By Israel Shamir
I
The main road of Palestinian Highlands from Nablus to Jerusalem runs
through Wadi Haramiyeh, a narrow defile in the Samaria
Mountains. From time to time, its olive-grown walls recede and leave
space for a village, tiny En Sinya, a neat and charming
cluster of spacious homes, or splendid Sinjil, preserving the name
of Raymond de Saint-Gilles, the Count of Toulouse, its liege
lord and Crusader. This is the heartland of Palestine, where every
stone keeps memories of old battles and skirmishes. I love
this area: in Sinjil, I was taken for a foreign-born son of local folks
who immigrated to America in the 1940s. In En Sinya, an
old peasant told me of his friend Moshe Sharet, a Palestinian Jew and
an Israeli minister of state, who was brought up in the
village, years before the Zionist segregation. I drank water from the
small spring of En al-Haramiyeh, guarded by a ruined
Ottoman Khan, while another ruin, King Baldwin’s Tower, watches the
southern entrance of the defile. Its relief makes it a
likely place for brigands’ ambush, and indeed ‘Wadi Haramiyeh’ means
just that, the Valley of Brigands.
On March 3, a Palestinian Rob Roy armed with an old, WWII – vintage
carbine, succeeded to lay low the whole troop of
heavily armed Jews. One after another, he shot the soldiers, and their
officers, and escaped unharmed. In one stroke, he
erased the overblown myth of Israeli military valiance. Never again
the supporters of Israel will sneer at Arab courage, never
again they will tell stories of shoes dropped in Sinai and Six Day
War. He repeated the feat of Karameh and returned the
honour to Palestinians.
He also provided a healthy alternative to the morbid attraction of suicide
bombers, and not too early. For a long time I wanted
to persuade my Palestinian brothers and sisters to desist from this
madness, but I loathed to be seen as an ideological tool of
Zionism. I understand the motives of the shaheeds, I salute their courage,
but I deeply regret their deeds. They are
counterproductive, inefficient, and blind. I am certain[i] that some
suicide cells are thoroughly infiltrated by Israeli
counter-intelligence: too often they explode in wrong places, in wrong
time, against wrong aims. Their deeds are used by Israeli
propaganda to its full value. Their death is a terrible loss for the
mankind. They sacrifice themselves as the son of Abraham
brought himself to be sacrificed, but God replaced his sacrifice with
a ram.
The marksman offered a different route to glory, one that does not lead
through the Valley of Death. The full story of the Battle
at Haramiyeh Pass should be sung by bards, and taught by guerrilla
fighters over the world. One against ten, the Lone Ranger
hit the most hated symbol of Jewish rule in Palestine, a checkpost,
where bored, overfed, sadistic Israeli soldiers daily
humiliated, beat and often murdered local people.
Just a day before the battle, the soldiers committed probably the most
revolting and cowardly act of cruelty. A Palestinian
woman on her way to give birth came to the checkpost, accompanied by
her husband. The soldiers let her through and then
opened fire. Her husband was killed; the pregnant woman was wounded
and gave birth in the hospital. The soldiers were not
reprimanded, but the Army ‘expressed regrets’ to the survivors.
Israeli Army’s main concern is to keep the local population vulnerable
and unable to defend itself. Soldiers got used to kill
unarmed civilians. Their preferred victims are children; the weapon
of choice is a long range high velocity sharp-shooter rifle.
Their idea of entertainment was witnessed by an expert on ‘the dark
side of the [Israel Defence] Force’, the chief of New
York Times Middle East bureau, Chris Hedges: they pour abuse at children
of the refugee camp and shot and maim them as
they approach the deadly trap[ii].
Still, the shooting of the pregnant woman was a deed as fateful as the
Biblical slaughter of the Levite’s concubine. The Lord
God of Palestine noticed the plight of His sons. The evil deeds of
Zionist soldiers had to be punished. The curse promised by
Lord to the misbehaving children of Israel (Deut. 28) fell on their
heads. Whatever will be discovered by the military
commission of enquiry, this is the most likely explanation of the event.
He Who gave victory to young shepherd David against
Goliath, granted victory to the lone warrior in Wadi Haramiyeh.
The surprise attack on the checkpost dealt a deadly blow to the
psychotic Israeli superiority complex. Cowards and sadists
are unable to cope with a defeat, they respond by homicidal rage. That
is why the Army began an all-out assault on Palestinian
towns and villages. As I write, soldiers shoot at ambulances that try
to remove wounded. The US jets with Israeli pilots bomb
the school for blind in Gaza. Crack troops of Golani division accompanied
by tanks storm the Tul Karem refugee camps. They
plan to repeat the massacre of Sabra and Shatila, the previous feat
of General Sharon. As a manual, they use the Waffen-SS
commander’s memoir of reducing the Warsaw ghetto. They are excited
by extremely low casualties of Wermacht in 1943, and
hope to repeat their feat while crushing the Palestinians[iii].
