Death of a Martyr 

By Israel Shamir 

The great leader of Palestine, Yasser Arafat, is dead. This unique man,
whose withered body was interned on the Eve of Eid el Fitr in a coffin
with the holy soil of Jerusalem in the midst of his ruined fortress, was
a symbol of struggle for Palestinian dignity. He will be forever
remembered as a young warrior who broke the teeth of Jewish arrogance in
the battle of Karameh, in 1968, when his fedayyin resisted the
irresistible force of Israel and caused its first ever defeat. He will
be remembered as a friend of Leila Haled, the man with a gun who blew up
enemy airplanes and spoke at the UN. He will be listed among other
warrior-saints of the century next to Che Guevara and Chapaev. He will
be remembered also for his last stand, for the last three dreadful years
he had spent in besieged Mukata as Sumud personified, as example of
unconditional clinging of a native man to his soil. 

He did not run away when Israel bombed and strafed Mukata, he did not
run away when the Jews discussed daily how should they kill him, he did
not run away during the hard years of Intifada – he stayed with his
people to the bitter end. Eventually he was granted glorious martyrdom
as one of thousands Palestinians martyred in the bloody war, together
with Abdelkader el Husseini, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and other leaders and
warriors. 

Even his errors were errors of a good man. He believed that the enemy
will abide by an agreement, he believed that the superpower will enforce
the treaty they guaranteed, he believed in a possibility of carving out
two states in his beloved Palestine. He submitted to endless
humiliations, agreed to endless concessions to the insatiable adversary,
but he never surrendered the Noble Sanctuary of Haram al Sharif, never
gave up the right of return of his people to Jaffa and Haifa. 

His death of a martyr is also death of the Two-states-solution, of the
Palestinian-state-alongside-Jewish-state mantra. Now we should
concentrate our efforts in the only possible direction – creation of one
democratic state for all in the whole of the Holy Land from the River to
the Sea. We call for immediate release of Marwan Barghouthi from the
Israeli captivity, together with thousands other prisoners-of-war. We
call for general elections with participation of all inhabitants of
historic Palestine, native Palestinians and Ashkenazi, Oriental and
Russian immigrants, on basis of full equality. We call to inter the
mortal remains of Arafat the Martyr in al Aqsa Mosque, next to
Abdelkader al Husseini, as a guardian of the Holy Mountain. We shall
redeem you, Arafat! 

My Russian friend and a great modern writer Alexander Prochanov wrote
these ringing lines about the great fallen leader a few years ago, when
the Intifada just began. They are still suitable today: 

*** 

Arafat as the Leader of Palestinians and of Russians 

By Alexander Prochanov, Zavtra weekly No: 42(359) Date: 17-10-2000 

The great nations whose haughty stalk shook the earth, who changed the
world, revolted, populated new continents, conceived new religions, now
are staring drowsily at their shepherds, who brought them into the sty
of the new world order, drip dross from a table of America into their
manger, pour the Circe’s potion of IMF, titillate them by a distant
sight of the synthetic heifer of the American dream. A nation that dares
to kick and pull the chain is flogged by electronic scourges of CNN; its
skin pierced by sharp Tomahawks. The Russians forgot Pushkin’s poems and
Stalin’s victories; Latin America does not recollect Bolivar, Sandino
and Che Guevara. 

But in one spot, a space ray burned through the dead encapsulating shell
of the planet. This space ray, as God’s finger, points to the people of
Palestine. Wherever the ray reaches the earth, wherever it shines over
Gaza, Jerusalem and Hebron, History Alive is re-created before our eyes.
As in the days of the prophets, the people of the Holy Land pray, shoot,
bleed, sing the songs of struggle, face the Jewish tanks, tear off their
steely caterpillars with bare hands, stops up with their bodies the
flaming gun mouths, demonstrate to the fuzzy emasculated world the
meaning of words Freedom, Country, God. 

Israel is doomed. She is disgusting to the Arabs, French, Englishmen,
even to herself. Red-hot Intifada is the fiery river, in which another
myth of the 20th century melts and sinks to the bottom — the Zionist
idea. According to designs of Herzl and Zhabotinsky, a small
geopolitical monstrosity was created on the Arab lands. They have
imposed on America and Germany the annual tribute of five billions
dollars. They pour napalm on the mosques and transform the whole nations
into homeless survivors and refugees. They brainwash the whole world
with their ‘ashes of Auschwitz’. 

On the place of Israel, where the Arabs planted many fig trees and Lebanese
cedars, they will create a National Park called The Jewish National
Home: it will be the home of the large and pretty Hebrew-speaking
parrot. 

Yasser Arafat is the last national leader of the turn-of-the-millennium.
The Great Palestinian was reared by his people professing the faith of
freedom; he erased the division between Sacred and Mundane together with
distinction between Life and Death. God came to His people incarnated as
the wise, fearless, tireless, incorruptible leader. He closes eyes to
the fallen fedai, embraces the orphan, wipes tears of widow, departs
from burning Beirut with his warriors, enters the Beast’s lair in Camp
David, reads the incinerated Koran in Sabra and Shatila, kisses the hot
earth of his native Palestine, walks with his olive branch and the
Kalashnikov gun into the immortality of history. 

“Tell me, the branch of Palestine: where did you grow, where you have
blossomed...” - asked the poet. It would reply: “I grew in the Garden of
Eden of our Lord the God. Of my strong wood, the handgrip and the stock
of the machinegun are made. My fiery leaves, like the drops of a Molotov
cocktail, fly on the armor of the Israeli tanks. My blossom decorates
the bullet-perforated banner of PLO. My fruits are sweet for the heroes
and martyrs, sweet as Freedom... "