The Third Dove By Israel Shamir

MAMILLA POOL By Israel Shamir

KUGEL EATERS  By Israel Shamir

Recently sifting through the archives of George Orwell I came across a long letter apparently written by one of the late writer’s friends. The letter purports to be a follow-up to the events which took place on Animal Farm, that unique experiment in animal self rule:

Dear George, My research brought me to the Farm in **shire, which you described so vividly in your book. I can’t tell you how excited I was to receive the Academy grant to study the only Farm in the world where Animals managed their own affairs.

I knew that full democracy at the Farm had been substituted almost immediately by the harsh rule of Pigs and their ferocious Dogs, so I was rather afraid to cross its well-fortified perimeter. As I was driven in a Horse-cart through the wide avenues of the Farmstead, Linda the Piglet told me that the horrors of oppression described in your book were now consigned to history and a liberal system had come into existence.

The place was one of the least efficient farms in the area. But the Animals were well fed and decently housed, though in rather shabby shacks. It was not a place of total equality; a small band of specially bred Pigs was in charge. But even their superior conditions did not seem to differ greatly from the rest - a bit more grub, a slightly bigger shack, access to a Farm- owned cart.

The Animals were not content. And the closer an Animal was to the pinnacle of power, the more dissatisfied she or he was. Linda’s dream was to go into the world of Humans and become the star of the Muppet Show. That evening she brought some friends round to my Human Lodge room. They were ruling Pigs and intellectual Foxes - the only kinds of the animals which a stranger like me would meet at the Farm. The proletarian Horses and peasant Cows couldn’t speak Human language anyway.

All the visitors complained. The Pigs compared their sty with palaces of Texan oil millionaires (they watched ‘Dallas’). I met one prominent Pig, Stinky, who had everything the Farm could give. He was the boss of the Massage parlour for the Ruling Pigs and therefore belonged to the elite. That meant unlimited grub, a nice sty in the Centre, a comfortable country cottage and opportunities to go to London and Paris.

‘You must be content with your life,’ I commented.

‘No, I am an unhappy creature,’ he whined, ‘whenever I go to Paris or New York I have to economize and stay in our own service flats. The joys of the Cote d’Azur are not for me, I cannot shop in the Faubourg St Honore.’

‘But you have your own pretty vacation resorts, your own jewellers,’ I argued.

‘They are not as good as yours,’he said firmly.

The Foxes were even more unhappy. ‘We are forced to live in the same houses as horses,’ a Red Fox told me. ‘We with our superb education - living with those coarse beasts.’ The Silver Foxes proudly proclaimed their North American origin; one showed me an article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica attesting to this fact. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘we could be living in Beverly Hills. I have a relative who moved back to America and has landed on Nancy Reagan’s shoulders.’

‘Life is so gorgeous outside,’ exclaimed Linda. ‘I once went to a Pig exhibition in Montreal. We stayed in golden sties, washed in huge bathtubs and were served real French fries. Just think: we all could have such a life. But our bosses will not have it. They keep telling us that Humans would eat us, slaughter us, take away our children... Tell us, how can we get rid of the ruling Pigs and join Humankind?’

I found myself in a dubious position. This enthusiasm for Human society was exciting and contagious, but the vision was patently too optimistic. I mumbled something about pork chops. Linda looked at me with horror: ‘I should have figured it out for myself - if you were invited to the Farm, you must have agreed to support Rotten’s brainwashing machine. It’s good that not all Humans are like that. Mr Johnson, for example...’

‘Who is Mr Johnson?,’ I inquired.

‘I am Mr Johnson,’ said a tall, blond, clean-shaven man in a well-cut grey suit who entered my room without knocking.

‘Dear Mr Johnson,’ the others greeted him. ‘You are back. Did you bring those little things you promised?’

‘Yes, I did. Here is a pack of Marlboros for you, Linda, and some Christian Dior for you, Stinky, and blue jeans for you, Rose...’

I learned that Mr Johnson was the heir to the huge Johnson Ranch to the West and was a regular visitor to Animal Farm where he would buy up surplus produce and sell nice things from the Big World.

He later told me that his father, Jamison Johnson senior, dreamed of making his eastern neighbour’s lands part of his estate. If modernized, Animal Farm could be a good source of income, producing milk, meat and hides...

Business aside, Mr Johnson senior was quite obsessed with the idea of regaining Animal Farm for people. ‘The thought of animals ruling themselves is a horrible profanity,’ he would say, ‘it could lead my cows and horses into temptation.’

Anyway, Mr Johnson junior had come that evening for a special religious occasion - to celebrate the Cargo Cult. Its Chief Priest was Stinky.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Stinky proclaimed, ‘let us thank our Great Benefactor, dear Mr Johnson. And let us thank The Great Box of Goods.’ The animals cheered.

But Mr Johnson had some bad news: ‘We tried to convince Chairman Rotten to sell us some meadows which border with our Ranch, but he didn’t agree. That is why you cannot have all the sweets and goodies you asked for, dear Stinky.’

‘Bloody Rotten,’ fumed Stinky, ‘What do we need those meadows for? We have enough meadows. It’s sweets we are short of. Next week I’ll come to your ranch and we shall see what we can do.’

They walked away hand in hand.

I did not understand then that I had witnessed the great moment: the beginning of the revolution which was to change the face of Animal Farm...

(Mr. Israel Shamir, is one of best-known and most respectedRussian Israeli writer and journalist. He wrote for Haaretz, BBC,Pravda and translated Agnon, Joyce and Homer into Russian. He lives in Tel Aviv and writes a weekly column in the Vesti, the biggestRussian-language paper in Israel.)

Source:   

A few days later I switched on the TV in my Human's guest room in Animal Farm and instead of the usual stories about the Best Working Horses I saw Stinky's visit to Mr Johnson's Farm. It was just like a royal visit, with a red carpet and a sea of journalists and cameras. Overnight, Stinky had become the most popular Pig in the world. Even Animals who had known him for years started to look at him with new eyes as he proclaimed: 'We shall make our life every bit as jolly as that of the Johnsons.' Until now life on Animal Farm had been boring but easy-going. Every animal got its low quality but ample fodder and had no reason to work harder. But all this was going to change.

Then, Max the Fox - a Fox of good standing with many influential Pig friends -received a novel toy from Johnson. It was a glorious, flashing, Japanese videobox. A Pig with access to the press that printed the chits for hay sales bought the videobox. But Max the Fox made a smarter move: he used his small worthless chits to buy huge amounts of hay which he drove to Johnson's to swap for 20 more videoboxes.

This made quite an impact on the Animals. Now they could see that the good life was not tilling fields nor weaving cloth, but selling videos and exporting hay. The Foxes and Pigs started to sell hay to bring in Human delights. And hay became scarce. Proletarian Cows and Horses had to queue, waiting for its delivery.

They stopped working: queuing for hay was consuming all their time. As hay became scarce Foxes discovered that they could get handsome profits by selling hay for more chits. And although the Horses and Cows were unhappy nobody understood their language.

Some old-style Pigs opposed Stinky. They thought one should leave some fodder for Animals, and they were supported by a small and esoteric group of intellectual Horses who tried to remind the Animals that life outside also included slaughterhouses.

But Stinky was unstoppable. When he introduced a new freedom of speech campaign, Mr Johnson Senior unveiled a competition for the best piece of journalism debunking Animal Farm's past. All dark spots of the Farm's history were exposed, all skeletons were removed from the closets, while life outside was truly glorified.

The Farm became a miserable place. Stinky was awarded honorary doctorates at Salamanca and Oxford but became increasingly unpopular back home.

'Very soon Stinky will be overthrown, the Old Guard Pigs will rule again and we shall lose all our hard-earned villas and millions,' said Max the Fox to his friends. 'It's time to act.' He remembered Tough the Hog, once in charge of a farmstead but dismissed by the senior Pigs in a row over stolen tarts. Tough was a great admirer of the Human way of life which he felt consisted of executive jets and whisky galore. Max found Tough inside his sty brooding over an empty bottle and offered him the chance of a lifetime...

Then Max went to Stinky and warned him of the danger: 'You will be overthrown if you do not protect yourself. You must use the Dogs for your own defence.'

'How can I - a Salamanca and Oxford Doctor of Philosophy - behave like an old founder of the Farm?' Stinky whined. But eventually he agreed that the Dogs could be bought in on the sly.

Max chose old toothless Dogs and placed them around Stinky's residence. Then Tough the Hog appeared with a carefully chosen band of Foxes. 'Bite me if you dare,' he exclaimed, 'but you cannot stop the Animals craving for the Human way of life.'

These noble words were immediately broadcast by Johnson TV and brought many a cheer. The Foxes rushed for the palace, while the old Dogs could not figure out what they were supposed to do... Stinky claimed he had been imprisoned by the Dogs but this cut no ice with Tough's band. He was dismissed and locked up. The Day of Great Victory over the Dogs was made a national holiday and a statue of Tough strangling a ferocious Baskerville Hound was erected on the main square.

'The Pigs' rule is over,' proclaimed Tough the Hog. Pigs who supported Tough were renamed Swine. Tough did not care for the old style titles: he accepted a perfectly Human position of Executive Manager.

More and more meadows and pastures belonging to Animal Farm were handed over to Human ranch owners in exchange for Free Aid. Johnson fortified his fences to stop hungry Horses and Cows grazing there, and only Foxes and Swine engaged in export were allowed across.

'But what could they export?' I wondered - until I spotted Max overseeing a truck being loaded up with rather thin Cows.

'It's silly to be the only Farm that has lots of Cattle but does not export beef,' he explained.

Some of the Animals - mainly Horses and few Pigs - began to notice what was going on and gathered in protest. 'Animal Farm for Animals!' they shouted. 'Do not sell us to the butcher!'

The gates of Tough's office opened and a pack of Great Danes stepped out. These were not old toothless creatures but strong, ferocious beasts that charged the crowd. Tough won the day - but discontent was strong. Even my guide Linda started to have her doubts as she saw her friends disappearing into the meat trucks.

