It's very sad. You can click on the picture for more info.
Posted on 12/20/2001 1:11:52 PM PST by Nachum
There are not many that is why. The few would not be here...they might be at Democrat Underground though.....
Where? At antiwar.com?
Dream on. US Israeli relations are tight as ever. New treaties, Arrow missile cooperation...and of course Sharon is very popular in Israel. All is well!
At least YOUR people don't. The Lefties, Arabs, and anti-semites.
President Bush was met by Leftie cranks all over Europe when he went there too. BFD.
It really doesn't matter though, does it? Even if you win, you lose.
Convoy to Bethlehem
By Israel Shamir
A new Audi car, squashed like empty cigarette box in the ashtray of a nervous chain smoker, greeted us at the entrance of Bethlehem. Other cars were flattened into a thin sheet of glass and steel. Israeli tank crews love to smash cars and dustbins as any vicious punks. Little kids crouched on the corner and intensely played with spent cartridges, making most of sudden lull in fighting. Bethlehem was quiet, for the first time since Saturday, October 20, when Israeli Merkaba tanks rolled into the City of Christ, realising Sharon’s pet project, reoccupation of Palestine.
It was quiet, as a new force entered the area: Christians of Jerusalem came to relieve the besieged neighbour. It was a wondrous sight, reminiscent of Crusades, when the Solidarity Convoy led by bishops and clergy of all denominations, Catholics, Orthodox and Muslim, carrying crosses and banners broke the strangling ring of Israeli blockade and moved by the heavily damaged streets towards the Church of Nativity. As opposed to Bush ‘Crusade’ in Afghanistan, this Crusade was felicitously met by Christians and Muslims alike, as there is no dispute between these intertwined communities. We went by the burned out Paradise Hotel (it received direct hit), by double-bent electric pillars, by pictures of young boys and girls killed by Israeli sharpshooters, and local people went out of their shelters to join the procession.
Israeli tanks left the main streets and crawled away into their lairs, like dragons disturbed at prey. On the way, I met so many old friends, local shopkeepers and guides. They were quite despondent: ‘As things are, with this war going on, they said, there are no tourists, no income, and no hope. Jerusalem and Bethlehem stand together or fell together’. Bethlehem is but a suburb of Jerusalem and I used to come so often with my tourists and pilgrims to this bourgeois city of spacious villas, king-size souvenir shops, grand Greco-Palestinian families, neat nuns, tourist crowds and many expatriates, flourishing thanks to the Church of Nativity, the great Justinian edifice and the oldest extant building of Palestine.
The plaza in front of the church, the Manger square, was full of local people who used the chance to see some sunlight after days behind the shutters. Last Sunday at the church doorstep, an Israeli sharpshooter killed a local 16 year old boy, Johnny Thaljieh, and his soft face looks from a hastily printed poster. This square was rebuilt by PA in Italianate style just two years ago, before the Millennium festivities, as in the days of Israeli direct rule it was an incongruous parking lot for the Border Police jeeps and tourist buses.
In the church, among the priests and laity, I saw a tall American with a proud upper lip, long curly hair and exotic head gear. It was Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom, of Rabbis for Human Rights. ‘I thought I was the only Jew here’, he said. ‘I am sure thousands of Israelis would come if they would be aware of situation’. It is true, Israeli TV, docile as Stalin’s media, downplayed the invasion and broadcasted peaceful pictures of friendly tanks on quiet streets. Still, the previous night, Jerusalem hosted a big Jewish rally calling for expulsion of all non-Jews from the Holy Land. Israeli TV reported on Friday night just before the invasion, that two thirds of Israeli Jews support this lethal solution. However, every one of us has his freedom of choice, and Rabbi Milgrom chose Judaism one can live with. I was mighty pleased to see him: God knows, this Sodom needs a few just men. In the church there were pockmarks of bullets: Israeli tank crews trained their heavy turret machine guns on the cradle of Christ. It reminded me of William Dalrymple’s “splendid, effective and impressive (Financial Times)” book, From the Holy Mountain[i], on ‘a wave of attacks on Church property in Israel. A Jerusalem church, a Baptist chapel and a Christian bookshop had been burned to the ground, there were attempts to arson the Anglican churches in West Jerusalem and Ramleh and two churches in Acre. The Protestant cemetery on Mt Zion was desecrated no fewer than eight times’. He could add the story of Daniel Koren, an Israeli soldier who pulverised with bullets the images of Christ and the Virgin in the church of St Anthony in Jaffa. Dalrymple mentions the deeds of the Likud Mayor of Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert, who destroyed the newly discovered Christian monasteries and churches in Jerusalem in order to obliterate the very memory of Christian presence in the Holy Land, the same Mayor Olmert who demolished three more Palestinian homes this morning while we walked the streets of Bethlehem.
In the Grotto of Nativity, few candles burned and a Palestinian family quietly prayed by the Star, as did their ancestors since the cruel predecessor of Sharon, King Herod the Great. I thought of a strange coincidence, why this invasion began while the US Air Force lays low Afghani cities. Apparently Sharon’s government decided to utilise the US Afghani operation as a diversion for the conquest of Palestine. A thief sees in a calamity, but an opportunity to steal. While our eyes are attracted to the deserts beyond Oxus River, while America is scared silly by the white powder in an envelope, while humanitarian agencies groan under the masses of starving Afghanis, while Anglo-American fleet blocks a possible Iraqi or Syrian relief, the Israelis grab the remainder of Palestine and eradicate the memory of Christ from His native land.
