Breakout from Ghetto Gaza
By Israel Shamir
They went out, risked their lives, rushed the army,
overturned the fence, strode the barbed wire, wiped out the border between two
states, committed so many heroic acts, worthy of great warriors, suffering
casualties -- and when they were through, they went to shop and bought bread for
their children. This gave a lie to the image of Palestinians that the Jews had
tried to plant in world conscience: that of wild violent fanatics bent on
rampage. Instead, the guys broke out of jail and bought bread. Meaning, they
were kept hungry by their Jewish overlords. A stronger picture will not come
soon from the Middle East than that of these family men carrying bread back
home.
They are so normal, these Gaza, like you and me – they carry
out their normal lives, they work in a bank or a garage -- but they get full
medieval treatment. First, they were dispossessed and corralled into Gaza, then
they were treated like even dogs should not be treated; they were not allowed to
travel by a highway if the road is used by a Jew, they were not permitted to see
their immediate family living only a mile away. And then, this siege. No food,
nothing to feed the children with. No future, either, with Israel as the
neighbour. They suffer for only one crime: they are not Jews, though,
ironically, many of them are descendent of Jews, some with famous Jewish family
names, who embraced Christ or the Prophet.
They were supposed to suffer quietly, but the Gazans have a
lot of dignity. They voted for Hamas against the will of Israel and America, and
they expelled the collaborationist gang of Dahlan. Now, they have rushed the
fence, and that was a good example for all of us: nothing can be done within the
legal limits our enemies had enforced. There is a need for the push that is
called Revolution.
When the brave Gazans walked back, loaded with their lucky
catch, with bread and rice, with salt and blankets, with vegetables and lambs,
the Jews were decidedly unhappy. The natives will forget that we are like God
unto them; we provide and we punish, we feed and we starve. Instead of accepting
our doom, they took their fate in their hands. With bread and rice, the Gazans
will smuggle guns, and this may force us to postpone the big offensive already
agreed upon with George W. The Jews prefer to assail weapon-less victims.
The Egyptians also failed Jewish expectations. “I believe
Egypt knows what its job is”, said the arrogant Israeli general Ehud Barak. The
job he gave to Egypt is the job of jailer of their Palestinian brothers. “The
Gazans would never dare to break the siege to Sinai, - wrote Israeli pundits a
week, even a day ago - Egyptians will meet them with deadly fire.” When there
was a shoot-out, the Israelis were so happy for a while. Effi Eitam, a
right-wing religious Jewish leader, who looks like a ‘well-fed kosher pig in
yarmulke’ (in words of Gilad Atzmon) wrote in the Yediot Ahronot an op-ed
dripping of crocodile tears. We Jews are so soft and merciful in comparison to
the Egyptians, he wrote. But Mubarak wants to survive, and he knows there are
limits he may not push too far. He gave orders to his soldiers to cease fire.
The Jews wailed that Egyptians must enforce the border, and supply their pound
of flesh per agreement. In vain. Mubarak does not want to follow Anwar as-Sadat
to hell.
Deeply dissatisfied, the Jews watched this stream of people
that got out of their jail for a short break. But then, they are hard to please,
these Jews are. The Palestinians have to kill each other in a civil war, or die
of hunger to please the Jews.
My grandfather did that, he died of hunger and exhaustion in
1942 in the ghetto of Stanislaw. The Germans and their Ukrainian quislings did
to Jews what the Jews did to Gazans: they gathered them in the ghetto, and left
them to starve there. The slogans of the Nazis were also taken from
Olmert-Barak’s book, mutatis mutandis: “they must suffer because their leaders
are our enemies, they should be punished for their terrorism in the revolution,
let them go hungry because their brothers harass the German troops and bomb
German cities”. My grandfather Israel – I was named after him – succumbed to
hunger, cold and exhaustion, they did not even have to shoot him; he did not
qualify for their targeted killing program.
Wait, you’ll say, how could Barak and Olmert starving Gazans
in 2008 influence the Germans of 1942? How could they be responsible for death
of my granddad? The answer is given in the secret language of Jewish mysticism:
Ein mukdam, ein meuhar beTorah. The sequence of events - in the Holy Writ
and in the world – is irrelevant, because all events and their alleged
consequences take place in the same meta-time, forever playing vicious circles
of Cat-pursuing-Mice-that scared-Elephant-that trampled-the-Cat. In Christian
theology the transcendent meta-time is defined as Kairos rather than
Chronos....time past, present and future as one, in a moment, "a twinkling
of an eye".
Poincare and Einstein translated this concept into the
language of modern physics when they described Time as just one of dimensions as
bendable as the others.
Douglas Adams popularised this in his novel: his characters
go back in time to fix a problem, they do it, but at some cost: they save a
fish, but dodo dies out, they gain music of Bach, but lost Coleridge’s poems.
The people are not aware that the world already changed; that now they have more
of Bach but less of Coleridge. Only those, who could exit the time frame, know:
the world is changing all the time because of our deeds, and these changes go
“back” and “forth”, because there is no such thing as “back” and “forth”. Thus,
the Armenians slaughtered and expelled the Azeris, and their ancestors were
deported into desert to suffer in the Kurds’ hands, and the Kurds suffer for
this crime, and for their support of the US-Zionist occupation.
And some things have not materialised yet, but they will:
when I listen to the Jews (and Poles, and Ukrainians, and Americans) who insist
that “Stalin was as bad as Hitler” and “there is no difference between Nazis and
Commies” and of “Russian antisemitism”, I know that in the next future, the Red
Army will not fight the Germans, will not liberate Poland and Czechia, will not
open the gates of Auschwitz and Treblinka.
This world is just, and the Lord is just. He punishes
ingratitude by undoing the deed one had to be grateful for. The Lord of Justice
is not chained to wrist watch chronology or the Western calendar, the past is
not nailed down. And, an emphatic yes, we have witnessed a sign of all of this
time above time in the Gaza events.
Do an evil thing today, and the past will change and kick you
back. Starve the Gazans and your grandfathers will die of thirst and hunger.
Torture Palestinians, and your ancestors will be tortured by the inquisition
using the same reasoning you applied today to your enemies. Turn Hebron into a
prison for its inhabitants, and the Jews will be slaughtered in 1929. The crime
of Jewish mistreatment of Palestinians is being punished even now. Do not ask
who is starved and who is tortured: it is somebody quite close to you.
25-26 January 2007 Tel Aviv-Havana
Edited by Ken Freeland, incorporating a letter by Thomas
Getman, Geneva, Switzerland
Read Responses
____________________________________
From: Tom Getman
My dear Israel:
Thank you very much for this. As one who had relatives in the Warsaw ghetto and
as a result many times have alluded to the Gaza parallels with my Israeli
friends, especially now that I have relatives in the illegal settlements with
whom I am hesitant to visit, your reflection instructed my
heart and encouraged me in my efforts for reconciliation.
In Christian theology the parallel to Jewish mysticism hyper-time is
transcendent meta-time that is defined as Kairos rather than Chronos....time
past, present and future as one, in a moment. "a twinkling of an eye". The
Lord of Justice is not chained to wrist watch chronology or the Western
calendar! And, an emphatic yes, we have witnessed a sign of all of this time
above time in the Gaza events.
Please know how grateful I am as a Follower of the Messiah Jesus for your life
and thoughtful witness as we work for and await His transformative justice.
Bon courage et paix,
tg
Tom Getman
Executive Director International Relations
World Vision International
From Kevin Boyle
What a brilliant and holy article. Thank you very much.
From Alla Nikonov, Tel Aviv
Hi, Israel. A wonderful piece about good news!
