"Together against racism", "Together in pain, together in hope",
"Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies" (photo: Avigail Shaham)
Pardes Hanna. A nice sleepy town with a bit over 30,000 inhabitants, halfway
between Tel Aviv and Haifa. Saturday night, several activists who live in
Pardes Hanna went off to participate in a demonstration against racism in
Haifa, but on that evening racism burst into their own hometown.
"I sat with the family in the McDonalds at the Big shopping mall and
suddenly they arrived. Fifty or sixty people, aged 15 to 30, waving Israeli national
flags and singing the anthem and shouting 'Death to the Arabs! Death to the
Arabs!'. They run shouting and flag-waving in front of the shops which have Arab
employees and Arab shoppers, at every shop entrance shouting 'Death to the
Arabs! A Jew has a soul, an Arab is a bastard! Hanin Zoabi is a whore! '. They
stopped every car which had Arabs in it, knocked on its windows and made
killing gestures to those inside. A police patrol car went after them. We asked
the police why they did not stop them, the police told us they did not have the
manpower for it."
Yasmine Halevi, who was that night at the demonstration in Haifa, told:
"On Sunday morning at nine o'clock I got an sms message: How about organizing
a protest about the mini-pogrom yesterday
at the Big? Honestly, I felt weak in the knees. Just at the start of a new
week, amid tons of work and deadlines to meet and a dirty kitchen and laundry,
and while transporting children to summer camp and passing just at the signs of
that same Big mall. Protest, exactly now? Why, who has the time and energy, and
anyway I was quite frightened. But I
could not let go, I realized if I did not do it nobody will.
After two phone calls to people whose opinion I value, I did it in the
simple way which is possible nowadays: set up an Event on Facebook. Let come
who will, I told myself, just let them be no less than a hundred, because I was
really frightened. Without a megaphone, no handbills, the most a-political text
I could manage. But soon I was surprised. The event started picking up
momentum, I got positive comments, supporting and even joyful.
Six thirty pm. We stayed at the entrance, more and more came and joined
us. I expected 150 people but we were several hundreds. Opposite us there began
to pile up the mass of the local hooligans, exclusively male with their flags
and anthem and shouting and hand gestures, confined by the police. On our side
there were some familiar faces and less familiar. Some of them had hardly ever
been in a demonstration, perhaps some only in the Social Protest of summer of 2011.
Individuals who tend to stay away from groups, political camps and shibboleths.
But more and more of them came, with their signs and children. They understood
what we are facing. This community, where I am living several years, moved me deeply
today. Even if people here are not always politically coherent, they know what
we are facing. They know when is the time to come out and stand our ground and say:
You are not going to conduct any manhunts here!"
Pardes Hanna is a microcosm of the state and society and country which
is fast spinning out of control. Just a bit more than two months have passed
since the final collapse of the mediation efforts led by Secretary State John
Kerry. There were commentators who wrote at that time that the situation cannot
remain static, that if we don’t move forward to peace we would fall down into
an abyss of violence and bloodshed, that the atmosphere was very volatile. Probably
even those commentators themselves were surprised at how much and how quickly their
prophecies came true.
A day before yesterday, on Sunday this week, the Israel Police Headquarters
announced the apprehension of six young
Jewish Israelis, charged with having kidnapped
the Palestinian boy Mohammed Abu Khdeir and burning him to death. But in order to
“counter-balance” the police simultaneously also announced the arrest of an
Arab taxi driver, charged with having stabbed to death a young Jewish woman, two
months ago, Shelly Dadon, who boarded his taxi. Maybe someone thought that
balancing the horrors against each other will help lower the flames and
emotional turmoil of riots and counter-riots and revenge for revenge for
revenge. It did not exactly work out this way.
And today, a stronger anodyne is used: all-out war in Gaza. The Israeli Defense Forces announced the
launching of “Operation Protective Edge”, the
youngest sibling of “Cast Lead” in 2009 and “Pillar of Defence” in 2012
and various other operations in and around Gaza. PM Netanyahu announced sternly
that “The gloves are off”. With Israeli combat planes flying non-stop bombing
missions over Gaza, and Palestinian rockets launched into Israel, and tens of
thousands of ground troops mobilized and poised to invade. Perhaps the tensions
and passions of Jewish and Arab civilians would be swept under the carpet –
there to fester untended until the next outbreak.
