What's new in utopia

For a change I am ignoring our never ending political intrigues, the murky domestic feuding between Arabs and Jews, between the secular-traditional majority and the Haredi sectors and the ongoing Conflict with some of our Arab neighbours backed by their Persian patron.

I’ve chosen to write about my home turf – the kibbutz.

As fitting the occasion the centennial of the kibbutz is being celebrated with more nostalgia than pyrotechnics. However not everyone is rushing to heap praise on this alternative society. Some of its critics berate the kibbutz claiming it has forsaken its ideology and has veered off the course set by its founding fathers. Others say its ideology is outmoded. They take it to task for obdurately maintaining a lifestyle that contradicts human nature.

Search and you will find soothsayers of all kinds who have predicted the demise of the kibbutz and have hurried to eulogise it while it is still alive and kicking.

Martin Buber was kinder when he described it as," An experiment that hasn't yet failed."

Just the same if we bear in mind that less than two percent of Israelis live in kibbutz communities, this homegrown commune hardly deserves to be called an "alternative society."

This morning like most mornings our breakfast table parliament convened in the factory cafeteria. As usual "Z" positioned himself at the hub of the topic discussed, asserting his opinion and predicting what the outcome will be.

Listening to him it occurred to me that he is indeed a chip off the old block.

In 1916 his grandfather, kibbutz pioneer and author Zvi Shatz was sure that the newly formed collective groups would become the dominant settlement community in both rural and urban Palestine. Speaking at a political conference of settlement leaders he predicted that they (the collective groups), "would sprout like mushrooms after rain."

By no stretch of the imagination could Shatz and his generation of pioneers have conjured up a vision of the kibbutz today. Admittedly it hasn't fulfilled his prophesy but in many respects it has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

Zvi Shatz didn't live to see the outcome of the alternative society, the experiment in communal living he had pioneered. He was murdered in Jaffa at the time of the Arab riots in 1921.

It could be argued that 125,000 people living in 270 communities are no more than a marginal sector of the general population, an insignificant anomaly.

A hundred years after the first furrow was ploughed at Degania the kibbutz is still experimenting, adapting and changing. Defiant and amazingly resilient it simply won’t go away It has survived crises, not the least among them an identity crisis.. In the past the kibbutz filled a pioneering role demarcating the nation's borders, reclaiming and farming the land. The kibbutzim were also the nation's front line of defence, tenaciously "holding their ground" against better armed enemies during Isral's war of independence. No longer required to fill national roles the kibbutz, like the proverbial pensioner was sent home cap in hand. Without a clearly defined goal and unable to formulate a new national purpose the kibbutzim became more introspective, more attendant to the quality of life. The “good life” became a good life too.

At that time one critical observer remarked, "These were people who wanted to change the world. Now, they're content to live a life of carefree irrelevance. That's the Kibbutz today."

There were new challenges facing the kibbutz, notable among them the absorption of the new immigrants that came to Israel in the fifties and sixties.

However most of the new immigrants were not attracted to the strange rural communities. On the other hand the Youth Aliya programme designed to accommodate and foster immigrant children was an unprecedented success.

Some of the youth returned to the kibbutz after their army service others settled elsewhere. All of them benefited from the kibbutz sojourn.

No assessment of the kibbutz enterprise would be complete without some reference to the communitarian settlement in North America.

Some researchers trace its origins to the Dutch Mennonites who settled briefly in Delaware in 1663. Professor Yaakov Oved , (Tel Aviv University) chose not to include them in his definitive history of American communal settlements -

"Two hundred years of American Communes" ( 1988)

Most of the utopian communities were short lived, however some like the Shakers, the New Harmony community and others continued into the twentieth century. Two Shaker communes still exist today.

In the 1880s a few Jewish communal settlements were established in Kansas and Oregon. They too were short lived.

The vast majority of those experiments proved unsuccessful. One study has shown that during the late 19th century, 25% of all utopian communities failed within one year, and 30% of the nonreligious communities lasted no more than a year.

It’s fair to say that all these communities had little or no impact on American society.

