Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Shin Bet o Stasi?

Questo sembra un libro da leggere:
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20080324&s=gordon
In his groundbreaking book Army of Shadows, Hillel Cohen, a research
fellow at Hebrew University's Truman Institute for the Advancement of
Peace, exposes this particularly nefarious side of the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict. Cohen has spent years in numerous Israeli and
British archives gathering information that many would pre­fer to
forget, and in Army of Shadows he sum­mons his findings to document
the actions of a seemingly endless number of Palestinian mukhtars
(village leaders), land merchants, in­­formers, weapons dealers,
journalists, busi­nessmen, farmers and teachers who collaborated with
the Jews between 1917 and 1948. By focusing on them, Army of Shadows
chron­icles a tragic chapter in the people's history of Palestine, one
that many Arab scholars have refrained from writing because it
contradicts the dominant ethos of Palestinian national unity. Zionists
have ab­­stained from recording it as well because it undermines their
claim that the Palestinians were able to unify and fight against the
es­tablishment of a Jewish state after the UN partition resolution of
November 29, 1947. Cohen reveals that many Palestinians signed pacts
with the Zionists during the 1948 war and that some even fought with
the Jews against the Arab armies.
...
Collaboration is a very thorny issue, primarily because of its
corrosive blend of betrayal, exploitation and deceit, so it's not
surprising that Army of Shadows created a stir when the Hebrew edition
was published in 2004. Both liberal Jews and Palestinians found the
book difficult to digest because each group found its side portrayed
in unflattering terms. Many Jewish readers were upset by Cohen's
revelation that the prestate Zionist intelligence agency, Shai, and
the Jewish Agency's Arab bureau exploited almost every honest Jewish
and Palestinian relationship to advance narrow Zionist interests.
There were, Cohen notes, many Jews who desired only friendship or good
business relations with Palestinians but were eventually identified by
the Shai, which used them to collect information and enlist
Palestinian collaborators. The Jewish Agency even helped establish and
finance Neighborly Relations Committees, which initiated mutual visits
and Jewish-Palestinian projects, ranging from pest control to the
sending of joint petitions to the Mandatory government. The rationale
for the creation of these committees was not only to enhance
coexistence but also to recruit informers.
Ezra Danin, head of the Shai's Arab department from 1940 to 1948,
identified twenty-five occupations and institutions in which Jews and
Palestinians mixed company, among them trucking, shipping, train and
telecommunications systems, journalism, Jewish-Arab municipalities,
prisons and the offices of the British Administration. He proposed
that the Jews in these walks of life enlist Arab collaborators, adding
that "such activity should be similar to the way the Nazis worked in
Denmark, Norway, and Holland--touching on every area of life." Cohen
explains that this approach was different from that of British
intelligence, which allowed only political and military organizations
and subversive bodies to be targeted as pools for potential informers.
This revelation, besides shedding light on some of the ruthless
tactics employed by the intelligence agencies, helps explain why, from
Zionism's very beginnings, it was almost impossible for many Jews to
develop loyal relationships with indigenous Palestinians.
...
If, for instance, Morris presents the 1948 war as a conflict between
Jews and Arabs, Cohen documents numerous cases of Palestinians
refusing to attack Jews. This unwillingness to do battle pervaded the
country. In December 1947, Cohen writes, "the inhabitants of Tulkarm
refused to attack Jewish towns to their west, to the chagrin of the
local Holy Jihad commander, Hasan Salameh. Sources in Ramallah
reported at the same time that many were refusing to enlist, and
reports from Beit Jibrin indicated that 'Abd al-Rahman al-'Azzi," the
head of a very influential family, "was doing all he could to keep his
region quiet. The villagers of the Bani-Hassan  nahiya southwest of
Jerusalem decided not to carry out military actions within their
territory, and the people of al-Maliha refused a request from 'Abd al-
Qader al-Husseini to attack the Jewish neighborhoods of Mekor Hayyim
and Bayyit va-Gan." In these places as well as in many others
mentioned in the book, Palestinians did not feel that war with the
Jews would advance their interests. In some cases local Palestinian
leaders were collaborators; in others, fear of the Jewish forces was
the source of reluctance; and in still others it was friendship that
had survived many years of national strife. "Palestinian Arab interest
in fighting the Jews seems not to have been very high," Cohen
concludes.
...