Sharon’s supporters in the American mass media gave him support by rising the current wave of Arab-bashing and general racist chant. “Osama Bin Laden's shifty, oily, semitic features leer from every news bulletin, in a barely concealed appeal to the American viewers' racism. Dr Joseph Goebbels could not have done it better”, reported from America the British historian, David Irving. He should know, he was a biographer of Goebbels.
President Bush demanded immediate Israeli withdrawal. He did it in sotto voce, saving ‘there will be no discussion’ line for Afghanis. We shall see whose will prevails, whether President’s chapter goes as far as Israel, whether this bark could be backed by a bite.
In P. G. Woodhouse hilarious novel, A Damsel in Distress, there is a wonderful line fully applicable to the President Bush: ‘Your argument seems to be without a flaw. But what then? We applaud the Man of Logic, but what of the Man of Action? What are you going to do about it?’
After the great church, our procession moved to Beth Jalla, a sister city of Bethlehem. Beth Jalla’s two hospitals were shelled, and ten people were killed by indiscriminate Israeli fire. The bereaved families stood in the church yard, clutching portraits of their dead and receiving condolences. Especially touching was the stunning beauty of Rania Elias, a 20 year old girl killed by Israeli shell in her own bedroom. She sat for her portrait in a white wedding dress, the dress she was buried in.
Beth Jalla is grim but defiant. On its streets, stood young men with AK machineguns. C’est la Tanzim, people’s militia, explained a priest to his fellow. Dashing Tanzim boys in their berets reminded me of Fidel’s young barbudos, as if the Palestinian revolution regained its second breath. As the convoy moved out, the tanks moved in, and a chatter of small arms echoed over the twin cities.
A big dark-skinned Oriental Jewish taxi driver picked me up at the checkpoint. The massive steering wheel of his Mercedes turned like a toy in his huge hands. He looked like a twin of a giant Tanzim guerrilla I saw fifteen minutes and five hundred yards away, in Aida refugee camp. ‘I lived all my life with Arabs, he said. My wife tells me, I am an Arab in my heart. We should live together. As things are, with this war going on, there are no tourists, no income, and no hope. Jerusalem and Bethlehem stand together or fell together’.
Yes, despite the official brainwashing, on both sides of the Divide, there is an understanding. The Holy Land can’t be divided, it should be tended jointly by all of us, as equals. There is enough room to pray, to play, to grow olive trees, write software and guide tourists. Tanks must go, together with artificial border between Israel and Palestine.
On the Move
By Israel Shamir
In the early autumn, when the pomegranates ripen, I embark for the ruins of the destroyed Palestinian village of Saffurie. The native city of Mary’s mother, it still guards the Crusader church of St Anne. This old village was an important city some two thousand years ago, when, under name of Sephoris, it refused to join the Jewish Zealots, and remained loyal to Empire. It provided a comfortable home to the man who reinvented Judaism after its collapse, Rabbi Judah the Prince, and for many Christian sages and Roman nobles. It survived all vagaries of time, until in 1948 it was stormed by Israeli army and destroyed. Its villagers became refugees and went to refugee camps or to nearby Nazareth. The groves of the dead village remained hidden in the valleys, bringing full, off-round, heavy and bursting pomegranates each year, but there is nobody left to pick the fruit. People from the Jewish settlement built next to the ruins are indifferent to the fate of pomegranates and of the peasants who planted them. In this kingdom of desolation amid bountiful red fruit laden trees, there is also a carefully laid Roman floor mosaic sometimes called Mona Lisa of Galilee. It consists of thousands small stones of various shades and together they form a proud elongated face with a straight nose, high hairdo and full lips in the acanthus frame of leaves.
This mosaic always reminds me of our beautiful world, this delightful mosaic of small towns, green meadows, civilised megapolises, castles and cottages, rivers and streams, churches and mosques, each piece of the mosaic is fine, precious and perfect. I saw a lot of them and I love them all. The rocky low-lying islands in lucid and transparent Baltic, where yellow-haired kids wave to the passing ships from the pier. La France Profonde of Conque, a tiny hamlet in the Massif Central on the old pilgrim road to St Jacques, with a narrow chatty river skirting the hill, slated roofs, thousand years ago paved streets. Domes of Russian churches in the high grass on Oka River, where girls in flowery shawls listen to a harmony. Pretty voices of Suzhou girls reverberate in the temple courtyard among canals crisscrossing South China. Baroque houses of Trinidad tobacco factors and proud stature of Cubans dancing on its streets. Superb bodies of tattooed Masai around the bonfire at Serengeti savanna. This world is lovely and its folks are very good.