Max the Fox, meanwhile, went to Mr Johnson Senior and came back with a contract: 'Animal Farm will belong to Mr Johnson and will be called Johnson's New Farm. Mr Johnson will provide the animals with hay. It is only natural that he will be free to take some animals to his facilities. Mr Tough will remain Executive Manager.

The contract was signed and that is how the troublesome history of Animal Farm came to its end. The new Human masters were forced to send quite a number of Animals to slaughterhouses. Nobody needed so many hay sales personnel...

Johnson made his Ranch even more efficient, closed a few outlying corrals and turned every literate Pig into chops. Foxes were sent to furriers and Johnson's TV closed down as it now created inappropriate expectations among the Animals.

Thoroughly disgusted I left the blighted place. On board the train I met Max the Fox and Tough the Hog; they were on their way to Florida.

(Mr. Israel Shamir, is one of best-known and most respectedRussian Israeli writer and journalist. He wrote for Haaretz, BBC,Pravda and translated Agnon, Joyce and Homer into Russian. He lives in Tel Aviv and writes a weekly column in the Vesti, the biggestRussian-language paper in Israel.)

Source:   

Reproduced from  Israel Shamir's Web site at Media Monitors Network

Dear Friends:

In recent months, many people have been reading the writings of Israel
Shamir, who describes himself as a Russian-Israeli journalist.  Many
have been impressed by these writings, and Shamir has been embraced in
many places in the US on his current speaking tour.  From early on, some
of Shamir's writings struck us as straying beyond criticism of Israel
and Zionism, and crossing into the territory of implicit anti-Semitism.
We have discussed this with many people privately, but now feel
compelled to raise some of these objections publicly.  While there are
many passages in Shamir's rhetoric that cause serious concern, it is
sufficient to cite these three:

1) Yesterday we received an "Easter Message" from Shamir in which he
repeats the most odious characterizations of Jews as "Christ killers,"
the staple of classic European Christian anti-Semitism.  In the message,
which originates from Shamir's own email address, he writes:

"Jesus taught, love your neighbour as yourself, even if he is a
traditional enemy of Jews, a Samaritan. That is why he was hated by the
Jewish supremacists of his time. He said: you can not worship God and
Mammon, the god of greed, you have to choose. That is why he was hated
by supply-side economists and bankers of his day. They sentenced him to
death and the Empire obliged and carried out the execution, in order to
keep peace with these all-important forces. Our fathers did not dare to
speak against their leaders. The spirit of domination scored a victory,
but the spirit of brotherhood did not vanish."

Shamir continues: "The Jewish supremacy forces and the greed worshippers
united again to crucify Christ. The US, this New Rome, again gives hand
and agrees to become the executioner. Now it is our turn to decide."

Palestinians, Shamir argues, are today's Christ, and history has given
the Jews a "second chance" i.e. a chance to redeem their earlier
crucifixion of Jesus by not crucifying the Palestinians. "If we keep our
mouth shut," Shamir writes, "we deserve to be called 'Christ killers.'
If we stop it, we shall change history. The scarlet as blood sins of
past will become white as snow. [sic]"

We cannot agree that Jews "deserve" to be called "Christ killers," or
that this kind of rhetoric has anything whatever to offer of value to
the movement for Palestinian liberation and human rights.  All this sort
of rhetoric does, no matter who it comes from, is paint the Palestinian
movement as one which includes, requires, or embraces a discourse which
vilifies, or threatens to vilify, Jews as "Christ killers."  What could
be more counterproductive to building the community of conscience, the
powerful moral stance, which is and must be the goal of those of us in
the United States who support Palestinian rights, than the introduction
of this kind of rhetoric into our conversation?  How could we do more to
discredit ourselves than by allowing such ideas to proliferate in behalf
of a movement that has no need whatever to stoop to vilifying others to
justify itself?

2) Shamir recently gave a speech at Tufts University. He is quoted as
saying at that speech: "Palestinians are perfect mammals; their life is
deeply rooted in the ground...Israeli people represent a virus form of a
human being because they can live anywhere." ("Israel at fault for
Middle East violence, Jewish journalist says," The Tufts Daily, April
10, 2001)  The quote appears to be verified and accurate.

This is, if anything, even worse than the "Christ killers" language
drawn from traditional European Christian anti-Semitism.  The
"Jew-as-parasite" analysis recalls the even more vicious political and
racial, rather than folkloric and religious, anti-Semitism which emerged
during the 19th century in Europe and culminated in the Nazi genocide of
World War II.  This description of Jews as 'parasites' or "viruses" cast
them as immutably alien to all societies in which they lived, and
contrasted the 'international Jew' with the supposedly 'authentic'
volkish people, who have deep connections to the land of the nation and
who are the creators of social and economic value.  The 'inauthentic'
Jews were always 'foreigners' and "viruses" because, as Shamir puts it,
"they can live anywhere," and are not rooted to the land as the
non-Jewish population supposedly is.  They are cast as parasites and
diseases that feed off of the productivity and creativity of the
authentic people, without ever contributing anything themselves.

It is disturbing to see the Palestinian people cast as the 'honest
volkish people' of what is, in effect, racist rhetoric about why Jews
are a fundamentally different and dangerous type of human being.
Palestinians are not "perfect mammals," they are human beings like
everyone else.  No better, and no worse.  Israeli Jews are not "a virus
form of a human being," they are a human form of a human being, whose
government and state is engaged in a brutal oppression and dispossession
of another group of human beings.  Our battle is for human rights and
human dignity, and against racism, colonialism and oppression.  It
should be obvious to everyone that this statement by Shamir crosses all
lines of decency, and could not be better designed to damage, denigrate
and bring into disrepute the movement for Palestinian human rights.

3) On March 30, the Jerusalem Post published an op/ed that reported:
"Two weeks ago, Russian-language journalist Israel Shamir told a largely
Jewish audience: 'Jews only exist to drip the blood of Palestinian
children into their matzas.'" ("The Jewish student - a minnow among
sharks," March 30, 2001)

If this is an accurate quote, it is another example of the repetition of
the worst kind of anti-Semitism.  Shamir has privately denied saying
this, but does not appear to have taken any action to correct the record
publicly or to be in any way upset about the attribution.  Obviously, we
have no trouble believing that the Jerusalem Post might have
mischaracterized someone's words.  However, if the report is not
accurate, one has to ask why Shamir has allowed such a gross
misquotation to stand unchallenged. If he is indeed working in the
interests of Palestinian liberation, surely he has an obligation not to
let such a mischaracterization go uncorrected.  Moreover, given the
"Christ-killers" and "Jews-as-viruses" statements, the Jerusalem Post
quote seems increasingly less out of character.

Many people have welcomed the contributions of Israel Shamir in good
faith, but we feel they may not be paying close enough attention to what
he is saying.  Perhaps this is because many of us welcome criticism of
Israel from someone who appears to be an "insider," that our hunger for
validation from Jewish Israelis sometimes allows us to proceed without
the requisite skepticism or overlook excesses we otherwise would not
tolerate.   Perhaps some are ready to overlook statements that appeal to
anti-Semitic sentiments because the person making them identifies
himself as a Jew.  But the identity of the speaker makes such statements
no less odious and harmful.  We do not have any need for some of what
Israel Shamir is introducing into the discourse on behalf of Palestinian
rights, which increasingly includes elements of traditional European
anti-Semitic rhetoric.  Such sentiments will harm, not help, the cause.
We urge all our friends in the movement for Palestinian rights to
seriously consider the long-term effects this rhetoric will have on the
cause, and act accordingly.

Ali Abunimah (http://www.abunimah.org)
Hussein Ibish (acting solely in his private capacity)

April 16, 2001
 

Israel Shamir's comment on the letter of 

Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish

Dear friends,

You asked me to comment on the letter of Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish. They spoke against what they feared might be my anti-Semitism. I am certainly pleased with their principled stand. As a Jew and a man, I salute them. Any irrational aversion to Jews should be certainly eradicated and condemned. While saluting their good intentions, I consider their judgment to be somewhat premature. It is based on my Easter greetings (Take Two, http://shamir.mediamonitors.net/april152001.html) which they failed to understand. Christopher Bollyn of The SPOTLIGHT stated it well. He wrote:

“I realize that neither of you are probably deeply immersed in Christianity, but you must understand that Shamir …compares the Israelis, Jews, and Americans to spectators of an execution that they can do something to prevent.

"I say to you, each one of us has to see oneself as is he personally stands on Via Dolorosa, and decides, whether the execution will be carried out. If we keep our mouth shut, we deserve to be called 'Christ killers'. If we stop it, we shall change history. The sins of the past, scarlet as blood, will become white as snow," Shamir wrote.

He is demanding that Jews, Israelis, and Americans do something to prevent the bloodbath that is occurring in Palestine as we speak.

”Indeed, while the Jews of old provide background to the Passion, all of us are the background of the present suffering of the Palestinians, which was the theology behind my Take Two. In other words, all of us, Jews and Gentiles alike, are ‘the Jews’ of the Palestinian Passion.

I perceive the excitement of Mr Abunimah and Mr Ibish could be generously explained away by their relative innocence of theology and history. They even put the exclamation mark of ‘sic’ after my words, failing to recognize the quotation from the prophets (scarlet sins and white snow) which is a part of Yom Kippur liturgy. They are not attuned to read what I wrote.

Anyway, Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish are entitled to their opinions. Their concern for the purity of the Palestinian banner meets my approval. However, my appreciation of their position is slightly diminished by some additional facts. The present accusatory letter is not the first, nor the second they composed in connection with my humble self. In their previous letters, the accusation of anti-Semitism was absent, but they called me alternatively a Mossad agent, a pursuer of Arab money, and even a false pretender to the high rank of an Israeli Russian journalist and a Vesti columnist. Such insistence combined with inconsistence makes one wonder if their goals were limited to fighting anti-Jewish prejudice. If I were a suspicious man, I would probably suspect their motives.

