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Son of Dogs & Foxes
Israel Shamir responds to Lisandro Otero
With great anticipation I waited for response of Lisandro Otero. I
waited for clear answer: why the Cuban writer repeated accusations
against France and French people voiced by enemies of Palestine and
Cuba, from President Bush to the head of ADL, Abe Foxman. Why did he
subscribe to Zionist-led pro-American discourse of ‘growing
antisemitism’? And he replied, but, alas, Socrates would dismiss
Otero from his feast for lack of logic in his reply.
1. I told him there is no antisemitism and that Jews are safe
everywhere. He replied that Jews suffered in the days of Caligula.
In a similar way, if I would tell him there is no slavery in Cuba,
he could reply that there were thousands of slaves just two hundred
years ago.
2. Otero rolled out familiar Jewish martirologue from Roman days to
Isabel the Catholic to Hitler. It is truth, but not all the truth;
and half truth is as bad as a lie. Jews knew hard days, for being
human, Jews lived on this earth and suffered as much as anybody.
Less than natives of Cuba and other Caribbean islands who were
exterminated. Probably less than their neighbours, ordinary
Spaniards or Poles, for Jews were always free, usually prosperous
and never knew slavery or bondage; but certainly they suffered too.
Just take it in proportion: Jews did not suffer more than any
comparable group of people.
Jews as a rule belonged to the exploiting classes; that is why
Jewish Quarters are located next to Royal palace in Seville and
Paris. From time to time they suffered from fury of exploited
classes or their competitors. So did aristocracy. Thousands of
French aristocrats were slaughtered during the peasant wars or the
Great Terror of 1793. Russian aristocrats were killed or expelled
during the October Revolution of 1917. Many of them were innocent,
for class war can be as cruel as any war. Why does not Otero bewail
them?
Jews fought wars like anybody else. If Jews were killed in
Alexandria, in the same time Jews massacred non-Jews in Jaffa and
Antioch. Friends of Jews were often fiends for the rest of
population: Cromwell brought Jews to England, but in the same time
he massacred Irish peasants and enslaved Ireland.
Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, but Moors were expelled too
at the same occasion. Why Otero does not lament the bitter fate of
Alhambra and Giralda’s builders? Jews actually fared much better:
those that remained were fully integrated, married into best Spanish
families and occupied positions of prestige and power in Spain.
And now to the capital H. During World War Two, millions of
Russians, Germans, Poles, Japanese perished. Among them, there were
Jews, civilians and soldiers, too. Thus my Jewish uncle Abraham was
killed by German bomb at defence of Leningrad next to his Russian
buddy Ivan. Auschwitz was inhuman, indeed, but so was Hiroshima. But
for a Jewish ideologist such a comparison is sacrilege for this
compares divine people of Israel with subhuman Japanese.
3. The Jewish discourse of unique martyrdom and victimhood is based
on racialist denial of full and equal humanity of non-Jews; that is
why Jewish ideologists are obsessed with counting Jewish victims and
discounting suffering of non-Jews. We see the result of this
approach in Palestine, where every Jewish victim of war receives a
place of honour on the front page of newspapers, while non-Jewish
victims are hardly mentioned at all. Now everybody, including Otero,
knows and refers to Jewish victims; but hardly anybody – and again
it includes Otero – has heard for instance the names of Mona and
Christina, two little Palestinian girls murdered recently by Jewish
soldiers.
Dorothy Naor, an enlightened Israeli woman, writes: “Today’s killing
of a 34 year old Israeli woman and her 4 daughters is indeed tragic.
Of the English language newspapers that I have checked, it has been
reported widely--in the USA by the NY Times, the Washington Post,
the SF Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the Herald Tribune; in
England by the Independent, and the Guardian; in Australia by the
Sidney Morning Herald (May 3); and in Toronto by the Globe and Mail.
By contrast, of the above newspapers, only today’s New York Times
reported yesterday’s killing of an 8 year old Palestinian boy by the
IOF. Every such death is tragic. But today’s killing of an Israeli
woman and her children has to be seen within the context of the
Palestinian child killed yesterday, of the Palestinian mother of 10
killed last week and of the statistics that I cited a few days ago:
i.e., April saw 59 Palestinians killed and 345 injured.”
