Israel
Israeli Spies in the US
November 21, 1985, was a remarkable day. FBI agents arrested a civilian terrorism analyst working for the US Navy, Jonathan Jay Pollard, outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, where he had gone seeking political asylum. Six days later, Pollard was arraigned in federal district court on several counts of espionage against the United States as a paid agent for the government of Israel.
Benvenisti, Israeli Censorship of Arab Publications
Meron Benvenisti, Israeli Censorship of Arab Publications: A Survey (New York: Fund for Free Expression, 1984).
Who Votes for Kahane?
The election of Rabbi Meir Kahane was undoubtedly the most traumatic outcome of the elections to the eleventh Knesset. His party, Kach, obtained 25,907 votes, or 1.2 percent of all valid votes, five times as many as in the previous elections. To understand this, we have examined the economic, social and political factors operating within the sectors which provided Kahane with his greatest electoral support.
Israel’s Economic Crisis
In the middle of August 1985, Minister of Science and Development Gideon Pat called on the Israeli public to disregard government declarations that the shekel would not be devaluated. The minister, on national radio, advised the public to purchase American dollars. The broadcast was aired on Friday night, during prime time. Pat’s advice was unprecedented, since trading in US dollars is a violation of Israeli law. Pat is a member of the Liberal Party, which is part of the Likud and represents merchants, industrialists and businessmen. The leader of the Liberal Party, Treasury Minister Yitzhak Modai, demanded that Prime Minister Shimon Peres fire Pat. Pat argued that his statement was taken out of context and he remained in the cabinet.
Marching Toward Civil War
In an article written in early 1985, Ze’ev Schiff described the Palestinian and Jewish populations of Israel and the Occupied Territories as “marching…toward a civil war.” [1] Since then, events have only confirmed the accuracy of Schiff’s observation. The escalation of violence and tension in the Occupied Territories has been particularly sharp in the last few months, since the withdrawal in the spring of most Israeli troops from Lebanon. Palestinian efforts to infiltrate guerrillas into Israel have been repeatedly headed off by the IDF. Likewise, most attempts at random violence by the PLO, such as bombs at bus stops, have been thwarted.
From the Editors (October-December 1985)
Lest anyone be tempted to dismiss the title of this issue as unduly melodramatic, we would like to call attention to an early November meeting of the Council of Settlers of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. According to its bimonthly newspaper, Aleph Yud, the settlers decided to take an “active stand” against the Peres government’s efforts to reach some agreement with King Hussein of Jordan about the future of the West Bank.
Adams, Israel and South Africa
James Adams, Israel and South Africa: The Unnatural Alliance (London: Quartet Books/Namara, 1985).
James Adams, a senior executive at the Sunday Times of London, scores an overwhelming victory in undermining the thesis of his own title. After even a few pages, his book convinces us, albeit unintentionally, that the Israel-South Africa courtship (and its many consummations) is quite a natural alliance after all, though not without the usual bumps. Mercifully, his remarks on the presumed improbability of the relationship betweeen “a people in flight from racism” and a state “founded on the ideas of racial superiority” absorb little of the author’s energy or the reader’s time.
The Resistance Front in South Lebanon
Though it fell like a piece of ripe fruit into the hands of the Israelis, southern Lebanon rapidly became a quagmire for the most powerful armed forces in the Middle East. An armed resistance developed, which by early 1984 was carrying out two attacks daily. Popular mobilization did not diminish in spite of the occupier's use of an intimidating arsenal of repression: prolonged arbitrary detention, collective punishment, harassment, repeated closure of the single road of access to the region. In fact, repression only fueled the mobilization.
Eyewitness to the Iron Fist
Jim Yamin is Middle East program coordinator for Grassroots International, a relief organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with programs in Lebanon and the Horn of Africa. He spoke with Joan Mandell and Kathryn Silver in April, 1985.
You’ve just spent ten weeks in south Lebanon. What were your most striking impressions of the occupation?
Thorpe, Prescription for Conflict
Merle Thorpe, Jr., Prescription for Conflict: Israel’s West Bank Settlement Policy (Washington DC: Foundation for Middle East Peace, 1984).
Benvenisti, The West Bank Data Base Project
Meron Benvenisti, The West Bank Data Base Project: A Survey of Israel’s Policies (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1984).
This book, by the former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, is the first major commercial publication of the small but industrious West Bank Data Base Project (WBDBP). The project constitutes an attempt to collect and collate an accurate and comprehensive data base which will enable “[us] to focus on fast changing conditions in the territories and, in so doing, prevent the political discussion and decision-making process from being overtaken by events.” (p. ix) This meritorious claim has received the imprimatur of no lesser figures than former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Special Envoy Philip Habib.
