ZGram - 12/14/2001 - "The State of Mind" (Excerpt)

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

December 14, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Israel Shamir is one of the truly discerning analysts of what is going on
in Israel and Palestine.  Like many Russian-born Jews, however, he stumbles
over English grammar, particularly articles.  He puts them where they don't
belong and leaves them out where they are necessary.  I have taken the
liberty of deleting and inserting a few.  I trust he will forgive me.

Here is an excerpt from a larger essay - his latest literary feat:

[START]

THE STATE OF MIND

 By Israel Shamir

 I...took [the] train homewards, to Jaffa. The train carried a few
Africans, probably illegal immigrants judging by their shy looks. A
Romanian building team was gulping beer and burping loudly. They were
imported from their impoverished East European land to build the houses for
immigrants, as the Jews do not want to be employed in construction in
Israel as well as in California. A Jewish Israeli lawyer in black yarmulke
leafed papers in his semi-opened briefcase. A blond and armed Israeli
soldier talked Ukrainian with its fricative h's to his corpulent
girlfriend. He extolled his own heroic fight against [the} multitude of
Arab terrorists under her admiring eyes. A group of Moroccans discussed the
closure of Acre steel plant and their slim chances to find another work.
The crisis is deepening, one of them said, it is as bad as in 1966.

 The train rode through Haifa, and I thought of hundreds of thousands,
maybe millions of Americans, Jews and Christian Zionists, who lobby, pray,
support and pay - no, not for the Jewish state built on the ruins of
Palestine. It would be bad enough; but reality is worse. I thought of
millions of Palestinians, rotting in refugee camps and jails, dispossessed,
expelled - not by the monster of evil occupation and land grabbing, but by
something worse - by a ghost.

 The Jewish state is a virtual state that quickly loses all remaining
connection to reality. This ghost of a state kills people and collects
money in America; it continues some nefarious existence, like the legal
term, "estate of the deceased". Its fields are worked by imported guest
workers, guarded by imported Russians and Ethiopians, explained by Israeli
professors teaching forever in American universities and by brave generals
on the lookout for a big shake. The unemployment grows daily, vital
services are on strike; the tourist industry collapsed, hotels are boarded
up and other branches of national economy are close to collapse. Israelis
buy flats in Florida and Prague, while houses in Israel could not be sold.
Sharon's desire to punish Palestinians was similar to punishing one's own
left hand: Palestinians and Israelis are intertwined and integrated, and
this separation kills the economy of both.

 From far away America, Israel looks like a giant, nuclear state, great
friend of the United States, a Jewish state that is a source of pride for
American Jews. A visitor leaves our shores with a strong feeling of our
identity and prosperity. Only we, permanent residents, know that it is a
cardboard sham. Israel is collapsing, as its active citizens emigrate in
despair, while generals complete the destruction of the country. A cruel
fate befalls the native Palestinians: a ghost kills them, a spiritless body
walking in Zombie-like trance the corridors of the Congress and the deserts
of [the]Middle East.

 For the sake of this spectre, important American Jews squeeze every penny
from their employees and countrymen, cut down on pensions to old and
assistance for children, reduce the health and education budget, dry up
help to Africa and Latin America, build improbable coalitions with
notorious racists of Pat Robertson's kind, demand destruction of Iraq,
bless [the] bombing of Afghani refugees, keep Afro-Americans in their
ghettos, undermine their host society, making enemies to themselves and to
America. These deeds are vile enough, but they are useless as well. [The]
Zionist experiment practically collapsed. It can run for many years to come
on [a] life-supporting machine, as a brain-dead vegetable. It can kill
people, maybe even start [a] world war. It cannot become alive.

 The Jewish state of Israel is a state of mind; it is but a projection of
the American Jewish mind. Worries and problems it articulates are American
Jewish problems. For Israeli "Jews", there is no need of segregation, of
war, of subjugation of natives. We eat no bagels with lox, speak no
Yiddish, read no Saul Bellow or Sholom Aleichem, and avoid synagogues. We
prefer Arab food and Greek music. My neighbourhood has seven pork butchers
to a kosher one. Forty per cent of Tel Aviv weddings are done outside [the]
Jewish framework: young Israelis prefer to go to Cyprus to get married,
just to avoid contact with Rabbis. Tel Aviv is the gays' capital of [the]
Middle East, though according to Jewish law, gays should be exterminated.
If American Jews would not bribe Israelis on a large scale, we would just
forget about the Diaspora and dissolve into the hospitable Middle East. If
they continue to bankroll us, we shall oblige them with a small show of
Jewishness.

 We are master-sellers of illusion, and as long as there are buyers, we
shall provide. In 1946, a group of dedicated men from all over the world
came to Palestine under the aegis of the UN. They were sent to prepare the
ground for [the] partition of the land. Among other places, they came to
the southernmost kibbutz Revivim in the arid Negev, and came across a
wonderful flowerbed with roses, anemones, and violets in front of the
kibbutz office. In their report, the members of the delegation expressed
their amazement and stated, "Jews make the desert bloom, let them have
Negev".

 As they left, the kibbutz youngsters went out and pulled the flowers out
of [the] sand: they [had] bought fresh flowers [the] same morning on the
Jaffa market and [had] planted them as props for the duration of the visit.
This small outlay transferred Negev with its two hundred thousand
Palestinians to the Jewish state. [The] Majority of them were expelled
across the newly drawn border, to the camps of Gaza or Jordan. It was cruel
and useless: even now, fifty years later, Negev south of Beersheba has [a]
smaller population than in 1948.

 In order to populate depopulated lands, Mossad broke and terrorised [the]
Jewish communities of North Africa. The Jews were brought in, sprayed with
DDT lice-killer and placed into refugee camps that soon became towns of
Netivot, Dimona, Yerucham.  They are still there, in the towns of
unemployment and misery, drawing social benefits and probably disliking
Ashkenazi Jews as much as anybody could. Not in vain, they write
"Ashkenazim to Auschwitz" on the walls of their towns.

 A few weeks before the Intifadah, Israeli establishment imprisoned [a]
hugely popular leader of Oriental Jews, Rabbi Arie Deri. Tens of thousands
of Moroccans gathered at the gates of the jail demanding his release.
Intifada saved the skins of Ashkenazi Jews from the civil war, but not
forever.

 Thus the conjuring tricks of Revivim, conquest of Negev, expulsion of
Palestinians, destruction of Moroccan Jewish community succeeded separately
and failed altogether. Zionist leaders dreamed to make Palestine as Jewish
as England is English. They failed. Palestine is Jewish as Jamaica is
English.

 The land of Palestine is being ruined now, in front of our eyes. Its
beautiful old villages are bombed to oblivion; churches are emptied of
their flock; olives are uprooted. Such ruin did not befall the land since
the Assyrian invasion 2700 years ago. Nothing could comfort us in [the]
face of this great destruction, and certainly [the] people connected to it
- whether Israeli killers or their American Jewish supporters - will be
damned forever.

 Still, a wry irony of history will remain as a footnote in the books of
[the]  future: the Jewish leadership committed these crimes in vain, and
received no profit out of it. Even if the last Palestinian would be
crucified on the hill of Golgotha, even that would not bring to life the
virtual Jewish state of Israel.

=====

Israel Shamir is an Israeli writer and journalist living in Jaffa. His
other articles could be found on his site, www.israelshamir.com This
article can be freely transmitted and published in electronic media; hard
copy publications must ask for permission at Shamir@israelshamir.com  If
you do not wish to receive his articles, reply with the subject line
"remove", if you would like to join this list, write with a subject line
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[END]

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