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.