Good News from Palestine, or One Jew Less
By Israel Shamir
Two
boats Free Gaza and Liberty manned by fourtysome activists from
various lands, safely reached the shores of besieged Gaza. They passed through
the naval blockade established by the Israelis, and brought a message of hope,
and even some provision for the besieged. This was far from obvious and expected
conclusion of the daring enterprise; some 20 years ago, a similar attempt ended
in catastrophe. In 1988, the PLO staged an unsuccessful effort to sail from
Cyprus to Haifa. The Israeli
frogmen attached a limp mine to the ship, named the Sol Phryne and
re-christened Exodus-2, while it was in the Cypriot port of Limassol,
while a day earlier they planted a bomb in the car of the crew and killed three
of them. That voyage had been timed to coincide with 40 years of Nakba and the
founding of Israel. For twenty years, nobody even mentioned it, nor tried to
repeat the suicidal trip. This trip marked the 60th anniversary, and it went off
successfully.
This is a happy event: we should be glad that the boats
arrived safely. Let these small vessels be remembered together with Granma
and Exodus, if not with Santa Maria of Columbus, for they did an
historic deed. The siege of Gaza is breaking down. The Israeli authorities said
they did not want to interfere with the boats in order to give it less
publicity. But events have their own dynamics; and we may hope that Israeli
leaders won’t find it that easy to go back to their bad old ways. One small
demonstration may lead to revolution. This operation should be extended, and
multiplied; instead of one boat, hundred boats should sail.
Our congratulations to brave and intrepid men and women who
sailed these boats to the shores of Gaza. And our special congratulations to Uri
Davis, one of the Free Gaza activists, who saw the light in more ways than one.
After being a life-long godless atheist, he came to God, and accepted Islam.
After being a single man for a long time, he got married to a Palestinian lady
of the noble Husseini family. So many blessings to Uri Davis! One Jew less and
one bachelor less, in one go!
By his triple deed, Uri Davis gave a powerful answer to his
erstwhile friend Uri Avnery.
Avnery wrote a piece warning the Palestinians: don’t you
dream of living with Jews in one state, because the Jews would rather expel or
exterminate you. An Indian-style reservation is as good as you may ever hope to
get from us. Our friend John Spritzler wrote a strong reply
http://spritzlerj.blogspot.com/ to Avnery, saying: “This is no different
from a Mafia thug giving "friendly advice" to a shop owner, warning what the
consequences will be for failure to pay the Mafia's "protection" fee. Here we
see Avnery the Zionist dropping his facade of "kindly friend of the
Palestinians" and making it perfectly clear where he stands: challenge the
Zionist project of an exclusively Jewish sovereignty in most of Palestine, and
we will all unite as a "fascist right wing" to drive you out of Palestine.”
Uri Davis came and slapped Avnery’s face: if even he, a
paragon of Jewish atheism, can convert and embrace Palestinians, not only in One
state, but in One community believing in One God, in One family and in One bed,
the Jewish steadfastness is surely collapsing.
Israel is the only place where it seems to be an oddity: in
the US and in Russia, majority of marriages are mixed ones. Jews are opting out
of Jewry as fast as they can. Inshallah soon there won’t be enough Jews left to
man the naval blockade.
PS From Dan McGowan
Hi Israel,
How do you know Uri Davis was on board? I have not seen his
name on the website nor have I seen his picture in the photos. BTW, our Board
member Hedy Epstein was not on board. She was too ill to make the trip.
Dan
Shamir replied: Apparently,
Uri Davis who was supposed to sail with the Free Gaza, did not sail after all.
Still, our congratulations to his wedding.