Last Sunny Days
By Israel Shamir
(based on talk
given in Trondheim, Norway)
On a better day, I would use an occasion and chat with you to my
heart’s content, and what could be a better occasion than
presentation of my book in the Norwegian translation. A
talkative man from Jaffa, I would spin you endless yarns of ties
that unite the Holy Land and the Nordic countries, from the
Vikings to the Oslo negotiators. The Norsemen of old, your
ancestors, Vikings or Varangs, as they were called in the Middle
East, were hired by the Byzantine Emperors to serve the throne,
and they would invariably make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem,
Jorsala in their tongue, proceed to the River Jordan and
afterwards sail to their new adventures. One of them, the Norse
king Harald Hardrada, went to Jorsala-borg, but failed to take a
dip in the waters of Jordan, and that is why he was slain at
Stamford Bridge in an aborted attempt to take over England. St
Olav, your king and national saint, who is buried a few hundred
yards away in the cathedral of Nidaros, is still venerated in
Palestine, and a week ago I saw a Palestinian peasant woman
praying at the medieval wax colour wall painting of St Olav in
the Bethlehem basilica. Maybe her prayers sustain Norway, while
her home is saved by the efforts of Norse volunteers of ISM.
On a better day, I would tell you the full story of my saintly
ancestor Rabbi Jacobson who left our family house in Tiberias on
the shores of the Sea of Galilee and sailed to Trondheim, this
spiritual heart of the North, to lead the Jewish community of
Norway, and of all my relations in Norway and Sweden, and of my
pilgrimage to your land of wooden churches, fiery aquavit and
deep fjords. But the days are not that good, and this yarn will
have to wait.
Yesterday, I would tell you: the Holy Land suffers probably the
worst times in centuries. It is being ruined, and its sons are
being killed. Its villages are destroyed, while its peasants are
languishing in the refugee camps of Jenin and Deheishe, or
imprisoned in concentration camps of Ansar and Ketziyot.
Hundreds of children have been shot by Israeli marksmen,
thousands of trees uprooted, and springs ruined.
Maybe it would move you, and maybe not. Palestinians are being
slain, you would say. What else is new? People kill each other
everywhere, from Timor to Brazil to Bosnia to Rwanda. While
feeling sorry and bla-bla-bla, why should we care about
Palestine? And I shall be first to admit that until yesterday,
this callous position made eminent sense. Only a small sect of
dedicated men and women, members of pro-Palestinian groups,
carried the torch in the desert. Now things changed, millions
listen to the message, and as I speak to you today, my
distinguished friend and teacher Noam Chomsky talks to
multitudes in Gothenburg, just a few hundred miles to the south.
Why yesterday is so different from today? These beautiful days
of autumn, when the leaves turn purple and gold over dark-blue
waters of your lakes, and limpid air enhances white caps of your
jagged peaks, could be last good days we know for many years. A
world war is in the making, a war that begins in Palestine. It
is August 1914 all over again, the eve of the Great War. The
World War One began in Balkans, in Bosnia. If you would say to a
Frenchman in August 1914, you and your friends will die because
of Bosnia, he would laugh at you. But in a few months after
Sarajevo assassination, the flower of French youth was slain at
Verdun. It is 1914, it is 1939.
Now, as in 1939, again there is a strong will to re-shape the
world, and speeches of George W Bush vividly remind us the
speeches of the German chancellor. But who writes the speeches?
Who pushes for the war? Is it monopolies, oil and weapon
interests, as some people want us to think? The war-mongering
speech of Axis of Evil, directly taken from Austin Powers (Dr
Evil and his Axis) was composed by a Zionist speechwriter David
Frum, previously a fighter against ‘anti-Semitism’. Another
Zionist, Wolfowitz is the man actually in charge of the US
military. A leading Zionist thinker, Norman Podhoretz, calls for
war, while oh so liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz promotes torture
as the best way to learn the truth.
Let us examine the American plans carefully. Recently we’ve got
a sneak preview of their campaign. The US plans to destroy Iraq,
invade Syria, break Saudi Arabia into a few parts, separate the
oil fields, pass them in the hands of Israel, and finish off
with Egypt. The news was broken gently by a Jewish Lobby man,
Laurent Murawiec, who works under aegis of the Defence Policy
Board Chairman Richard N. Perle. This hawk, a friend of Sharon,
a devoted Zionist and a suspected Israeli mole, calls for
seizure of the Arabian oil fields, transfer of Mecca and Medina
unto Hashemite rule and confiscation of Saudi assets. He
represents a voice of many American Jews. In the prestigious
Jewish World Review , a columnist Jonah Goldberg calls: “Baghdad
must be destroyed… America should go to war with Iraq even if
that risks innocent Iraqi – and American – lives”. Professor
David D. Perlmutter in LA Times is even more explicit: “I
daydream - if only! If in 1948, 1956, 1967 or 1973 Israel had
acted just a bit like the Third Reich, then today Jews, not
sheiks, would have that Gulf oil’. Endless abbreviations, think
tanks, institutes connected to the powerful Jewish community in
the US are interwoven into a dense spider-net around Pentagon
and the White House. And they are the moving force behind the
new Drang nach Osten of President Bush.
