by Israel Shamir
JAFFA, Israel -- 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-siecle. 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... "
Copyright © 2001 Israel Shamir. Israel Shamir,
is one of best-known and most respected Russian Israeli writers and
journalists. He wrote for Haaretz, BBC, Pravda and translated Agnon, Joyce and
Homer into Russian. He lives in Tel Aviv and writes a weekly column in the
Vesti, the biggest Russian-language paper in Israel.
