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.]