    note: 15-20 percent of Palestinians are Christian

    By Israel Shamir
    Date: 31-10-2000

    Among the colourful revellers of Allenby street, in crowded restaurants
    of merry-making Tel Aviv nights, a vision came to me, a vision of an
    angel in battle-dress, chalking up on a wall three words, Mene, Tekel
    ufarsin. My Angel-English on-line dictionary prompts a translation: you
    were tested and you failed the test. [those three words are the
    "handwriting on the wall" in Aramaic in Daniel 5:25-29--CHM]

    These are the darkest days for the people of Israel. They are dark, as
    the lamentations and protests of us and our fathers turned out to be as
    genuine as a three-dollar bill. In 1968, a young Jewish Russian kid, I
    wrote on the walls of my native Russian city, 'Hands off
    Czechoslovakia'. The beautiful deep voice of a Jewish Russian poet
    Alexander Galitch intoned: Citizens, our motherland is in danger, our
    tanks are on foreign soil! Some Russian Jews demonstrated on the Red
    Square against the invasion, and were beaten up by the police. We
    protested against the presence of the Russian tanks in Budapest, Prague
    and Kabul as Russian citizens who value honour above the ill-understood
    loyalty, humankind above blood ties. In the same time, Jewish American
    kids demonstrated against their country's intervention in Vietnam, while
    Jewish boys and girls in Europe fought against racism.

    Years passed by, and now our Jewish tanks are on the foreign soil. Our
    Jewish army murders civilians, demolishes houses, starves millions and
    imposes the siege on the Palestinian villages. Our crimes exceeded the
    Russian crimes committed in Chechnya and Afghanistan, the American
    crimes in Vietnam and Serb crimes in Bosnia. Surely, the Israeli
    intellectuals demonstrate en masse on our equivalent of Pennsylvania
    Avenue or Trafalgar Square, American Jews raise their voice against the
    America-armed killers of Palestinians; Russian Jews speak up for the
    human rights of the enslaved Gentiles of the Holy Land? No fear, our
    literati exalt the courage of our Jewish soldiers, venerate the steady
    hand of our Jewish snipers and glorify the immense humanity of the
    Jewish folk, who could pulverise all the Gentiles of Palestine, but
    kindly limit ourselves to a few hundred wounded and maimed a day.

    My grandfather in the Pale of Settlement complained against the
    restrictions of the free movement of Jews in the Russian Empire, while
    in our generation Anatoli Sharansky became a symbol of struggle for
    human rights. In our own country, the Gentiles are fenced into
    reservations and concentration camps that the Pale pales in comparison
    with. A Palestinian cannot go to the next village without the Jewish
    ausweis, he is forever checked by our Checkists. He can only dream of
    the sea, washing the shores of his ancestral home - we do not let
    Palestinians to pollute the Jewish purity of our beaches.

    For years, the Jews protested the discrimination in employment and
    education. In our own state we created the system of total national
    discrimination. In our state-owned Electric company, out of 13000
    employees there are six Gentiles. 0,0004%. Gentiles form forty percent
    of the population between the Jordan River and the sea, but only one out
    of four has the right to vote. There are no Gentiles in the Supreme
    Court, in the government, in Air Force, in the secret services. There is
    not even one Gentile on the board of the main Israeli Liberal newspaper,
    Haaretz.

    That is why all complaints of Jews in the Diaspora deserve to be
    re-written in the light of the events. We did not fight for the human
    rights, but for the rights of Jews. We were for the freedom of movement
    and freedom of choice - for Jews only. We spoke of the universal
    suffrage, but we meant the right of vote for Jews only. We do not mind
    occupation and invasion, as long as we invade and occupy. The sight of a
    child raising hands in front of the machine-gun-toting thug grieves us
    only if it is a Jewish child. The Gentile child can be shot at freely.

    When Bialik wrote "Devil did not invent a fit punishment for the murder
    of a child", he actually meant 'a Jewish child'. When he was horrified
    by the scenes of pogrom, he was horrified that the violence is directed
    against Jews. Otherwise, there is nothing wrong with pogrom per se. The
    Jews of Upper Nazareth committed a pogrom of Gentiles in Nazareth, but
    no pogromchik was tried. Police helped them by murdering a few of pogrom
    victims. Still worse were the pogroms of Ramallah and Beth Jallah,
    committed with the helicopter gunships and tanks.

