Uri Avnery
August 6, 2016
The Shot Heard All Over the Country
ON JUNE 28, 1914,
the Austrian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, visited
Sarajevo, the main town of Bosnia, then an Austrian province.
Three young Serbian
inhabitants of Bosnia had decided to assassinate him, in order to
achieve the attachment of Bosnia to Serbia. They threw bombs at the car
of the archduke. All three failed to harm him.
Later on, one of the
assailants, Gavrilo Princip, chanced upon his intended victim again.
The archduke's car had made a wrong turn, the driver tried to reverse,
the car stalled, and Princip shot the duke dead.
That was "the shot
heard around the world". This small incident led to World War I, which
led to World War II, with altogether some 100 million dead, to
Bolshevism, Fascism, Nazism and the Holocaust. Yet, while the names of
Lenin, Stalin and Hitler will be remembered for centuries, the name of
Gavrilo Princip, the most important person of the 20th century, is
already forgotten.
(Because he was only
19 years old, Austrian law did not allow him to be sentenced to death.
He was sent to prison, where his death from tuberculosis went unnoticed
in the middle of World War I.)
For some reason,
this insignificant person who made history reminds me of an
insignificant young Israeli named Elor Azaria, whose act may well change
the history of the State of Israel.
THE FACTS of the case are quite clear.
Two young
Palestinians attacked an Israeli soldier with a knife in Tel Rumaida, a
settlement of extremist Jews in the center of Hebron. The soldier was
slightly wounded. The attackers were shot, one died on the spot, the
other was severely wounded and lay bleeding on the ground.
What happened next
was photographed by a local Palestinian with one of the many cameras
distributed by the Israeli human rights association "B'Tselem" to the
local population.
The crew of an
Israeli ambulance was treating the wounded soldier, ignoring the
seriously wounded Arab who was lying on the ground. Several Israeli
soldiers were standing around, also ignoring the Palestinian. About 10 minutes later
Sergeant Elor Azaria, a medic, appeared on the scene, approached the
wounded Palestinian and shot him point-blank in the head, killing him.
According to
eye-witnesses, Azaria declared that "the terrorist must die". Later, on
the advice of his phalanx of lawyers, Azaria claimed that he was afraid
that the wounded Palestinian had an explosive charge on his body and was
about to kill the soldiers around him – an assertion clearly disproved
by the pictures which showed the soldiers standing nearby obviously
unconcerned. Then there was a mysterious knife which was not there at
the beginning of the clip and could be seen lying near the body at the
end.
The film was widely
distributed on social media and could not be ignored. Azaria was brought
before a military court and became the center of a political storm that
has been going on for weeks. It is splitting the army, the public, the
political scene and the entire state.
LET ME interject a
personal note. I am not naive. In the 1948 war I was a combat soldier
for ten consecutive months, before being severely wounded. I saw all
kinds of atrocities. When the war was over, I wrote a book about these
atrocities, called "The Other Side of the Coin"(in Hebrew). It was
widely condemned.
War brings out the
best and the worst in human nature. I have seen war crimes committed by
people who, after the war, became nice, normal, law-abiding citizens.
So what is so special about Elor Azaria, apart from the fact that he was photographed during the act?
We all saw him on
TV, sitting in the military courtroom during his trial, which is still
going on. A childish-looking soldier, seeming quite lost. His mother
sits directly behind him, cradling his head in her arms and stroking him
all the time. His father sits nearby and in the intermissions shouts
abuse at the military prosecutor.
So what is so
special about this case? Similar acts happen all the time, though not on
camera. It's routine. Especially in Hebron, where a few hundred
fanatical settlers live among 160,000 Palestinians. Hebron is one of the
oldest cities in the world. It existed long before Biblical times.
In the center of
Hebron there is a building which, according to Jewish belief, houses the
graves of the Israelite patriarchs. Archaeologists dispute this claim.
Arabs believe that the tombs belong to venerable Muslim sheiks. For
them, the building is a mosque.
Since the beginning
of the occupation, this has been a place of continued violent strife.
The main street is reserved for Jews and closed to Arab traffic. For
soldiers sent there to guard the settlers, it is hell.
