Vox Taxi – Vox Dei (Uri Avnery)

[Violet_Crumble]

On Saturday evening, two weeks ago, we returned by taxi from the annual memorial rally for Yitzhak Rabin, and as usual got into a conversation with our driver.

Generally, these conversations flow smoothly, with lots of laughs. Rachel loves them, because they bring us face-to-face with people we don’t normally meet. The conversations are necessarily short, the people express their views concisely, without choosing their words. They are of many kinds, and in the background we generally hear the radio news, talk shows or music chosen by the driver. And, of course, the soldier-son and the student-daughter are mentioned.

But this time, things were less smooth. Perhaps we were more provocative than usual, still depressed by the rally, which was devoid of political content, devoid of emotion, devoid of hope. The driver became more and more upset, and so did Rachel. We felt that if we had not been paying customers, it might have ended in a fight.

The views of our driver can be summed up as follows:

There will never be peace between us and the Arabs, because the Arabs don’t want it.

The Arabs want to slaughter us, always did and always will.

Every Arab learns from early childhood that the Jews must be killed.

The Koran preaches murder.

Fact, wherever there are Muslims, there is terrorism. Wherever there is terrorism, there are Muslims.

We must not give the Arabs one square inch of the country.

What did we get when we gave them Gaza back? We got Qassam rockets!

There’s nothing to be done about it. Only to hit them on the head and send them back to the countries they came from.

According to the Talmudic injunction: He who comes to kill you, kill him first.

This driver expressed in simple and unvarnished language the standard convictions of the great majority of Jews in the country.

It is not something that can be identified with any one part of society. It is common to all sectors. The owner of a stall in the market will express it crudely, a professor will set it down in a learned treatise with numbered footnotes. A senior army officer regards it as self-evident, a politician bases his election campaign on it.

This is the real obstacle facing the Israeli peace camp today. Once upon a time, the discussion was about whether a Palestinian people exists at all. That’s already behind us. After that we had to discuss “Greater Israel” and “Liberated Territory Will Not Be Given Back”. We overcame. Then there was the discussion about whether to return the “Territories” to King Hussein or to a Palestinian state to be established next to Israel. We overcame. After that, whether to negotiate with the PLO, which was defined as a terrorist organization, and with the arch-terrorist, Yasser Arafat. We overcame. All the leaders of the nation later stood in line to shake his hand. Then there was the quarrel about the “price” – return to the Green Line? Swap of territories? A compromise in Jerusalem? Evacuate settlements? That is also largely behind us.

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=16417

[MisterP]

1. Jeffery Paige's "Coffee and Power" managed to interview like 80

Guatemalan and Salvadoran elites and middle class in the 80s; they, too, said that the rebels were bloodthirsty and ruining things for everyone by blocking Progress; sort of like Ariel Sharon visited Suazo Córdova and Gustavo Alvarez's Honduras 1982

[proteus_lives]

2. That's why there must be compromise on both sides.

The author rightly mentioned that a Palestinian might say the flip-side of this.

Each side must learn that no one is going to walk away with everything they want or deserve.

A peace of equals or no peace at all.

[oberliner]

3. Well said

Sadly, it looks like instead we have no compromise forthcoming from either side.