he
killing of Muammar Gaddafi and his son Mutassim was not a pretty sight.
After seeing it once, I looked away when it was shown again and again on
TV – literally ad nauseam.
Commercial TV exists, of course, to make money for the
tycoons by appealing to the basest instincts and tastes of the masses.
There seems to be an insatiable appetite for gruesome sights. But in
Israel there was another motive for showing these lynching scenes
repeatedly, as the commentators made abundantly clear. These scenes
proved, to their mind, the primitive, barbaric, murderous nature of the
Arab peoples and indeed of Islam as such.
Ehud Barak likes to describe Israel as a “villa in the
middle of a jungle”. By now this is accepted by the great majority of
our media. They never miss an opportunity to point out that we live in a
“dangerous neighbourhood” – making it clear that Israel does not really
belong to this neighbourhood. We are a civilised western people, sadly
surrounded by these primitive savages. (As I have mentioned many times,
this goes right back to the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, who wrote
that the future Zionist state would be a part of “the wall of
civilisation against Asiatic barbarism”.)
Since this attitude has far-reaching mental and
political implications, let’s have a closer look.
I am against the death penalty in all its forms.
Executions, whether in Texas or in China, disgust me. I would have much
preferred Gaddafi to be tried in a proper court.
But my first reaction to the sight was: My god, how much
a people must hate their ruler if they treat him like that! Obviously,
the decades of abominable terror inflicted on the Libyan people by this
half-crazy despot have destroyed any remnants of mercy they may have
felt. (His fanatical defenders to the last, members of his tribe, seem
to be a tiny minority.)
His clownish appearance and foreign adventures diverted
the attention of world opinion from the murderous aspects of his rule.
From time to time, on a whim, he let loose waves of horror, torturing
and killing anyone who had so much as voiced a hint of criticism, trying
them in football stadiums where the roar of maddened crowds drowned out
the pitiful pleas for mercy from the condemned. On one occasion his
thugs shot dead 1,200 inmates of the Abu Salim prison in Tripoli.
True, he spent some money on building schools and
hospitals but that was a tiny part of the huge amounts of oil revenue
squandered on his bizarre adventures or stolen by his family. This
immensely rich country has a poor population, a single narrow road from
Egypt through to Tunisia and a standard of living that is a third of
ours.
You did not have to be an Arab barbarian or Muslim
arch-terrorist to do what was done to him. Actually, the highly
civilised Italians (Libya’s former colonial masters) did exactly the
same in 1945. When the partisans caught the fleeing Benito Mussolini, he
pleaded piteously for his life but they killed him on the spot together
with his mistress. Their bodies were thrown into the street, kicked and
spat on by the crowd and then hung by the feet from meathooks from the
roof of a gas station where the public threw stones at them for days on
end. I don’t remember anybody in civilised Europe protesting.
Contrary to Mussolini and Gaddafi, Adolf Hitler was not
caught while ignominiously trying to escape. He chose a much more
dignified exit. But during his last weeks Gaddafi rather resembled
Hitler, living in a world of crazy delusion, moving non-existent troops
around on the map, sure to the end of the boundless love of his people.
Nicolae Ceauşescu, another bloody tyrant, had his day –
or hour – in court. It was a charade, as such trials are bound to be.
The kangaroo court condemned him to death and he was shot forthwith
together with his wife.
Gaddafi’s demise puts an end to the debate that started
months ago. There can be no doubt any more that the vast majority of the
Libyan people detested Gaddafi and welcomed the NATO campaign that
helped to remove him. It was an important contribution but the actual
heavy fighting was done by the ragtag people’s army. Libya liberated
itself. Even in Tripoli, it was the people who put an end to the
tyranny.
I was sharply attacked by some well-meaning European
leftists for blessing the awful monster called NATO. Now in retrospect,
it is quite obvious that the overwhelming – if not unanimous – opinion
of the Libyans themselves welcomed the intervention.
Where did I differ from these leftists? I think that
they have sewn themselves into a kind of ideological straitjacket.
