By Uri Avnery
Some years ago, when the jury for the annual Israel Prize announced its award to Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, I decided to invite him to give a lecture to the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, the group that established the first contacts with the PLO.
"I am ready to come," he said, "on one condition: I shall speak only about the duty to refuse to serve in the occupied territories." For him, that was the alpha and omega of the fight against the occupation.
I told him that he was free to speak about whatever he saw fit, even if I myself did not quite share his view.
(The lecture, by the way, had an unexpected result. In his usual provocative style, Leibowitz compared the Special Units of the Israeli army to the Nazi SS. His words were published, aroused a storm of protest and the prize jury wanted to cancel the award, whereupon Leibowitz himself announced that he refused it.)
Since then I had an ongoing debate with myself about this hard and painful subject.
<snip>
http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery12292003.html