- "WHY DON'T the masses stream to the square here,
too, and throw Bibi out?" my taxi driver exclaimed when we were passing
Rabin Square. The wide expanse was almost empty, with only a few mothers
and their children enjoying the mild winter sun.
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- The masses will not stream to the square, and Binyamin
Netanyahu can be thrown out only through the ballot box.
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- If this does not happen, Israelis can blame nobody but
themselves.
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- If the Israeli Left is unable to bring together a serious
political force, which can put Israel on the road to peace and social justice,
it has only itself to blame.
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- We have no bloodthirsty dictator whom we can hold responsible.
No crazy tyrant will order his air force to bomb us if we demand his ouster.
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- Once there was a story making the rounds: Ariel Sharon
then still a general in the army assembles the officer corps
and tells them: "Comrades, tonight we shall carry out a military coup!"
All the assembled officers break out in thunderous laughter.
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- DEMOCRACY IS like air one feels it only when it
is not there. Only a person who is suffocating knows how essential it is.
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- The taxi driver who spoke so freely about kicking Netanyahu
out did not fear that I might be an agent of the secret police, and that
in the small hours of the morning there would be a knock on his door.
I am writing whatever comes into my head and don't walk around with bodyguards.
And if we did decide to gather in the square, nobody would prevent us from
doing so, and the police might even protect us.
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- (I am speaking, of course, about Israel within its sovereign
borders. None of this applies to the occupied Palestinian territories.)
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- We live in a democracy, breathe democracy, without even
being conscious of it. For us It feels natural, we take it for granted.
That's why people often give silly answers to public opinion pollsters,
and these draw the dramatic conclusion that the majority of Israeli citizens
despise democracy and are ready to give it up. Most of those asked have
never lived under a regime in which a woman must fear that her husband
will not come home from work because he made a joke about the Supreme Leader,
or that her son might disappear because he drew some graffiti on the wall.
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- The Knesset members who were chosen in democratic elections
spend their time in a game of who can draw up the most atrocious racist
bill. They resemble children pulling off the wings of flies, without understanding
what they are doing.
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- To all these I have one piece of advice: look at what
is happening in Libya.
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- DURING THE whole week I spent every spare moment glued
to Aljazeera.
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- One word about the station: excellent.
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- It need not fear comparison with any broadcaster in the
world, including the BBC and CNN. Not to mention our own stations, which
serve a murky brew concocted from propaganda, information and entertainment.
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- Much has been said about the part played by the social
networks, like Facebook and Twitter, in the revolutions that are now turning
the Arab world upside down. But for sheer influence, Aljazeera trumps them
all. During the last decade, it has changed the Arab world beyond recognition.
In the last few weeks, it has wrought miracles.
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- To see the events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and the other
countries on Israeli, American or German TV is like kissing through a handkerchief.
To see them on Aljazeera is to feel the real thing.
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- All my adult life I have advocated involved journalism.
I have tried to teach generations of journalists not to become reporting
robots, but human beings with a conscience who see their mission in promoting
the basic human values. Aljazeera is doing just that. And how!
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- These last weeks, tens of millions of Arabs have depended
on this station in order to find out what is happening in their own countries,
indeed in their home towns what is happening on Habib Bourguiba Boulevard
in Tunis, in Tahrir Square in Cairo, in the streets of Benghazi and Tripoli.
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- I know that many Israelis will consider these words heretical,
given Aljazeera's staunch support of the Palestinian cause. It is seen
here as the arch-enemy, no less than Osama bin Laden or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
But one simply must view its broadcasts, to have any hope of understanding
what is happening in the Arab world, including the occupied Palestinian
territories.
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- When Aljazeera covers a war or a revolution in the Arab
world, it covers it. Not for an hour or two, but for 24 hours around the
clock. The pictures are engraved in one's memory, the testimonies stir
one's emotions. The impact on Arab viewers is almost hypnotic.
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- MUAMMAR QADDAFI was shown on Aljazeera as he really is
an unbalanced megalomaniac who has lost touch with reality. Not in
short news clips, but for hours and hours of continuous broadcasts, in
which the rambling speech he recently gave was shown again and again, with
the addition of dozens of testimonies and opinions from Libyans of all
sectors from the air force officers who defected to Malta to ordinary
citizens in bombed Tripoli.
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- At the beginning of his speech, Qaddafi (whose name is
pronounced Qazzafi, whence the slogan "Ya Qazzafi, Ya Qazzabi"
Oh Qazzafi, Oh Liar) reminded me of Nicolae Ceausescu and his famous
last speech from the balcony, which was interrupted by the masses. But
as the speech went on, Qaddafi reminded me more and more of Adolf Hitler
in his last days, when he pored over the map with his remaining generals,
maneuvering armies which had already ceased to exist and planning grandiose
"operations", with the Red Army already within a few hundred
yards from his bunker.
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- If Qaddafi were not planning to slaughter his own people,
it could have been grotesque or sad. But as it was, it was only monstrous.
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- While he was talking, the rebels were taking control
of towns whose names are still engraved in the memories of Israelis of
my generation. In World War II, these places were the arena of the British,
German and Italian armies, which captured and lost them turn by turn. We
followed the actions anxiously, because a British defeat would have brought
the Wehrmacht to our country, with Adolf Eichmann in its wake. Names like
Benghazi, Tobruk and Derna still resound in my ear the more so because
my brother fought there as a British commando, before being transferred
to the Ethiopian campaign, where he lost his life.
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- BEFORE QADDAFI lost his mind completely, he voiced an
idea that sounded crazy, but which should give us food for thought.
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- Under the influence of the victory of the non-violent
masses in Egypt, and before the earthquake had reached him too, Qaddafi
proposed putting the masses of Palestinian refugees on ships and sending
them to the shores of Israel.
-
- I would advise Binyamin Netanyahu to take this possibility
very seriously. What will happen if masses of Palestinians learn from the
experience of their brothers and sisters in half a dozen Arab countries
and conclude that the "armed struggle" leads nowhere, and that
they should adopt the tactics of non-violent mass action?
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- What will happen if hundreds of thousands of Palestinians
march one day to the Separation Wall and pull it down? What if a quarter
of a million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon gather on our Northern border?
What if masses of people assemble in Manara Square in Ramallah and Town
Hall Square in Nablus and confront the Israeli troops? All this before
the cameras of Aljazeera, accompanied by Facebook and Twitter, with the
entire world looking on with bated breath?
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- Until now, the answer was simple: if necessary, we shall
use live fire, helicopter gunships and tank cannon. No more nonsense.
-
- But now the Palestinian youth, too, has seen that it
is possible to face live fire, that Qaddafi's fighter planes did not put
an end to the uprising, that Pearl Square in Bahrain did not empty when
the king's soldiers opened fire. This lesson will not be forgotten.
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- Perhaps this will not happen tomorrow or the day after.
But it most certainly will happen unless we make peace while we still
can.
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