SUMMARY: Considering the conditions and the rights of the peoples of the Middle-East subjected to regimes supported by fanatical and intolerant minorities that use, against all rules and against all humanitarian principles, absolute power of life or death, Israeli democracy, the imperfect democracy of Israel, always proclaimed and many times contradicted, appears like a precious good to be safeguarded and protected.

(Radical news n.62 of the 18th of March 1987)

At the core of the Radical choice are the conditions and the rights of the individuals and of the peoples.

The imperfect Israeli democracy appears to us as a precious good to be safeguarded.

Giovanni Negri in his report, and Alex Langer in his intervention at the radical Congress, have suggested two different points of view on the Palestinian question, on the Jewish question and on their dramatical intertwining. I'm using the expression points of view, almost in an etymological sense, almost in the sense of different visual angles, not incompatible, and that therefore don't exclude one another even though they imply different choices and different attitudes.

Alex Langer from his point of view chooses to focus at the core of his attention, and at the core of the attention of the Jewish and palestinian affairs, and of the whole Middle-east affair, on the State of Israel, on its way of being, its practical choices and its responsibilities. How could we consider Alex Langer's point of view as not related, when he sets his ideal Israel, his ideal "second" and "deep" father-land, against the concrete reality and the concrete and sometimes brutal, in any case merciless "reason of state of Israel", we who have so many times fought together with Langer in the name of ideals in opposition to so many reasons of state?

Of course, taking this point of view, if you are democratic and you believe in the State of right, the State of Israel appears to us in patent contradiction with its nature and its democratic legitimacy; how very un-democratic, how very non-respectful of rights and of right! If you are lay, it appears to us as intolerably religious, even arrogant in its will to make Hebraism into a state. If you are against militarism, and non-violent, how ugly the militarization of society and the ideology that it has created appears, before the war that Israel has chosen to fight and has been forced to fight. If, finally you are a Jew, and you have experienced on your own body and on your own blood the diaspora and the persecution of your own people, you can say "never again, never again, no matter what it costs..." but then it shall be difficult to keep the diaspora, the suffering of other people, and above all of the palestinian people, far from your mind, as if it were a sense of guilt.

A legitimate point of view, Langer's one, for me even sound, true and right in many of the opinions expressed. It is not by chance, in fact, that one of the first Israeli citizens to enter the radical Party was Shulamit Aloni, leader of a party of 4 deputies who struggle in Israel in the name of democracy, in the name of laity, in the name of civil rights, in the first place those of the Palestinians, in the name of inter-racial and inter-religious cohabitation.

But we, who have never allowed ourselves to be influenced by the new myths of the left wing, that appear to us as tragically similar at times to the myths that in the thirties created fascism, we have felt the need to choose a different point of view, the same one that Giovanni Negri fully and rightly expressed at the Congress. From this point of view, from this visual angle, the attention is focused elsewhere: at the centre of the attention are, firstly, the conditions of life, the practical rights of the individuals and of the peoples, the conditions and the rights of the Jews and of the Jewish people, the conditions and the rights of the Palestinians and of the Palestinian people, but also the conditions and the rights of the people and the individuals of the problematic Middle-East, Arabs (Syringas, Lybians, Iranians, Iranians, Jordans...), Christian-Maronites, Armenians, Curds...I'm writing conditions and rights in the plural form and in small letters, and I have to add the adjective "practical". I'm no

t interested in abstractions, that are always expressed in the singular form and with capital letters (Revolution, Freedom, Liberation, Right to Self-determination, Independence, Nation...)

This point of view lets us see above all something that the other points of view allow us to ignore: that even nowadays there are Jews that are being persecuted, put into ghettos, kidnapped, and even murdered, guilty of simply being Jews. It occurs in the USA, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iran, in Iraq, in the countries of the Maghreb. In a world, and in a left wing all intent in presenting Israel, and therefore Jews, as persecutors, it seemed impossible even to mention these persecuted Jews, and to deal with the problem seemed like a fault.

