Shamir le fou et Thion le fanatique
By Israel Adam Shamir
My good
friend and French dissident Serge Thion has written a fiery response to an old
essay of mine called
The right move (Fr:
http://www.israelshamir.net/French/RightMoveFr.htm ) under the title
Shamir gone mad. Apparently only now, after ten years of correspondence, has
Serge finally apprehended that when I speak of the One State Solution I actually
meant just that: One State, as compared to the infamous Two State Solution.
Serge may be forgiven for not understanding the assumptions behind the term “One
State Solution” because this, the only reasonable solution to the nightmare of
Zionism, has for at least ten years lain buried below a wall of static. One
State, for the well-meaning and well-adjusted, obviously means a diverse state
that is capable of representing a diverse population which includes Muslims (of
all backgrounds), Christians (the tiny remainder), and (surprise!) the ruling
class of Jews, who are (surprise again!) quite a diverse lot. Serge represented
the majority when he was initially shocked by the idea of “One State”, because
the media had long prepared him to understand it as a euphemism for the ethnic
cleansing of Jews. Well, now that he has graduated from the sadly typical state
of the average brainwashed global citizen, we can finally have a dialog like
adults.
I wrote: “One State is not an
apocalyptic vision of the Last Days. It is a perfectly feasible and mutually
profitable development.” Serge exclaims:
“That is to say also beneficial for the Zionists”. Right, Serge! It is
beneficial for Zionists as well. We are not playing a winner-takes-all game,
where the loser picks up his toys and heads home. That game has never worked
here in the Holy Land. Everyone has to be taken into account, and no one is too
small or loathsome to be left standing in the cold. A model Palestine might be a
beacon unto the world. The shining example of the South African solution guides
us. Just as the transformation of racialist South Africa into a normal state was
beneficial to both the despised white nationalists and the indigenous darlings
of the left, so too the Jewish nationalists (“Zionists”) should be rewarded
(whether they deserve it or not) in the normalization of racialist Israel to the
normalized state of Israel/Palestine.
Serge
reminds his readers “The
Zionists denied the creation of a Palestinian state, and now Shamir wants them
to support one non-denominational state. Is it a dream?” Dreams can
become reality, dear Serge. Yesterday’s dreams are tomorrow’s reality. It is
only the dogmatic sectarians, for whom the world is made of inflexible crystal,
that change not.
Serge declares with horror that the
Zionist right-wingers like Moshe Arens “want… to
annex the territories, purely and simply by giving citizenship to Palestinians
who live there now (not to those who left, of course!).” Let them do it, Serge,
this is a fine first step. The full enfranchisement of Palestinians living in
Palestine is the best we might hope for, in fact it is the best anyone should
wish for.
Serge is
strong on emotions, weak on arithmetic. He claims: “it will not change the
situation much, as there are already many Palestinian citizens of Israel”. Today
Palestinians are held to being not more than 10% of voters for the Israeli
Knesset. If all Palestinians had the right to vote, they would make up at least
45% of Israeli voters. Imagine that! No law could pass without their approval;
no government could be formed without including Palestinians. Even the return of
the 1948 refugees would become possible under those circumstances (those
“dreams” Serge might say).
Serge
impugns my own dreams (and my choices as an Israeli voter) when he proclaims:
“Shamir tried to sell us the mafia politico Arcadi Gaydamak by saying that he
would win [municipal] elections and clean the Augean stables. But
Gaydamak, with the cops after him even in
Israel, has managed, by paying dearly, to return to Russia where he went to
ground.”
I do regret
the sound defeat of Gaydamak in Jerusalem’s municipal elections. Instead of him,
Jerusalem chose to elect the terrible Barkat, who has demolished Arab houses on
a daily basis ever since election day. If a day comes when all Jews are expelled
from Israel/Palestine, it will be more the fault of the Barkats than the
Religious Zionists. Barkat rightwing policies bring shame to Jerusalem, but he
was the choice of even the most leftist of Zionists (like Avnery) because he was
against religious Jews. Gaydamak might have been the first good mayor of
Jerusalem. The holy city has never had a good mayor; some say Nashashibi was
good, and others say not even him. Gaydamak actually cared about
Palestinian Jerusalemites, as well as for orthodox Jews. He delivered weapons to
the pro-Communist MPLA government of Luanda, and it is a good deed in my book.
Of course the cops were after him! Let’s not forget that the cops were after
Serge Thion, too! Gaydamak escaped, and so did Serge. I am glad both are free,
and there is no need for the pot to call the kettle black.
Serge talks
about “going to ground” like a good revolutionist, but he shows how out of touch
he is with the reality on the ground in Israel. He still thinks that the Sinai
Bedouins are under Israeli military administration. But Sinai with its Bedouins
reverted to Egypt in 1970s. He thinks Israeli citizens of Arab origin were under
military administration “for dozens of years”. In actuality, this had been over
by 1966. Serge says that since Israeli Arabs are given second-class status in
Israel, they should either walk away or expel their rulers. This is the way
revolutionists talk. But there is another way, the evolutionary way. The
partition-or-nothing argument is a staple of the leftist Zionist supporters of
the Two State Solution, of people like Uri Avnery. I argue against that
elsewhere.
Serge is worried that, under the One
State solution, Jews might survive and flourish in Palestine. He prefers to give
Jews the well-known choice: “the bag or the
coffin”. In this, we must part company. I do indeed want “to save the Jews, to
maintain their presence in Palestine after the failure of the Jewish state.”