Just as I wrote the above, the air-raid sirens sounded over the
metropolitan Tel Aviv area. One rocker, successfully intercepted by the Israeli
Iron Dome system made us run for safety to the staircase. There will probably
be more in the coming days.
To be fair, Netanyahu had been far from trigger-happy, as far as Gaza
was concerned. Under another PM (for example the “dovish” Olmert) this
operation might have been underway a week ago already. In the past days, Netanyahu had undertaken a
conspicuous policy of “restraint”, which caused him to be accused of “weakness”
and led to an open rift between him and his longtime partner, the hardliner
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
Netanyahu had been willing to reach a ceasefire with Hamas, under
Egyptian mediation, and for some days it looked like something might be worked
out. But he was completely unwilling to relax in any way the siege of Gaza,
which had been increasingly suffocating what is left of its economy. Gaza’s
Rafah Border Crossing to Egypt was supposed to open after the Palestinian Unity
Government came into being (in fact, that was the main reason why Hamas made
that deal in the first place) but Egypt’s General Sisi - implacably hostile to Hamas and on
excellent terms with Netanyahu – reneged on his part and kept Rafah closed. And
so Hamas did not agree on a ceasefire, holding out for an end to the siege –
and Netanyahu responded by reducing the area, where Gazan fishermen may venture,
from six miles to three tightening the rope around Gaza’s neck another notch.
And the cross-border exchanges escalated day by day and night by night, and
here we are in a war which nobody really wanted. It can be said that both the
Government of Israel and the Hamas leadership played brinkmanship, and we all
fell in.
At the worst possible timing, Ha’aretz newspaper on this very day
launched its long-prepared “Ha’aretz Israel Conference on Peace”, inviting
various VIP’s to come and speak about the possibilities and prospects of
achieving peace in this troubled country and region. Unsurprisingly, many of
the speeches reported from there were far from offering real hope.
In fact, when the Ha’aretz editors initiated this event half a year ago,
they had expected Kerry to keep his timetable and achieve an
Israeli-Palestinian agreement by the April 29 deadline. In that case, the
conference in July would have provided the newborn agreement with public
backing from inside the Israeli society. As things are, Ha’aretz still placed
prominently at the top of its front page a specially-commissioned article from
the President of the United States, Barack Obama.
Obama repeated all the nice words and catch-phrases which he made at his
speech in Jerusalem, a year and a half ago – again reiterating an American
commitment to peace between Israelis and Palestinians and to the two-state
solution. Some activists which I know did not bother to read it through. The
operative sentences were tucked in towards the end: “We remain determined to
work with both Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas. When the political will exists to recommit
to serious negotiations, the United States will be there, ready to do our
part”.
Thousands of years ago, a prophet living in this country sounded a stern
warning to those putting their trust in a super-power of that time:”
Now, behold, thou dost trust upon this broken reed, even upon Egypt, on
which if a man leans, it will go into his hand and pierce it; so is Pharaoh,
king of Egypt unto all that trust in him.”
With little to expect of the world’s powers, the Tel-Aviv based Coalition
of Women for Peace took an initiative for action within hours of the Army
announcing its Gaza operation.
Stop the Killing, End the Occupation!
We will not remain quiet as the bombs are falling!
Wednesday, July 9th at 18:00
Habima Square, Tel Aviv
(Note: this time and place replace those originally published here)
In the past month, Israel raided several thousand homes, and arrested over 600 Palestinians, including women and children.
Also in the last few weeks, everyday forms of racism and violence, by the state and its officials, have escalated exponentially.
Thousands of hate-filled Israeli citizens poured into the streets, seeking revenge, destruction and violence.
Ongoing occupation, daily oppression, house demolitions, destruction of lives. The Israeli government is relentless - demolishing in Hebron, expropriating lands in the Naqab/Negev, brutally suppressing popular protests, attacking Gaza.
Once again, Israel launched yet another irresponsible and unnecessary military 'operation,' at the expense of the residents of the south, who, together with Gazans, deserve to live in dignity, without constant and daily threats.
Bombardments and casualties lead nowhere, except for further bombings, rockets and blood. Stop militarism, end the occupation!
Coalition of Women for Peace
3 Yegia Kapayim Street, Tel-Aviv-Jaffa
+972-73-7373745
cwp@coalitionofwomen.org
Gaza today (photo AFP)
