Wistful eyes

by Uri Avnery

This is an imaginary case. But it resembles very much what would happen if a real case that is now pending were to take this turn.

There is no death penalty in Israel. It was abolished during the first years of the state, when the execution of Jewish underground fighters (called “terrorists” by the British) was still fresh in everybody’s mind.

It was a solemn and festive occasion. After the vote, in an unplanned outburst of emotion, the entire Knesset rose and stood at attention for a minute. In the Knesset, such expressions of emotion, like applause, are forbidden.

On that day I was proud of my state, the state for which I had spilled my blood.

Before that day, two people had been executed in Israel.

The first was shot during the early days of the state. A Jewish engineer was accused of passing information to the British, who passed it on to Arabs. Three military officers constituted themselves as a military court and condemned him to death. Later it was found that the man was innocent.

The second death sentence was passed on Adolf Eichmann, an Austrian Nazi who in 1944 directed the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the death camps. He was not very high up in the Nazi hierarchy, just a lieutenant-colonel (“Obersturmbannführer”) in the SS. But he was the only Nazi officer with whom Jewish leaders came into direct contact. In their minds, he was a monster.

When he was kidnapped in Argentina and brought to Jerusalem, he looked like an average bank clerk, not very impressive and not very intelligent. When he was condemned to death, I wrote an article asking myself whether I was in favor of his execution. I said: “I dare not say yes and I dare not say no.” He was hanged.

A personal confession: I cannot kill a cockroach. I am unable to kill a fly. That is not a conscious aversion. It is almost physical.

It was not always so. When I had just turned 15, I joined a “terrorist” organization, the Irgun (“National Military Organization,”) which at the time killed lots of people, including women and children, at Arab markets in retaliation for the killing of Jews in the Arab rebellion.

I was too young to be employed in the actions themselves, but my comrades and I distributed leaflets proudly proclaiming the actions. So I certainly was an accomplice, until I left the organization because I started to disapprove of “terrorism.”

But the real change in my character occurred after I was wounded in the 1948 war. For several days and nights I lay in my hospital bed, unable to eat, drink or sleep, just thinking. The result was my inability to take the life of any living being, including humans.

So, naturally, I am a deadly enemy of the death penalty. I greeted with all my heart its abolition by the Knesset (before I became a member of that not-very-august body.)

But a few days ago, somebody remembered that the death penalty was not really quite abolished. An obscure paragraph in the military code has remained in force. Now there is an outcry for its application.

The occasion is the murder of three members of a Jewish family in a settlement. The Arab assailant was wounded but not killed on the spot, as usually happens.

The entire right-wing clique that governs Israel now broke out in a chorus of demands for the death penalty. Binyamin Netanyahu joined the chorus, as did most members of his cabinet.

Netanyahu’s attitude can easily be understood. He has no principles. He goes with the majority of his base. At the moment he is deeply involved in a huge corruption affair concerning the acquisition of German-built submarines. His political fate hangs in the balance. No time for moral quibbles.

Putting aside, for the moment, my personal mental disabilities concerning the death penalty, judging the problem on a rational basis shows that it is a huge mistake.

The execution of a person who is considered a patriot by their own people arouses profound anger and a deep desire for revenge. For every person put to death, a dozen others arise to take their place.

I speak from experience. As already mentioned, I joined the Irgun when I was hardly 15. A few weeks before, the British had hanged a young Jew, Shlomo Ben-Yossef, who had shot at an Arab bus full of women and children, without hitting anyone. He was the first Jew in Palestine to be executed.

Later on, after I had already forsworn “terrorism,” I still felt emotionally involved whenever the British hanged another Jewish “terrorist.” (I take pride in having invented the only scientifically sound definition of “terrorism” — “A freedom fighter is on my side, a terrorist is on the other side.”)

Another argument against the death penalty is the one I described at the beginning of this piece: the inherent dramatic effect of this penalty.

From the moment a death sentence is passed, the entire world, not to mention the entire country, gets involved. From Timbuktu to Tokyo, from Paris to Pretoria, millions of people, who have no interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, get aroused. The fate of the condemned man starts to dominate their lives.

Israeli embassies will be deluged by messages from good people. Human rights organizations everywhere will get involved. Street demonstrations will take place in many cities and grow from week to week.

The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people, until then a minor news item in newspapers and on TV news, will be the center of attention. Editors will send special correspondents, pundits will weigh in. Some heads of state will be tempted to approach the president of Israel and plead for clemency.