This beautiful and intricate set-up is threatened by the forthcoming hostilities, as this Third World War is not only against the Third World. This war started even before the first bomb fell on the rocky ground of Afghanistan. A million of new refugees are on the road, creating the great commotion and unsettling Asia. There is no doubt, sooner or later the refugee wave will hit Europe. Hundreds of thousands refugees already are on the move towards Europe, Russia and relatively stable countries on the rim. One can understand them: as the US promised to use nuclear weapons against their homes, the defenceless population has no choice but flee the target areas. No border controls would be able to withstand their hectic push. Pakistan will be first, but not last. As the US and Britain plan to turn their Crusade into a long war ‘against terror’, there will be more and more refugees, until, eventually, the fragile social fabric of Europe would crumble and collapse. Europe would be overrun, as Roman Empire in its day, and it will face a stark choice: to establish a system of apartheid and discrimination, or to lose its identity.
Would Europe be an incidental victim of American fury, like an innocent bystander in a Western shoot-out? It appears to me that Europe is rather one of the real targets of the forthcoming offensive. It is not what the ordinary people of the United States wish, but they are not being asked. The new ruling elites of the US and their partners and agents overseas put destruction of prosperous independent and cohesive Europe on their list. This desire has a practical short-term reason: Europe is a competitor to America, it is too independent, it started its own monetary unit that can push dollar. Europe supports more even-balanced policy in Palestine. Europe is too egalitarian: in New York, I saw a lift boy, an immigrant from devastated Panama, who actually lives in the elevator. You would not find such things in Europe, as Europe is not yet Mammonized.
I
The new ruling elites do not care much for Christ or Muhammad, it is true, but they have a lot of religious feeling towards another old Deity, Mammon. This ancient god of greed was much loved by Pharisees, some two millennia back, as we learn from the Gospel. Jesus told them: you can not serve both God and Mammon. But Pharisees sneered at him, because they loved money’[i]. This faith was pushed away by the following developments. Love of Mammon became known as Avarice, one of the Mortal Sins, it was condemned by Christian and Muslim societies alike.
But it did not disappear completely. Two thousand years later, a grandson of the Trier Rabbi, Karl Marx, came to a revolutionary conclusion: the faith of Mammon, this ‘weekday religion of Jews’, in his words, became the real religion of American elites. Marx approvingly quoted a colonel Hamilton, ‘Mammon is Yankees’ idol, they worship it not only with their lips, but with all strength of their body and soul. In their eyes, the earth is but a stock exchange, and they are convinced that they do not have other purpose on earth but to become richer than their neighbours’. Marx concluded, ‘The practical domination of Jewish spirit over the Christian world has achieved in North America its unambiguous, complete expression’.
This victorious Jewish spirit, for Marx, was based on ‘greed and egoism, its confession was business, it’s god - Money’[ii]. These words, as other ideas of Karl Marx, were known but their deep spiritual meaning was not understood in full. For a good reason: until our days, the religious features of the creed of Greed were not expressed, and one could possibly imagine a capitalist who thinks of his own interest and promotes the common good, as it was presented by Adam Smith.
Things changed with advent of ‘neo-liberalism’. Lectures of Milton Friedman manifested ‘outing’ of Mammonites, adepts of the new/old faith. They differ from ordinary greedy folks, as they elevate Greed to the level of jealous God, that does not suffer other gods. The traditional wealthy men would not dream of destroying their society. They cared about their land and community. They would like to be the first among their own kind. They still considered themselves ‘shepherds of men’. It is true, shepherds also eat sheep, but they would not sell the whole lot to the butcher just because the price is good.
The Mammonites see such consideration as a betrayal of Mammon. As Robert McChesney wrote in his Introduction to Noam Chomsky’s Profit Over People[iii], ‘they demand a religious faith in the infallibility of the unregulated market’, in other words, a faith of egoism and greed unlimited. They are devoid of compassion to the people they live amongst, they do not see the local people as ‘their own kind’. If they would be able to eliminate local folks and supplant them by poor immigrants, to optimise their profits, they would do it, as their brothers did in Palestine.
The Mammonites do not give a damn for the people of America, but use them as their tool to achieve world domination. Their ideal picture of the world is archaic, or futuristic: they dream of the world of slaves and masters. In order to achieve it, the Mammonites strive to destroy cohesiveness of social and national units.
As long as people stay on their land, speak their tongue, live among their own kith and kin, drink water of their rivers, worship in their churches and mosques, they can not be enslaved. But if their lands are flooded by masses of refugees, their social structure will collapse. They will lose their great advantage, the feeling of belonging together, the feeling of brotherhood, and they will become an easy prey for Mammonites.
II
Afghanis are wonderful folk, sturdy, independent, self-reliant. They are formed by their mountains, and as all highlanders, they are quite stubborn and conservative. Fear of American bombs would push them into the lowlands of Holland and into the cities of France, and they will unwillingly but irreversibly change the land they enter. This process is going on for quite a while. As the global policies of the Mammonites deplete the poor countries of the Third world, pump out natural resources and incomes, support the nasty quisling rulers, destroy their nature, more and more people are forced to join the stream of refugees to Europe and the US.