The last wave of utopian communities in the United States occurred during the radical social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s. At least 4,000 communes developed during this period. Their total membership exceeded 250,000 individuals. Those utopian societies were part of the general counterculture movement that searched for an alternative to war and dependence on technology. Members flocked to communes to experiment with collective living and to achieve personal, often spiritual, fulfillment.

In a lecture given at the 6th International Communal Studies Association conference, in Amsterdam. Yaakov Oved, summarised the communitarian phenomenon as follows:
“We can state, without a shadow of a doubt, that the twentieth century was the richest of all for voluntary communes. In an overall review of the history of communes we can discern a number of characteristic lines:
From the first years of the present century, large communal movements, which developed over the years, have existed continuously. The first of these is the Israeli kibbutz movement which had its beginnings in the first decade of the century and which at present has a total population of 125,000 souls living in 270 settlements.

The second-largest communal group is the Hutterite movement, which is also the oldest communal order, and which was established in Central Europe in the sixteenth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century its communities in the United States had a population of approximately 2,000 souls, while today the number some 40,000 people living in 400 communes.
A smaller movement that has maintained its stability and growth is the Bruderhof, which had its beginning in Germany in 1920 and which today has a population of 2,500 souls in eight settlements in the United States and Great Britain.
In the present century there has been an uninterrupted series of emergences of communes. Not a decade has gone by without the appearance of new communes. While in previous centuries, new communes were mostly isolated communities, and mainly in the United States, in the present century we have witnessed the extensive establishment of communes in numerous countries on different continents. These waves appeared against the background of significant historical events.”
I doubt if this late revival has had much of an impact on the nation in general and society in particular.

The kibbutz however, despite its later introspective direction has always been and still is highly integrated in Israeli society.

A snippet highlighted in the Israeli news media this week illustrates this well:

“It's now official: The long-rumoured merger of Shamir Optical Industry and Essilor International was announced late last week.

The French company, which dominates the worldwide corrective optical lens industry, will be acquiring 50% of kibbutz-based company Shamir Optimal's share capital.

Shamir Optical will become consolidated into Essilor's operations once the transaction is complete.

Essilor will be purchasing the 37% of the company's shares that are publicly held, and the remaining 13% from Kibbutz Shamir. The kibbutz, which currently holds 63% of the company's stock, will retain 50%.

After the transaction, Shamir Optical will be de-listed from NASDAQ and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. “

Kibbutz companies have been proving resilient in recent years and many have grown from small manufacturers to international corporations. Twenty kibbutz companies are currently traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the number of kibbutz-owned companies traded on the Tel Aviv stock exchange is expected to double in coming years.

A case in point is the industry I work in. Ricor is the only Israeli company manufacturing its particular electro-optical accessory. Since the product is defence industries related I can’t describe it in more detail. Suffice to say that the company is doing well. Perhaps Zvi Shatz would be appalled to learn that the company his grandson works in employs more than 120 outside workers.

The principle of self-labour, once one of the basic tenets of the kibbutz is no longer relevant. We could never have developed Ricor if we had strictly adhered to the principle of self-labour. Instead more than 120 people from other kibbutzim and nearby towns together with 60 members of my kibbutz find gainful employment in our factory and contribute to the nation’s security.

Undoubtedly the most controversial change that has taken place in recent times is the privatisation that has taken place in many kibbutz communities.

I can’t possibly do justice to this aspect of the contemporary kibbutz in the narrow confines of this letter, especially the little space I have left. Therefore, I will mention it on another occasion.

Ironically Degania where the kibbutz enterprise started is one of the “reconstructed” kibbutz communities where members are remunerated for their work on a differential scale. The kibbutz movement is divided into two camps the kibbutzim that have been “reconstructed” (privatised) and a smaller number of kibbutzim aligned with the traditional collective philosophy which has incorporated a small degree of privatisation.

Rereading this survey I realise that my comments are disjointed and tend to confuse more than they enlighten. My apologies.

Have a good weekend.

Beni 27^th of October 2010.