But I am ready to give Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish full benefit of any doubt. It is probable that they were motivated not by spite and envy, not by a fear of competition or of ‘rocking the boat’, not by working in cahoots with the Jewish lobby, but by nobler feelings. They remind me of the young police officer in this period piece movie, LA Confidential, who tries to arrest a blond Lana Turner look-alike, and proclaims: “a hooker who looks like Lana Turner is still a hooker, not Lana Turner.” His colleague stops him: “she IS Lana Turner!” The kid made a silly mistake.

In plain words, I do not pretend to be a friend of Palestine: I am a friend of Palestine. I am quite used to this sort of accusations, they are the professional hazard for whoever is engaged in the struggle. A fainthearted man should fight for the well-being of whales, as it is a noble cause that brings no flak.

Now I shall refer to other concerns raised by Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish. As for my alleged comparison of the Jews with ‘virus’, I quote the lines of Ellen Cantarow, who was present at the talk.“

I do want to stress that the comment about "viruses" cited by Ali in his letter was taken out of context. I was there; I heard the talk. This is NOT what Shamir said. Which makes me feel that THE JERUSALEM POST reference should be looked up in context. I do not feel it wise, when one has not read the entirety of a text, especially in a controversy like this one, to fan the flames by circulating partial statements. For those on the limited list to whom I send this note, in the Tufts talk Shamir referred to the movie "Matrix," with its references to "organic" "mammals" and to predatory viruses. He then said that the original Palestinian population had an "organic" relation to the land in Palestine, whereas the European-Jewish immigrants and colonists did not, and in their consequent actions, expelling the original inhabitants, destroying villages with beautiful architecture, etc.,  could be compared to the "viruses" in "Matrix." I find this in perfect keeping with his "Dulcinea" essay and other pieces”.

I would add to it, that in my opinion every man, Jew or Gentile, can choose whether to behave like a virus or like a mammal, or even as a vulture. It is actually an idea deeply rooted in the Zionist discourse of Hertzl and Borochov, who wished to reconnect Jews and soil as the means of rejuvenation of the Jewish people. In my opinion, it failed because the settlers did not connect to the native inhabitants of the land.

Let us move on to the blood-libel accusation in the Jerusalem Post, repeated by Ali Abunima and Hussein Ibish. This Conrad Black newspaper wrote: “One of NIF's beneficiaries is the Israel-Palestine Friendship Center in Tel Aviv. The center promotes the Palestinians' 'right of return' to their pre-1948 homes. Two weeks ago, Russian-language journalist Israel Shamir told a largely Jewish audience: ‘Jews only exist to drip the blood of Palestinian children into their matzas.' No one protested.”

It is obviously rubbish. I certainly did not say the words they attribute to me. Have no doubt, the nice middle-class Jewish audience in Tel Aviv, where the misquoted talk was given, would protest such silly stuff instead of pouring their love on the speaker. The purpose of the JP allegation was to smear these wonderful people, who work very hard on charity lines to feed the hungry and clothe the needy in the besieged villages. It is to be regretted that Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish were deceived by the right-wingers’ blood libel against Israeli supporters of Palestinian rights.

As for the blown out of proportion question of whether I write for Vesti, one answer was given by the brilliant columnist of a Jerusalem newspaper, Kol Ha’ir, Haim Baram. He wrote: “Who cares if Mr Shamir writes in Vesti or not? His articles are interesting and his approach non-conformist. Somehow, I don't really believe that you were out to vindicate Shamir, but rather to discredit him. I reject your dubious endeavour (on behalf of the fascist settlers?) with utter contempt.”

Just for the sake of clarity I may add that I was asked to discontinue my regular column CONTRA in the Vesti newspaper after the Rape of Dulcinea was published, at the request of a certain American Jewish journalist attached to the staff of JP. It is a loss of income and of means to access my Russian Israeli audience, but I can bear it without regret.

What I do regret that at the time Sharon is bombing Lebanon and re-conquering Gaza I have to waste the much needed time of myself and of you on such silly accusations. I thank all of you who wrote me letters of support. Now enough of this stuff, I shall not refer to it any more and I ask you to refrain from writing more to me on this subject. Let us concentrate on the question of Palestine

.As a Russian poet wrote about a pilot arrested by Stalin after he returned to Russia from the Civil war in Spain, “The insult hurts, but it is not the issue: let my destiny befall me, it is the destiny of mankind I am worried about.”

Dear friends, in order to cheer you these dark days, I would like to introduce to you Liad, a fresh new pen. Liad came back to Israel very recently after many years in the US. She is a delightful and colorful young thing, her hair is rainbow, and her shoes a foot high. She rides her bike with a canopy, lanterns and bells along Jaffa streets, and she likes to visit Palestinian villages. Liad is my hope for the better  future. She is an Israeli, she is American, she is Palestinian and she is 100% human. She writes from Liadland, and I think it is a good land, that everybody would like to visit.

Israel Shamir, April, 25, 2001

On the afternoon of Wed. Apr.19, a demonstration\direct action activity was scheduled to take place at a road block entering the Palestinian village of Harres, which sits right next to a massive Jewish settlement. The road's main entrance point has been blocked off for months to keep the Palestinians from coming in or out of their own town, despite the Israeli government's claim of more than three weeks ago that all roadblocks surrounding villages have been removed. The road is the only entrance and exit point of the town, and has caused people an inability to travel, even in emergency situations. Also, there's a large regional market right at the entrance of town, which provides many people with income, and many regular shoppers as well as merchants have been unable to access it, bringing financial strain and lack of food to many locals.

So naturally, we decided to remove this pestering road block. The action date was set to coincide with proximity to Easter, so that all these Italian religious zealots/crazy activists would be in town and could attend. It also coincided with the eve of the Israeli national holocaust memorial day. Now personally, I’m having a really hard time with this whole holocaust memorial day, and the Israeli independence day that's happening a week later. My grandma, who's a holocaust survivor, is gonna kill me for saying this, but what can I do. This country's in fucking war for crying out loud. How can any race commemorate racial genocide when they instill it on another race, or celebrate their independence while keeping another nation from getting theirs? It just seems one-sided, short-sighted, and wrong.

Anyhow, I was on a small bus with roughly another 15 Israeli activists. we were trying to clarify everyone's positions on getting arrested and decide how to organize accordingly. I think that the most nerve-wrecking part of any organized act of opposition is the anxiety that accompanies the drive there. We all collectively know that the military perceives our act as a provocation, and assume the risk of injuries or arrests, but we don't know for sure. We can go by former experiences, but really, there is no telling what kind of force we'll encounter, or how much, and what kind of mood they'll be in. There's no set precedent, and sitting in a bus full of people that are shitting their pants but still deciding to do it is a little scary.

So we get to Harres, and we meet up with some more Israelis, Americans, French, Swedes, and lots of Italians, who are almost all women. Some of them are really hot. Italian chicks. yum. Oh, - and there's about a hundred Palestinian villagers. After everyone reunites with all their acquaintances that they haven't seen since the last demonstration, everyone gets their asses moving and start shoveling the 4 ft high mountain of rocks that makes up the road block. Theirs all works out well for about half and hour despite constant military presence, until the police shows up and starts, along with the army, pushing everyone back.

Somehow I’m amongst a smaller group of people that doesn't get pushed back, so I just try to remove as much of the road block while I have time. The military notice me almost immediately, and physically pick me up and drag me into a car by my arms and legs while journalists stand back and take pictures. The army knows that it hurts their image to show peaceful demonstrators like that, so when I make v's with my fingers, they shove my fingers back into my palm with their hands. I’m the 2nd person arrested, and I sit there in a car for ten minutes watching who else that I know they're gonna drag in. They arrested a total of 16 people, two of whom are Palestinians, and the rest Israelis and internationals.

One of the arrestees is my friend Neta, who's gotten arrested in the area three times already, including twice just two weeks earlier. The local police treat Neta like a permanent local fixture that they both love and hate. I think that many of the cops really like her, but are tired of the near-weekly meetings with her that cause them so much paperwork. It turns out that she can’t even give them any ID because she left her bag on the bus we came in, but it's not really needed, because the cops basically have all her info memorized.

In the car on the way to the station me and Neta embark on a political discussion with the cops. I do have to say that in the favor of the cops, most of them are good people who are just trying to do their job, and they know that we are there to do ours. They know that we're there for ethical reasons that they either don't agree with or don't understand, but they respect it, and they're human enough to conduct discussions about it with us. What gets to me is that there are numerous Arabic Israeli cops at the station. What the fuck are they doing arresting us for helping their people?

For the point we get to the station at the settlement, the situation turns into what looks like a sitcom about how disorganized the police is as a whole and how lazy the cops are. The title for this evening's show is: “mayhem at the station - 16 people arrested and now we'll never make it to the 8pm soccer game.” The cops are running around like chickens with their heads cut off and really, they just don't want to deal with this whole hassle of arresting us. They fill out shitloads of paperwork, wait for each question to get translated into English, Arabic, French and Italian, then lose all the paperwork and spend the next twenty minutes looking for it. Meanwhile the arrestees are behaving like unsupervised children in the waiting room.

Once every ten minutes some officer comes by and orders everyone to sit their asses down in a row and turn off their cell phones. “You're under arrest, for crying out loud”, he would yell, and then turn around, and everyone would just get back up and turn on their excessively overused cell phones. There were just too many of us and the cops were too fed up with playing nanny, so no order was ever instilled. We decided to use our ample spare time to steal the cops' food that was laying around and photocopy various body parts on the copy machine in the hallway. I stole a highlighter pen.

We did decide, as a group, that we won't pay bail, and we won't be released until all of us get released. The reason for this is that there were two Palestinian amongst us, and it's usually the case that Palestinians get detained for larger periods of time, treated more harshly and receive worse sentences than Israelis and internationals. The entire police squad really didn't want to book us. really. It would have been way too much of a hassle for them, and they wanted to go home by nine, so they kept on bargaining with us on what bail and terms of release we're willing to accept. How Israeli of them. These Israelis haggle over everything.

