The
American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Volume 21 Fall 2004
Number 4, pp. 124-126 Book Review
Flowers
of Galilee: The Collected Essays of Israel Shamir By Israel Shamir
Tempe, Arizona: Dandelion Books, 2004. 304 pages.
Flowers
of Galilee
breaks new ground in modern political discourse. This book
recommends a democratic one-state solution in all of historical
Palestine and the return of the Palestinians to rebuild their
villages. The beautiful front cover painting by Suleiman Mansour
of Jerusalem lovingly depicts a Palestinian family, children
seated on a donkey, walking past a hill covered with olive trees.
Similarly, Israel Shamir's essays portray the peaceful, pastoral
landscape of the Holy Land and the humanity of its inhabitants,
juxtaposed against the ugliness and inhumanity of Jewish racism.
These
thought-provoking essays, written in Jaffa during the al-Aqsa
Intifada in 2001-2, call for Jews to leave their sense of
exclusivity and plead for human equality. The author, a Russian
immigrant to Israel in 1969, followed his meditations to their
inevitable conclusion, renounced Judaism, and was baptized in the
Palestinian Orthodox Church of Jerusalem. A brilliant storyteller
with a vast knowledge of history, he discusses current events and
their global implications with brutal honesty and tenderness. His
clear insights and lyrical use of language to illustrate social,
religious, and political complexities make him the Khalil Gibran
of our time.
An
important chapter, "The Last Action Heroes,"
memorializes the Spring 2002 siege of Bethlehem. The Israeli army
surrounded 40 monks and priests and 200 Palestinians seeking
refuge in the Church of Nativity. For a month, "people
starved...the stench of corpses and of infected wounds filled the
old church" (p. 63). The UN did nothing, but a few
International Solidarity Movement activists from America and
Europe, including the author's son, broke the siege. One group
distracted the soldiers while the others rushed into the church's
gates, brought food and water, and helped negotiate a surrender.
Shamir
deconstructs the legal fictions of the state of Israel and the
elusive Palestinian state: "Israelis who would like to live
in peace with their Palestinian neighbors...cannot counteract the
raw muscle of the American Jewish leadership" (p.179). He
further dissects the Jewish Holocaust cult and other Zionist
public relations tactics. He exposes the two-state solution as a
political bluff, calls on the world to cut off aid to Israel, and
admonishes the Muslim world for indulging in usury.
Shamir
strives to free Gentiles from both their fear and adoration of
Jews. He searches into the material successes of world Jewry, the
Jewish rejection of Jesus, and the global applications of Jewish
ideology, resulting in the mass immigrations of refugees into
Europe from war zones and the destruction of local cultures. The
Left and the Right, he believes, are like the two legs of a human
being: They must work together to counteract the uprooting and
homogenizing forces of the global elite, whom he calls Mammonites.
The
author debunks the myth of Islamic terror, pointing to the
anti-Gentile polemic embedded in Jewish discourse. He demystifies
the threat of "anti-Semitism" as a control mechanism to
keep good Jews from confronting those Jewish leaders responsible
for promoting war and policies of economic inequality. He points
out that the political position of a "moderate" Jew is
alarmingly similar to Nazism. Shamir explains "Jewishness"
as a destructive concept of "separateness and privilege"
based on the "two-tier approach of ingroup-outgroup" (p.
263). He sees Jewish chauvinism as threatening not only
Palestinians but the entire world, because of the Jewish control
over public opinion and policy. His philosophical analysis of
Judeo-American power is illuminating.
Shamir
pays tribute to former US Representative Cynthia McKinney, who
stands out as a politician who refused to be disloyal to America.
Her defeat by Jews who organized Republican voters to vote
Democratic in order to unseat her sounded the death knell of
American democracy. Jews used black Americans to open the doors to
the elite positions formerly held only by white Christians. Once
the Jews were in, the author explains, they closed the doors to
blacks. Jewish equal rights activists were steered into Zionism
and became enemies to those blacks who rejected Jewish supremacy.
The
book concludes with the author's personal peace treaty with the
Arabs: "As for me, Syrian children may come and swim in the
Sea of Galilee, and children of Palestine are welcome to the
amusement parks of Tel Aviv...The refugees of Gaza may come back
to the fields they owned before 1948, and deal directly with the
few old Polish Jews who 'privatized' the lands. Keep me out of
it." He tells Sharon: "General, if you want war, please
wage it personally" (p. 296).
The
author presents a compelling argument to the native Palestinians
to accept him as their brother and let him live in their beautiful
land as a neighbor, with their permission and blessing. Every
chapter maintains an inspiring certainty of humanity's victory
over evil. I would have liked to learn more about his own personal
transformation from someone who watched his Israeli army buddies
shoot unarmed prisoners to someone that courageously withstands
vilification to champion human rights for all.
Flowers
of Galilee
is a romantic discourse on Palestine that lacks native Palestinian
voices; however, it provides sincere and wise counsel. The author
recommends neutralizing the invader through assimilation. He
dreams of a world in which the descendants of Jews and
Palestinians will be able to live as equals, intermarry, and
create a new race of people. Shamir's proposal is consistent with
Islamic tradition and is the only viable option for a lasting
peace in the Middle East.
Karin
M. Friedemann, Editor World View News Service
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns
The
American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Volume 21 Fall 2004
Number 4, pp. 124-126 Book Review
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