Something Is Moving

I once saw in a Western a Red Indian (or should I say a Native American?)putting his ear to the ground and hearing a train tens of miles away.

In the course of the years I have tried to imitate that Indian. I try to hearchanges in the public mood long before they appear on the surface. Not toprophesy, not to guess, just to hear.

Now I perceive the approach of a great wave of opposition to the bloody waragainst the Palestinians (nicknamed "Peace of the Settlements, followingthe name given to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, "Peace of Galilee").The revolt of the soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied Palestinianterritories is an important symptom, one of many.

We have seen in the past several such public upheavals, that start withopaque noises and grow quickly into a public uproar. Such a wave rose during theLavon affair in the 50s and led to the dismissal of Ben-Gurion. Such a wavecarried Moshe Dayan into the Defense Ministry on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War(led by the women nicknamed "the Merry Women of Windsor"), and thenext one, which swept him and Golda Meir away after the Yom Kippur war. Such awave got the IDF out of Beirut, and later out of South Lebanon (led by the"Four Mothers" movement.)

The mechanism can be compared to a transmission of spiked wheels. A smallwheel with a strong, independent drive turns a bigger wheel, which in turn movesan even bigger wheel, and so on, until all the establishment changes course.This is how it happens in Israel, this is how it happens in all democracies(see: Vietnam).

It always starts with a small group of committed people. They raise theirfeeble voice. The media ignore them, the politicians laugh at them ("atiny, marginal and vociferous group"), the respectable parties and theestablished old organizations crinkle their noses and distance themselves fromtheir "radical slogans".

But slowly they start to have an impact. People leave the respectable(meaning linked to the establishment) organizations and join the fightinggroups. This compels the leaders of the organizations to radicalize theirslogans and to join the wave. The message spreads throughout the parties.Politicians who want to be reelected adopt the new slogans."Important" journalists, serving as weathercocks, smell the change andadapt themselves in time to the new winds.

The famous anthropologist Margaret Mead said about this: "Never doubtthat a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." And the German philosopher,Arthur Schopenhauer, said: "All truth passes through three stages. First,it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted asself-evident."

Now it happens again. It is difficult to fix the exact moment when itstarted. Perhaps after the demolition of some 50 homes in the Rafah refugeecamp. Or at the mass-meeting called by Gush Shalom in Tel-Aviv, when ColonelYig'al Shochat, who had lost a leg in the Yom Kippur war, called upon hiscomrades, the airforce pilots, to refuse to execute orders that are manifestlyillegal, such as bombing Palestinian towns, and when the philosopher Adi Ophirproposed to open files on IDF officers who commit war crimes. Suddenly thepublic woke up to the possibility that war crimes are being committed in itsname. The mental block was broken, a public debate about war crimes, andconsequently about the occupation itself, began.

The announcement by 50 reserve officers and soldiers that they refuse toserve in the occupied territories broke a dam. The number of refuseniks grewquickly, the phenomenon shook the military-political establishment. For thefirst time, the leaders of the establishment saw in their nightmares thepossibility of a big uprising of soldiers who say: This is where we stop, wewill not go on. When public opinion polls showed that nearly a third of theJewish public supports the refuseniks, the panic grew. At the same time,hundreds of Israelis visited the besieged Yasser Arafat in Ramallah.

Then came the big, joint demonstration of the militant peace movements("The Occupation Kills All Of Us!") in Tel-Aviv's Museum Square.Organizations that had got used during the last 16 months to demonstrations of ahundred, two hundred people saw before them ten thousand enthusiasticdemonstrators, who have left despair behind them and were demanding action.

This demonstration had, of course, an impact on the "establishedleft", which is now compelled to confront the new mood of their own public.

This is the beginning of a process. Nobody can know yet how powerful it willbecome and how far it will go. But one thing is certain: something is happening.