[R-G] A venerable voice in Israel is muted after questioning army's actions - LAT

[shniad at sfu.ca]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-042902speech.story

The Los Angeles Times					April 29, 2002

A venerable voice in Israel is muted after questioning army's actions 

     By Mary Curtius, Times Staff Writer

Jerusalem -- To generations of Israeli fans, Yaffa Yarkoni has been "the
Singer of the Wars." Whenever troops marched into battle, they could be sure
Yarkoni would follow. Clad in fatigues, she raised spirits at the front with
her rousing renditions of patriotic songs. 

So it seemed natural for Army Radio to interview the iconic singer in her
home a few days before Israel's Independence Day this month. Once again,
Israeli troops were at war, this time in the West Bank, where they were
sweeping through Palestinian towns and refugee camps in Israel's largest
military operation there since the 1967 Middle East War. 

But this time, Yarkoni offered no words of encouragement. Instead, she
bitterly criticized the troops, the government and Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon in an anguished tirade that shocked her interviewer and enraged many
Israelis. 

"When I saw the Palestinians with their hands tied behind their backs, young
men, I said, 'It is like what they did to us in the Holocaust,' " Yarkoni
said. "We are a people who have been through the Holocaust. How are we
capable of doing these things?" 

Her words were deemed so offensive that the union representing the nation's
performing artists called off a planned tribute to Yarkoni that had been in
the works for two years. The head of the union said it was forced to make
the move after members of the public flooded its offices with complaints and
returned tickets purchased for the event, and after sponsors canceled their
financial support. 

Government ministers denounced Yarkoni. The town of Kfar Yona canceled her
performance at a Memorial Day event to honor Israeli soldiers who have
fallen in battle. Youth movements declared a boycott of her music. The
septuagenarian received so many hate calls, her daughter said, that she is
now too frightened to appear in public. 

At a time when many Israelis believe that they are locked in a battle for
their existence with the Palestinians, Yarkoni's remarks, and the backlash
against her, have stirred a debate here about freedom of speech and the
nature of patriotism. 

"What happened to Yaffa Yarkoni," said Naomi Chazan, a left-wing member of
the Knesset, Israel's parliament, "exemplifies the fact that in the current
climate in Israel, anything that is not the official line is considered
treachery or betrayal." 

Yarkoni is not the only public figure who has come under attack recently.
Yossi Beilin, the dovish former justice minister, found himself the target
of a boycott effort this month. A group of 43 professors and instructors at
Ben Gurion University in Beersheba signed a letter protesting Beilin's
scheduled appearance to lecture on Jews in the 21st century. 

Instead of being invited to lecture, said Dr. Arieh Zaritsky, a geneticist
who was one of the signatories, the former Cabinet member should be standing
trial in Israel for helping draft the 1993 Oslo peace accords between Israel
and the Palestinians. 

"I think he is a criminal," Zaritsky said. 

Beilin did deliver his lecture, and a stream of university professors took
to Israeli radio and television talk shows to denounce what they said was an
attempt to stifle academic freedom. 

But Zaritsky denies that those who opposed Beilin's appearance are against
free speech. 

"We wanted to save Ben Gurion University from the shameful appearance of a
person who has demonstrated, to say the least, a lack of judgment," he said.


In a poll published Friday, the Israeli daily Maariv found that at a time of
threat, large segments of the Israeli public are more interested in unity
than free speech. 

Asked whether journalists who criticize the army's current operation in the
West Bank and the government's policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip harm
national security or strengthen democracy and the country, 58% of those
polled said they harm national security. Asked whether it was appropriate to
cancel the performance honoring Yarkoni after she spoke against Israel's
policies in the territories, 55% said it was. 

"It's not only Yaffa Yarkoni or Yossi Beilin," wrote Maariv analyst Hemi
Shalev of the poll's results. "Fifty-eight percent of the public, a stable
and definite majority, believes that journalists who criticize [army]
operations or government policy 'harm state security.' No more and no less,
and very, very scary." 

It is one thing, Shalev wrote "to believe in the colossal failure of Oslo or
the need to take measures against the Palestinians with a strong hand and
powerful arm, and another thing entirely to accuse anyone who thinks
otherwise of something akin to treason. This is a slippery slope." 