This threat is already felt in Europe. Oriana Fallaci, a well- known Italian journalist, published in the leading Milanese newspaper, Corriere della Sera[iv], an article bewailing the fate of Europe overrun by “Muslim hordes”. She viewed immigrants as a courtier of Romulus in Ravenna considered the Germanic warriors. Oriana says that “Somali Muslims defaced and shitted and outraged for three months the main square of my city”, that some "children of Allah" urinated on the walls of the Cathedral, that they had mattresses inside the tent "to sleep and fuck on" and poisoned the square with the smell and smoke of their cooking. Oriana goes on to say that Florence, "once the capital of art and culture and beauty" is "wounded and humiliated" by "arrogant Albanians, Sudanese, Bengalese, Tunisians, Algerians, Pakistanis and Nigerians" who "sell drugs" and pimp whores. She calls for the support of American-led Crusade and contends, "If America falls, then Europe will fall [...] instead of church bells, there will be the muezzins, instead of miniskirts, chadors, instead of cognac, camel's milk".
Before condemning her style, let us attend the faults of her logic. Ms Fallaci, an experienced and not too young journalist sees in America a possible protection, rather than the source of her – and Florence’s trouble. She should be worried by victory, not by fall of America. If America succeeds in her Afghan war, Oriana’s nightmare can become a reality.
She does not want to notice that the refugees and immigrants arrive to Italy because their lands were devastated by the US and its allies. She would not see Albanians if NATO would not ravage Balkans. She would not see Sudanese, if Clinton would not bomb Sudan. She would not see Somalis, if Somali would not be ruined by Italian colonization and American intervention. Neither she, nor America would see a Palestinian immigrant if the peasants of Saffurie would still tend their pomegranate groves.
Nobody, but nobody would leave his own land with its unique nature, lifestyle, friends and relatives, holy places and fathers’ graves for the dubious pleasure of camping by the walls of an Italian Cathedral. Like ducklings have their imprinting, men are born to love their native land. Young Telemachus compares his rocky and lean island with broad meadows and rich fields of Lacedaemon, and says to his host, ‘we’ve got hardly any grass, and still, I prefer our mountains with its goats to all your meadows suitable for horses’[v] People immigrate when their lands are ruined. The Irish would not leave the green fields of Erin for Chicago, if English government would not starve them out. My own Russians would not come to occupy Palestine if Russia would not be ruined by pro- American forces of Yeltsin and Chubais.
For host folk, immigration wave is a nuisance at the best, a disaster at the worst. It is not their fault, it is the question of numbers. Carlos Castaneda joined an Indian tribe and learned a lot of their ways. I am sure the tribe learned something from Carlos Castaneda. Now imagine, that thousand wonderful guys and gals from Yale and Berkeley would join the Indian tribe. The tribe would disappear, it would not be able to keep its ways. While a single émigré would be always welcomed, and would add some colour to the society, mass immigration is bad.
Whether immigrants come as invaders and conquerors, or as refugees, the receiving society gets a shock. If they are smart, they push local people away from interesting and important social positions, and create their own subculture. If they are violent, they can take over the land by other means. If they are humble and timid, they will bring down the price of labour. That is why in normal circumstances immigrants are not popular.
A good man and my friend, Miguel Martinez, who brought Oriana’s article to the attention of English-reading audience, was justly horrified by her racism. He is right, Ms Fallaci speaks as a racist, as Ann Coulter, this American scourge of ‘swarthy men’. But he failed to see some truth in her words. A man whose garden was overrun by buffaloes does not notice the hunter who rushes the herds his way and blames the innocent animals. He is mistaken, the blame behoves the hunter, but it does not mean the buffaloes do not ruin the garden. Mass immigration is painful for immigrant and host alike.
But it is not painful for the Mammonites. They actually like immigration, as it lowers the price of labour. A leading Mammonite magazine is the British weekly Economist. Their leader called a few weeks ago, before the ‘new Pearl Harbour’ to increase intake of immigrants from the Third World. The most dynamic, best qualified people from Africa, Asia and South America could be useful for Britain, Europe and the US, wrote the Economist. It would push down salaries of European workers and increase profits of entrepreneurs. As a side profit, the outflow of the dynamic element weakens the donor societies and makes them an easy prey for the hostile takeover. It is an improved version of slave trade, as what could be better that willing slaves competing for the board of slave ship. Naturally, the first condition of this intake was not written down in the leader: the countries of the Third World should be devastated and ruined.
Mammonites need immigrants for their own sake, as well. A cohesive and healthy society rejects men of greed instinctively, as greed is a socially destructive drive. In a healthy society, Mammonites would remain pariahs. Immigration destroys cohesiveness of the host society. Mammonites do not like their society being cohesive, they prefer it thinnish and liquescent, so it would be easier to drink it up. That is why Mammonites support immigration. Immigrants conceive them as their natural allies and fail to comprehend that the Mammonites like them as vampires like fresh blood. Because of this lack of understanding, immigrants support with their votes the Mammonite power of Tony Blair and New York Democrats. It is the Mammonites, who should be on the receiving end of Oriana’s diatribes, instead of innocent immigrants on the streets and squares of Europe.
III
A Mammonite senator for California, Diane Feinstein, imports more and more poor Mexicans into her state. They give her the vote, stay out of politics for many years, they agree to work for less, they undermine the organised labour. Ordinary Californians live worse, but she does not care. Some people consider her a Zionist by virtue of her support for Israel.
However, it would be a mistake to call her a Zionist. Historically, Zionists felt that man needs roots. They considered easy mobility of Jews to be a sign of wanting. They wanted to provide the rootless Jews with the roots in the Holy Land. Mammonites do not understand who needs roots. They want to uproot everybody. Zionists felt that Mammonite way of life is wrong. Mammonites of all backgrounds adopted the way of life discarded by Zionists.
