    Dutch Treat

    By Israel Shamir

    On November 12, 2005, the leading Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf published
    an article Op kruistocht met de duivel by a Jewish writer Joost De Haas
    attacking me, in the good company of the Dutch PM Dries van Agt and the
    wonderful Dutch lady, a friend of Palestine Gretta Duisenberg. The last
    two were condemned for keeping in touch with me, while I was proclaimed
    guilty of being at the same congress as the US right-wing anti-war
    activist David Duke. Alas, this Talmudic construction of secondary
    impurity collapses at the first fact check. I had no honour and pleasure
    to meet with Mr van Agt or Mrs Duisenberg. As for the congress in
    Ukraine I attended, it was not organised by ‘extreme right’ but by the
    largest Ukrainian private university, well recognised by UNESCO and
    Dutch Universities. As a matter of fact, I sat at the presidium of the
    congress, but not next to David Duke, as de Haas claims, but next to the
    Palestine Ambassador in Ukraine, His Excellency Walid Zakut. Here is an
    official photo of this occasion:

    Mr Duke was just one of many participants of the congress, next to many
    writers, diplomats, members of parliament. Anyway his views are quite
    similar to those of the late Dutch politician Pym Fortuyn. However, de
    Haas had no problem meeting with Pym Fortuyn and writing about him.
    Neither was he ostracised by other Dutch politicians and media. There is
    no problem for any Dutch politician who would meet with Israeli Prime
    Minister Ariel Sharon, though he personally is guilty – not of some
    unpleasant right-wing views, but of outright war crimes, from mass
    murder in Qibie to Sabra and Shatila to siege of Beirut to massacre of
    Jenin. Thus Mr. Duke is chosen as the object of de Haas’ hate for
    something else – for his stubborn objection to the US-led war in the
    Middle East. Likewise, Mr de Haas and others of his ilk never minded Pym
    Fortuyn, for he was an obsessive Islamophobe, and it fitted into their
    plans for encouraging strife between the Christians and the Muslims in
    Europe and elsewhere.

    The rest of de Haas’ piece is equally sloppy and dishonest. He says I
    wrote about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Big deal! So did
    Umberto Eco. Writers are, and will be interested in this political
    pamphlet. In a bout of anti-Communist rage, de Haas claims that the
    Protocols were published and used in the Communist Soviet Union. It was
    the other way around! The Soviet authorities punished the possession of
    this book by heavy terms of imprisonment, and even by death. It was,
    contrary to de Haas' claims, banned in Tsarist Russia as well. So, the
    man really does not know what he writes about.

    His complaint that my writing appears on some right (and left-) wing
    sites can’t be taken seriously by anybody who ever used the Internet.
    Everything is linked in the World Wide Web, and just one step separates
    de Haas writing from mine on this or any other site. However, I do not
    mind: as a flower does not check credentials of the bee coming to
    collect its nectar, I rely upon various websites, left, right, green and
    multicoloured, to deliver my message to as many people as possible, and
    this message is: ‘there will be no peace until Jews are considered equal
    to non-Jews, in Palestine and elsewhere’. Now Jews are not equal: they
    may have nuclear weapons, while their neighbours are forbidden, they may
    travel everywhere in the whole of Palestine, while a goy has to use
    special roads. Jews are not equal in Netherlands, either: Pym Fortuyn
    was proclaimed (after his untimely death) ‘not bad a guy’ for he was
    good to Jews. Never mind what he said about the Muslims. Jews are not
    equal in neighbouring Denmark, whose Queen Margareta said recently: “We
    have to show our opposition to Islam and we have to, at times, run the
    risk of having unflattering labels placed on us”. But what about
    opposition to Judaism? One would be crucified for this very thought.

    De Haas condemns me for my objection to Judaism. It was good that
    Spinoza who had similar views did not survive to the present time. But
    Spinoza was among the first Jews who rebelled against Judaism for a good
    reason – until advent of freedom in Netherlands, even in the 14th
    century, such Jewish heretics were burned at the stake by decision of
    autonomous Jewish rabbinical authorities. Such persecution persists: in
    the Jewish state, propagation of Christianity is punishable by five
    years of jail, while outside of Israel, de Haas and others of his ilk
    are doing all they can to make the life of a Jewish heretic unbearable.

