And Sharon is a success?
A Witness from the Past
Uri Avnery
September 14, 2002
"A person who died 1900 years ago was summoned
this week by Ariel Sharon to appear before his verbal
kangaroo court.
That, in itself, is not surprising. In Jewish
consciousness, there is no clear borderline between
past and present, as there is none between history and
myth. This may be the result of living outside history
for thousands of years. Anyhow, in all debates about
the future, Jews are used to involving figures from the
remote past.
Joseph ben-Mattathias, better known by his Roman
name Josephus Flavius, was the scion of a priestly
family in Jerusalem. With the outbreak of the Jewish
Rebellion against Rome, 66 AD, he was appointed
commander of the Galilee. When the Romans re-conquered
the region, he was holed up in the fortified town
Jotapata (Jodpat), but saved himself by resorting
to a clever device. The defenders of the town decided
to kill each other (as the defenders of Massada did
later) and fixed by lot who would kill whom. Joseph
managed to be the last one left alive, went over to the
Romans and became a court historian of the Emperor.
His book “The Jewish War” is the most important
report on the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of
the Jewish Temple – a traumatic event, that has left a
deep imprint on Jewish consciousness to this very day.
Every year, on the ninth day of the month Av, Jews
are bound to mourn the destruction of the Temple and
Israeli law forbids opening places of amusement. The
claim for Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount is
even now a major obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace.
A few days ago, on the first day of the Jewish New
Year, Ariel Sharon invited himself to a solemn interview
by two handpicked interviewers of the state-owned Kol
Israel radio. That was not difficult, because Sharon is
now the direct boss of all state-owned media.
(He achieved this by a small putsch: the Labor
minister who was in charge of these media was
persuaded to resign and accept a huge salary as the
director of a bank, which collapsed the next day.
Contrary to the coalition agreement, Sharon took the
portfolio for himself. Now he controls the state media
the way Stalin controlled his, with the same results.)
In the course of the interview, Sharon was asked
about the Gush Shalom activists who, as put by the
interviewer, are collecting material about IDF soldiers
with the intention of submitting it to the international
war-crimes court at The Hague.
This was obviously an invited question, since
Sharon had brought with him to the interview a
testimony for the prosecution: a quotation from
Josephus Flavius.
First, Sharon accused the Gush activists (including
myself) of treason and espionage in times of war.
According to him, we are collecting the names of IDF
officers and soldiers, in order to denounce them to the
“enemies of Israel”, namely the judges of the
International Criminal Court at The Hague. “No act is
more despicable than that,” he pronounced.
After claiming that the Gush activists want to sow
discord within our ranks, he read the long passage
from Josephus that he had brought with him: “They
(the defenders of Jerusalem) fought against each
other, and their actions delighted the besiegers.
Indeed, the evil that the Romans brought upon the city,
was not worse than the evil the defenders brought on
each other. After that, the fall of the city could not add
to the disaster. The calamities that befell the city
before its fall were so terrible, that one may say that
the quarrel conquered the city, and the Romans
conquered the quarrel, which was stronger than its
besieged walls.” (My translation.)
The trouble with this quotation is that it is quite
irrelevant, to say the least. The assistants who
prepared it for Sharon are, it seems, ignorant of
history.
First, nobody is besieging us. We are besieging the
Palestinians. In this story, we are the Romans and the
Palestinians are the Jews.
Second, the terrible civil war that broke out
inside the besieged city was not between those who
supported the rebellion and those who objected to it,
between extremists and moderates, or, in today’s
terms, between right and left. It broke out between the
Zealots themselves, or, to use today’s language again,
between the extreme right (Sharon) and the even-more-
extreme right (Effi Eitam and his ilk). The moderates,
those who argued that a war against the Roman Empire
was hopeless, were liquidated by the Zealots long
before that. The Rabins of those days were murdered,
one by one.
Third, the crazy Zealots did indeed kill each other
inside the besieged city, they destroyed the remaining
foodstuffs and demoralized the starving population.
But the city did not fall because of the quarrels inside
it. Even if the defenders had behaved in an exemplary
way and united like one man behind Sharon and Ben-
Eliezer (sorry, behind Jochanan of Giscala and Shimon
Bar-Giora), the Romans would have breached the walls.
Nobody was able to stop their immense military might
for long.
It was the Rebellion itself that was an act of
madness. The end of the Jewish commonwealth in
Palestine became inevitable when the Zealots took
control of it. The more so, since the Jews outside
Palestine – already numbering at that time two thirds of
the Jewish people – turned their backs on the rebels.
By the way, Sharon’s attack on Gush Shalom was so
important to his minions, they saw to it that it was
announced in five consecutive news broadcasts
throughout that morning. All his other statements in
the interview, such as the scoop about his forthcoming
visit to India and the session of the Palestinian
parliament, were ignored.
That may be a hint of what’s to come. Sharon plans
a full-fledged attack on Gush Shalom and all the
serious peace camp, in order to silence all criticism
and frighten other opponents into silence. His words
are not only designed to pressure the state prosecution
into putting the Gush activists on trial, but are also
a simple incitement to murder, very much like his
speeches on the eve of Rabin’s assassination.
What frightens Sharon so much? It seems that the
Gush Shalom activity causes many soldiers to think,
for the first time, about the possibility that certain
actions are not only immoral and sabotage all chances
for peace, but also violate Israeli and international law
and might constitute war crimes. After all, the great
majority of the soldiers are reasonable persons.
Sharon hears the echo. In order to silence the
message, he chooses to silence the messenger.
I believe that even Josephus Flavius will not help him
to achieve that." |