The US fully adopted the Judaic discourse; that is why American
Jewish-dominated media exploded with fury when four American
professional killers were killed by people of Faluja and ignored
killing of thousands of Iraqis. In full agreement with Judaic
doctrine of massive retaliation Americans massacred six hundred
civilians of Faluja. Thus Judaic inspiration is very dangerous for
us.
On the other hand, during Crusades, the Muslim warriors and
Christian knights made friends between the battles and actually
liked each other. Don Rodrigo was called by Moorish name of El Sid;
Torquato Tasso made a beautiful Muslim woman Clorinda a heroine of
his Gerusalemme liberata. At the siege of Kerak, Saladin ordered to
cease fire during the wedding in the castle; while the queen mother
had sent him a slice of wedding cake. Thus Muslim and Christian
attitudes are very different from the Judaic: people may fight, it
is human; but they should treat each other as fully human and equal.
A problem of Otero is that he swallowed the Jewish discourse hook,
line and rod; and took it for true description of reality instead of
what it is: an ideological propaganda tool aimed to stop and reverse
normal process of Jewish assimilation and keep descendents of Jews
in fear of goyim, subservient to Jewish elites. He even adopted
racialist Jewish point of view, and calls Marx, Mendelsohn and Heine
– Jews. (Though born of Jewish parents, they baptised, did not
consider themselves Jews and would not be allowed to settle in
Israel, by Zionist laws). Indeed, Lisandro: if Marx were a Jew would
he say ‘liberation of Jews is liberation from Jews’? Rosa Luxembourg
equally hated to be considered Jewish.
This misunderstanding of the Cuban writer makes it clear when he
refers to “old plague of mankind, anti-Semitic racism”. Far from
being ‘an old plague’ it did not exist until second half of 19th
century, and lasted considerably less than hundred years.
Paradoxically, it was caused by proliferation of Jewish racialist
discourse. Now, Jewish attitudes were and remain racialist, for Jews
– like Indian Brahmins - believe in their inborn high qualities.
Until Jewish influence emerged as powerful keynote of modernity in
the mid-19th century, racial approach was quite foreign to
Europeans. The Church was never racist towards Jews; and every
descendent of Jews could become a Christian and a full member of
society. The Church’s fight against the Jews was also fight of
ideology of equality versus ideology of racism. The Jews fought the
Church, too, but when they had an upper hand – for instance in AD
128 and in AD 614 in Palestine – they were not satisfied with
expulsion but slaughtered all Christians they could get their hands
on. But Otero does not understand it and claims that anti-Judaic
attitudes were ‘racist’.
He says there are good and bad Jews; little he knows that even this
trite statement is considered anti-Semitic in present climate. A
Jewish American journalist, Klinghoffer wrote in Forward (http://www.forward.com/issues/2002/02.12.27/oped3.html
): “A writer who wants to divide us [Jews] in half, some for praise,
others for scorn, may not be an antisemite - but he's not our friend
either.” Beware, Lisandro!
4. Otero’s lack of logic is seen in his reference to me. He writes:
Shamir made a tour of lectures in American universities, ‘honour
that few writers of left reach’, implying that a person who enjoys
such glorious privilege does not really belong to the Left but is a
stooge of some dark forces. But in the next line, he approves of
Dominique Vidal, the chief editor Le Monde Diplomatique. So, you’ve
got to be a stooge if you tour American Universities, but not if you
edit one of the major French newspapers…
(I had no possibility to verify the quote of Vidal; whether this man
who proved his loyalty to Jewry by penning a book on exclusive
Jewish suffering actually lied and said that I called to vote for Le
Pen; or it is a flight of Lisandro’s fantasy.)
5. And last but not least, Lisandro insinuates that I’ve got to be
an ‘agent of Mossad or CIA’. Maybe it is an acceptable form of
discussion in his circles like it was in my native Russia in 1930s;
or maybe it is his personal inability to understand why I do not
submit when he does. He says with pride that he never changed his
opinions: for me it is a quality of petrified mind. The world
changes, and we should change with it.
Israel Shamir, Jaffa |