We refused to sing any agreement, refused to pay and refused to answer any questions during interrogation. They lowered the bail from three thousand shekels per person plus a signed agreement that we won't enter the area to no bail but an agreement that we won't set foot there for two weeks, and we refused that too. I mean, come on! some of these people live there. There's no way we're gonna commit to that and let the army have a field day with the town knowing that all the radical activists are not allowed to be there. So the cops finally got sick of us, and wrote "refuses to sign" where each person's signature goes, and told us that the agreement still has legal repercussions despite us refusing to sign it and kicked us out.

But since this can in no way hold up in any court, we told them to fuck off and left. When we got out, we found out what happened at the scene of the crime after we got arrested. The rest of the unarrested crowd backed up but refused to disperse, so the army stepped in and started firing tear gas and stunt grenades at the completely nonviolent crowd. One of the tear gas canisters hit this 72-year-old-and-sweet-as-a-lamb grandma activist and cut and burned her.

Also, my friend Yasmeen, who was not one of the arrestees, and one of her Palestinian friends from Harres got their car showered with live ammunition from Jews in the nearby settlement while driving on their way back to town after visiting us at the police station. Yasmeen didn't get hurt, and her friend got hit by a bullet in his hand. they both ducked under the dashboard to avoid getting killed. They were fine, but there was nothing left of their car seats.

What's most amazing about all this is that it made it to the Israeli propaganda TV, but with the following revisions. They reported that indeed 16 people got arrested while trying to dismantle a roadblock, but entirely bypassed just why they were doing it, and what significance this roadblock has on the local people. They also noted that the demonstration/direct action ended up with stone-throwing on the side of the activists/activists, and mentioned that later on at night there was shooting at a car nearby, but that the Palestinians were the ones shooting. And thus the Israeli public is led to believe that this whole intifada schpiel is all the Palestinians' fault, because those barbaric people are bringing it onto themselves and what can the poor Israeli "humanitarian" army do, they're only trying to defend themselves on someone else's land.

So a few of you have asked me: "Liad, what is this rush to get arrested?" Well, let me explain. Getting arrested in Israel, especially for an Israeli Jew like myself, is a great form of protest. First of all, the public doesn't readily accept Israelis or internationals getting arrested (they could care less about Palestinians, however). They want to find out why, making it a great media ploy, especially if a large enough number of people gets arrested frequently enough. Second of all, the sentences here for Israelis are really minimal, and the public would be really outraged anyway, especially for a crime like "being in a closed military zone", which obviously doesn't hurt anyone, or dismantling a roadblock, so the effort is worth it. Plus, I’m really broke, and spending a night in jail would at least guarantee me breakfast, which is more than what I can say for staying the night at home.

The following day was holocaust memorial day, which more than anything else is commemorated by a loud minute-to minute-and-a-half long siren that is heard all over the country. Upon this siren, everyone drops everything and stands still to remember all the people that died during the holocaust. It's the strangest thing ever. Cars and buses pull over, everyone just freezes in the middle of the street. I was in front of a meat shop talking to a butcher about cat food when the siren hit.

I haven't had to deal with this phenomenon for about thirteen years now, and there I was, stuck in front of the butcher, unable to move, and I just started crying. After the siren was over, I told him that one of my friends nearly died the day before from settlers who were shooting at her car. I mean, who cares if it's called the holocaust or the intifada? People here are still dying here because of their race. I think that this made him uncomfortable so he started talking about the weather. I’m gonna try once again to go to Ramallah on Thursday, which is the Israeli independence day. wish me luck and write back soon.

Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 10:49:41 -0500 Title: 

A Riposte to Elie Wiesel on Jerusalem TEXT:

Rape of Dulcinea

by Israel Shamir

The touching words of Elie Wiesel (Jerusalem in My Heart, NYT 1/25/2001) painted a beautiful portrait of the Jewish people, yearning for Jerusalem, loving and praying for it over the centuries and cherishing its name from generation to generation.

This potent image reminded me, an Israeli writer from Jaffa, of something familiar yet elusive. I finally made the connection by revisiting my well-thumbed volume of Don Quixote. Wiesel's evocative article is so wonderfully reminiscent of the immortal love of the Knight of Sad Visage to his belle Dulcinea de Toboso. Don Quixote traveled all over Spain proclaiming her name. He performed formidable feats, defeated giants, who turned out to be windmills, brought justice to the oppressed, and so much more for the sake of his beloved. When he decided that his achievements made him worthy, he sent his arms bearer, Sancho Pansa, to his Dame with a message of adoration.

Now I find myself in the somewhat embarrassing position of Sancho Pansa. I have to inform my master, Don Wiesel Quixote, that his Dulcinea is well. She is happily married, has a bunch of kids, and she is quite busy with laundry and other domestic chores. While he fought brigands and restored governors, somebody else took care of his beloved, fed her, provided her with food, made love to her, made her a mother and grandmother. Do not rush, dear knight, to Toboso, or it would break your heart Elie, the Jerusalem that you write of so movingly is not now and never has been desolate. She has lived happily across the centuries in the embrace of another people, the Palestinians of Jerusalem, who have taken good care of her. They made her the beautiful city she is, adorned her with a magnificent piece of jewelry, the Golden Dome of Haram al Sharif, built their houses with pointed arches and wide porches and planted cypresses and palm trees.

They do not mind if the knight-errant visits their beloved city on his way from New York to Saragosa. But be reasonable, old man. Stay within the frame of the story and within the bounds of common decency. Don Quixote did not drive on his jeep into Toboso to rape his old flame. OK, you loved her, and thought about her, but it does not give you the right to kill her children, bulldoze her rose garden and put your boots on her dining room table. All your words just prove that you confuse your desires with reality. If you must continue to ask why the Palestinians want Jerusalem? Because she belongs to them, because they live there and it is their hometown. Granted, you dreamed about her in your remote Polish hamlet. So did many people around the world. She is so wonderful and certainly worth dreaming about.

Elie, many people have adored this city across the ages. Swedish craftsmen left their villages and moved there to build the lovely American Colony together with the Vesters, a devout Christian family from Chicago. You can read about it in the works of Selma Lagerlof, another Nobel Prize winner. On the slopes of the Mount of Olives, the Russians built the dainty church of Mary Magdalene. Ethiopians erected their Resurrection monastery amid the ruins left by the Crusaders.

The British died for her and left as their architectural legacy the St George Cathedral and St Andrew's. The Germans built the lovely German Colony and nursed the city's sick in the Schneller Hospital. My devout great-grandfather moved into the protection of her thick walls in 1870-s from a Lithuanian Jewish village and threw his lot with the hospitable Jerusalemites. He found his eternal rest until the day of Resurrection on the slopes of Mount of Olives. None of them thought to rape their Dulcinea. They just left bouquets of architectural flowers as testament of their adoration.

Those who love Jerusalem are legion. It is disingenuous of Elie Wiesel to reduce the struggle for this city as a tug of war between Muslims and Jews. It is a question of coveting property versus having the deed of ownership. The resolution of this case should be based on the 10th commandment, observed by our fathers. They knew that veneration does not amount to the right of ownership. Millions of Protestants venerate the Catholic-owned Gethsemane Garden, but it does not transfer the garden into their hands. Millions of Catholics visit the Tomb of Mary, but it still belongs to the Eastern Church. For generations, the Moslems have come to kneel at the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem, but the church remains Christian forever.

What water did to Gremlins in Spielberg's movies, Zionism has inflicted on the jolly Jewish folk of Eastern Europe. It caused them to carry out the ethnic clearing of Gentiles in West Jerusalem, to convert Schneller hospital and church into a military base and to build a Holiday Inn on top of the venerated shrine of Sheik Bader. The Israeli State forbids the Christians of Bethlehem to pray in the Holy Sepulcher and bans Moslems below the age of 40 from attending Friday prayers at al Aqsa mosque. These changes of the city by the Israeli government amount to her rape.

In order to justify this rape, you invoke the names of King Solomon and Jeremiah, quote the Koran and the Bible. Let me tell you a Jewish Hassidic tale, one you might have heard in your Polish schtetl. A Jewish midrash, a legend, mentions that Abraham had a daughter. A simple-minded Hassid asked his Rabbi, why Abraham did not wed his daughter and his son Isaac. The Rabbi responded that Abraham did not want to marry a real son to a legendary daughter.

The legends are the stuff the dreams are made of. Some are charming, some are horrible, and none is valid as a deed to the land or as a political platform. Elie, you certainly would not like to lose your private home in New York because of a few verses written in the Book of Mormon. This game of spreading the Zionist gospel is becoming irrelevant, but I will play one more round with you for the entertainment of the crowd. As every archaeologist will tell you, King Solomon and his temple belong to the fantasy realm of Abraham's daughter. Moreover, and not that it matters, but the name of Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Jewish Holy Book, the Torah.

Elie, you want to play some more games? I'll tell you more. The Jews are not even mentioned in the Jewish Bible. Get that thick book off of your shelf and check it. None of the great and legendary men you named, from King David to the prophets, were called 'the Jews'. This ethnonym appears the first and only time in the Bible in the Persian story of the very late Book of Esther. The self-identification of the Jews with the tribes of Israel and with the heroes of the Bible is as valid as the story of Rome being founded by the Trojan prince Aeneus. If the modern Turks, who call themselves 'the descendants of Troy' would conquer Rome, dynamite Borromini's baroque masterpieces and expel her inhabitants in order to re-establish the legacy of Aeneus, they would just be repeating the folly of the Zionists.

Our ancestors, the humble East European folk of Yids, whose language was Yiddish, had a tradition of adorning themselves with the impressive heraldic lions of Biblical heroes. Their claim of descent from these legends was as valid as the claims of Thomas Hardy's ambitious farmer girl Tess. But event the fictional Tess did not conspire to evict the lords from their castle and claim the manor for herself.

