- I...took [the] train homewards, to Jaffa. The train carried
a few Africans, probably illegal immigrants judging by their shy looks.
A Romanian building team was gulping beer and burping loudly. They were
imported from their impoverished East European land to build the houses
for immigrants, as the Jews do not want to be employed in construction
in Israel as well as in California. A Jewish Israeli lawyer in black yarmulke
leafed papers in his semi-opened briefcase. A blond and armed Israeli
soldier talked Ukrainian with its fricative h's to his corpulent girlfriend.
He extolled his own heroic fight against [the} multitude of Arab terrorists
under her admiring eyes. A group of Moroccans discussed the closure of
Acre steel plant and their slim chances to find another work. The crisis
is deepening, one of them said, it is as bad as in 1966.
-
- The train rode through Haifa, and I thought of hundreds
of thousands, maybe millions of Americans, Jews and Christian Zionists,
who lobby, pray, support and pay - no, not for the Jewish state built
on the ruins of Palestine. It would be bad enough; but reality is worse.
I thought of millions of Palestinians, rotting in refugee camps and jails,
dispossessed, expelled - not by the monster of evil occupation and land
grabbing, but by something worse - by a ghost.
-
- The Jewish state is a virtual state that quickly loses
all remaining connection to reality. This ghost of a state kills people
and collects money in America; it continues some nefarious existence,
like the legal term, "estate of the deceased". Its fields are
worked by imported guest workers, guarded by imported Russians and Ethiopians,
explained by Israeli professors teaching forever in American universities
and by brave generals on the lookout for a big shake. The unemployment
grows daily, vital services are on strike; the tourist industry collapsed,
hotels are boarded up and other branches of national economy are close
to collapse. Israelis buy flats in Florida and Prague, while houses in
Israel could not be sold. Sharon's desire to punish Palestinians was similar
to punishing one's own left hand: Palestinians and Israelis are intertwined
and integrated, and this separation kills the economy of both.
-
- From far away America, Israel looks like a giant, a nuclear
state, a great friend of the United States, a Jewish state that is a source
of pride for American Jews. A visitor leaves our shores with a strong
feeling of our identity and prosperity. Only we, permanent residents, know
that it is a cardboard sham. Israel is collapsing, as its active citizens
emigrate in despair, while generals complete the destruction of the country.
A cruel fate befalls the native Palestinians: a ghost kills them, a spiritless
body walking in Zombie-like trance the corridors of the Congress and the
deserts of [the] Middle East.
-
- For the sake of this spectre, important American Jews
squeeze every penny from their employees and countrymen, cut down on pensions
to old and assistance for children, reduce the health and education budget,
dry up help to Africa and Latin America, build improbable coalitions with
notorious racists of Pat Robertson's kind, demand destruction of Iraq,
bless [the] bombing of Afghani refugees, keep Afro-Americans in their
ghettos, undermine their host society, making enemies to themselves and
to America. These deeds are vile enough, but they are useless as well.
[The] Zionist experiment practically collapsed. It can run for many years
to come on [a] life-supporting machine, as a brain-dead vegetable. It can
kill people, maybe even start [a] world war. It cannot become alive.
-
- The Jewish state of Israel is a state of mind; it is
but a projection of the American Jewish mind. Worries and problems it
articulates are American Jewish problems. For Israeli "Jews",
there is no need of segregation, of war, of subjugation of natives. We
eat no bagels with lox, speak no Yiddish, read no Saul Bellow or Sholom
Aleichem, and avoid synagogues. We prefer Arab food and Greek music. My
neighbourhood has seven pork butchers to a kosher one. Forty per cent
of Tel Aviv weddings are done outside [the] Jewish framework: young Israelis
prefer to go to Cyprus to get married, just to avoid contact with Rabbis.
Tel Aviv is the gays' capital of [the] Middle East, though according to
Jewish law, gays should be exterminated. If American Jews would not bribe
Israelis on a large scale, we would just forget about the Diaspora and
dissolve into the hospitable Middle East. If they continue to bankroll
us, we shall oblige them with a small show of Jewishness.
-
- We are master-sellers of illusion, and as long as there
are buyers, we shall provide. In 1946, a group of dedicated men from
all over the world came to Palestine under the aegis of the UN. They were
sent to prepare the ground for [the] partition of the land. Among other
places, they came to the southernmost kibbutz Revivim in the arid Negev,
and came across a wonderful flowerbed with roses, anemones, and violets
in front of the kibbutz office. In their report, the members of the delegation
expressed their amazement and stated, "Jews make the desert bloom,
let them have Negev".
-
- As they left, the kibbutz youngsters went out and pulled
the flowers out of [the] sand: they [had] bought fresh flowers [the] same
morning on the Jaffa market and [had] planted them as props for the duration
of the visit. This small outlay transferred Negev with its two hundred
thousand Palestinians to the Jewish state. [The] Majority of them were
expelled across the newly drawn border, to the camps of Gaza or Jordan.
It was cruel and useless: even now, fifty years later, Negev south of
Beersheba has [a] smaller population than in 1948.
-
- In order to populate depopulated lands, Mossad broke
and terrorised [the] Jewish communities of North Africa. The Jews were
brought in, sprayed with DDT lice-killer and placed into refugee camps
that soon became towns of Netivot, Dimona, Yerucham. They are still there,
in the towns of unemployment and misery, drawing social benefits and probably
disliking Ashkenazi Jews as much as anybody could. Not in vain, they write
"Ashkenazim to Auschwitz" on the walls of their towns.
-
- A few weeks before the Intifadah, Israeli establishment
imprisoned [a] hugely popular leader of Oriental Jews, Rabbi Arie Deri.
Tens of thousands of Moroccans gathered at the gates of the jail demanding
his release. Intifada saved the skins of Ashkenazi Jews from the civil
war, but not forever.
-
- Thus the conjuring tricks of Revivim, conquest of Negev,
expulsion of Palestinians, destruction of Moroccan Jewish community succeeded
separately and failed altogether. Zionist leaders dreamed to make Palestine
as Jewish as England is English. They failed. Palestine is Jewish as Jamaica
is English.
-
- The land of Palestine is being ruined now, in front
of our eyes. Its beautiful old villages are bombed to oblivion; churches
are emptied of their flock; olives are uprooted. Such ruin did not befall
the land since the Assyrian invasion 2700 years ago. Nothing could comfort
us in [the] face of this great destruction, and certainly [the] people
connected to it - whether Israeli killers or their American Jewish supporters
- will be damned forever.
-
- Still, a wry irony of history will remain as a footnote
in the books of [the] future: the Jewish leadership committed these crimes
in vain, and received no profit out of it. Even if the last Palestinian
would be crucified on the hill of Golgotha, even that would not bring
to life the virtual Jewish state of Israel.
-
- ___
-
- Israel Shamir is an Israeli writer and journalist living
in Jaffa. His other articles could be found on his site, www.israelshamir.com
This article can be freely transmitted and published in electronic media;
hard copy publications must ask for permission at Shamir@israelshamir.com
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