YANAELEKEA KUGALAMBUKA? ARE THINGS CHANGING?

'Yes, we are now on the wrong side of history.'

By Uri Avnery – Israel

Of all the beautiful phrases in Barack Obama's inauguration speech, these are the

words that stuck in my mind: "You are on the wrong side of history."

He was talking about the tyrannical regimes of the world. But we, too, should ponder

these words. In the last few days I have heard a lot of declarations from Ehud Barak,

Tzipi Livni, Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Olmert. And every time, these eight words

came back to haunt me: "You are on the wrong side of history!"

Obama was speaking as a man of the 21st century. Our leaders speak the language

of the 19th century. They resemble the dinosaurs which once terrorized their

neighborhood and were quite unaware of the fact that their time had already passed.

During the rousing celebrations, again and again the multicolored patchwork of the

new president's family was mentioned. All the preceding 43 presidents were white

Protestants, except John Kennedy, who was a white Catholic. 38 of them were the

descendants of immigrants from the British isles . Of the other five, three were of

Dutch ancestry (Theodor and Franklin D. Roosevelt , as well as Martin van Buren)

and two of German descent (Herbert Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower.)

The face of Obama's family is quite different. The extended family includes whites

and the descendents of black slaves, Africans from Kenya , Indonesians, Chinese

from Canada , Christians, Muslims and even one Jew (a converted African-American).

The two first names of the president himself, Barack Hussein, are Arabic. This is

the face of the new American nation – a mixture of races, religions, countries of

origin and skin-colors, an open and diverse society, all of whose members are

supposed to be equal and to identify themselves with the "founding fathers". The

American Barack Hussein Obama, whose father was born in a Kenyan village, can

speak with pride of "George Washington, the father of our nation", of the "American

Revolution" (the war of independence against the British), and hold up the example

of "our ancestors", who include both the white pioneers and the black slaves who

"endured the lash of the whip". That is the perception of a modern nation, multi-

cultural and multi-racial: a person joins it by acquiring citizenship, and from this

moment on is the heir to all its history.

Israel is the product of the narrow nationalism of the 19th century, a nationalism

that was closed and exclusive, based on race and ethnic origin, blood and earth.

Israel is a "Jewish State", and a Jew is a person born Jewish or converted

according to Jewish religious law (Halakha). Like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia,

it is a state whose mental world is to a large extent conditioned by religion,

race and ethnic origin.

When Ehud Barak speaks about the future, he speaks the language of past

centuries, in terms of brute force and brutal threats, with armies providing the

solution to all problems. That was also the language of George W. Bush who

last week slinked out of Washington, a language that already sounds to the

Western ear like an echo from the distant past.The words of the new president

are ringing in the air: "Our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us

to do as we please." The key words were "humility and restraint".Our leaders

are now boasting about their part in the Gaza War, in which unbridled military

force was unleashed intentionally against a civilian population, men, women

and children, with the declared aim of "creating deterrence". In the era that

began last Tuesday, such expressions can only arouse shudders.

Between Israel and the United States a gap has opened this week, a narrow

gap, almost invisible – but it may widen into an abyss.The first signs are small.

In his inaugural speech, Obama proclaimed that "We are a nation of Christians

and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and nonbelievers." Since when? Since when

do the Muslims precede the Jews? What has happened to the "Judeo-Christian

Heritage"? (A completely false term to start with, since Judaism is much closer

to Islam than to Christianity. For example: neither Judaism nor Islam supports

the separation of religion and state.)

The very next morning, Obama phoned a number of Middle East leaders. He

decided to make a quite unique gesture: placing the first call to Mahmoud Abbas,

and only the next to Olmert. The Israeli media could not stomach that. Haaretz,

for example, consciously falsified the record by writing - not once but twice in

the same issue - that Obama had called "Olmert, Abbas, Mubarak and King

Abdallah" (in that order).

Instead of the group of American Jews who had been in charge of the Israeli-

Palestinian conflict during both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Obama,

on his very first day in office, appointed an Arab-American, George Mitchell,

whose mother had come to America from Lebanon at age 18, and who himself,

orphaned from his Irish father, was brought up in a Maronite Christian Lebanese

family.

These are not good tidings for the Israeli leaders. For the last 42 years, they

have pursued a policy of expansion, occupation and settlements in close

cooperation with Washington . They have relied on unlimited American support,

from the massive supply of money and arms to the use of the veto in the

Security Council. This support was essential to their policy. This support may

now be reaching its limits.

It will happen, of course, gradually. The pro-Israel lobby in Washington will

continue to put the fear of God into Congress. A huge ship like the United

States can change course only very slowly, in a gentle curve. But the turn-

around started already on the first day of the Obama administration. This could

not have happened, if America itself had not changed. That is not a political

change alone. It is a change in the world-view, in mental outlook, in values. A

certain American myth, which is very similar to the Zionist myth, has been

replaced by another American myth. Not by accident did Obama devote to this

so large a part of his speech (in which, by the way, there was not a single word

about the extermination of the Native Americans).The Gaza War, during which

tens of millions of Americans saw the horrible carnage in the Strip (even if

rigorous self-censorship cut out all but a tiny part), has hastened the process

of drifting apart. Israel , the brave little sister, the loyal ally in Bush's "War on

Terror", has turned into the violent Israel , the mad monster, which has no

compassion for women and children, the wounded and the sick. And when

winds like these are blowing, the Lobby loses height.

