Newsletter n° 124 – January 2024 – THIRTY YEARS ON

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Yocheved Lifshitz

Newsletter n° 124

January 2024

THIRTY YEARS ON

Thirty years I have been involved in continuous action against warfare, and for constructive coexistence. Since the summer of 1993, from Sarajevo and Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, to the civil war in Algeria, and then Israel & Palestine. On my birthday, October 22, 2000, I was in Ramallah, a rare foreigner there during the explosion of the Second Intifada. Ten days after two waylaid Israeli reservists in a civilian vehicle, Yossef Avrahami, a toys salesman, and Vadim Nurzhitz, a truckdriver, were taken to a police station, which was stormed by a raging mob, who lynched them to death.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Ramallah_lynching

That very night, October 22, 2000, I was taken away by two young men in jeans and leather jackets to a no-man’s land outside the heart of the city, a desolate place with unfinished construction, and I had no choice but to follow my captors into an empty building with no doors, no windows. They suspected I could be a zionist spy. I was fortunate enough to pass the test, and they sent a young boy to buy pita and hummus for a shared meal. I spent the night with them on foam mattresses on the floor in this bare flat without windows, and in the morning they drove me back to town. I realized, looking at mounts of dirt and rubble on the way out, that my destiny would have ended there had I not passed the audition.

That’s the way it goes, at those latitudes. Until October 7, it was rather all quiet though. Take a look at the Lifshitzs, before 2023, in front of their little cottage in Nir Oz, South-East of Gaza. Yocheved is the woman you see, in the upper corner, after her release from the Gaza tunnels. Oded, her husband, 84, is still detained down there.

Or take Masoud’s family, in Gaza, in their little garden, where he loves to grow aromatic plants and light a little fire, with his children around. Now his family has been displaced, along with one million others they say, to the South-West of Gaza, to a barren space without drinking water from the taps, without shelter, without any proper food. Where infants have passed away, due to the lack of food. It’s cold, windy and rainy now there.

All these people were happy before October 7. Happy and quiet.

• Why do you feel you have to tell us of these people in particular ?

Because I happen to know Masoud. In Amos Oz’s words, he is « an agreeable man, reflective, soft-spoken, a receptive listener ». An English teacher at university level, like my father, he is a good teacher, clear-headed, open-minded, and patient. I went to his classes at the Islamic University in Gaza, right in front of the UNRWA headquarters – his students like him, all strive to progress under his guidance. Nineteenth-century and twentieth-century English literature, from Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells to Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene, have few secrets for him. I admit I have a foible for English teachers. I see them as ambassadors of the universal mind – isn’t English the easiest language in the world ? Masoud also invited me in their Barcelona Park modern flat, and I felt comfortable there, quite at ease.

• What of the Lifshitz couple then ?

I have only been to Sderot, where I have friends that I care for, and to Kfar Aza, Nahal Oz, with Vivian Silver and her group of Women Wage Peace, by the Fence. As you will remember, Vivian, born in 1949, was burnt alive in her home in kibbutz Be’eri, five kilometers South of Nahal Oz, fifteen North of Nir Oz, where the Lifshitz lived. Note that Oded Lifshitz, born in 1940, defended Bedouins ; he was a journalist witnessing what happened in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982. With his wife Yocheved, they have four children. One of their grandsons, Daniel Lifshitz, a former goalkeeper, also is a peace activist, helping Palestinians from Gaza in need of medical transportation, driving them from the Erez Terminal to hospitals in Israel, where they could get the best proper care.

• Why focus more on Yocheved Lifshitz then, Oded’s wife, since she’s been released ?

Maybe because on the picture of her in hospital she reminds me so much of my mother, when she was hospitalized. And also because she came across Sinwar when she was detained in the Gaza tunnels, and she had the nerve to face him and speak her mind to him, without any fear.

« How can’t you be ashamed of yourself ? » she cried out. « To do such things to people who, for years, have upheld peace with you ? »

She says he remained silent, did not flinch. For he is not the flinching type.

2013 was the time I met him in Gaza, some twenty months after he had been relased in the Shalit deal, after spending twenty-two continuous years in Israeli jails. I met him not in a tunnel, but in a ministry, surrounded by people, ordinary people. He was fifty-one then. Intense and tense, a man of few words, with an overloaded agenda. I had the feeling of hugging a cold-hearted man, who would never smile, and who had no time to lose with me. He knew who I was and what I was about – our Experimental Bilingual Programme, approved by his government in 2006, to teach teenagers the codes of non-violent resistance and constructive coexistence, and that did not seem to match his priorities. I think I could tell the Lifshitz family why he was not ashamed of ordering the October 7 onslaught.