In the shade of the pergola

From the 'Dado vantage point" you get a wonderful view of the Hula Valley, Upper Galilee and a peep across the border into Lebanon. Perched on a hill above Metulla in the "the finger of Galilee," a narrow enclave wedged between Lebanon and Syria, it's a not-to-be-missed stop when touring the north of Israel.

It's named in memory of David Alazar, IDF chief of staff during the Yom Kippur War, known by his cognomen Dado. On Saturday morning we took in the view from the shade provided by the pergola at the the vantage point. Marj Ayun and the Beaufort fortress

Our hosts Sarah and Razi, old friends from Kibbutz Manara had included a stop at Dado's point in our drive around their territory. While Razi pointed out places of interest in the landscape I noticed that two couples seated on the benches next to us were "hanging on his words." The circumstances created a brief social bond. After all we were occupying the same pergola and before long our neighbours, Arabs unacquainted with this part of the country joined in the conversation.

Razi was born in Baghdad and speaks fluent Arabic, so from time to time he elaborated in his mother tongue. However for the most part the conversation took place in the lingua franca – Hebrew. At some stage he pointed in the direction of Lebanon at Marj Ayun a village/town a few kilometers inside Lebanon and the Beaufort fortress towering behind it, barely seen through the morning haze. Both places and others too aroused memories. Our pergola partners certainly were familiar with the names, after all battles were fought there in the Lebanon wars. However mention of the Crusaders in the context of battles fought at the same sights might have caused them some mental discomfort. The Crusades are a dark period in the history of Islam.

Admittedly their heroes Saladin and the Mamluke Sultan Baibars made amends for the devastation wreaked by the Christian armies, nevertheless the trauma still remains hundreds of years after the last crusader left the Holy Land. Arab leaders frequently refer to the U.S and Israel as the Latter Day Crusaders. We of course distance ourselves from the Crusader analogy. Some of our neighbours have reluctantly accepted Israel as a fait accompli, others continue to regard us as a foreign implant.

Razi's panoramic description ended, we said goodbye to the two Arab couples and left. The brief encounter ended and we continued our separate ways.

Two days earlier Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed a mass rally at Bint Jbeil not far from Marj Ayun and repeated his prophetic message about Israel disappearing from the map of the region. By and large Israelis remain unperturbed by Ahmadinejad's bellicose threats, but not unprepared. An array of anti-rocket and anti-missile defence systems have been designed to face every contingency.

Some people say we tend to ignore the potential threat that Israeli Arabs pose.

Middle East expert Dr. Guy Bechor claims that over the past decade the leaders of Israel's Arab minority have progressively adopted a more radical stance towards the policies of successive Israeli governments. In fact today they are more radical than the Palestinian leadership

Bechor says that Israel's Arab minority no longer fills the hoped for bridge-builder role..

At one time their leaders said that they would be the bridge to peace. and many people in the "Israeli left" spoke of the historic role of the Israeli Arabs.

Dr. Bechor claims that the trend to support a more radical leadership stems from the stigma attached to the very existence of the Arab minority in Israel.

The fact that in 1948 they remained behind while the great majority of the Arabs in the area that became the state of Israel either fled or were forced to leave caused the Arab states to regard them as traitors who surrendered to the Jews.

Ever conscious of that stigma they feel the need to prove that they did not betray the Palestinian cause.

"The so-called ‘Arabs of 1948’ are forced to fend off the accusations levelled against them. These accusations define them, and instead of shaking them off they double their efforts to prove their loyalty. The Palestinians don’t need to prove anything, while Arab Israelis do.”

In many respects Khaled Abu Toameh is an exception to the stereotype that Guy Bechor describes. Abu Toameh is an "Israeli-Arab-Palestinian" journalist and documentary filmmaker. He is the West Bank and Gaza correspondent for the Jerusalem Post and U.S News and World Report, and has been the Palestinian affairs producer for NBC News since 1988. His articles have appeared in The Sunday Times, DailyExpress and many other newspapers . He also writes for the Hudson Institute think-tank in New York.

