Israel Shamir on the Iranian statement in Paris:
On October 29, 2005, in the prestigious Hotel de l’Industrie in Saint Germain des Prés in Paris, there was a meeting of Israel Shamir with his French readers. The meeting room was full, but nobody was refused. The audience consisted of an improbable mixture -- from Communists to Front National to the Black and Caribbean activists -- united in their rejection of the new world order and of Zionism. There was some tension, for the lawyers warned of a possible police raid and imminent arrest of Shamir as LICRA, the French Jewish ADL-like body, pressed charges against him and his publisher M. Cherifi, but the evening passed without these complications.
Shamir was asked about the Iranian President’s remarks, and he said:
“There is nothing unusual about states getting wiped off the map. The country I was born in, the Soviet Union, was wiped off the map. Yugoslavia was wiped off the map with the help of NATO bombers. Prussia was wiped off the map by decision of the World War's victors. Palestine was wiped off the map so completely that it is difficult to find a map containing it. In French history, Aquitaine and Languedoc were wiped off the map. What is unusual is the mass hysteria that surrounds the Iranian statement. This brouhaha proves that the Western world suffers from philosemitic neurosis. Things that can be said about anybody else can’t be said about Jews. I can call for the wiping off of France and for the creation of something different in her stead, (voices from the audience: “France is already wiped off!”) but a call to wipe off the Jewish state may lead to a real war against Iran. I may say: you stupid Breton; I may say: Corsicans took over the police force, or the Sicilian Mafia rules the casinos. But were I to change Breton or Corsican to “Jew,” I’d find myself in handcuffs and on my way to jail.
“Our struggle for equality of Jew and non-Jew in Palestine is connected to the same struggle elsewhere. Jews should be equal, not superior to Bretons or Corsicans. But there is a complication: the Jews form a competing church, and their perceived superiority and overprotection creates the conditions for this church’s victory over the Christian Church. I can say whatever I want to about the Christian Church, even things that are perfectly annoying to a Christian, But if I say things annoying to the Jewish church, I’ll go to prison. This unfair situation is unbearable. Voltaire did not hesitate to release you from the clutches of the Church by writing blasphemous verses about the Immaculate Conception. Now you may follow his lead and obtain freedom from the clutches of the Judaic Church. The Great Revolution disestablished the Catholic Church not in order to establish the Judaic Church in France. This is a new taboo that has to be broken, and the Iranian president took an important step in this direction. If it is permissible to wipe Palestine, the state of all people, Jews and non-Jews, off the map, it should be permissible to call for wiping a Jewish state off the map as well.
Unanimity of the media is a frightening phenomenon. Once, it was supposed to be a Stalinist feature, but the uniform reaction to the Iranian statement shows that Stalinism has returned with vengeance. Though I have been a journalist all my life, I feel towards the mainstream media as once I felt about the KGB – that it is the enforcer of the power, not a voice of people.
Our friend Paul Eisen wrote: “I find nothing wrong with the Iranian President's remarks. They're pretty standard stuff in such a context. What is more noteworthy is the huge fuss everyone is making. Yes of course they're looking for excuses to attack Iran but victims can't fight an oppressor by just avoiding giving them excuses. If the object is to avoid giving them excuses, then the best thing is to just give in. My feeling is that Israel and Jewish power can't be challenged by strategising. Israel and Jewish power can't be "undercut". You can't make Israel 'look bad' because it doesn't matter if Israel does look bad, Israel still does what it wants. My feeling is that only defiance and resistance will do. I support the President of Iran in making his remarks.”
He is right: defiance is the way to obtain freedom we lost. Do not submit, and you will win. This is the way to stop the forthcoming attack on Iran and to regain freedom in France and in Palestine.
Shamir also called for unity of the Left and the Right against globalising imperialism.
Shamir was asked about the late Israel Shahak whose book Three Thousand Years of Jewish Religion was an important step in undermining the Judaic paradigm. He replied:
In the Jewish tradition, there is a concept: a righteous man does not die unless there is a new one ready to take his place. It is based on the words of Ecclesiastes: ‘The sun rises and the sun sets’. Thus, before the setting of the sun of Eli, the sun of Samuel had risen, in the book of Samuel. Likewise, I began to write on this subject when Israel Shahak died. In a way, I took his place after he was gone. I have immense respect for him, but I have gone further: he debunked the Jewish paradigm in the name of liberalism and of open society, I added that the Open Society of George Soros and its liberalism is but another name for Jewish paradigm.
The Black activists asked for Shamir’s stand on the problem of Negrophobia being stirred up in France. He said:
In Palestine, there are Black soldiers who man the checkpoints on the roads, and there are Black Palestinians who queue at the checkpoints. There are white and black Jews, white and black Palestinians. So the colour of one’s skin is not an important factor for us, the people of the Middle East. Similarly to my countrymen, I am a colour-blind Daltonian, and I do not feel about the colour of skin more than about the colour of eyes: there are blue-eyed and brown-eyed people, of black and white skin, but it is as important as the colour of cat’s fur. It is not necessary to imitate Jewish talk about anti-Semitism by speaking of Negrophobia. You are French, of whatever shade of skin, and that is important. So you may refer, as in the schools of old, to ‘our Gallic ancestors’ whether your real ancestors were Franks, Dutch or Africans. Naturally, I am against all discrimination on the base of skin colour; people should be equal; but one should not encourage divisive ideas. Again, I do not know much about your situation here, and I am ready to learn as much as I am ready to teach.
On Wednesday, a decision of the French court on the case of Shamir’s publisher is expected.
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