Members of Isha L' Isha (Woman to Woman)

In an extensive, research-based 2009 position paper titled: On Nuclear Weapons: A Feminist Perspective, Edna Gorney and Hedva Eyal of the Isha L’Isha Haifa Feminist Center wrote, “the Israeli public remains excluded from the [nuclear] debate. The public does not ask questions, does not demand that the state takes responsibility, nor does it demand to be involved in decision making; it accepts and is content with the information or, more accurately, with the lack of information.”

This passive indifference to the nuclear weaponry widely believed to be in the public’s backyard is, in my view, a highly dangerous manifestation of Israel’s longtime and entrenched militarization. As Gorney and Eyal have put it, “Decision-making in all areas related to security is characterized by secrecy and vagueness, excluding anyone who does not belong to the security elite. … The secret functions both on the outside as well as on the inside. Denying information under the guise of maintaining secrecy is one of the common ways through which elites maintain their status. … [While o]ne of the ways they can attain legitimacy for their control and actions is to continuously disseminate and instill fear – real and imaginary – among the citizens of Israel. This fear justifies and, in turn, foments military power and its use against any security threat, as defined by this elite group.”

Meanwhile, Gorney and Eyal have noted, “We are flooded with information on the great threat Iran poses and on the necessity of military operations. The debate within the Israeli public discourse is almost devoid of the possibility of solution through diplomatic means.”

Outlining the severely undemocratic suppression of any public nuclear debate in Israel, the position paper lists a line of researchers, journalists, politicians, activists and ex-security personnel who’s critical voices have been stifled by the security establishment, using a broad range of tactics. This in addition to the constant dissemination of fear underpinning militarization in general and the unquestioning Israeli public acceptance of its governments’ nuclear armament in particular. Thus, the risks of such armament to this public itself, as well as the entire area or even the globe, go unexamined and undebated for decades on end.

Resisting this reality and reaching for an actual, participatory democracy, Gorney and Eyal explain, “As feminists we wish to expose the connections between the policy of opacity, concealment and fear, and the current perception of security. We want to take responsibility for our lives and for actions carried out in our name.”

In one of the rare public voices taking up these issues, the position paper concludes:
“We demand the removal of opacity surrounding the issue of nuclear weapons in Israel; We demand a public debate and the development of an alternative policy that will enable us to live in peace in the Middle East; We demand nuclear disarmament; We demand that the State of Israel join the International Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.”

Click here to download the full 22 page position paper.

Another such public voice, sounded now for many years, is that of nuclear historian and analyst, Avner Cohen, whose work is one of main sources repeatedly referred to by the Isha L’Isha position paper. Cohen is equally critical of successive Israeli governments’ successful barring of nuclear debate and, in a recent op-ed, offers a series of serious arguments against what he views as the irresponsible and extremely dangerous possibility that Israel might launch a military attack against Iran in an attempt to quash its nuclear capacity.

Cohen’s op-ed, converging in part with some of the conclusions presented by the Isha L’Isha position paper, was published April 2nd in Haaretz and claims, among other things, that:

Instead of a public discussion [of a possible Israeli attack against Iran] there has been a belligerent press, which makes demagogic use of statements that intensify the message of the politics of fear. These include expressions such as ‘Iran is galloping toward a bomb’ and a ‘second Holocaust’ that Israel must prevent. Such discourse creates a feeling that if Iran is not attacked, and soon, we have no choice but to accept a nuclear Iran. [Meanwhile,] It’s doubtful whether the people making those statements are capable of giving them a precise (technical and political) interpretation.

[Israel's is] a culture of national security in which nuclear opacity has been exploited to the hilt to create a specific model of deterrence. The result is that when [… we Israelis] look at Iran we see ourselves: how we would behave in a similar situation. [… This] leads to systematic errors when making assessments.”

A comment regarding Avner Cohen, from Gideon Spiro:

Cohen’s recent op-ed in Haaretz was an important one as it supports the
claims of those who oppose the dangerous adventure of an Israeli military
strike against Iran. However, please make no mistake: Avner Cohen is no ally
of the struggle to dismantle Israel’s nuclear arsenal. He is a staunch
supporter of the Israeli nuclear bomb and his book “Israel and the Bomb” is
a hymn singing the praises of the nuclear program in Dimona. I have
personally confronted Cohen on several occasions, some of them public, most
recently several months ago on Al Jazira.”

Gideon Spiro is a Tel-Aviv based journalist and activist in various Israeli
and international peace and human rights movements, one of the founders of
the “Yesh Gvul” peace movement and the “Israeli Committee for Mordechai
Vanunu and for a Middle East Free of Atomic, Chemical and Biological
Weapons.

Israeli generals live a life of luxury and extravagance, mostly shaded from public scrutiny, while their soldiers enforce a brutal and criminal occupation upon the Palestinian people. Now they appropriately choose the Waldorf Astoria in New York to solicit more American money. New Profile, an Israeli feminist movement for the civil-zation of Israeli society, asks US citizens to just say NO.

