The 1967 War and the Political Legacy of Shimon Tzabar
Moshé Machover
Shimon was always a political person,
with a rebellious spirit and revolutionary mind. But if
not for the 1967 war he would probably not be remembered
as a political activist who has left a significant
political legacy.
The 1967 war was of course pivotal in the modern history
of the Middle East. It was also pivotal in Shimon’s life.
Less than a year after the war, he went into self-imposed
political exile in England, where he died 39 years later.
Not long before leaving Israel, Shimon was the main mover
behind the first public call against the occupation (“Let
us get out of the occupied territories immediately”) to
reach a wide audience in Israel, published as an
advertisement in Ha’aretz on 22 September 1967. Reading
that statement many years later, quite a few people have
remarked that it was prophetic. But Shimon and the other
11 signatories did not possess supernatural clairvoyance.
What was needed was clarity of political vision – and this
quality was remarkably rare in the Israel of that time.
The decade preceding the 1967 war was the period in which
the Israeli–Arab conflict was at its most quiescent,
almost dormant. In the Suez War of October 1956, Israel
had pounced, showing its expansionist claws in a bid to
annex the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, which Prime
Minister David Ben-Gurion hastened to declare parts of the
“Third Kingdom of Israel”. But massive international
pressure soon compelled Israel to withdraw back to its
1949 Armistice lines.
The general public soon forgot all about that episode.
Israel seemed to be a more or less normal nation state,
which just happens to have an unresolved border conflict
with its neighbours. The basic nature of Israel as a
Zionist state – not only a product of the Zionist
colonization project, but also a tool for its further
extension and expansion – seemed to recede into the
background, and tended to be ignored or regarded as no
longer relevant.
Of course, this was just an illusion. The whole of
Israel’s domestic and foreign policy was in fact
determined by its basic nature as a settlers’ state,
actively engaged in an ongoing process of colonization.
But so long as this involved a myriad of routine acts and
practices rather than major moves, the common denominator
of all these policies, the Zionist colonizing drive, could
easily be ignored or denied.
So the majority of Israelis – like public opinion in the
West – could easily be misled about the causes and aims of
the 1967 war. Exploiting Nasser’s disastrous tactical
errors, the Israeli government was able to fool almost all
Israelis (as well as public opinion in the West) and
present the war as one of Israeli self-defence.
Shimon was among the small minority of Israelis who could
see through this propaganda, because he had not lost sight
of the true nature of Israel as a Zionist settlers’ state.
He gauged correctly the expansionist drive behind the war
defensive façade, and was able to foresee clearly its
long-term consequences. (His views on this issue were
close to those of the socialist organization Matzpen; so
it is no accident that four of the 12 signatories of the
22 September call were Matzpen members.)
Shimon also understood that Israel’s aggression and
expansionism was made possible and encouraged by its role
as a junior partner and local enforcer of Western imperial
domination of the Middle East region. The struggle against
Israeli occupation, colonization and annexationism
therefore had a vital international dimension: progressive
public opinion in the West had to be weaned away from its
indulgent sentimental pro-Israeli bias.
So his going into exile was not merely an individual act
of protest, or an expression of personal exasperation and
disgust with the chauvinist intoxication of Israeli
society; it was a calculated move to fight against the new
Israeli empire by doing its dirty washing abroad, in full
public view.
His main weapon in this fight was literary and graphic
satire, at which he excelled.
This is how Israel Imperial News was conceived. The few
issues that came out – almost entirely Shimon’s work, with
a little help from his friends – are a classic of this
genre and his unique style.
Learn more about
Israel
Imperial News and Shimon Tzabar here: www.shimontzabar.com
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