Like Army of Shadows, Aravim Tovim, which covers the years 1948 to
1967, questions pervasive truths. In 1948, during what Israel calls
the War of Independence and the Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or
"catastrophe," the vast majority of Palestinian leaders and
intelligentsia either fled or were expelled from urban centers. The
relatively small percentage of Palestinians who stayed put were
unorganized rural dwellers who found themselves in a new state that
did not want them. They were ultimately granted citizenship but were
nonetheless considered a fifth column and forced to live under the
Emergency Regulations, which restricted the movement of Palestinian
citizens within the Jewish state until 1966. For years, it has been a
widely held assumption that the first generation of Palestinian
citizens of Israel was timid, afraid to challenge the Israeli
government and demand basic rights. Such is the story told in Coffins
on Our Shoulders: The Experience of the Palestinian Citizens of Israel
(2005), in which Dan Rabinowitz and Khawla Abu-Baker distinguish the
1948 generation of Palestinians from their grandchildren, "the stand-
tall generation," which Rabinowitz and Abu-Baker describe as being
assertive, confident, determined and possessed with a sense of
entitlement.
But is this really the case? The same mistakenly declassified archival
files that Cohen used in Army of Shadows to open a window on
Palestinian collaboration also reveal the existence of ongoing
Palestinian resistance to Israeli rule. I vividly recall my friend
Fareed Ghanem, a Palestinian Druse from Mghar, calling to tell me that
he had just finished reading Aravim Tovim and that his father, Qassem,
who was a schoolteacher in the early 1960s, figures in the book.
Qassem Ghanem appears in a chapter about the governmental Committees
for Arab Affairs, the major objective of which was to monitor and
control the Palestinian minority within Israel. Cohen quotes an
Israeli memo about Qassem Ghanem's hometown. Mghar, the memo states,
had been "known in the past as outstanding in its loyalty to Israel,
[but] recently nationalistic activities and incitement against the
government have been exposed. At the center of these activities," the
memo continues, "are a group of teachers who in broad daylight oppose
the government.... The village notables and collaborators stand
helpless in light of these activities and are certain that if the
culpable teachers were harmed a bit it would do a great deal towards
pacifying the spirits in the village and restoring the calm." Cohen
goes on to suggest that the Regional Committee for Arab Affairs
invoked the Emergency Laws in order to fire Qassem, together with two
other teachers, from the education system.
This relatively minor incident, which takes up no more than seven
lines in Cohen's book, conveys a sense of the vast covert world of
informers and operators, backed by government offices, responsible for
fragmenting the Palestinian minority and cultivating Palestinian Arab
support for the Jewish state. While many Israelis--Jews and
Palestinians alike--already had a sense that these shadowplays were
part of the state's history, Aravim Tovim supplies the evidence. Case
after case is summoned to illustrate how collaboration permeated all
aspects of Palestinian society. The schools were a major arena for
spying. Students squealed on teachers, teachers informed on colleagues
and principals reported on their students. Other arenas where
collaborators operated included mosques, where an imam might criticize
the government; cafes, where friends might discuss recent political
events; and even weddings, where Palestinian nationalist songs were at
times sung. Big Brother's eyes and ears were always on the alert.
Cohen's riveting chapter about the Jewish-Arab Communist Party
illustrates especially well how the mechanisms of control were put to
use. During the first two decades of Israel's existence, the
Communists were practically the only ones to fight for egalitarian
treatment of the Palestinian minority. They also led the campaign
against the expropriation of Palestinian land and fought for the right
of refugees to return to their villages. Cohen shows how every dirty
trick in the game was used to sabotage their efforts. Collaborators
were tapped not only to listen and report but also to burn down
Communist clubs and offices, to violently attack Communist leaders and
to sway votes in municipal councils. Aravim Tovim proves for the first
time that allegations voiced by the Communists fifty years ago about
the dirty tricks of the government and its agents were true.
...
Today a request to exit the Gaza Strip to receive medical treatment,
visit a dying relative or study in the West Bank or abroad is often
contingent upon one's willingness to collaborate. In early January a
number of patients were referred from Gaza--where they could not
receive medical treatment--to Maqassed Hospital in East Jerusalem, and
received permits to leave the region. At the border, though, they were
interrogated by Israeli security service officers, who demanded that
they become collaborators. According to Hadas Ziv of Physicians for
Human Rights, Israel, those patients who refused had their travel
permits annulled and were sent back home. While these patients managed
to resist the temptation to collaborate, despite their medical ills,
others do not. The persistence of collaboration is a result of not
only the historical processes Cohen eloquently describes but also the
harsh conditions under which Palestinians currently live.

 Laido.
Una parola al giorno toglie il medico di torno. Prova "tendinite", è ganza.
Namib