The Zionists were wrong as they did not understand that without Palestinians, they can not achieve their goal of striking the root in the soil of Palestine. They were wrong, as a person of Jewish origin can strike his root anywhere, not only in Palestine. A Jew can become an American, an English, a Russian as well as a Palestinian. It calls for identification with his countrymen, for supreme concern with his land. Every land is a Promised Land to man who loves it. People who force America to send away billions of dollars to Israel, instead of providing for America’s poor, are not loyal to America. But they are not loyal to Israel, either. They admire Israel as the model of their world.
Many good men dislike Zionism, for it caused this massive destruction of the lovely land of Palestine and uprooted Palestinians. But Zionism is a local disease. Its big brother, Mammonitis, is a world-wide plague, that wants to turn the world into a “ Big Israel”, with shopping malls and destroyed villages, settlements for the chosen few, and many-many refugees as a source of cheap labour. Zionists ruined nature of Palestine, Mammonites ruin the world environment. Zionists uprooted Palestinians, Mammonites uproot all.
Zionists fight Christ. In modern Israel, St Paul and St Peter would be jailed for teaching Gospel. Mammonites fight every faith, every conviction, Christ and Muhammad, Nationalism and Communism. Enemies of Zionism hope Mammonites will reign the Zionists in, as too independent policy of Zionists can become an obstacle to the world-embracing plans of Mammonites. But I tell you, God tolerates the excesses of Zionists so you would notice the plans of Mammonites.
IV
It is not a cry of dye-in-the-wool Leftie. We can live with some people of wealth, we can survive some amount of privilege. Both the left and the right are good and needed for the society, as left leg and right leg are needed to stand up. Imagine a springtime meadow in the Jerusalem mountains. It is a magic carpet of flowers, that calls you to seat on it. If everybody will walk it, there will be no flowers left. If it will be fenced, it will be lost for us. These two tendencies: of access and of preservation, are the paradigms of Left and Right. Their correct combination allows many people to enjoy the meadow.
The right is the conservative force, preserving the power of traditional elites. They save the landscape, protect nature, keep the tradition. The left is a moving force of society, the guarantee of its liveliness, of ability to change, of social mobility. A society without its left would rot, a society without its right would collapse. Left provides movement, right provides stability. But Mammonites create for their purposes a pseudo-left and pseudo-right, using errors of real left and right.
One of the faults of the European ‘real’ right was its lack of compassion and racist tendency. Their knee jerk reflex was correct: immigrants destabilize the society. But it is not because they are worse men, as racists say. Immigrants could be wonderful folk, and they are still a trouble. Dutch moved to Indonesia, and plagued their land for quite a while by their presence. They ruined Indonesia heavily. Indonesians went to Holland and troubled it back. English plagued America in the heavy way: they exterminated the natives. Colonial process often leads to mutual plaguing: Brits despoiled Ireland and were troubled by Irish.
Racism is wrong, as it claims that some groups of men are inherently better or worse than others. Everybody is wonderful, Zulu and British, Russians and Chechens, Palestinians and French, Pakistanis and Turks, while at their own ground. At others’ land, these good people become a nuisance. In the days of European imperialism and colonial expansion, racist theories were necessary to justify the one- sided flow of men. Without racism, one could not exterminate natives, take their property, ban their industries, create huge landholdings, and keep people without basic human rights. But now racism is not needed anymore. As the colonial adventure of Europe is over, morally wrong and scientifically mistaken theory of racist superiority can be laid to rest.
The real left should promote interests of lower classes and it means to object to mass immigration. But, under Mammonite influence, the liberal left supports immigration for the reason of compassion. Mammonites, normally devoid of compassion, utilise this humanitarian reasoning in their own purposes. It gives them an additional profit: European and American working people are being alienated from the liberal left. For workers, the dangerous nature of immigration is obvious. Immigrants live in close quarters with the local workers, and suffer from their competition for the work places. Thus, they are forced to embrace the racist extreme right.
There is a good way out of the impasse, a way that is good for everybody but Mammonites. Stop immigration, and open money transfer line to the Third World. Africa and Sweden should have the same income. Tax money should flow to the Indians of Amazon and to the peasants of Afghanistan. Not many Pakistanis will immigrate to Britain, if they would have the same (or almost the same) income back home. The EC is a proof of it: though Swedes still earn more than Portuguese, Greek and Italians, the difference is not that big, and the lands are peaceful, so there is a very little immigration into Sweden or Germany. If you say: compassion; the true Christian compassion tells you to let people live at home, under their vine and their fig tree, as good as they would live at your land. You would not have very cheap cleaners, but you will live in a cleaner and better land. It would be just, as for hundreds of years Europe and the US pumped out the wealth of the South and the East.
The immigrant’s lot is a sad one. After all, immigration is an exile, this saddest state of man. Ovid bewailed it on the Moldavian shore, and prince Genji decried in Suma. My Palestinian friend Musa brought his elderly father from the village of Aboud to his new home in Vermont, and the old man began to build terraces, as on the slopes of Samarian hills. We are so much a part of landscape, a part and parcel of mountains and valleys. Now, when in the US, there are attacks on immigrants, probably many of them think of their homes they were forced to leave.