As the date of execution grows nearer, the pressure will grow. In colleges and in churches, calls to boycott Israel will become shrill. Israeli diplomats will send urgent alarms to the Foreign Office in Jerusalem. Embassies will strengthen anti-terror precautions.

The Israeli government will meet in urgent emergency sessions. Some ministers will advise commuting the sentence. Others will argue that that would show weakness and encourage terror. Netanyahu, as usual, will be unable to decide.

I know that this line of argument may lead to a wrong conclusion: to kill Arab assailants on the spot.

Indeed, this is a second discussion tearing Israel apart at the moment: the case of Elor Azaria, a soldier and field medic, who shot at close range a wounded Arab assailant lying on the ground and bleeding profusely. A military court sentenced Azaria to a year and half in jail, and the sentence was confirmed on appeal. Many people want him released. Others, including Netanyahu again, want his sentence commuted.

Azaria and his entire family are enjoying themselves hugely at the center of national attention. They believe that he did the right thing, according to an unwritten dictum that no Arab “terrorist” should be allowed to remain alive.

Actually, this was openly pronounced years ago by the then Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir (who himself, as a leader of the Lehi underground, was one of the most successful “terrorists” of the 20th century). For that he did not need to be very intelligent.

From whatever angle one looks at it, the death sentence is a barbaric and stupid measure. It has been abolished by all civilized countries, except some US states (which can hardly be called civilized.)

Whenever I think about this subject, the immortal lines of Oscar Wilde in his “Ballad of Reading Gaol” come to my mind. Observing a fellow prisoner, a convicted murderer, awaiting his execution, Wilde wrote:

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon the little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky…

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A stride toward justice

by Libertad Ciudadana (Panama’s chapter of Transparency International)

In this historic moment in the anti-corruption struggle through which the republic lives, the announcement made on August 1 by the nation’s attorney general, Kenia Porcell, that this past July 26 she signed an agreement for effective cooperation with the Odebrecht company, is a necessary step toward attaining justice.

With this agreement there begins the handover of information for which all of Panamanian society awaits. This will lead to effective investigations by the Public Ministry in the course of this inquiry into the conduct of three administrations, which cannot be put off.

From now on we insist that the Attorney General’s office maintain a flow of communication, which will generate an accompanying civic vigilance. We want to see not only fines and frozen money, if we are not to be witnesses to impunity in the end, by way of knowing the terms of the accord and evaluating its benefits for the country.

Taking into account that the administration of justice is composed of both the Public Ministry’s investigative phase and the trial phase before the courts, we demand that both institutions fulfill their roles, so that there are strictly legal trials of all those who were involved, so that the criminal schemes that were used are known and that the proper restitution is made.

In case information exists that includes officials with special immunities, we expect that this will be sent to the proper institution, whether it’s the National Assembly or the Supreme Court, that these will be resolved by persons uninvolved in the Odebrecht corruption scheme and free of conflicts of interest, and that all of those responsible account for their actions — whoever may fall!

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Comunicado del PRD

El Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD) señala que el gobierno del presidente Juan Carlos Varela ha irrespetado la dignidad del país al rebajar a Panamá a la condición de apéndice sumiso de la política exterior de los Estados Unidos, al respaldar las sanciones impuestas por Estados Unidos a Venezuela y a funcionarios de ese país, de manera unilateral.

La administración del presidente Juan Carlos Varela ha cometido un atentado contra la personalidad internacional de la nación panameña al subordinar su política exterior a la de los Estados Unidos.

Es deplorable que el presidente Varela haya aceptado, sin rubor alguno, la recolonización de la política exterior del país.

Para el PRD es inadmisible que la administración del presidente Varela avale sanciones unilaterales contra Venezuela que son violatorias del derecho internacional. Resulta penoso que el gobierno de Panamá, país que sufrió en 1988 y 1989 sanciones injustas e ilegales que afectaron severamente la economía nacional y la calidad de vida de los ciudadanos, ahora apoye acciones semejantes contra Venezuela.

Es vergonzoso que el gobierno del presidente Juan Carlos Varela avale hoy contra Venezuela las acciones condenables que ayer se aplicaron contra Panamá.

Ahora, el gobierno del presidente Varela pretende erigirse en juez supranacional, cuando ni siquiera es capaz de resolver los problemas que aquejan a la población panameña y mucho menos enfrentar con eficacia las graves denuncias de corrupción de ésta y la pasada administración.

