    Interview with Israel Shamir
    Kim Petersen
    http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m22995
    May 1, 2006

    Israel Shamir is a prominent and controversial Russian-Israeli thinker,
    writer, and translator who lives in Jaffa. Shamir brings to his
    political writing a refreshing candor, sharp insight, and inspiring
    humanity. His principled stand supporting the Palestinian refugees’
    right of return and the rebuilding of their destroyed villages led to
    his firing from the “progressive” Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Following
    Israeli attacks on Palestinians in January 2001, Shamir became dedicated
    to political writings in English.

    For the intellectual Karl Marx, the Jewish question was an “unreal
    subject.” Marx was baptized a Lutheran and married to a gentile.

    Shamir has renounced Judaism and embraced Christianity.

    He is a strong proponent of the “One Man, One Vote, One State” solution
    for a united Israel-Palestine.

    I interviewed the unflinching maverick writer Israel Shamir.

    Kim Petersen: You wrote recently that the historian David Irving, who
    the corporate media reports as being sentenced for holocaust denial, was
    sentenced for denial of “Jewish superiority.” Could you elaborate on
    this and what holocaust denial means for you?

    Israel Shamir: I wrote about it, in “For Whom The Bell Tolls,” and in
    the “Vampire Killers,” at length. No free man can agree with the
    proposition that Jewish death (and life) is more important than that of
    a goy. But the ban of Holocaust revisionism is the only legally enforced
    prohibition in our society. The Armenians were envious of this elevated
    status of Jews, and actually succeeded to protect their tragedy of 1915
    by a similar law in France. The result was tragicomic. They brought an
    important Jewish historian (and warmonger of first degree) Bernard Lewis
    to the court of Paris, and he was found guilty of denying their tragedy,
    just like David Irving. But David Irving has got three years in jail,
    and now his name is always preceded with the title “discredited” (see an
    interview with him in the Observer), while Bernard Lewis was fined one
    franc and he still appears everywhere, and his name graces various
    petitions. He was not discredited, but the Armenians were. Apparently,
    Jewish blood is redder than Armenian, not to mention lesser species. I
    quoted an article by a Jewish American historian denying the genocide of
    the native Americans. He was not discredited, either. The scourge of
    Irving, Debora Lipstadt, denied the fiery holocaust of Dresden, and was
    not discredited, either. Face it, Kim: the very concept of H is a
    concept of Jewish superiority.

    This has an important religious meaning: Christianity is the denial of
    Jewish superiority. Whoever believes or accepts Jewish superiority,
    denies Christ for He made us equal. The French Jewish filmmaker Claude
    Lanzman, the creator of “Shoah,” said: if you believe in holocaust, you
    can’t believe in Christ. I am ready to take his challenge: I believe in
    Christ. We can rephrase the words of Lanzman: belief in a special
    historical meaning of death of Jews is a sign of apostasy. Indeed, the
    creed of holocaust competes with the Church: we believe that Christ
    suffered for us and came back to life. The H believers believe that the
    Jewish people suffered and came back by creating the Jewish state. In
    this competition, the Jews win: as opposed to H, you can deny
    Crucifixion and Resurrection and your career won’t suffer a bit.

    Thus the question of H denial is the question of apostasy: will our
    society stand on the rock planted by Christ, or will it worship the
    Jewish state. This is an important discovery of eternal religiosity of
    human spirit: the attempt to create a secular society did not work out.
    After an illusionary short break, the gods came back.

    KP: Is it appropriate to use such loaded terms as "goy"?

    IS: Well, I am not aware this is a loaded term. I translated some Hebrew
    books, from Samuel Yosef Agnon, the only Hebrew Nobel Prize winner, to
    the Book of Lineage by Rabbi Zacuto, a 15th century Judaeo-Iberian sage,
    my most recent translation into English. They all used “goy” and so do
    Israeli newspapers. The word "goy" has a meaning: this is a non-Jew as
    seen by Jews. If you think it is not a complimentary term, you mean that
    in your view Jews look with distaste at a goy. Maybe. But we should deal
    with problems, not with words. Dealing with words is easier, but brings
    no relief. If we were to use 'gentile', would it change the Jewish
    attitude to one? This is also a sign of weakness. When (in 19th century)
    Jews felt weak, they liked to be called Israelites, or Hebrews. Now they
    do not mind being called "Jews."

