New Page 4

Gush Shalom and Uri Avnery

Gush Shalom ("Peace Bloc") is an Israeli activist group founded by former Irgun member, Member of the Knesset, and journalist Uri Avnery in 1993. He and his organization unequivocally oppose the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the siege of Gaza, and were highly vocal critics of Israel's brutal war against Lebanon in July of 2006. Many credit Avnery and Gush Shalom with being a valuable asset for the Palestinians' struggle for justice, and for their day-to-day welfare.

Some people have objected to positions taken by Avnery, such as those from his article, "The Devil's Hoof".

There is no chance at all that the Jewish public will agree, in this generation or the next, to live as a minority in a state dominated by an Arab majority. 99.99% of the Jewish population will fight against this tooth and nail. The demography will not stop haunting them, but on the contrary, it will push them to do things which are unthinkable today. Ethnic cleansing will become a practical agenda. Even moderate Israelis will be driven into the arms of the fascist right-wing. All means of oppression will become acceptable when the Jewish majority adopts the aim of causing the Arabs to leave the country before they have a chance of becoming the majority.

Critics allege that :
● He makes clear that Israel must maintain a Jewish majority and destiny, yet this can never be guaranteed if non-Jews in Israel had equality in the law and in practice.
● He makes what are considered threats to Palestinians should they seek a single, democratic state, contending that a single state would be disastrous for Israeli Jews and bring grave consequences to Palestinians.

The following passage from Avery's writings, however, may better explain his positions and, arguably, show the above criticism to be unfair.

IN RECENT YEARS, intellectuals of the third Arab generation in Israel have published several proposals for the normalization of the relations between the majority and the minority.

There exist, in principle, two main alternatives:

The first way says: Israel is a Jewish state, but a second people also live here. If Jewish Israelis have defined national rights, Arab Israelis must also have defined national rights. For example, educational, cultural and religious autonomy (as the young Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky demanded a hundred years ago for the Jews in Czarist Russia). They must be allowed to have free and open connections with the Arab world and the Palestinian people, like the connections Jewish citizens have with the Jewish Diaspora. All this must be spelled out in the future constitution of the state.

The second way says: Israel belongs to all its citizens, and only to them. Every citizen is an Israeli, much as every US citizen is an American. As far as the state is concerned, there is no difference between one citizen and another, whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian, Arab or Russian, much as, from the point of view of the American state, there is no difference between white, brown or black citizens, whether of European, African or Asian descent, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish or Muslim. In Israeli parlance, this is called "a state of all its citizens".

It goes without saying that I favor the second alternative, but I am ready to accept the first. Either of them is preferable to the existing situation, where the state pretends that there is no problem except some traces of discrimination that have to be overcome (without doing anything about it).

For examples of critical views of Avnery, see e.g.

http://spritzlerj.blogspot.com/2008/08/uri-avnerys-despicable-devils-hoof.html

http://peoplesgeography.com/2007/04/27/pappe-to-avnery-zionist-left-misguided-on-two-states/

http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/War/Uri%20Avnery%20Is%20Wrong.htm

Al-Jazeera interview from 2006
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2006/11/2008525184558213712.html

continue to
Gush Shalom