- Contrary to appearances, the elections
this week are important, because they will expose the true face of Israeli
society and its hidden ambitions. More than 100 elected candidates will
be sent to the Knesset on the basis of one ticket - the racism ticket.
If we used to think that every two Israelis have three opinions, now it
will be evident that nearly every Israeli has one opinion - racism. Elections
2006 will make this much clearer than ever before. An absolute majority
of the MKs in the 17th Knesset will hold a position based on a lie: that
Israel does not have a partner for peace. An absolute majority of MKs in
the next Knesset do not believe in peace, nor do they even want it - just
like their voters - and worse than that, don't regard Palestinians as equal
human beings. Racism has never had so many open supporters. It's the real
hit of this election campaign.
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- One does not have to be Avigdor Lieberman
to be a racist. The "peace" proposed by Ehud Olmert is no less
racist. Lieberman wants to distance them from our borders, Olmert and his
ilk want to distance them from our consciousness. Nobody is speaking about
peace with them, nobody really wants it. Only one ambition unites everyone
- to get rid of them, one way or another. Transfer or wall, "disengagement"
or "convergence" - the point is that they should get out of our
sight. The only game in town, the 'unilateral arrangement," is not
only based on the lie that there is no partner, is not only based exclusively
on our "needs" because of a sense of superiority, but also leads
to a dangerous pattern of behavior that totally ignores the existence of
the other nation.
-
- The problem is that this feeling is based
entirely on an illusory assumption. The Palestinians are here, just like
us. They will, therefore, be forced to continue to remind us of their existence
in the one way they and we both know, through violence and terror.
-
- This gloomy chapter in the history of
Israel began at Camp David, when Ehud Barak succeeded in planting the untruth
that there is nobody to talk to on the Palestinian side, that we offered
them the sky and they responded with violence. Then came the major terror
attacks and Israeli society withdrew into a sickness of apathy never before
known to it.
-
- While it used to demonstrate complete
indifference toward Palestinian suffering, that apathy spread and intensified
to include weak Israelis - Arabs, the poor, the ailing. From that aspect
the current election campaign, more boring than ever, seems almost like
an expression of the state of public caring. Nothing can awaken the Israelis
from their coma - not the imprisonment of the nation next door, not the
killing and destruction that we sow in their society and not the suffering
of the weak among us.
-
- Who would have believed that, in Israel
of 2006, the killing of an 8-year-old girl at short range, as happened
last week in Yamoun, would barely be mentioned; that the ruthless attempt
to expel an Ethiopian with AIDS who is married to an Israeli, just because
he is not Jewish, would not raise hue and cry; and that the results of
a poll showing that a majority of Israelis - 68 percent - don't want to
live next to an Arab, did not raise a stink. If in 1981, tomatoes were
being thrown at Shimon Peres and in 1995, there was incitement against
Yitzhak Rabin, now there are no tomatoes, no incitement and not even any
election rallies.
-
- Nothing can get the Israelis out to the
streets, nothing can enrage them. An election without involvement and interest
is more dangerous to democracy than any tomato. It is a demonstration of
apathy and indifference, which the regime can exploit to do whatever it
wants. The fact that there are no real differences between the three main
parties, with this one saying nearly the entire country is mine, and that
one saying nearly the entire country is mine, is bad news for democracy.
-
- The coming elections have been decided
already. A massive majority will cast its vote for the racist arrangement
that ignores the Palestinians, as proposed by Kadima, Likud and, to a large
extent, Labor. None of them tried to propose a just peace; their leaders
never said a word about the war crimes and suffering caused by Israel.
They'll be joined by the extreme right and the ultra-Orthodox, and there
you have it: a nation in which racism is the real common denominator uniting
us all. Nearly everyone will say no to peace, yes to the continuing occupation
(even if it is in new camouflage) and yes to the total focusing on ourselves.
-
- Morality has become a dirty word, and
the worst corruption in the country's history, the occupation, was never
mentioned. Only one-sided maps, similar to one another, all including the
humongous "settlement blocs," a withdrawal based on "our
needs," with a separation wall and the frightening air of indifference
hovering above it all.
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