On Nov. 12, 2005, the leading Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf published an article by a Jewish writer Joost De Haas attacking me, in the good company of the Dutch PM Dries van Agt and the wonderful Dutch lady, a friend of Palestine Gretta Duisenberg. The last two were condemned for keeping in touch with me, while I was proclaimed guilty of being at the same congress as the US right-wing anti-war activist David Duke. Haas says I wrote about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Big deal! So did Umberto Eco. Writers are, and will be interested in this political pamphlet. De Haas claims that the Protocols were published and used in the Communist Soviet Union. The fact is that Soviet authorities punished the possession of this book by heavy terms of imprisonment, and even by death. It was, banned in czarist Russia as well.
His complaint that my writing appears on some right (and left-) wing sites can’t be taken seriously by anybody who ever used the Internet. Everything is linked in the World Wide Web, and I rely upon various websites, left, right, green and multicolored, to deliver my message to as many people as possible, and this message is: “There will be no peace until Jews are considered equal to non-Jews, in Palestine and elsewhere”. Now Jews are not equal: They may have nuclear weapons, while their neighbors are forbidden, they may travel everywhere in the whole of Palestine, while a goy has to use special roads.
De Haas condemns me for my objection to Judaism. It was good that Spinoza who had similar views did not survive to the present time. Spinoza rebelled against Judaism for a good reason — until advent of freedom in Netherlands, even in the 14th century, such Jewish heretics were burned at the stake by decision of autonomous Jewish rabbinical authorities. Such persecution persists: In the Jewish state, propagation of Christianity is punishable by five years of jail, while outside of Israel, De Haas and others of his ilk are doing all they can to make the life of a Jewish heretic unbearable.
De Haas objects to my call to my fellow Israelis to accept Christ. He does not even mention, nor object to, to the official plan of Israeli government to convert 300,000 Israeli Christians to Jewish faith within next five years.
De Haas claims I consider the Jews as “Christ-killers”. To the contrary, I wrote in Galilee Flowers, that there is no more reason to blame modern Jews for that crime than to blame French for killing of Joan of Ark.
De Haas claims I called Jews “bacilli”. Let him quote verse and chapter from my writings; he won’t find it. But he will find without effort that our previous Prime Minister Barak called the native non-Jewish Palestinians a “virus” in an official interview in the Ha’aretz newspaper.
He notes that my book Galilee Flowers was banned by a French court. This is true. I find this court decision extremely shameful for France, as instead of hatred and war, my books call for peace and equality. Not in vain, my Galilee Flowers has the subtitle “The Case for Israel and Palestine United in Love to Their Land.” But this dream of peace can’t be achieved until there is full equality, until a Muslim and a Christian gets the same treatment as a Jew.
The French judges easily rejected the demands to ban Salman Rushdie or Oriana Fallaci in the name of freedom of thought. But why does this freedom stop at the Jewish door?
De Haas makes a lot of mileage out of old hat, that I supposedly do not live in the Holy Land but in Sweden, and that my name is something else. This is silly stuff. In my home in Israel, I receive visitors daily, including those from the Netherlands; I feel comfortable enough, and if I am to be tried for my betrayal of the Jewish cause, for my belief in equality of Jew and goy, I’d rather be tried in Israel than in once-Christian Europe.
As for the names I supposedly use, it is quite irrelevant — as irrelevant as the “real name” of Leon Trotsky (Bernstein) or of Ariel Sharon (Schneidman) or of Andre Maurois (Wilhelm Herzog) or of Salman Rushdie when he was in hiding in Bienfait, Saskatchewan, living under an assumed name. Usually such a discussion is not considered comme il faut, especially referring to Israel, where even an ex-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps an American passport on another name.
To my Dutch friends, I want to tell this:
De Haas considers me an enemy. He stands for the subjugation of Palestine, for war in Iraq, for the destruction of Iran, for exclusion of Islam. I really do not care about his views. I am upset about the weak knees of our friends. You are too fearful, submitting at first demand. You won’t say “boo” to a goose, let alone the Jewish lobby. As a result, you are forever carrying out our adversaries’ agenda, busily condemning the Iranian president and the Malaysian prime minister whenever they stray from the narrow path drawn by the enemy. Instead of condemning Israel for stopping Mohammed Mahathir from praying in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, you object to his talk of Jewish power. Instead of condemning Israeli threats of bombing Iran, you discuss the Iranian president’s words.