    KP: You have described the US as a “greater Jewish state.” You laud
    Jeffrey Blankfort as having taken “an important next step” in rejecting
    the views of Noam Chomsky and others. Is the influence of the “Jewish
    lobby” preponderant over US corporate imperialism?

    IS: I wrote about it in “A Yiddishe Medina.” The US corporate
    imperialism is not a bodiless spirit; it is the sum of desires and
    actions by the US elites. And the US elites are Jewish, to great extent,
    and they have accepted Jewish values and ideas, to even greater extent.
    A few years ago, an American Jewish writer Philip Weiss wrote in the New
    York Observer: “I don’t claim to know how Jewish the membership of the
    establishment is. Twenty percent, 50 percent? I’m guessing 30.” Jews
    compose at least 30% of Harvard students, reported The Forward, a Jewish
    American newspaper. The Hillel Society gives such numbers: Total
    Undergraduate Population: 6658; Jewish Undergraduate Population: 2000
    (approx.); Total Graduate Population: 10351; Jewish Graduate Population:
    2500 (approx.). Thus the US elites are Jewish to a great extent, in the
    ordinary meaning of the word. As for spirit, Karl Marx spoke of “Jewish
    spirit” of the Yankees. A less known Marxist, Sombart, wrote about it at
    length. Thus in my view it is a mistake to speak of “Jewish Lobby” -- we
    may refer to a takeover, a displacement of the old WASP elites. The Jews
    constitute some three percent of the US population. The Brits took over
    India with much less percentage; so did the ruling minority in Syria.
    Normans ruled over Britain for centuries with less than that. All
    Russian nobility in the Tsar’s days was 2-3% of the population, while
    upper castes of Hindu societies constitute some 5% at most. Now, the
    Jews are well integrated in the “US corporate imperialism” on many
    levels, and they do not have to fight it, they use it. The Jewish Lobby
    is an additional mechanism, consisting of hard-core Jewish nationalists.
    The problem is that the rest, the non-Jewish-Lobby part of the US
    establishment consists, as I have said, of not-so-nationalistic Jews to
    great extent. They reach compromise, and this compromise is the middle
    ground of mild-Jewish-nationalism.

    KP: On the invasion of Iraq, you stated: “Too many coincidences for a
    purely American war.” To what extent do you see a Zionist hand behind
    the attack and occupation?

    IS: Yes, I partly agree with the Chicago-Harvard duo, the conquest of
    Iraq and present threat to Iran are caused by the Zionist affiliates
    within the Administration. The old canard of Oil Interests was debunked
    by reality: oil costs more, oil companies leave Iraq, none of their
    executives supported the war. Probably your readers do not even think of
    Iraqi WMD or the silly stuff of “bringing democracy” to the Arabs. Thus
    the Zionist plot is the first and obvious explanation.

    But the Iraqi war, as a part of War on Terror, has a second leg: this is
    an even more scary totalitarianism, the drive to create a caste-based
    oligarchy of the Iron Heel, in Jack London’s terms. Fear is its
    important tool; dismantling of civil freedoms and of cohesive natural
    society is the first goal. Without War on Terror, the US rulers wouldn’t
    be able to read our emails, listen to our conversations, store in their
    data banks every bit of information about our lives. This
    totalitarianism was predicted by George Orwell, an avid reader of the
    Protocols, and it was lauded by Leo Strauss, a guiding light of
    Neo-Cons. Strauss endorsed a society with dictatorial powers of elites;
    a follower of Hobbes, he distrusted the people. Though his views were
    formed before the WWII, after the war he frequently referred to the
    Holocaust as a phenomenon that is liable to come back unless the society
    is firmly kept in check. I called the supporters of this paradigm by the
    name “Mammonites,” mammon-worshippers. The Iraqi war, and the War on
    Terror in general, is a joint product of Zionists and Mammonites, while
    these two groups often coincide, as is the case with the leading
    Neo-Cons.