• Does that mean you consider terrorists as partners in dialogue ?

• How do you define your stand then ? What is your interest in this conflict ? Do you have family in Israel, or the Palestinian Territories ?

I just do not believe in the ancient creed of endless wars, unavoidable conflicts. My point-of-view is that of a stretcher bearer, a nurse, a surgeon : we have far enough loads of pain to carry in ordinary times, with obesity, diabetes, cancers, and what not, to afford any extra burden.

• What else about your encounter with Yahya Sinwar ?

As he’d been released after spending most of his adult life in jail, I expected to feel a sense of recovered freedom in him, but it was not the case. Escorted as he was, maybe by his younger brother, he was not a free man. But then, who in upper power circles is a free man ? And how can you be a « free man » when you live in an enclave, with the exit gates locked, blocked and controlled by both neighbours, the Israelis and the Egyptians – as none of them wants to have anything to do with the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a part. The Egyptians actually ban it, repress it, don’t they. Remember the Rabaa massacre in Egypt. August 14, 2013. A « zero-tolerance policy of dissent », according to Amnesty International. We always hear about Israel as the gatekeeper of Gazans in their « open-air prison » (in British PM Cameron’s words in 2010), but it is only fair to recall that this is a duo of gatekeepers, not just a solo.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/14/turning-point-what-happened-during-egypts-rabaa-massacre-10-years-ago

Looking for that Archimedean point, you come upon a recent inquiry into who exactly Yahya Sinwar is, documented by one of his interrogators when he was a prisoner in Israel, who insists he is « a very intelligent, charismatic person, with unusual leadership skills. »

https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/hyw00ksu00a    YNet News, January 6, 2024

You may wish to check into another inquest, the first interview ever given by Sinwar, well worth reading, by Francesca Borri, an Italian journalist working for La Repubblica :

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5364286,00.html   October 5, 2018

• What is your main concern, as of now, January 2024 ?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/13/world/middleeast/houthis-yemen-us-strikes-gaza.html

• Could he, Kobi, be prejudiced ?

It’s not just Kobi, but Dr Becker as well, who has his own angle, as a clinical criminologist and psychotherapist. “On the one hand, I don’t want to accuse an entire society, but on the other, beyond doubt, a society has developed in Gaza that is unrestrained and that sanctifies death and violence. » Adding, about Sinwar, « He’s a man with an extremist political and religious agenda that lead him do things that shock us, but that he regards as advancing his life-long cause. »

Concerning Michael Kobi, the man who dealt with both Yassin and Sinwar in Israeli jails, he states that they do go by the Hamas Covenant, and that the latter is widely taught in Gaza schools.

« Sinwar ensures that the covenant is taught in all schools in Gaza. »

As for Ahmed Yassin, during interrogations, « he wasn’t afraid to say that they would wipe us off the face of the earth – if not now, then in a decade’s time, and if not in a decade, then in a century. Ultimately, they would set up an Islamic state in the Middle East and after that, they’d make the whole world Islamic. »

• Revisiting Francesca Borri’s interview in May 2018, doesn’t it strike you, the sort of visionary warning that was emitted then by Sinwar: «I don't wish prison on anybody. But really anybody. Not even those who today—across that barbed wire—knock us down like bowling pins and laugh, and don't realize that they might end up in 25 years at the Hague. » It’s been a little over 5 years, not 25, and here we are, with South Africa making a case for genocide at the International Court of Justice in Haag.

Sadly, Mandela passed away ten years ago, and Archbishop Tutu departed in 2021. Their legacy seems to belong to the past century. The current South African stand has one merit though : it pushes one to find precedents as far as their present accusation goes.
History has recorded three genocides in the twentieth century :

The way Turks exterminated 77% of the Armenian population in 1915 – by their Grand Vizier’s own estimates. « The definitive solution to the Armenian Question » , in his own words, meant the massacre of one and a half million people, the deportation of the others, or their forced islamization.

Taking us to Rwanda, in 1994, where two thirds of the Tutsis were massacred by the Hutus and their militias – close to eight hundred thousand slaughtered in a hundred days, from April to mid-July. In the same time, « rape was the rule, systematic, and was used as a weapon », according to the UN special Rapporteur Degni-Segui, in his 1996 report on Rwanda.

