Letter from within
With the beginning of the ceasefire, the phase we lived for the last month – “the open war” – was finished.
Everybody admits that the Moqawamah – resistance – has won this part of the war. It’s a great thing, and more than that, it’s the first time Arab forces win over Israel at war and it is really nice to be on the winner’s side. You can see all the Zionists in a very bad mood.
For us the last month was very strange. In spite of the fact that we were active almost every day (we organized & participated in demos 3 – 4 times a week, and did more social activity) I felt, more than ever, that the real politics, the real change of the world is done by other people that use other means.
During this month the Israeli police & people were much more racist than they are regularly – they felt that they are beaten by Hizbullah, but couldn’t do anything, so they were attacking us. We were attacked by Israeli people during our demonstrations (for example, the students organization that is associated with the Avoda (“Labour”) party were organizing to attack anti-war demos, especially demos of “Women in Black”, the police was repressing demos & beating savagely, and there were lot of people that spent their nights in detention centers after completely legal demos.
It is important to understand that at least 85% and maybe even more of the Zionist society – the Jews of Israel – supported the war and there were no anti-war voices among the so-called “Israeli left” or “Zionist left”. Just in the last week, when it became clear that Israel is loosing the war, that the best Israeli commandos are being defeated by the Hizbullah guerrillas, that the tanks, helicopters and ships became death traps to the Israeli soldiers, and that the Israeli society is not functioning well because of the rocket attacks, some of the “Zionist Leftists” began to criticize the war. They made one demo that was small (500 people) and with slogans that implied that they were sharing the Zionist premises.
The “Anti war” movement (I don’t speak about an organization, but rather about the elements that organized activities to protest the war) that we have here is mainly based on the Arab parties & movements and some radical Jewish people & organizations, like the Anarchists against the Apartheid Wall. In the demos in Tel Aviv half of the demonstrators were Arabs, in Haifa (which is a mixed city) maybe 75% of them Arabs.
As a consequence the slogans of the movement were directly blaming Israel in the aggression (the most beloved chants in Hebrew were: Peretz, the defense minister, how many kids you’ve killed today?” “All the ministers are war criminals”, “Who is the terrorist – this is Olmert/Peretz the fascist” and “Olmert, murderer, Lebanon will win the war” and in Arabic: “In Taibeh & Maroun e-Rass, the occupation army was beaten” and “Bint Jbeil, you’ve beaten the Zionist army” etc. – there are, of course, some slogans we can’t chant or write because one can go for some years to prison for it. For example, there is a man from Nazareth that was sentenced, 5 years ago, to 3 years in prison for holding a photo of Nasrallah in a land day demonstration according to the paragraph of “supporting a terrorist organization”.
An Activist of Abnaa el Balad
