positions? What does that have to do with the
good of Israel? What does that have to do with basic values of justice
and morality?
Perhaps you might take just one day of vacation, which you so rarely do,
and visit the occupied territories. Have you ever actually seen the
Qalandiyah checkpoint, even once? Have you seen what happens there? Do
you think that you can do your job without seeing the Qalandiyah
checkpoint? Do you understand that you are responsible for what goes on
there? Do you understand that any foreign minister of a state that puts
up these checkpoints bears responsibility for their existence?
Then you could go to the village of Yamoun and meet Heira Abu Hassan and
Amiya Zakin, who lost their babies three weeks ago when IDF soldiers
wouldn't let their cars through the checkpoint, while they were in labor
and bleeding. Listen to their terrible stories. And what will you tell
them? That you're sorry? That it shouldn't have happened? That it's part
of the war on terror? That it's shocking? That maybe it's Shaul Mofaz's
fault and not yours? The IDF spokesman hasn't even expressed regret about
these two instances, not to mention any criminal investigation. He only
confirmed that one occurred and said he "didn't know" about the other.
And equally important, what will you say about our soldiers who behave
this way? That it's because of national security? That the Palestinians
are to blame? Or Arafat? The truth, Shimon, is that you bear
responsibility for the deaths of those two babies. Because you were
silent. Because you sat in this government.
These are terrible times. But worse is yet to come. The cycle of
violence and hatred has far from reached its peak. All the injustices and
evil perpetrated against the Palestinians will eventually blow up in our
faces. A people that is abused this way for years will explode one day in
a terrible fury, even worse than what we see now. And meanwhile we have
the soldiers going into the radio station, laying explosives and blowing
the place to kingdom come - without stopping to ask why.
These soldiers are the bearers of bad tidings, not only for their
victims, but for their dispatchers as well. Soldiers that destroy dozens
of homes belonging to refugees, with all their meager possessions inside,
without a moment's hesitation - and certainly no refusal to carry out
such blatantly illegal orders, are not good soldiers, even for their
country. Pilots who bomb targets in the heart of populated cities, tank
operators who point their guns at women trying to get to the hospital to
give birth in the middle of the night and Border Police officers who
abuse women and youngsters are not a good portent of things to come. They
all attest to the loosening of restraint that derives from a total loss
of direction.
Yes, this year we have lost our way. You have joined forces with a prime
minister who is Israel's most veteran warmonger, and no one can say for
sure what your intentions are. And with a brainwashed public that speaks
with frightening uniformity, you have it easy. Ever since another member
of your party, Ehud Barak, intentionally shattered the peace camp, you've
been able to do practically as you pleased. The IDF no longer
investigates any war crime and the legal system approves every injustice
that comes wrapped in the mantle of security. The whole world is busy
struggling against terror, the press hides its face and the public
doesn't want to hear, doesn't want to see and doesn't want to know. It
only wants revenge. And under cover of this darkness and with the backing
of a person of your stature, the occupation has become a machine of crime
and evil.
Naturally, you'll say: What can I do? I wasn't elected prime minister.
And I wasn't elected chairman of the Labor Party. I'm not even the
defense minister. You're right: In this government you cannot do anything
and you are not doing anything. Which is exactly why you never should
have become a member of it. You'll say: I have influence - I rein things
in, I'm a moderating force, I'm trying. Nonsense. It couldn't be much
worse than it is now, so where exactly have you exerted your influence
and what are you preventing from happening? Did you ever imagine that you
would be sitting in a government that would reoccupy parts of Area A
completely unhindered?
Just think what would have happened had you got up and loudly resigned
from this government and told the world what is (perhaps) in your heart.
The Nobel Prize laureate versus the crimes of the Sharon government.
Imagine if you had gone to Ramallah, to Yasser Arafat who is under siege
there, and taken to the street together, faced the Israeli tanks and
called for their removal and for a cease-fire. True, the sky wouldn't
have fallen - the occupation wouldn't have ended and the closure of Jenin
would not have been lifted, but real cracks would have been opened in the
moral, political and international basis of this currently immune
government. Imagine if you would have said: Yes, the house demolitions
are a war crime. Yes, a state that has lists of assassination targets is
not a state of law. Yes, installing a checkpoint that causes people to
die is an act of terror. No, the Palestinians are not the only ones to
blame for this orgy of blood. Yes, we have a chief of staff who is a
danger to democracy. Yes, we have a defense minister and Labor Party
chairman who is the government's contractor for assassinations and house
demolitions. Yes, we have a prime minister who only wants to occupy, to
avenge, to kill, to expel, to demolish and to uproot and he has no other
plan in mind.
That's what you think, isn't it? If it is, then say so, for God's sake.
And if not, then your place really is with this government and we who
once believed in you made a dreadful mistake. And please don't say that
you're being made a punching bag once again. You're not. Ever since Oslo,
you were the embodiment of our hopes. And these have been disappointed.
Time is short, Shimon. Not just for you, but for all of us. We are
standing on the verge of the abyss. If you wait until Benjamin
Ben-Eliezer, Ephraim Sneh, Ra'anan Cohen, Dalia Itzik and their like come
up with another sneaky
resigning-from-the-government-for-election-purposes deal, you might just
find yourself kicked into oblivion by them. You know that they've been
itching to be rid of you for some time now. And even if you do make a stand
now, it may just be too late. Everyone may already be too disappointed in
you and there may be no way to rebuild the ruin brought about by Sharon.
But the only way for you to add one more meaningful accomplishment to
your rich biography is not just to get up now and resign from this
government, which you may be compelled to do at some point anyway, but to
do it while speaking out loud and clear, and telling Israelis all that
you think about everything that is happening, especially about the evil
we are perpetrating with our own hands. Once more in your life, try to
build something new - not an atomic reactor or an aircraft industry, of
which we already have more than enough. Now, against all the odds, try to
build a radical Israeli peace camp, to make something out of nothing. Is
it too farfetched to believe that you still see things differently than
the rest of your colleagues in the government? Tell the truth, Shimon.
Gush Shalom calls for a protest vigil Friday, Jan. 25, at 2.30 PM, in
front of Peres' home in Tel-Aviv. We will stand at the corner of the Rav
Ashi and Oppenheimer Streets, at Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv. You get there
from central Tel- Aviv by bus lines 24, 25 and 74, as well as 13 (from
Allenby - Karmel Market area) and 27 from the Central Bus Station.
=====
Shimon Peres, whose claim to international fame for winning the Nobel
Peace Prize rest upon Oslo, keeps on as Sharon's Foreign Minister, keeps
on providing the semblence of "national unity" to Sharon's systematic
effort to destroy the Palestinian Authority.
Whenever any initiative for calming down the situation appears, whenever
any international envoy or mediator arrives in the region, the Prime
Minister and the army are quick with a new provocation. When Sharon
ordered the assassination of Ra'ed Karmi in Tul-Karm a week ago, he
knew that it woulod set in motion a new cycle of retaliations and
terrorist attacks and shatter the three-weeks old ceasefire. By all
indications, that was Sharon's exact intention.
With the Nobel Laureate continuing to be his chief propagandist Sharon
fanned the flames further by invading the town of Tul-Karm and
assassinating four senior Hamas militants at Nablus - with the expected
effect of restarting suicide bombings in Israel's population centers.
These then provide the pretext for further escalation to our Prime
minister, who like a modern Nero would not rest before everything goes
up in flames.
If ever Peres has to account for his role, he would be by no means
excused by having held at the same time still another empty-handed
meeting with Palestinian leader Abu Ala.
[END]
=====
Thought for the Day:
"As he brews, so shall he drink."
(Ben Johnson)