    Tsarist Russia, 'the land of pogroms', was much hated by our
    grandfathers, and eventually destroyed by them. Still, a hundred years
    of Jewish pogroms caused fewer casualties than we murder in a week.

    The most horrible pogrom of Kishinev claimed 45 dead and 600 wounded.
    Last weeks in Israel, 300 were killed and many thousands wounded. After
    the pogrom in Tsarist Russia, all writers and intelligentsia condemned
    the perpetrators. In the Jewish state, hardly few dozens gathered at the
    demonstration in Tel Aviv, while the Hebrew Writers Union supported the
    pogrom of Gentiles.

    In 1991, the majority of the Russian Jews took the stand against
    communism and for the private ownership. They actually had in mind
    Jewish private property, as we confiscate the Gentile property with
    greatest ease. Go through the best areas of Jerusalem, Talbieh, Old
    Katamon, Greek and German Colonies, and see the marvellous palaces. They
    belonged to Gentiles, - Germans, Armenians, Greeks, British, Russians,
    Palestinians Christian and Moslem. All of them were confiscated and
    given to Jews. During last weeks, hundreds of acres of Gentile property
    were confiscated, and hundreds of Gentile houses seized or demolished.

    Just before his arrest, the richest Russian Jewish media-lord Gusinsky
    came to Israel and expressed his unlimited support. At the same time he
    asked the world to help him in his fight with the Russian authorities
    who try to save the TV from his clutches. His support of Israel proves
    that Mr Gusinsky approves confiscations on the ethnic base. He is just
    against the confiscations of the Jewish property. He is against Jews
    being arrested - the Gentiles may rot in prisons forever, as it happens
    in the Jewish state.

    In no time at all we succeeded to undermine the long-term achievements
    of Jews in the struggle for democracy, human rights and equality. What
    we did not like about the German Nazis? Their racism? Our racism is not
    less wide-spread and poisonous. The Russian language newspaper Direct
    Speech published in Jerusalem asked hundreds of Russian Jews about their
    feelings towards the Palestinians. Typical answers were: "I would kill
    all Arabs", "All Arabs must be eliminated", "Arabs must be expelled",
    "An Arab is an Arab. They have to be eliminated". I am not sure you
    would get better results in Germany in 1938. Even Nazis did not intend
    to kill their Jewish enemies until 1941. Let us put it straight, we were
    against racism as long as it was somebody else's racism. We were against
    death squads and Sonderkommando as long as they acted against us. Our
    own killers, our Jewish Sonderkommando is the object of our tender
    admiration. The Jewish state is the only place in the world possessing
    legitimate killer squads, embracing the policy of assassinations,
    practicing torture on the medieval scale. Do not worry, dear Jewish
    readers, we torture and assassinate Gentiles only.

    We were against ghetto while we were pushed into a ghetto. Now the most
    liberal Jewish plan calls for creation of a few Gentile ghettos fenced
    by barbed wire, surrounded by Jewish tanks and Jewish-owned factories at
    the fence, where the Arbeit will match the Gentiles frei. We shall give
    the ghetto full independence previously removing all sources of income
    and sustenance.

    Israelis are brainwashed from kindergarten, they are taught they belong
    to the Chosen People, who are Uber Alles. They were indoctrinated in
    belief that the Gentiles are not fully human, and therefore they can be
    killed and expropriated at will. After all, Israel fulfilled one UN
    resolution, the one that called Zionism a form of racism. What is
    upsetting that the internationalist upbringing in the Soviet Union could
    not withstand the poison of Zionist propaganda of Jewish superiority. I
    do regret the moral collapse of my own Russian community in the Holy
    Land.

    Now, as the angel wrote his fiery words, as prophets called the people
    to repent, we have the choice. We can choose the way of Nineveh, to
    repent, to return the stolen property, to give full equality to
    Gentiles, to stop discrimination and murder, and hope to be forgiven by
    God, if not for our sake, then for the sake of our cats and dogs. We can
    persist in our evil ways as the people of Sodom and wait for the flood
    of fire and burning sulphur from the angry heavens of Palestine.