Reem Hazzan is a twenty-year-old student at Haifa University in Haifa, Israel. She is the International Secretary of the Students’ Department of the Young Communist League of Israel, and a member of the YCLI’s Executive Bureau. Reem is also an elected member of the Arab Students Committee at Haifa University, and of the National Union of Arab Students. Dynamic recently got the chance to catch up with Reem by phone to talk about the current situation in Israel and how the YCLI fights for peace and for the rights of youth and students.
KW: Can you start off by telling us a little bit about what the YCL Israel is working on these days?
RH: Well, there is a demonstration almost every week, near Israel’s Apartheid Wall that is being built to surround Palestinian villages or on the borders with Palestine. We always go to the demonstrations against the occupation and the demonstrations supporting the refuseniks—those in mandatory Israeli military service who refuse to participate in the illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza or in the killing of civilians.
We also work closely with other YCLs and other youth groups around the world. Right now we are working with the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) on developing their Mission to Palestine and Israel. WFDY is composed of organizations of communist youth, social movements, and workers’ youth movements from around the world. So those representatives will be coming here to discuss how to build solidarity with the cause of Palestinian self-determination and human rights.
Summer is always one of the most active periods for the YCL. Every year we run over 20 communist summer camps around the country, with thousands of kids participating. Our older YCL comrades volunteer as camp counselors.
KW: Tell us a little bit about your work in the universities.
RH: We have representatives in each university’s Arab Students Committee. In the case of my university, University of Haifa, we also have 25% representation in the General Students Union. It’s the highest number we have ever reached, and it’s a real historical achievement–this happened just six weeks ago!
KW: What are the major issues students are facing right now in Israel?
RH: Students in Israel are facing very high tuition and the difficult economic situation. You cannot ask students to work, and study, and to pay tuition, and to pay rent. It’s very hard, because students cannot find jobs. I mean, graduates cannot find jobs, so how can students? Families cannot afford tuition for even one child, and most have two or three or four.
KW: What’s the relationship of this economic situation to government policies?
RH: Well, government policy is the whole problem! When you have a government thinking only of occupation, and building settlements in the Occupied Territories, and how to occupy and repress another people, instead of taking care of it’s own people who are suffering–truly suffering—that’s the whole problem!
There are around 250,000 unemployed people in a population of 6.2 million. And that’s not even counting the children of the unemployed, who of course are also affected.
With the neo-liberal economic policies of Bibi Netanyahu, the Treasury Minister, it’s very hard for the working classes to survive in such a country. That’s why you see people leaving the country. That’s why you see crimes increasing. Social networks are being destroyed. It’s very difficult for a very large percentage of the population of Israel, both Arabs and Jewish. Not to mention that it affects Arabs twice as much as it affects the Jewish people.
KW: Can you explain that comment?
RH: Here in Israel the Arab minority is discriminated against in everything–in education, in social life, living conditions–in too many ways to list.
For instance, there are 27 cities and villages in Israel that are stricken by unemployment. And 13 of them are Arab villages, entirely Arab. [The country’s Arab population is about 20% - ed.]
And then, in the mixed cities in Israel, you can see the difference between Arab and Jewish living conditions. In the schools, in the housing conditions, in the neighborhoods, social activities, community centers, you name it. These are facts. We are not just whining!
KW: How does the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip relate to the situation of Arab youth in Israel?
RH: A very large number of Arab citizens of Israel have relatives in the Occupied Territories. If you take a general historical view, it’s the same people – the Palestinian people. Part of the people was sentenced to stay here within the borders of Israel, as established in 1948, and the other part happened to be in the West Bank and Gaza, which were later occupied by Israel in 1967.
So if someone feels and knows that his relatives–his uncle, his aunt, his grandmother–close relatives of his are being repressed and killed and occupied by the Israeli Army, by the Israeli policy, he will surely know that this repression and discrimination there is not unrelated to him.
It’s very important for me to say also that we are not only talking about the Arab minority. We are also talking about the Jewish working class and the very similar conditions that we share: in the education system, the housing conditions, in the systematic discrimination.
It’s the same class. These are the same people, who do the same jobs – maybe in different parts of the country. But this is the working class! They are being kept from knowing that they are part of the working class. Together, Arabs and Jews can demand their rights according to the principle of being a worker: of needing to be protected by the trade unions, which the state is trying to suppress.
