Very Uncivil Obedience

It is the evening of Jan. 5. Pinchas Wallerstein's program for civil disobedience to fight the dismemberment of Israel is in its fourth day. While no one cares, his protesters are freezing in rain-soaked tents opposite the Knesset.

Great plan Pinchas.

Just two weeks before, Wallerstein issued a proclamation. Those who signed it agreed to go to jail for taking uncivil action against the Gaza withdrawal. Why should the authorities send anyone to jail when the conditions in the protest camp are infinitely worse?

The rain will stop tomorrow. There will be a few dry days for the protesters to ask why they listened to Wallerstein and the heads of the Yesha Council in the first place. Either, it was their leaders' plan to demoralize their movement, or they suffer from a total lack of imagination.

Permit me to explain how civil disobedience could work. If one is prepared to sit in jail on behalf of a cause greater than himself, like preserving his nation, he had better be sure of his motives. I am so prepared, but not because of Eretz Yisrael or the Torah. What motivates me is that those pushing the so-called disengagement are a clique of filthy murderers and assassins. Any one who gets in their way is slaughtered and if the withdrawal goes through, we'll be stuck with them ruling us until the nation collapses. If the other side was honest and had the best interests of our people in mind, I might be supporting them today. But they are rot!

The Jews have a fine history of civil disobedience and know to make it work. The core philosophy is: You gotta hit 'em in the pocketbook. During the Seventies, the American movement to free Soviet Jewry did just so by throwing marbles on the stage of Bolshoi performances, turning dance into pratfalls, and tossing pennies on the ice during appearances of the Soviet hockey team, making skating risky. These acts forced the cancellation of profitable Soviet attractions and garnered international humiliation for Soviet treatment of the Jews. In the end, they helped open the gates of freedom.

I was just eighteen when I had my first journalistic coup. I managed to finagle a short interview for my college paper with Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman. The Yippies, which Hoffman explained meant Yiddish hippies, were in good part responsible for ending America's immoral role in Viet Nam, using the pocketbook approach. Wouldst such a movement only arise today to save young Americans from dying futile deaths in Iraq!

Hoffman's philosophy was summed up in the title of his bestselling book, Revolution For The Hell Of It. Perhaps his most publicized act was gathering a group of protesters to throw hundreds of dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange from the gallery above. As he anticipated, the traders scurried like rats to catch the money and trading was thoroughly disrupted.

His cleverest idea was aimed at shutting down banks throughout the country. He recommended opening a safety deposit box and placing a sizable fish within. After just a few days, the smell of the rotting fish will permeate the bank so thoroughly, that working would be impossible. The smell would be traced to its source but that would make no difference. A safety deposit box, by strict law, cannot be opened or removed without the signed permission of its owner.

Unlike the equally Jewish Weathermen, cum Weather People, the Yippies rejected violence in favor of intelligence. No one was ever hurt by a Yippie, only by the police fighting them.

And that is the perfect philosophy for Israel today, where no one wants a violent confrontation with the army or police. What follows is a real program for civil disobedience that does not require catching pneumonia for no reason. If every Israeli who is committed to saving his nation cooperated, that is, half the population at least, the program would have a genuine chance of success.

First, The Nation's Pocketbook

1. Anyone who owns stocks in Israeli companies, sell them, all of them, and trade them in for foreign shares.
2. Sell all your shekels, including every last agora in your savings accounts, and buy foreign currency with them. Make all your purchases in foreign currency. If you are able, close your accounts in Israeli banks and open accounts in banks abroad.
3. Do not buy any Israeli product, excluding those manufactured in Yesha. Even the foodstuffs you buy must be imported. To prevent any deviation, cancel all meals out.
4. If you were planning a holiday in the country, cancel it and go abroad. Do not fly El Al. Book by internet and not through an agency.
5. Merchants, do not charge VAT on sales. Citizens, do not pay income tax. If two million people, or even 20,000 people join a tax revolt, it would take decades to prosecute everyone. Tie up all income collected by the government until the collection process collapses. Bankrupt the country that has betrayed you.

Next, Let The Disruptions Begin

1. It takes only 5-10 people to tie up the phone lines of radio talk shows or government offices. All that is required is getting a line at the same time and leaving that line off the hook. When the lines are cleared, the group repeats the process.
2. Two vehicles driving side by side at the legal minimum speed on a highway can create a traffic jam that will take many hours to sort out.
3. Forty protesters at every city bus stop will make sure only they get on the buses. It is perfectly legal to ride a bus if you pay the fare.
4. It is also perfectly legal to play your car radio, even at 3 AM in a convoy of several hundred vehicles keeping target neighborhoods sleepless. If thousands of people participated in dozens of neighborhoods, there wouldn't be enough room in all the jails to incarcerate them. And it would take several centuries of court time to convict them all.
5. It is just as legal to buy a ticket on an El Al flight and cancel it at the last moment, paying a penalty. When two hundred people do so for the same flight, a point is vividly made.

Now We Destroy The Good Name Of Our Leaders

1. To get their way, our leaders have committed heinous crimes against fellow Jews. They are terrified that these crimes be revealed, especially to outsiders. Make sure they are. Their most sensitive spot is the Rabin assassination. I'll be happy to supply my book, Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin without personal profit to anyone or any group willing to hand it out to every tourist who gets off a plane or registers at a hotel.
2. Whatever your beef, make sure that every visitor who enters, stays in, or leaves the country knows just what kind of criminality has overtaken Israel.
3. And when anyone visits their favorite "safe" city, let him see the signs wherever he goes: JEWS OUT OF TEL AVIV; DISENGAGE FROM RAMAT AVIV NOW; WITHDRAW FROM RAANANA!

If properly coordinated, all these actions would get the point across without any clashes with the army. Those who signed the Wallerstein Proclamation will finally be tested. Are they really willing to be arrested for creating a public nuisance, or would they rather be free in their puddle across from the Knesset?

Naturally, I don't actually advocate such actions because I know I'd be the only one doing so. And I know none of these suggestions will actually be tried. The protesters will continue to follow their leaders from puddle to puddle and when the bulldozers arrive, will wonder what went wrong.

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As always, my books Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin; Israel Betrayed, Shabtai Tzvi, Labor Zionism And The Holocaust; The Last Days Of Israel; and Save Israel!, as well as my videos and CDS, The Dirty Secrets Of Oslo are available by writing me at chamish@netvision.net.il.