There is another reality that remains obscure, in the shade, from the other point of view. That 17% of Palestinians that have accepted to live in Israel and to be citizens of Israel, experience - it is unfortunately true - racial and religious discrimination: the Palestinians of the occupied territories in Cisjordan - this too is unfortunately true - experience the suffering and the injustice of a harsh military occupation; but the Palestinian minority of Israel, the majority of the Palestinians of the occupied territories, live, in spite of this sad reality, in conditions of life that are incredibly better, and their fundamental rights are respected far more that those of the Palestinian refugees that have chosen to live in the Arab countries, and even of the citizens and of the peoples of those same Arab countries. Now, our point of view doesn't exclude the rights of the Palestinians who live in the camps in Lebanon, massacred by the Schists (or is this too the fault of the Israeli army?), the rights of t

he refugees subjected to the OLP and its military and military-oriented ideology and praxis, the rights of the Palestinians in Jordan who live and work in that State and currently make up the majority. Our point of view does not exclude with a racist attitude the rights (human, civil, political) to life, to freedom, to democracy of the individuals and peoples of Syria, of Iraq, Iran, Lybia, ruled by regimes supported by fanatical and intolerant minorities which use, against all rules and principles of humanity, absolute powers of life and death, and even those States that are considered liberal and that are not, however, considering the possibilty of making concessions to rights and to democracy.

It is precisely considering the conditions and the rights of these peoples that Israeli democracy, imperfect as it may be, always proclaimed and many times contradicted, so fragile and yet so resistant to sustain the wave of international tensions, religious fanaticism from certain religious minorities, external isolation and war, the policy of power and the obscure affairs of its secret services, appears to us as a precious good, one to be safeguarded and protected, an anchor and a hope for the future, not an anchor and a hope just for Israel and Israelis, but for Palestinia and the Palestinians, for the peoples of the Middle East as well.

We want to build a policy that refers to these values: human rights, democracy. A policy that believes there can be no democracy and liberation without these values. Enough of fighting romantically for liberations that then produce even more atrocious oppressions. Enough of "freeing" the Vietnamese from the corrupt ruling classes of the South and from American occupation to hand the urban population of Saigon over to genocide or to the horrid escape of the boat-people; enough with freeing the people of Cambodia to hand them over to the revolutionary folly of Pol Pot; enough with freeing the Iranians from the Shah to hand them over to the loving hands of Khomeini and his ayatollas.

It's not true that all this could not have been foreseen. A liberation based on terror creates first terrorism and then a state of terror or in any case of oppression. Each time I hear of a bomb exploded in Israel or in the occupied territories, I hear that it's not a revolt against the occupation and the dominion of Israel, but instead a revolt against the Palestinians that live in that territory: almost to stop a new sort of people from asserting itself, a people not of eradicated individuals but of settled-in individuals, not armed with desperation, bombs and terror, but armed with hope, democracy, civil disobedience, tolerance, non-violence, and capable with such weapons - that even women and children, old people and sick people can use - to impose and assert their own rights. The time is ripe for this different sort of individual to assert himself in Jordan and in Cisjordan, (where 60% of the Palestinians have made the country of Hussein beautiful and rich).

Even more so is it necessary to fight against the logic of things, to rely on common sense, to rely on the morality of politics that is to choose, instead of on moral judgements or on senses of guilt that are always misleading (be they the senses of guilt of the Christians toward the Jews, or the guilt of the Jews toward the Palestinians, or of former colonizers toward former colonized). The hope for a different future must be prepared today. It would be useless to re-recognize oneself in Israel the day in which a destiny of genocide for the people of Israel once again chased away were reaffirmed, and an irreversible destiny of military and terrorist oppression for the Palestinian people and for the Arab peoples were reaffirmed.

Even Langer's metaphor (the identification almost between Israel and the Radical party) acquires a different meaning, less restrictive, less schematic, less simplified.