Sharon surpassed Hitler: the German dictator carefully avoided giving
the orders to kill Jews, the Jewish ruler unabashedly
called to kill the Goyiim on the TV in prime time. While many Germans
were disgusted by the Nazis and crossed the lines, and
served in the Allied armies against the Third Reich, the Jews still
hesitate to break the bond of false loyalty to their Third
Malkuth. Israelis of conscience refuse to participate directly in the
ethnic cleansing. It is very good but it is not enough. We
should follow the example of Ernst Thaelmann and Joe Slovo, cross the
lines, and join the Palestinian fighters on the barricades
of Gaza and Tul Karem. In the British newspaper, the Guardian[iv],
Jonathan Freedland called the Israeli protesters, ‘heroes’.
I reserve this title for the marksman from the Brigands’ Defile.
II
Sometime ago I described the war in Palestine as a ‘creeping genocide’.
Now this process speeds up. I doubt it could be
different, as the Jewish paradigm of necessity causes genocide and
transfer of population. Whenever this paradigm raises,
genocide and transfer follows. The predominantly Jewish governments
of post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia carried out
genocidal transfers of ethnic German groups in 1945. Heavily Jewish
government of revolutionary Hungary in 1919 massacred
its opponents on a huge scale. Jews were prominent in Ataturk’s government
when the Greeks were massacred in Smyrna.
This paradigm does not need ethnic Jews: Nazi Germany applied its racist
ideas against Jews by using the Judaic paradigm of
racial purity and superiority.
There is a difference: since 1945, Germans atone for committed atrocities.
Their remorse broke their will. But there is little
remorse among the Jews for the transfers and massacres. John Sack,
an American Jewish writer, described Jewish
participation in the post-1945 atrocities in his book An Eye for an
Eye. This publication could become a beginning of a
catharsis, of a deep regret and remorse. Instead, the book was banned
and Sack became a non-person. Strange behaviour of
Benny Morris, the Israeli ‘New Historian’, bewildered many friends:
how come the man who described the Palestinian
Holocaust of 1948, al- Naqbah, became a spokesman against the Palestinian
cause? There was no reason to wonder: killing
and transferring the Gentiles is not a cause to regret according to
the Jewish paradigm of superiority.
It is not strange that this archaic paradigm became so prominent in
the Jewish state. A few days ago, Israeli TV carried out a
lively discussion on advantages of transfer. Not everybody supported
the notion, but the transfer supporters were not
ostracised. They sat and called for mass murder and expulsion with
smug smiles, citing the previous transfers as a proof of their
legitimacy. The most frightening piece of today’s news was the news
as broadcasted by Israel and slavishly repeated by CNN
and Jewish-owned media elsewhere. The leading item referred to death
of an Israeli sergeant, followed by a casual mentioning
of fifty killed Palestinians.
How can it be? Israelis are not too bad, nor are other Jews. Even Sharon
looks like a huggable teddy bear, said General Zinni.
How our basically nice folk are able to commit horrible crimes and
still remain rather nice? This paradox is rooted in an artificial
chasm between a Jew and a non-Jew in the Jewish mind. In the chain
of ‘Jew – Gentile – animal’ the difference between the
first two items is much bigger than the difference between the second
and third, postulated Taniya, a compendium of traditional
Jewish teaching. This notion sits in the subconscious levels of many
Jews, good and bad alike.
While evil Jews of Sharon’s kin slaughter Gentiles without slightest
remorse, many good Jews object to Sharon’s actions as
they would object to cruel treatment of animals. Actually, on the walls
of Tel Aviv houses there are more posters protesting
inhuman feeding of geese than deploring mass murder of Goyiim.
Talmud preaches compassion to animals, as we can learn from the following
fable. A sheep on the way to the butcher tried to
find a refuge with the Rabbi Judah the Prince, but he said that it
is normal for a sheep to be slaughtered. As he had no mercy
for the sheep, God withdrew his mercy from him, and the holy Rabbi
suffered for many years of kidney disease. Years later he
prevented killing of wasps, and this sign of compassion made God to
reverse His judgment. But there is a profound lack of
compassion towards non-Jews. They are frequently compared to animals,
but while there is a duty to save an endangered
animal, there is no obligation to save a Gentile. This paradox of compassion
to animals and lack of feeling towards Gentiles
causes many abnormalities of Jewish outlook.
