From: Francis Feeley <Francis.Feeley@u-grenoble3.fr>
Subject: AN OPEN LETTER TO GENERAL ARIEL SHARON,
FROM SOUTH AFRICAN POET BREYTEN BREYTENBACH.
22 April 2002
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends:
The following letter was forwarded to us by Professor James Stevenson,
a
research associate at the Center for the Advanced Study of American
Institutions and Social Movements. For more information on the Zionist
massacres in Palestine, readers are invited to visit the web site,
<http://www.aljazeerah.info/>.
Sincerely,
F. Feeley
==================================================
© 2002 The Nation Company, L.P.
An Open Letter To General Ariel Sharon
Paris, April 7, 2002
Sir,
You don't know me. There's no reason
why you should and little cause for
you to listen to what somebody like
myself may have to say. I don't imagine
you have time to pay attention to
views that do not correspond to your own.
In fact, I'm convinced that you
do not listen to anybody who doesn't say
what you wish to hear.
Should it interest you, I'm a writer
born in South Africa now living and
working abroad. For some time back
there I also grew up among a "chosen
people" who behaved as Herrenvolk--as
all those who believe themselves
singularized by suffering or entrusted
with a special mission from God.
I apologize if my comparative allusion
to Israel as Herrenvolk hurts
because of the echoes from a recent
past when, in Europe, so many Jews were
the victims of a "final solution."
But how else is one to attempt
describing the comportment of your
armies when one is flooded by the horror
of what you're doing?
These rough equivalences don't come
lightly. As a writer I'm deeply
apprised of the need to keep the
words uncluttered of any urge to rouse
easy emotions. This is what facile
comparisons do--they nullify
understanding the complexity of
the observed phenomena by a rush of outrage
heating the throat and staining
the adversary with the vomit of borrowed or
vicarious condemnation. Apartheid
was not Nazism, though to say so was a
striking slogan. And the policies
now perpetrated by Israeli forces on the
Palestinian people should not be
equated with Apartheid. Each one of these
processes and systems is evil enough
to merit a thorough description of its
own historical singularity.
And yet... There are similarities
and differences: This blind competition,
on both sides, to be recognized
as more-victim-than-thou; cloaking
atrocities in the "divine" right
to self-defense; the shameless
manipulation of perceptions and
the mendacious lying; the concomitant
brutalization of your own society;
the disdain shown for the humanity of
the Palestinians--indeed, denying
even the most elementary humane treatment
to a terrified and trapped civilian
population...
It is all only too familiar. The
underlying assumptions informing your
actions are racist. As was the case
with the South African regime, the
preferred methods by which you hope
to subjugate the enemy consist of force
and bloodshed and humiliation. Cynically,
you think you can get away with
this as long as you play up to the
supposed vital interests of the United
States. I don't think you really
care a Jaffa fig for America's interests.
You probably despise them for being
blinded by their own material crassness
and their ignorance of the world.
True, your used-car-salesman
doppelgänger, Netanyahu, deploys
this craft of crude propaganda more
openly, as if he were a dirty finger
tweaking the clitoris of a swooning
American public opinion. But you
too, by opportunistically echoing the
semantically challenged American
President (and putting words in his
mouth), who describes every "other"
as a terrorist, have shown that you
take the rest of the world for fools.
Surely, not all of us agree that the
highest good in the world is America's
greed for cheap oil, and that we
should hence be expected to adhere
to the inviolability of corrupt regimes
in the region!
There is a more pernicious red herring
that needs to be smelled out
forthwith. It is blatantly averred,
again and again, that any criticism of
Israel's policies is an expression
of anti-Semitism. With that assertion
the argument is supposed to be closed
and sealed. Of course, I reject this
attempt at censorship by thus disqualifying
the grounds for debate. No
amount of suffering--be it of the
Tutsis, the Kurds, the Armenians, the
Vietnamese, the Bosnians or the
Palestinians--can confer immunity from
criticism. (And, to put it sadly,
no amount of persecution would seem to
vaccinate people against perpetrating
the same practices they suffered
from.) No appeal to the incitement
or supposed promises of some Holy Land
edicted by One God can condone the
exactions carried out by an invading and
occupying army-- or, for that matter,
the cold-blooded massacres of
innocents ordered by fanatic warlords
in the name of resistance. No
reference to some ostensibly sacrosanct
"Greater Israel" can camouflage the
fact that your settlements are armed
colonies built on land shamelessly
stolen from the Palestinians, festering
there as shards in their flesh, or
snipers' nests, intended to thwart
and annul any possibility of Palestinian
statehood. There can be no way to
peace through the annihilation of the
other, just as there is no paradise
for the "martyr."
I find this "anti-Semitism" allegation
utterly deplorable, especially
coming from Jewish intellectuals
who so often constitute the reasonable,
rational and creative backbone of
Western societies. Why should we be
subjected to this special pleading,
or look the other way when it is Israel
committing crimes? Is what's sauce
for the goose then, in some
Yahweh-inspired way, not sauce for
the gander?
No, General Sharon, past injustices
suffered cannot justify or excuse your
present fascist actions. A viable
state cannot be built on the expulsion of
another people who have as much
claim to that territory as you have. Might
is not right. In the long run, your
immoral and shortsighted (and finally
stupid) policies will furthermore
weaken Israel's legitimacy as a state.
