ebrei contro l'occupazione

Internazionale, 3 marzo 2010

Più i palestinesi protestano pacificamente contro l’occupazione, più l’esercito aumenta la repressione.


La mia amica era al parco e il suo compagno mi ha chiesto di richiamare più tardi. Poi ha aggiunto: “Ma forse non tornerà tanto presto. È uscita con altri due di sinistra, e di questi tempi è un po’ pericoloso”. Stava scherzando, naturalmente. Le persone di sinistra possono passeggiare per ore a Tel Aviv senza essere seguite o fermate. Ma forse avrei dovuto scrivere “possono ancora”.

Attenzione: non c’è paragone tra il giro di vite dell’esercito contro i palestinesi e le misure prese contro i loro simpatizzanti israeliani. Più i palestinesi protestano pacificamente contro l’occupazione, più l’esercito aumenta la repressione: raid nei villaggi di Bili’n e Ni’lin, arresti di massa e lunghi processi basati su testimonianze dubbie.

Contemporaneamente le forze dell’ordine scoraggiano i cittadini israeliani dal violare la separazione imposta ai due popoli. Chi partecipa ad attività congiunte è accusato di schierarsi con il “nemico”. Negli ultimi due anni una nuova generazione di israeliani ha aderito alla causa palestinese, raccogliendo l’invito dei vecchi attivisti.
A Gerusalemme la polizia ha effettuato alcuni arresti durante le proteste contro l’espulsione dei palestinesi dalle loro case.

Gush Shalom, 06/03/10

SOME WEEKS ago, Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in Rome, was released after serving 28 years in prison.

The motives for his act have never been clarified. But a Palestinian leader once told me his version: God appeared to Agca in a dream and told him: Go to the Holy City and kill that damn Pole. But the Turk misunderstood, so instead of going to Jerusalem and killing Menachem Begin, he went to Rome…

Which just goes to show that holy cities are a pain in the neck.

THE LATE Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an observant Jew and a resolute opponent of the religious establishment, used to praise a deed of the Wahhabis, the radical sect that arose more than 200 years ago to cleanse Islam of impurity. The first thing they did upon conquering Mecca was to destroy the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad. The sanctification of graves was, to their mind, a pagan abomination. Leibowitz lauded this act and poured his wrath on religious Jews who sanctify “holy” sites.

He was standing on solid ground. The last chapter of the Torah (Deuteronomy 34) states: “So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab…and he buried him…but no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto this day.” Clearly, the authors of the Bible, too, believed that the adulation of graves was a despicable habit of idolaters.

In the course of generations, Jews, too, were infected with this ailment. Orthodox Jews worshipped at the grave of Rabbi Nachman in the Ukraine and of Rabbi Abu-Hatzira in Egypt. The mutation of Judaism, which has become a kind of state religion in Israel, has turned this idolatry into a holy cult.

During the first years of the state, an official of the Ministry of Religions (as it was then called), a certain Shmuel Zanwill Kahana, toured the country and discovered holy sites right and left. He found graves of Muslim sheikhs and announced that they were, actually, the tombs of our forefathers. They were declared holy places and taken over by his ministry.

That aggrandized the ministry and its budget, attracted tourists and “proved” that Jews had deep roots in the country. Secular Israelis smiled in derision, and some religious Jews, like Leibowitz, were furious.