    Peace is not 'shalom' and 'Shalom' is not Sharon

    Gilad Atzmon

    For the last few days we have been reading some flattering reports
    concerning the latest political moves of Sharon undertaken in his newly
    born peace loving persona. Sharon, a notorious war criminal, a man who
    has managed to prove time after time that he is totally lacking in any
    sense of moral guard or ethical consideration, has now managed to
    convince the Western media that he is the Israeli ‘voice of
    responsibility’. Make no mistake, Sharon and the Israeli people are
    indeed devoted ‘peace’ lovers, yet, it is rather critically important to
    mention that the Israeli notion of peace is pretty remote from any
    notion of peace familiar to the rest of humanity. When we think of the
    Hebrew word for peace we traditionally refer to the word ‘Shalom’. But
    apparently, shalom and peace aren’t exactly the same. In fact they are
    very different. While shalom refers to the freedom from conflict while
    achieving a general sense of security, peace has a far broader meaning.
    Peace is a true resolution. Peace is the search for harmony between
    people. Peace is all about reconciliation.

    It is very sad to admit that the broad realisation of the notion of
    peace in terms of harmony and reconciliation is totally lacking within
    the Israeli mindset. For the Israelis, shalom means applying a strategy
    that would guarantee personal and national refuge to the Jewish people.
    For the Israelis, shalom means living in peace, nothing more or less
    than that. How shalom is achieved or maintained isn’t a real concern for
    the Israelis. The fact that millions of Palestinians are subject to
    state terrorism in a form of major war crimes committed by the IDF isn’t
    a practical concern either. In short, rather than harmony and
    reconciliation, shalom is a set of political and military manoeuvres
    that silence the enemy of the Jewish people.

    This very ‘shalom’ philosophy stands in the very core of the Zionist
    left school. It is this very perception that led the Israeli left to
    believe that ‘two states for two people’ is a viable option. Clearly the
    two state solution promises shalom: it pledges personal security as well
    as a refuge to the Jewish people. A year ago, in the days leading
    towards the unilateral disengagement from Gaza, Sharon declared: “we
    (the Israelis) want shalom but we want to define its terms and
    conditions”.

    Sharon’s idea is not that remote from Shalom Now’s agenda (‘Shalom Now’
    is an Israeli left shalom seeking movement that is mistakenly translated
    into “Peace Now”). Sharon’s comprehension of the term shalom isn’t that
    different from Peres’s philosophy and in categorical terms, it isn’t
    that far from Uri Avnery’s Gush Shalom perception. The Israeli shalom
    seekers always want to ‘define the terms and conditions’. True,
    Avnery’s, Peres’s and Sharon’s ‘terms and conditions’ are varied, yet,
    they all believe in partitions between people. They all believe in two
    states for the two people. They may dispute the borders, but they all
    aim to resolve the Jewish question both in personal and national terms.
    The entire shalom movement is concerned with different methods of
    division between the Jew and the goy. This is the real meaning of the
    Israeli shalom. Sadly enough, just as separateness is the central
    purpose of Zionism, this bizarre self-centric political worldview stands
    at the core of Israeli left thinking. This is the logic behind the
    Israeli shalom movement’s collective dismissal of the Palestinian cause,
    i.e. “the right of return”. One may ask how it is possible that the
    Israeli left ignores the cause of their foes, the people they intend to
    make shalom with. How can the Israelis ever establish harmonious
    relationships with their neighbours? The answer is simple: the Israeli
    left isn’t interested in reconciliation and harmony. They are interested
    in shalom and shalom is not peace.

    Six months ago Bush called Sharon a ‘man of peace’. Apparently, Bush was
    not that wrong, he was just lost in translation. Sharon isn’t a man of
    peace, he is a man of shalom. Being a militant nationalist Jew as well
    an experienced tactician, Sharon managed to grasp the biggest paradox
    within Zionist political thought. Within the Zionist discourse, it is
    the left who are leading towards a hard-core national and racist state.
    The hawks, on the other hand, push forwards towards a multi-national
    reality of ‘one state’. As bizarre as it may sound to some, it is the
    Jewish settlers who engage in the creation of an indivisible social
    reality of a single state, albeit with a vast Palestinian majority. It
    is the settlers who are bringing the Jewish national state down. Sharon,
    himself a historic mentor of the settler movement, has managed to
    diagnose this very flaw within the settler philosophy. The old man now
    realises that the maintenance of the Jewish state and its salvation from
    a demographic catastrophe is totally dependent on the immediate
    disengagement from the Palestinian population. Sharon and the shalom
    camp want a solid Jewish state with a clear Jewish majority. This
    realisation matured recently into a pullout from Gaza, it would mean a
    withdraw from the West Bank as well in the near future.

    Sharon has indeed joined the Israeli shalom movement but this isn’t to
    say that he has become a peace lover. As it seems, the real meaning of
    the word peace doesn’t translate into modern Hebrew. The meaning of
    peace doesn’t translate into the Israeli reality.

    Furthermore, not only does peace not translate into shalom, the sincere
    Israeli aim towards shalom guarantees nothing but the continuation of
    war. If the outcome of shalom is indeed the division of the land between
    two peoples, it can never bring harmony and reconciliation to the
    region. The reasons are obvious. Shalom can never address both the
    Zionist and the Palestinian causes: it fails to address the morally
    grounded Palestinian right of return. But it fails as well to address
    the outrageous Jewish nationalist demand to settle in the entire land of
    greater Israel at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians. Shalom is
    thus the continuation of war. Sharon is certainly a shalom seeker. This
    is probably the reason that Blair and Bush are so excited about him.
    With Sharon in power, and it looks as if Sharon will remain in power,
    shalom will prevail. A unilateral shalom will be imposed on the
    Palestinians. Shalom that would allow the endless merciless bombardment
    of the Palestinians who insist upon returning to their homeland. Those
    who decide to live in peace will do a merciless shalom kill in what is
    left of the Holy Land.