       More trouble around Shamir

       In a week or so we shall have a sad commemoration of Deir Yassin
       Massacre, and as an advisor to the Deir Yassin Remembered (DYR) I call
       upon you to take part in it, wherever you are. You can check the place
       and time with Prof Dan McGowan mcgowan@hws.edu or Paul Eisen
       dyr@eisen.demon.co.uk or on their site www.DeirYassin.org . This good
       organisation was heavily attacked by usual suspects because of electing
       me as their adviser, a purely nominal position. A man who made his name
       by besmirching me, Ali Abunima, ran a vicious campaign against DYR and
       tried (with help of an Omar Fayez, another renegade Palestinian) to
       strike DYR out of the roll of tax exempt bodies in the US. Abunima, an
       American of Palestinian-Jordanian extraction, an honorary
       Jew-for-justice, apparently believes that the pocket is the most
       precious and vulnerable place of a man. But it was not all: some English
       Jewish activists from Roland Rance milieu (see my Not Cricket article on
       my website) wrote a letter calling to disband DYR if they dare to have
       me. (Their letter is at the bottom of this email, as well as my reply).
       Here is a brave response of Paul Eisen, the London director of DYR,
       where he points out some fallacies of peace-loving Jewish activists.

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------

    From Paul Eisen, DYR London

    Dear all

    Regarding Israel Shamir and Deir Yassin Remembered:

    Israel Shamir is an extraordinary thinker and writer and an outstanding
    and tireless supporter of Palestinian rights. He also has severe
    criticisms to make of the way Jews and Jewish organisations are
    currently behaving and have behaved in the past. Shamir has also
    proposed the existence of what he would term a Jewish "spirit" or
    "paradigm" (which incidentally is by no means confined only to those who
    identify themselves as Jewish) which, if unchecked and unbalanced can
    lead to supremacism.

    Israel Shamir has never been guilty of violence nor has he ever
    advocated violence. He has never discriminated against anyone, nor has
    he ever advocated discriminating against anyone. Nor has he ever
    advocated anyone the right to free speech, or to a fair hearing.

    I like Shamir enormously, always find him stimulating and informative
    and I agree with a lot, though not all, of what he says and writes.

    Shamir is in full agreement with the spirit and meaning of Deir Yassin,
    he has contributed enormously to Deir Yassin Remembered and is an
    honoured member of the Deir Yassin Remembered Board of Advisers.

    Regarding my feelings about my fellow Jews and Deir Yassin remembrance,
    these were perfectly well expressed in the piece below which I wrote a
    while back.

    If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to get in
    touch

    Paul Eisen

     Deir Yassin Remembered

     In Sight of Yad Vashem….

     Jews and Deir Yassin Remembrance

     Paul Eisen

      "The central part of Deir Yassin is a cluster of buildings now used as a
      mental hospital. To the east lies the industrial area of Givat Shaul; to
      the north lies Har Hamenuchot (the Jewish cemetery), to the west, built
      into the side of the mountain on which Deir Yassin is located is Har
      Nof, a new settlement of orthodox Jews. To the south is a steep valley
      terraced and containing part of the Jerusalem Forest. On the other side
      of that valley, roughly a mile and a half from Deir Yassin and in clear
      view of it, are Mount Herzl and Yad Vashem. "
                                        --Dan McGowan "Remembering Deir Yassin"

     Deir Yassin is as important a part of Jewish as it is of Palestinian
     history. Deir Yassin, coming in April 1948, just three years after the
     liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945, marks a Jewish transition from
     enslavement to empowerment and from abused to abuser. Can there ever
     have been such a remarkable shift, over such a short period, in the
     history of a people? Deir Yassin also signalled the ethnic cleansing of
     750,000 Palestinians leading to their eventual dispossession and exile
     and was just one example of a conscious and premeditated plan to destroy
     the Palestinians as a people in their own homeland. For the fifty-odd
     years since the establishment of the state of Israel, successive Israeli
     governments whether Labour or Likud, and whether by force as at Deir
     Yassin, or by chicanery as at Oslo and Camp David, have followed the
     same policy of oppressing and dispossessing Palestinians to make way for
     an exclusively Jewish state. Even now, when Israel could have peace and
     security for the asking, Israeli governments persist in their original
     intention of conquering the whole of Palestine for the use of the Jewish
     people alone. And all this was done, and is still being done, by Jews,
     for Jews and in the name of Jews.