    That is why our struggle is with Zionists and Mammonites; this is not
    only a laudable campaign of support of the peoples of the Middle East,
    but first of all the decisive battle for preservation of democracy and
    freedom in the US and Europe, for a chance of better life for our
    children, for creation of a more egalitarian and more spiritual society,
    against the Dark ages were are being led to.

    KP: Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has taken a lot of flak from
    the western media for citing the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini about
    wiping Israel off the map. Apparently, judging by the western media’s
    silence, it was okay to wipe Palestine off the map though. Is the state
    of Israel a legitimate entity?

    IS: No, it is not. We can’t consider legitimate a state that gives no
    rights to its inhabitants and officially belongs to World Jewry. It is
    in our interests to achieve full independence from the Jews, and to
    shift the whole lot of rights and responsibilities to the population of
    the country. The sovereignty should be ours, of the people of
    Palestine/Israel, not of the Jewish People, the extra-territorial
    worldwide body. I call upon my country-fellows to give up their
    “Jewishness” and to become adoptive Palestinians, brothers and sisters
    to the native folk. I hope eventually it will happen; we shall integrate
    and forget the overseas connection. Meanwhile we follow the colonial
    paradigm and exclude the natives in the name of “Jewishness.” We should
    follow the example of Mexico, where immigrants from Spain and Italy form
    one nation with the descendents of Montezuma.

    KP: What does the election of Hamas mean for you? Should Hamas recognize
    the state of Israel?

    IS: I wrote about the results. The Palestinians rejected the Fatah rule
    because they made too many concessions to Israel, and received nothing
    in return. Hamas should not recognise the state of Israel, at least
    until the Israeli rulers recognise the Palestinian independence, remove
    their armed forces and stop interfering with the free traffic of
    Palestinians within and without Palestine. This is reciprocity. I can
    imagine an even better solution: Hamas may call for full integration of
    all Palestine from the River to the Sea, and for general elections on
    the basis of One Person-One Vote. But until it happens, Hamas should be
    guided by reciprocity principle: mutual recognition, inter alia.

    KP: You are an ex-Jew, a convert to Christianity -- why is this? You
    have written of “many ex-Jews.” Is this for the same reason as you? Do
    you think a growing trend in Jewish apostasy would be effective in
    bringing about justice for Palestinians?

    IS: Christianity and Judaism are strongly connected religions. A
    Christian, Karl Marx said: Christianity is sublime Judaism, while
    Judaism is sordid Christianity. A real Christian knows that a goy is not
    worse than a Jew; so the idea of Jewish exclusivity is not acceptable to
    a Christian. In our country we have many Russian Orthodox Christians
    (some of Jewish origin, and some not), and they pray and celebrate
    holidays together with our Palestinian Orthodox Christian brothers and
    sisters. I was baptised by the Palestinian priest, Archbishop Theodosius
    Attalla Hanna, and it helped me to sort out the question of identity.
    The important point is not to create a separate Jewish “Christian”
    set-up, for such an arrangement defeats its purpose. Thus I am worried
    that there are “Jewish Christian” churches that are devoutly Zionist. In
    short, yes, baptism is a solution, but only in connection with rejection
    of Jewishness. If it is done as an addition to Jewishness, it is void,
    and brings no benefit.

    --------------------------------------------------------------
    Kim Petersen, Co-Editor of Dissident Voice, lives in the traditional
    Mi'kmaq homeland colonially designated Nova Scotia, Canada. He can be
    reached at: kim@dissidentvoice.org.

    Israel Shamir writings can be read at his website. His essays are
    collected in three books, The Flowers of Galilee, Our Lady of Sorrow,
    and the Pardes.

    :: Article nr. 22995 sent on 02-may-2006 02:56 ECT

    :: The address of this page is : www.uruknet.info?p=22995

    :: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Uruknet .