In the clip, Azaria
is seen shaking hands with somebody immediately after the killing. This
person is no other than Baruch Marzel, the king of the Tel Rumaida
settlers. Marzel is the successor of "Rabbi" Meir Kahane, who was
branded as a fascist by the Supreme Court of Israel. (Marzel once openly
called for my assassination.)
During the trial it was revealed that Marzel plays host every Saturday
to the entire company of Israeli soldiers guarding the settlement,
including the officers. This means that Azaria was exposed to his
fascist ideas before the shooting event.
WHAT MAKES the case
of the "shooting soldier" (as he is called in the Hebrew press) a
turning point in the history of the Zionist enterprise?
As I mentioned in a
recent piece, Israel is now rent into diverse "sectors", with the rifts
between them growing ever wider. Jews and Arabs; Orientals (Mizrahim)
and Europeans (Ashkenazim); secular and religious; exclusive orthodox
and inclusive "national religious"; male and female; heterosexual and
homosexual; old-timers and new immigrants, especially from Russia; rich
and poor; Tel Aviv and the "periphery"; Left and Right; inhabitants of
Israel proper and the settlers in the occupied territories.
The one institution
which unites almost all these diverse – and mutually antagonistic –
elements is the army. It is far more than a mere fighting force. It is
where all Israeli youngsters (except the orthodox and the Arabs) meet on
equal terms. It is the 'melting pot". It is the holiest of the holy.
Not any more.
This is where
Sergeant Azaria comes in. He did not just kill a wounded Palestinian –
named, by the way, Abd al-Fatah al-Sharif. He mortally wounded the army.
FOR SOME years now, a secret endeavor of the "national-religious" has been going on to conquer the army from below.
This sector was once
a small and disdained group, since religious Jews by and large rejected
Zionism altogether. According to their belief, God exiled the Jews
because of their sins, and only God has the right to allow them back. By
appropriating God's task for themselves, Zionists were committing a
grievous sin.
The mass of
religious Jews lived in Eastern Europe and were destroyed in the
Holocaust. A number of them came to Palestine and are now a secluded,
self-sufficient community in Israel, taking huge sums of money from the
Zionist state and not saluting the Zionist flag.
The
"national-religious", on the other hand, grew in Israel from a small,
timid community into a large and powerful force. Their tremendous
birthrate – 7-8 children is the norm – gives them a large advantage.
When the Israeli army conquered East Jerusalem and the West Bank,
studded with holy places, they also became assertive and self-assured.
Their present
leader, Naftali Bennett, a successful high-tech entrepreneur, is now a
dominant member of the government, in constant competition and conflict
with Binyamin Netanyahu. The party has its own education system.
For decades now this
party has been engaged in a determined effort to conquer the army from
below. It has pre-army preparatory schools which produce
highly-motivated future officers, and is slowly infiltrating the lower
officer corps. Kippah-wearing captains and majors, once a rarity, are
now very common.
ALL THIS is
exploding now. The Azaria affair is blowing the army apart. The high
command, still mainly composed of old-timers, Ashkenazim and
(comparative) moderates, put Azaria on trial. Killing a wounded enemy is
against army orders. Soldiers are allowed to shoot and kill only if
they are in immediately danger to their lives.
A large part of the
population, especially the religious and rightist sectors, protested
loudly against the trial. Since the Azaria family is oriental, the
protesters include the bulk of the oriental sector.
Netanyahu's acute
political nose immediately scented the trend. He decided to visit the
Azaria family, and was only held back at the last moment by his
advisors. Instead, he called Elor's father, and conveyed his personal
sympathies on the phone. Avigdor Lieberman, before his appointment as
Minister of Defense, personally visited the courtroom in order to
demonstrate his support for the soldier.
It was an open slap in the face of the army command.
Now the army, the
last bulwark of national unity, is being torn apart. The high command is
openly attacked as leftist, a term not far removed from traitorous in
current Israeli discourse. The myth of military infallibility lies
shattered, the authority of the high command profoundly damaged,
criticism of the Chief of Staff is rampant.
In the contest
between Sergeant Elor Azaria and the Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General
Gadi Eizenkot, the sergeant may well win. If convicted at all for
blatantly disobeying orders, he will get off with a light sentence.
Killing a
defenseless human being has turned him into a national hero. His was the
shot that was heard all over the country. Perhaps all over the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment