    Curse Or Blessing?

    (a chapter from the Pardes)

    by Israel Shamir

    In the sandy and dusty Negev hills, the vast arid area in the South of
    the Holy Land, just below the Roman-built Scorpio Pass, on the edge of
    Arava Valley, half-way from Jerusalem to Eilat and from Gaza to Petra,
    there is a venerable and venerated thousand-year old shizef tree. Under
    its eternally-green spreading and leafy boughs, there was once an
    abundant spring of water, called En-Hazeva in the Bible, and Ain-Husub
    in modern Arabic. Its gushing waters attracted caravans of Nabatean
    traders carrying myrrh and frankincense from Arabia Felix to
    Mediterranean, Israelites of old dwelt next to it, Edomites built a
    small temple on the hill above, and the Romans erected a bath house. In
    modern times, many Bedouin shepherds, children of Abraham, wandered with
    their flocks to its blessed stream and swore their oaths at the tree in
    its deep and cool shadow.

    It is the Promised Land's border, home to the pastoral figure of the
    shepherd with his lamb on his shoulders. Lean and sturdy in white loose
    clothes, with a noble weather-bitten face in the white frame of his
    headdress girdled by black knitted string, a rolled cigarette of
    home-grown weed in his rough hands, the Arab feels himself in the bare
    vastness of desert as much at home as you on your High Street. Always
    relaxed and friendly, he is a pleasure to meet. Many times, wandering in
    the desert I came across a Bedouin black tent and was enlivened by their
    maramiye tea, forever warming in a big aluminium kettle on the amber
    coals.

    The stars, huge shaggy desert stars above their camp fire were so much
    more impressive and moving than the flat TV screen we are doomed to
    stare at. Electricity, this doubtful blessing, has given us the pleasure
    of reading books at night, but has stolen the stars; it is easier to
    turn on electric light than to lit a fire, but the Arab has a live
    warmth of fire in addition to light for the same effort. For settled
    folk, walls stop the wind, but block the view; but the Arab has the live
    view of virgin nature untouched. Roofs protect us from sun and rain, but
    the Arab has this high heaven to remind him of God.

    From afar, all inhabitants of the Middle East are 'Arabs', but here,
    this name belongs exclusively to the Bedouin. In the beautiful mosaic of
    Palestine, the Arab shepherds, the Fellah peasants, and the city
    burghers are as distinct as basic colours; all very good and different.
    The Fellah has his green fingers; he makes almonds blossom and olive to
    give fruit; he builds terraces and stone houses. The city people live
    amidst great churches and mosques of Palestine; the learning and the
    trade are done by them. The Arabs are different from settled folk, for
    they are exposed to elements; washed by rain, warmed by sun, purged by
    wind, they are an integral part of nature. T.E. Lawrence was in love
    with them, and thought the Jews would protect the Bedouins from the
    Fellahs and city folk. For this reason he supported the Balfour
    declaration and the Jewish colonisation of Palestine.

    Ain Husub is a good place to open the New Scofield Reference Bible
    (Oxford 1967 and subsequent editions), a vast Jewish-inspired enterprise
    popular with simple-minded American preachers, rather a Talmud, a vast
    set of 'commentaries' and 'footnotes' upon the Bible text. Its editors
    write:

    "there is a promise of blessing upon those individuals and Nations who
    bless Abram's descendants, and a curse laid upon those who persecute the
    Jews[4]. It has invariably fared ill with the people who have persecuted
    the Jew, well with those who have protected him".

    Let us check whether it fared well with the people who have protected
    the Jew, just here, in Ain Husub. With Israel's unilateral declaration
    of independence in 1948, the Jews drove the Bedouins out of Arava Valley
    into Jordan, Sinai and Gaza Strip. Only one family remained near the
    spring of Ain Husub, the family of Ali Abu el Mesk Amrani whose father
    'protected the Jew': he helped the Zionist soldiers to find the way
    south to Eilat in 1949. As a reward, he was allowed to stay on the land
    of his ancestors near the great old tree and abundant spring. But not
    for long: in 1960's, the Jewish settlers came to Arava. They wanted to
    use its warm climate to create profitable agriculture for export to
    Europe. The soil was poor, so they took over the Jordanian lands across
    the border. The work was hard, so they brought in Thai workers. Their
    ideas of agriculture were developed in Europe with its plentiful water,
    so they drilled deep wells, and sucked out the juice of the land. In
    1964 the ancient spring of Ain Husub dried up; in a few years all 26
    small springs that once supplied Ali's lambs with water were dry and
    dead.