Let us face the unpleasant reality: the Jewish elites of the US
are pushing for the Armageddon, or in your Norse tradition, for
Ragnarok, the Doomsday war, in order to establish the Jewish
state at the top of the world. It is a plan of megalomaniac, but
these megalomaniacs are in control of the only superpower, as
well as of their nuclear-powered Middle-Eastern bridgehead.
“Oh no, you say. We know Jews, a wonderful clever peaceful and
pleasant folk. It should be some mistake”. Let me remind you a
short story by the American writer and poet of 19th century,
Edgar Allan Poe about Germany of his days. He depicts Germans as
placid and peaceful folk, much given to growing cabbage, playing
piano, constructing clocks, smoking pipe and talking philosophy.
It is exactly the picture of Germans presented by Mark Twain in
his travelogues. This image apparently corresponded to reality,
and a German officer was a witness at my grandparents’ wedding
in the days of German occupation of Minsk in 1916. Some 25 years
later, my grandparents decided to flee the advancing German
army, while their Jewish neighbours laughed at them: “you fell
for the Bolshevik propaganda, there is no reason to run away,
the Germans are wonderful peaceful folk and the best friends of
Jews”. Still, my grandparents took flight and were saved from
the cruel Einsatzcommando, from the Germans who did not care
much about pipes and cabbage.
People can change, and if peaceful Germans could become for a
while a walking horror of the world, so can Jews. I do sincerely
hope that as the Germans came back to their normal selves, so
will the Jews, but I do not think it will happen by itself.
There is an infection and it is spreading fast. It is caused by
the inherent racism of the Jewish state. On my way to Ben Gurion
airport, I bought Haaretz, our main liberal newspaper. It
contained a dispute between our chief of staff, Buki Ayalon and
our previous Labour Prime Minister, Ehud Barak. Ayalon compared
the Palestinians with cancer growth, while the vice-chairman of
Socialist International, Barak completely disagreed: they are
rather a virus, he said. This racism spread over the Jewish
communities like a forest fire. Provided the Jews are the
prominent part of the American and to lesser degree European
elites, they communicate the disease to the rest. Their
newspapers and their film studios preach racism, hatred to
Muslims, Germans, French and to everybody else, including the
ordinary white working folk and the blacks of the United States.
In your Norse tradition, an evil cunning Loki cheated the gentle
but blind Hoed and caused him to kill his brother, shining
Balder, this Nordic pre-figuration of Christ. Now, Loki again
tries to cause the war between the brothers. It is our duty and
our right to refuse Loki’s advices and to stop the Ragnarok.
It can’t be done without attending to Palestine. For years, I
would say: Palestine/Israel must be transformed into a
democratic state, where Jews and Palestinians will live happily
ever after, as equals. But the Democratic State wouldn’t be a
Jewish state, people would object. That is the best part of it,
I would say. The Jewish state is as bad as the Aryan state, and
whoever rejects the Aryan state, should reject the Jewish state,
as well. Without the Jewish state, the Jews of the US and other
lands will return to their normal life, will forget the wet
dreams of the world domination and become law-abiding citizens
of their respective countries.
Until now, only our wonderful comrades, friends of Palestine,
had supported this idea. But now it becomes necessary – not only
for the sake of the Palestinians, these noble courageous and
hard-working people, but for the sake of all of us, for the sake
of the world peace. There are Israelis who would like to live in
peace with their Palestinian neighbours, in peace with churches
and mosques, but we can not counteract the external forces
supporting Sharon the Evil and Peres the Cunning. Good Israelis
and their Palestinian allies can’t win, unless their adversary’s
supply lines are cut, as in the Thor story.
The tale hath it, Thor the Mighty came to Utgard to boast his
prowess. The gods of Utgard challenged him to drink up the
Golden horn. He drunk and drunk, but the horn had remained
forever full. It was no miracle: the horn was connected to the
sea. Only by severing the umbilical tie, he could meet the
challenge and drink up the horn. If you, people of Europe, would
block the sea of external support, we, Israelis and
Palestinians, will be able to change the things on the ground
and bring equality to Palestine and Israel.
The deconstruction of the Jewish state, its conversion into a
state for all its citizens would become an important cardinal
point in human development. Instead of being the pilot project
of globalization, the Holy Land can become an ideal of
integration. The invaders and the local folk will merge, as your
ancestors the Normans did in East Anglia, Sicily and Normandy,
as the children of Provencal Crusaders became Palestinians in
the hilly villages of Sinjil and Gifna, while the Jews overseas
will become again the blessing of their communities, like my
sainted ancestor in your marvellous cathedral city.
|