    Death of a Martyr

    By Israel Shamir

    The great leader of Palestine, Yasser Arafat, is dead. This unique man,
    whose withered body was interned on the Eve of Eid el Fitr in a coffin
    with the holy soil of Jerusalem in the midst of his ruined fortress, was
    a symbol of struggle for Palestinian dignity. He will be forever
    remembered as a young warrior who broke the teeth of Jewish arrogance in
    the battle of Karameh, in 1968, when his fedayyin resisted the
    irresistible force of Israel and caused its first ever defeat. He will
    be remembered as a friend of Leila Haled, the man with a gun who blew up
    enemy airplanes and spoke at the UN. He will be listed among other
    warrior-saints of the century next to Che Guevara and Chapaev. He will
    be remembered also for his last stand, for the last three dreadful years
    he had spent in besieged Mukata as Sumud personified, as example of
    unconditional clinging of a native man to his soil.

    He did not run away when Israel bombed and strafed Mukata, he did not
    run away when the Jews discussed daily how should they kill him, he did
    not run away during the hard years of Intifada – he stayed with his
    people to the bitter end. Eventually he was granted glorious martyrdom
    as one of thousands Palestinians martyred in the bloody war, together
    with Abdelkader el Husseini, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and other leaders and
    warriors.

    Even his errors were errors of a good man. He believed that the enemy
    will abide by an agreement, he believed that the superpower will enforce
    the treaty they guaranteed, he believed in a possibility of carving out
    two states in his beloved Palestine. He submitted to endless
    humiliations, agreed to endless concessions to the insatiable adversary,
    but he never surrendered the Noble Sanctuary of Haram al Sharif, never
    gave up the right of return of his people to Jaffa and Haifa.

    His death of a martyr is also death of the Two-states-solution, of the
    Palestinian-state-alongside-Jewish-state mantra. Now we should
    concentrate our efforts in the only possible direction – creation of one
    democratic state for all in the whole of the Holy Land from the River to
    the Sea. We call for immediate release of Marwan Barghouthi from the
    Israeli captivity, together with thousands other prisoners-of-war. We
    call for general elections with participation of all inhabitants of
    historic Palestine, native Palestinians and Ashkenazi, Oriental and
    Russian immigrants, on basis of full equality. We call to inter the
    mortal remains of Arafat the Martyr in al Aqsa Mosque, next to
    Abdelkader al Husseini, as a guardian of the Holy Mountain. We shall
    redeem you, Arafat!

    My Russian friend and a great modern writer Alexander Prochanov wrote
    these ringing lines about the great fallen leader a few years ago, when
    the Intifada just began. They are still suitable today:

    ***

    Arafat as the Leader of Palestinians and of Russians

    By Alexander Prochanov, Zavtra weekly No: 42(359) Date: 17-10-2000

    The great nations whose haughty stalk shook the earth, who changed the
    world, revolted, populated new continents, conceived new religions, now
    are staring drowsily at their shepherds, who brought them into the sty
    of the new world order, drip dross from a table of America into their
    manger, pour the Circe’s potion of IMF, titillate them by a distant
    sight of the synthetic heifer of the American dream. A nation that dares
    to kick and pull the chain is flogged by electronic scourges of CNN; its
    skin pierced by sharp Tomahawks. The Russians forgot Pushkin’s poems and
    Stalin’s victories; Latin America does not recollect Bolivar, Sandino
    and Che Guevara.

    But in one spot, a space ray burned through the dead encapsulating shell
    of the planet. This space ray, as God’s finger, points to the people of
    Palestine. Wherever the ray reaches the earth, wherever it shines over
    Gaza, Jerusalem and Hebron, History Alive is re-created before our eyes.
    As in the days of the prophets, the people of the Holy Land pray, shoot,
    bleed, sing the songs of struggle, face the Jewish tanks, tear off their
    steely caterpillars with bare hands, stops up with their bodies the
    flaming gun mouths, demonstrate to the fuzzy emasculated world the
    meaning of words Freedom, Country, God.

    Israel is doomed. She is disgusting to the Arabs, French, Englishmen,
    even to herself. Red-hot Intifada is the fiery river, in which another
    myth of the 20th century melts and sinks to the bottom — the Zionist
    idea. According to designs of Herzl and Zhabotinsky, a small
    geopolitical monstrosity was created on the Arab lands. They have
    imposed on America and Germany the annual tribute of five billions
    dollars. They pour napalm on the mosques and transform the whole nations
    into homeless survivors and refugees. They brainwash the whole world
    with their ‘ashes of Auschwitz’.

    On the place of Israel, where the Arabs planted many fig trees and Lebanese
    cedars, they will create a National Park called The Jewish National
    Home: it will be the home of the large and pretty Hebrew-speaking
    parrot.

    Yasser Arafat is the last national leader of the turn-of-the-millennium.
    The Great Palestinian was reared by his people professing the faith of
    freedom; he erased the division between Sacred and Mundane together with
    distinction between Life and Death. God came to His people incarnated as
    the wise, fearless, tireless, incorruptible leader. He closes eyes to
    the fallen fedai, embraces the orphan, wipes tears of widow, departs
    from burning Beirut with his warriors, enters the Beast’s lair in Camp
    David, reads the incinerated Koran in Sabra and Shatila, kisses the hot
    earth of his native Palestine, walks with his olive branch and the
    Kalashnikov gun into the immortality of history.

    “Tell me, the branch of Palestine: where did you grow, where you have
    blossomed...” - asked the poet. It would reply: “I grew in the Garden of
    Eden of our Lord the God. Of my strong wood, the handgrip and the stock
    of the machinegun are made. My fiery leaves, like the drops of a Molotov
    cocktail, fly on the armor of the Israeli tanks. My blossom decorates
    the bullet-perforated banner of PLO. My fruits are sweet for the heroes
    and martyrs, sweet as Freedom... "