     But should we, as Jews, feel ourselves culpable? After all, these are
     the crimes of Zionists not of Jews committed in a different place and
     time. Are we, Jews who were not there, who were not even born at the
     time, to feel responsible for these deeds? And anyway, not all Jews
     committed these crimes, so surely not all Jews need accept
     responsibility? But Zionism and the state of Israel now lie at the very
     heart of Jewish life and so many Jews have benefited from the associated
     empowerment. So many Jews, even if unaffiliated officially to Zionism,
     have still supported it in its aims. Indeed, almost the entire organised
     Jewish establishments throughout the western world, in Israel, Europe
     and North America have used their power, influence and, most
     importantly, their moral prestige to support Israel in its attempts to
     subjugate the Palestinians. And not only have they offered their support
     for these crimes. These same groups and individuals are also telling the
     rest of the world that it's not really happening, that Israel is not the
     aggressor, that Israel is not trying to destroy the Palestinian people,
     that black is white. And not only do they deny this reality, anyone who
     dares say otherwise is branded an anti-Semite and excluded from society.

     This militarization and politicisation of Jewish life, this silencing of
     dissent, this bowing down before the God of the state of Israel, is this
     the tradition that was handed down to us, and what does this leave us to
     pass on to our children? If we are really honest with ourselves, should
     we not, as suggested by Marc Ellis, replace every Torah scroll, in every
     ark, in every synagogue in the Jewish world, with a helicopter gunship?
     Because, as Ellis says, "what we do, we worship".

     That the relationship with the Palestinian people is fractured is
     self-evident, but what of the relationships within our own community and
     the relationship with our own history and tradition? Are these also not
     affected? And how does one repair a fractured relationship? As with an
     old friend whom one has offended, but to whom one has never acknowledged
     the offence, surely only the absolute truth will do.

     So, for the sake of the future of Jewish life, there can only be one
     solution - a complete and full confession that what we Jews have done to
     the Palestinian people is wrong and what we are doing to the Palestinian
     people is wrong, and, with that confession, a resolve, as far as is
     possible, to put the matter right.

     And where better to begin than at Deir Yassin - the scene of the crime
     against the Palestinian people, the place of transition from enslavement
     to empowerment and from abused to abuser? For Deir Yassin, in clear
     sight of Yad Vashem, the symbol of our own tragedy, is the symbol of the
     tragedy visited by us on another people. Where better to begin this
     process of confession and restitution? But will they come? Will Jews
     come to commemorate Deir Yassin? For the overwhelming majority, the
     answer is a resounding "no". Jews will not come to Deir Yassin. Jews
     will not confess to the Palestinian people. For most Jews, commemoration
     of Deir Yassin is tantamount to siding with the enemy, to conspiring to
     destroy Israel and the Jewish people. Buoyed up by their own propaganda
     and blinded by their sense of innocence and victimhood, most Jews will
     not join with Palestinians in commemorating Deir Yassin.

     But there is a fringe of Jews who do not take this view, Jews who do not
     share this vision of the Jewish establishments. These Jews, who
     generally make up what is known as the "Peace Camp," do not wish to see
     the complete destruction of the Palestinian people but, instead, wish to
     come to some kind of accommodation with them. These Jews, whilst also
     uneasy about coming to Deir Yassin, will at least talk about it. What of
     them? These Jews will often say, "Yes, we will join Palestinians in
     commemorating Deir Yassin when Palestinians join us in commemorating
     Maalot" or "We will remember Deir Yassin when Palestinians remember the
     more recent Sbarro Pizza Bar bombing", We then point out that we don't
     commemorate Deir Yassin because it was a massacre. (If we did, we would
     be commemorating every day of the week, every week of the year since
     there were plenty of massacres, on both sides) We commemorate because
     Deir Yassin is a symbol of the Palestinian catastrophe rather as Anne
     Frank is a symbol of the Holocaust. After all, as Anne Frank was just
     one child so Deir Yassin was just one village.

