Because of all the
violence and mayhem on the international scene these days relatively little
attention is paid to Israeli domestic politics.
For example, most
uninformed observers of the Israeli scene imagine that there is a genuine
political difference between the Labor and Likud parties. Recall 1978 when up
to that time Israeli politics had been controlled by David Ben-Gurion�s Labor
Party. The Labor candidate in the election that year was Shimon Peres; the
Likud (Herut) candidate was Menachem Begin. When a reporter asked who he
favored, an anonymous Palestinian remarked, �They are the same; the only
difference is one will kill us by hanging the other by drowning.�
Begin won the
election and ultra-right Zionists came to power. When he was criticized for his
enunciation of aggressive policies, Begin retorted that he was doing nothing
that Ben-Gurion had not done. His remark was met with skepticism and led to new
research about Ben-Gurion and the first years of the Jewish State. This helped
launch the careers of the so-called New Historians; a group of Israeli scholars
who sifted through state achieves that become available that year. As a general
rule, Israeli archives are opened after 30 years and Begin came to power 30
years after the founding of the Jewish State.
From these
historians came revelations about Zionist military aggression and terrorism
against Palestinians in 1948 (Simha Flapan), Zionist collusion with King
Adbullah of Jordan on the division of Arab Palestine (Avi Schlaim), causes of
the flight of the Palestinians and the birth of the refugee problem (Benny
Morris), the outright theft of Palestinian land and property (Tom Segev), and
others of lesser academic and print fame.
Simultaneously,
there were �new Arab historians� not identified as such who accessed the same
archives and wrote articles and books that debunked Israel�s founding myths and
alleged Zionist altruistic aspirations. As it turned out Begin was right, he
was doing nothing openly that Ben-Gurion had not done surreptitiously.
In May 1948, when
the Jewish State was declared, its new prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, Polish
�migr� and �George Washington of Israel,� expected the new State and eventually
the remnants of Mandate Palestine to be flooded by European and Western Jews.
But, to his dismay, few came. In an outburst of frustration he stated that any
Jew in the Diaspora who did not make Aliyeh (immigration to Israel) was
anti-Semitic. To fill the Jewish State with Jewish bodies it was arranged to
airlift the Jews of Yemen to Israel. Still, the new state needed bodies.
The next major
event was the Mossad acting as agents
provocateurs and terrorizing Iraqi Jews (see either edition of David Hirst The Gun and the Olive Branch). Their
eventual evacuation to Israel under the guise of escaping Iraqi persecution
brought more than 100,000 Jews to Zionist Paradise. In 1987, during a
conversation in Jerusalem with a Knesset member, a Jew who came from Iraq to
Israel at age 12, told me that Iraqi Jews lived better in Iraq than in Israel
and many Iraqi Jews regretted their move to Israel.
During this same
period, the early 1950s, Jews from other Arab countries began to be expelled by
their respective governments in retaliation for Israel�s exile of the
Palestinians. Ben-Gurion began to see his dreams fulfilled. Moroccan Jews were
not expelled but were encouraged by the Israelis to come to Israel. Many of them
did, although the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside Israel
remains in Morocco. The big pond, however, the Soviet Union, refused to allow
Jewish emigration and the flood gates were not opened until the early 1990s.
Israel today has a
population consisting of Jews from over 100 different countries. They are
divided into basically two groups, the Ashkenazi Jews from Europe and the
Sephardic Jews from Middle Eastern and Arab countries. To the European Jews,
the Sephardics are �niggers,� only one level above the loathed Arabs of Israel
and not on the same elite level as the Ashkenazis. There has never been a
Sephardic prime minister, but during the 1990s it appeared they would come to
power under the leadership of David Levy, a Sephardic from Morocco, but the
influx of Russian Jews tilted the population balance in favor of a stronger
Ashkenazi voting bloc.
Meanwhile Shimon
Peres was always on the scene. He was the last of Ben-Gurion�s proteges and was
mentioned in Chaim Weizmann�s autobiography Trial
and Error (1949) as a leader of the future. Those familiar with Zionist
history will recall that Weizmann was the diplomatic face of Zionism prior to
the establishment of Israel and, after its founding, its first president. The
political structures of the new state were configured by Ben-Gurion to block
Weizmann�s power, a move that proved of little value because Weizmann died in
the early 1950s. However, those structures remain and are the source of
problems related to the Israeli political construct.
Every government
that has come to power has been a coalition which has proved to be relatively
easy to topple through parliamentary processes. But Peres had prevailed until
his recent unseating as leader of the Labor Party by Amir Peretz.
The defeat of Peres
is noteworthy because of his political longevity although he had his fingers in
certain scandals including the egregious Lavon Affair of the mid 1950s,
according to some of the New Historians and others. He has also filled the
Weizmann role of being the �reasonable face� of Zionism Israel presents to the
world. Remember that he and Yitzhak Rabin along with Yasser Arafat were Nobel
Peace Laureates after they all signed the Oslo Accords. This momentous event
touted as the answer to everyone�s prayers, in fact, transformed the PLO from
an economically and politically bankrupt national liberation movement into a
�peace loving� Israeli police force and �partner for peace� and its leader,
Yasser Arafat into a Zionist collaborator.
Rabin was
assassinated by an ostensibly religious Jew, but Labor remained in power until
its defeat by Ariel Sharon in 2000. Sharon promised to deliver Israel from its
enemies and bring peace to the Holy Land, something no Israeli politician has
been able to accomplish. As a result of his failed administration rumblings
have emerged throughout the Israeli electorate.
Enter Amir Peretz.
He is the face of the Sephardic Jews and has stripped away the veneer of
Israeli social and political homogeneity. His challenge to the leadership of
Ariel Sharon is a serious matter and not to be compared to the 1978 campaign
between Peres and Begin. What his real agenda might be is not public
information, but his stated political platform sounds more like a leader
addressing domestic problems rather than creating external crises.
This could be a
major turning point in history. If and perhaps this is a big if, Peretz can
convince the Russian Jews that he is their best bet and maintain the Sephardic
support, which should be relatively easy, he could unseat Sharon. Also, recall
that ethnic Arabs constitute about 20 percent of Israel�s population and their
support of Peretz could offset the Russian bloc.
If Peretz became
Prime Minister of Israel, George W. Bush would be in serious trouble. Since
9-11, Sharon has used the so-called War on Terror to expand Zionist
colonization and land seizures in the Occupied Territories and thwart the
creation of a Palestinian State. He has made stirring the pot with Syria and
Iran a favorite pastime, while Peretz has said little if anything about Iran,
wants to settle with the Palestinians, possibly address Israel�s confrontation
with Syria over Israel�s occupation of the Golan Heights and try to resolve or
lessen Israel�s domestic problems.
This is the real story
behind the front page. If Sharon falls to a more domestic-minded and less
belligerent leader and George Bush remains mired in corruption scandals that
boil over every day in Washington, substantive changes will occur in US foreign
policy, within Israel and certainly in Iraq. With or without Tony Blair, George
Bush would be in mortal political danger if Amir Peretz is successful in his
bid to become prime minister. Then, perhaps, the merry-go-round of obfuscation
over the question of Palestine and dreams of an Imperial Greater Israel will
come to an end.
Louis Farshee M.A. is a freelance writer and
independent businessman living in the Pacific Northwest. He can be reached at lfarshee@easystreet.com.