BYE BYE GAZA - Barry Chamish

disobedience that was practiced by Soviet Jewish and other
citizens in the 1970s.
I would be most grateful if you could devote a bit of your
time to my thoughts about your protest.
Having lived in Israel for 17 years, I cannot imagine people
that might come forward and start the action at the level
being proposed by you. You are actually appealing to
intellectuals and businessmen the category of population that
is most conservative when a risk is involved of loosing their
social privileges. Something would probably become known
on the fate of 34 officers who signed a protest letter. I very
much fear that most of them will be morally broken and
humiliated in a most primitive manner, and their dignity will
be wrecked. Those who would prove stauncher if any will
also pay for that wonderful day when they behaved like free
citizens.
I’ve come to Israel from a totalitarian country but with an
experience of a citizen perceiving my personal responsibility
to the society in which I live. I cannot help but to compare the
moral and social environment and the unwritten laws of my
both societies the past and the present.
I’m sorry to say that the moral spirit and the cynical
bureaucratic attitude towards the population in the Jewish
land have little difference from the Bolshevik regime.
The fact that anybody can freely leave Israel makes it
possible for the bureaucracy to conceal its Bolshevik
character. Instead of being put in prisons and psychiatric
hospitals as it was done in the USSR, the dissidents just
leave the society and the country in the care of their more
passive compatriots. The people are living in a fear of the
omnipotent bureaucracy and realizing their complete
helplessness against it. When talking to simple people, I hear
it far too often: Whatever I could do I’ve done: my children
live in America!
With regard to demonstrations, I share your doubts as to
the sincerity of the settlement leaders beyond the “green
line”. They’re civil servants and encounter serious personal
problems when challenging their employer the state. On the
other hand, the youth participation in the demonstrations
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