This article written by Gideon Levy as a letter to Shimon Perez is a valuable peice

Twilight Zone: Tell the Truth, Shimon

by Gideon Levy

Haaretz
January 24, 2002

In the 24 years of our acquaintance, four of which I spent working
as your aide, this is the third time I have written you an open
letter. In 1989, when you were finance minister in the Shamir
government and the first intifada was raging, I used these pages to
write "A letter to a former boss." Then, I told you that "for the
first time in your life, you have nothing left to lose - except the
prospect of vanishing into thin air." This was after you kept silent
in the face of the IDF's conduct in the intifada, in the face of the
continuation of the occupation and Israel's stubborn refusal to
recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians. At the
time, I believed that you thought differently from Yitzhak Shamir
and Yitzhak Rabin (known then as the "bone-breaker"), but that you
just weren't bold enough to speak up.

Eleven years later, in 2000, I wrote you another open letter. This
was after Oslo and the Rabin assassination, and after you again had
lost an election - this time, to the office of president. Then, I
said: "Many Israelis see you as a different person now. For them,
you represent the hope of something else." And now, as I write to
you again, I have to say: You no longer represent hope for anything.

The government of which you are a senior member, the foreign
minister, is no longer just a government of last resort in our
history of governments of last resort; this government is a
government of crime. And partnership in this crime is another
matter. It is no longer possible to absolve you, to give you credit
for Oslo, to understand that your heart aches over what is
happening, and to know that you may even be bursting with rage over
what is happening and refraining from speaking out, from shouting
out, and most of all, from acting, only because of tactical
considerations, which you understand better than anyone.

No, your silence and inaction can no longer be justified by any
excuse: Shimon, you are a partner in crime. The fact that you might
realize this in your heart and, from time to time, even utter some
feeble words of condemnation, the fact that you are not prime
minister and that America is giving carte blanche right now, the
fact that most of the people think otherwise and that to quit and
"chase after a Ha'aretz journalist," as you put it, would be
pointless - All of these excuses make no difference. You continue to
serve in a government with blood on its hands, whose outstretched
hand is still busy killing and jailing and humiliating, and you are
a partner to all of its deeds. Just as the Taliban foreign minister
is a part of the Taliban regime, you are a part of the Sharon
regime. Your responsibility does not fall far short of the prime
minister's. It is equal to that of the defense minister and the
chief of staff, whose actions you harshly criticize in private
discussions. Always in private discussions only.

You say you heard about the assassination of Raed Karmi, after three
weeks of Palestinian quiet, on the radio. From your perspective,
that's enough to exempt you from responsibility for the deed and
even from having to express criticism of it. While the IDF was
reoccupying Tul Karm, you were with Bill Clinton. When asked about
it, you mumbled something incoherent. Following the house
demolitions in Rafah, you bit your lip and kept silent. One could
assume that the blowing up of the radio station was not your cup of
tea either. But you bear the terrible responsibility for all of
these things, for all of these actions that cannot be defined as
anything other than war crimes.

Ask your brother-in-law, Prof. Rafi Walden, the head of surgery at
Sheba Medical Center, who sometimes travels to the territories as a
volunteer with Physicians for Human Rights, and he'll tell you what
you're a partner to. He'll tell you about the women in labor - not
just one or two, not just the rare exception - who can't get to the
hospital because of the cruelty of the IDF of which you were once so
proud, and whose babies die right after they deliver them. He'll
tell you about the cancer patients prevented from getting to Jordan
for treatment. No, they cannot even go to Jordan - for "security
reasons."

He'll tell you about the hospitals in Bethlehem that were shelled by
the IDF. He'll tell you about the doctors and nurses who sleep in
the hospital because they can't get home. He'll tell you about the
dialysis patients forced to spend hours jostled about while
traveling makeshift routes three times a week in a desperate attempt
to reach the machines that their lives depend on. He'll tell you
about the patients denied crucial medical treatment because of the
closure and about the ambulances prevented from passing through
checkpoints, even when they're carrying critically ill passengers.
He'll tell you about the people who have died at the checkpoints and
about those who died at home because they didn't dare to approach
the checkpoints - which are now made up of menacing tanks in the
middle of the road, or mounds of dirt and cement blocks that cannot
be budged - even for someone on the brink of death.