Last year Abu Toameh commented on the Israeli Arabs' dilemma in the Hudson New York blog:

“As far as many Israeli Jews are concerned today, we are all just a bunch of Arabs who seek Israel's destruction. Some see us as a 'fifth column' and an 'enemy from within.' Others, such as right-wing politician Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Israel Beitenu, have even been talking about the possibility of getting rid of the 1.3 million Arab citizens by redrawing the border so that we would end up under the jurisdiction of a future Palestinian state.”

Well up to this point he seems to be toeing the line with other Arab journalists, but then surprisingly he takes the Arab politicians to task:

“The Arab Knesset members are often elected on a platform that promises their constituents better services and equal rights. But once they come to the Knesset, most of them start acting as if they had been elected by Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.

Instead of focusing their efforts on improving the living conditions of the Arab citizens, many of the Arab representatives prefer to deal with the Palestinian issue as a way of drawing the attention of the media. A Knesset member who deals only with schools and unpaved roads knows that he will never appear in the mainstream media.

But a Knesset member who travels to Beirut or Damascus to meet with Hezbollah and Hamas leaders is fully aware of the fact that he will appear on the front-page of one of Israel's leading newspapers. The same applies to those Arab Knesset members who have been issuing fiery statements against Israel or expressing sympathy and understanding for suicide bombings. In this case, they are following the saying, ‘I don't care what you write about me as long as you spell my name right.’ “

Just the same Abu Toameh isn't prepared to absolve Israel's governments from blame. He quotes Ehud Olmert who claimed there has been a policy of systematic discrimination against the Arab minority. This situation has to change. He urges the government to do more to improve the lot of the Arab minority.

For their part the Israeli Arabs are advised to, "Start searching for new leaders who would put their interests at the top of their list of priorities. We need representatives who would spend more time fighting Israeli bureaucracy than meeting with Hassan Nasrallah, Bashar al-Assad and Khaled Mashaal.

Hezbollah and Hamas are not going to build schools and hospitals in Nazareth and Umm al-Fahem. Nor is the Ba'athist regime in Damascus going to solve the problem of the bankrupt Arab municipalities inside Israel. Assad, Nasrallah and Mashaal hardly care about the interests of their own people.

What is needed today is a new leadership for the Israeli Arabs that would work hard to repair the damage done to relations with the Jewish public. The good news is that there's still a majority of Arab citizens who are loyal to Israel and would rather live in the Jewish state than in Ramallah or Cairo or Amman. We must start working toward persuading the Israeli Jews that the Arabs are seeking integration, not separation, from Israel. It's the Palestinians on the other side of the border who are fighting for separation. "

When I wrote about the proposed amendment to Israel’s citizenship law last week I omitted to use quotation marks in the following phrase,

“The proposed change further antagonizes Israeli Arabs, is unnecessary, provocative and racist.” It was in fact a direct quotation from an article by Isabel Kershner that appeared in the New York Times. Reconsidering what I wrote I think I should have acknowledged the source or avoided the term racist.

This week I want to quote directly from an article that appeared in the Economist :

“Privately, Palestinians say that anyone seeking citizenship will take the oath anyway. The definition ‘Jewish and democratic’ appears, after all, in several existing Israeli laws.

Privately, too, PA officials explain that they might consider recognising Israel as the Jewish state—thereby effectively forgoing the Palestinian Right of Return—but only in the context of a comprehensive peace package, not in exchange for a tiny step forward in the form of a two-month extension of the settlement-building freeze.”

The proposed change in the law is unnecessary and provocative. The demand for the settlement building freeze is also unnecessary. It wasn’t required in the past and shouldn’t be now.

Have a good weekend

Beni 21^st of October, 2010.

Balloons for Bint Jbeil

"Red Ed" Edward Solomon Milliband, the first Jewish leader of the British Labour party and Leader of Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition, could one day be the UK's first Jewish prime minister. Milliband's rise to the Labour political pinnacle was not impeded by his Jewish parentage.

Considering the Milliband brothers' political careers it's difficult not to recall an almost forgotten episode in British parliamentary history. It concerns the saga of another politician and coreligionist Lionel de Rothschild.