While I think that immigration should be stopped and supplanted by transfer of funds to the poorer lands until the incomes would level, immigrants that already came over, probably came to stay. They could become locals: Germans in Germany, French in France, Americans in America, Palestinians in Palestine. The ancestors of European and American people also migrated, and adopted to new ways. Germanic tribes of Franks overrun Romanised Celtic Gaul, and together with its old population they formed modern French. Descendents of European Crusaders still live in Palestinian village Sinjil that preserves the glorious name of the Provencal commander Raymond de St Gilles, but they became Palestinians in every way and are being besieged by Israelis as everybody else. So did the Georgians brought eight hundred years ago to the Jerusalemite village of Malcha by the orders of Queen Tamar. They became Palestinian, and shared the fate of other Palestinians when they were expelled from their houses by Zionist invaders in 1948.
Human beings are adaptable, and if the immigrants love their new land, they can become locals. I know it: a native of Siberia, I choose to become a Palestinian.
V
WWIII is a war against variety per se, initiated by the adepts of Greed. They do not like the delightful mosaic of races and cultures, they would rather homogenise the world. They have a practical reason: it is easier to sell goods to homogenised mankind. They have a moral reason: they do not want people to enjoy this beauty for free, so it has to be destroyed. They have a religious reason: the Mammon worshippers, they feel this jolly plurality is a sacrilege against their jealous god. Beautiful things of old belong in a museum, where they can charge entrance fee, after the village is destroyed.
In a beautiful adolescent movie, the Never-Ending Story, the many-coloured world of Fantasy disappears into Nowhere. The same thing happens to our marvellous world. Old and unique places are being erased and supplanted by shopping malls and scorched land. The left and the right should join forces against the Nowhere that threatens our very existence.
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[i] Lk 16, 13-14
[ii] Deutch-Franzosische Jahrbucher", 1844
[iii] Chomsky, Profit Over People, Seven Stories Press, 1999, page 8
[iv] English translation : LEADING ITALIAN DAILY SPEWS RACIST HATRED by Miguel Martinez http:// www.kelebekler.com Italian original Saturday 29 September 2001, "Corriere della Sera"
[v] Odyssey IV
In the movie based on the mammoth tale by Jean Auel, Clan of Cave Bear, there is a glimpse of the sex life of the Palaeolithic people who roamed the earth some 35,000 years ago. Apparently, whenever a Neanderthal wished to have fun, he didn’t need to bring flowers or arrange dinner for two. He would make a certain sign with his hand, and the chosen girl would immediately comply with his desire, without further ado.
The sign to submit is still with us. Whenever people discuss the things done in the name of Jews by, say, Sharon or Abe Foxman, the moment the discussion starts to get out of hand, one of the leaders of the community chants the magic word ‘anti-Semitism’, and, as if under a spell, we immediately bend over. It is amazing that grown men and women who have never personally experienced any prejudice in their life, still respond to this spell like the girl, Ayla, in Auel’s novel.
The machine of the official Jewish establishment and its Israeli offshoot nauseates many Jews. Israeli government commits war crimes on a day-to-day basis. It is run by a certified mass murderer. The unprecedented siege, mass starvation and summary executions are now routine. Bombing, strafing and shelling civilians are no longer anything to get worked up about. Many Jews see it, and are ready to say so in a cosy ‘entre-nous’ environment. They read news from Israel with resignation and disgust, like an English Victorian squire learning of the new exploits of his wild brother in a far away colony.
The American Jewish establishment is not better than Israel’s leadership. It provides unconditional support to Israeli and other Jewish criminals, from Sharon to Gusinsky, the Russian media lord. Abe Foxman, the head of ADL, files compromising materials, bugs phone calls and intrudes on the privacy of many Americans. The whining voice of Elie Wiesel and his colleagues traffic in schmaltzy self-righteousness. Conrad Black and others of his ilk take morally unsustainable positions, supporting freaks such as the Chilean torturer, Augusto Pinochet, and Henry Kissinger, the destroyer of Cambodia.
But the moment a word of objection exits our lips, we see the sign of Ayla and bend over. If nobody says it, we whisper it to ourselves: "Sh-sh-sh! It will cause anti-Semitism!" We can not help ourselves, it is too deeply engrained. Like a spoilt child, we take any criticism as a sign of hate. We dared to rebel against kings, but we do not dare to fight our self-proclaimed and self imposed leadership, as "it will cause A-S".
Abe Foxman, besieged for taking a $100,000 check from the Marc Rich Foundation, gave the sign of Ayla in the New York Times (March 21), proclaiming, ‘anti-Semitism is a disease, and we have seen a big eruption of that disease in New York’. But it misfired. Rabbi Lapin of Toward Tradition called him ‘a guy who's not in close touch with reality’, and a ‘dealer of the Anti-Semitism Manufacture’. He noted that the ADL gets paid (by contributors) according to how much anti-Semitism it finds.