    De Haas objects to my call to my fellow Israelis to accept Christ. He
    does not even mention, nor object to, to the official plan of Israeli
    government to convert 300,000 Israeli Christians to Jewish faith within
    next five years, though this plan was made public and the Ministry of
    Immigrant Absorption received budgeted funds for it. Why is it
    permissible to spend taxpayer’s funds to remove people from the church,
    and it is forbidden to convince others to come to the Church? Alas, de
    Haas and his ilk hate the Church and Christ as much as they hate
    Muslims. Not in vain did his friend and associate Abe Foxman of the
    notorious ADL recently publish a hysterical piece on ‘excessive
    Christian influence’ in the US.

    De Haas claims I consider the Jews as ‘Christ-killers’. To the contrary,
    I wrote in Galilee Flowers, that there is no more reason to blame modern
    Jews for that crime than to blame French for killing of Joan of Ark. But
    we may disprove those of de Haas ilk who are proud of killing Christ and
    consider it their right duty well done.

    De Haas claims I called Jews ‘bacilli’. Let him quote verse and chapter
    from my writings; he won’t find it. But he will find without effort that
    our previous Prime Minister, whom he met and publicly admired, Mr Barak,
    called the native non-Jewish Palestinians a ‘virus’ in an official
    interview in the Ha'aretz newspaper, and Telegraaf did not call upon the
    Dutch prime minister to cancel his visit.

    He notes that my book Galilee Flowers (called in French The Other Face
    of Israel) was banned by a French court. This is true. I find this
    verdict of the French court a compliment for me, as I have now joined
    the great list of authors whose books were burned and banished in
    France, from Voltaire to Baudelaire, from Nabokov to Joyce, from Wilhelm
    Reich to Vladimir Lenin, and I hope to come back to the French readers
    out of this bonfire as their books did. However, I find this court
    decision extremely shameful for France, as instead of hatred and war, my
    books call for peace and equality. Not in vain, my Galilee Flowers (buy
    it from http://www.booksurge.com/product.php3?bookID=GPUB02699-00003 )
    has the subtitle “The Case for Israel and Palestine United in Love to
    Their Land.” But this dream of peace can’t be achieved until there is
    full equality, until a Muslim and a Christian gets the same treatment as
    a Jew.

    Yes, I do feel betrayed by the French court. When Spinoza was condemned
    by Rabbinical authorities, he knew that the Christian Netherlands
    wouldn’t deliver him into their tender clutches. The French court
    reverted back into the days of Pedro the Cruel who would surrender a
    Jewish heretic to the Synagogue for its quick justice. The French judges
    easily rejected the demands to ban Salman Rushdie or Oriana Fallaci in
    the name of freedom of thought. But why does this freedom stop at the
    Jewish door? Last week when I was in France, many ex-Jews who came to
    Christ met me and expressed their serious concern. Is Christianity dead?
    Is the Church dead? Is there no counterbalance to the Jewish influence?
    It is symptomatic that the attack on me, published in the day of my
    publisher’s trial by the French left-wing weekly Politis was penned by a
    Frenchman, Jean-Yves Camus, a recent convert into Judaism? Though he
    spoke at length about my baptism, he forgot to refer to his apostasy.

    De Haas makes a lot of mileage out of old hat, that I supposedly do not
    live in the Holy Land but in Sweden, and that my name is something else.
    This silly stuff was first published by the ADL-financed Expo website,
    whose ties with Israeli intelligence were made public. Then it was
    republished by its sister publication of Searchlight, which proudly
    describes itself as a ‘Jewish antifascist magazine’. Somehow this
    nonsense never made it to Israel. There, the right-wing, extremely
    nationalist daily Maariv recently published a five-full-pages-long
    expose of my modest self, which included interviews with my elderly
    mother, a prominent member of an Israeli nationalist party, and
    everybody who had ever met me. But even this hostile article did not
    lower itself to publish such obvious nonsense. In my home in Israel, I
    receive visitors daily, including those from the Netherlands; I feel
    comfortable enough, and if I am to be tried for my betrayal of the
    Jewish cause, for my belief in equality of Jew and goy, I’d rather be
    tried in Israel than in once-Christian Europe.

