I am very aware that opinions on Arafat's value to the Palestinian struggle is divided - and that many Arabs and Palestinians feel that he has sold out to the client regime idea and is, essentially, in the pockets of those who want Palestine's destruction. On the other hand, there are many who see him as a wily fox who walks a perilous road with the Americans and with the Israelis - a strategy that is at least partially to benefit his people. I often feel sorry for him because he is in a Catch-22 and No-Win situation and because he is a desperately sick man.
Since the inception of the ZGrams I wanted to reflect the nature of this global struggle to shake off the Zionist yoke, and I welcome the essay below, written by a man who speaks for the Russian mind from a Russian perspective. There are magnificent Quotable Quotes in this essay, and I ask that you read it with a fair and open mind.
It was sent to us by Israel Shamir, a Russian-born Jewish journalist for whom I feel an ever more abiding respect - even though once in a while he jarrs me badly, as he did the other day when he sang the praises of what we Germans consider the Monster of all Jewish/Bolshevik Monster Propagandists, Ilya Ehrenburg, responsible for the deaths through murder and rape of millions of Germans - men, women and children during and after World War II.
No matter. This war takes many warriors.
Below is stunningly masterful writing. Read on, starting with an introduction by Shamir:
[START]
[END]Dear friends, on the day Israeli F-16 jets bomb Ramallah and Nablus, I would like to introduce you to Zavtra Russian weekly, published in Moscow, where I have an honor to place my articles from time to time. It is a fighting newspaper, standing steadfast for independent Russia, and for Palestine. It prints both left and right-wing opinions of wide range, as long as they oppose the neo-liberal globalization.
It is definitely not a politically correct tribune, its writers do not form a selected club. On its pages, some rather extreme and disturbing ideas could be found, as well.
That is the price for freedom of speech, and Zavtra is free, much freer than any American newspaper. It is edited by Alexandre Prohanov, who wrote the editorial (below) in his highly opinionated ringing prose reminiscent of Gibbon and Hugo.
It is a moving eulogy to the people of Palestine, and to the man who personifies Palestine for Russians, Yasser Arafat. It could be compared to Pablo Neruda and Eluard eulogies of Stalin in the days of Stalingrad.
Prohanov stays clear of inter-Palestinian party politics, he accepts the choice of Palestinians and supports them. Let it be a voice of cheer in the time of gloom.
ISRAEL IS DOOMED
The nations whose step once shook the earth, who endeavored revolutions of great magnitude, populated new continents, conceived and inspired faiths and religions, now drowsily stare with groggy eyes at the shepherds who have brought them into the sties of the new global order, who drip dross from the table of America into their mangers, pour Circe's potions from the IMF, and titillate them with the distant sight of the synthetic heifer, the American dream.
The nation that dares to moan and pull at its chains is flogged by the electronic scourges of CNN, its skin pierced by the sharp edges of Tomahawks, its mouth gagged by the "holocaust victims" stopper.
The Russian people forget the language of Pushkin and victories of marshal Zhukov. Latin Americans do not recollect Sandino and Che Guevara; they twist their lithe bodies on the carnival, push drugs and provide a cheap labor force on the building sites of California.
The Americans disregard the pioneers' drive and John Brown's body; bleary-eyed, they stare at their TV screens, pay tribute and docilely send their sons to kill Serbs and Iraqis.
Only from a solitary point of sky does a beam from Space burn through the dead shell that seals mankind. This plasma beam, as God's finger, points to the people of Palestine.
Wherever the beam reaches the earth, wherever it shines over Gaza, Jerusalem and Hebron, History Alive is created before our eyes. As in the days of the prophets, the nation prays, shoots, bleeds, sings the songs of struggle, faces the Jewish tanks, tears with naked hands their steely caterpillars, stops up the flaming mouths of guns with bodies of their own children, demonstrates to the fuzzy emasculated world the meaning of the words Freedom, Homeland, God.
Israel is doomed. She is disgusting to the Arabs, the French, the English, even to herself. The red-hot intifada is the fiery river, into which melts and sinks to the bottom another myth of the 20th century - the theory of Zionism.
According to designs of Herzl and Jabotinsky, a small geopolitical monstrosity was created on Arab lands. Its settlers have imposed on America and Germany the annual tribute of five billions dollars. They pour napalm on the mosques and transform whole nations into homeless refugees. They brainwash the whole world by their "ashes of Auschwitz".
In the place of Israel, the Arabs will plant many fig trees and Lebanese cedars, they will create a national park. It will be the home of a large, pretty Hebrew-speaking parrot. The sad Jews will move elsewhere, to another place on earth. Even to Brooklyn. If they will repeat their mistakes, let Americans arrange for them a new intifada.
Yasser Arafat is the last national leader of the fin-de- siËcle. The Great Palestinian, who was reared by his people professing the faith in freedom where the division between the mundane and the divine struggle vanishes together with distinction between Life and Death. God came to His people incarnated as a wise, fearless, tireless, incorruptible leader. He mourns the fallen fedayeen, embraces the orphan, wipes the tears of widows, departs from burning Beirut with his warriors, enters the Beast's lair at Camp David, reads the incinerated Qur'an of Sabra and Shatila, kisses the hot earth of his native Palestine. Arafat the Palestinian walks with his olive branch and his Kalashnikov into the immortality of history.
"Tell me, O bough of Palestine: where did you grow, where did you blossom...?" asked the Russian poet, Lermontov. And the bough replied: "I grew in the Garden of Eden of our Lord the God. The handgrip and the stock of the machinegun are made of my strong wood. My fiery leaves, like the drops of a Molotov cocktail, fly on the armor of the Israeli tanks. My blossoms decorate the bullet-perforated banner of the PLO. My fruit is sweet for the heroes and martyrs, as sweet as Freedom..."
Thought for the Day:
"The Russian goyim in Kiryat Ata get drunk, they spread anti- Semitism that they inherited from the days of the Tsar, and soon the Jews will be forced to flee the city."
-Kiryat Ata Municipal Rabbi Shmuel Shulzinger, appealing to town officials to stop "flooding" the Haifa suburb with what he called non-Jewish immigrants.
(Ha'aretz | May 15, 2001 |)
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