[Reader-list] Breyten Breytenbach : An Open Letter To General Ariel Sharon

[Harsh Kapoor]

The Nation (New York)

COMMENT | Special Report

An Open Letter To General Ariel Sharon

by Breyten Breytenbach 

Paris, April 7, 2002

Sir,

You don't know me. There's no reason why you should and little cause 
for you to listen to what somebody like myself may have to say. I 
don't imagine you have time to pay attention to views that do not 
correspond to your own. In fact, I'm convinced that you do not listen 
to anybody who doesn't say what you wish to hear.

Should it interest you, I'm a writer born in South Africa now living 
and working abroad. For some time back there I also grew up among a 
"chosen people" who behaved as Herrenvolk--as all those who believe 
themselves singularized by suffering or entrusted with a special 
mission from God.

I apologize if my comparative allusion to Israel as Herrenvolk hurts 
because of the echoes from a recent past when, in Europe, so many 
Jews were the victims of a purported "final solution." But how else 
is one to attempt describing the comportment of your armies when one 
is flooded by the horror of what you're doing?

These rough equivalences don't come lightly. As a writer I'm deeply 
apprised of the need to keep the words uncluttered of any urge to 
rouse easy emotions. This is what facile comparisons do--they nullify 
understanding the complexity of the observed phenomena by a rush of 
outrage heating the throat and staining the adversary with the vomit 
of borrowed or vicarious condemnation. Apartheid was not Nazism, 
though to say so was a striking slogan. And the policies now 
perpetrated by Israeli forces on the Palestinian people should not be 
equated with Apartheid. Each one of these processes and systems is 
evil enough to merit a thorough description of its own historical 
singularity.

And yet... There are similarities and differences: This blind 
competition, on both sides, to be recognized as 
more-victim-than-thou; cloaking atrocities in the "divine" right to 
self-defense; the shameless manipulation of perceptions and the 
mendacious lying; the concomitant brutalization of your own society; 
the disdain shown for the humanity of the Palestinians--indeed, 
denying even the most elementary humane treatment to a terrified and 
trapped civilian population...

It is all only too familiar. The underlying assumptions informing 
your actions are racist. As was the case with the South African 
regime, the preferred methods by which you hope to subjugate the 
enemy consist of force and bloodshed and humiliation. Cynically, you 
think you can get away with this as long as you play up to the 
supposed vital interests of the United States. I don't think you 
really care a Jaffa fig for America's interests. You probably despise 
them for being blinded by their own material crassness and their 
ignorance of the world. True, your used-car-salesman doppelgänger, 
Netanyahu, deploys this craft of crude propaganda more openly, as if 
he were a dirty finger tweaking the clitoris of a swooning American 
public opinion. But you too, by opportunistically echoing the 
semantically challenged American President (and putting words in his 
mouth), who describes every "other" as a terrorist, have shown that 
you take the rest of the world for fools. Surely, not all of us agree 
that the highest good in the world is America's greed for cheap oil, 
and that we should hence be expected to adhere to the inviolability 
of corrupt regimes in the region!

There is a more pernicious red herring that needs to be smelled out 
forthwith. It is blatantly averred, again and again, that any 
criticism of Israel's policies is an expression of anti-Semitism. 
With that assertion the argument is supposed to be closed and sealed. 
Of course, I reject this attempt at censorship by thus disqualifying 
the grounds for debate. No amount of suffering--be it of the Tutsis, 
the Kurds, the Armenians, the Vietnamese, the Bosnians or the 
Palestinians--can confer immunity from criticism. (And, to put it 
sadly, no amount of persecution would seem to vaccinate people 
against perpetrating the same practices they suffered from.) No 
appeal to the incitement or supposed promises of some Holy Land 
edicted by One God can condone the exactions carried out by an 
invading and occupying army-- or, for that matter, the cold-blooded 
massacres of innocents ordered by fanatic warlords in the name of 
resistance. No reference to some ostensibly sacrosanct "Greater 
Israel" can camouflage the fact that your settlements are armed 
colonies built on land shamelessly stolen from the Palestinians, 
festering there as shards in their flesh, or snipers' nests, intended 
to thwart and annul any possibility of Palestinian statehood. There 
can be no way to peace through the annihilation of the other, just as 
there is no paradise for the "martyr."

I find this "anti-Semitism" allegation utterly deplorable, especially 
coming from Jewish intellectuals who so often constitute the 
reasonable, rational and creative backbone of Western societies. Why 
should we be subjected to this special pleading, or look the other 
way when it is Israel committing crimes? Is what's sauce for the 
goose then, in some Yahweh-inspired way, not sauce for the gander?

No, General Sharon, past injustices suffered cannot justify or excuse 
your present fascist actions. A viable state cannot be built on the 
expulsion of another people who have as much claim to that territory 
as you have. Might is not right. In the long run, your immoral and 
shortsighted (and finally stupid) policies will furthermore weaken 
Israel's legitimacy as a state.

Recently, I had the opportunity of visiting the territories for the 
first time. (And yes, I'm afraid they can reasonably be described as 
resembling bantustans--for only too often are they reminiscent of the 
ghettos and controlled camps of misery one knew in South Africa.) I 
only glimpsed Israel briefly, upon entering and then later leaving 
after spending a night in the opulent but dismally deserted David 
Intercontinental Hotel of Tel Aviv. You may say my view is fatally 
one-sided. Perhaps. Though one is always within sight of Israeli 
demarcation lines, checkpoints, tanks and armed outposts in the West 
Bank.