     So then these Jews say, "Okay, we shall commemorate Deir Yassin when
     Palestinians commemorate Auschwitz". To this we have to say, "Yes, but
     Palestinians didn't do Auschwitz to us; we did do Deir Yassin to them".
     These Jews also don't want to admit that what they have done to the
     Palestinians is wrong, and what they are doing to the Palestinians is
     wrong. Nor do these Jews really want to make restitution to the
     Palestinians. These Jews, just like those who flatly refuse to come to
     Deir Yassin and make no apologies, these, more moderate Jews, also want
     to assert their power. But, unlike the others, they want to keep their
     innocence as well. And this is not easy. At one time they simply told
     themselves that it had never happened, but now, largely thanks to the
     new Israeli historians, this is no longer possible. So they dress it up
     in what Professor Walid Khalidi has called "the sin of moral
     equivalence". They say, "This is not a case of one people trying to
     destroy another, of a victim and a perpetrator; this is a conflict, a
     conflict between two rights and both sides have suffered terribly. If
     only both sides would understand each other's suffering, all will be
     well." So these Jews say that they will come to Deir Yassin and, once
     there, will say to Palestinians, "Okay, we've suffered; you've suffered,
     let's talk". To which we have to say, "No, it's not we've suffered,
     you've suffered, let's talk"; it's "We've suffered and we've caused you
     to suffer; NOW let's talk". Deir Yassin is surely about peace and
     reconciliation, but the peace cannot be the peace and quiet for the
     victor to go on robbing the victims, and the reconciliation cannot be
     the reconciliation of the victims reconciling themselves with their
     victim-hood.

     But for those few Jews of conscience who do make it to our
     commemorations, for that tiny remnant who do wish to remember and to
     confess, what will they find? First, they will encounter a people and a
     narrative that they may never have met or heard before. For most Jews,
     Palestinians remain stereotyped as biblical shepherds, refugees or
     terrorists, and their story is largely unknown. To encounter the
     Palestinian community, as so many Jews did for the first time at our
     London commemorations, is to encounter a community not only human and
     diverse, but, most importantly, so very like their own.

     They will also be witness to Palestinians remembering their own tragedy.
     For many Palestinians, particularly those old enough to have been
     present at the events being remembered, Deir Yassin commemorations can
     be very emotional. Silently to accompany these people as they remember
     their tragic history is, for any Jew of conscience, a deeply moving
     experience.

     Thirdly, and so importantly, they will encounter a story of
     dispossession and exile so reminiscent of their own. For any Jew, the
     Palestinian father who was dragged out of his home in Deir Yassin, as
     re-enacted at the London 2001 commemoration, could so easily have been a
     surrendered ghetto fighter in Warsaw 1941, and that bourgeois Madame, in
     her now-bedraggled fur coat trudging the road out of Jaffa and into
     exile, was nothing if not a Berliner boarding a train for Riga in 1942.

     Finally, they will have the opportunity and the privilege to say, loud
     and clear, with no ifs and buts, "what we have done to the Palestinian
     people is wrong and what we are doing to the Palestinian people is
     wrong. Let us now work together to put it right."

     Paul Eisen
     dyr@eisen.demon.co.uk
     January 2003
     Paul Eisen is the London-based director of Deir Yassin Remembered

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------

       -----Original Message-----

       From Charlie Pottins

       To Asaf, friends in Israel, Roland Rance et al

       Dear Asaf, and comrades,

       Knowing your work with the Workers Advice Centre, I apologise for
       troubling you with another matter, but it concerns us as communists and
       peace activists. I expect you are familiar with the organisation Dir
       Yassin Remembered? When I first heard of it a few years ago, I thought
       its stated aims were highly commendable and noble.

