To end the occupation

Hillel Schenker, co-editor of the journal Palestine - Israel, sent out this email report of an event in Tel Aviv on Friday. I post it with his permission:

Just got back from the Day Against the Occupation event in the plaza near the Tel Aviv Museum. My first thought was, why so few people (a few thousand)? Talking it over with friends, one of the explanations was that the settler-right is energized by the fact that they have a very focused goal - try to stop the disengagement. The rest of us seem to be very unfocused. One veteran activist said it's because the rest of Israeli society has become pleasure-oriented rather than goal oriented. My response to [this] was that most of Israeli society simply wants to get on with their lives and are individual goal oriented within the collective. It's much easier for the extreme chauvinistic and messianic right to mobilize its forces. The question of how to energize and mobilize the pragmatic side of Israeli society, who want to live in a normal, stable and secure country, living at peace with its neighbours, is probably one of the primary things we have to deal with.

Still, all was not gloom. Somehow, everyone I talked with had made a special effort to come, even if there wasn't that much PR and it wasn't very focused. Stands were all around, and NGOs, movements, etc. were out there promoting their wares and signing people up for their activities.

It turned out that the whole event was the brainchild of one guy - Noam something, who had spent two years of his childhood in South Africa and was inspired by the commitment and imagination of the anti-Apartheid movement. For an initiative of one person, without a movement behind him, this wasn't a bad turnout, even if it seemed to conflict with the fact that Shatil had organized a similar activism fair last weekend in Lod. That's right, let a thousand flowers bloom.

Peace Now was busy handing out blue ribbons, to counteract the anti-disengagement orange ribbons that the settlers and Bnei Akiva are promoting. Uzi Benziman wrote a column in Haaretz this week saying that the roads should be filled with blue ribbons. I mentioned that I saw my first blue ribbon on a car in my neighbourhood when I walked the dog in the morning. I also said that I was tempted to cut the lone orange ribbon in my neighbourhood with my Swiss army knife, but held back. For two reasons. One, I should respect their right to protest in this manner. And two, the fact that it's the only orange ribbon in the vicinity emphasizes how isolated they are in my part of the woods. Amos Gvirtz from Kibbutz Shefayim, one of Israel's first conscientious objectors, agreed with me. They should have the right to protest in that manner - he also supports their right to refuse to take part in the evacuation of the settlers, just as he refused to serve in the West Bank and Gaza.

When it came former Education Minister Shulamit Aloni's turn to speak from the platform, there wasn't the slightest hint of disappointment at the size of the crowd. 'It doesn't matter how small we are, as long as we know we are right,' she said. 'That's what should motivate us.' And she made a powerful pitch for a State of Israel based upon the vision of the writers of the Declaration of Independence, a moral state, concerned for the welfare of all its citizens, living in peace with its neighbours. The vision we grew up on. The only state which has a chance to survive in the long run.

Faris from the Palestinian Geneva Initiative office in Ramallah said that he represented the majority of the Palestinians who support a negotiated solution along the lines of the Geneva model, basically the 1967 borders with mutual adjustments, and in a flawless English he wished those present 'the best of luck, for both the Israelis' and the Palestinians' sake'.

And finally, writer David Grossman used as his hook the settlers' plan to halt traffic throughout the country next week for 15 minutes, so that people 'can rethink the danger of the disengagement'. Grossman said that the police will be helpless to stop the action, as they are in so many other things vis-à-vis the settlers, so we should use the 15 minutes to reflect on the damage that 37 years of occupation and settlement activity have done to the settlers themselves (yes, we should have some sensitivity to their pain as well he said), but primarily the damage they have caused the Palestinians and the rest of us. As a matter of fact, he concluded, we should take even more than 15 minutes to reflect about this, and about what we can and should be doing to end the occupation.

And there was music too. Singer Hemi Rodner, and a teenage anti-occupation rock band. And a lot of red (left), green (environmental) and blue balloons and streamers.

I couldn't help reflecting as Shulamit Aloni was on the platform, that the event was taking place in a square opposite the museum (culture), with the municipal library on one side (books and knowledge), and the Tel Aviv District Court (the rule of law as Aloni always emphasizes) on the other. A combination that she has always embodied with her entire being.