Silence but no peace

Many important struggles in Israel are calling out to people of conscience - the environment, democracy, human rights, feminism, gay rights, social justice, animal rights and more.

What do all these causes have in common? All of them belong to the liberal, "progressive" world view.

Every one of them deserves full-hearted devotion. But all of them serve as substitutes for the main battle - the struggle for peace with the Palestinian people.

There is a danger that all these struggles will become refuges for young idealists who want to fight for a noble cause but not to take part in the main struggle.

Since every one of these struggles is important, no-one can argue with these activists. Scores of organisations are active in these fields and thousands of wonderful people are devoting themselves to these causes.

I too would willingly join every one - if not for the fact that all of them are draining the life out of the struggle for peace.

As I see it, peace stands above all other aims, not least because the success of all other struggles depends on this fight.

The unending war creates a reality of occupation and oppression, death and destruction, brutality and cruelty, moral degeneration and general bestiality. Can any ideal be realised in this situation? Can feminism, for example, achieve its aims in a country in the throes of unbridled chauvinist militarism?

Can rivers and forests, birds and leopards be saved when houses are bombed and shelled with white phosphorus?

The main question is why people of conscience are running away from the vision of peace.

Peace has become a four-letter word. (The Hebrew word for peace, shalom, indeed consists of four letters.) A decent person does not want to be seen in its company.

People do verbal acrobatics to avoid it. Politicians speak about "the end of the conflict," "permanent status" and "political settlement" to avoid the taboo term.

Why? First, the word "peace" has been exploited so many times that it has almost become meaningless.

To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, "peace is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

Hope for peace has been raised and dashed so many times that hope itself now arouses suspicion and fear. What happened to the Oslo agreement and the historic handshake of 1993? Or Ehud Barak's triumphal journey to Camp David in 2000?

One cannot demand that ordinary people find out what really happened and who is to blame. They see only the plain facts - we hoped for peace, we got war.

Things have reached the point where even peace movements are afraid to mention the word. It is now generally accepted that one should not approach young people with talk about peace. They are convinced that war is permanent, that peace is an illusion.

They believe they are condemned, they and their children and their children's children, to go to war again and again till the end of time. They do not want to waste energy on this peace nonsense. Better to save the last leopards in the Judean desert or the eagles on the Golan Heights than to search for the doves of peace, which they have never seen.

Leftists are proud that the two-state solution, once the vision of a handful of crazies, is now a worldwide consensus.

A huge victory, indeed. But it is trumped by the success of the right in turning "We have no partner for peace" into a national credo.

Journalist Gideon Levy remarked on TV last week that there are now no Jewish Knesset members for whom peace is the top objective.

Some people mention the new member of the Meretz faction Nitzan Horowitz. For years he was a TV foreign affairs commentator who infected viewers with his enthusiasm for every struggle for peace and freedom throughout the world. His emotional style and tendency to identify with the underdog earned him the love of the audience.

But since entering parliament his flame seems to have gone out. Now he is conducting a noisy fight against the price war among bookshops. What about peace? What about the occupation? Silence, please.

That is true for his entire Meretz faction, which was once the vanguard of the zionist peace camp in the Knesset. Since then, things have changed for the worse. To regain some of its strength, it ignores peace as far as humanly possible.

When it is unavoidable they mention it perfunctorily - like a Jew kissing the Mezuzah or a Christian crossing themself - and hurry on.

Meretz has an interesting story. When Shulamit Aloni founded the party in 1973, on the eve of the Yom Kippur war, she was known mainly as a civil rights activist. She was engaged in the struggle for women's rights and against religious coercion. Peace was a secondary aim.

But as the leader of Meretz, she gradually became convinced that none of her aims could be realised in an atmosphere of war and peace became central to her views. When the party grew it became the leading zionist peace faction.

In recent years the process has gone backwards, like a video film in reverse. Peace was pushed from the centre of the Meretz agenda and it has almost disappeared. Meretz has become again a party for civil rights, while going down from 12 Knesset seats to a mere three.

But the cause of peace will inevitably return to centre stage because it will decide our destiny - as individuals and as a state. There is no escape.

Of course, none of the other struggles should be given up, even though the fight to end the occupation and achieve peace must head all others.

I look forward to the day when the organisations engaged in all these struggles unite their wonderful activists, their enthusiasm, talents and courage, and especially their ability to devote themselves to an idea, into one single force fighting for the Other Israel, whose spearhead is the fight for peace.

Together they will conduct the decisive campaign - the struggle for the Second Israeli Republic.

Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist, peace activist and former Knesset member. He is one of the founders of Gush Shalom, a broad-based Israeli peace group.