Sickening as these forays into the history of our common humankind are, they remind us that we skate on very thin ice, as far as « civilization » goes, from Turkey to Europe and Africa, not even going further into the bloodbath of three million Vietnamese killed by the US, the million and a half victims of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the seventies, the genocide of the Native Americans by the Europeans in the 19th century, with its toll of some five million victims,  and closer to us, in 2014, the enslavement and massacres of the Yazidi and Christians, by Daesh, the Islamic State, in Syria.

• What do you make of the Hague ruling then, on January 26 ?

The first impression is that what we call « the international community » has double standards. When the Russians practised carpet bombing, « indiscriminate bombing », in Aleppo, Syria, for instance, in 2015, and killed around 20,000 people to « eradicate terrorism » and the Islamic State, a few NGOs worldwide protested, but nobody seemed to care. When the Americans and their allies, in the same period, recaptured Mosul, Iraq’s second city, from the blood-stained hands of Daesh, the Islamic State insurgents, they left 40,000 killed behind them, fast forgotten.

The second impression is that we are facing a new kind of awareness about the horrors of war on a massive scale. As if they did not watch the effects of war from the Netherlands, but from the moon. The Hague justices did not choose to order Israel to stop its operation though, as they could have.

Their ruling was based on the heavy destruction of houses and buildings in Gaza, and the blood-curdling losses of the Palestinian population in a hundred days, but, again, it stopped short of condemning Israel. It actually gave it licence to pursue its operation, with the warning it was being watched closely.

• How do you analyze the Resolution that was passed by the Security Council of the United Nations, prior to the Hague ruling, on December 22, 2023 ?

The document itself, Resolution 2720,  is composed of thirteen specific points, the majority of them concerned with the « protection of civilians and civil objects » and « humanitarian assistance » (1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 11) ; three of them being about the nomination of a « Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator » and the safety of UN personnel (4, 5, 6, 13) ; one, to « demand the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages » (7) ; and one reiterating an « unwavering commitment to the vision of the two-State solution » (12).

The Senior Coordinator has been appointed since, a Dutch citizen, Mrs Sigrid Kaag.

We wish her good luck.

Whether the Coordinator will have « the necessary personnel and equipment in Gaza » (6) remains to be seen. Truly hoping that this goodwill mission will not know the fate of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, August 2003, when a terror attack resulted in the death of 22 people, including the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello, thus terminating any prospects for the role of the U.N. in Iraq.

• How come you don’t ask for an immediate cease-fire, the way peace organizations have done, since you are one of them ?

« It is an easy thing » to bleat with the sheep and howl with the wolves – even the heads of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad demand a cease-fire. Like an abstract proposition, out of the blue, going nowhere fast. Then « the groan & the dolor are quite forgotten And the captive in chains & the poor in the prison & the soldier in the field », in William Blake’s words. As if one were some long gone Urizen, some celestial incarnation of reason and law, so high above, pretending to measure the terrestrial mess with perfect tools… or a would-be guru chanting for rain in the drought. « Stop war ! », « Time to stop the killing ! ». Etc. Even the Security Council of the United Nations and the Hague justices refrained from such vain incantations.

• What is your position then, as far as the cessation of war goes ?

It’s the conditions of possibility  of a « durable cessation of hostilities » – in U.N. parlance.

• Meaning ?

We need to check the exact chronology, from 2005 till now, from the evacuation of the Israeli settlers in Gaza till October 7, 2023, since the crux is Gaza. Double-check the Deaths preceding the (present) war again (above). 6,407 Palestinians killed, from January 1, 2008, to the summer of 2023 – along with 308 Israelis. Compute it with the number of rocket and mortar attacks at Israel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel

Isn’t it high time for the Gaza strategists to revise their vision of the future, conceiving what a win-win scenario could be, instead of the same stuttering lose-lose ?

• Are you taking sides then, blaming one against the other ?

I’d rather address the core of the issue, if there is one to be found.

Amos Oz, one of the most precise observers of the past century, has always brilliantly maintained that the problem is of Right vs Right, a conflict Between Right and Right (To cure a fanatic, Princeton University Press, 2006). Unfortunately, he passed by the end of 2018.

Wouldn’t he say now that it has tragically switched to Wrong vs Wrong ?