The leaders of official Israel do not notice it. They do not feel, as Obama put

it in another context, that "the ground has shifted beneath them". They think

that this is no more than a temporary political problem that can be set right

with the help of the Lobby and the servile members of Congress. Our leaders

are still intoxicated with war and drunk with violence. They have re-phrased

the famous saying of the Prussian general, Carl von Clausewitz into: "War is

but a continuation of an election campaign by other means." They compete

with each other with vainglorious swagger for their share of the "credit". Tzipi

Livni, who cannot compete with the men for the crown of warlord, tries to outdo

them in toughness, in bellicosity, in hard-heartedness.

The most brutal is Ehud Barak. Once I called him a "peace criminal", because

he brought aboutthe failure of the 2000 Camp David conference and shattered

the Israeli peace camp. Now I must call him a "war criminal", as the person who

planned the Gaza War knowing that it would murder masses of civilians. In his

own eyes, and in the eyes of a large section of the public, this is a military

operation which deserves all praise. His advisors also thought that it would bring

him success in the elections. The Labor party, which had been the largest party

in the Knesset for decades, had shrunk in the polls to 12, even 9 seats out of 120.

With the help of the Gaza atrocity it has now gone up to 16 or so. That's not a

landslide, and there's no guarantee that it will not sink again.

What was Barak's mistake? Very simply: every war helps the Right. War, by its

very nature, arouses in the population the most primitive emotions – hate and fear,

fear and hate. These are the emotions on which the Right has been riding for

centuries. Even when it's the "Left" that starts a war, it's still the Right that profits

from it. In a state of war, the population prefers an honest-to-goodness Rightist

to a phony Leftist.

This is happening to Barak for the second time. When, in 2000, he spread the

mantra "I have turned every stone on the way to peace, / I have made the

Palestinians unprecedented offers, / They have rejected everything, / There is no

one to talk with" - he succeeded not only in blowing the Left to smithereens, but

also in paving the way for the ascent of Ariel Sharon in the 2001 elections. Now

he is paving the way for Binyamin Netanyahu (hoping, quite openly, to become

his minister of defense). And not only for him. The real victor of the war is a man

who had no part in it at all: Avigdor Liberman. His party, which in any normal

country would be called fascist, is steadily rising in the polls. Why? Liberman

looks and sounds like an Israeli Mussolini, he is an unbridled Arab-hater, a man

of the most brutal force. Compared to him, even Netanyahu looks like a softie.

A large part of the young generation, nurtured on years of occupation, killing and

destruction, after two atrocious wars, considers him a worthy leader.

While the US has made a giant jump to the left, Israel is about to jump even

further to the right. Anyone who saw the millions milling around Washington on i

nauguration day knows that Obama was not speaking only for himself. He was

expressing the aspirations of his people, the Zeitgeist.Between the mental world

of Obama and the mental world of Liberman and Netanyahu there is no bridge.

Between Obama and Barak and Livni, too, there yawns an abyss. Post-election

Israel may find itself on a collision course with post-election America .

Where are the American Jews? The overwhelming majority of them voted for Obama.

They will be between the hammer and the anvil – between their government and

their natural adherence to Israel. It is reasonable to assume that this will exert

pressure from below on the "leaders" of American Jewry, who have incidentally

never been elected by anyone, and on organizations like AIPAC. The sturdy stick,

on which Israeli leaders are used to lean in times of trouble, may prove to be a

broken reed.

Europe, too, is not untouched by the new winds. True, at the end of the war we saw

the leaders of Europe – Sarkozy, Merkel, Browne and Zapatero – sitting like

schoolchildren behind a desk in class, respectfully listening to the most loathsome

arrogant posturing from Ehud Olmert, reciting his text after him. They seemed to

approve the atrocities of the war, speaking of the Qassams and forgetting about the

occupation, the blockade and the settlements. Probably they will not hang this picture

on their office walls. But during this war masses of Europeans poured into the streets

to demonstrate against the horrible events. The same masses saluted Obama on the

day of his inauguration.

This is the new world. Perhaps our leaders are now dreaming of the slogan:

"Stop the world, I want to get off!" But there is no other world.

Yes, we are now on the wrong side of history.

Fortunately, there is also another Israel . It is not in the limelight, and its voice is

heard only by those who listen out for it. This is a sane, r a tional Israel , with its

face to the future, to progress and peace. Inthese coming elections, its voice will

barely be heard, because all the old parties are standing with their two feet squarely

in the world of yesterday.But what has happened in the United States will have a

profound influence on what happens in Israel .The huge majority of Israelis know

that we cannot exist without close ties with theUS . Obama is now the leader of

the world, and we live in this world. When hepromises to work "aggressively" for

peace between us and the Palestinians, that is a marching order for us. We want

to be on the right side of history. That will take months or years, but I am sure

that we shall get there. The time to start is now.

- Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He contributed

this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

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