Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 09:55:27 -0800 (PST)
Subject: An article by Israel Shamir


This article (offered here in English translation)
appeared in the
Russian
Israeli weekly RI one month ago, and was reprinted
since then by
numerous
newspapers and Internet publications in Russia and in
Russian-Israel.
It is still a subject for a lively debate in the local
Russian 
community

as well as in Russia.

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.



ACID TEST FAILED

Israel Shamir

Among the colourful revellers of Allenby street, in
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.

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
the
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 the
foreign soil.

Our Jewish army murders civilians, demolishes houses,
starves millions
and
imposes the siege on the Palestinian villages. Our
crimes 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 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 13000
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 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 complaints of Jews in the Diaspora
deserve to be
re-written in the light of the events. We did not
fought 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 pogrom
per se. The Jews of
Upper Nazareth committed a pogrom of Gentiles in
Nazareth, but no
pogromchik was tried. Police helped them by murdering
few of 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, 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.
Last weeks in
Israel,
300 were killed and many thousands wounded. After the
pogrom in Tsarist
Russia, all writers and intelligentsia condemned the
perpetrators. In
the
Jewish state, hardly few dozens gathered on the
demonstration in Tel
Aviv,
while the Hebrew Writers Union supported the pogrom of
Gentiles.

In 1991, the majority of the Russian Jews took the
stand against
communism
and for the private ownership. They actually had in
mind Jewish private
property, as we confiscate the Gentile property with
greatest 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 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 try
to
save the 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 the 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 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 ghetto while we were pushed into a
ghetto. Now the most
liberal Jewish plan calls for creation of a few
Gentile ghetto 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 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 
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 that the
internationalist upbringing in the Soviet Union could
not withstand the
poison of 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. 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.

 

Internet site www.welcome.to/shamir


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