    As for the names I supposedly use, I shall quote the Talmud, which I
    know better than de Haas: “R. Joseph b. Judah was known as Joseph of
    Huzal and as Issi b. Gur Aryeh and as Issi b. Gamaliel and as Issi b.
    Mehalalel. What was his real name? Issi b. Akabia” (Pesachim 113b)
    Likewise, I may be known as Samir in Jordan, or Irmas in Sweden, or
    Mirosami in Japan, or Smirnov in Russia, and even as Jersma in the
    Netherlands, while my real name is Israel Adam Shamir; it is quite
    irrelevant; as irrelevant as the ‘real name’ of Leon Trotsky (Bernstein)
    or of Ariel Sharon (Schneidman) or of Andre Maurois (Wilhelm Herzog) or
    of Salman Rushdie when he was in hiding in Bienfait, Saskatchewan,
    living under an assumed name. Usually such a discussion is not
    considered comme il faut, especially referring to Israel, where even an
    ex-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps an American passport on
    another name. But apparently this game is crooked, and what is forbidden
    to one side, is permitted to the opponent.

    P.S. And here is my letter to my Dutch (and not only Dutch…) friends who
    are so permanently scared that run for cover at the first attack of the
    adversary; who had asked me to place a link or to bless their activity
    until they came to recognise that I am not a lighting rod, nor an
    insurance policy against such an attack. Then they ask me to resign, to
    remove the link or to submit to questioning. This is a letter for those
    innocents who still think that I may serve them as their pet Jew in
    order to deal with the Palestinian tragedy; here I spell out my
    disagreement with this role.

    To my Dutch friends:

    I have received the article in the Telegraaf and have written a response
    which you may attempt to publish. I have a problem, and it is not with
    de Haas' writing, but with you. He is an obvious enemy, and he considers
    me an enemy. He stands for the subjugation of Palestine, for war in
    Iraq, for the destruction of Iran, for exclusion of Islam, he is against
    the Church and Christ; and he probably curses apostates like me during
    his morning prayer as his faith demands. I really do not care about his
    views. I am upset about the weak knees of our friends. You are too
    fearful, submitting at first demand. You won’t say “boo” to a goose, let
    alone the Jewish lobby. As a result, you are forever carrying out our
    adversaries’ agenda, busily condemning the Iranian President and the
    Malaysian Prime Minister whenever they stray from the narrow path drawn
    by the enemy. Instead of condemning Israel for stopping Mohammed
    Mahathir from praying in the Al-Aksa Mosque, you object to his talk of
    Jewish power. Instead of condemning Israeli threats of bombing Iran, you
    discuss the Iranian President’s words. Instead of discussing the real
    issue of the equality of Jew and non-Jew, you ask me for my biography.
    You retreat too easily. Now you wish to sacrifice me in order to keep an
    immaculate appearance. In vain: when you show your weakness, it will be
    exploited to the full. A young Cabbalist Joseph della Reina trapped
    Satan in a magic pentagram (so sayeth a story told in Safed, in
    Galilee), and asked him to release the captive soul of Messiah. Satan
    agreed on one condition: let della Reina light a small candle in his
    honour. Reina thought of it – a small sacrifice! And lit the candle.
    Immediately Satan was free, and he threw della Reina all the way from
    Safed to Tiberias. His tomb is still shown to pious pilgrims. This is a
    lesson for you, for us all – do not bend even a little tiny bit, for
    otherwise you will end like Joseph della Reina. This is unless the enemy
    is right and you do not deserve equality.

    Israel Adam Shamir