Uri Avnery
Eine eindringliche Warnung zum Pessach 5762:
The Murder of Arafat
[Hebrew]
If Ariel
Sharon succeeds in murdering Yasser Arafat, as he wants to, the
Palestinian leader will remain in the collective memory of his people,
and the whole Arab world, like Moses in Jewish memory.
Moses rebelled against Egyptian
oppression, led his people forth from “the house of bondage”, led them
for 40 years in the desert, made a new people out of them and brought
them to the threshold of the Promised Land. He did not enter the land
itself – God only showed it to him from afar. That will be told about
Arafat, too, if he becomes a martyr now.
Moses is, of course, a
mythological figure. No serious scholar in the world believed that the
exodus from Egypt really happened. Experts explain that it could not
have taken place at all. But that is not really important: the
mythological Moses shaped the consciousness of the Jewish people more
than any flesh-and-blood leader of a nomad tribe in the desert could
have done.
The Haggada, the book read on
Passover’s eve by almost every Jewish family throughout the world,
commands us to feel as if we ourselves had set forth from Egypt. The
basic Jewish ethos is built on this premise. The text of Ten
Commandments in Deuteronomium 5 explains why on the holy Sabbath the
servants and slaves must be allowed to rest, too: “Remember that thou
wast a slave in the land of Egypt.”
In the new myth that is being born
before our eyes, Sharon is the Pharaoh and we are the ancient Egyptians.
In the story about the Exodus, the Bible lets God say: “I have hardened
(Pharaoh’s) heart and the heart of his servants.” After every calamity
that befell him, Pharaoh broke his promise to free the Israelites. Why?
What was God’s purpose? He wanted the Israelites to become hardened by
the hardship, before they started on their long march. This is what is
happening to the Palestinians now.
So what will happen if an Israeli
bullet kills Arafat now? After Moses, no second Moses appeared, but
Jehosuah, the merciless warrior who committed genocide. (This, by the
way, is also a myth. All serious scholars believe that this holy
genocide never actually happened.) After Arafat, the heir will not be
Abu-this or Abu-that. It will be Brother Kalachnikoff – like the song we
used to sing in our youth, during the fight against the British
occupation: “Give the floor to Comrade Parabellum, Give the floor to
Comrade Tommy-gun.” Parabellum was a pistol, tommy-gun a
sub-machine-gun.
There will be no Palestinian
Quisling – and if a candidate would be found, he would be killed the
next day, like Sharon’s Lebanese Quisling, Bashir Jumail. Dozens of
local guerilla leaders will take over, and they will start a campaign of
revenge that may go on for many years, not only in the country, but
throughout the world. The life of every Israeli will become hell, all
the world will become a Jerusalem-style Ben-Yehuda street. No Israeli
embassy, no airplane, no tourist will be safe.
The dead Arafat will be by far
more dangerous than the living Aarafat. The living Arafat is able and
willing to make peace. The dead Arafat can not. He will eternalize the
conflict.
In our days, historians wonder
what folly took possession of the Jewish people 1930 years ago, causing
them to start a hopeless rebellion against the Roman empire and bringing
utter destruction upon the Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. A hundred
years from now, historians will ask themselves what folly took
possession of this people, causing it to elect Sharon, a bloody person
who has not done anything in life apart from shedding blood and set up
settlements. What folly took possession of this people, causing it to
prefer settlements and some territories to peace and conciliation? And
how does this people remain indifferent, when the whole Arab world
offers it – perhaps for the last time! – real peace and normal
relations, and the public is listening to the silly ranting of
politicians and commentators, who ridicule the offer and cheer Sharon
on, at the start of a bloody campaign worse than any one before?
History remembers the few, who warned
the people of the disaster that is bound to follow if they listen to the
Zealots. History will remember us, the few who are warning the people
now of the disaster that will befall all of us, if we follow Sharon and
his gang. Let’s hope that our voices will be heard in time, so that we
can start on a new road.
If Arafat will be murdered, it
will be the moment of no return.
Arafat in Ramallah:
Deckt ihn
zu, dass er sich nicht erkältet
Erinnern wir uns an den bekannten
ungarischen Witz über einen Soldaten, der seiner Mutter einen Brief von
der Front schrieb und mitteilte: „Ich habe einen türkischen Soldaten
gefangen genommen, aber er will mich nicht gehen lassen.“?...
Druck auf Scharon
wächst:
Arafat beseitigen
ist nicht schwer - aber was dann?
Inzwischen mehren sich wieder die Stimmen,
die die völlige Zerschlagung der palästinensischen Autonomie fordern...
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haGalil onLine 03-04-2002
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