During the Vietnam war they arrived at a world view that was appropriate
for that particular situation: there were good guys and bad guys. The
good guys were the Vietnamese communists and their allies. The bad guys
were the US and its puppets. Since then, they have applied this schema
to every situation around the world: South Africa, Yugoslavia,
Palestine.
But every situation is different. Vietnam is not Libya;
the South African problem was much more simple than ours. Great power
politics may remain constant, and very unattractive at that, but there
are huge differences between the various situations. I was very much
against the US wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq and very much in
favour of the NATO campaigns in Kosovo and Libya.
For me, the starting point of every analysis is what the
people concerned want and need and only after that do I wonder how the
international schema applies to them. Working from the inside out, so to
speak, not from the outside in.
Also, I have never quite understood the dogma which
seems to answer all questions: “it’s all about oil”. Gaddafi sold his
oil on the world market and so will his successors, on the same terms.
International oil corporations are all the same to me. Is there much of
a difference between the Russian Gazprom and the American Esso?
Some former communists seem to have a kind of inherited
attachment to Russia, almost automatically supporting its international
positions, from Afghanistan to Serbia to Syria. Why? What is the
similarity between Vladimir Putin and the Soviets? Putin does not
subscribe to the dictatorship of the proletariat; he is quite satisfied
with a dictatorship of himself.
If Gaddafi’s savage end has reinforced all the
Islamophobic obsessions in the West, the elections in Tunisia have made
matters worse.
Help! The Islamists have won the elections! The Muslim
Brotherhood will win the elections in Egypt! The Arab Spring will turn
the whole region into one vast hotbed of jihad! Israel and The West are
in mortal danger!
This is all nonsense. And dangerous nonsense at that
because it may derail any sensible American and European policy towards
the Arab world.
Sure, Islam is on the rise. Islamic parties have
resisted the Arab dictatorships and were persecuted by them and
therefore are popular in the aftermath of their downfall – much as
European communists were very popular in France and Italy after the
defeat of fascism. From there on, support for these parties declined.
Islam is an important part of Arab civilisation. Many
Arabs are sincere believers. Islamic parties will certainly play an
important role in any democratic Arab order, much as Jewish religious
parties play – alas – an important role in Israeli politics. Most of
these Arab parties are moderate, like the governing Islamic party in
Turkey.
It is certainly desirable that these parties become a
part of the democratic order rather than turning into its enemy. They
must be inside the tent otherwise the tent may collapse. I believe that
this is in the best interest of Israel too. That’s why my friends and I
favour Fatah-Hamas reconciliation and advocate direct negotiations
between Israel and Hamas and not only for prisoner exchanges.
Our media are outraged: the interim prime minister of
Libya has announced that Islamic law – the Shariah – will guide the
enactment of new laws in his country. It seems our journalists are
ignorant of the existence of an Israeli law that says that if there are
legal questions for which there are no ready answers, the religious
Jewish law – the Halacha – will fill the void. Moreover, there is a new
bill before the Knesset that states unequivocally that the Halacha will
decide legal disputes.
The outcome of the Tunisian elections was, to my mind,
very positive. As expected, the moderate Islamic party won a plurality
but not a majority. It must form a coalition with secular parties and is
willing to do so. These parties, totally new and practically unknown,
need time to establish their identity and structure.
To add a personal note, Rachel and I went to Tunisia
many times to meet Yasser Arafat and rather liked the people. We were
especially taken by the many men we saw in the streets wearing a jasmine
flower behind the ear. No wonder that such people could make an almost
bloodless “jasmine revolution”.
If elections in other Arab countries follow this
pattern, as seems probable, it will be all for the best.
The Obama administration was clever enough to jump on
the bandwagon of the Arab revolutions though at the very last moment. We
Israelis did not have this sense. Our Islamophobia has caused us to miss
a golden opportunity for a new image among the young Arab
revolutionaries.
Instead, we contrast our goodness with the barbarism of
the Libyans who have once again shown the true nature of the jungle
surrounding our villa.