Last update - 10:01 03/04/2003
Unsung heroes
All over the world, Israeli peace activists are being showered with awards and attention. Why is it, then, that the Israeli media and the public ignore them?
By Aviv Lavie
One day in the spring of 1994, with the Middle East at the height of the Oslo euphoria, Yvonne Deutsch, a veteran Women in Black activist, traveled to the Italian resort town of San Giovanni D'Asso to receive a prize for the peace project she and her colleagues had initiated. At the climax of the ceremony, she was given the prize: a large, fleshy mushroom, weighing several kilograms, which had been picked in the fields surrounding the town and is considered the symbol of the region, a delicacy fit for a king. Deutsch put the mushroom into her car, and planned to bring it to Israel, but after several hours in the trunk, it started to smell. She made a quick decision: That same day, the prize mushroom was cut up, cooked and consumed by Deutsch and several Italian woman peace activists.
The sun of Oslo has long since set, but ironically, as peace becomes more remote, people and organizations on the Israeli left, especially the so-called radical left, are enjoying increasing respect in the international community. This esteem is expressed in awards - many of them - usually more valuable that a mushroom. In almost every Israeli organization that works to promote peace and human rights, members have found themselves, since September 2002, standing on stages all over the Western world, receiving prizes and expressing their thanks in emotional speeches. At the same time as they are being showered with honor and respect, in Israel they are steadily moving away from the heart of the consensus, or perhaps - it's a matter of viewpoint - the consensus is steadily moving away from them.
"It's very exciting to receive a prize and to keep hearing how brave and wonderful you are," says Terry Greenblatt of Bat Shalom [Daughter of Peace, an organization of woman peace activists], who during this past year alone has received prizes in Rome and Washington, and was invited to speak at the Library of Congress.
"Afterward, there is always the flight back, and then you understand that it's like cotton candy: It's very tasty while you're eating it, but at the end you're left with a strange emptiness in your stomach. Needless to say, recognition and honors in Israel would be worth a thousand times more."
Gila Svirsky, of Women in Black, another group of peace activists, is most proud of the prize that her movement didn't receive: the Nobel Peace Prize, for which her organization was nominated two years ago. A group of eight members of parliament from Denmark and Norway proposed the candidacy of the worldwide movement, which was represented by women from two war-torn countries - Serbia and Israel.
"Nobody knew'
Women in Black was launched in January 1988, a month after the beginning of the first intifada. In recent years, sister organizations have sprung up in many countries, including most of Europe. Svirsky says that when she tried to interest Israeli journalists in the candidacy for the Nobel Prize, they replied, "Now there's a war going on, and this is not the right time to talk about peace." Not to mention their lack of interest when Women in Black received less glamorous awards, three in all during the past two years, including two that Svirsky received personally: an award from the German Writers Union (previous winners include Gunther Grass and Harold Pinter), and the Solidarity Prize of the city of Bremen for "activity for peace" (a previous laureate: Nelson Mandela). She received these two prizes jointly with Palestinian writer and peace activist Sumaya Farhat Naser. Each prize was worth 7,500 euros.
Svirsky still has a hard time comprehending the gap between the increasing admiration abroad, and her place at the margins of the Israeli camp: "It's an astonishing thing, all over the world they know about us, they make dozens of films about the worldwide Women in Black movement, with a focus on Israel; only here it is of no interest. There were no reactions at all to the prizes. Nobody knew. On the other hand, I can't say that there has been no change during the 15 years of our existence."
How is it manifested?
"At first they called us prostitutes. In recent years we have been promoted, and we are traitors and anti-Semites. For us this is significant, because first they related to us as women, and now as people with a certain political viewpoint, and that's a big difference."
Has it occurred to you that the country has slipped out of your hands, that it no longer belongs to you?
"Absolutely not. I'm not only a Zionist, but a proud Israeli. This country doesn't belong to [Prime Minister] Arik Sharon and his friends, but to the central stream, which is for the most part fed up with the violence. I'm proud of the country, but not of its establishment, and it's a big mistake to consider the two identical."
Nurit Elhanan-Peled is also trying to find the golden mean between her innate patriotism and her disgust with the policy of Israeli governments. On the eve of her trip to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where she received the Andrei Sakharov Human Rights and Freedom of Thought Award, a friend with right-wing views asked her "to represent Israel honorably." Elhanan-Peled replied that she was planning to open her speech with a declaration to the effect that she does not by any means see herself as a representative of the State of Israel.
