http://www.thestruggle.org/acid.html

We've Failed the Test

by Israel Shamir

Among the colorful revelers on Allenby street, in a crowded
restaurant on a merry-making Tel Aviv night, a vision came
to me, a vision of an angel in battle-dress writing on a wall
the three words, "Mene, Tekel Ufarsin." My Angel-English
dictionary prompts a translation: "You were tested and you failed."

These are the darkest days for the people of Israel. They are
dark as ours and our fathers' lamentations and protests

against injustice have turned out to be about as genuine as a
three-dollar bill.

In 1968, as a young Jewish Russian kid, I scrawled on the walls
of my native Russian city, 'Hands off Czechoslovakia'. The
beautiful deep voice of a Jewish Russian poet Alexander Galitch
still resonates in my ears: "Citizens, our Motherland is in
danger, our tanks are on foreign soil!" Some Russian Jews
demonstrated on Red Square against the invasion and were beaten
up by the police. We protested against Russian tanks in Budapest
and Prague and Kabul, as Russian citizens who valued honor
above loyalty, humankind above kinship. At the same time Jewish
American kids were demonstrating against their country's
intervention in Vietnam, and Jewish boys and girls in Europe were
struggling against racism. Years passed by, and now our Jewish
tanks are on foreign soil.

Our Jewish army murders civilians, demolishes houses, and imposes
siege on hungry villages. Our crimes are on a par with the
Russian crimes committed in Chechnya and Afghanistan, the American
crimes in Vietnam, and Serb crimes in Bosnia. Surely Israeli
intellectuals are demonstrating en masse on our equivalent of
Pennsylvania Avenue or Trafalgar Square, and American Jews are
raising their voices against the American-armed killers of
Palestinians, and surely the Russian Jews are going to speak up
for the human rights of the enslaved Gentiles of the Holy Land?
No fear, our literati are busy indeed, as they exalt the courage
of our Jewish soldiers, venerate the steady hand of our Jewish
snipers, glorify the immense humanity of the Jewish folk who
could pulverize 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 railed against the
restrictions of the free movement of Jews in the Russian
Empire. In our generation, Anatoli Sharansky became a symbol
of struggle for human rights. Yet in our own country, the
Gentiles are fenced into reservations and concentration camps
that pale in comparison with the Pale.

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
don't let Palestinians pollute the Jewish purity of our beaches.
For years, the Jews protested against discrimination in employment
and education. Yet, in our own Jewish state, we created a system
of total national discrimination. In our state-owned Electric
company, out of thirteen thousand employees, there are six Gentiles
(0.0004%).

Gentiles form forty percent of the population between the Jordan
River and the Mediterranean, but only one in four has the right
to vote. There are no Gentiles in the Israeli Supreme Court, in
the Air Force, in the secret services. There is not even one
Gentile on the board of the main Israeli oh-so-liberal newspaper,
Haaretz.

In the light of there events, the complaints of the Diaspora Jews
deserve to be revisited. We didn't really fight for human rights,
but for the rights of Jews. We struggled for the freedom of movement
and freedom of choice - but only for Jews. We spoke of the universal
suffrage, but we meant the right of Jews to vote. We do not mind
invasion and occupation so long as we are doing the invading and
occupying.

The sight of a child raising hands in front of machine gun toting
thug grieves us only if it is a Jewish child. The Gentile kid can
be shot at freely.

Apparently, when Bialik wrote "The Devil did not invent a fit
punishment for the murder of a child", he actually meant "a Jewish
child". When the scenes of pogrom horrified him, he was horrified
that the violence was directed against Jews. Otherwise, there is
nothing wrong with pogroms per se. Several weeks ago, the Jews of
Upper Nazareth committed a pogrom of Gentiles in Nazareth, but no
pogromchik was brought to justice. The Israeli Police helped out
by murdering some of pogrom victims. Still worse, the pogroms of
Ramallah and Beth Jallah were committed with 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 in Russia caused fewer casualties than
we murder in some weeks. The most horrible pogrom of Kishinev
claimed 45 dead and 600 wounded. Over the last three months,
400 Palestinians have been killed and many thousands wounded.
After a pogrom in Tsarist Russia, all Russian writers and
intelligentsia condemned the perpetrators. In the Jewish state,
barely a few dozens gathered to demonstrate in Tel Aviv,
while the Hebrew Writers Union has endorsed the pogrom of Gentiles.

In 1991, the majority of Russian Jews took the stand against
communism and raised the banner of private property. Apparently,
they actually meant Jewish private property, since we confiscate
Gentile property with the greatest ease.

Take a stroll through the best areas of Jerusalem, wander through
Talbieh, Old Katamon Greek and German Colonies, and admire the
marvelous palaces. They belonged to Gentiles - Germans, Armenians,
Greeks, British, Russians, Palestinians - Christian and Moslem.
All of them were confiscated and bestowed upon Jews. Just in the
last few weeks, hundreds of acres of Gentile property were
confiscated and scores of Gentile houses seized or demolished.

Right before his arrest, the Russian Jewish media-lord Gusinsky
came to Israel and sang his fervent support for the Jewish state.
At the same time, he was demanding that the West assist him in
his fight with the Russian authorities which has seized his TV
station. His support of Israel proves that Mr. Gusinsky does not
object confiscations, he is just against confiscation of Jewish
property. He is against Jews being arrested, the Gentiles can rot
forever in the prisons of the Jewish state.

In no time at all, we have succeeded in undermining the long-term
achievements of Jews in the struggle for democracy, human rights
and equality. What exactly did we abhor about the German Nazis?
Their racism? Our own racism is no less widespread and is
potentially as virulent.

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 should be eliminated", "Arabs must be expelled", and "An Arab
is an Arab. They all have to be eliminated". I am not sure a
street poll of Berlin in 1938 would produce more damning results,
as the Nazi idea of the Final Solution did not emerge until 1941.

Shall we call a spade a spade? We Jews have been fighting racism
as long as it was someone else's racism. We were against death squads
and the Sonderkommando as long as they acted against us. Our own
killers, our Jewish Sondercommando, are the object of our tender
admiration. The Jewish state is the only place in the world
possessing official death squads, that embrace a policy of
assassination, and the practice of medieval torture. No cause for
alarm, my dear Jewish readers, we only torture and assassinate Gentiles.

We were against ghetto while we were confined in a ghetto. Now the
most liberal Israeli peace plan calls for creation of a few Gentile
ghetto walled 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 their independence,
but not before we remove 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 belief that the Gentiles are not fully human, and
therefore they can be killed and their land expropriated at will.
After all, Israel fulfilled at least one UN resolution, the one
that called Zionism a form of racism.

What is upsetting me, that the internationalist upbringing in the
Soviet Union which we Russian Jews received, could not withstand
the poisonous Zionist propaganda of Jewish superiority. What I
regret most, is the moral collapse of my own Russian community
in the Holy Land.

Now, as the angel wrote his fiery words, as prophets called upon
the people to repent, we still have a 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 did the people of Sodom, and wait for the flood of fire and
burning sulphur to rain down from the angry heavens of Palestine.

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