Once, walking with the Christian pilgrims to the great Church of the Holy Sepulcher, I was stopped by a Hassidic Jew. He inquired whether my companions were Jews, and, receiving a negative reply, exclaimed in amazement: "What are these Goyyim Gentiles looking for in the holy city?" He had never heard of the Passion of Jesus Christ, whose name he used as a swear word. I am equally amazed that a Jewish professor from Boston University is as ignorant as the simple-minded Hassidic Jew. Jerusalem is holy to billions of believers: Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Christians, Sunni and Shia Moslems, to thousands of Hassidic and Sephardic Jews. Still, as a city, Jerusalem is not different from any place in the world; she belongs to her citizens.

Twenty more years of Zionist control of this ancient city would turn her into just another Milwaukee and forever ruins her charm. Jerusalem needs to be restored to its inhabitants. The seized properties in Talbieh and Lifta, Katamon and Malcha should be returned to their owners. Professor Wiesel, respect the Gentile property rights as you would like Gentiles to respect your right to your lovely house. The holy sites of Jerusalem are regulated by the 150 years old international statute (Status Quo) that should not be tampered with. Last attempt to touch it caused the siege of Sevastopol and the charge of the light brigade at Balaclava. Next attempt could cause the nuclear war.

__

Israel Shamir, is one of best-known and most respected Russian Israeli writers and journalists. He wrote for Haaretz, BBC, Pravda and translated Agnon, Joyce and Homer into Russian. He lives in Tel Aviv and writes a weekly column in the Vesti, the biggest Russian-language paper in Israel. He can be reached at shamiri_@netvision.net.il 

" The Handwriting on the Wall" 

By Israel Shamir

 January 23,2001

 [The author, Israel Shamir, is one of best-known and most respected Russian Israeli writers and journalists. He wrote for Haaretz, BBC, Pravda, and translated Agnon, Joyce, and Homer into Russian. He lives in Tel Aviv and writes a weekly column in the Vesti, the biggest Russian-language paper in Israel.]

Among the colourful revellers of Allenby Street, in the crowded restaurants of merry-making Tel Aviv nights, a vision came to me, a vision of an angel in battle-dress, chalking up on a wall three words, Mene, Tekel ufarsin. My Angel-English on-line dictionary prompts a translation: you were tested and you failed the test. [those three words are the "handwriting on the wall" in Aramaic in Daniel 5:25-29--CHM]

These are the darkest days for the people of Israel. They are dark, as the lamentations and protests of us and our fathers turned out to be as genuine as a three-dollar bill.

In 1968, a young Jewish Russian kid, I wrote on the walls of my native Russian city, 'Hands off Czechoslovakia'. The beautiful deep voice of a Jewish Russian poet Alexander Galitch intoned: Citizens, our motherland is in danger, our tanks are on foreign soil! Some Russian Jews demonstrated on the Red Square against the invasion, and were beaten up by the police. We protested against the presence of the Russian tanks in Budapest, Prague and Kabul as Russian citizens who value honour above ill-understood loyalty, humankind above blood ties. In the same time, Jewish American kids demonstrated against their country's intervention in Vietnam, while Jewish boys and girls in Europe fought against racism.

Years passed by, and now our Jewish tanks are on foreign soil. Our Jewish army murders civilians, demolishes houses, starves millions and imposes sieges on Palestinian villages. Our crimes have exceeded the Russian crimes committed in Chechnya and Afghanistan, the American crimes in Vietnam and Serb crimes in Bosnia.

Surely, the Israeli intellectuals demonstrate en masse on our equivalent of Pennsylvania Avenue or Trafalgar Square, American Jews raise their voice against the America-armed killers of Palestinians; Russian Jews speak up for the human rights of the enslaved Gentiles of the Holy Land? No, I fear, our literati exalt the courage of our Jewish soldiers, venerate the steady hand of our Jewish snipers and glorify the immense humanity of the Jewish folk, who could pulverise all the Gentiles of Palestine, but kindly limit ourselves to a few hundred wounded and maimed a day.

My grandfather in the Pale of Settlement complained against the restrictions of the free movement of Jews in the Russian Empire, while in our generation Anatoli Sharansky became a symbol of struggle for human rights. In our own country, the Gentiles are fenced into reservations and concentration camps that the Pale pales in comparison with. A Palestinian cannot go to the next village without the Jewish ausweis, he is forever checked by our Checkists. He can only dream of the sea, washing the shores of his ancestral home - we do not let Palestinians to pollute the Jewish purity of our beaches.

For years, the Jews protested the discrimination in employment and education. In our own state we created the system of total national discrimination. In our state-owned Electric company, out of 13,000 employees there are six Gentiles. 0,0004%. Gentiles form forty percent of the population between the Jordan River and the sea, but only one out of four has the right to vote. There are no Gentiles in the Supreme court, in the government, in the Air Force, in the secret services. There is not even one Gentile on the board of the main Israeli Liberal newspaper, Haaretz.

That is why all the complaints of Jews in the Diaspora deserve to be re-written in the light of the events. We did not fight for the human rights, but for the rights of Jews. We were for the freedom of movement and freedom of choice - for Jews only. We spoke of the universal suffrage, but we meant the right of vote for Jews only. We do not mind occupation and invasion, as long as we invade and occupy. The sight of a child raising hands in front of the machine-gun-toting thug grieves us only if it is a Jewish child. The Gentile child can be shot at freely.

When Bialik wrote "Devil did not invent a fit punishment for the murder of a child", he actually meant 'a Jewish child'. When he was horrified by the scenes of pogrom, he was horrified that the violence is directed against Jews. Otherwise, there is nothing wrong with pogroms per se. The Jews of Upper Nazareth just committed a pogrom of Gentiles in Nazareth , but no pogromchik was tried. Police helped them by murdering a few of the pogrom victims. Still worse were the pogroms of Ramallah and Beth Jallah, committed with the helicopter gunships and tanks.

Tsarist Russia, 'the land of pogroms', was much hated by our grandfathers, and eventually destroyed by them. Still, a hundred years of Jewish pogroms caused fewer casualties than we murder in a week. The most horrible pogrom of Kishinev claimed 45 dead and 600 wounded. During the last weeks in Israel, more than 300 were killed so far and many thousands wounded. After the pogrom in Tsarist Russia, all writers and intelligentsia condemned the perpetrators. In the Jewish state, hardly a few dozens gathered at the demonstration in Tel Aviv, while the Hebrew Writers Union supported this pogrom of Gentiles.

In 1991, the majority of the Russian Jews took a stand against communism and for private ownership. They actually had in mind Jewish private property, as we confiscate the Gentile property with the greatest of ease. Go through the best areas of Jerusalem, Talbieh, Old Katamon, Greek and German Colonies, and see the marvellous palaces. They belonged to Gentiles, - Germans, Armenians, Greeks, British, Russians, Palestinians, Christian and Moslem. All of them were confiscated and given to Jews. During the last weeks, hundreds of acres of Gentile property were confiscated, and hundreds of Gentile houses seized or demolished.

Just before his arrest, the richest Russian Jewish media-lord Gusinsky came to Israel and expressed his unlimited support. At the same time he asked the world to help him in his fight with the Russian authorities who were trying to save their TV from his clutches. His support of Israel proves that Mr Gusinsky approves confiscations on the ethnic base. He is just against the confiscations of Jewish property. He is against Jews being arrested - the Gentiles may rot in prisons forever, as it happens in the Jewish state.

In no time at all we succeeded to undermine the long-term achievements of Jews in the struggle for democracy, human rights and equality. What is it that we did not like about the German Nazis? Their racism? Our racism is not less wide-spread and poisonous. The Russian language newspaper, Direct Speech, published in Jerusalem, asked hundreds of Russian Jews about their feelings towards the Palestinians. Typical answers were: "I would kill all Arabs", "All Arabs must be eliminated", "Arabs must be expelled", "An Arab is an Arab. They have to be eliminated". I am not sure you would get better results in Germany in 1938. Even Nazis did not intend to kill their Jewish enemies until 1941.

Let us put it straight, we were against racism as long as it was somebody else's racism. We were against death squads and Sonderkommando as long as they acted against us. Our own killers, our Jewish Sonderkommando is the object of our tender admiration. The Jewish state is the only place in the world possessing legitimate killer squads, embracing the policy of assassinations, practicing torture on the medieval scale. Do not worry, dear Jewish readers, we torture and assassinate Gentiles only.

We were against ghettos while we were being pushed into a ghetto. Now the most liberal Jewish plan calls for creation of a few Gentile ghettos fenced by barbed wire, surrounded by Jewish tanks and Jewish-owned factories at the fence, where the Arbeit will macht the Gentiles frei. We shall give the ghetto full independence but previously removing all sources of income and sustenance.

Israelis are brainwashed from kindergarten, they are taught they belong to the Chosen People, who are Uber Alles. They were indoctrinated in the belief that the Gentiles are not fully human, and therefore they can be killed and expropriated at will. After all, Israel fulfilled one UN resolution, the one that called Zionism a form of racism. What is upsetting is that the internationalist upbringing in the Soviet Union could not withstand the poison of the Zionist propaganda of Jewish superiority. I do regret the moral collapse of my own Russian community in the Holy Land.

Now, as the angel wrote his fiery words, as prophets called the people to repent, we have the choice. We can choose the way of Nineveh, to repent, to return the stolen property, to give full equality to Gentiles, to stop discrimination and murder, and hope to be forgiven by God, if not for our sake, then for the sake of our cats and dogs. Or we can persist in our evil ways as the people of Sodom and wait for the flood of fire and burning sulphur from the angry heavens of Palestine.