In 1847 when Rothschild was elected to parliament he was required to take an oath on the Bible (both the Old and New Testaments), swearing on 'the true faith of a Christian'. Unable to take the oath Rothschild hoped a proposed Jewish Disabilities Bill would correct the discrimination and allow him to take his seat in the House of Commons. The bill softening the requirement for a Christian oath was passed in the Commons in February 1848, but was rejected by the House of Lords. The same bill and variants of it were tabled repeatedly only to be blocked by the Lords. Rothschild was reelected five times without being able to take the oath. Finally in 1858 a change in the voting requirements overcame the opposition of the Lords and Lionel de Rothschild finally entered parliament.

Recalling the tortuous passage of the Jewish Disabilities Bill provides a hyperlink to the contentious draft amendment to Israel's citizenship law approved by the Israeli cabinet on Sunday. The amendment requires non-Jews applying for Israeli citizenship to pledge loyalty to Israel as a Jewish and a democratic state.

The proposed change further antagonizes Israeli Arabs, is unnecessary, provocative and racist. The amendment, which is subject to approval by the Knesset has encountered a storm of criticism and has driven open divisions within the coalition government.

The citizenship law change was originally proposed by Avigdor Lieberman.

It is part and parcel of the coalition agreement between Lieberman's party, Yisrael Beitenu and the Likud party . The amendment dovetails with other treats Lieberman has in store for Israel's Arab minorities. Last week I mentioned his "in situ transfer plan."

There has been widespread speculation by political observers regarding the timing of the draft amendment. Some say Netanyahu's enthusiastic endorsement of the amendment was an attempt to steal Lieberman's thunder. This is quite likely, but it was also intended to appease the right wing members of the coalition in advance of a possible concession to thePalestinians.

At the opening of the third Knesset session Prime Minister Netanyahu offered the Palestinians an extension of the moratorium on building in the settlements in exchange for their recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. An offer he knew they were not likely to accept. Indeed Palestinian spokespersons rejected it almost immediately.

Naturalization applicants currently swear an oath of allegiance to the state, without elaboration.

Israelis, both Arabs and Jews, who have criticised the amendment claim that the current draft amendment is discriminatory. It applies only to non-Jews who want to become naturalized citizens. Those are mainly Arabs from other countries who marry Arab citizens of Israel, and who are likely to reject the definition of Israel as a Jewish state.

The amendment would not apply to Jews or those of Jewish descent, who immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return. Ironically this would allow the exemption of ultra-Orthodox Jewish immigrants, many of whom are non-Zionist and would oppose pledging allegiance to a Jewish state.

Israel's Declaration of Independence and a core group of legal statutes known as basic law, often used as a de facto constitution, both already refer to Israel as a Jewish, democratic state. The term is also used widely in other laws and court rulings, but it has never been fully defined.

While we are debating the ramifications of the amendment to the oath of allegiance Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad currently on a state visit to Lebanon repeated his call to obliterate Israel.

Today he conducted a provocative tour of south Lebanon which culminated with a mass rally at Bint Jbeil near the border with Israel, but not close enough to throw a stone at the IDF as he boasted he would do. During the enthusiastic reception at Bint Jbeil maybe the Iranian president saw the clusters of 2,000 blue and white balloons released on the Israeli side of the border and blown into Lebanon by a south westerly breeze.

I don’t know who paid for the balloons and it’s unclear what message they were meant to convey.

Observers claim Ahmadinejad’s visit to Lebanon was timed to bolster support for Hezbollah at a time of political difficulty. Tensions are on the rise between Hezbollah, which has 13 members in Lebanon's 128-seat parliament, and the pro-Western government over a UN-backed investigation into the 2005 bomb attack that killed Prime Minister Saad Hariri's father, ex-premier Rafiq Hariri. The tribunal is expected to indict several Hezbollah members in the assassination in coming weeks.

On a hot summer's night at the end of August members of a Hamas terror group opened fire on a car at the entrance to Kiryat Arba . Five Israelis were killed in the attack.