The Guardian (March 28, 2001), to prove its pluralism, published an op-ed by a Simon Sebag Montefiore, who declared that ‘the most energetic media-campaigners against Israel are, in private, virulent anti-Semites’. He pictures the British journalists and public figures as ‘dogs besetting the bear’. "Dog" refers to lord Gilmour; "bear" to Conrad Black ,
He specifically objects to the ‘most wicked implication that Israel is replicating German behaviour: this approaches Holocaust denial in its iniquity’. Well, it is a question of standards. Years ago, an Israeli writer noted that the Jews measure their actions by the Nazi stick, and invariably find themselves ‘a good and benevolent occupier’. Maybe even this ‘generous’ standard has been set aside. Yes, the Nazi chapter in Poland was much worse than the thirty-four year Israeli military rule in the occupied territories. But the Nazi occupation of France was probably milder for the French, than the Israeli occupation is for Palestinians, and mercifully it has been much shorter. Daily life under the Vichy government was certainly better than life in the ‘autonomous’ Gaza strip.
Montefiore calms the Brits as his ‘aim is not to launch witch-hunts, just to warn decent people’ of the abyss ahead. Another purpose of this op-ed, which was probably sponsored by Black, is to frighten British Jews silly into supporting General Sharon.
This game is not for the right wing only. An Israeli liberal, Amnon Rubinstein, called his compatriots to fight the danger of anti-Semitism. This plague, in his opinion, was manifested by Greece bringing to court a Jewish stock market swindler, a local Milken or Rich. For Rubinstein, Jew must be immune to persecution, and all Jews must support every Jewish rascal. The Israeli peace activist, Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom, called Arabs to fight anti-Semitism, as "anti- Semitism brought one million Russian Jews to Israel". He could say anti-Semitism brought half a million of Chinese guest workers to Israel, as well.
In order to deliver peace to your souls, I will give my personal testimony. An aging baby-boomer, I have travelled the world, lived among Russians and Palestinians, Germans and Swedes, the English and the Japanese, Indians and Africans, and I can tell you, on the basis of my experience, anti-Semitism no longer exists. As a Jew, you can walk freely in any city of men; you will be safe everywhere, if you come as a friend. The prejudice to Jews has vanished. You can find a Jew-hater, but there are many more people who hate the Poles or the Irish or have a beef against the WASPs. You are much more likely to encounter an Arab-hater or those who hate blacks or Asians.
I met with many people who have been branded with the scarlet letter of the anti-Semite. These so-called anti-Semites object to the policies of the organised Jewish community, of the unholy alliance of Sharon and Abe Foxman, Gusinsky and Mark Rich, Conrad Black and William Safire. I concur with them wholeheartedly, as it is not a question of prejudice.
The professional anti-Semitism fighters know this very well. Their true purpose is not to fight anti- Semitism, but to frighten ordinary Jews into submission. That is why the pillars of the community write them generous checks, and they report every insult, magnifying it by a factor of ten. The Holocaust Industry is but a branch of the Anti-Semitism Manufacture, a two-pronged weapon: it pumps money from Gentiles and forces Jews into obedience to the leaders of the community.
In 1991, when Iraqi Scuds landed in Israel, and the gas warfare alarm sounded, a dozen Israelis suffocated in their gas masks and died. There was no poisonous gas outside, just the fresh and fragrant air of the Judean hills, but they would not breathe it. They thought they would die the moment they took their masks off. Instead, they suffocated in their masks. This is the paradigm of modern Jewish existence in the shadow of fear.
When Noah released the first dove from the ark, it had to return. The second dove, however, brought back an olive branch. The third dove did not come back. He found the deluge was over, and saw no reason to come back to the stifling air of the Arc. I am your third dove. You may take off your masks. The air outside is perfectly good. The deluge has subsided. Step outside to greet the human race, your brothers and sisters.
Jews and Gentiles, we have the same enemies and the same friends. The enemies are those who push us back into a goy-hating ghetto; for a Jew-hater is but a mirror image of a goy-hater. A few generations separate us from the stifling world of traditional Jewish community life. Those who pine for it can take a trip to Brooklyn.
Yossi Klein Halevi, an Israeli-American journalist, wrote about his childhood: "We lived on the border of Borough Park. Beyond our Brooklyn enclave,.. were Italians, Puerto Ricans, and Scandinavians. They evoked no curiosity in us, only fear. We saw them all as members of the same ethnic group: Jew-haters. Goyim we called them, a Hebrew word that literally means 'the nations' but that we understood to mean the enemy. We lived in a sealed Jewish world.... had it been possible, we would have surrounded Borough park with a moat..... Borough Park's interests were limited to its own borders, and leapt over the Christian neighborhoods to embrace other Jewish enclaves - as if the only civilized parts of the world were Jewish, the rest being inhabited by rabid creatures capable at any moment of unprovoked violence. 'The world' existed only insofar as it affected Jews. The Jews and 'the world' could never coexist; at best we would endure each other from a distance. Some of our religious laws seemed meant not to bring us closer to God but to separate us from the goyim, and I accepted that estrangement as self-evident».
Keep in mind, he was writing of modern New York with its large Jewish population, not of some medieval town. It is not strange that Halevi, brainwashed in his youth, became an activist of the goy-hating Nazi group, Meyer Kahane’s Jewish Defence League. He moved on, but even now, this correspondent for the New Republic in Israel supports settlers, who behave "as if the only civilized parts of Palestine were Jewish, the rest being inhabited by rabid creatures capable at any moment of unprovoked violence". A few generations ago, all the Jews lived in such enclaves, subservient to the Jewish elite of wealth and learning. The rule of the elite was based on patronage and on our fathers’ fear of anti- Semitism. The Jewish aristocracy has adapted to new conditions and continues to reinforce this fear in order to control us.