Elhanan-Peled, the daughter of the late general and Knesset member Matti Peled (the Progressive List for Peace), is a bereaved mother. Her 14-year-old daughter was killed five years ago in an attack by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem. She writes many articles, and lectures about the obligation to live in peace in order to save the lives of additional children. As opposed to most of the other Israeli prize laureates, she does little field work, and devotes most of her time to her work as a lecturer and an expert on literacy.
"One night, at about midnight, Reuters Israel called," she says, "and informed me that I had won the European Parliament Freedom of Thought Award." They asked me if I knew why. I said I didn't. They asked me if I was happy. I said I wasn't. Then they said that they had nothing to say to me."
Elhanan-Peled really wasn't especially thrilled. She even considered turning down the prize, despite its distinguished history: The first winner, in 1988, was Nelson Mandela. "I write and speak, but I don't act," she explains. "In my opinion, that's no reason to give someone a prize. An organization like Taayush [Cooperation, an Israeli-Palestinian organization] should receive it, not me." The person who convinced her was Luisa Morgantini, an Italian member of the EP.
"I didn't know her," says Elhanan-Peled. "One day I spoke at a demonstration of Women in Black in Jerusalem, and later she came over to me and introduced herself. She described a little of what goes on behind the scenes at the EP, and told me that there has never been such strong opposition by a country to having one of its citizens receive the prize. It turned out that there had been an aggressive lobby against me, with no holds barred, on the part of the Israeli Embassy, the Foreign Ministry and the Jewish communities. Morgantini and several other EP members made a tremendous effort to have the decision passed. I told her that only because of this struggle did I feel obligated to accept the prize."
Like a beauty queen
Elhanan-Peled received the prize jointly with Izzat Ghazzawi, a lecturer at Bir-Zeit University, whose 16-year-old son was shot to death by IDF [Israel Defense Forces] soldiers. The ceremony was very impressive. "It really didn't affect me," she says. "I don't get excited about such things, but objectively speaking, it was extremely dignified. There were over 2,000 people in the plenum of the EP. On the day we arrived, they gave us a warm welcome, and started to rush us from one press conference to another. I let Ghazzawi speak, he has an amazing way with words, I told him to say `we' in regard to everything he said, and I would sign on. Everything was done according to protocol, everywhere we went they photographed us and took our briefcases and coats - a feeling that the world is spoiling you. At the parliament itself I spoke in French from a written text, and managed to make 2,000 people cry, which was my goal. I spoke about the fact that Israel has become a cemetery for children, that hope for humanity in the region is disappearing."
On the way to Strasbourg, Elhanan-Peled also received a royal welcome at the Greek parliament in Athens. With all due respect, she gave the prize, a check for 12,500 euros, to her children, but that wasn't the end of her love affair with Europe. "Since then I have become a kind of celebrity," she says. "They invite me to many lectures and events all over the world. During the first year I felt obligated, like some beauty queen who has to fulfill her contract. When I was in Val d'Osta my son asked me when the swimsuit part would begin. As time goes by, I feel less obligated, and turn down more offers. These trips exhaust me, after all, I don't come to speak about literacy, and these are things which are difficult for me emotionally, and require strength. I don't believe much in the importance of all this, either. It's a drop in the bucket. I do it in order to feel that I have said what has to be said, and for my children."
Instead of giving her hope, the prizes and the respect in Europe, along with the publicity in all the serious media on the Continent, have only made it clear to her how great the gap is between Israel and the Western world, of which Israel presumes to be a part. "In the UN they announced the year of Education for Peace in schools in all the member nations," she says. "In Israel, they never heard of it. This country is a nation-state that lives on an ideology that says: If you aren't 100 percent with us, you are against us. It's a fascist ideology. There is a dismissal here of anyone who talks or thinks differently, as in the benighted nations. Like now in America. Therefore, anyone who says anything that is not accepted by the majority becomes a traitor. I spoke about just that at the EP. I said that the war is not between the Palestinians and the Israelis, but between those who want war and those who want peace."
How do you live with the gap between the attitude toward you abroad and what awaits you here at home?
"I don't feel ostracized here. Maybe by the government, but I don't meet the government. I work, lecture. It's true that I have a very bad feeling that the forces of evil have taken control, and that my daughter is a victim of the occupation. My grandmother paved roads here, and my father gave his soul, it was nice to raise children here, but people like me are a vanishing breed. We are at the margins of the margins. I feel that I committed a great crime when I didn't smuggle my children out of here in time. It's only because we're patriots, and patriotism blurs other feelings. Even motherhood. My grown children are studying in Paris, and I keep them there by force, because I don't want them to return to reserve duty and prison [for avoiding military service], but it's hard, because Paris will never be their home."