       I wrote to them in support, and when they appointed a British
       representative, Paul Eisen, I arranged for him to speak at a Jewish
       Socialists' Group meeting in London.

       I remain fully in support of telling the truth about Dir Yassin and
       other atrocities, and of establishing a memorial. We owe it not only to
       the past but to the future, as an earnest that we are serious about
       peace and repect between peoples.

       Unfortunately, despite some impressive and successful work and no doubt
       sincere convictions, Mr.Eisen has alienated some of us by his pursuit of
       a personal religious quest and repentance for supposed collective sins,
       not just in modern times but over centuries, which is neither part of
       his remit nor useful to the cause of Dir Yassin. But that is our
       problem.

       The bigger issue, which concerns you in Israel-Palestine, is the
       presence on DYR's board of one Israel Shamir, and the circulation of his
       articles. On DYR's website and elsewhere, Shamir is described as an
       Israeli resident in Jaffa. But for over a year now he has been known as
       leading a double existence, having an address in Stockholm and using the
       name Joran Jermas. As Jermas he has a reputation in Scandinavia as an
       antisemite and conspiracy theorist.

       Under another name, Robert David, Shamir was a contributor to the
       Russian magazine Zavtra, which is a Russian nationalist and fascist
       journal whose editor Pokhrasov hosted a visit to Russia by former Ku
       Klux Klan leader David Duke. Far from denying such connections Shamir
       has himself boasted of his "friend Martin Webster" - the former National
       Front leader in Britain and a vicious racist. He greeted the votes for
       Jean Marie Le Pen in France as a blow to Jewish influence. Evidently his
       pretence at concern for Arabs in Palestine does not extend to Arabs in
       France, who are more likely to feel the physical blows from LePen's
       supporters.

       Leading Palestinian and Arab activists in the United States decided
       after meeting Shamir and hearing his views on Jews as "Christ killers"
       and conspirators that he could only harm their cause and they wanted
       nothing to do with. Among some of us here there is debate as to whether
       Shamir is a "genuine" antisemite, who has pretended to be a Jew (before
       converting to Orthodox Christian), a clever but crazy person, or a
       really determined agent provocateur deliberately infiltrating
       pro-Palestinian circles with the aim of discrediting them. Whatever the
       truth, he is dangerous, and now the pro-Zionist propagandists have
       seized on his words and name to smear anyone associated with him. It
       seems therefore weak and irresponsible of Dir Yassin Remembered or any
       other movement charged with a decent cause to harbour this character.

       Looking at the DYR website I see the names of several people who are
       known and respected such as Hanan Ashrawi, Leah Tsemel and Roni Ben
       Efrat. I am glad they have taken up this cause, but I wish they would
       use their place as advisors to advise DYR to get rid of Shamir. I heard
       some people had already withdrawn, and I apologise if the information
       is out of date. If, for whatever hidden reason, Dir Yassin Remembered
       insists on keeping Shamir and ignoring the harm he does to the cause,
       the best thing would be to break away and establish a better, cleaner
       organisation to honour the people of Dir Yassin and the cause they
       symbolise.

       Please pass this on to Roni and anyone else it concerns - except of
       course Israel Shamir!

       Charlie Pottins

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Israel Shamir (ishamir@013.net) writes:

       Pottins forgot to mention that I am also a paedophile, holocaust denier,
       homophobe, male chauvinist pig, white supremacist, and not a real Jew.
       Sorry, this last 'accusation' was not missed.

       You should also be aware that whenever you have met me on a
       demonstration or on a street in Israel, it was only an apparition, while
       my true self was safely residing in Timbuktu, under the name of Robert
       Jermas. After this disclosure, nothing can stop you from winning the
       battle for Palestine like you did for the previous thirty years before
       the intrusion of the named Shamir.