Lessons from an Occupation

In an interesting article for The New York Review of Books, Amos Elon wrote how the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has coarsened the Jewish state. He advances a theory that's becoming increasingly prevelant: their victory in 1967 Six Day War fundamentally changed the nature of Israeli society. It went from being a country of people fleeing oppression to a country who ruled over others against their will. This transformed the character of Israel.

In words that would be useful for Americans to remember, he writes: A great victory can be almost as harmful as a defeat. In the hubris of Israel's stunning success in defeating Egypt, Syria and Jordan in a war ominously named after the Six Days of Creation, it became a victim of its victory no less than the Palestinians.

He notes that Israelis were originally viewed as liberators by the Palestinians. Relieved to be rid of a repressive Jordanian regime, the Palestnians at first greeted the Israeli occupiers with cries of 'Welcome! Welcome!' and cups of steaming hot Turkish coffee.

Elon also pointed out that the 1967 transformed the political culture of Israel. Until then, it was led by civilians. Now, like Algeria, it's dominated by the military even when there's a nominal civilian head. In reviewing a book by Richard Ben Cramer, Elon notes No other Western democracy, Cramer says, has a former general as prime minister. [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon is the third general headnig an Israeli government in recent years, while Benjamin Netanyahu was a colonel in the special forces. Having former generals as prime ministers was a practice that began only after 1967. It was, Cramer writes, 'conicident with the occupation,' when generals began to be celebrated as supermen and no elegant dinner party was complete without a victorious general. Thus my personal discomfort with mass canonization of all soldiers in a civilian democracy. He continues, The problem with military men in high places, Crame writes, is their tendency to be narrowly tactical thinkers.

Curiously, he adds that Sharon once told an interviewer that he keeps A Savage War of Peace by Alistair Horne, a book on the Algerian war, by his bedside. I've read the excellent book myself. If Sharon has really read it, he obviously wasn't paying attention since the parallels between Israeli conduct in the Occupied Territories and French conduct in Algeria are stunning. The wars' effects on and divisions they created within the respective societies (Israeli and French) are even more similar.