"The way I speak, the way I dress, the way I look. Everything.
"Once, in the middle of a speech in the Knesset (I believe it was about allowing the Beatles to appear in Israel) I interrupted myself and said: 'Now I want to answer MK Golda Meir...'
"'But MK Meir has not said anything!' the chairman objected.
"'I am not answering an interjection,' I explained. 'I am answering her grimaces!'
"And indeed, Golda was grimacing, every muscle of her face proclaiming her detestation. ..."
Later in this column, Avnery wrote:
"The basic fact is that Golda had from the beginning an abysmal contempt for Arabs. Like all her predecessors (except Moshe Sharett, as I have already noted) she never had any real contact with Arabs, was totally ignorant of Arab culture and despised them from the bottom of her heart.
"The ease with which the Israeli army had beaten three Arab armies in 1967 amplified this contempt. Golda did not dream of giving back the Sinai peninsula to Egypt, which was a contemptible Arab state."
Returning to the recent a "state for Jews" law, as Avnery constantly noted, Israel does not have a constitution. It is ruled by its original declaration under which the Knesset passes "binding laws." With the government in the hands of his Likud party, Benjamin Netanyahu pushed through his "state for Jews" law by a vote of 62-55, with two abstentions.
Increasingly distressed over the rightward move of Israel's Likud party and the settlement movement, Avnery never wavered. He made clear that Israel could not survive as "a state for Jews" that renders its Arab citizens as second-class citizens.
It can also not survive as a democracy that slaughters its non-Jewish citizens, as it does consistently, and as it has done during the Gaza Friday Palestinian protests.
On April 14, Avnery wrote, "Eyeless in Gaza," which began:
"WRITE DOWN: I, Uri Avnery, soldier number 44410 of the Israel army, hereby dissociate myself from the army sharpshooters who murder unarmed demonstrators along the Gaza Strip, and from their commanders, who give them the orders, up to the commander in chief.
"We don't belong to the same army, or to the same state. We hardly belong to the same human race. ...
"During the first two Fridays, 29 unarmed people were shot dead and more than a thousand wounded by sharpshooters.
"For me this is not a judicial question. It is a crime, not only against the unarmed protesters. It is also a crime against the State of Israel, against the people of Israel and against the Israeli army.
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