A cat called to the mouse holed up under the floor: “Come out, you have nothing to worry about! I have become a pious vegetarian, preparing for my pilgrimage, you may play freely”.
“Oh wonderful news”, cried the mouse and ran out of the hole; a moment of the eternity clock passed, and the mouse found herself in cat’s claws, goes Nizami’s fable.
This is, in brief, the development of Gaza crisis that began with Israel’s phony but much advertised “withdrawal” (“disengagement”) from Gaza in summer 2005, followed by their phony permission to run democratic elections for the Palestinian government.
“Sharon changed his ways”, exclaimed the good-meaning Americans and Europeans; “he — and after him, Olmert — are ready for peace and reconciliation.”
“We liberated Gaza”, said Hamas.
“Oy vey!” cried the settlers.
The cries of joy and sorrow of the fake withdrawal had not died out, when the real siege and bombardment of Gaza began. After a few months of shelling, this real takeover of Gaza and arrest of all Palestinian leadership completed the picture of a fat cat playing with the mouse.
Some of you may remember that at the height of withdrawal hullabaloo I called for everyone to tone down their expectations: An Israeli pull-out is always followed by a push-in, as in a rape scene. Do not expect to see the last of them. An Englishman leaves without bidding farewell, a Jew says his farewells but does not leave, goes a Jewish joke. Indeed the Jews came back.
The intermezzo was quite sad, too. Gaza after the withdrawal was one of the most depressing places on earth, with widespread starvation and vast unemployment, and it was not the Gazans’ fault: Whether under Hamas or Fatah rule, Gaza can’t stand alone; this narrow strip is surrounded by Israeli troops and barbed wire; the Gazans have no way to sell their goods or to import their needs but through Israeli-controlled ports. Remove the SS men from Auschwitz to its perimeter, give the camp full autonomy but keep its gates shut from outside, and you’ll get a picture of Gaza. The Israelis destroyed the Gazan industry and trade by their siege: Gazan fruits and flowers for export withered at Karmi checkpoint, and multimillion-dollar investment went down the drain. Gazans openly regretted their new-found “independence”, because in the days of Israeli rule they could make a living working at Israeli factories, and the Israeli shelling was much more moderate, while “independent” Gaza was subjected to incessant shelling. Hundreds of missiles and shells were launched against this small strip of land daily, killing a few but ruining the nerves of its residents.
Gazans — children, women, men, — had now almost a year of attrition made worse by aerial booming.
Israeli tactics in Gaza resemble the strategy of “starving into obedience” applied by the Pentagon to North Vietnam.
If the Israelis were to bomb a hundred thousand Gazans to oblivion, probably there would be “a wave of revulsion”, but destruction, starvation and thirst are equally efficient, and do not disturb the world conscience all that much. The destruction of a Gazan power plant was a shrewd business decision as well. Now the Gazans will have to buy all their electricity from Israelis at a much higher price. Combining business with pleasure, this destruction also allowed Jews to “thirst Palestinians” in addition to starving them as Gaza has no rivers, and electricity is needed to operate pumps.
Still, in this short time of Gazan “independence”, Gazans proved they are men, not mice. Their stubborn launching of Kassams were a sign of their unbroken spirit: They refused to be starved into obedience. Their brave and well-planned raid of an Israeli siege unit has restored our appreciation of Gazans’ fighting abilities. It is not a simple thing to attack tanks with your bare hands. True, Israel utilized this courageous raid to jumpstart a new invasion of Gaza, but do not make too much out of this linkage: Last month the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed that the plans for mass arrests of Palestinian leadership and for reinvasion were prepared a long time ago.
The Israeli government referred to the raid: “A horrific, serious terror attack was carried out by Palestinian factions, which ended in the deaths of two soldiers, the injury of an additional soldier, and the kidnapping of Shalit.” My friend Jeff Blankfort wittily quipped: “One would think Shalit was a little boy walking to the candy store who had been seized by a notorious child molester and not a soldier on active duty”.
A Palestinian Christian professor and a Knesset member, Azmi Bishara, said well of the resistance fighters: “Some people chose to respond to the murder of Palestinian civilians by attacking an Israeli military installation. They made the hardest choice, and chose the difficult path. Those who did not take this path, who did not make this sacrifice, or put their courage to this test, or suffer the trembling nerves in the darkness of the tunnel, yet who have some delicacy of feeling toward the pains of the Palestinians could at least spare this operation the embarrassment of tainting it as terrorist.”
Yea, when the Israelis attack, that’s war, when they are attacked, it is terror. When Jews attack natives, this is rightful vengeance, when they get some of it back, it is a pogrom. Long before the Jews defamed Palestinians as terrorists, they vilified their previous native neighbors, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Spaniards, Germans as subhuman and vicious anti-Semites. If we reject their defamation of Palestinians, we may re-examine their accusation of others, and the whole narrative of Jewish suffering will collapse.
In 1880s, Dostoyevsky prophesized: If and when the Jews get power, they will skin the goy alive. In Palestine this prophesy is being realized.
Thus, the Hamas was right in refusing to recognize the Jewish state: In no way this state can become a tolerable neighbor, whether ruled by Labor of Peretz or by Kadima of Olmert.
A medieval chronicle reports that the Jewish king of Khazar once said to a Muslim visitor: “We would destroy all the churches and mosques in our kingdom right away, but we can’t for fear that they will destroy the synagogues in Baghdad and Constantinople”.
Indeed, if in response to the Jewish destruction of Gaza’s power plant, an Israeli power plant in Caesarea were erased, and the Jews had to survive their summer without air-conditioners, they wouldn’t do it again. If the Jews in Europe were limited to the rights their brethren granted to Palestinians, Palestine would be free tomorrow.
But why should we indulge in daydreaming? Who could do such a deed? The Arabs are subdued. The US conquest of Iraq eliminated the last independent Arab state. Iran is being pushed hard and this powerful Muslim state is happy every day it is not bombed. Syria is in the crosshairs of the US whom the French are helping them to contain Damascus. Never before — since Saladin — has the Middle East been so helpless and powerless. The Palestinians have no chance, unless we free our souls from Jewish control.
— Israel Shamir is a leading Russian-Israeli intellectual, writer, translator and journalist. He lives in Jaffa, Israel.
