My name is Pepe Goldman, I was born in Argentina in 1952 and at the age of 24, in March
1976, four days after the rise of the last military dictatorship, I immigrated to Israel.
Most of my young years in Argentina I lived under military dictatorships, each crueler than
the last. Night raids, abductions in broad daylight, torture and oppression in all areas of life
were an integral part of the life menu in a country that from 1930 to 1983 did not know
what an entire term of a democratically elected government was. This reality has led me to
form an intolerant and uncompromising position and political stance towards undemocratic
regimes and ideologies.
Like many other young people in the Argentine Jewish community, I received a non-formal
Zionist and socialist education, and by the same values I educated hundreds of Jewish
youths. With this value charge I arrived in Israel, convinced that within the borders of 1948 a
democratic state lives and breathes for all its citizens, who must evacuate the territories it
occupied in the Six Day War to enable the establishment of an independent and sovereign
Palestinian state and return to being a worthy state again.
As a result of the political activity I started shortly after arriving in Israel in various
frameworks, party and non-partisan, my eyes were opened and I came to a number of
insights:
1. There is not and there was not a true democracy within the State of Israel. Although
there are democratic mechanisms (elections, separation of powers, etc.), the regime
is far from democratic in the essential sense that there is full equality for all citizens
of the state. The Palestinian population has been discriminated against since the
establishment of the state (military administration, lack of master plans for
construction in accordance with its demographic needs, discrimination in the
allocation of budgets and resources, etc.). Over the years, and as a result of the
nationalist strengthening of Israeli society and its governments, the anti-democratic
signs became even stronger (an expression of this is the anti-democratic legislation
of recent years).
2. The Nakba process did not end in 1948 and continues to exist even today, within the
Green Line and in all the occupied territories.
3. In the current reality, it is inevitable to regard our regime in the whole region, Israel
and occupied territories, as apartheid where there is rule for oppressors and rule for
oppressed (Israelis and Palestinians respectively), with two systems of laws, rights
and obligations.
As one who grew up under dictatorships and oppression, I cannot remain indifferent to
what Israel is doing to the Palestinians: the oppression, the unjustified military killings,
the violence of the privileged Jewish caste in the Occupied Territories, and the wrongful
practices of the Israeli forces that leave mental and physical scars among the Palestinian
population, specially children. And all this is happening in front of the indifferent eyes of
the Israeli Jewish society, which ranges from feeling victims to carelessness.
Nowadays, I am concentrating my activities on Taayush (coexistence in Arabic), a group
of activists that coordinates its work mainly in the southern Hebron Hills and assists
Palestinian communities in dealing with settler violence in the area, the arbitrary and
discriminatory behavior of Israeli security forces and legal battles over land ownership.
I also participate in the struggles of the Palestinian community in East Jerusalem in the
face of the constant threat of expelling its families from their homes for the benefit of
right-wing organizations based on discriminatory laws between Israelis and Palestinians
enacted in dubious Israeli democracy.
Another front of my activity is in the framework of the organization "Looking at the
Occupation in its Eyes" whose main purpose is to bring to the attention of Israeli society
the atrocities and crimes committed by the Israeli security forces and the Jewish settlers
against the Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories.
I do think that despite the difficult times, the violent reality and the permanent
incitement directed at us, activists for human rights, we must not stop working to end
the injustices of Israeli apartheid.
