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By Israel Shamir
12-15-1
I...took [the] train homewards, to Jaffa. The train carried a few Africans,
probably illegal immigrants judging by their shy looks. A Romanian building
team was gulping beer and burping loudly. They were imported from their
impoverished East European land to build the houses for immigrants, as the Jews
do not want to be employed in construction in Israel as well as in California.
A Jewish Israeli lawyer in black yarmulke leafed papers in his semi-opened
briefcase. A blond and armed Israeli soldier talked Ukrainian with its
fricative h's to his corpulent girlfriend. He extolled his own heroic fight
against [the} multitude of Arab terrorists under her admiring eyes. A group of
Moroccans discussed the closure of Acre steel plant and their slim chances to
find another work. The crisis is deepening, one of them said, it is as bad as
in 1966.
The train rode through Haifa, and I thought of hundreds of thousands, maybe
millions of Americans, Jews and Christian Zionists, who lobby, pray, support
and pay - no, not for the Jewish state built on the ruins of Palestine. It
would be bad enough; but reality is worse. I thought of millions of
Palestinians, rotting in refugee camps and jails, dispossessed, expelled - not
by the monster of evil occupation and land grabbing, but by something worse -
by a ghost.
The Jewish state is a virtual state that quickly loses all remaining connection
to reality. This ghost of a state kills people and collects money in America;
it continues some nefarious existence, like the legal term, 'estate of the
deceased'. Its fields are worked by imported guest workers, guarded by imported
Russians and Ethiopians, explained by Israeli professors teaching forever in
American universities and by brave generals on the lookout for a big shake. The
unemployment grows daily, vital services are on strike; the tourist industry
collapsed, hotels are boarded up and other branches of national economy are
close to collapse. Israelis buy flats in Florida and Prague, while houses in
Israel could not be sold. Sharon's desire to punish Palestinians was similar to
punishing one's own left hand: Palestinians and Israelis are intertwined and
integrated, and this separation kills the economy of both.
From far away America, Israel looks like a giant, a nuclear state, a great
friend of the United States, a Jewish state that is a source of pride for
American Jews. A visitor leaves our shores with a strong feeling of our
identity and prosperity. Only we, permanent residents, know that it is a
cardboard sham. Israel is collapsing, as its active citizens emigrate in
despair, while generals complete the destruction of the country. A cruel fate
befalls the native Palestinians: a ghost kills them, a spiritless body walking
in Zombie-like trance the corridors of the Congress and the deserts of [the]
Middle East.
For the sake of this spectre, important American Jews squeeze every penny from
their employees and countrymen, cut down on pensions to old and assistance for
children, reduce the health and education budget, dry up help to Africa and
Latin America, build improbable coalitions with notorious racists of Pat
Robertson's kind, demand destruction of Iraq, bless [the] bombing of Afghani
refugees, keep Afro-Americans in their ghettos, undermine their host society,
making enemies to themselves and to America. These deeds are vile enough, but
they are useless as well. [The] Zionist experiment practically collapsed. It
can run for many years to come on [a] life-supporting machine, as a brain-dead
vegetable. It can kill people, maybe even start [a] world war. It cannot become
alive.
The Jewish state of Israel is a state of mind; it is but a projection of the
American Jewish mind. Worries and problems it articulates are American Jewish
problems. For Israeli 'Jews', there is no need of segregation, of war, of
subjugation of natives. We eat no bagels with lox, speak no Yiddish, read no
Saul Bellow or Sholom Aleichem, and avoid synagogues. We prefer Arab food and
Greek music. My neighbourhood has seven pork butchers to a kosher one. Forty
per cent of Tel Aviv weddings are done outside [the] Jewish framework: young
Israelis prefer to go to Cyprus to get married, just to avoid contact with
Rabbis. Tel Aviv is the gays' capital of [the] Middle East, though according to
Jewish law, gays should be exterminated. If American Jews would not bribe
Israelis on a large scale, we would just forget about the Diaspora and dissolve
into the hospitable Middle East. If they continue to bankroll us, we shall
oblige them with a small show of Jewishness.
We are master-sellers of illusion, and as long as there are buyers, we shall
provide. In 1946, a group of dedicated men from all over the world came to
Palestine under the aegis of the UN. They were sent to prepare the ground for
[the] partition of the land. Among other places, they came to the southernmost
kibbutz Revivim in the arid Negev, and came across a wonderful flowerbed with
roses, anemones, and violets in front of the kibbutz office. In their report,
the members of the delegation expressed their amazement and stated, 'Jews make
the desert bloom, let them have Negev'.
As they left, the kibbutz youngsters went out and pulled the flowers out of
[the] sand: they [had] bought fresh flowers [the] same morning on the Jaffa
market and [had] planted them as props for the duration of the visit. This
small outlay transferred Negev with its two hundred thousand Palestinians to
the Jewish state. [The] Majority of them were expelled across the newly drawn
border, to the camps of Gaza or Jordan. It was cruel and useless: even now,
fifty years later, Negev south of Beersheba has [a] smaller population than in
1948.
In order to populate depopulated lands, Mossad broke and terrorised [the]
Jewish communities of North Africa. The Jews were brought in, sprayed with DDT
lice-killer and placed into refugee camps that soon became towns of Netivot,
Dimona, Yerucham. They are still there, in the towns of unemployment and
misery, drawing social benefits and probably disliking Ashkenazi Jews as much
as anybody could. Not in vain, they write 'Ashkenazim to Auschwitz' on the
walls of their towns.
A few weeks before the Intifadah, Israeli establishment imprisoned [a] hugely
popular leader of Oriental Jews, Rabbi Arie Deri. Tens of thousands of
Moroccans gathered at the gates of the jail demanding his release. Intifada
saved the skins of Ashkenazi Jews from the civil war, but not forever.
Thus the conjuring tricks of Revivim, conquest of Negev, expulsion of
Palestinians, destruction of Moroccan Jewish community succeeded separately and
failed altogether. Zionist leaders dreamed to make Palestine as Jewish as
England is English. They failed. Palestine is Jewish as Jamaica is English.
The land of Palestine is being ruined now, in front of our eyes. Its beautiful
old villages are bombed to oblivion; churches are emptied of their flock;
olives are uprooted. Such ruin did not befall the land since the Assyrian
invasion 2700 years ago. Nothing could comfort us in [the] face of this great
destruction, and certainly [the] people connected to it - whether Israeli
killers or their American Jewish supporters - will be damned forever.
Still, a wry irony of history will remain as a footnote in the books of [the]
future: the Jewish leadership committed these crimes in vain, and received no
profit out of it. Even if the last Palestinian would be crucified on the hill
of Golgotha, even that would not bring to life the virtual Jewish state of
Israel.
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Israel Shamir is an Israeli writer and journalist living in Jaffa. His other
articles could be found on his site, www.israelshamir.com This article can be
freely transmitted and published in electronic media; hard copy publications
must ask for permission at Shamir@israelshamir.com
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