Remembering Yocheved Lifshitz’s outcry, facing Yahya Sinwar, in the dark, damp tunnels : How can’t you be ashamed of yourself ? But also remembering the endless hours in the morning of October 7, when the unarmed inhabitants of the communities around Gaza were left unprotected, helpless before their aggressors.

• What do you make of the endless feeling ?

There was this TIME magazine cover, back in 1988, conveying the feeling. Israel, since its birth, has had to confront six main wars, 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006, plus the two Intifadas (1987-1993 and 2000-2005), with the whole series of Gaza wars and operations : 2008-2009, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2021, 2023-2024 …/…

As for the Gaza children born around 2000, all they have known is bombings, rockets and missiles, drones and Apache helicopters.

The whole devastating chorus of Defiance and Crackdown. Begging out loud for a switch in visions, a shift in strategies. The way it happened in Ireland and the Basque homeland.

• How can you compare Ireland, the Basque homeland, and Palestine ?

Simply enough. Take this picture. From a video released on October 20, 2011. It shows three leaders of the ETA announcing at a press conference that their group, defined as a terrorist organization by the European Union, « has decided the definitive cessation of its armed activity ».

At the end of the video, they raise their fists, as a last-minute reflex, and conclude :

« It is time to look at the future with hope. It is also time to act with responsibility and courage. »    To act with responsibility and courage.

It took ETA six years from that point on to fully demilitarize. In April 2017 it handed in its last weapons, and in 2018 it went as far as to apologise to its victims, a few days before it formally and finally declared its dissolution.

• Are you daydreaming of the dissolution of Hamas and Islamic Jihad ?

It could be convenient to elaborate a modest version of « I have a dream », bearing in mind that yesterday’s dreamers have become todays’ elected leaders, Martin Luther King having morphed into Barak Obama. In the course of forty years.

Any way you look at it, we’re not talking about a dream here. Terror has no future in modern, solid societies. Regardless of the alibis it covers itself with. The Irish first, in Europe, and then the Basque, have shown the way. Have they reached their stated goals ? Not that we know of. Does that mean they have failed ? Undoubtedly, they have failed to convince people of their righteousness, of the adequacy of the means they resorted to.

In this uncompromising light, the choice for their operatives, as they’re also called, is twofold : either the Irish way, dump arms deliberately, by and by, of their own volition, or the Algerian way, a forceful eradication by military means. In Algeria, the civil war imposed by terror groups lasted ten years, and cost the nation its second profound scar in the span of forty years. In the end, terror as a « political » strategy disappeared. The Algerians, after choosing eradication of terror,  have more or less forgotten their Black Decade (1992-2002).

Call it Gandhi’s victory post mortem. Give it two generations, and you go the American way, get Obama, whether he was your candidate or not – or you go the Algerian way, and you get Bouteflika (with his plan then for a national reconciliation) and a violent end to all terror attacks.

• What of the Islamic context then ?

No Muslim state is willing to fund terror groups in 2024 – with two notable exceptions, Iran and Qatar. Look at it long enough, and find out that, paradoxically, the radical insurgents, from Algeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, to Palestine, have been working, actually, for the arms industry. Somehow, objectively speaking, Bin Laden and Zawahari, al Baghdadi, have been commercial agents for Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman Corporation.

Deif and Sinwar are good for Israel Military Industries (IMI) and Rafael (the National Armaments Development Authority) – and for all the companies involved in building walls and barriers, with their exponential load of sensors and surveillance devices.

• Is this part of a Wrong vs Wrong theory ?

What is dead wrong for people, for human beings, is so profitable for others – others with a vision of personal profit galore plus progress. Take the case of Smart Shooter, a small startup which has developed into a self-sustaining enterprise. Its CEO states clearly, « This is the finest hour of the defense industries », and it « would also be nice to be purchased for a billion dollars ».

2023 ? It’s been « the best year ever in Israel’s history », as far as exports go of weapons systems, with the war in Ukraine and now the war in Gaza. Registering unprecedented peaks in orders from all over the world – the US, the UK, Germany, India, the Netherlands… Reminding us that Israel ranks number nine among the world’s largest arms exporters, with a record of 831 million (Trend Indicator Value). In between Poland (452) and Spain (950). Still far behind the UK (1,504), Germany (1,510), Italy (1,825), and China (2,017). Lagging behind the three giants : Russia (2,820), small France (3,021), and the usual winner, the US, so high above the pack of competitors (14,515).