KW: Did youth in Israel react and organize against the U.S. war in Iraq and the occupation there?
RH: Fighting against the American occupation of Iraq–and it is an occupation–is very similar to fighting Israel’s occupation. Maybe without all the same historic reasons, but basically, it’s imperialism.
When America supports Israel in occupying the territories, it has no reason not to do the same in other places of the world, like Afghanistan, like Iraq, and maybe other places as well, for all we know. If Bush remains the President of the United States, then not the Americans, not the Israelis, not any other occupying country of the world will live in peace or will have rest.
KW: In Israel, Jewish citizens are drafted into the army at age eighteen. But a movement has emerged of those who are refusing to serve. They say that they would rather go to jail than be part of an army that occupies another people. Many of these ‘refuseniks’ are young people, like the five recent high school graduates who were sentenced last month for refusing to be drafted. What is the role of the young refuseniks and conscientious objectors in Israeli society?
RH: Well, let me start by explaining a little about Israeli society. Israel is a very good example of a military culture. Jewish kids grow up on the idea that army service is not a negotiable thing. You have to ‘defend the country’ against the Arabs, against I don’t know who, against terrorism, against the Palestinians. This is what kids grow up to be: soldiers.
So for these brave refuseniks, it’s very hard for them to take this step, to say that ‘I refuse. I won’t serve in the army, because I won’t take part in killing and occupying another people.’ It’s very hard for them. I think they are doing a heroic role, saving the Israeli community—and by that I mean both Arab and Jew — from the ongoing disaster, from the ongoing nightmare.
The Israeli press tries not to give the refuseniks too much attention. The media basically ignores them. It’s all a media game, and you should always keep in mind who owns the media. People who have connections with the government control Israeli media.
That is why the YCL Israel and Communist Party of Israel always try to show their side in our newspapers. We believe in coexistence, we believe in sharing this country, in living together as two peoples in this area. And we believe these young people are the ones who have enough guts to take an action that will actually bring us closer to coexistence.
KW: How does the YCL support the refuseniks?
RH: We go to their trials, and we go to the demonstrations against their imprisonment. Maybe you’ve heard about the Five Shministim, five famous refusenik defendants? One of them, Matan Kaminer, who I know very well, is a comrade of ours in the YCL.
KW: How is he doing?
RH: Well, I haven’t talked to him for a long time. You see, he’s been in prison for a long while, so of course I haven’t seen him. But he knows that we’re supporting him. The YCL, our newspaper, the Communist Party, are all standing behind him. He knows that we’re with him.
And the thing is, it’s not only the drafted refuseniks that are coming out against the army’s human rights violations. It’s also people within Sayeret Matkal, an elite unit of the Israeli army, and an entire unit of career pilots. They have stood up and said: ‘We won’t serve in the army. We love our country, we are patriots, but we will not take any part in occupying and killing innocent people.’
KW: Have you seen the refusenik movement have an influence with the youth?
RH: An increasing number of new draftees are asking not be in the combat units. Like I said, it’s a very militaristic culture, and for many draftees, refusing to serve in the army completely is a shameful thing for them and for their families. So they try to avoid this by asking not to serve in the territories, or asking for what are considered menial tasks–anything not to be in a fighting role.
KW: Here in the States, we have the presidential elections coming up. You mentioned President Bush and the American role in supporting the occupation and the right wing policies of the Israeli government. Are the elections important to people outside the U.S., particularly in the Middle East?
RH: Keeping the current government of the U.S. in power will mean keeping this international order, this status quo. It will mean more American soldiers dying and getting injured in Iraq. It will mean more suffering here, and more ambiguity and stalemate in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian case.
You know, one of the American people’s main concepts is freedom. Well, Karl Marx once wrote that a nation cannot truly be free when it is subjugating another nation. I think that still holds true.
For more information on the Young Communist League-Israel, see www.banki-shabiba.org
Keren Wheeler is a member of the Peace and International Solidarity Committee of the National Council of the YCL. She is the Distribution Coordinator for Dynamic.
Five imprisoned Shministim (Refuseniks) - from left to right: Noam Bahat, Hagai Matar, Shimri Tzamaret, Matan Kaminer, Adam Maor
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