Israeli Peace Marchers Protest Iran War Talk in Tel Aviv
by Juan Cole
Informed Comment
Posted on 03/25/2012
http://www.juancole.com/

Haaretz reports that hundreds of Israeli peace activists
marched in Tel Aviv on Saturday to protest all the talk
of striking Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities. Their
placards demanded "No to War with Iran," and "Talks, not
Bombs."

The boldness of this march, given the rightwing
political atmosphere in Israel, should not be
underestimated. Devastated at the polls and quiescent
for years, the Israeli left has in the past year begun
finding its voice. The J14 movement of street protests
for affordable housing and education brought hundreds of
thousands of Israelis into the streets last summer and
fall. It is well known that many of the protesters
skewed left politically and privately oppose the
concerted settlement of Palestinian land in the West
Bank.

The peace activists and the social justice organizers
are offering a new discourse about the good society that
differs perceptibly from the old, Labor left. For
instance, Uri Savir, President of the Peres Center for
Peace, argues for a two-fold strategy. He admits that
the Arab Spring makes it more important than ever for
Tel Aviv to give up the dream of "Greater Israel" and to
draw back from the West Bank, since Israel's Arab
neighbors will never accept that millions of
Palestinians should continue to live under occupation.
But he takes a harder line against Iran, urging a close
American alliance, sanctions, and a military strike as
"a last resort." In essence, he is reversing the policy
of the Likud government of PM Binyamin Netanyahu, which
routinely risks strained relations with the executive in
Washington, sees a strike on Iran as an urgent priority
and not a last resort, and is redoubling efforts to
colonize the Palestinian West Bank with Israeli
squatters.

As welcome as Savir's common sense is (and it seems to
represent Israeli President Shimon Peres's own
thinking), he seems strangely tone deaf to the dangers
that `crippling' sanctions on Iran will lead to war, and
strangely detached from reality in thinking it is still
plausible that Israeli squatters in the West Bank can be
removed or that there is enough of it left to form a
basis for a Palestinian state. The UN is now reporting
that the Israeli state is actively helping West Bank
Israeli squatters to steal water resources and springs
that belong to the Palestinians, depriving the latter of
water and turning the springs into revenue sources and
even tourist sites. Colonialism is theft.

In a context where Savir's position is so far left that
probably only a handful of members of the Israeli
parliament would publicly sign on to it at this point,
the Iran peace march in Tel Aviv is a breath of fresh
air.

The dead end of conventional Israeli politics is well
summarized by journalist Stav Shaffir of J14, who
pointed out to Jweekly that the electorate seems to vote
on security issues rather than social issues: "People
vote like tomorrow there's a war and they choose the
best general. While doing that, we get a government that
abandons all responsibilities. Society isn't better when
you build a better airplane, but when you [offer] a
better education."

Although unconnected to the peace march, another project
of Israeli doves is a Facebook page set up by husband-
wife team Ronny Edry and Michal Tamir to promote people-
to-people positive relations between Israelis and
Iranians.

The world-wide trend to big money dominating
conventional politics has also affected Israel, where
the country's burgeoning prosperity is increasingly
poorly distributed. This problem of creeping plutocracy
is not only an issue for young people who can no longer
afford apartment rent. It is the same plutocrats who own
munitions factories and benefit from war, and who can
buy parliamentarians to serve as their ventriloquist
dummies. But when conventional politics is seized by
gridlock, the people invent new forms of politics. We
may be seeing glimmerings of a new Israeli politics of
peace.

___________________________________________

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