You have imprisoned an entire people for over a year with a degree
of cruelty unprecedented in the history of the Israeli occupation.
Your government is trampling three million people, leaving them with
no semblance of normal life. No going to the market, no going to
work, no going to school, no visiting a sick uncle. Nothing. No
going anywhere, and no coming back from anywhere. No day or night.
Danger lurks everywhere, and everywhere there is another checkpoint,
choking off life.

An entire nation already partly outstretched its hand in peace, no
less than we have - you know this well - It has had its fill of
suffering, from the Nakba in 1948, through the 1967 occupation and
the siege of 2002, and it wants exactly the same things that
Israelis want for themselves - a little quiet, a little security and
a drop of national pride. To a man, this entire people now wakes up
each morning to a gaping abyss of despair, unemployment and
deprivation - now with tanks parked at the end of the street, too.

You were always forgiven for all this - but no longer. Someone who
is a partner in a government that deliberately sabotages every
Palestinian effort to achieve quiet, that utterly humiliates their
leaders, for whom vengeance is the sole motivating force, which
cynically exploits the world's post-September 11 blindness and
obtuseness to do as it pleases - can no longer be forgiven. True,
you do not agree with everything this government wants to do, but
what does that matter? You're inside - you're an accessory, as in
any other crime. I sometimes see you answering a reporter's question
about your government's latest despicable deed. The look on your
face (and I'm pretty familiar with your expressions after all these
years) suggests unease, even disgust. And then you give one of your
evasive, hint-laden and not quite direct answers. You mumble
something and try to extricate yourself by means of some awkward
wordplay. Like what happened this week when you were standing next
to Clinton and were asked about the occupation of Tul Karm and you
said nothing - nothing - and just waited for the question to pass,
to be left alone so you could go back to talking about peace and
vision.

When asked about the assassinations, the demolitions, the
humiliation of Arafat and his scandalous confinement, the
destruction of the Dahaniya airport or the festival of the munitions
display in Eilat, you furrow your brow and give half an answer. But
that's not enough anymore.

Now is the time for a straight, honest and truthful answer - or
nothing. Now is the time to say that the occupation of Tul Karm was
a foolish move, that the assassination of Raed Karmi was intended to
renew the violence and that the destruction of the houses in Rafah
was a war crime - or to be Ariel Sharon. This is not the time for
subtlety, for hidden meanings, for veiled criticism in private -
because, here on the outside, a terrible disaster is underway, and a
great ill wind is blowing and laying waste to everything.

Shall I give you an example? A few days ago, you were quoted as
saying (privately, again) that it was hard for you to criticize the
government's actions when the United States wasn't doing so. What
kind of pathetic excuse is that? What does the fact that there is a
predatory administration in the U.S. that has no counterbalancing
power in the world, that does as it pleases and lets Israel do as it
pleases, have to do with your principled positions? What does that
have to do with the good of Israel? What does that have to do with
basic values of justice and morality?

Perhaps you might take just one day of vacation, which you so rarely
do, and visit the occupied territories. Have you ever actually seen
the Qalandiyah checkpoint, even once? Have you seen what happens
there? Do you think that you can do your job without seeing the
Qalandiyah checkpoint? Do you understand that you are responsible
for what goes on there? Do you understand that any foreign minister
of a state that puts up these checkpoints bears responsibility for
their existence?

Then you could go to the village of Yamoun and meet Heira Abu Hassan
and Amiya Zakin, who lost their babies three weeks ago when IDF
soldiers wouldn't let their cars through the checkpoint, while they
were in labor and bleeding. Listen to their terrible stories. And
what will you tell them? That you're sorry? That it shouldn't have
happened?

That it's part of the war on terror? That it's shocking? That maybe
it's Shaul Mofaz's fault and not yours? The IDF spokesman hasn't
even expressed regret about these two instances, not to mention any
criminal investigation. He only confirmed that one occurred and said
he "didn't know" about the other.

And equally important, what will you say about our soldiers who
behave this way? That it's because of national security? That the
Palestinians are to blame? Or Arafat? The truth, Shimon, is that you
bear responsibility for the deaths of those two babies. Because you
were silent. Because you sat in this government.

These are terrible times. But worse is yet to come. The cycle of
violence and hatred has far from reached its peak. All the
injustices and evil perpetrated against the Palestinians will
eventually blow up in our faces. A people that is abused this way
for years will explode one day in a terrible fury, even worse than
what we see now. And meanwhile we have the soldiers going into the
radio station, laying explosives and blowing the place to kingdom
come - without stopping to ask why.