Recently, I had the opportunity
of visiting the territories for the first
time. (And yes, I'm afraid they
can reasonably be described as resembling
bantustans--for only too often are
they reminiscent of the ghettos and
controlled camps of misery one knew
in South Africa.) I only glimpsed
Israel briefly, upon entering and
then later leaving after spending a night
in the opulent but dismally deserted
David Intercontinental Hotel of Tel
Aviv. You may say my view is fatally
one-sided. Perhaps. Though one is
always within sight of Israeli demarcation
lines, checkpoints, tanks and
armed outposts in the West Bank.
I wondered, are your two peoples
really all that different? You are of a
similarly diverse mix of cultures
and origins, you are all of you diaspora
people, you are equally intelligent
and quick-witted and excitable. You may
well be brave in similar fashions.
On both sides there are creative minds
of exceptional integrity at work.
On both sides, also, there are an
extraordinary number of self-serving,
power-hungry individuals, fanatics
with their spirits obfuscated by
this God-nonsense. Or using that as a
pretext.
As provocateur--cold-blooded and
cruel--you stand out among your peers. In
your dogged but ill-considered attempts
to subvert previous agreements and
to scupper the possibility of peace--except
for the peace of the graveyard
and of exile, premised on the "total
transfer" or "disappearance" of the
Palestinian entity--you are bringing
turmoil to the region. This you
probably planned for. It remains
to be seen whether the growling of your
principals in Washington will inflect
your campaign of calculated terror
and wanton destruction--or whether
it is but a smokescreen behind which to
better align the "free world's"
war on "terrorism." And for the domination
of resources and a global control
of markets and cheap oil and "democracy."
The few days I spent there, with
the delegation of the International
Parliament of Writers, left me with
a mixed bag of strong but conflicting
impressions. How small Palestine
is! How inextricably linked your peoples
are. The stones everywhere. The
topography of names familiar from the
Bible. The beautiful light. The
attempts to make the place look like
Switzerland by planting out-of-place
conifers. The inhospitality of the
land, except for lush coastal plains.
How abysmally sad the villages are,
reminding one of the lifeless and
apathetic towns of East Germany. The
green lights in the mosques and
all the unfinished habitations. The
ugliness of the architecture everywhere--the
ubiquitous light-gray
limestone building blocks. The inanity
of your occupation--all those lit-up
detour roads built for the exclusive
use of settlers and Israeli citizens.
The surly pettiness of your controls
at checkpoints, having little to do
with security and everything with
the primitive urge to humiliate,
frustrate, harass and drive to insane
rage an occupied population. The
extreme youth of your soldiers,
and sadly they are so obviously
well-cultivated boys and girls.
The ruthless rapaciousness with which you
destroy the possible Palestinian
economy and steal their goods. The ancient
revenge--bulldozing houses, destroying
olive groves. The equally primitive
sight of armed positions under camouflage
netting and Israeli flags in
commandeered houses. Your vaunted
"democratic" media lying to your own
people, denying the war crimes carried
out by your troops. The Berlin walls
around your settlements in Gaza
(and behind them university extensions,
research institutes, American-linked
hotels, golf courses), and then the
rubble of destroyed Palestinian
quarters looking now like Ground Zero. The
way little kids looked us straight
in the eye, apparently uncowed, but then
we were told that they're probably
all traumatized not only by the hovering
dogs of your gunships and your prehistoric
tanks and your men in uniform
shooting at everything that moves,
but by all the hyperactive adults around
them. The old kerchiefed women in
some refugee camp screaming that you,
Sharon, will never make them move,
that they chased away your soldiers
"like dogs." Proffering abuse, also,
at the spineless Arab states and the
cowardice of their own Palestinian
Authority. The ebullience of the
intellectuals and artists under
siege in Ramallah--arguing, laughing at
their own plight. How they all say,
"We don't want to be heroes, we don't
want to be victims, we just want
to lead normal lives." Their wry despair.
Mahmoud Darwish: "There is too much
history and too many prophets in this
small land." The visit to Abu Ammar,
Yasir Arafat, a holed fox, his waxed
yellow hands clinging to the empty
clichés of "a peace of the brave" and
"the conscience of the international
community." A bourgeois lady lamenting
the desecration of the Palestinian
landscape. And a human rights lawyer
claiming: "We are grateful to Sharon
for two things--he united all the
Palestinian factions and he took
away every option except to resist." Later
on, the same haunted man, chain-smoking
and with the sweat of death already
on him, remarked bitterly that repression
has penetrated the skin of the
people, and that now they have nothing
else to defend themselves with
except their skins. Thus the human
bombs.
For these will be my contrasted
conclusions: You have not broken the spirit
of the Palestinian people. Quite
the contrary--they are now more resolute
than ever to build a state; it doesn't
matter how much you bully them. They
saw the renewed onslaught coming,
they knew you were but playing footsy
with General Zinni--probably in
agreement with Dick Cheney. They also know
that, since you have now made them
stronger, you must strike harder and
deeper, because you are caught in
a conundrum of your own making. Like Bush
in his crusade against the infidel
and the disobedient, you have to
accelerate your distention of international
public ethics and flaunt common
sense even more, and throw good
moral money after bad political
assessments. They know that nothing
they can do will appease you, short of
turning turtle. They fear you will
have to compound this crime against
humanity which you are committing
at present, that you may indeed break
their hopes for a secular, modern
and democratic state responsible to its
population, and bring forth the
devil among them. They also know that this
will profoundly divide and weaken
Israel.
But you don't care, do you ?
This is the pity and the horror.
The pity and the horror.
--BREYTEN BREYTENBACH