Serge reveals, “Jews will always be able to get along, even in an Arab
state, and perhaps in Muslim Islamist. They know
how.” Yes, Serge, that’s right! That is what I want. The Jews manage fine in
Muslim Islamic Iran, and they will manage fine in a united Palestine. This irks
you and suits me fine, because I am for Palestine and you are against Jews.
We might
discern the Christian virtue of charity implicit in the One State Solution. The
Zionists have fought hard - no one was more single-minded or world shaking in
their determination - and yet they still have lost. Such is the profit from all
worldly endeavors. The Jews have, for many and varied reasons, cooperated with
the Zionist juggernaut. How shall we punish them? Shall we expel them, giving
them no reason whatever to cooperate with us? Or shall we acknowledge their
worth, perhaps to recognize at the very least their boldness and proven
fundraising skills? Charity to the deserving is not charity at all – it is
justice. Justice is what the Palestinian people have been denied, but the fact
is that justice is coming. How shall the victorious Palestinian people treat
the vanquished? I would hope they might treat them with charity.
Serge made his choice clear in his foreword to an Italian
translation of one of my books, saying:
The Palestinians, ultimately, have only one claim, simple
and legitimate: that the Jews will go back where they came from. Nobody among
the Palestinians wishes them harm, but nobody will ever accept their presence…
Israel is a lost cause, post-Zionists want to save the Jews however possible. To
give up the old dream of two states, to struggle for a single, democratic state
of "one man one vote" (old slogan of anti-apartheid in South Africa) – and to
maintain the politico-financial elites within this state, like in South Africa.
This prospect does not appear realistic to me. The weight of the crimes
committed by the Zionists is the Himalayas beside the Nazis' hills. The river of
blood that the Zionists made run since 1936 is too broad for them to cross it by
saying "Let us forget all and become partners". The rejection is visceral,
violent, everywhere in the Middle East. The Jews will have to leave, and the
bloody Zionist venture will be "erased from the pages of times", as Imam
Khomeiny said poetically. (Israel Shamir, "Should
the Jews be Deported?")
In my view, this approach is as erroneous as it is immoral.
It harkens back to the joys of the partition of India. “Send them back” is a
slogan of the far right in Europe and the US; there they want to send the blacks
to Africa, the Turkish-Europeans to Turkey, and the
Mexican-Americans to Mexico, even if the targets of these racial
stereotypes have never even visited their designated place of origin. Just so,
Israeli extremists want to send Arab-Israelis to Arabia. There is no end to this
“sending back”. I do not say it is impossible, because it is possible and it has
been done in the past. Spaniards pushed the Moors back to North Africa after
they had lived side by side for 700 years. Russians expelled the Germans from
East Prussia 900 years after they had moved in. Algerians attempted to rid
themselves of Frenchmen 150 years after the French culture arrived. The results
are so similar as to be predictable by this time: bloodshed, robbery, and a
people divided by hatred. Beyond the brutality required to force populations to
move against their will, the state is generally permanently weakened by the
disorder. Today’s Algeria is less developed and probably less democratic than it
was before the mass flight of the European settlers. It is better to live and
let live; making people equal does not require displacing anybody.
As a citizen of Israel, I know that this mature attitude of
compromise holds sway “on the ground” there. The majority of the Palestinians in
Palestine do not share Serge’s wish to “send the
Jews back home”. The bitter and disillusioned do wish it, and profoundly. Most
Jews, for their part would like the Palestinians to return to some kind of
imagined pan-Arabian homeland. It is a natural wish, a child’s wish. I wish
my problem would just go away, so that I don’t have to deal with it. It is
as natural as the desire to become young again. We do not have to fight our
feelings – it is enough to understand that it is not going to happen.
Rivers of blood once divided the Bretons of western France
from the rest of the country; now they live peacefully together in one state. It
is possible. We stand for One State; that is to say one state where
people live together as equals, without expelling anybody – not Jews, not
Zionists, not anybody! When Jews evolve past their superiority complexes, and
their persecution complexes, they do manage to become normal, useful citizens.
It would be better for everyone, themselves included, if they could shed their
clannishness, but this can wait, for it is said in the Song of Songs: “Do not
wake up my beloved until she wakes up herself.” Let us struggle for equality
like grownups. Let us not indulge ourselves in Serge’s childish fantasy: the
dream (or rather, nightmare) of ridding ourselves of millions of human beings.
Serge howls,
“Shamir, you're wrong to take us for idiots.” Serge, I speak to you, and you
alone when I take to task a man who has let himself be carried away by his
personal anti-Jewish feelings. Your unreasoning hatred is a gift to the more
reasonable opponents of Zionism. At the bargaining table prudent people will
turn with disgust from your inhuman final solution, and embrace Ahmadinejad,
Hamas, and even Hezbullah, for they at least will permit a Jewish presence after
Palestine has been freed from the chains of Zion. I wrote, “Integration is
a good thing for Jews.” Serge clarifies: “Because
they can exploit, [they will become] the bankers.” Your game, Serge, is clear:
you want to get rid of Jews, and you want the blood to be on the hands of the
Palestinian people. If you feel you must, Serge, do as your heart commands. But
please do it in France, on your own turf. Palestine has enough worries, and
cannot spare the blood to satisfy your cravings for ethnic cleansing.
You are no idiot, Serge, and I would
never question your ability to come up with a bold solution. You have placed
yourself into a very specific category, that of being an extremist and an
anti-Jewish fanatic. Your sort makes everybody else look moderate. Thank you for
performing this valuable service.