This is no confidential information – the latest Top Ten (2022) can be found at SIPRI’s (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) and with Wikipedia. The Smart Shooter CEO’s world vision can be read from Ynet News, December 23, 2023, and she does have a point or two about minimizing the risk for soldiers on the field, deterring instead of killing, and « ensuring that innocent civilians remain unharmed ».

https://www.ynetnews.com/business/article/hkpuon4pp?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=internal

• What is the rationale of the Nobel Call you support, « For the Release of Hostages and a Durable Cessation of Hostilities » ?

We’ve heard of a « suicidal drive » by Deif & the Sinwar brothers, the military quintette in Gaza. Their original plan for October 7 must have been brilliant (to breach through the border in some twenty points, neutralize all cameras and sensors with explosive drones, launch attackers in paragliders over the Wall) – admittedly well conceived and executed, taking the enemy by surprise, but the follow-up was a disaster, for lack of well-disciplined troops, and letting just about any potential criminal rush through the breaches. More than this, the unforgivable part was, from the start, giving the order to kill as many people, civilians included, as they could, and kidnap the rest in numbers, men, women, infants, of all ages.

The rationale of this Nobel Call is in the same spirit as the Nobel Call for Algeria, in 1998.

We are human beings – wherever. I MI SMO LJUDI was the password in Middle Bosnia. I mi smo : We are… Ljudi : Human beings.

We are the members of the same human species – come what may.

Little wonder that we oppose bargaining with hostages’ freedom and lives, the way it is being done between Gaza and wherever the political leaders reside, in Qatar or Turkey. The simple idea of treating human beings as pawns, bargaining chips, is horrendous, is it not.

Hence our demand for an end to all attack and sequestration tunnels in Gaza.

• Don’t you know of the polls in the West Bank showing a surge in popularity for Hamas and its allies ?

Call it a rash instant reaction, mixing denial of the facts and emotional vainglory at the short-lived technological victory. In the past century, they could have got away with it. Not anymore. Anybody with access to irrefutable info has had to realize that the scope of the 10/7 onslaught and its atrocities make its perpetrators and commanders universal outlaws.

Add to it that the military quintette seized power from the political echelon, and did not inform them until the last instant, in the early hours of October 7. Had they limited themselves to a « clean » military op, with only soldiers captured, it would have meant an amazing victory. This will not remain the only case in which a deviant military wing overpowered the political establishment, to be later discarded and eliminated.

Again, when you manage to rise above the damning circumstances, you realize that no Muslim leaders, emirs, authorities, condone October 7 – except in Tehran, to a degree.

• Now, when all’s said and done, isn’t there a growing urge, inside out, to get it over with?

You have other actors in the shades : the major weapon manufacturers, whose fortune depends on warmongering – the Russians at Almaz (98% of the total Almaz revenue from weapons) ; the British, with BAE Systems (95%) ; the Americans with Lockheed (89%), RTX Corp. (87%) and Northrop (86%) ; and some smaller players, the Italians with Leonardo (72%), the French and the Chinese, with Thales, and China Electronics Technology Group (46%). Arms have to be manufactured on a massive scale, for massive profit, and have to be tested, used, sacrificed, for the following generations of military products.

The (in)famous lie about Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, as spread by the highest authorities, in the US and the UK, was a necessary ploy and alibi to get the whole financial market rolling, back in 2003. The real Weapons of Mass Destruction were around the bend, waiting to be used. With their toll of 300,000 human beings massacred, including 200,000 civilians.

Thence, rather than howling with the usual packs of wolves, or bleating with Panurge’s sheep, maybe we’d better just start thinking things over, from their concrete, non ideological, chains of causes and effects. Thinking outside the boxes of caducous software.

In Martin Luther King’s words, « there is little hope for us until we become tough-minded  enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths, and downright ignorance. »

In our words, in Algeria, (Nobel Call for Algeria, 1998), as in Israel and Gaza today : « Let the will to live prevail, free and fearless ! » No political or religious speech, whatsoever, can ever legitimate the massacre of innocents, the murder of a child, the rape of a woman.

What was true in Algeria in the nineties remains true in Israel and Palestine in 2024. A demilitarized Palestinian state already exists in the West Bank. Let it prevail. The Gaza Strip is part and parcel of Palestine. « There is the way of nonviolent resistance. »     ( MLK )