I wondered, are your two peoples really all that different? You are 
of a similarly diverse mix of cultures and origins, you are all of 
you diaspora people, you are equally intelligent and quick-witted and 
excitable. You may well be brave in similar fashions. On both sides 
there are creative minds of exceptional integrity at work. On both 
sides, also, there are an extraordinary number of self-serving, 
power-hungry individuals, fanatics with their spirits obfuscated by 
this God-nonsense. Or using that as a pretext.

As provocateur--cold-blooded and cruel--you stand out among your 
peers. In your dogged but ill-considered attempts to subvert previous 
agreements and to scupper the possibility of peace--except for the 
peace of the graveyard and of exile, premised on the "total transfer" 
or "disappearance" of the Palestinian entity--you are bringing 
turmoil to the region. This you probably planned for. It remains to 
be seen whether the growling of your principals in Washington will 
inflect your campaign of calculated terror and wanton destruction--or 
whether it is but a smokescreen behind which to better align the 
"free world's" war on "terrorism." And for the domination of 
resources and a global control of markets and cheap oil and 
"democracy."

The few days I spent there, with the delegation of the International 
Parliament of Writers, left me with a mixed bag of strong but 
conflicting impressions. How small Palestine is! How inextricably 
linked your peoples are. The stones everywhere. The topography of 
names familiar from the Bible. The beautiful light. The attempts to 
make the place look like Switzerland by planting out-of-place 
conifers. The inhospitality of the land, except for lush coastal 
plains. How abysmally sad the villages are, reminding one of the 
lifeless and apathetic towns of East Germany. The green lights in the 
mosques and all the unfinished habitations. The ugliness of the 
architecture everywhere--the ubiquitous light-gray limestone building 
blocks. The inanity of your occupation--all those lit-up detour roads 
built for the exclusive use of settlers and Israeli citizens. The 
surly pettiness of your controls at checkpoints, having little to do 
with security and everything with the primitive urge to humiliate, 
frustrate, harass and drive to insane rage an occupied population. 
The extreme youth of your soldiers, and sadly they are so obviously 
well-cultivated boys and girls. The ruthless rapaciousness with which 
you destroy the possible Palestinian economy and steal their goods. 
The ancient revenge--bulldozing houses, destroying olive groves. The 
equally primitive sight of armed positions under camouflage netting 
and Israeli flags in commandeered houses. Your vaunted "democratic" 
media lying to your own people, denying the war crimes carried out by 
your troops. The Berlin walls around your settlements in Gaza (and 
behind them university extensions, research institutes, 
American-linked hotels, golf courses), and then the rubble of 
destroyed Palestinian quarters looking now like Ground Zero. The way 
little kids looked us straight in the eye, apparently uncowed, but 
then we were told that they're probably all traumatized not only by 
the hovering dogs of your gunships and your prehistoric tanks and 
your men in uniform shooting at everything that moves, but by all the 
hyperactive adults around them. The old kerchiefed women in some 
refugee camp screaming that you, Sharon, will never make them move, 
that they chased away your soldiers "like dogs." Proffering abuse, 
also, at the spineless Arab states and the cowardice of their own 
Palestinian Authority. The ebullience of the intellectuals and 
artists under siege in Ramallah--arguing, laughing at their own 
plight. How they all say, "We don't want to be heroes, we don't want 
to be victims, we just want to lead normal lives." Their wry despair. 
Mahmoud Darwish: "There is too much history and too many prophets in 
this small land." The visit to Abu Ammar, Yasir Arafat, a holed fox, 
his waxed yellow hands clinging to the empty clichés of "a peace of 
the brave" and "the conscience of the international community." A 
bourgeois lady lamenting the desecration of the Palestinian 
landscape. And a human rights lawyer claiming: "We are grateful to 
Sharon for two things--he united all the Palestinian factions and he 
took away every option except to resist." Later on, the same haunted 
man, chain-smoking and with the sweat of death already on him, 
remarked bitterly that repression has penetrated the skin of the 
people, and that now they have nothing else to defend themselves with 
except their skins. Thus the human bombs.

For these will be my contrasted conclusions: You have not broken the 
spirit of the Palestinian people. Quite the contrary--they are now 
more resolute than ever to build a state; it doesn't matter how much 
you bully them. They saw the renewed onslaught coming, they knew you 
were but playing footsy with General Zinni--probably in agreement 
with Dick Cheney. They also know that, since you have now made them 
stronger, you must strike harder and deeper, because you are caught 
in a conundrum of your own making. Like Bush in his crusade against 
the infidel and the disobedient, you have to accelerate your 
distention of international public ethics and flaunt common sense 
even more, and throw good moral money after bad political 
assessments. They know that nothing they can do will appease you, 
short of turning turtle. They fear you will have to compound this 
crime against humanity which you are committing at present, that you 
may indeed break their hopes for a secular, modern and democratic 
state responsible to its population, and bring forth the devil among 
them. They also know that this will profoundly divide and weaken 
Israel.

But you don't care, do you ?

This is the pity and the horror. The pity and the horror.

--