Despite good feeling towards animals, people do not hesitate to sell
them, slaughter them, separate them and move them
whenever it is deemed necessary. We do not consider it a sin or an
objectionable behaviour. Lady Macbeth lost her sleep
because of the shed blood, but a person with a traditional Jewish outlook
would not feel bad at all. He would remain his
cheerful self, after killing Palestinian peasants in Kafr Kassem in
1956, or Egyptian POWs in 1967, or indeed, Russian and
Hungarian gentry in 1920, Germans and Poles in 1945, Iraqis and Afghanis
in 2002.
Such a person would not leave an impression of homicidal mania, because
he would consider himself a perfectly sound man. I
have met many professional killers and torturers in Israel, and none
of them have experienced pangs of conscience. An old
judge of the High Court, Moshe Landoi, permitted ‘moderate’ torture
of detained Goyiim, but their cries did not disturb his
sleep. He is still honoured by his colleagues and the media. In an
interview, a Shabak official Ehud Yatom boasted he smashed
a Palestinian prisoner’s head with a stone[v]. He could not comprehend
why somebody would find it objectionable, and as a
matter of fact, when his carrier suffered a minor setback, he was supported
by many MPs and by Israeli public.
This deep conviction in one’s own righteousness makes us Jews so unusual.
It also makes the job of good Jews more difficult.
We do not cause enough annoyance. Jewish Nazis are quite tolerant towards
Jewish liberals: the parties have a strained but
comfortable relationship of a hunter and vegetarian, not a hunter and
a hunted one. Rare Jewish radicals found on the
al-Awdah and suchlike groups break the complacent mould when they reject
the very idea of a Jewish state and of the eternal
People of Israel.
The peculiar feeling towards a non-Jew is manifested in the Jewish endogamy,
tradition of marriage within the creed. In
Talmud, marriage to a Gentile equals bestiality. Even in 20th century,
the Jewish writer Sholom Aleichem describes his good
Jew, Tevie the Milkman (the Fiddler on the Roof), doing full mourning
rites for his daughter who have been married to a
Gentile. Just last year, Mortimer Zuckerman, the owner of many American
newspapers, divorced his Gentile wife in order to
be elevated to the top of the US Jewish community. Jews, who married
outside the creed usually break with the organised
Jewry, part with racism and join the human race.
Children of mixed marriages are often misled as to their status vis-Þ-vis
the Jewish community. Whatever they are being told
by their well-meaning parents, they are often considered as impure
bastards and unfit for important positions in the community.
The community will use them, abuse them and discard them. This pattern
is seen in Israel, where the children of mixed
marriages serve in the army but are buried outside the fence if they
die for the Jewish state. It would be better for them, while
having a moderate interest in their origin, to throw their lot with
the folks that will accept them fully.
The present rise of the Jewish paradigm is not the first one. It is
similar to Freddy of the Elm Street Horror movie: whenever
this concept materializes, it causes genocide. Biblical total genocide
of Joshua served as a model for genocidal Hasmoneans,
mass murders of Bar Kochba led to slaughter of gentiles in Yemen and
Palestine, Cyprus and Alexandria. They were exceeded
by large scale genocide practiced by the Jewish rulers of Khazaria.
The genocide of Palestinians will not be forgotten and it will
cause the genocide of Jews. That is why I believe the bloodthirsty
spectre of a Jewish state should be laid to rest.
We can offer a differing paradigm, that of equality. After all, the
real chasm is not between the Arab and the Jew; it is between
ZioNazis and the rest of us. Present Israeli leaders committed horrible
war crimes and lost the last vestige of their legitimacy.
There is an urgent need to establish a new legitimate leadership for
the whole of Palestine, following the example of South
African ANC, a leadership comprising all religious and ethnic communities
of Palestine, a leadership that will call the citizens to
take arms against the bloody dictator Sharon.
[i] See my article Doubt and Certainty
[ii] It was published in Harpers Magazine, October 2001, http://www.harpers.org/online/gaza_diary/?pg=1
[iii] Haaretz 27.1.02
[iv] Guardian 6.3.02
[v] Shin Bet Murders JOHN DANISZEWSKI, Confession of a Killing in Cold Blood Chills
Israel; Mideast: The embattled Shin Bet security service faces new criticism as
agent describes 1984 deaths of prisoners.; Home Edition., Los Angeles Times,
07-27-1996, pp A-1. top of page
Israel Shamir is an Israeli journalist based in Jaffa. His articles
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