April is the cruelest month by Israel Shamir 

The article is written in commemoration of Deir Yassin anniversary on 9th of April April is the cruelest month by Israel Shamir 

On a beautiful spring day, when the skies of the Holy Land are tender blue and the grass is a verdant green, air-conditioned buses ferry tourists from the City of the Plain to the City in the Mountains. A small distance past the halfway point, just beyond the reconstructed Ottoman inn of Bab al-Wad, the Gate of the Valley, the bus drives by the red-painted skeletons of armored vehicles. This is where the tour guides make their routine pitch. "These vehicles are in memory of the heroic break-through of Jews relieving the blockade of Jerusalem imposed by the aggression of nine Arab states". The number of Arab states varies with the mood of the guide and how they size up their audience.

The battle for the road to Jerusalem was a high point of the 1948 Civil war in Palestine, and it ended with the Zionist Jews of the Plain capturing the prosperous West End of Jerusalem with its white stone mansions of Arab nobles and German, Greek and Armenian merchants. In the course of these battles they also subdued the neutral, non-Zionist Jewish neighborhoods.

Zionists expelled the Gentiles in a massive sweep of ethnic cleansing and contained the local Jews in the ghetto. In order to achieve this feat, they razed to the ground the Palestinian villages on their path to the city.

The rusted junk is barely an adequate backdrop for the standard Israeli narration, and they would not qualify for a realistic film production. It is a staged scene that lacks the authentic look needed by movie directors.

The story of the blockade and aggression is a theater play, not a cinema script. It is an encore performance for the tourist receiving indoctrination on the non-stop trip to the Wailing Wall and the Holocaust Museum.

The war for this road was over in April 1948, weeks before Israel declared independence on 15th of May, before the hapless rag-tag units of Arab neighbors entered Palestine and saved what remained of the native population. As T.S. Elliot observed, April is the cruellest month. And so it was on that fateful April when the Palestinians were doomed to start a journey to five decades of exile. Its apotheosis was reached near the entrance to Jerusalem, where the Sacharov gardens lead to a cemetery, to a lunatic asylum and to Deir Yassin.

Death has many names. The Czechs call it Lidice, the French word is Oradur, in Vietnamese they use My Lai, for every Palestinian, it is Deir Yassin. On the night of the ninth of April 1948, the Jewish terrorist groups Etzel and Lehi attacked the peaceful village and massacred its men, women and children.

I do not want to repeat the gory tale of sliced off ears, gutted bellies, raped women, torched men, bodies dumped in stone quarries or the triumphal parade of the murderers. Existentially, all massacres are similar, from Babi Yar to Chain Gang to Deir Yassin.

Yet, the Deir Yassin massacre is special for three reasons:

One, it is well documented and witnessed. Other Jewish fighters from the Hagana and Palmach, Jewish scouts, Red Cross representatives and the British police of Jerusalem left complete records of the event. It was just one of many massacres of Palestinians by the Jews during the war of 1948, but none received as much attention. This is probably due to the fact that Jerusalem, the seat of the British Mandate in Palestine, was just around the corner.

Second, Deir Yassin had dire consequences, beyond its own tragic fate. The horror of the massacre facilitated the mass flight from nearby Palestinian villages and gave the Jews full control over the western approaches to Jerusalem. The flight was a prudent and rational choice for the civilian population. As I write this, my TV glares with the image of Macedonian peasants fleeing a war zone. My mother's family escaped from a burning Minsk on June 22, 1941, and survived. My father's family remained and perished. After the war my parents could return like other war refugees. The Palestinians, however, have not been allowed to come back, until this very day.

Three, the careers of the murderers. The commanders of the Etzel and Lehi gangs, Menahem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir eventually became Israeli prime ministers. None of them expressed any remorse, and Menahem Begin lived the last days of his life with a panoramic view of Deir Yassin from his house.

No Nuremberg judges, no vengeance, no penitence, just a path of roses all the way to a Nobel Peace prize. Menahem Begin was proud of the operation, and in his letter to killers he congratulated them for fulfilling their national duty. "You are creators of Israel's history", he wrote. Yitzhak Shamir was also pleased that is helped to achieve his dream: to expel the nochrim (non-Jews) from the Jewish state.

The field commander of the operation, Judah Lapidot, also had quite a career. His superior, Menahem Begin, appointed him to run the campaign for the right of Russian Jews to immigrate to Israel. He called for compassion and family reunion; he orchestrated the demonstrations in New York and London, with that memorable slogan 'Let My People Go'. If you supported the right of Russian Jews to immigrate to Israel, maybe you came across this man. By then the blood stains of Deir Yassin had presumably washed off. For the political indoctrination of Russian immigrants, he even published a Russian-language 'version' of 'Oh Jerusalem', a best seller by Lapierre and Collins, expurgating the story of Deir Yassin.

But there is yet another reason why this event was historically significant. Deir Yassin demonstrated the full scope of Zionist tactics. After the mass murder became known, the Jewish leadership blamed . the Arabs.

David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, announced that the Arab rogue gangs perpetrated it.

When this version collapsed, the Jewish leaders began the damage control procedures. They sent an apology to Emir Abdallah.

Ben Gurion publicly distanced himself and his government from the bloody massacre, saying it stained the name of every honest Jew and that it was the work of dissident terrorists.

His public relations techniques remain a source of pride for the good-hearted pro-Zionist 'liberals' abroad. "What a horrible, dreadful story", a humanist Jew told me when I drove him by the remaining houses of Deir Yassin, then he added "But Ben Gurion condemned the terrorists, and they were duly punished". "Yes", I responded, "they were duly punished and promoted to the highest government posts".

Just three days after the murder, the gangs were incorporated into the emerging Israeli army, the commanders received high positions, and a general amnesty forgave their crimes. The same pattern, an initial denial, followed by apologies, and a final act of clemency and promotion, was applied after the first historically verifiable atrocity committed by Prime Minister Sharon.

It was at the Palestinian village of Qibya, where Sharon's unit dynamited houses with their inhabitants and massacred some 60 men, women and children. After the murders became public, Prime Minister Ben Gurion, at first, blamed rogue Arab gangs. When that did not wash, he blamed Arab Jews, who, he said, being Arabs by their mentality, committed the unauthorized wild raid of vengeance and killed the peasants. For Sharon, it was the usual path of roses all the way to the post of Prime Minister. It sometimes appears that to become the Prime Minister of Israel, it helps to have a massacre to your name.

The same pattern was repeated after the massacre of Kafr Kasem, where the Israeli troops lined up the local peasants and machine-gunned them down. When the denial failed, and a Communist MPs disclosed the gory details, the perpetrators were court-martialed and sentenced to long prison terms. They were out before the end of the year, while the commander of the murderers became the head of Israel Bonds. If you ever purchased Israeli Bonds, maybe you met him. I am certain he washed the blood off his hands by the time he shook yours.

Now, with the passing of 50 years, the Jewish establishment had decided to, once again, take a stab at "Deir Yassin" revisionism. The Zionist Organization of America pioneered the art of denying history and published, at the expense of American taxpayer, a booklet called 'Deir Yassin: History of a Lie'. The ZOA revisionists have utilized all the methods of their adversaries, the 'Holocaust deniers': they discount the eye-witness accounts of the survivors, the Red Cross, the British police, Jewish scouts and other Jewish observers, who were present at the scene of massacre. They discount even Ben Gurion's apology, since after all, the commanders of these gangs became in turn prime ministers of the Jewish state. For ZOA, only the testimony of the murderers has any validity. That is, if the murderers are Jews.

Still, there are just people, and probably because of them the Almighty does not wipe us off the face of the earth. There is an organization called Deir Yassin Remembered, which fights all attempts to erase the memory. They publish books, organize meetings, and they are working on a project to build a memorial at the scene of the massacre, so the innocent victims will have this last comfort, their name and the memory saved forever (Isa 56:5). It will have to do, until the surviving sons of Deir Yassin and neighboring villages return from their refugee camps to the land of their fathers.

Israel Shamir is an Israeli writer and journalist. His articles The Rape of Dulcinea, The Test Failed, Galilee Flowers can be found on many Internet sites. They can be freely published and distributed in the Web. This article was written for the Deir Yassin Remembered and it contains texts from other articles by Shamir. He can be reached at shamiri_@netvision.net.il, or write P.O.B. 23714 Tel Aviv 61236. If you do not wish to receive his articles, reply with subject 'remove'.

Springtime for Hitler By Israel Shamir

While Broadway successfully hosts a musical comedy Springtime for Hitler, a prominent Californian newspaper published a revisionist article, attempting to reverse the accepted version of Nazi Germany and justify the persecution of its Jews.

The author of the article has a highly original vision of the German life before Hitler’s rise to power. By subterfuge, he infers that German Jews in 1932 enjoyed full protection of the army under their command, while the Germans were not allowed to bear arms. Whenever the Jews would have a feast, local Germans would be locked up under curfew for a few days in a row. A Jew could kill a German with an impunity, while a German who harmed a Jew was locked in jail for life. By default, every plot of land that nobody could ‘prove’ ownership of, was considered Jewish. A Jew could travel freely in all Germany, while a German had to get a hard-to-get Jewish ausweis. Even water was supplied in abundance to the Jewish homes, while Germans received water once a week.

Trying to justify Nazi excesses, the author wants us to believe, that before Hitler, the Jews of Germany voted in parliamentary elections, while Germans could vote only for their toy assembly, devoid of real powers. The only employment left for Germans was a low pay job in a Jewish-owned factory. Germans were forbidden by law to reside in the Jewish settlements. The agricultural base of the German peasants was eroded by the Jewish bulldozers relentlessly destroying their crops. Anti-Semitism, according to this revisionist article, was the name of a German movement endeavoring to rid Germany of its Jewish masters. The author infers that Hitler just trying to get rid of invading Jews, who seized the land of German farmers by force.

This outrageous description of Weimar Germany and its Jews is too fantastic for any reader, and Ms Lipstadt, the scourge of deniers, would do well to investigate this writer and his attempt to poison American public opinion. But the most unusual feature of this perverse pièce was the fact that it was concocted by a Jewish writer and published in a Jewish-owned newspaper. The author, Jonathan Kellerman, a self-described ‘writer of 17 books and a pediatrician’, published this historic revisionist profanity (Settlers Bear Brunt of Violence, Anti-Semitism, http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20010523/t000043000.html) in the LA Times, on May 24.

