SERIOUS CONCERNS ABOUT ISRAEL SHAMIR

From Ali Abunimah & Hussein Ibish (acting solely
in his private capacity)

Dear Friends:

In recent months, many people have been reading
the writings of Israel Shamir, who describes
himself as a Russian-Israeli journalist. Many have
been impressed by these writings, and Shamir has
been embraced in many places in the US on his
current speaking tour. From early on, some of
Shamir´s writings struck us as straying beyond
criticism of Israel and Zionism, and crossing into
the territory of implicit anti-Semitism. We have
discussed this with many people privately, but now
feel compelled to raise some of these objections
publicly. While there are many passages in
Shamir´s rhetoric that cause serious concern, it
is sufficient to cite these three:

1) Yesterday we received an "Easter Message" from
Shamir in which he repeats the most odious
characterizations of Jews as "Christ killers," the
staple of classic European Christian
anti-Semitism. In the message, which originates
from Shamir´s own email address, he writes:


"Jesus taught, love your neighbour as yourself,
even if he is a traditional enemy of Jews, a
Samaritan. That is why he was hated by the Jewish
supremacists of his time. He said: you can not
worship God and Mammon, the god of greed, you have
to choose. That is why he was hated by supply-side
economists and bankers of his day. They sentenced
him to death and the Empire obliged and carried
out the execution, in order to keep peace with
these all-important forces. Our fathers did not
dare to speak against their leaders. The spirit of
domination scored a victory, but the spirit of
brotherhood did not vanish."
Shamir continues: "The Jewish supremacy forces and
the greed worshippers united again to crucify
Christ. The US, this New Rome, again gives hand
and agrees to become the executioner. Now it is
our turn to decide."

Palestinians, Shamir argues, are today´s Christ,
and history has given the Jews a "second chance"
i.e. a chance to redeem their earlier crucifixion
of Jesus by not crucifying the Palestinians. "If
we keep our mouth shut," Shamir writes, "we
deserve to be called ´Christ killers.´ If we stop
it, we shall change history. The scarlet as blood
sins of past will become white as snow. [sic]"

We cannot agree that Jews "deserve" to be called
"Christ killers," or that this kind of rhetoric
has anything whatever to offer of value to the
movement for Palestinian liberation and human
rights. All this sort of rhetoric does, no matter
who it comes from, is paint the Palestinian
movement as one which includes, requires, or
embraces a discourse which vilifies, or threatens
to vilify, Jews as "Christ killers." What could be
more counterproductive to building the community
of conscience, the powerful moral stance, which is
and must be the goal of those of us in the United
States who support Palestinian rights, than the
introduction of this kind of rhetoric into our
conversation? How could we do more to discredit
ourselves than by allowing such ideas to
proliferate in behalf of a movement that has no
need whatever to stoop to vilifying others to
justify itself?

2) Shamir recently gave a speech at Tufts
University. He is quoted as saying at that speech:
"Palestinians are perfect mammals; their life is
deeply rooted in the ground...Israeli people
represent a virus form of a human being because
they can live anywhere." ("Israel at fault for
Middle East violence, Jewish journalist says," The
Tufts Daily, April 10, 2001) The quote appears to
be verified and accurate......."

The rest at http://nigelparry.com/issues/shamir/or
iginalletter.html