Wary of Israeli and Palestinian Authority security forces, Hamas in the West Bank tries to keep a low profile. The organisation is highly departmentalised, making it difficult for security forces to detect its operatives. Nevertheless, military intelligence was able to track down the Hamas cell that carried out the attack

Last Friday the eight members of the terror group were tracked down. The house they were hiding in was surrounded by a police anti-terror unit supported by an IDF infantry force and a demolition unit equipped with bulldozers. The accrued siege situation experience has yielded positive results.

Of the eight terrorists holed up in the house six surrendered while their leader and another terrorist chose to die in the exchange of fire or when the bulldozers demolished the house. The Israeli forces suffered no casualties.

In the past IDF units engaged in ferreting out wanted terrorists sometimes employed the "neighbour procedure," a method used to avoid endangering IDF soldiers. It calls for using an Arab resident of a building being entered or searched to enter the building or to open suspicious objects. The theory behind it is that a terrorist in the building is less likely to shoot one of their neighbours than to shoot an IDF soldier, or that the neighbour is more likely to know whether a certain package is booby-trapped than the IDF soldiers who might otherwise open it.

The procedure was used successfully for at least twenty years. During that time there were only two "neighbour" casualties. One was killed and another was wounded. Two too many for Israel’s human rights groups.

Five years ago seven human rights groups petitioned the High Court of Justice to forbid the use of the neighbour procedure, which it did in a detailed and reasoned ruling.

Ten days ago an Israeli military court convicted two soldiers for using the neighbour procedure when they ordered a nine-year-old Palestinian boy to open suspicious looking packages. The incident occurred almost two years ago during Operation Cast Lead. .

Following the High Court ruling the IDF strictly prohibits using civilians as human shields.

At this juncture it's pertinent to add that various forms of the neighbour procedure have been used by military forces since antiquity and are still in use, regardless of rulings against it.

I'm not qualified to argue for or against its use, however Asa Kasher is.

He is the Laura Schwarz-Kipp Professor of Professional Ethics and Philosophy of Practice at Tel Aviv University. He is noted for authoring theIsrael Defence Forces' Code of Conduct.

Kasher claimsthe Supreme Court is wrong, although the military court that convicted the two soldiers on Sunday was right.

“What those two soldiers did was wrong,” said Kasher in a telephone interview, endorsing the military court ruling. “But there are situations in which the use of the enemy’s civilian population to defuse a potentially explosive situation is not only ethically permissible, it also saves lives.”

He added, “In many instances of confrontation between IDF forces and a terror suspect who has barricaded himself inside a building, neighbours who are either family from the same clan or friends can peacefully and effectively neutralize the situation.”… “Neighbours often have a vested interest in preventing the IDF from destroying the building where the suspect is hiding because they live in the same building; relatives also have a desire to save the terrorist’s life.
If they volunteer to do so of their own free will they should be allowed to.”

Despite the unusually hot weather summer is definitely drawing to a close.

The sea squill, the eternal season marker has flowered, the first rains caught us unprepared, but hoping that they are a sign that more will come.

Have a good weekend.

Beni 14^th of October, 2010.

Memory

“Forgotten your password?” This is probably the most frequently asked and annoying question of the cyber age. Unless you’re blessed with a prodigious memory or have all your many passwords conveniently stored a mouse -click away, you have no option but to request a reminder, or an opportunity to compose a new password.

It’s on these “click for a reminder” occasions that I remember our collective memory. Every national entity, ethnic group and tribe is endowed with a collective memory. It seems there is no effective deleting mechanism that enables us to expunge it. Even conscious and determined efforts to bring about intentional ethnic amnesia fail to wipe the memory slate clean.

Perhaps second and third generation descendents of émigrés determined to assimilate and adopt the host nation’s identity and collective memory manage to blot out the past.

We the people of the book; the “good book” and all the interpretative tomes written after its compilation, that ongoing library often referred to as the “Jewish Bookcase,” we its beneficiaries are endowed with an especially prodigious and long collective memory.

“Remember what Amalek did to you …” commands Deuteronomy and then commands us to, “blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget." Deut. 25:17. Notwithstanding the problem that scholars disagree about the exact identity of Amalek and if indeed we did blot out the Amalekites, we are mindful of the injunction not to forget.