He did not dare to write this perversion of history explicitly, but subtly implied it by comparing the Jews in pre-Hitler Germany with the latter-day Jewish settlers on the occupied Palestinian lands. Kellerman actually exults German Nazis, by comparing them with the freedom-seeking Palestinians. The insane Californian does not stop here. He proclaims that every Jew, wherever he lives, behaves towards the local people as the Jewish settler in Palestine. He surely overreaches himself, as non-Jewish Californians can travel freely in their land, and are not forced to have car license plates of distinct color.

Kellerman does not even consider the ‘radical’ solution of a democracy, where Jews and non-Jews have the same rights and enjoy equal protection under the law. No Palestinian would object to a Jewish neighbor, if he was treated in a neighborly way. Jewish settlers would be able to remain forever in the places they chose, by foregoing their privileges, sharing water with their Gentile neighbors, allowing non-Jews to reside in their settlements, granting them the right to vote, freedom of movement, safety of ownership. Naturally they would have to restore the property seized from goys to its rightful owners, and avoid discriminatory practices, but afterwards they could live in peace with the gentle Palestinians.

Kellerman has a strange idea that ‘indigenous people returning to their land’ are entitled to confiscate property of ‘less indigenous’ folks. Well, let him follow his own preaching and return his house to one of the Mexican immigrants returning to their ‘indigenous’ land in Southern California.

One additional matter proves that the author really has no idea of what he is talking about, and probably has never even visited Palestine. He writes: ‘recently, Palestinian rioters destroyed one of the world’s oldest synagogues, a 1200-year old architectural beauty’. The rioters, or whoever, did this black deed some eight hundred years ago, in the heyday of the Crusader King Baldwin II. That is hardly ‘recent’. By the time the three synagogues of Jericho were excavated in the nineteenth century, the only remains were the mosaic floors and they were well preserved by the Palestinians for the last one hundred fifty years, as a part of their heritage. We have just a vague idea of their architecture, as not a brick survived the Crusades and Middle Ages.

Kellerman describes himself as a ‘Professor of Pediatrics in USC medical school’. If that is not an invention, like ‘the 1200-year architectural beauty’, I would hesitate to send my child to a pediatrician, who suffers from such delusions.

Israel Shamir,

Jaffa

May 26, 2001

Israel Shamir is an Israeli writer and journalist, living in Jaffa. His other articles can be found on his site http://shamir.mediamonitors.net/ or email shamiri_@netvision.net.il.

Doubt and certainty By Israel Shamir 

June, 3, 2001

The Russian discotheque Dolphi, devastated by the Friday night blast, stands on the shore of Manshieh, a destroyed Palestinian neighborhood of Jaffa, not far from my home. Teenage friends of my sons used to frequent the place. It is an innocent crowd, brought to the shores of Palestine by their parents after disintegration of the Soviet Union. Kids speak Russian, their contacts with Israeli boys and girls of the same age are quite limited, as is their interest in local affairs. Many of them are blond and blue-eyed, some dress in the outmoded punk style, they drink more than it is good for them. A Lost Generation, they call themselves. Few of them are Jews by any reasonable criteria, and Israeli radio informed that it would be quite impossible to bury the victims in the hallowed ground of the Jewish cemetery. Their fate is not an easy one in the Jewish state: they are supposed to serve in the army, but the army makes it difficult for them to swear the oath of allegiance on the Gospel. If they perish, they are buried beyond the fence, together with suicides.

As Druse and Circassian minorities, one million strong Russian community is not an obvious partner of the Jewish supremacists. The Russians are subject to discrimination. They have low paid jobs, which provide no security of income. They pay huge interest (three times higher than in the US) on loans they are given as ‘a settlement grant’ or ‘a mortgage help’. Many Russians baptize their children, pretty Russian girls often marry Palestinians. Actually, despite separation rules, Russians marry Palestinians as often as they marry Israelis. The blast is liable to enforce their tentative ties with Israelis. That is why it is important to stress that the circumstances of the explosion are still surrounded by a cloud of mystery.

INFOPAL expressed doubts whether “any Islamic movement is able to carry out such a strong attack, given that most of the recent suicide bombings have failed to cause significant harm or damage”. On the other hand, Israeli security services have know-how and facilities needed to cause by one blast the major shift of alliance of the Russian community. They proved their lack of scruples in 1949, when they bombed the Baghdad synagogue and sent the Iraqi Jews running to Israel. In 1990-s they instigated rumors of impending pogroms in Moscow and sent the parents of Dolphi kids on the way to Tel Aviv. Killing of non-Jewish children was already declared a ‘justifiable means’ by Madeleine Albright. She spoke about Iraqi children, dying because of the US-imposed blockade, but her Tel Aviv friends could make their own conclusions.

Many years from now, Palestinians will unravel the mystery of the botched suicide bomber wave 2001. They will discover who and why targeted the Russian disco, or the poorest Hassidic area of Jerusalem, or other marginal sites, as if trying to enforce the elusive Jewish unity. They will find out why the only ‘successful’ attack was made on predominantly non-Jewish kids.

But it is not the only doubt. Susanne Scheidt from Italy posited a legitimate query: "How come that last summer, when there was no Palestinian uprising in sight, we read about numerous cases in which Palestinians, as soon as they showed up on the beach of Tel Aviv with a bathing suit in their bag, were instantly spotted by Israeli police and sent away from the beach?" Could a Palestinian with a backpack get as far as the queue to the discotheque, without a connivance of the security services? Until now, there are doubts. Let as move to a certainty.

Last year we witnessed a severe gang warfare for the control of Russian night clubs. The warring parties used to throw hand-grenades into the competing clubs, with some human casualties. Russian discos of Tel Aviv are fighting for the same market. Their methods are not too gentle. It would not be impossible to suggest that the fatal attack at the entrance of the Russian discotheque was caused by the gang war, rather than by a Palestinian bomber. A year ago there was a dreadful explosion in Moscow underground station Pushkinskaya, that was immediately ascribed to Chechen terrorists. Afterwards it became known that the station was bombed by the racketeers, as the vendors did not pay the protection money.

Now, if it will be found out that the explosion was actually caused by a rival gang from, say, a neighboring Netania, would the IDF planes bomb Netania? Would the army besiege Netania? Would Netania city council be denounced as a terrorist organization? No, this way of collective punishment is meted out only to Palestinians. That is wrong. Gaza should be treated in the same way as Netania, Mahmud and Anton should have the same rights as Doron and Boris. Then, probably, there will be no reason even for suspicions and doubts.

We should object both to the premature presumption of a Palestinian involvement, and to the racist style of collective punishment. Israelis are too fast in this game. When a single Jewish terrorist shot a German diplomat in Paris in 1938, the Nazi government replied with the Kristallhacht, a massive pogrom that carried away one hundred lives. When a single pro-Iraqi terrorist shot an Israeli diplomat in London in 1982, Israeli government unleashed the invasion of Lebanon and killed forty thousand people. Maybe it was the thing to do in the days of Genghis Khan, but not any more.

Next day after the bombing, Jewish mob tried to lynch Palestinians and destroy the mosques in Jaffa. The police blocked their advance. Israeli press made a lot of profit out of this action. But I see no reason to congratulate the police: they knew, as we all know, that the work of the lynching mob will be done by the Israeli army. Surely they will target Palestinians just because they belong to the same ethnic group as the supposed bomber.

Nobody demands ‘the Jews’ to pay for the dirty dealings of Milken, Rich and Maxwell, or for Sharon massacres. ‘The Palestinians’ should not pay for excesses of individuals. While there are still reasonable doubts as to the identity of the bombers, one thing is certain: collective ethnic-based punishment is a crime against humanity.

Doubt and certainty – follow up By Israel Shamir

 June 30, 2001 

With Sunday Times’ disclosure of the Israeli security services’ involvement in the slaughter of the Russian kids in Tel Aviv, the clever by half plot began to unravel. From the first moment, there were reasonable doubts that it was an act of Palestinian terror. The crime had the bloody fingerprints of the Jewish supremacist all over it. It was perpetrated on Sabbath eve, when a ‘good Jew’ is not supposed to hang around a discotheque. It washed the Palestinian blood off Jewish hands with expendable Russian blood. It forced the hand of Arafat to surrender to Israeli conditions of a cease-fire. It created a miraculously ‘restrained’ General Sharon withholding his justifiable fury and sparing malfeasants. It pushed a hence neutral Russian community into the embrace of Arab-haters. The Qui Bono principle of criminal detection led directly to the high rooms of Israeli politics, who profited hugely from the explosion.

An American activist voiced the initial suspicions noting that ‘the bombing took place the day of Husseini's funeral when the IDF had so "generously" left East Jerusalem and when spirits were so high at the demo. And then there was the convenient timing of this horrendous crime; exactly what Israel needed to win over public opinion’.

The Sunday Times now reports that the impossible feat of delivering the bomber to the deep hinterland of Tel Aviv was done by a Shabak (Israeli Internal Secret Police) agent, al Nadi. Quoting a string of officials, an Israeli journalist Uzi Mahanaimi drew a portrait of a gullible Shabak agent who unwittingly became an accomplice in the murder. He supposedly understood the intentions of the bomber; but far too late. The Israeli Army spokesman also stressed innocence of al Nadi who did not know what he was doing.

This scoop by The Sunday Times reminded me of a plot by the British thriller writer, Le Carre. When endangered by a pending disclosure, secret services usually prefer to leak their own doctored version of events. The damning report of the English paper appears to be an Israeli damage control procedure. Many Israel-based foreign journalists recently received additional detailed information from usually knowledgeable sources. The sources claimed that the suspected bomber Said Hotari worked for a branch of Jordanian security services until his defection to Israel. He apparently collaborated with Shabak, and that is why his Israeli visa was duly extended. This fact of visa extension was reported by Israeli newspapers before the court slapped a full publicity ban on the case. Hotari was probably unaware of his deadly load, as the explosion was caused by remote control.

