Ha’aretz 8 oktober

Permission to kill

By Yitzhak Laor

On Sunday, November 30, 1972, British paratroops attempted to

prevent a march for human rights in the Northern Ireland city of Derry

on the basis of a judicial order making the Catholic march illegal. That

Sunday ended in the massacre of 14 demonstrators. Bloody Sunday

will never be erased from the blood-drenched history of the

Anglo-Irish struggle. The British are still studying the events that took

place that day in Derry's working-class neighborhoods.The massacre

of Palestinians in recent days will be with us for many years, not only

because it won the full backing of the media - Israel Television led the

favorable coverage, but the entire Israeli press followed in the

footsteps of the holiday-eve television reports. The old instincts came

into play: criticism of the Israel Defense Forces is prohibited, because

the IDF - God - acted this time as well.

The IDF did not defend Israel. Israel was not in danger. Permission to

kill has become "self-evident" even when it comes to defending the

thorn-in-the-side settlement of Netzarim. It is permissible to kill a

child in the arms of his father and to afterward deny that killing

"because he had no reason to be there." It is permissible to shoot

missiles at demonstrators, because at stake is not just defense of the

state or its citizens, but a "principle": one does not surrender to

violence. It is permissible to use violence to make others surrender.

And as usual, in summing up the entire event, human life is important

only when the human is not Arab.

The Israeli "self-evident" proposition worked overtime. The masses of

Palestinian demonstrators had the privilege to be shot at with live

ammunition and earned strong denunciations from the entire Israeli

media. "What can you do?" as if it were self-evident that live

ammunition be used to end such a struggle, as if it were obvious that

"we are all united" in demanding those liters of blood.

In exactly the same way, the closure of roads from Lake Kinneret to

the center of the country gave the right to treat the country's Arab

citizens as if they were children in the heart of the colonial wilderness

of the end of the 19th century, as if we had not seen the television

footage of truck and taxi drivers in Europe blocking roads on the

Continent to the point of totally paralyzing the economy, without a

single shot being fired. The press and the establishment stood up for

the "policeman of the Arabs," Police Major-General Alik Ron. In any

civilized country he would have been forced out long ago, if only for

his racist statements about the mayor of Umm al Fahm and head of

the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, Sheikh Ra'ed Salah:

"Sheikh Ra'ed has a fertile, Middle Eastern imagination."

But one can look for the background to the great massacre of these

terrible Days of Awe in the place where the great silence of the media

and the academic establishment can always be found: the main thing is

who is governing us when such things occur. If Benjamin Netanyahu

were prime minister now, we would have already heard cries to the

heavens, or at least some tough questions. This war is being waged by

the government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak, "our" government, of

"the left." And so, for the sake of peace of course, since after all

everything is for the sake of peace, everything is permitted.

The signal was given and the ground prepared for this horror after the

collapse of the Camp David talks. Out-and-out "doves" gave

interviews and wrote articles: Yasser Arafat, chairman of the

Palestinian Authority, betrayed them, Heaven forbid. They always

wanted peace, they paid a heavy price for peace, and now, when the

Palestinians could get from them the best peace that could be given to

them (that is, without quarreling with the settlers, without causing a

"rift within the people," without dissolving the coalition, without giving

up the "dreams of sanctity" that were born in the five historical minutes

that preceded the negotiations), Arafat - that is, the Palestinian people

- turns his back on them, the cooing doves, and listens to the yearning

of his hard-pressed people, without water or work, crowded

between bypass roads and sanctified settlements, because everyone

knows that "Beit El is the eyes of the country," or whatever organ it is

the latest trite metaphor.

How easy it is to beat your breast in contrition this Yom Kippur,

when the fist lands on the chest of your neighbor, Arafat or Ariel

Sharon. And you, your hands did not spill this blood, your hands did

not fire missiles at demonstrators, your voice did not denounce