By Israel Shamir

(based on talk given in Trondheim, Norway)

On a better day, I would use an occasion and chat with you to my heart's
content, and what could be a better occasion than presentation of my book in
the Norwegian translation. A talkative man from Jaffa, I would spin you
endless yarns of ties that unite the Holy Land and the Nordic countries,
from the Vikings to the Oslo negotiators. The Norsemen of old, your
ancestors, Vikings or Varangs, as they were called in the Middle East, were
hired by the Byzantine Emperors to serve the throne, and they would
invariably make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Jorsala in their tongue, proceed
to the River Jordan and afterwards sail to their new adventures. One of
them, the Norse king Harald Hardrada, went to Jorsala-borg, but failed to
take a dip in the waters of Jordan, and that is why he was slain at Stamford
Bridge in an aborted attempt to take over England. St Olav, your king and
national saint, who is buried a few hundred yards away in the cathedral of
Nidaros, is still venerated in Palestine, and a week ago I saw a Palestinian
peasant woman praying at the medieval wax colour wall painting of St Olav in
the Bethlehem basilica. Maybe her prayers sustain Norway, while her home is
saved by the efforts of Norse volunteers of ISM.

On a better day, I would tell you the full story of my saintly ancestor
Rabbi Jacobson who left our family house in Tiberias on the shores of the
Sea of Galilee and sailed to Trondheim, this spiritual heart of the North,
to lead the Jewish community of Norway, and of all my relations in Norway
and Sweden, and of my pilgrimage to your land of wooden churches, fiery
aquavit and deep fjords. But the days are not that good, and this yarn will
have to wait.

Yesterday, I would tell you: the Holy Land suffers probably the worst times
in centuries. It is being ruined, and its sons are being killed. Its
villages are destroyed, while its peasants are languishing in the refugee
camps of Jenin and Deheishe, or imprisoned in concentration camps of Ansar
and Ketziyot. Hundreds of children have been shot by Israeli marksmen,
thousands of trees uprooted, and springs ruined.

Maybe it would move you, and maybe not. Palestinians are being slain, you
would say. What else is new? People kill each other everywhere, from Timor
to Brazil to Bosnia to Rwanda. While feeling sorry and bla-bla-bla, why
should we care about Palestine? And I shall be first to admit that until
yesterday, this callous position made eminent sense. Only a small sect of
dedicated men and women, members of pro-Palestinian groups, carried the
torch in the desert. Now things changed, millions listen to the message, and
as I speak to you today, my distinguished friend and teacher Noam Chomsky
talks to multitudes in Gothenburg, just a few hundred miles to the south.

Why yesterday is so different from today? These beautiful days of autumn,
when the leaves turn purple and gold over dark-blue waters of your lakes,
and limpid air enhances white caps of your jagged peaks, could be last good
days we know for many years. A world war is in the making, a war that begins
in Palestine. It is August 1914 all over again, the eve of the Great War.
The World War One began in Balkans, in Bosnia. If you would say to a
Frenchman in August 1914, you and your friends will die because of Bosnia,
he would laugh at you. But in a few months after Sarajevo assassination, the
flower of French youth was slain at Verdun. It is 1914, it is 1939.

Now, as in 1939, again there is a strong will to re-shape the world, and
speeches of George W Bush vividly remind us the speeches of the German
chancellor. But who writes the speeches? Who pushes for the war? Is it
monopolies, oil and weapon interests, as some people want us to think? The
war-mongering speech of Axis of Evil, directly taken from Austin Powers (Dr
Evil and his Axis) was composed by a Zionist speechwriter David Frum,
previously a fighter against 'anti-Semitism'. Another Zionist, Wolfowitz is
the man actually in charge of the US military. A leading Zionist thinker,
Norman Podhoretz, calls for war, while oh so liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz
promotes torture as the best way to learn the truth.

 Let us examine the American plans carefully. Recently we've got a sneak
preview of their campaign. The US plans to destroy Iraq, invade Syria, break
Saudi Arabia into a few parts, separate the oil fields, pass them in the
hands of Israel, and finish off with Egypt. The news was broken gently by a
Jewish Lobby man, Laurent Murawiec, who works under aegis of the Defence
Policy Board Chairman Richard N. Perle. This hawk, a friend of Sharon, a
devoted Zionist and a suspected Israeli mole, calls for seizure of the
Arabian oil fields, transfer of Mecca and Medina unto Hashemite rule and
confiscation of Saudi assets. He represents a voice of many American Jews.
In the prestigious Jewish World Review[i], a columnist Jonah Goldberg calls:
"Baghdad must be destroyed. America should go to war with Iraq even if that
risks innocent Iraqi - and American - lives". Professor David D. Perlmutter
in LA Times[ii] is even more explicit: "I daydream - if only! If in 1948,
1956, 1967 or 1973 Israel had acted just a bit like the Third Reich, then
today Jews, not sheiks, would have that Gulf oil'. Endless abbreviations,
think tanks, institutes connected to the powerful Jewish community in the US
are interwoven into a dense spider-net around Pentagon and the White House.
And they are the moving force behind the new Drang nach Osten of President
Bush.