On Tuesday March 9 the US-based non-profit “Friends of the Israel Defense Force” is scheduled to hold its annual fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. The event will host Israel’s Chief of Staff as keynote speaker. Outside the hotel, a coalition of organizations will protest in a moving processing, under slogans such as “No to the occupation and siege of Gaza,” “No to the Israel Defense Force Brutality.”

It’s no coincidence that this particular non-profit, created to enhance the funding of Israel’s army, has chosen to hold this year’s fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria.

It was just last October that Israel’s State Comptroller investigated the outrageous bills run up at lavish hotels by the thirty-nine Israeli army and security officials who attended the Air Salon in Paris. Defense Minister Ehud Barak topped the list in a deluxe 2,500 Euro a night hotel suite.

Two months later, in December 2009, Israeli media revealed the equally lavish pension deal – approximating some 3 million Shekels – struck by a retiring general with the military after arranging a prematurely hiked up salary. “Everything connected to the terms of military pensions remains unknown,” wrote The Marker’s Meirav Arlosoroff, in her report on “these shady deals regarding senior officers’ leaving conditions.” These deals, she said, were “beyond any kind of external supervision … [as] no one … can bring the IDF to disclose its data.”

The Waldorf Astoria is just another glimpse of this entrenched regime of extravagance and corruption.
Israel’s national security budget, 50 Billion Shekels in 2010, with 10 Billion more in US aid, coming from US taxpayers, is by far the largest portion of the public coffers allocated to any single government ministry. Itself a symptom and a benchmark of the state’s extreme militarization, it is moreover insulated from detailed examination by Israel’s elected representatives. The people entrusted with the dispensation of public funds towards implementing policy are in fact denied a transparent breakdown of this major portion of the budget. This has been the case for over sixty years, a perfect hothouse for corruption.

For decades now, Israel’s army and its security administration have enforced a brutal and criminal occupation upon the Palestinian people. At the very least, this choice of ostentatious venue reveals an arrogant, callous indifference to the intense human suffering inflicted by the military organization being honored by the Waldorf Astoria event. The Palestinian people withstanding this suffering are largely disregarded or viciously stereotyped and demonized both within and outside of Israel. In rallying to support Israel’s military, the “Friends of the IDF” align themselves with those acts of erasure and oppression. Their funding and fundraising help uphold the impunity with which such criminal acts continue to be committed. Perhaps less obviously, the “Friends of the IDF” also align themselves with a force that systematically undoes the democratic values and rights of all the people living in the state which the so-called Israel Defense Force claims to protect.

The gala event at the Waldorf Astoria, described on the “Friends of the IDF” website is “themed around the concept of education.” Indeed, education is one of the most militarized areas of civil society in Israel. The state education system, designed to perpetuate obedience to conscription law, produces and maintains the systemic militarization of state and society as it aggressively channels minors from a very young age towards enlistment. The end result – a population of young people with little critical capacity to make informed choices about conscription – is largely achieved by integrating a polarized, militarized world view into almost every aspect of school curricula. The system imbues youngsters with military-centered views, effectively entrenching paranoia while presenting the army as attractive and exciting. Students and teachers are commonly required to participate in lessons offered on school premises by uniformed officers and to visit a variety of military units in programs designed to naturalize armed conflict and enthuse future candidates for conscription. Enormous pressures both convince and oblige teachers to legitimize and normalize the militarized policy choices of warfare and to justify mandatory conscription. Precluding the encouragement of critical thinking, this means, in effect that Israeli youth are being educated as executors of the ongoing occupation of Palestine.

The feminist, anti-militarist movement with which both of us are active has been working for over a decade now to challenge and reverse Israel’s militarization, its onslaught of destruction and self-destruction. Along with all of the members of New Profile: Movement for the Civil-ization of Israeli Society, we are honored to stand with those who protest this event, exposing and denouncing what it stands for. From within Israel, we join the voices raised against Israel’s impunity, against Israel’s war crimes, against Israel’s affront to human rights and democracy.

Dr. Diana Dolev teaches at two schools of design in Israel and researches the connections between national identity and architecture. Her PhD dissertation analyzed the militarization of the Mt. Scopus campus of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

Diana has been an activist since 1980 when she facilitated a group of Palestinian and Jewish students at the “Education for Peace” program at Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva, later introducing the curriculum into six high schools in Israel. In 1987, Diana established a branch of the Association for Civil Rights (ACRI) in Beer Sheva then going on to found the “Gaza Team,” which petitioned Israeli authorities against human rights violations in the Gaza Strip. The team collected detailed testimonies and succeeded in exposing Israeli atrocities in the mainstream media.

Since initiating a weekly Woman in Black vigil in Beer Sheva in 1989, Diana has been active with WIB, and a member of the organizing committee of the August 2005 international WIB conference in Jerusalem.

Diana has been an active member of New Profile since the founding event in 1998, mainly focusing her work with New Profile in the educational team.