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In English, a "four-letter word"
is a rude expletive. It is a vulgar description of a sexual act
or organ, and an educated person will not use it.
Now it appears that in the
Hebrew language, too, there is a four-letter word, which a decent
person will not use, especially not in an election campaign.
A (politically) correct person will avoid it at all costs.
That word is Peace (which in
Hebrew consists of four letters).
* *
*
THIS WEEK, the election propaganda moved from
the street to radio and TV. Israeli law accords every list of
candidates a minimum of free broadcasting time (10 minutes on
TV), with parties represented in the outgoing Knesset getting
additional minutes according to their size. No other election
broadcasts on TV or radio are allowed.
As a result, election propaganda
has been taken out of the hands of the politicians and turned
over to the "experts" - advertising people, copywriters
and assorted "strategists". This is a cynical bunch.
Like lawyers, most advertising people are mercenaries. They may
serve a left-wing party today and sell their services to a right-wing
one tomorrow. Their personal opinions do not count, business
is business.
When an advertising expert
plans an election campaign, his aim is not to explain the program
of the party that hired him, but to attract voters. He is more
a circus juggler than a preacher.
Election propaganda is like
a gown: it should emphasize the attractive features of its owner
and hide the less attractive ones. The difference is that the
advertising expert can invent limbs that do not exist and cut
off limbs that do, according the demands of the market.
One of the major headaches
of the propagandist is that his candidates may speak up, God
forbid, and expose their real views, thus spoiling the show.
As a well-known advertising expert told me: "Selling a politician
is like selling toothpaste, with one important difference - toothpaste
doesn't talk!"
As a result, the election propaganda
does not say much about the real aims of the leaders and their
parties. One can assume in advance that most of the content of
the broadcasts is fraudulent. If a commercial enterprise distributed
such a mendacious prospectus on the stock exchange, it would
be indicted.
Does this mean that the election
propaganda is not interesting? On the contrary, one can learn
a lot from it. It does not reflect the real positions of the
parties, but it does reflect public opinion. More precisely:
public opinion as it appears to the experts, who conduct daily
polls, listen to test groups and such.
On this background, it is worthwhile
to examine the broadcasts.
* *
*
IN ONE of his mysteries, Sherlock Holmes observed
that the solution lay in the curious incident of the dog in the
night. "But the dog did nothing in the night-time!"
his assistant exclaimed. "That is the curious incident!"
Sherlock replied.
The curious incident in the
present election campaign is a word that does not appear at all:
the word "peace".
A stranger will not understand
its absence. After all, Israel is in a perpetual state of war.
The broadcasts themselves are full of frightening Hamas parades.
The fear of suicide bombings is stronger in Israel than any other
fear. Logic says that a party that promises peace will reach
the heights of popularity. Yet, wonder of wonders, no important
party is claiming this crown for itself. More than that, no important
party so much as mentions the word peace in its broadcasts.
Kadima speaks about Hope, Hope,
Hope - without spelling out what kind of hope, hope for what.
It speaks of "Might", and even of a "Chance for
a Political Move". Peace? Nyet.
Kadima's masterpiece is a TV
clip which harnesses to its cause the whole crew - Herzl, Ben-Gurion,
Begin, Sharon and Rabin. It shows Herzl announcing the Zionist
idea, Ben-Gurion founding the State of Israel, Begin making peace
with Egypt, Sharon crossing the Suez Canal in the Yom-Kippur
war, and Rabin making peace with -- King Hussein.
King Hussein? Wait a minute.
Didn't Rabin sign an agreement with the Palestinian Liberation
Organization and shake hands with Yasser Arafat? Wasn't that
the high point of his life? Wasn't he awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize for that? Wasn't the peace with Hussein almost an afterthought,
since Hussein had already been an unofficial ally of Israel for
more than 40 years? But Kadima has decided that it must not show
Arafat at any price. It could be accused, God forbid, of striving
for peace with the Palestinians!
Amir Peretz of Labor might
have been tempted to speak about peace, if his handlers had not
shut him up in time. He feels much safer talking about children
without food and oldsters without pensions.
Likud, of course, does not
speak about peace. Binyamin Netanyahu is at his best when scaring
people. For this purpose he went down to the junkyard and retrieved
some used generals, who testify that Hamas and the Palestinian
Authority pose an existential threat to Israel, much as the frightful
Iranian bomb. Only the Great Bibi knows how to deal with them.
Peace? Don't make me laugh!
Most amusing is Meretz, the
party headed by Yossi Beilin, originator of the Geneva Initiative.
Its main broadcast shows men and women pushing slips of paper
into the cracks of the Western Wall while voicing their most
ardent wish. There is a woman yearning for an academic degree,
a man who wants to marry another man, a grandpa who longs for
money in order to buy a present for his grandson, a Christian
woman who hankers for recognition as a Jewess, a mother who desires
to send her son to kindergarten, a woman pining for a divorce.
And what is the one thing nobody yearns for, longs for, pines
for according to the Meretz propaganda people?
You guessed it: That four-letter
word again.
* *
*
WHAT DOES all this say about the Israeli public,
2006?
It says that the huge majority
of the Jewish Israelis do not believe in peace. Peace is being
conceived as a dream, something that has nothing to do with reality.
A party that speaks about peace brands itself as living in a
fantasy world. Worse, it may be suspected of "Arab-loving".
What could be more disastrous?
So what do Israelis believe
in? They want a Jewish State, with as large a Jewish majority
as possible. That is agreed among all the Jewish parties. They
believe in fixing the final borders of Israel unilaterally, without
speaking with those Palestinians. The Palestinians, as everybody
knows, have just elected Hamas and want to throw us into the
sea.
What borders? Ehud Olmert is
gradually disclosing what he has in mind. His map will not surprise
the readers of this column. His Greater Israel includes all the
territory trapped between the Green Line and the Separation Wall;
and in addition the Jordan Valley; Greater Jerusalem, which includes
the Ma'aleh Adumim settlement and the territory between it and
the city (but giving up some densely populated Arab neighborhoods);
the settlement blocs of Ariel, Alfei-Menasheh, Modi'in Illit
and Gush Etzion; and "special security areas". He takes
care not to draw an actual map, so there is no certainty about
the borders of the settlement blocs. But he certainly aims at
annexing more than half of the West Bank.
For Netanyahu, that is, of
course, blatant treason, a shameful surrender to the Arabs. In
his broadcasts, he denounces Olmert's borders as "borders
inviting terrorism'. The Likud does actually draw a map, in which
the Wall moves right to the center of the West Bank.
Labor and Meretz agree in principle
to the annexation of the settlement blocs, but they do not publish
maps. They mention half-heartedly some undefined swaps of territory.
No wonder, since they dream, almost visibly, of joining the coalition
under Olmert that will probably be set up after the election.
The map of the coalition is more important than the map of annexations.
And peace? Shhhhhhh
Finally
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
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