    Fiesta of St. Fermin

    I

    Recently, travelling in Northern Spain, I came upon the old capital of
    Navarre. Pamplona was celebrating the feria of St. Fermin, and thousands
    of aficionados had crowded the narrow streets leading to the famed
    bullring. There were also a lot of foreigners earnestly following
    Hemingway’s steps. In the morning, young boys ran the arena with the
    young bulls, competing in speed and grace. It was an exciting show,
    awash with adrenaline, but it drew no blood. It was different in the
    evening hours, when grown men fought mature bulls, ferocious coal-black
    creatures with sharp horns, moving at the speed of a TGV train, weighing
    over half a ton each, every ounce of them loaded with the resolve of a
    bullterrier.

    The tribunes above the arena are divided into two differently populated
    sections. In the Sombra section, the upper class sombrely applauds the
    show. They are the important people, and a matador tries his best to
    show them his art. In the Sol, under the direct rays of the Pyrenean
    sun, the simple folk made merry by splashing buckets of Sangria, sharing
    home-cooked food with strangers and singing the chant of St. Fermin.
    They love bullfight too, but there is not much action on their side of
    the ring.

    The matador works unbelievably close to the beast, just slightly
    shifting weight to avoid the deadly horns. If not for the animal's lack
    of understanding, a man would have a slim chance of surviving a
    confrontation with a bull. But the bull is fascinated with the red
    cloth, the muleta, that the matador unveils in front of him. Instead of
    going for the matador, he flies at the cloth. In the end, tired of his
    labours lost, frustrated by vain assaults on the unvanquished red cloth,
    the bull stood still, lowered his neck and waited for the merciful
    steel.

    The bullfight is an apt metaphor for the fruitless fight for civil
    rights in Palestine. The Jewish settlements in the midst of the
    Palestinian population are like the red cloth. The settlements annoy us,
    as they ruin the Biblical beauty of the Highlands. They annoy us by
    their visible injustice, as they are open only to Jews, while a goy can
    not even enter their limits. They annoy us because they are the reason
    for separate for-Jews-only roads. They annoy us because of the
    provocative demeanour of the settlers, who do their worst to humiliate
    their non-Jewish neighbours. They annoy us because they supplant olive
    trees with ugly prefabs. So we charge at them, while the matador moves
    away, and the important people above applaud.

    For once, let us direct the rage of the bull away from the distracting
    and annoying muleta. The constant focus on the settlements is a
    distraction. On any given day, even in Jewish newspapers, in Haaretz or
    the New York Times, you can publish a critique of the illegal
    settlements, provided you stop there. But there is a man behind the red
    cloth. And there are those who sent him to fight the bull. The matador
    is the state of Israel. No settlement would exist for even a day,
    without the Israeli war machine behind it. When the native inhabitants
    of Hebron are locked for months in their homes, the curfew is imposed by
    the Israeli army, not by the four hundred Jewish settlers. But there is
    a man in the Sombra who commands the matador. Israel would not be able
    to commit its atrocities without support from abroad.

    II

    Maxim Rodinson, a noted French Marxist and biographer of the Prophet,
    defined Israel as ‘a settler state’, a colony. But every settler state
    has its mother country, the source of external power. French Algeria was
    manned and supported by France. The US was a settler state, whose mother
    country was England. What is the external power supporting Israel? What
    is its mother country? It is not the US, it is the constellation of
    important Jewish communities and first and foremost, the American Jewish
    community.

    They send money and they organize public support and they influence the
    policies of the state of Israel. They are visibly more hawkish than even
    Sharon’s Likud. The late unlamented ‘Rabbi’ Kahane was probably nearest
    to the hearts of Israel's supporters in America. This phenomenon of
    overseas Jews posing as ‘more Israeli than Israelis’, well described by
    Uri Avneri, exists for a variety of reasons. But I shall limit myself to
    addressing just one of the causes. The American Jews get no flak from
    their operations. They sit in the shade and send the matador to fight.

    The men who send the Israeli troops to enforce the siege of Hebron and
    other Palestinian communities, live at ease in New York or Los Angeles,
    watch TV and put pressure on their congressmen to support the slaughter.
    These folk have no worries at all. Perhaps it is time to direct some
    heat their way.

    Wars can never end, as long as their chief perpetrators sit in peace.
    Michael L. Calderon reminded us this week: “The French, Americans, and
    Afrikaner South Africans did not abandon their exploits in Algeria,
    Indochina, Namibia and Angola because of a collective “change of heart.”
    Indeed these victories were won on two fronts. One was the front of
    actual warfare, and peoples of Algeria, Vietnam, Angola and Cuba bore
    the brunt of it. The second front was the international pressure and
    domestic protests.

    The second front of the war for Palestine should be opened now, and we
    should know whom to pressure and against whom to protest. In my opinion,
    the buck stops at the door of self-appointed heads of the organized
    Jewish communities and media lords, Bronfman, Foxman, Sulzberger, et al.
    They are nasty and powerful men, and I understand the desire of the
    friends of Palestine to look for a less formidable adversary, like the
    Hebron settlers. Alas, that is as unprofitable as looking for a lost
    coin under the lamp post, just because that is where the light shines.
    One must look for the coin where one dropped it, even if it is
    inconvenient.