Israel and the Jewish Question
Maxime Rodinxon, Cult, Ghetto, and State: The Persistence of the Jewish Question, London: Al Saqi Books, 1983.
Akiva Orr, The unJewish State: The Politics of Jewish Identity in Israel, London: Ithaca Press, 1983.
Lenni Brennr, The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir, London: Zed Books, 1984.
From the Editors (March/April 1985)
Over the last several years, library subscriptions to MERIP Reports have expanded steadily. We are very pleased at this development, and we are anxious to encourage an even higher rate of growth in library subscriptions. In particular, we would like to see more subscriptions at public libraries, where the Reports are still poorly represented. Library subscriptions are particularly important in bringing MERIP Reports to many readers who might not otherwise see it. For this reason, we ask our readers to request subscriptions at their local public library and/or their university library. Thanks to a donation from a friend of MERIP, we are able to offer a half-price introductory subscription to the first 20 libraries that request it in 1985.
Gitai, Field Diary
Amos Gitai, Field Diary (1984).
Rarely has the cinema verité technique, with its false naiveté, been deployed so strategically as in Field Diary. It looks as if it could have been made by your little brother with the family toy camera, and it is even hard to credit filmmaker Amos Gitai with the earlier filmmaking experience that his House testifies to. But Field Diary, gracelessness and all, refuses to leave you when you leave the theater.
Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1983).
Lenni Brenner has written a singular book about “the interaction between Zionism and Fascism and Nazism.” It is one of the many ironies of history that Zionism, a movement that claims to be dedicated to assuring the survival of the Jewish people, should have developed in symbiosis with the most murderous Jew-haters of our (or perhaps any) era. Ironies, however, have their logic, and this is what Brenner explores.
Sifting the Berkeley Left
On June 5, 1984, voters in Berkeley, California, by a margin of almost 64 percent to 36 percent, defeated a ballot measure calling for the United States to reduce its aid to Israel by the amount Israel spends on its settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights. What’s going on here? Since the 1960s, Berkeley has had a reputation as the most politically progressive urban community in the country. Civil rights activism on the University of California campus spawned the Free Speech Movement, which in turn set the stage for the early protests and organizing against the US war in Vietnam. When Ronald Reagan was elected governor in 1966, one of his main campaign targets was UC campus radicalism.
Israel’s Political Formations
Alignment: The dominant party in the Labor Zionist movement was the right social-democratic Mapai. In 1965, a group loyal to Mapai’s historic leader, David Ben-Gurion, split and formed Rafi — a formation characterized by an “activist” military policy and a technocratic/statist outlook. This group included Shimon Peres, Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Navon. The same year the first Alignment, an electoral coalition and not a merger of forces, was formed between Mapai and Ahdut ha-Avoda, a kibbutz-based party with a tradition of military activism and close links to the military establishment (best represented by Yigal Allon, Deputy Prime Minister under Golda Meir and author of the “Allon Plan” for the occupied territories).
Israel’s “National Unity”
Israel’s latest elections, for the eleventh Knesset, have certified the state of paralysis and polarization that has gripped the country since the Lebanon invasion of 1982. The results of the election, and the failure of the Likud bloc to maintain a decisive plurality, certainly represent one consequence of the Lebanon war. When Menachem Begin resigned as prime minister in the fall of 1983 without any public explanation, many Israelis attributed this move to the Lebanon “tragedy,” as Begin himself referred to the continuing war in a Knesset speech just before his resignation. Clearly a great many Israelis consider the war a failure — even a nightmare.
The Cold Peace
March 26, 1985, will mark the sixth anniversary of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, brokered and signed in Washington, the culmination of the “Camp David process.” What have been the consequences of this pact, and where is the peace it was supposed to usher into the region?
From the Editors (January 1985)
We would like to begin this first issue for 1985 with heartfelt thanks to our readers for your very strong support over the past year. Your unprecedented generosity in response to our fundraising appeals was essential to our work, and we appreciate very much the confidence this expresses for MERIP’s future. In this coming year we will continue to count on your help. The need for a strong, critical perspective on US policy in the region will be more important than ever as the Reagan administration begins its second term. We are grateful to know that you are with us. One innovation we are planning for this year is a special newsletter for those who contribute $50 or more to MERIP’s work. The first issue will appear shortly.