Yarkoni declined to be interviewed for this story. Her daughter, Orit
Shohat, said her 77-year-old mother is too distressed to speak. But Shohat
said Yarkoni, who has not previously made political statements, has no
regrets about the comments she made. 

"They interviewed her just after she saw the pictures from the Jenin refugee
camp," Shohat said. Her mother was shocked by footage of the large-scale
destruction carried out inside the camp during a battle there between
Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen, Shohat said. 

"She spoke from the heart. And she says she would say it all again. But
there is a patriotic mood now, and nobody is supposed to say anything except
how well we did in Jenin, how wonderful we are and how we are the most moral
army in the world. If you say something else, you are an outcast." 

Writing in the mass-circulation daily Yediot Aharonot, commentator Eitan
Haber pleaded with his countrymen to come to their senses. 

"Yaffa Yarkoni tripped over her tongue," Haber wrote. "She spoke words of
terrible folly . . . but the ganging up on her says more about us than it
does about her. We are a hysterical country. We have lost our brakes and run
off the rails." 

Yarkoni served as a radio operator in Israel's War of Independence in 1948
and began her career singing the songs adopted as anthems by the Palmach,
the Jewish underground militia that fought the British and the Palestinians
in the pre-state days. In 1967, after Israel captured Jerusalem's Old City,
it was Yarkoni who sang "Jerusalem of Gold" in front of the Western Wall,
Judaism's holiest site. And on Israel's 50th Independence Day, in 1998, she
was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for her contribution to the
nation's music. 

But in the Army Radio interview, Yarkoni said this was "the worst Yom
Hatzmaut [Independence Day] I can remember. I have never seen things more
dismal or black. I feel we are at the edge of the abyss." 

She still remembers, Yarkoni said, how soldiers would clamor to board trucks
headed for the front in previous wars "because we knew it was a war of
existence. Today, what are we fighting for? Are we fighting for territories?
For what?" 

She said she understood the Israeli reserve soldiers who have refused to
serve in the West Bank and Gaza, and revealed that one of her sons-in-law is
among them. If the situation in Israel continues to deteriorate, she said,
she might think of sending her grandchildren abroad to live. 

"I don't want to put them through what we have been through, what my
children have gone through. These are traumas," she said. "And until when?
How long? What can you explain to them? That these are our enemies? To
create more hate?" 

What Yarkoni said was nothing less than "blasphemy," said Reuven Rivlin, the
minister of communications and a member of Sharon's rightist Likud Party.
Rivlin said he will no longer attend her performances but does not believe
in organizing boycotts against her. 

And the minister said the boycott of Beilin by the Beersheba University
professors and lecturers was wrongheaded. 

"The professors went too far," he said. "I believe that Beilin is wrong, I
disagree with him, but both of us are ready to give our soul and body to the
existence of Israel. Each believes that the other is bringing the country to
disaster, but Beilin is not doing what he is doing to go against his
country. I respect him and I respect his ideas." 

Rivlin worries, he said, "that the gap is becoming unbridgeable" between the
Israeli right and left. "It takes a lot of nerves, a strong spirit to
continue the debate even though the other side sometimes annoys me." 

Shohat said she is disappointed that few Israeli artists have risen to her
mother's defense. Gidi Gov, a well-known pop singer, announced that he was
quitting the Israeli Union of Performing Artists, the group that canceled
its evening of tribute to Yarkoni. Moshe Tene, manager of the Tzavta Theater
in Tel Aviv, announced that the theater would hold its own tribute to
Yarkoni on May 15. But few others have spoken out publicly in her support. 

"I'm already receiving phone calls from artists who want to perform," Tene
said. "But I'm also receiving phone calls from people who say they will
never set foot in my theater again. People are growing less and less
tolerant. This happened to Yaffa last week, to Beilin the week before.
People and their opinions are being boycotted. Artists are afraid." 

Gov said that he was not scheduled to sing at Yarkoni's tribute but that he
will certainly attend the Tzavta evening to show support for the singer. 

"She sang to the soldiers in every war," he said. "Her songs are the songs
from my childhood. She is an elderly woman now, and she said what she
thinks. Maybe many Israelis think the same way, although they would not say
it in these ways. But it doesn't matter to me what she said, it matters to
me that she had no protection."