Article via e-mail: The Handwriting on the Wall

The Handwriting on the Wall
By Israel Shamir
January 23,2001

[The author, 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.]


Among the colourful revellers of Allenby Street, in the crowded
restaurants of merry-making Tel Aviv nights, a vision came to me, a vision of an
angel in battle-dress, chalking up on a wall three words, Mene, Tekel
ufarsin. My Angel-English on-line dictionary prompts a translation: you
were tested and you failed the test. [those three words are the
"handwriting on the wall" in Aramaic in Daniel  5:25-29--CHM]

These are the darkest days for the people of Israel. They are dark, as
the lamentations and protests of us and our fathers turned out to be as
genuine as a three-dollar bill.

In 1968, a young Jewish Russian kid, I wrote on the walls of my native
Russian city, 'Hands off Czechoslovakia'. The beautiful deep voice of a
Jewish Russian poet Alexander Galitch intoned: Citizens, our motherland
is in danger, our tanks are on foreign soil! Some Russian Jews
demonstrated on the Red Square against the invasion, and were beaten up
by the police. We protested against the presence of the Russian tanks in

Budapest, Prague and Kabul as Russian citizens who value honour above
ill-understood loyalty, humankind above blood ties. In the same time,
Jewish American kids demonstrated against their country's intervention
in Vietnam, while Jewish boys and girls in Europe fought against racism.

Years passed by, and now our Jewish tanks are on  foreign soil. Our
Jewish army murders civilians, demolishes houses, starves millions and
imposes  sieges on Palestinian villages. Our crimes have exceeded the
Russian crimes committed in Chechnya and Afghanistan, the American
crimes in Vietnam and Serb crimes in Bosnia.

Surely, the Israeli intellectuals demonstrate en masse on our equivalent
of Pennsylvania Avenue or Trafalgar Square, American Jews raise their voice
against the America-armed killers of Palestinians; Russian Jews speak up
for the human rights of the enslaved Gentiles of the Holy Land? No, I fear,
our literati exalt the courage of our Jewish soldiers, venerate the steady
hand of our Jewish snipers and glorify the immense humanity of the Jewish
folk, who could pulverise all the Gentiles of Palestine, but kindly limit
ourselves to a few hundred wounded and maimed a day.

My grandfather in the Pale of Settlement complained against the
restrictions of the free movement of Jews in the Russian Empire, while
in our generation Anatoli Sharansky became a symbol of struggle for human
rights. In our own country, the Gentiles are fenced into reservations and
concentration camps that the Pale pales in comparison with. A Palestinian cannot
go to the next village without the Jewish ausweis, he is forever checked by our
Checkists. He can only dream of the sea, washing the shores of his
ancestral home - we do not let Palestinians to pollute the Jewish purity of our
beaches.

For years, the Jews protested the discrimination in employment and
education. In our own state we created the system of total national
discrimination. In our state-owned Electric company, out of 13,000
employees there are six Gentiles. 0,0004%. Gentiles form forty percent of the
population between the Jordan River and the sea, but only one out of
four has the right to vote. There are no Gentiles in the Supreme court, in the
government, in the Air Force, in the secret services. There is not even
one Gentile on the board of the main Israeli Liberal newspaper, Haaretz.

That is why all the complaints of Jews in the Diaspora deserve to be
re-written in the light of the events. We did not fight for the human
rights, but for the rights of Jews. We were for the freedom of movement and
freedom of choice - for Jews only. We spoke of the universal suffrage, but we
meant the right of vote for Jews only. We do not mind occupation and invasion,
as long as we invade and occupy. The sight of a child raising hands in
front of the machine-gun-toting thug grieves us only if it is a Jewish child. 
The Gentile child can be shot at freely.

When Bialik wrote "Devil did not invent a fit punishment for the murder
of a child", he actually meant 'a Jewish child'. When he was horrified by the
scenes of pogrom,  he was horrified that the violence is directed
against Jews. Otherwise, there is nothing wrong with pogroms per se. The  Jews
of Upper Nazareth just committed a pogrom of Gentiles in Nazareth , but no
pogromchik was tried. Police helped them by murdering a few of the
pogrom victims. Still worse were the pogroms of Ramallah and Beth
Jallah, committed with the helicopter gunships and tanks.

