The culture of factionalism
By Ze'ev Sternhell
Haaretz, January 2, 2004
The right wing has always preached national unity, while at the same time developing and disseminating an ideology of civil war. This was the pattern throughout Europe and it is the pattern in Israel as well. For those on the right, the term "unity" has one practical meaning: falling into line with their opinions. They believe that anyone who holds an opposing view and does not make do with merely voicing it but also tries to implement it, is a traitor. Therefore it's always the left that pays the price of unity, and it's in the ranks of the left that the victims fall. When the right is in power it is also adept at making substantive innovations: the sole meaning it attaches to democracy is majority rule.
According to this approach, the majority has all the rights, including control over the citizen's conscience. This intriguing doctrine also holds that under no circumstances does anyone have the right to oppose the government that was democratically elected, and that this government is entitled to trample human rights, ignore norms of law and natural morality alike, and make a mockery of the principle of equality. By the same token, the government of the majority is entitled to demand that every citizen put on a uniform and take part in deeds that border on war crimes.
This is the logic according to which refusal to participate in killing civilians, women and children in the course of belligerent activity is perceived by many as being identical with the refusal to participate in removing a settler outpost. It's clear, though, that in the first case the refusal is the revolt of an individual, whose value system does not allow him to be part of a morally unjustified killing campaign, whereas the latter refusal case is purely political resistance.
The purpose of the right's refusal is to prevent the realization of policy that it rejects outright, whereas the refusal of the left has the goal of preserving a humane image even in wartime. The Israeli government is not the first to be elected democratically and to order its security forces to perform actions that conscience can barely abide. France of the Fourth Republic and the United States in the period of the Vietnam War were democracies that forced their soldiers to commit war crimes or that ignored the perpetration of such crimes.
Today more than ever it is necessary to reiterate these basic conceptions - because the shooting at the demonstrators by the fence last Friday is a taste of what is liable to happen here in the future. Indeed, the more intense and the more long-lasting the occupation is, the cheaper life becomes and the culture of factionalism takes over. That culture doesn't distinguish between a fighter and an ordinary civilian. Thus the incident last week should have come as no surprise.
The only difference between it and hundreds, if not thousands, of previous similar events in the territories is really a matter of chance: If a Jew hadn't been wounded and if the incident hadn't been filmed and seen by dozens of Israeli witnesses, it would not have merited even a line in the press. Now, because of the "mishap," every Israeli knows how and why hundreds of Palestinians, including children, who may have taken part in demonstrations but not in belligerent activity, are killed every year by live fire.
What's interesting is that there was nothing unusual here. The soldiers reacted instinctively, as they had been taught and encouraged and trained. The new culture of factionalism holds the answer to all the questions and all the puzzles. It also supplies the answer to the question that Ze'ev Schiff posed in this paper on August 8, when he examined the official numbers of the enemy killed. Until that date, 2,341 Palestinians had been killed and another 14,000 wounded. "According to the calculations of the Shin Bet, 551 of those killed were terrorists, Who, then, were the others?" Schiff asked. The incident at the fence provides the definitive answer.
So there is no need for an inquiry. Everything stems from the fact that the army serves the settlement enterprise, its commanding officers express their admiration for the Israelis who live across the Green Line, and they strike at the Palestinian population without pangs of conscience. Some of them also make no secret of their enmity for the left. The shooting at the fence was the accumulated result of the trickling down of the hostility toward the "bleeding hearts," the Oslo and Geneva "criminals," and toward all those who refuse to do military service in the territories.
Those who want to trace the roots of the problem will recall the mental and sometimes physical closeness between the army high command and the settlers' leaders. If you want to understand what has happened to the IDF in the course of the occupation, look up back issues of the papers, and especially the interviews given in the past few months by senior officers - from the commanders of infantry brigades to the outgoing commander of the Air Force, the man who sleeps well at night and, when he drops a bomb in the heart of a civilian population feels only a "light bump" in his plane. His conscience, in contrast, feels no jolt of any kind.
The dominant insensitivity in the top ranks is threatening to turn the youngsters in uniform into an army of robots: That's the other lesson of the incident at the fence.