El creciente descontento ciudadano y la falta de credibilidad internacional de la administración del presidente Varela no se mitigarán plegándose a los designios de países extranjeros ni formando parte de alianzas injerencistas ni pretendiendo un triste protagonismo de conveniencia con respecto a Venezuela.

Con la posición asumida frente a Venezuela, el presidente Juan Carlos Varela ha hecho retroceder la política exterior de Panamá a las épocas más oscuras de entreguismo y ha desechado las mejores prácticas diplomáticas del país caracterizadas por la adhesión y aplicación de los principios de no intervención, respeto a la soberanía nacional y a la autodeterminación, el no uso de la fuerza y la solución de los conflictos por medio del diálogo y la negociación.

Demandamos que la administración del presidente Varela desarrolle una política exterior de autonomía e independencia basada en esos principios que le dieron credibilidad y respeto a Panamá en el ámbito internacional.

Todo esfuerzo exterior, tanto bilateral como multilateral y en los organismos internacionales, que honestamente y sin agendas ocultas desee contribuir a una solución a la problemática que vive Venezuela, debe basarse en el acatamiento del Derecho Internacional, en el respeto estricto a la soberanía de Venezuela y a su institucionalidad democrática, en el rechazo a la violencia, en el apoyo decidido al diálogo y la negociación como vías irremplazables para lograr una solución política duradera que restablezca la paz social y la convivencia en ese hermano país.

Secretaría de Relaciones Internacionales

Partido Revolucionario Democrático

31 de julio de 2017

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Investigate Varela

We have two men who would have been in a position to know who have made public statements that President Juan Carlos Varela took money from the corrupt Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht.

The first to say that had been Varela’s minister without portfolio, de facto leader of Varela’s Panameñista Party and for the first year and a half of this administration Varela’s right-hand man, attorney Ramón Fonseca Mora of Mossack Fonseca infamy.

The second to say that was Spanish-Brazilian attorney Rogelio Tacla Durán, whom Odebrecht hired as an outside counsel to set up a system of companies and bank accounts that would allow them to make corrupt cash payments without leaving any paper trail.

And what has the jailed former CEO of Odebrecht, Marcelo Odebrecht, said? About his company’s general modus operandi in the bribery game, he said that they would either pay off all sides in a country’s political system or they would pay nobody. There is strong documentary evidence and there are multiple witnesses that Ricardo Martinelli was paid handsomely by Odebrecht, so what does that say about Varela’s Panameñistas and the PRD?

Yes, innocent until proven guilty. Yes, nobody whose statements implicate the president is an admirable person whose honesty is beyond question. But the sophistries and pseudo-legal excuses about why Varela can’t and shouldn’t be investigated are annoying. The personal attacks on those who are demanding a proper investigation are sickening. From the Panameñista camp the creepiest of the screeds are coming from the same crew and assuming the same tone as the attacks on those who questioned their flagrantly corrupt hero of yesteryear, Bosco Vallarino.

Varela should agree to and cooperate with a full, honest and independent investigation of the allegations against him or he should resign.

Contain Trump

Will The Donald be going the way of Mr. Flynn and Mr. Scaramucci in short order? Perhaps. It’s hard to see how he can go the distance at the pace he’s going. The replacement will be another set of serious problems if Trump goes. A Democratic Party led by people without many good ideas — to the extent that anyone can be said to lead the party at the moment — would not help matters if he goes right away.

Best for the opposition to dig in for a long struggle, in the course of which it is to be hoped that the factions will find their leaders and a common program will be agreed. Good ideas are actually being introduced as bills in Congress, but of course few of them have any chance of passing. Right now the name of the game is blocking bad ideas.

The United States is at war in too many places, hardly any of them where there is a credible end game in mind. The cost of the present course, which predates the Trump administration, may yet bankrupt the nation. It’s already letting other powers gain economic advantages. Major new wars, escalations of old ones, and geopolitical blunders are the most important avenues of action on which Donald Trump should be blocked. “Tough talk” and foreign policy goading by Democrats may well blow up in the nation’s face. We are dealing with a dangerously unstable man. We aren’t going to get any sober reasoning from Trump and this imposes on his opponents a duty to remain scrupulously level-headed. The demagoguery coming from the White House can’t be usefully countered by its mirror image from Democrats.

Bear in mind…

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