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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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Israel: The grass is always greener
Uri Ash and Yam Yehoshua Ha'aretz, Israel
Sunday 22 Dec 2002 Green Leaf, the pro-legalization party, looks likely to win two seats in the upcoming Knesset elections - and it could be as high as eight Rosh Pina, where police harassment drew a pro-legalization protest vote, according to residents. Now activists are said to be less willing to speak up in public. Rosh Pina Mayor Avihud Rasky says the local attitude is "stay out of my personal affairs." (Photo: Yaron Kaminsky ) The straw polls, unscientific as they may be, that the tabloids are conducting in malls, markets and plazas around the country are breathing life into Ale Yarok, Green Leaf, the pro-legalization party. Those polls - though far from scientific - are showing impressive returns for the party, which sometimes seems to rate as the fourth largest party after Likud, Labor and Shinui. In fact, say party spokesmen, the straw polls on average, give Green Leaf eight seats in the parliament. The fact that the professional polls are also showing the party reaching, and in some cases, breaking through the voting threshold to win two seats in the Knesset is less relevant for Boaz Wachtel, the founding chairman of the party. "We prefer the straw polls as an indicator. They show our chances better than the scientific polls, because people, for all sorts of reasons, prefer to keep their truth private until they're in the ballot booth," says Wachtel. Wachtel, 44, worked in various jobs at the Israeli Embassy in Washington in the military attache's office, and once served as a one-man lobby for a Turkish pipeline of water to Israel and Jordan through the Golan Heights as a kind of security sealant that would make a peace deal with Syria possible. While living in New York, he worked in treatment programs with hard drug addicts where he learned, that none of them became heavy narcotics users by smoking pot: On the contrary, the illegality of marijuana and its derivates forced users to brush up against the criminal underworld, and exposed them to hard drugs. As opposed to the last time Green Leaf ran for the Knesset, when it received 34,029 votes - just short of breaking through the threshold - this time the voters won't have two ballots to vote, one for prime minister and the other for a party. Green Leaf realized that meant it needed other elements in the platform besides the legalization of pot. For a party that presumably offers seemingly radical solutions to the problems it sees, it came up with a relatively conventional approach to the main issue on the agenda - the peace process. Green Leaf wants a referendum - with UN supervision - before any implementation of a political plan for a deal with the Palestinians. "It has to be under UN supervision because Israeli elections have been corrupted," says Wachtel. "Although most of our voters are on the left, and most of the party's leaders and activists come from the left, as a party, our positions is that neither left nor right has managed to solve the problem between us and the Palestinians, so we have to go to the people in a referendum. We'll support any peace agreement that is accepted by the other side. And if settlements need to be evacuated, and the agreement includes guarantees for an end to terror and the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state, and international guarantees, we'll support territorial compromise. Green Leaf also supports separation of state and synagogue and the elimination of the Orthodox monopoly. "If the Haredim don't want to serve in the army, they should do three years of national service, and so should Arab Israelis. I am also against state budgets for yeshiva students. For them, the Torah is their craft, but for artists, their craft is their Torah, and they don't get budgets." Like other parties, Green Leaf is worried about the large number of foreign workers in Israel and the harm done to their civil rights. "The import of foreign workers must cease," says Wachtel, "and meanwhile those who are here should get full social rights and integration into Israeli society." Attorney Dan Goldenblatt, the number two on the party list, adds a reservation: "A person caught working in Israel without appropriate papers should be deported to his home country within a week, but given a chance to appeal to a judge about the deportation." The state must return to providing a social security net and provide the minimal needs of the citizenry, says Green Leaf - education, work, rights for the unemployed. Paying for the costs of all that could come from taxing cannabis, which would become legal, and the state would benefit from hundreds of millions of shekels a year that could be used for education and welfare. Green Leaf believes that Meretz and Shinui will partner with it on these issues. The party has a detailed political platform on a host of environmental issues - cars and other vehicles should run on natural gas, corporate managers whose companies are caught polluting should be held personally liable, desalination plants should be built to run on natural gas, construction on beaches should be banned. The party also is pro animal rights, so it is against forced feeding of geese, growing chickens in batteries of cages, and calves in tight quarters. Apparently threatened by Green Leaf is the Green Party, which is also running for Knesset. Green Chairman Pe'er Wiesner, a Tel Aviv city councillor, says "the issue of legalization of drugs is important, but it seems there's a lot more to do in the environmental arena before