The ‘mutual support’ of the Jewish community is immoral. If an Irishman or an Italian steals, he goes to jail, and his parish priest might send him a Christmas pie. If an influential Jew steals, be it Vladimir Gusinsky or Mark Rich, the Jewish community demands his impunity. If the Jewish state commits war crimes, the Jewish community supports it without reservations. This is abnormal behaviour for an ethnic community, a shameful remnant of our habit of dealing with the outside world as if we were members of a medieval guild.
Let us help one another to overcome the impulse to bend over. A man should be able to voice objections to the homicidal policies of his leadership without being called a traitor. That was the position of Mark Twain who fought the US intervention in the Philippines. That was the position of Thoreau during the war over Texas. These were the positions of Alexander Solzhenitzyn, Thomas Mann, and Berthold Brecht. It should be easy for Jews to emulate these men, as the self-styled Jewish leadership has no real power over Jews; it can only resort to scare tactics.
The pursuit of the bogey of anti-Semitism leads away from the real problem. During WWII, the brilliant Russian Jewish writer, Iliya Ehrenburg, in a moment of rage called out (on the pages of Pravda) to his countrymen to ‘Kill the German vermin’. Marshal Joseph Stalin rebuked him: ‘The Nazis come and go, but the German people remain forever’. The German propaganda made a killing out of the hate speech of Ilya Ehrenburg, trying to obscure the fact that the problem was not the anti-German remark of the Jewish writer, but the German war crimes. In the same vein, the problem today is not a mythic anti- Semitism, but Israeli war crimes and US complicity in these crimes.
Anti-Semitism is a weapon of the scoundrel, said Lenin in 1920’s echoing the maxim of Samuel Johnson. This sentence, as so many Biblical verses, has retained its validity in a changed context: scoundrels still use anti-Semitism as a weapon, but now most of these scoundrels are Jewish.
(snicker)
Interesting he mentions Marx, "the grandson of the Trier Rebbe". I have been to Trier, Germany. It is a beautiful place. It is also "Yuden-rein": Jew-free.
Israel Shamir is a leading Russian-Israeli intellectual, writer, translator and journalist.
Shamir was born in Novosibirsk, Siberia, a grandson of a professor of mathematics and a descendant of a Rabbi from Tiberias, Palestine. He studied at the prestigious School of the Academy of Sciences, and read Math and Law at Novosibirsk University. In 1969, He moved to Israel, served as paratrooper in the army and fought in the 1973 war. After the army, he resumed his study of Law at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but abandoned the legal profession in pursuit of a career as a journalist and writer.
He got his first taste of journalism with Israel Radio. As a freelance, his varied assignments included covering Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the last stages of the war in South East Asia. In 1975, Shamir joined the BBC and moved to London. In 1977-79 he wrote for Maariv and other papers from Japan. While in Tokyo, he wrote ‘Travels With My Son’, his first novel. He also managed to find time to translate a number of Japanese classics.
After returning to Israel in 1980, Shamir wrote for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz and Al Hamishmar newspapers and worked in the Knesset as the spokesman for the Israel Socialist Party (Mapam). He translated the works of SY Agnon, the only Hebrew Nobel Prize winning writer, from the original Hebrew to Russian. His work was published and reprinted many times in both Israel and in Russia. He also translated selected chapters of Joyce’s Ulysses, which were well received by publishers in Moscow, Tel Aviv, New York and Austin, Texas. Another of his translations, the Israeli-Arab Wars by President Herzog, was published in London.
His most popular work, the Pine and the Olive, the story of Palestine/Israel, was published in 1988. Its cover carried a painting by the Ramallah painter, Nabil Anani. As the first Palestinian Intifada began, Shamir had left Israel for Russia, where he covered the eventful years 1989-1993. While in Moscow, he reported for Haaretz, but was sacked for publishing an article calling to the return the Palestinian refugees and the rebuilding of their ruined villages. He wrote for various Russian newspapers and magazines, including Pravda and Zavtra weekly. In 1993, he returned to Israel and settled in Jaffa. He wrote for Russian newspapers both in Israel and Russia and contributed to various literary magazines. During this period, he also worked on a new translation of the Odyssey, which was published in 2000 in St. Petersburg, Russia. His next big project was translating a Hebrew medieval Talmudic manuscript into Russian.
In response to the second Palestinian uprising in thirteen years, Shamir has temporarily abandoned his literary occupation and resumed his work as a journalist. In the midst of all the endless talk of a "Two State solution", Shamir, along with Edward Said, has become a leading champion of the ‘One Man, One Vote, One State’ solution in all of Palestine/Israel. His most recent essays have been circulating widely on the Internet and are now posted on many prominent media sites. With every new article, Shamir is establishing himself as a journalist whose work speaks to the aspirations of both the Israelis and the Palestinians. His most recent works include Acid Test, Rape of Dulcinea, Galilee Flowers, Joseph Revisited and Kid Sister.
Shamir (50) lives in Jaffa, he is father of two sons.
It's very sad. You can click on the picture for more info.
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