A Judicial Document

THE MOST important sentence written in Israel this week was lost in thegeneral tumult of exciting events.

Really exciting: In a final act of villainy, typical of his whole tenure asPrime Minister, Ehud Olmert abandoned the captive soldier, Gilad Shalit.

Ehud Barak decided that the Labor Party must join the ultra-right government,which includes outright fascists.

And this, too: the former President of Israel was officially indicted forrape.

In this cacophony, who would pay any attention to a sentence written bylawyers in a document submitted to the Supreme Court?

THE JUDICIAL debate concerns one of the most revolting laws ever enacted inIsrael.

It says that the wife of an Israeli citizen is not allowed to join him inIsrael if she is living in the occupied Palestinian territories or in a "hostile"Arab country.

The Arab citizens of Israel belong to Hamulas (clans) which extend beyond theborders of the state. Arabs generally marry within the Hamula. This is anancient custom, deeply rooted in their culture, probably originating in thedesire to keep the family property together. In the Bible, Isaac married hiscousin, Rebecca.

The "Green Line", which was fixed arbitrarily by the events of the 1948war, divides families. One village found itself in Israel, the next remainedoutside the new state, the Hamula lives in both. The Nakba also created a largePalestinian Diaspora.

A male Arab citizen in Israel who desires to marry a woman of his Hamula willoften find her in the West Bank or in a refugee camp in Lebanon or Syria. Thewoman will generally join her husband and be taken in by his family. In theory,her husband could join her in Ramallah, but the standard of living there is muchlower, and all his life – family, work, studies – is centered in Israel.Because of the large difference in the standard of living, a man in the occupiedterritories who marries a woman in Israel will also usually join her and receiveIsraeli citizenship, leaving behind his former life.

It is hard to know how many Palestinians, male and female, have come toIsrael during the 41 years of occupation and become Israeli citizens this way.One government office speaks of twenty thousand, another of more than a hundredthousand. Whatever the number, the Knesset has enacted an (officially "temporary")law to put an end to this movement.

As usual with us, the pretext was security. After all, the Arabs who arenaturalized in Israel could be "terrorists". True, no statistics have everbeen published about such cases – if there are any – but since when did a"security" assertion need evidence to prove it?

Behind the security argument there lurks, of course, a demographic demon. TheArabs now constitute about 20% of Israel’s citizens. If the country were to beswamped by a flood of Arab brides and bridegrooms, this percentage might rise to– God forbid! – 22%. How would the "Jewish State" look then?

The matter came before the Supreme Court, The petitioners, Jews and Arabs,argued that this measure contradicts our Basic Laws (our substitute for anonexistent constitution) which guarantee the equality of all citizens. Theanswer of the Ministry of Justice lawyers let the cat out of the bag. Itasserts, for the first time, in unequivocal language, that:

"The State of Israel is at war with the Palestinian people, people againstpeople, collective against collective."

ONE SHOULD read this sentence several times to appreciate its full impact.This is not a phrase escaping from the mouth of a campaigning politician anddisappearing with his breath, but a sentence written by cautious lawyerscarefully weighing every letter.

If we are at war with "the Palestinian people", this means that everyPalestinian, wherever he or she may be, is an enemy. That includes theinhabitants of the occupied territories, the refugees scattered throughout theworld as well as the Arab citizens of Israel proper. A mason in Taibeh, Israel,a farmer near Nablus in the West Bank, a policeman of the Palestinian Authorityin Jenin, a Hamas fighter in Gaza, a girl in a school in the Mia Mia refugeecamp near Sidon, Lebanon, a naturalized American shopkeeper in New York – "collectiveagainst collective".

Of course, the lawyers did not invent this principle. It has been acceptedfor a long time in daily life, and all arms of the government act accordingly.The army averts its eyes when an "illegal" outpost is established in theWest Bank on the land of Palestinians, and sends soldiers to protect theinvaders. Israeli courts customarily impose harsher sentences on Arab defendantsthan on Jews guilty of the same offense. The soldiers of an army unit orderT-shirts showing a pregnant Arab woman with a rifle trained on her belly and thewords "1 shot, 2 kills" (as exposed in Haaretz this week).

THESE ANONYMOUS lawyers should perhaps be thanked for daring to formulate ina judicial document the reality that had previously been hidden in a thousanddifferent ways.

The simple reality is that 127 years after the beginning of the first Jewishwave of immigration, 112 years after the founding of the Zionist movement, 61years after the establishment of the State of Israel, 41 years after thebeginning of the occupation, the Israeli-Palestinian war continues along all thefront lines with undiminished vigor.