These soldiers are the bearers of bad tidings, not only for their
victims, but for their dispatchers as well. Soldiers that destroy
dozens of homes belonging to refugees, with all their meager
possessions inside, without a moment's hesitation - and certainly no
refusal to carry out such blatantly illegal orders, are not good
soldiers, even for their country. Pilots who bomb targets in the
heart of populated cities, tank operators who point their guns at
women trying to get to the hospital to give birth in the middle of
the night and Border Police officers who abuse women and youngsters
are not a good portent of things to come. They all attest to the
loosening of restraint that derives from a total loss of direction.

Yes, this year we have lost our way. You have joined forces with a
prime minister who is Israel's most veteran warmonger, and no one
can say for sure what your intentions are. And with a brainwashed
public that speaks with frightening uniformity, you have it easy.
Ever since another member of your party, Ehud Barak, intentionally
shattered the peace camp, you've been able to do practically as you
pleased. The IDF no longer investigates any war crime and the legal
system approves every injustice that comes wrapped in the mantle of
security. The whole world is busy struggling against terror, the
press hides its face and the public doesn't want to hear, doesn't
want to see and doesn't want to know. It only wants revenge. And
under cover of this darkness and with the backing of a person of
your stature, the occupation has become a machine of crime and evil.

Naturally, you'll say: What can I do? I wasn't elected prime
minister. And I wasn't elected chairman of the Labor Party. I'm not
even the defense minister. You're right: In this government you
cannot do anything and you are not doing anything. Which is exactly
why you never should have become a member of it. You'll say: I have
influence - I rein things in, I'm a moderating force, I'm trying.
Nonsense. It couldn't be much worse than it is now, so where exactly
have you exerted your influence and what are you preventing from
happening? Did you ever imagine that you would be sitting in a
government that would reoccupy parts of Area A completely
unhindered?

Just think what would have happened had you got up and loudly
resigned from this government and told the world what is (perhaps)
in your heart. The Nobel Prize laureate versus the crimes of the
Sharon government. Imagine if you had gone to Ramallah, to Yasser
Arafat who is under siege there, and taken to the street together,
faced the Israeli tanks and called for their removal and for a
cease-fire. True, the sky wouldn't have fallen - the occupation
wouldn't have ended and the closure of Jenin would not have been
lifted, but real cracks would have been opened in the moral,
political and international basis of this currently immune
government. Imagine if you would have said: Yes, the house
demolitions are a war crime. Yes, a state that has lists of
assassination targets is not a state of law. Yes, installing a
checkpoint that causes people to die is an act of terror. No, the
Palestinians are not the only ones to blame for this orgy of blood.
Yes, we have a chief of staff who is a danger to democracy. Yes, we
have a defense minister and Labor Party chairman who is the
government's contractor for assassinations and house demolitions.
Yes, we have a prime minister who only wants to occupy, to avenge,
to kill, to expel, to demolish and to uproot and he has no other
plan in mind.

That's what you think, isn't it? If it is, then say so, for God's
sake. And if not, then your place really is with this government and
we who once believed in you made a dreadful mistake. And please
don't say that you're being made a punching bag once again. You're
not. Ever since Oslo, you were the embodiment of our hopes. And
these have been disappointed.

Time is short, Shimon. Not just for you, but for all of us. We are
standing on the verge of the abyss. If you wait until Benjamin Ben-
Eliezer, Ephraim Sneh, Ra'anan Cohen, Dalia Itzik and their like
come up with another sneaky
resigning-from-the-government-for-election- purposes deal, you might
just find yourself kicked into oblivion by them. You know that
they've been itching to be rid of you for some time now. And even if
you do make a stand now, it may just be too late. Everyone may
already be too disappointed in you and there may be no way to
rebuild the ruin brought about by Sharon.

But the only way for you to add one more meaningful accomplishment
to your rich biography is not just to get up now and resign from
this government, which you may be compelled to do at some point
anyway, but to do it while speaking out loud and clear, and telling
Israelis all that you think about everything that is happening,
especially about the evil we are perpetrating with our own hands.
Once more in your life, try to build something new - not an atomic
reactor or an aircraft industry, of which we already have more than
enough. Now, against all the odds, try to build a radical Israeli
peace camp, to make something out of nothing. Is it too farfetched
to believe that you still see things differently than the rest of
your colleagues in the government? Tell the truth, Shimon.