11 November 2004 Edition

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Israeli activist speaks out

Dalit Baum meets with Aengus Ó Snodaigh, Sinn Féin TD

Dalit Baum meets with Aengus Ó Snodaigh, Sinn Féin TD

Tuesday 9 November marked the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 1938 attack by the Nazis against Jewish interests in Germany. Dalit Baum, of the Coalition of Women for Justice in Israel - a coalition of nine different organisations that work for peace - has been touring Europe and the United States to highlight the illegality and cruelty of Israel's Wall. Baum is also a founder member of a group called Black Laundry, an organisation of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered against the Occupation; and with a group called Anarchists against Fences, which carries out direct actions against the Wall.

How did you, as an Israeli, get involved in the anti-Occupation movement?

Dalit Baum. Wherever I go, I encounter this perception that there are two camps, the Israeli and the Palestinian, and that if you are critical of the Israeli government you are pro-Palestinian or anti-Israeli, or what is worse, anti-Semitic, which in my case is not possible, because I am an Israeli and Jewish. As an Israeli, I care about the place where I live and about the people I live with, and there is no choice today but to realise that the Israeli government is dooming us to years and years of war with its policy of controlling Palestinians through violence.

An example of Israel's policies took place at the beginning of the Intifada, when an Israeli army spokesperson said that they would break the spirit of the Palestinian people, they would "imprint their consciousness".

That is stupid: you cannot break the spirit of a people; you cannot make them disappear completely. You can make them move, leave their land, their water, their homes - sometimes people do that, mostly because they do not have a choice - but you will not break them.

It has been a very long process for me, because I grew up a Zionist in Israel, an Ashkenazi — a Jew of European descent — in opposition to those of Asian or African descent, who are usually lower class and suffer other kind of oppression in Israel. So, I am middle-class, white, Zionist. I served in the army, I am well educated, and I had all the privileges.

For me, the turning point was coming out as a lesbian. It was then that I became more political and more radical and I got involved in the feminist movement. So, that is why it was so important for me to start working with Black Laundry, because it was important for me to speak out.

Do you feel you have to justify your position against the Occupation when acts of violence are inflicted against Israelis?

It is a well known fact that violence never changes anybody's view about anything. It just makes their opinion stronger. When people are hit by any kind of loss because of violence, they find comfort in their core ideas, so if they were fighting for peace, they wonder why there was not peace before, why did we keep the occupation for so many years and allow the conflict to escalate and reach them? There is a group of bereaved families, both from Israel and Palestine, who work together for peace. These are people who lost their loved ones. On the other hand, those who support violence as a way to resolve the situation, they will be for further violence and they will be looking for revenge.

Another good example could be the Holocaust, a very strong issue in the Israeli political discourse. When Women in Black stand on silent vigils against the Occupation every week, reactions can be very violent — people throw things at us, jump on us, etc — and one of the recurrent arguments is the Holocaust.

I remember once in one street corner in Tel Aviv a woman came to us. She had tears on her eyes. "Aren't you ashamed of yourselves?" she said. "My mother died in the Holocaust and what you are doing here today is killing her again." One of our older members, who I think has been taking part in this vigil for at least 16 years, and who was standing next to me, said to the woman: "My sister died in the Holocaust, and she is standing here with me today."

Is there a real political alternative to the parties in government?

We do not really have a political alternative in Israel. Ariel Sharon is especially cruel and violent. He has had his programme for the Occupied Territories and the settlements in his pocket for the last 30 years and now he has managed to implement that plan exactly as he wanted it. The settlements, though he didn't start them, were very much his project: he has the idea of making the Palestinian state unviable.

The wall he is building is a great victory for his way of thinking, because it will make a Palestinian state impossible. He is taking over all the fertile land, water and resources of the future Palestinian state; he has managed to kill the Road Map peace accord. Because of Sharon's success on the ground, many people think that there is no hope for a two-state solution anymore. So both, on the left and the right, on the mainstream in Israel, and even Palestinians, believe that they need to look for another solution, that they have to rethink the process.

And as we speak the bulldozers are working.

Will you tell me about opposition to the Wall within Israel?

One of the activities we do with the coalition is touring the Wall, taking people to see it. Because many people speak about it without knowing: they think this is a wall separating two states, so they are in favour of it, they think separation is good, as there may be less violence.

All this is nonsense. The barrier they are building is separating Palestine from Palestine, and is not a straight line but a very elaborate system of road blocks, checkpoints, walls and barbed wire: it is turning the West Bank into a big barrier.

The inhabitants of the villages and the towns affected go to the building sites day after day for months, and as the wall progresses, the opposition and resistance also progresses with it. Everybody goes to the protest, women, men, children, older people. They all go to the fields to sit in front of the bulldozers. They all are unarmed — most of them do not even throw stones. It is completely non-violent and they always invite internationals and Israelis, which is a first because Israelis were not invited to the first part of this Intifada. For us it is a big privilege to be invited to be part of the Intifada, because we are Israelis and we are part of the oppressor state.

Even though the Wall has been deemed illegal by international courts, the Israeli establishment has chosen to ignore all criticism. What can be done to force the Israeli government to change its policies?

I think the Israeli government cares a lot about how it is viewed, especially by Europe. Israelis are frightened that they may be treated as unwanted people, just as South Africans during the Apartheid era. I think any external criticism is noted in Israel. The reason nothing changes on the ground is because there is no real pressure. Why aren't there real sanctions, or boycotts?

We still receive about $3 billion in military aid per year from the US. So from an economic point of view it makes sense to maintain this fortress at the edge of the empire.

There are some Israelis, and I am one among them, who invite boycotts, who invite sanctions against Israel. We invite the kind of punishment that will make the Israelis feel that occupation is not worthwhile. And when it comes to the death toll, and this is hard to say, it may not be high enough. It seems this is a sustainable conflict, the kind of conflict where people say, "we can bear that, and any change may be more dangerous, so we just stick to the status quo". That is terrible, because the status quo is terrible for everybody, for Israel too.


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