    After losing his livelihood, Ali decided to build a house and to switch
    to modern way of life. But he was not allowed to: the authorities that
    permitted Jewish settlers to build their villas, forbade it to Ali the
    Goy. He and his family remained living in his torn tents, near the
    dried-up spring of Ain Husub, near the prosperous villas of the Jewish
    settlers, near small shantytown called Bangkok for Thai labourers. Here
    we may forsake post-modern multiculturalism, the anti-hate,
    no-offence-given approach proclaiming the equal value of all religions,
    and answer the question who is right, which model of the universe is
    better: Jewish or Christian.

    Indeed, the Jewish universe is good for the Jews, but it is a curse for
    others. The Church had it right: their blessing became curse, and
    whoever blesses them is cursed; as Americans experience now on their own
    skin. Jewish dominance is not a good sign for the ordinary people, and
    it has been tried many times.

    In Eastern Europe, times of Jewish dominance were the worst experienced
    by the ordinary people. Post-Revolutionary Russia experienced the reign
    of terror in 1920's, destruction of its churches, the great famine in
    Ukraine, and the massive uprooting of peasants. They did not mean harm,
    my Jewish grandfathers, they weren't evil monsters. Like a boy who pulls
    the goldfish out of the bowl so they will enjoy sunshine, Jews meant
    well. They wanted to turn Russia into a modern efficient country without
    churches, without Dostoyevsky 'the antisemite', without its primitive
    native culture.

    And in the US, as Jewish influence has grown steadily since 1968, the
    lives of ordinary people has worsened and the social gaps has grown
    manifold.

    A right-wing American Business Week, in an article titled "Waking Up
    From the American Dream", reported that between 1973 and 2000 the
    average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers
    actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent
    rose by 148 percent, the income of the top 0.1 percent rose by 343
    percent and the income of the top 0.01 percent rose 599 percent. Upward
    mobility shrunk from 25% to 10%, and very few children of the lower
    class are making their way to even moderate affluence. Paul Krugman
    writes in the Nation[7] that America creates a caste society, where low
    position of ordinary Americans is entrenched by cuts in education and
    health, and by shifting the tax burden to workers away from the rich and
    sophisticated.

    This tendency is strong in the Jewish state, where stock market profits,
    and profits from real estate are not taxed at all in many cases, while
    the labour is taxed at full capacity. It is not a coincidence: the Jews
    traditionally despise labour and workers, and the rise of the Jewish
    church has had severe repercussions for ordinary working people. In the
    State of Israel, the question 'curse or blessing' is really a
    no-brainer. The native Gentiles of the Holy Land suffer from destruction
    of their country; their olive trees are uprooted, their income is a
    fraction of the Jewish income, while they are locked up behind the great
    Sharon's Wall. Ordinary Israelis of a working sort are indebted and
    survive with difficulty in the new economic climate.

    An Israeli author, Ran HaCohen wrote in Antiwar.com: "It is high time to
    say it out loud: In the entire course of Jewish history, since the
    Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC, there has never been an era
    blessed with less antisemitism than ours. There has never been a better
    time for Jews to live in than our own." I agree. But is not it the high
    time to say it out loud: A good time for the Jews is not a good time for
    the rest of mankind. Since 1968, the Jews have it better and better,
    while ordinary people have it worse and worse.

    Thus we have found an answer to the question: the blessing of the Jews
    is a curse for others, and therefore the Jews are not the blessed
    Israel. A Jewish theologian from New York, Saadiya Grama, put it
    succinctly: "Jewish successes in the world are completely contingent
    upon the failure of all other peoples. Only when the gentiles face total
    catastrophe do the Jews experience good fortune."[8] His book was
    rightly condemned as racist, for he claimed: "The difference between the
    people of Israel and the nations of the world is an essential one. The
    Jew by his source and in his very essence is entirely good. The goy, by
    his source and in his very essence is completely evil. This is not
    simply a matter of religious distinction, but rather of two completely
    different species."

    Grama said explicitly and bluntly what many other Jews - from Lubavitch
    Hassids to Matti Golan - think. More importantly, it is a true
    presentation of the Jewish theological paradigm, cleansed of PR lies and
    dissimulation. It would be objectively true even if no Jew were to
    express or even consciously entertain such thoughts. In the same way,
    America was separated from Europe by the Atlantic even when its
    existence was not known to the Europeans.