Let us face the unpleasant reality: the Jewish elites of the US are pushing
for the Armageddon, or in your Norse tradition, for Ragnarok, the Doomsday
war, in order to establish the Jewish state at the top of the world. It is a
plan of megalomaniac, but these megalomaniacs are in control of the only
superpower, as well as of their nuclear-powered Middle-Eastern bridgehead.

"Oh no, you say. We know Jews, a wonderful clever peaceful and pleasant
folk. It should be some mistake". Let me remind you a short story by the
American writer and poet of 19th century, Edgar Allan Poe about Germany of
his days. He depicts Germans as placid and peaceful folk, much given to
growing cabbage, playing piano, constructing clocks, smoking pipe and
talking philosophy. It is exactly the picture of Germans presented by Mark
Twain in his travelogues. This image apparently corresponded to reality, and
a German officer was a witness at my grandparents' wedding in the days of
German occupation of Minsk in 1916. Some 25 years later, my grandparents
decided to flee the advancing German army, while their Jewish neighbours
laughed at them: "you fell for the Bolshevik propaganda, there is no reason
to run away, the Germans are wonderful peaceful folk and the best friends of
Jews". Still, my grandparents took flight and were saved from the cruel
Einsatzcommando, from the Germans who did not care much about pipes and
cabbage.

People can change, and if peaceful Germans could become for a while a
walking horror of the world, so can Jews. I do sincerely hope that as the
Germans came back to their normal selves, so will the Jews, but I do not
think it will happen by itself. There is an infection and it is spreading
fast. It is caused by the inherent racism of the Jewish state. On my way to
Ben Gurion airport, I bought Haaretz, our main liberal newspaper. It
contained a dispute between our chief of staff, Buki Ayalon and our previous
Labour Prime Minister, Ehud Barak. Ayalon compared the Palestinians with
cancer growth, while the vice-chairman of Socialist International, Barak
completely disagreed: they are rather a virus, he said. This racism spread
over the Jewish communities like a forest fire. Provided the Jews are the
prominent part of the American and to lesser degree European elites, they
communicate the disease to the rest. Their newspapers and their film studios
preach racism, hatred to Muslims, Germans, French and to everybody else,
including the ordinary white working folk and the blacks of the United
States.

In your Norse tradition, an evil cunning Loki cheated the gentle but blind
Hoed and caused him to kill his brother, shining Balder, this Nordic
pre-figuration of Christ. Now, Loki again tries to cause the war between the
brothers. It is our duty and our right to refuse Loki's advices and to stop
the Ragnarok.

It can't be done without attending to Palestine. For years, I would say:
Palestine/Israel must be transformed into a democratic state, where Jews and
Palestinians will live happily ever after, as equals. But the Democratic
State wouldn't be a Jewish state, people would object. That is the best part
of it, I would say. The Jewish state is as bad as the Aryan state, and
whoever rejects the Aryan state, should reject the Jewish state, as well.
Without the Jewish state, the Jews of the US and other lands will return to
their normal life, will forget the wet dreams of the world domination and
become law-abiding citizens of their respective countries.

Until now, only our wonderful comrades, friends of Palestine, had supported
this idea. But now it becomes necessary - not only for the sake of the
Palestinians, these noble courageous and hard-working people, but for the
sake of all of us, for the sake of the world peace. There are Israelis who
would like to live in peace with their Palestinian neighbours, in peace with
churches and mosques, but we can not counteract the external forces
supporting Sharon the Evil and Peres the Cunning. Good Israelis and their
Palestinian allies can't win, unless their adversary's supply lines are cut,
as in the Thor story.

The tale hath it, Thor the Mighty came to Utgard to boast his prowess. The
gods of Utgard challenged him to drink up the Golden horn. He drunk and
drunk, but the horn had remained forever full. It was no miracle: the horn
was connected to the sea. Only by severing the umbilical tie, he could meet
the challenge and drink up the horn. If you, people of Europe, would block
the sea of external support, we, Israelis and Palestinians, will be able to
change the things on the ground and bring equality to Palestine and Israel.

The deconstruction of the Jewish state, its conversion into a state for all
its citizens would become an important cardinal point in human development.
Instead of being the pilot project of globalization, the Holy Land can
become an ideal of integration. The invaders and the local folk will merge,
as your ancestors the Normans did in East Anglia, Sicily and Normandy, as
the children of Provencal Crusaders became Palestinians in the hilly
villages of Sinjil and Gifna, while the Jews overseas will become again the
blessing of their communities, like my sainted ancestor in your marvellous
cathedral city.
 
 

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[i] Debating War Against Iraq By Jonah Goldberg -- Jewish World Review --
July 17, 2002
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/jonah.html

[ii] April 7, 2002
 
 

Israel Shamir is an Israeli journalist based in Jaffa. His articles can be
found on the site www.israelshamir.net In order to subscribe to this list or
to be removed from it, please write to info@israelshamir.net You may freely
display this article on the Web or forward it, but ask for permission in
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