Lunatic fringe
In all the conversations held in order to prepare this article, one moment of loud and liberating laughter repeated itself. That was when the prize laureates were asked if the Foreign Ministry, or some other official government body, had congratulated them for winning and for glorifying Israel's reputation among the nations.
Dr. Ruhama Marton, a psychiatrist, who is president of the non-profit organization Physicians for Human Rights, didn't get a "bon voyage" from Shimon Peres, who was foreign minister at the time, when she flew to Washington last spring to receive the prestigious Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights. Mann, a Jewish doctor, established a research institute at Harvard on the subject of human rights in the field of medicine. After he and his wife were killed in a plane crash, a prize foundation named after him was established at the Global Health Council in Washington.
Marton: "One day I get a phone call from a woman who tells me that she is happy to inform me that they have decided to give me the award. Until then I hadn't heard of this award, so I explained to her that I didn't know what she was talking about or who they actually were. I was sure it was some wiseguy. She said politely that she wanted me to appreciate the prize very much, because they had come to us after a huge filtering process, which at the final stages included 90 candidates from all over the world. At that point I understood that I had made an embarrassing mistake."
It was the period of Operation Defensive Shield, and Marton had a hard time coming to terms with the huge difference between the honor showered on her by the non-Jews and the indifference on the part of the Israeli public toward the severe undermining of human rights in the territories. "At that very same time, we had managed to bring a Palestinian ambulance full of bulletholes to Tel Aviv by truck - the driver had been killed by our forces - and we placed it in the Museum Square in Tel Aviv. It was an incredible operation. We demonstrated next to the ambulance, people came in white coats, we even managed to bring a large number of journalists and photographers, but nothing, not a word was published. We were totally ignored. We felt terribly frustrated."
The prize was shared by Marton and Salah Haj Yihyeh, a fieldwork director for the physicians' organization, who was in charge of the project of bringing the ambulance to Israel. Each of them received $10,000. Marton: "We received a funny glass bowl with an inscription. The ceremony took place in a hall in a fancy hotel in Washington, with loads of people who spent $500 and even $1,000 for an invitation to the dinner. Before the ceremony we even had a dress rehearsal to show us where to stand and when to come onstage. Before us, a nice-looking elderly man made a speech, and kept talking about how his son had done this and that. When I asked who he was, they told me he was the father of Bill Gates."
How is it possible that while in the United States you are the guest of honor, in Israel you are considered to be on the lunatic fringe?
"Beyond the obvious things, that we are a very right-wing and very belligerent society, I think that it stems from the fact that we are in the midst of a process of becoming more extreme. Some people have not finished moving to the right. A part of their hearts and minds are still on the left, and this movement causes tension and disquiet. It's a situation of moving a little bit forward, a little bit backward. Within this tension they don't want to see anything that sounds like `I told you so.' The media have a substantial role here. The media read their audience. They know that the way to suffer less from tensions and pressures, and to cause less suffering to their readers, is simply not to write about all the things they don't want to know, and about the people who deal with things that they don't want to know about."
The list of Israeli prize laureates is a long one. In the past year alone, members of Bat Shalom received four awards, including prizes from the city of Barcelona (former education minister and Meretz MK Shulamit Aloni represented them at the ceremony), the city of Rome, and even from Ms., the feminist magazine founded by Gloria Steinem. Only the award in Barcelona carried a cash prize - 3,000 euros, which were put into the organization's kitty. Terry Greenblatt, like the other winners, says that in none of these instances did the movement submit its candidacy or take any initiative regarding the prize.
Referring to the lack of attention on the part of the media and the public, she says ironically that Bat Shalom actually enjoyed a moment of rising popularity this past year. That was when Jane Fonda visited Israel, and all the journalists called to ask for her phone number.
In order to explain the gap between the respect that she and her friends receive all over the world and the fact that they are ignored in Israel, she uses a diagnosis from the field of psychology: "Each person walks around with his own problems and complexes, and often only someone from outside can diagnose them. Sometimes one needs perspective in order to assess a person properly. Apparently that is true in the case of countries as well."
Three months ago, Dr. Jeff Halper, chair of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, received the Human Rights Award from the UN Association in Washington. Last year, exactly the same prize was awarded to Arik Asherman and his colleagues from Rabbis for Human Rights, who have won two additional prizes since then. Two weeks ago, at a ceremony held at the Sorbonne, Michael Warshawsky, a member of the radical left and one of the founders of the Alternative Information Center, received the annual award of the French periodical Le Monde Diplomatique for his recently published political biography ("Al Hagvul" - On the Border).