At various times we have faced existential threats, the most recent, the Holocaust blotted out many Jewish communities but not our ability to remember them and commemorate that tragic event. Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad not content with trying to blot out the memory of that genocide threatens to physically wipe us off the map. Many Arabs and especially many Palestinians deny a large part of our early history, would happily blot us out if they could and have deliberately tried to destroy archeological evidence of our historical presence here.

Memory is a narrative that differs according to the way we recount an event. We commemorate our fight for independence and celebrate it annually as fitting the occasion with festivities repeating battle narratives, acts of heroism and the great victory..

The Palestinians remember the same event as their great national tragedy – the Naqba.

At present Israelis and Palestinians are trying without much enthusiasm to resolve the two narratives.

The conflict involves both people and territory. Recently, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman suggested his own private solution when he spoke from the podium of the United Nations General Assembly. He is Israel’s most unwelcome foreign minister. Often the prime minister and the minister of defence act on his behalf in places where he is persona non grata. Lieberman says the guiding principle in peace talks with Palestinians should be exchanges of land and population not land for peace. The current plan is a refinement of a plan he suggested in May 2004. He proposes that Israel gets rid of as many of its Arabs as possible. Not by transferring them, but by transferring the territory they live in.

The Wadi Ara region is one of the places Lieberman has earmarked for transfer. Ironically this area, a narrow pass between the hills that affords a connection between the coastal road and the Jezreel Valley was not in Israeli hands at the end of the War of Independence. Israel wanted the pass and the road but had to take the Arabs living in the 15 villages along the route as part of the exchange of territories agreed to by the Jordanians in the 1949 armistice agreement

Recently we commemorated the tenth anniversary of the outbreak of the Second Intifada.

The July 11–25, 2000Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David was held between United States President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat . As we know the talks ultimately failed with both sides blaming the other. There were four principal obstacles to agreement: territory, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount , refugees and the 'right of return' and Israeli security concerns.

The disappointing outcome of the Camp David Summit led to a potentially explosive atmosphere in the West Bank and Gaza. On September 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon conducted a provocative visit to the Temple Mount.

Recently disclosed information indicates that the purpose of his visit was to boost his political standing. He underestimated the Palestinian reaction to the visit. Some observers have attributed the riots that broke out the following day and later on to the provocation caused by Sharon’s visit.

It’s reasonable to suppose that the disturbances would have occurred with or without the provocation. One of the main clashes that occurred between Israeli Arabs actively supporting the Palestinians took place in and around Umm el Fahm in the Wadi Ara region. The main road artery north was blocked for hours before police were able to reopen it. In the ensuing clashes 13 Arabs were killed, others were injured. The police also suffered a number of casualties.

Ten years later the trauma of the Wadi Ara clash is still felt. Perhaps this explains why Lieberman’s plan to exchange Wadi Ara for an equal area of the West Bank occupied by Israeli settlements was relatively well received when respondents to a public opinion poll conducted were asked to accept or reject it.

I doubt if the Arab residents of the15 villages in the Wadi Ara area are willing to change their nationality.

Lieberman knows that his plan tends to make him and his party more popular, however he probably knows it has few merits and many flaws

Journalist and TV anchorman Yaron London commented as follows:

“Let’s do Lieberman justice: He does not propose the expulsion of people from their homes and land. The term ‘transfer’ is incommensurate with his initiative. He proposes to mark the border in such a way that many Arabs will find themselves east of it.

Arab spokespeople are outraged by this, yet are having trouble explaining what’s so wrong with it. They do not wish to renounce their status as Israelis, yet at the same time they claim that this identity had been forced upon them. Their excuses are irrelevant here. Only one thing is important: Some 1.3 million Israeli citizens, who constitute roughly one-fifth of the country’s population, will strongly object to Lieberman’s proposal, and we cannot implement it without their agreement.

Yet let’s assume that everyone does agree. When will the border pass in a way that pushes as many Arabs as possible out of Israel without uprooting Jews, without ripping up the map of Israel, and without jeopardizing Israel’s security?”