sinking into a sofa with a joint. The Greens have been working for the past five years protecting the environment. We passed laws against pollution in Tel Aviv. We made buses use only low-sulfur fuel. We demanded the public's right to know where and how the cellular antennas are hidden, we went to court against the Dead Sea Works and the authorities that pollute rivers, we managed to get restraining orders against construction in open space. And what has Green Leaf done for the state?" Paranoia in Rosh Pina Meanwhile, Green Leaf bumper stickers haven't replaced "the People are with the Golan" stickers on the cars in Rosh Pina. The grass party is focusing on other parts of the north - the Carmiel and Alonim Junctions, for example - and not in the veteran moshava, which is surprising since Rosh Pina gave 7.7 percent of its votes to the party in 1999, more than any other town in the country. But the reason for the lack of apparent activity in the town is not surprising: lack of money. In the last elections, the little town of 2,000 saw volunteers working non-stop to raise the consciousness of the voters and convince them to put the Green Leaf ballot into the box. This time there might not be anyone to volunteer, but the support for legalization wasn't born in the last election, and certainly not in Green Leaf's modest campaign of 1999. Residents of Rosh Pina say that police harassment against users of "light drugs" drew a protest vote in 1999, and that could repeat itself in the coming elections without any campaigning at all in the town. It's not that there's a column of sweets smoke rising from every chimney in Rosh Pina, or that everyone on the streets is carrying a joint. "Rosh Pina has a number of constituencies," says S., who lived there up until two years ago. "There's a large community of freaks - people who work for their living, have families, and sometimes smoke." In Rosh Pina, people say it all started back in the late `60s and early `70s, when the sleepy town began attracting leftist communes, including a Matzpen cell, flower children, and shell-shocked veterans of the Yom Kippur War looking to escape the pressures of the city. "Grass was the consensus," says L., who was a campaign activist in 1999 for Green Leaf. "Everyone grew grass." But the Rosh Pina police disperse the cannabis smoke with detective work and not particularly delicate patrol work. "For years, anyone with long hair and a pierced ear trying to hitch a ride to Safed, would be used as a towel," says L., using a euphemism for being patted down by police. "They broke into my house, without knocking, without a search warrant," says S. about her encounter with the Rosh Pina police. "Suddenly two cops and dogs burst in, one shouting at me to get the lease on the house and the other beginning to search the house. They found a little grass and made a huge deal about it. Three times a year, in waves, they come, each time searching someone else's house. Filling their quota." "Voting for Green Leaf," she says, "was the result of the searches. The people of Rosh Pina looked for Green Leaf because they got fed up." Rosh Pina Mayor Avihud Rasky, two years on the job, doesn't think the police enforcement of the drug laws in his town is unusually harsh, and "it wasn't, isn't and won't be a reason to vote for Green Leaf. I've heard very few complaints like that. Only one girl approached me to complain about the police. I don't think that most of the public does it to protest against the police but because they want to say `stay out of my personal affairs, if I want to smoke pot, it's my right.'" With atypical liberalism for elected officials, Rusky says "I'm not sure that nicotine and alcohol aren't more dangerous that some other drugs being used. I am in principle against the use of drugs or breaking the law, and I assume the police is doing its work." Meanwhile, whatever the reason for the support for Green Leaf, it's not sure the party can repeat its success of 1999, when party activists talked with residents, handed out stickers, and even organized a rally where Wachtel came to speak to about 100 supporters. This time, says L., it won't happen. "Two-and-a-half years ago, there was money for telephones. Nowadays I can't afford it. If Green Leaf doesn't invest in an elementary budget we won't be able to form party cells. If they don't invest, they won't get the results they did last time." Rehavia Berman of the national campaign admits there's no money. "We expect the local branches to organize their own budgets or that some key activist in each area take upon himself to pay for the branch activities, like in Karmiel. We're working on a shoestring, because to donate, one can't be anonymous, and it is very difficult to raise money when the donor has to reveal his identity." But even if there is money, Green Leaf has another problem in Rosh Pina. Nobody wants to take charge of the operation. Activists from the past refused to be interviewed for this article. A source close to the party in the town says that nobody wants to end up on a police "black list" and become a target for searches. Galilee Police spokesman Kobi David says, "The police does its work according to the law. Grass is classified as a dangerous drug in the law and is prohibited, and it's the police's job to eradicate the phenomenon. The district commander, Deputy Commander Dov Lutzky has instructed the police station commanders to step up the enforcement of the drug laws, whether sale or possession and use." David refuses to comment on charges the police search policies in Rosh Pina are harsh. "The issue of how evidence is found is in the hands of the courts," he says.
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