There are also journalists among the award winners: Amira Hass, a journalist for Haaretz, recently won the Prince Klaus Award from Holland for her coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a Unesco award and the Democracy Award from the German political journal Die Blatter (The Pages), whose editors include philosopher Jurgen Haberman. Even Mordechai Vanunu, in solitary confinement in the Be'er Sheva prison, has become the respected winner of several awards. A few months ago, he received the Nuclear-Free Future Award in St. Petersburg. His adoptive parents, Nick and Mary Eoloff, represented him at the ceremony. About two years ago, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Tromsoe in Norway, a title once granted by the same institution to Mikhail Gorbachev. Several respected Norwegians who were on the awards committee make sure to send Vanunu letters with the title "doctor" on the envelope. They apparently are amused at the thought of the jailers' reaction.
The dean of Israeli award winners is the person identified more than anyone else with the Israeli peace camp: Uri Avnery. Together with his movement, Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc), he has received no fewer than eight prizes during the past decade. The most prominent among them is the "Alternative Nobel Prize" - whose official name is the Right Livelihood Award - which he received last winter in the Stockholm parliament, together with his wife Rachel. The Alternative Nobel Prize was established by members of an aristocratic Swedish-German family who felt that the original Nobel Prize was missing its mark, for example when it was granted to "a war criminal like Henry Kissinger," as Avnery puts it. De facto, the prize has come under the sponsorship of the Swedish parliament. "Officially it's unofficial, but unofficially it's official," says the Israeli award winner.
Avnery says he had absolutely nothing to do with his nomination. As far as he knows, a group of German women recommended him, and his chances increased after the founder of the foundation, Jacob von Uexkull, came to Israel for a conference on the future of Jerusalem, and heard Avnery speak. The ceremony, which took place in the Swedish parliament, moved Avnery very much: "There was a harp playing, and a choir of Swedish children of all sexes and colors. Three other people won along with us, including Ecuador's former minister of culture, who established a network of children's orchestras in the poor neighborhoods that gave the children in these neighborhoods a cause for pride, and spread like wildfire all over the country." The substantial prize money, $40,000, was all deposited in the Gush Shalom bank account.
Avnery has a longstanding familiarity with the complicated relationship between Israeli leftists and their country: "Israeli peace activists are a refreshing phenomenon for many people all over the world, because the world is in great distress vis-a-vis Israel. I encountered this for the first time over 40 years ago in a conversation with Jean-Paul Sartre. I lectured him about the Israeli peace movement, and when I finished he said, `Sir, you are removing a stone from my heart, because I can't agree in any way to the policy of Ben-Gurion and the Israeli government, but neither can I criticize it, because I don't want to be lumped together with anti-Semites. When someone comes from Israel and says what I feel, he makes things much easier for me.'
"These words are just as relevant today," says Avnery. "Many people in Europe have an emotional need to identify with Israel; after all, until the end of the 1950s, the left in Europe was the natural ally of Zionism. Since the Sinai Campaign [in 1956], and even more so after the occupation [in 1967], slowly but surely the extreme right has become our ally. For the European left, the attitude toward us is like unrequited love, and when they find someone like me whom they can shower with love, they almost thank me for agreeing to accept the prize."
It seems that in Europe you are much more welcome than in Israel.
"I have a strange feeling when I go from Israel to Europe. Instead of being a member of a small and persecuted minority, I suddenly become the majority. In the foreign ministries of the European countries I find an atmosphere of complete agreement. In the past year alone I have been in four such ministries. I can only imagine how I would feel today in the Israeli Foreign Ministry. I am completely cut off from Israeli diplomacy. They are vigorously propagandizing abroad in favor of Sharon, and former leftists are the worst of all, because they want to prove their loyalty. At all the prizes I have received to date, the ambassadors from the Palestine Liberation Organization in those [prize-awarding] countries were present, and only once was the Israeli ambassador present, and it was extremely moving. That was in Germany in 1995, still during the Oslo period, and our ambassador was Avi Primor. He and the PLO ambassador shook hands festively in front of the entire audience, and it was the first and last time that happened."
Are you sometimes concerned by the possibility that when you level criticism at Israel abroad, you are liable to cause harm to the country?
"Because I believe that Israeli-Palestinian peace is an existential need for the State of Israel, I don't find this approach valid. What causes us harm is the government policy. I keep saying in my lectures that you don't have to be against Palestine or in favor of Israel, but in favor of both."