They also claim that there was an additional reason for the peculiar choice of the site: the nearby David Intercontinental Hotel had an unusual guest, the German Foreign Minister Joshka Fischer. It is not a popular hotel with high-ranking guests. Though it is a five star operation, it is not located in the most fashionable area of Tel Aviv. Purely by ‘chance’, Herr Fischer became a star witness of the outrage. He was emotionally swept away to the Israeli side and became an important player in the following diplomatic game that resulted in imposing the cease fire on Israeli terms.

Ruthless use of terrorism for political and tactical purposes has always been a traditional tool of Israeli secret service operatives. Provocation is not below their dignity: in 1950s, in the infamous Lavon Affair, some local Jews enlisted by Israel were apprehended in Cairo while placing bombs in the American and British consulates. They tried to present their bombing as ‘acts of Islamic terror’ and cause hostility between Arabs and Americans. Israeli agents did not hesitate to kill Jews ‘for the cause’.

Thus, on November 25, 1940, the Jewish Agency men sunk SS Patria and killed 250 Jewish immigrants. They did it in order to ensure sympathy to the plight of Jews who were refused entry to British-run Palestine. The perpetrators of the outrage admitted their crime in Israeli media a few years ago. The explosive charge was too powerful, they explained.

Joachim Martillo recently wrote of possible Zionist connection with the bloody anti-Jewish riots in the Polish town of Kielce after the WWII. The riots sent a wave of Jewish immigrants to the shores of Palestine. Israeli bombings of Baghdad synagogues are by now a well known and declassified fact. They caused mass immigration of Iraqi Jews to Israel.

In a more recent development, just over a year ago, Moscow was shaken by dreadful explosions that caused multiple casualties. Unknown terrorists exploded whole residential apartment buildings in the Russian capital. The explosions were blamed on Chechens, and brought about the Second Chechnya war, the destruction of Grozny, thousands of dead and wounded, but more importantly, they served as a turning point in Russia’s relations with Israel and the Muslim world. Russia’s media enforced the image of Islamic terrorism and of Israel as a guardian and ally of Russia.

‘We have a common enemy, Islamic terrorism’, was the line reiterated by Israeli politicians visiting Moscow, be it Sharansky, Lieberman or Peres. The comparisons of Chechnya with Palestine became commonplace in the Jewish-owned Russian press. The old Zionist dream of creating confrontation between Russia and Dar al Islam almost became true. Until now, the bombers have not been found. Russia’s influential Nezavisimaya Gazette openly expresses doubts of a Chechen connection to the explosions.

Moreover, I am ready to risk anger of my readers and claim that the Palestinians are miscast for the role of terrorists. Surely some of them try to act the part the Jews gave them and dabble in ‘terror’. Their ‘terror’ is so timid, that a careful and objective observer would just pooh-pooh an idea of the ‘Palestinian terrorists’. Consider a suicide bomber, for instance, a quiet sophomore at Bir Zeit University, Dia Tawil. He exploded near a bus full of Israelis. He died while only a few Israelis were lightly wounded. Many suicide bombers die without killing a single Israeli, only a few manage to wound and kill.

Even in their most successive and lethal wave of 1996, all of them together could not beat a single Jewish terrorist act, bombing of King David Hotel in 1947 with its 92 victims. When Jews deal in terror, their enemies die in droves. That is how they operated before the state of Israel was established. And that is how the Israeli state operates to this day. It is meaningless to even compare the Palestinian ‘terror’ with the organized terror of the state of Israel. They are not in the same league. For Israel, the killing of a hundred refugees in Kana, or bombing a school, or blasting a besieged Beirut for two months, or assassinating a leader, or strafing the USS Liberty, or shooting down a passenger airliner is a normal occurrence. Yet the Jewish dominated media machine manages to hang the terrorist label on the Palestinians.

The Palestinians are inefficient killers because they have the peaceful souls of peasants and martyrs. They do not go out to kill, they go to die. They are similar to the kamikaze, the Divine Wind of Japan. The Japanese suicide flyers loaded their tiny planes with explosives, prayed to God, wrote a poem comparing themselves with falling petals of wild cherry, tied a white band over their forehead and took off to ram the American aircraft carriers in the blue waves of Pacific. More often than not they caused no damage, but they scared the hell out of McArthur. He could not understand this willingness to sacrifice one’s life for a higher cause. Nor can Israelis.

The unusually ‘productive’ explosion at Dolphi just did not feel right from the start. We still do not know the answer, but the doubts grow. Some supporters of the Palestinian cause rushed to support the Israeli version and condemned the discotheque explosion. They were rewarded: the usually reluctant Jewish-owned American press published their letters and articles. In my view, in such dubious cases, when no known Palestinian organization claimed the act in real time, it is not wise to dish out blame hastily.

The Third Dove By Israel Shamir 

April 9, 2001

In the movie based on the mammoth tale by Jean Auel, Clan of Cave Bear, there is a glimpse of the sex life of the Palaeolithic people who roamed the earth some 35,000 years ago. Apparently, whenever a Neanderthal wished to have fun, he didn't need to bring flowers or arrange dinner for two. He would make a certain sign with his hand, and the chosen girl would immediately comply with his desire, without further ado.

The sign to submit is still with us. Whenever people discuss the things done in the name of Jews by, say, Sharon or Abe Foxman, the moment the discussion starts to get out of hand, one of the leaders of the community chants the magic word 'anti-Semitism', and, as if under a spell, we immediately bend over. It is amazing that grown men and women who have never personally experienced any prejudice in their life, still respond to this spell like the girl, Ayla, in Auel's novel.

The machine of the official Jewish establishment and its Israeli offshoot nauseates many Jews. Israeli government commits war crimes on a day-to-day basis. It is run by a certified mass murderer. The unprecedented siege, mass starvation and summary executions are now routine. Bombing, strafing and shelling civilians are no longer anything to get worked up about. Many Jews see it, and are ready to say so in a cosy 'entre-nous' environment. They read news from Israel with resignation and disgust, like an English Victorian squire learning of the new exploits of his wild brother in a far away colony.

The American Jewish establishment is not better than Israel's leadership. It provides unconditional support to Israeli and other Jewish criminals, from Sharon to Gusinsky, the Russian media lord. Abe Foxman, the head of ADL, files compromising materials, bugs phone calls and intrudes on the privacy of many Americans. The whining voice of Elie Wiesel and his colleagues traffic in schmaltzy self-righteousness. Conrad Black and others of his ilk take morally unsustainable positions, supporting freaks such as the Chilean torturer, Augusto Pinochet, and Henry Kissinger, the destroyer of Cambodia.

But the moment a word of objection exits our lips, we see the sign of Ayla and bend over. If nobody says it, we whisper it to ourselves: "Sh-sh-sh! It will cause anti-Semitism!" We can not help ourselves, it is too deeply engrained. Like a spoilt child, we take any criticism as a sign of hate. We dared to rebel against kings, but we do not dare to fight our self-proclaimed and self imposed leadership, as "it will cause A-S".

Abe Foxman, besieged for taking a $100,000 check from the Marc Rich Foundation, gave the sign of Ayla in the New York Times (March 21), proclaiming, 'anti-Semitism is a disease, and we have seen a big eruption of that disease in New York'. But it misfired. Rabbi Lapin of Toward Tradition called him 'a guy who's not in close touch with reality', and a 'dealer of the Anti- Semitism Manufacture'. He noted that the ADL gets paid (by contributors) according to how much anti-Semitism it finds[i].

The Guardian (March 28, 2001), to prove its pluralism, published an op-ed by a Simon Sebag Montefiore, who declared that 'the most energetic media-campaigners against Israel are, in private, virulent anti-Semites'. He pictures the British journalists and public figures as 'dogs besetting the bear'. "Dog" refers to lord Gilmour; "bear" to Conrad Black.

He specifically objects to the 'most wicked implication that Israel is replicating German behaviour: this approaches Holocaust denial in its iniquity'. Well, it is a question of standards. Years ago, an Israeli writer noted that the Jews measure their actions by the Nazi stick, and invariably find themselves 'a good and benevolent occupier'. Maybe even this 'generous' standard has been set aside. Yes, the Nazi chapter in Poland was much worse than the thirty-four year Israeli military rule in the occupied territories. But the Nazi occupation of France was probably milder for the French, than the Israeli occupation is for Palestinians, and mercifully it has been much shorter. Daily life under the Vichy government was certainly better than life in the 'autonomous' Gaza strip.

Montefiore calms the Brits as his 'aim is not to launch witch- hunts, just to warn decent people' of the abyss ahead. Another purpose of this op-ed, which was probably sponsored by Black, is to frighten British Jews silly into supporting General Sharon.

This game is not for the right wing only. An Israeli liberal, Amnon Rubinstein, called his compatriots to fight the danger of anti-Semitism. This plague, in his opinion, was manifested by Greece bringing to court a Jewish stock market swindler, a local Milken or Rich. For Rubinstein, Jew must be immune to persecution, and all Jews must support every Jewish rascal. The Israeli peace activist, Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom, called Arabs to fight anti-Semitism, as "anti-Semitism brought one million Russian Jews to Israel". He could say anti-Semitism brought half a million of Chinese guest workers to Israel, as well.

In order to deliver peace to your souls, I will give my personal testimony. An aging baby-boomer, I have travelled the world, lived among Russians and Palestinians, Germans and Swedes, the English and the Japanese, Indians and Africans, and I can tell you, on the basis of my experience, anti-Semitism no longer exists. As a Jew, you can walk freely in any city of men; you will be safe everywhere, if you come as a friend. The prejudice to Jews has vanished. You can find a Jew-hater, but there are many more people who hate the Poles or the Irish or have a beef against the WASPs. You are much more likely to encounter an Arab- hater or those who hate blacks or Asians.