    Tsunami in Gaza

    By Israel Shamir

    While the whole world had sent aid to the tsunami-hit South East Asia,
    Israel forwarded a team entrusted with unique task. Not many Israeli
    tourists were swept away by the giant waves – official death toll stands
    at three, with some twenty missing; not many comparing with hundred
    thousand Indonesians or even with three thousand Swedes. Still the
    Israeli teams were very active on the ground. The highly trained experts
    led by Rabbi Meshi Zahav did not go to save trapped survivors or
    alleviate suffering of millions; their job was to save dead Jews from
    fate worse than death – that is to be buried with the goyim in the same
    grave. The Haaretz daily[1] reported: “The Israeli rescue teams in
    Thailand split up Thursday: one team worked on identifying bodies in
    Krabi, while another worked on the same task in Phuket. The Israeli
    crews - from the police and Zaka (a non-profit group that specializes in
    identifying victims of disasters) - are trying to locate dead Israelis
    before they are buried”.

    They pressed upon the Thai government to postpone the mass entombment,
    though it was necessary to prevent spread of epidemics; and Bangkok gave
    in. Every dead Jewish body should be taken to Israel, or at least buried
    separately from impure non-Jews. Witty Gilad Atzmon remarked: “the
    ‘altruistic’ Jews … are in a state of panic, as we all know, dead Jews
    are precious, they deserve a special burial. The fact that 5-10 Jews
    might be lost forever among some other 125,000 gentiles is pretty
    horrifying, I am sure you can see it.”

    This is a part and parcel of Jewish faith, the pinnacle of “The Nation
    Shall Dwell Alone” commandment – Jews are not supposed to live or to die
    with non-Jews. Their separate burial is necessary to guarantee their
    bodily resurrection when Messiah comes. A Jewish body defiled by gentile
    proximity won’t be resurrected, according to the Jews. Even irreligious
    Jews follow this separation rule without giving it a second thought.

    This squeamish attitude is particularly unpleasant: whenever the Jews
    discover that a person of doubtful Jewishness is buried among their lot
    they remove the body and dump it elsewhere. It happened to an Israeli
    citizen Teresa Angelowitz. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery; later
    on the religious authorities discovered that she was a wife of a Jew,
    but not a Jew. They exhumed her body at the dark of the night and
    re-buried on the dumping ground. It happened to many Russian soldiers
    who died defending the Jewish character of Israel and were refused the
    burial. Now, in face of the huge tragedy in South East Asia, this
    insistence of ‘not being counted among the goyim” is especially
    offensive, bordering on denial of our common humanity. What is so bad
    about Thais, French, Chinese and other people who found their death in
    the catastrophe that you can’t leave your dead lying next to them?

    This nasty exclusiveness has to be taken into account while trying to
    comprehend the long-running show of Israeli redeployment in Gaza.
    Sharon’s government wants to withdraw its troops from within the strip
    to its perimeter. Fine and good: this is a reasonable (from his point of
    view) decision: it is cheaper to keep Gaza under lock and key,
    surrounded by Israeli troops. The redeployment is not good neither bad
    for the Palestinians – the Jews will be able to kill whoever they wish
    from their bases outside the narrow strip, but this act is presented as
    an important step on the way to creation of a Palestinian state.

    Now, instead of redeployment, Israelis discuss the fate of some
    (probably two thousand) Jewish settlers in Gaza strip. Sharon wants to
    evacuate them and pay them hefty compensation; they object to
    evacuation. The whole Israeli society discusses whether they can be
    removed; how much force should be applied; whether ‘Jews may remove
    Jews’; whether the ruling of the Rabbis forbidding the evacuation takes
    precedence over the government decision.

    Nobody, but absolutely nobody is ready to consider an obvious (for a
    non-Jew) solution: remove the army and leave the settlers where they
    are. If they want to stay in Gaza, let them. Do not pay a penny for
    their removal: they are free men and women; they knew what they did when
    they accepted the lands and houses in Gaza. There are hundreds of
    American Jews who want to buy their houses, there are Palestinians who
    will be willing to buy – so there is no problem, whoever wants stays,
    whoever wants to leave sells his house and leaves. If they will be nasty
    to their neighbours, they will flee; if they will be good neighbours,
    they will flourish.

    Indeed, when the British Empire left Palestine, or India, or Africa,
    they did not evacuate their citizens by force. Whoever felt that he
    caused too much grief to the natives, left for England; whoever
    preferred to stay – stayed.

    Kenya is a good case to consider. The country had a sizeable English
    settler community; there was also very active Mau-Mau native resistance,
    much more violent than the Palestinian; still, when Kenya was granted
    independence, the settlers stayed. I have met them in the Highlands near
    Lake Rudolf: prosperous farmers, strong and sunburned, similar to
    old-style Israelis, they speak local language, are involved in local
    life. Many of them have their small airplanes and pop into Nairobi for
    an evening drink whenever they get tired from watching pink flamingos at
    the lakeside. The settlers try to be good neighbours to the native
    people – after all, the political power in hands of native Kikuyu; and
    RAF is not likely to defend them.

    This is the example for the Israeli settlers to emulate, while the
    Israeli government should not tell them what to do and where to live.
    Their settlements won’t be ‘for Jews only’. They will have native
    neighbours, not only farm hands, but native officials, native police and
    native judges – but this consideration did not stop thousands of Brits
    and French, Portuguese and Spaniards, Russians and Germans to remain in
    the newly independent countries. The evacuation discourse that brought
    Israel to the verge of civil war can’t be comprehended outside of the
    general nasty picture of Jewish exclusiveness.

    Only people who can’t bear the thought of being buried in one grave with
    a goy, can’t imagine the possibility of staying as equals without the
    army and colonial administration to enforce their superiority. Azmi
    Bishara, our MP from Nazareth, was right when he refused to support
    Sharon’s initiative; while the Labour party of Peres and Barak added
    another shameful deed to its long roll of shame when they joined
    Sharon’s government to carry on the ‘disengagement’. The case of the
    Gaza settlers may be used to undermine and destroy the “Jewish character
    of the state”. There is no reason to play into the game of Jewish
    exclusivity, whether in Thailand or in Gaza.

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    [1] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/521450.html