Tsarist Russia, 'the land of pogroms', was much hated by our
grandfathers, and eventually destroyed by them. Still, a hundred years of Jewish
pogroms caused fewer casualties than we murder in a week. The most horrible
pogrom of Kishinev claimed 45 dead and 600 wounded. During the last weeks in
Israel, more than 300 were killed so far and many thousands wounded. After the
pogrom in Tsarist Russia, all writers and intelligentsia condemned the
perpetrators. In the Jewish state, hardly a few dozens gathered at the demonstration 
in Tel Aviv, while the Hebrew Writers Union supported this pogrom of Gentiles.

In 1991, the majority of the Russian Jews took a stand against communism and for 
private ownership. They actually had in mind Jewish private property, as we
confiscate the Gentile property with the greatest of ease. Go through the best
areas of Jerusalem, Talbieh, Old Katamon, Greek and German Colonies, and see
the marvellous palaces. They belonged to Gentiles, - Germans, Armenians,
Greeks, British, Russians, Palestinians, Christian and Moslem. All of them were
confiscated and given to Jews.  During the last weeks, hundreds of acres of
Gentile property were confiscated, and hundreds of Gentile houses seized or
demolished.

Just before his arrest, the richest Russian Jewish media-lord Gusinsky
came to Israel and expressed his unlimited support. At the same time he asked
the world to help him in his fight with the Russian authorities who were
trying to save their TV from his clutches. His support of Israel proves that Mr
 Gusinsky approves confiscations on the ethnic base. He is just against
the confiscations of Jewish property. He is against Jews being arrested -
the Gentiles may rot in prisons forever, as it happens in the  Jewish state.

In no time at all we succeeded to undermine the long-term achievements
of Jews in the struggle for democracy, human rights and equality. What is
it that we did not like about the German Nazis? Their racism? Our racism is
not less wide-spread and poisonous. The Russian language newspaper, Direct
Speech, published in Jerusalem,  asked hundreds of Russian Jews about their
feelings towards the Palestinians. Typical answers were: "I would kill
all Arabs", "All Arabs must be eliminated", "Arabs must be expelled", "An
Arab is an Arab. They have to be eliminated". I am not sure you would get 
better results in Germany in 1938. Even Nazis did not intend to kill their
Jewish enemies until 1941.

Let us put it straight, we were against racism as long as it was somebody 
else's racism. We were against death squads and Sonderkommando as long
as they acted against us. Our own killers, our Jewish Sonderkommando is
the object of our tender admiration. The Jewish state is the only place in
the world possessing legitimate killer squads, embracing the policy of
assassinations, practicing torture on the medieval scale. Do not worry,
dear Jewish readers, we torture and assassinate Gentiles only.

We were against ghettos while we were being  pushed into a ghetto. Now
the most liberal Jewish plan calls for creation of a few Gentile ghettos
fenced by barbed wire, surrounded by Jewish tanks and Jewish-owned
factories at the fence, where the Arbeit will macht the Gentiles frei.
We shall give the ghetto full independence but previously removing all
sources of income and sustenance.

Israelis are brainwashed from kindergarten, they are taught they belong
to the Chosen People, who are Uber Alles. They were indoctrinated in  the
belief that the Gentiles are not fully human, and therefore they can be  killed
and expropriated at will. After all, Israel fulfilled one UN resolution, the
one that called Zionism a form of racism. What is upsetting is that the
internationalist upbringing in the Soviet Union could not withstand the
poison of the Zionist propaganda of Jewish superiority. I do regret the
moral collapse of my own Russian community in the Holy Land.

Now, as the angel wrote his fiery words, as prophets called the people
to repent, we have the choice. We can choose the way of Nineveh, to repent,
to return the stolen property, to give full equality to Gentiles, to stop
discrimination and murder, and hope to be forgiven by God, if not for
our sake, then for the sake of our cats and dogs. Or we can persist in our
evil ways as the people of Sodom and wait for the flood of fire and burning
sulphur from the angry heavens of Palestine.


The author, 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.