The inherent aim of the Zionist enterprise was and is to turn the country –at least up to the Jordan River – into a homogeneous Jewish state. Throughoutthe course of Zionist-Israeli history, this aim has not been forsaken for amoment. Every cell of the Israeli organism contains this genetic code andtherefore acts accordingly, without the need for a specific directive.

In my mind I see this process as the urge of a river to reach the sea. Ariver yearning for the sea does not recognize any law, except for the law ofgravity. If the terrain allows it, it will flow in a straight course, if not –it will cut a new riverbed, twist like a snake, turn right and left, go aroundobstacles. If necessary, it will split into rivulets. From time to time, newbrooks will join it. And every minute it will strive to reach the sea.

The Palestinian people, of course, oppose this process. They refuse to budge,set up dams, try to push the stream back. True, for more than a hundred yearsthey have been on the retreat, but they have never surrendered. They continue toresist with the same persistence as the advancing river.

ALL THIS has been associated, on the Israeli side, with an obstinate denial,using a thousand and one guises, pretexts, self-serving slogans andsanctimonious untruths. But from time to time an unexpected flash of light showswhat is really going on.

That happened this week, when one of the pre-military preparatory schools,set up to educate future officers, convened a meeting of alumni, most of them onactive service or in the reserves, and encouraged them to speak freely abouttheir experiences. Since many of them had just returned from the Gaza War, andthe things were burning in their bones (as the Hebrew expression goes), shockingdetails were disclosed. These quickly found their way to the media and werepublished at length in newspapers and on television.

To the readers of this column they would not come as a surprise. I havewritten about them before, e.g. in my article "Black Flag" (January 31,2009). Amira Hass and Gideon Levy have collected eye-witness reports from Gazainhabitants, telling much the same stories. But there is a difference: this timethe facts are disclosed by the soldiers themselves, those who took part in theevents or saw them with their own eyes.

The army was Shocked. Surprised. Revolted. The official Army Liar, who bearsthe title of Army Spokesperson, had previously denied anything of the kind. Nowhe promises that the army will investigate every incident "as the case mayrequire". The Military Advocate General ordered the investigative arm of themilitary police to open an inquiry. Since the same Advocate General bragged inthe past that his officers had been embedded throughout the war in everyfront-line command post, one would have to be more than naïve to take hisstatement seriously.

One can rely on the army to ensure that nothing tangible emerges from theinvestigation. An army investigating itself – like any institutioninvestigating itself – is a farce. In this case it is even more than farcical,since the soldiers must testify under the eyes of their commanders, while theircomrades are listening. In the alumni meeting, they spoke freely, believing thatonly those present would hear. Even so, they needed a lot of courage to speakout. And since each of them could speak only about what had happened in hisimmediate vicinity, only a few cases were brought up. The army intends toinvestigate only those.

But the picture is far wider. We have heard about many cases of the samekind, and they clearly were a widespread phenomenon. A woman and her childrenwere evicted by soldiers from their home in the middle of the fighting andimmediately afterwards shot dead at close range by other soldiers who had ordersto shoot everything that moved. Old people and children walking on open groundwere shot in cold blood by snipers who saw them clearly through their telescopicsights, who had orders that everybody moving should be considered a "terrorist".Homes were destroyed for no reason, simply because they were there. Belongingsinside apartments were vandalized just for fun, "because they belong to Arabs".Soldiers slit open sacks of food intended by UNO agencies for the hungrypopulation, because they "go to Arabs".

I know that such things happen in every war. A year after the 1948 war Iwrote a book about them called "The Other Side of the Coin". Every fightingarmy has its share of psychopaths, misfits and sadists, side by side with decentsoldiers. But even some of the normal soldiers may go berserk in battle, losetheir sense of right and wrong and conform to the "spirit of the unit", ifit is such.

Something has happened to our army. Its commanders never tire of calling it"the Most Moral Army in the World" and this has become a slogan like "Guinnessis Good For You". But what happened during the Gaza operation testifies to amassive deterioration.

This deterioration is a natural result of the definition of the war as usedin the document submitted to the Supreme Court. This document must arouse shockand condemnation and serve as a wake-up call for every person to whom the futureof Israel is dear.

This war must be ended. The river must be channeled into a different bed, sothat its waters will make the earth fertile - before we become irreversiblybestialized in our own eyes, and in the eyes of the world.