Oct. 15 2009 - 9:02 am | 206 views | 1 recommendation | 0 comments

‘The Other Israel’ that Won a Nobel Prize

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The brilliant and brave Israeli activist, Uri Avnery, has written an incisive essay in celebration of the award of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry to his countrywoman, Ada Yonath. Though her award got far, far less attention than that of the peace prize to the U.S. president, Avnery sees it as a defining moment for his nation and a challenge to Nobel Laureate-designee Barack Obama.

Avnery, 86, is the dean of Israel’s peace movement, having evolved from youthful participation in the radical paramilitary group Irgun in the 1930s to serving in the Knesset. He authored several books, edited a respected magazine, and founded the Gush Shalom peace movement – supporter of the two-state solution and opponent of Israeli settlements in the future Palestinian state.

In his essay, The Other Israel, published in several places in the Middle East, Avnery contrasts the award to Yonath for her work on the structure of the ribosome with the issue that last week preoccupied most of Israel, Palestine and the angry Arab world: interreligious strife on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem. [See my coverage of last week's controversies here.] Avnery argues:

“There is something symbolic about the proximity in time of the awarding of the Nobel Prize and the Temple Mount happenings. The two events represent the two options facing Israel. We have to decide what we are: The Israel of Ada Yonath or the Israel of Ateret Cohanim.”

Yonath, he notes, belongs at the apex of national pride, …. “born in Jerusalem, who received all her education in Israeli schools. Her character traits are those considered typical for Israelis: a direct approach, simple manners, a hatred of formality, a readiness to laugh at oneself. There is not an ounce of arrogance or vanity, but an incredible power of persistence.” Avnery notes that Yonath’s scientific research is an additional source of national pride because it involved organisms found locally, in the Dead Sea. He continues:

“The news about Ada’s prize was like an oasis in the desert. Almost all the other news on TV and radio and in the newspapers dealt with blood and riots. The battle for the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif), the clashes between the police and protesters in the Arab quarters of Jerusalem …. And over everything there still hovers the Goldstone Report about crimes committed during the Gaza War ….

The subject dominating this week’s news was Jerusalem. Everything happened “suddenly.” Suddenly the flames broke out on the Temple Mount, after the month of Ramadan had passed relatively quietly. Suddenly the Islamic Movement in Israel called upon the Arab citizens to rush and save the al-Aqsa Mosque. Suddenly, senior Islamic preachers all over the Muslim world urged the one and a half billion Muslims to rise to the defense of the holy shrines. (Nothing happened.)

The police chief in Jerusalem has a ready explanation: The Muslims are “ungrateful.” To wit: We have “allowed them” to pray safely all through Ramadan, and that is how they repay us. This colonial arrogance infuriated the Arabs even more.

According to the Israeli authorities, nothing has happened that could justify this “sudden” upheaval. Meaning: It is an Arab provocation, a vile effort to create a conflict out of nothing. But in Arab, and not only Arab, eyes it looks very different. For years now, the Arab community in Jerusalem has been under siege. Since Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister, and since Nir Barkat became mayor of Jerusalem, the sense of siege increased manyfold. Both men belong to the radical right, and both are leading toward ethnic cleansing.

This finds its foremost expression in the systematic building of Jewish neighborhoods in the heart of the Arab quarters in the annexed eastern part of the city, which is supposed to become the capital of the Palestinian state and whose final status is still to be decided by negotiation. The execution is entrusted to a group of extreme rightists called Ateret Cohanim (“the crown of priests”), financed by the American Bingo king Irwin Moskowitz…. “

Don’t miss the rest of Avnery’s provocative essay here. His conclusion focusing on Obama:

“An Israel that cherishes its culture, science, high-tech, literature, medicine and agriculture, which marches in the first row of progressive human society toward a better future, or an Israel of wars, occupation and settlements, a fundamentalist state that looks to the past. Contrary to the prophets of doom, I believe that this battle is not yet decided. Israel is far from being the monolithic body that appears in the caricatures. It is a varied, multifaceted society with many possibilities, one of which leads to war and the other toward peace and reconciliation. The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Barack Obama, can have a lot of influence on the choice. After all, wasn’t the prize awarded to him as a down payment for deeds to come?”

Coincidentally, Joe Klein posts a similar challenge to the president on Time magazine’s website this morning, noting that “the elements of” a peace plan on which most Middle East experts agree “are widely known” and that, in pushing the reluctant Israelis toward this plan, Obama “would have the chance to be remembered as the man who finally secured Israel’s borders — the sort of achievement that actually might merit a Nobel Prize.” Klein continues:

“Bill Clinton announced a version of it in December 2000, as he was leaving office…..four major components: a return to 1967 borders, with land swaps enabling Israel to keep many of its existing settlements; no right of return for Palestinians who left, or were forced off, their lands when Israel became a state; Jerusalem as the capital of both Israel and Palestine; and an international peacekeeping force replacing the Israelis currently patrolling the Jordan River Valley. (A fifth point, often mentioned, would be international control of the religious sites in the Old City of Jerusalem.)”

I would add that the components of this plan are discussed at nearly every Middle East policy forum, with general agreement, and are contained in a wide variety of official and unofficial peace plans, from DC groups like the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (which Klein cites) to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative – in which the heads of state of Israel’s Arab neighbors agreed to give full recognition of Israel and the establishment of normal relations.

Why don’t these plans become reality? Religious extremism on both sides, a fanatical obsession with righting wrongs of the past, top-down governmental structures, language and cultural isolation, and political leadership full of Jewish Joe Wilsons and Arab Rush Limbaughs.We are very dirty here: The U.S. has watched – and expensively abetted – an arms race in this, one of the most politically fragile regions of the world. Today, when the Sri Lankans are determinedly inching their way off the Failed States Index, and even the Turks are talking to the Armenians, the U.S. needs to make like Ada Yonath – craft brilliance out of Middle East mud.

I hope Klein’s Time piece is in Obama’s briefing book.

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