Anarchist Studies

URI GORDON

These are strange and troubling days in Israel. The defeat in Lebanon has left Israeli society in confusion and disarray, bewildered by humiliation on the battlefield and less secure than ever about its future. As I write this in late August, a ceasefire is in effect across the border, but the soldiers whose capture was the excuse for Israel’s knee-jerk attack are still in the hands of Hezbollah and the organisation is as popular as it has ever been. The Lebanese are slowly beginning to rebuild their devastated country and international peacekeeping forces are deploying, but there is no guarantee that by the time these words see print new hostilities will have not erupted.

Some may have hoped that the defeat would shock the Israeli public into questioning their successive governments’ path of warfare and unilateralism in lieu of a peace process, the pervasive ‘there is no partner’ mantra and the military’s firm grip over the political agenda. Unfortunately, such questioning does not seem to be forthcoming. Instead, a protest movement of reservists has taken life, in a move that eerily resembles the situation in Germany in 1918. Their protest does not question the government’s decision to go to war or the broader context of the conflict, but rather focuses on how the war was conducted: on the army’s unpreparedness for battle – lack of supplies and ammunition, irrational orders and misguided operations – and on the fact that it was ended when it was, while a few more days of ground-force advancement would have (presumably) given Israel its missed victory.

Amid unheeded demands for the resignation of the Prime Minister, Defence Minister and Chief of Staff, and for the establishment of a judicial committee of inquiry, the protest movement expresses acute indignation over the shattering of collective myths – an invincible army, an unassailable home-front, a country that always prevails. Underlying this is a surge of proto-fascist sentiments, abetted by the behind-the-scenes involvement of rightist settler forces in the protest movement. The defeat is blamed on the erosion of Israelis’ public virtue and moral fabric – their republican spirit of commitment and of sacrifice for the common good – all because of ‘the elites’, ‘liberal academics’, ‘decadent party-goers’ and ‘the nouveau-riche’. The wish for a strong leader that will put the country in order and suppress unpatriotic elements is palpable, and it is no alarmism to expect that a present or as-yet-unknown figurehead of the populist right will step into the vacuum, sending the country into an unstoppable downward spiral towards authoritarianism at home and a reckless permanent war regionally.

There is no question that the moral fabric of Israeli society has been drastically eroded, but laying the blame on the hedonists and peaceniks only distracts attention from the real source. What moral fabric could possibly remain when one people occupies another for forty years? When innocent civilians, sometimes entire families, are regularly killed in ‘surgical operations’ in the West Bank and Gaza? When the lives and livelihoods of millions are at the mercy of sergeants at checkpoints, privates at roadblocks and bureaucrats in air-conditioned offices? Is it any surprise that an army which has become a bullying police force over an occupied civilian population – checking IDs, arresting people in their bedrooms, chasing children in refugee camps and demolishing homes by the thousands – would find itself unprepared for a confrontation with a streamlined, well-equipped and highly-motivated guerrilla force on the latter’s home soil?

Meanwhile, deep gloom has also enveloped the Israeli radical left (including the anarchists), the only constituency in Israel that opposed the war from the beginning. It has been frustrating that the mainstream media, locally and internationally, failed to include anything about the active opposition to the war within Israel. The day after the war started, over a thousand peace activists took to the streets in Tel-Aviv in a protest that ended in arrests and police brutality. A week later over five thousand participated in an anti-war march calling for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations. Twelve Israeli activists were arrested for blockading an air-force base at the height of the war.

But the battle raged on in Lebanon, and this clearly gave the police and border patrols a carte blanche for repression. The most harrowing experiences were on 10-11 August. On the Thursday, the organisers of the World Pride parade called for a vigil against homophobia in lieu of the parade they had planned, which had been cancelled – falling victim to the war and to the homophobic incitement of ultra-orthodox Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders and the far right, who formed an unholy alliance to oppose it. The one small glimmer of hope in all of this is that Queeruption 9, an international celebration of queer DIY culture, still went ahead in Tel Aviv, with almost a hundred people attending from all over the world. Queeruption also formed a significant chunk of the vigil against homophobia, and with flags from other countries waving, someone brought out a Lebanese flag and whole event started to become a spontaneous anti-war demo. The police immediately declared the vigil ‘illegal’ and all of a sudden we were surrounded by cops and being beaten. The mainstream gay community fled: it later condemned the actions of ‘a small group of anarchists who had hijacked the event’.

Friday, at the weekly protest against the Wall being built in Bil’in in Palestine, the police fired rubber bullets on the large crowd of over 250 Israelis, Palestinians and internationals even before the demo began, which resulted in four serious injuries, including to an Israeli lawyer, who was shot in the head at close range and is in serious condition. He has survived, thankfully without brain damage, but could easily have been killed. Many other people were beaten, some seriously, including a Danish woman who was hit in the head with a rifle butt. This was a far more brutal response than usual. There is definitely a hardening of feeling within Israel, that ‘you are either with us or you are against us’, and whilst Israeli Leftists have always been treated with derision and hostility, it now seems that political dissent warrants a bullet in the head. For many of us, even the most hardened macho Israeli activists, these events mark a new low.

I’m also sorry to hear from Jewish friends overseas that they have not felt able to participate in anti-war demonstrations because they didn’t want to march alongside Hezbollah flags, and am horrified by the directly linked rise in anti-semitism – from the firebombing of a synagogue in New Zealand to the murder of a Jewish woman in Seattle – no less than I am horrified by the language of racist hatred and ignorance that fills Israelis’ discourse about their Arab neighbours right now.

It feels like everything we’ve been working for, all the bridges we’ve built and all our dreams of finding a way for all the peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean to live together in a just peace are fading fast. The war with Lebanon has caused irreparable damage that will take generations to heal. It’s hard to accept that we’ve hurled our energy into the peace movement, trying to put some good energy out there, and in return have been overwhelmed by all the bad energy and evil that is out there in the world. Not only do we no longer feel safe, with the very real threat of further violence, but we no longer feel able to communicate with the majority of Israelis, who seem to have fallen back to a default position of macho patriotism and the dark collective trauma around the imminent annihilation of the Jewish people and the Israeli state – which they can only be hastening rather than abating. The emotional and spiritual attachment we feel to the place and to each other only makes this all the more heartbreaking.

Whilst clearly the Israeli army has responded with overwhelming aggression to Hezbollah provocation, I have to fight not to see this issue as simply one of black and white/good and evil. Everyone suffers in war, whether physically or psychologically. I can’t help feeling that we are being swept up in the narrative of the much broader ideological battle, either as cast by the US administration’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ rhetoric, or by the imperial Islamic narrative of Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah. Israeli, Lebanese and Palestinian civilians are suffering so that Iran and US politicians can continue their proxy war of words and weapons, and so that the Israeli and Hezbollah generals can show off their shiny new toys.

The path towards a peaceful and progressive life in this region that we actively advocate has to be paved by joint struggle, shared values, compassion and non-violence – not the hateful racism that dominates the discourse on both sides around the Lebanon war, both within the region and worldwide. Can we overcome this stage in the conflict? Will the Israeli public ever awaken to a new path and call its leaders to task for their peace rejectionism and bullying mentality? Or will it be business as usual until an all-out war breaks out, involving not only Israel and Lebanon but Syria, Iran and the US, plummeting the region into unprecedented bloodshed, to say nothing of the looming shadow of nuclear destruction? It is very difficult to be optimistic these days. All we can do is hang on, and keep looking for those momentary glimmers of hope that make life and struggle bearable in this orphaned, unholy land.