    Confronting the leadership of the American Jewish community has become
    an urgent necessity. Why has it not been done until now? There is still
    the irresistible tendency to exonerate them from blame for the tragedy
    of the Palestinians, and to explain it all by ‘American imperialist
    policies’. Even a great friend of Palestine, Noam Chomsky, whom I admire
    this side of idol worship, subscribes to this view. In a recent public
    appearance at MIT, he said that the pro-Israeli policies of the US are
    not caused by the influence of the Jewish lobby, but by the interests of
    American elites. Amicus Plato, magis amica veritas. I beg to disagree.

    His opinion was repeated by many good people, all of them sincere
    supporters of the Palestinians. Usually they quote The Fateful Triangle,
    a classic work by Noam Chomsky, or express it like good Dr. Gabor Mate.
    He wrote to me:

    While they, Bronfmans and their colleagues certainly do their share to
    mislead and confuse the public--Jewish and non-Jewish-- even they are
    small beer (metaphor intended) compared with the real interests U.S.
    policy serves. It's a question of the strategic interest of the U.S.
    corporate-state in having an obedient pit bull in the Middle East, with
    a nuclear capability, sufficiently nervous and aggressive to jump at
    Arab throats on demand, should the need arise--but also sufficiently
    dependent so that the leash can be pulled short whenever necessary. As
    one U.S. State Department official said some years ago, “in Israel we
    have an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East.”

    III

    If you look carefully at these arguments, they collapse like a house of
    cards. American planes do not land on this ‘aircraft carrier’ even in
    case of war--they have bases elsewhere, in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, etc.
    Cyprus was once called ‘the unsinkable aircraft carrier’, but it was
    dropped with great ease. The obedience of this pit bull is not much to
    speak about, as its supply of weapons to China proved. And about
    Israel’s being a dependable ally, there are strong doubts. Some Israeli
    politicians promote a different alliance, namely with Russia and its
    immensely rich and powerful Russian Jewish community, as America pulls
    the leash too much, in their opinion.

    Some people explain US policies by ‘oil interests’. As it happens, there
    is no oil in Palestine, bar olive oil. One can not envisage Israeli
    intervention in Saudi Arabia or Iran for the sake of American oil
    supplies: that would explode the entire Middle East.

    The idea of Israel as a ‘local proxy’, or a ‘local cop on the beat’ also
    stores no water. I do not know of a single American corporate interest
    that would not be better off by allying with Turkey instead of Israel,
    for instance. As a Palestinian analyst wrote:

    Turkey would have been a better investment, for example, as a "normal"
    regional power that can help US policy, without costing half as much.
    Being Muslim may help as well in having a legitimate claim to "ruling
    over" the weak Arab countries.

    One can add that Turkey was the traditional ruler of the area up to
    1917, and it has the biggest and strongest army, totally pro-American
    and pro-Western. In other words, the concept of Israel as a servile dupe
    of American imperialism is a non-starter. Edward Herman, who co-authored
    Manufacturing Consent with Chomsky, agrees with this assessment:

    The Jewish lobby here is extremely important. I did have a piece on them
    directly, and it drew some criticism from several people on the left who
    argued that the lobby was much less important than US strategic
    interests in the Middle East. I've always felt that the lobby was at
    least of equal importance; fortunately for the lobby, the two have been
    at least reconcilable.

    The means of confronting the self-proclaimed Jewish leadership can be
    direct, creative and non-violent. A good example was set by Berkeley
    students, the bearers of the tradition of 1968. They built two gates to
    the campus, one for Jews, another one for non-Jews, in order to give
    Americans a taste of Israeli ‘roads for Jews only’. I can envisage heaps
    of earth on the driveways of Mr. Bronfman or Mr. Foxman. As good Jews,
    they certainly observe the rule of Hillel the Elder and do not do unto
    others whatever they hate themselves. As they support blocking
    Palestinian driveways, they would probably enjoy the same treatment. By
    the same rule, as they support illegal settlements, they no doubt will
    be pleased if some good people were to squat on their private estates.

    I think such sit-ins would be fun, and they would attract many good
    Americans of Jewish ancestry. After all, their fathers protested White
    supremacy in the South; now the sons can protest Jewish supremacy in
    Palestine, without having to travel out of town. Instead of a boring
    demonstration in front of a boring Federal office building, instead of a
    dangerous show-down with Israeli soldiers on the hills of al-Khadr, the
    Not In My Name people, Rabbis for Human Rights, etc. can lead the
    struggle against the real adversary, back in the good old United States
    of America. They should do it together with other American activists,
    including Palestinian exiles.

    This experiment will answer the question of the Jewish lobby's influence
    in the US and on the events in Palestine. I believe it would be very
    effective if there were real pressure on Mr. Bronfman and his super-rich
    friends in the Sombra to end their anti-Palestinian belligerence. Maybe
    they will signal the matador to send the bull back to his cows, instead
    of to the carver’s bench.

    [Despite many positive responses, none of the Jewish activists in the US
    dared to demonstrate against ‘their own’ community. They demanded from
    the Americans to demonstrate against corporations and administration
    with solid Anglo-Saxon names, but weren’t ready to take such steps
    themselves.]