Aluf Benn a journalist who writes op eds for Haaretz had this to say about the plan five years ago, soon after Lieberman aired it for the first time:

“Lieberman advocates a ‘populated land swap,’ which is sometimes called a ‘soft transfer’: Israel would give Umm el-Fahm and the adjacent Arab-populated area west of the Green Line to a future Palestinian state, in return for the major Jewish settlement "blocks" that lie east of the Green Line on the West Bank. You don't have to be from the extreme right to find the notion appealing; academics and politicians from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to his predecessor, Ehud Barak, have toyed with the idea. “

Benn asked Arik Sharon about the plan anticipating an affirmative reply.

He said Sharon told him: "It can be discussed. But I don't see any possibility to impose such a move by force."

“The residents of Umm el-Fahm firmly reject the idea, and the mayor, Sheikh Hashem Abdel Rahman Mahajne, calls it ‘racist and unacceptable.’ They are, and want to remain, Israeli citizens, he told me. The Israeli left opposes the Wadi Ara swap as both immoral and impractical. A state cannot simply divorce its citizens for convenience.” Said Benn.His impressions are still relevant today,

Like other nations we remember our wars and the soldiers who died in battle. This week Egypt and Syria celebrated the victory of the Yom Kippur War. In Israel the occasion was marked earlier according to the Hebrew calendar.

Viewed in historical perspective, that war was a victory for Israel. After the initial setback we were able to turn the tables and force our enemies to sue for a cease fire. Anwar Sadat was astute enough to realise that Israel was unbeatable at that particular time, so he sought a peace accord.

While Mubarak and Assad extol their great victory we find the laurel wreaths too uncomfortable to rest on. Instead we engage in another round of self-flagellation. After thirty seven years the Pandora’s box we call government archives were opened a little to allow a peek into the cabinet minutes of meetings held during the early part of the war.

Memoires, biographies and exhaustive research have revealed most of the details we would prefer to wish away. It seems we still need another cathartic

draught to rid ourselves of the humiliation and the guilt that came in the aftermath of the war. Till now the minutes published this week were classified as "top secret." They reveal a morbid, defeatist Moshe Dayan.

“October 7, 1973. 2:50 pm. A little more than a day after the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, then-prime minister Golda Meir and her cabinet hold a dramatic meeting. Then-defence minister Moshe Dayan discusses the fall of IDF positions, one after the other, in the Sinai Peninsula. "The canal line is lost," he says, and suggests a withdrawal to the Isthmus line, some 30 kilometers (about 19 miles) from the canal, while leaving behind the injured soldiers who cannot be evacuated. "Where we can evacuate – we will evacuate. In places we can't evacuate – we will leave the wounded. Those who make it – make it. If they decide to surrender, they'll surrender. We have to tell them, 'We can't reach you. Try to bust through or surrender.'"

Their publication came at a time when efforts are being made to renew the negotiations for the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held by Hamas in Gaza. A formidable army of supporters have been lobbying the government to pay the price and bring him home. The Shalit family and their supporters remind the government that the IDF doesn’t desert its soldiers. The old cabinet minutes prove that at least one member of the war cabinet suggested we leave them behind.

I don’t know if Moshe Dayan remembered a precedent created by another famous general.

At the time of Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign a secondary military expedition was conducted in Palestine. It was concluded with victories and a few setbacks. On the return march to Egypt when the French reached Jaffa Napoleon was faced with a dilemma. He had already discarded his canons to lighten his load and was forced to decide what to do with his wounded and sick soldiers. One biographer mentions it briefly: “The tale that has circulated for two centuries alleged that Napoleon had his medics administer over-doses of opium to some of his plague-ridden troops. The story explained that he did not want to have them fall into the hands of the Turks, who would torture them.” Many historians have discredited the story , nevertheless it won’t go away.

Of course Dayan’s plan was rejected, the Egyptians were repulsed but the IDF chief of staff David Elazar, one of the few cool headed people at the cabinet meeting who believed the IDF could win the war was blamed for the imbroglio.

Memory can be uncomfortable; nevertheless we can’t ignore the injunction to remember.

Beni 9^th of October, 2010.