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Tsunami in Gaza
Israel Shamir
Published January 7, 2005
-- While the whole world sent aid to tsunami-hit South East Asia, Israel forwarded a team entrusted with a unique task. Not many Israeli tourists were swept away by the giant waves - the official death toll stands at three, with some 20 missing. Still the Israeli teams were very active on the ground.
The highly-trained experts led by Rabbi Meshi Zahav did not go to save trapped survivors or alleviate the suffering of millions; their job was to save dead Jews from a fate worse than death: to be buried with the goyim (non-Jews) in the same grave.
They pressed upon the Thai government to postpone the mass entombment, though it was necessary to prevent spread of epidemics, and Bangkok gave in. Every dead Jewish body should be taken to Israel, or at least buried separately from impure non-Jews.
This is a part and parcel of the Jewish faith, the pinnacle of "The nation shall dwell alone" commandment - Jews are not supposed to live or die with non-Jews. Their separate burial is necessary to guarantee their bodily resurrection when the Messiah comes. A Jewish body defiled by gentile proximity won't be resurrected, according to the Jews. Even nonreligious Jews follow this separation rule without giving it a second thought.
Whenever Jews discover that a person of doubtful Jewishness is buried among their lot they remove the body and dump it elsewhere. It happened to Israeli citizen Teresa Angelowitz. She was buried in a Jewish cemetery. Later on the religious authorities discovered that she was a wife of a Jew, but not a Jew herself. They exhumed her body in the dark of the night and reburied it in a dumping ground. This also happened to many Russian soldiers who died defending the Jewish character of Israel. Now, in face of the huge tragedy in southeast Asia, this insistence on "not being counted among the goyim" is especially offensive, bordering on a denial of our common humanity. What is so bad about Thais, French, Chinese and all the other people who met their death in the catastrophe that you can't leave your dead lying next to them?
This nasty exclusiveness has to be taken into account when trying to comprehend the long-running show of Israeli redeployment in Gaza. Sharon's government wants to withdraw its troops from within the strip to its perimeter. Fine and good: this is a reasonable (from Sharon's point of view) decision: it is cheaper to keep Gaza under lock and key, surrounded by Israeli troops.
However, instead of redeployment, Israelis are now discussing the fate of some 2,000 Jewish settlers in the Gaza strip. Sharon wants to evacuate them and pay them hefty compensation; they object to evacuation. The whole Israeli society discusses whether they can be removed, how much force should be applied, whether 'Jews may remove Jews' and whether the ruling of the rabbis forbidding the evacuation takes precedence over the government decision.
Nobody, but absolutely nobody, is ready to consider an obvious (for a non-Jew) solution: remove the army and leave the settlers where they are. If they want to stay in Gaza, let them. Do not pay a penny for their removal: they are free men and women; they knew what they did when they accepted the lands and houses in Gaza. There are hundreds of American Jews who want to buy their houses, there are Palestinians who would be willing to buy - so there is no problem, whoever wants stays, whoever wants to leave sells his house and leaves. If they will be nasty to their neighbors, they will flee; if they will be good neighbors, they will flourish.
Indeed, when the British left Palestine, or India, or Africa, they did not evacuate their citizens by force. Whoever felt that he caused too much grief to the natives left for England, and whoever preferred to stay stayed.
Kenya is a good case to consider. The country had a sizable English settler community, as well as a very active Mau-Mau native resistance movement, much more violent than the Palestinian one. Nevertheless, when Kenya was granted independence, the settlers stayed. I have met them in the Highlands near Lake Rudolf: prosperous farmers, strong and sunburned, similar to old-style Israelis, they speak the local language and are involved in local life. Many of them have their small airplanes and pop into Nairobi for an evening drink whenever they get tired of watching pink flamingos at the lakeside.
This is the example for the Israeli settlers to emulate, and the Israeli government should not tell them what to do and where to live. Their settlements won't be 'for Jews only'. They will have native neighbors, not only farm hands, but native officials, native police and native judges. The evacuation discourse that has brought Israel to the verge of civil war can't be comprehended outside of the general nasty picture of Jewish exclusiveness.
The case of the Gaza settlers may be used to undermine and destroy the "Jewish character of the state". There is no reason to play into the game of Jewish exclusivity, whether in Thailand or in Gaza.
Israel Shamir
Published January 7, 2005
-- While the whole world sent aid to tsunami-hit South East Asia, Israel forwarded a team entrusted with a unique task. Not many Israeli tourists were swept away by the giant waves - the official death toll stands at three, with some 20 missing. Still the Israeli teams were very active on the ground.
The highly-trained experts led by Rabbi Meshi Zahav did not go to save trapped survivors or alleviate the suffering of millions; their job was to save dead Jews from a fate worse than death: to be buried with the goyim (non-Jews) in the same grave.
They pressed upon the Thai government to postpone the mass entombment, though it was necessary to prevent spread of epidemics, and Bangkok gave in. Every dead Jewish body should be taken to Israel, or at least buried separately from impure non-Jews.
This is a part and parcel of the Jewish faith, the pinnacle of "The nation shall dwell alone" commandment - Jews are not supposed to live or die with non-Jews. Their separate burial is necessary to guarantee their bodily resurrection when the Messiah comes. A Jewish body defiled by gentile proximity won't be resurrected, according to the Jews. Even nonreligious Jews follow this separation rule without giving it a second thought.
Whenever Jews discover that a person of doubtful Jewishness is buried among their lot they remove the body and dump it elsewhere. It happened to Israeli citizen Teresa Angelowitz. She was buried in a Jewish cemetery. Later on the religious authorities discovered that she was a wife of a Jew, but not a Jew herself. They exhumed her body in the dark of the night and reburied it in a dumping ground. This also happened to many Russian soldiers who died defending the Jewish character of Israel. Now, in face of the huge tragedy in southeast Asia, this insistence on "not being counted among the goyim" is especially offensive, bordering on a denial of our common humanity. What is so bad about Thais, French, Chinese and all the other people who met their death in the catastrophe that you can't leave your dead lying next to them?
This nasty exclusiveness has to be taken into account when trying to comprehend the long-running show of Israeli redeployment in Gaza. Sharon's government wants to withdraw its troops from within the strip to its perimeter. Fine and good: this is a reasonable (from Sharon's point of view) decision: it is cheaper to keep Gaza under lock and key, surrounded by Israeli troops.
However, instead of redeployment, Israelis are now discussing the fate of some 2,000 Jewish settlers in the Gaza strip. Sharon wants to evacuate them and pay them hefty compensation; they object to evacuation. The whole Israeli society discusses whether they can be removed, how much force should be applied, whether 'Jews may remove Jews' and whether the ruling of the rabbis forbidding the evacuation takes precedence over the government decision.
Nobody, but absolutely nobody, is ready to consider an obvious (for a non-Jew) solution: remove the army and leave the settlers where they are. If they want to stay in Gaza, let them. Do not pay a penny for their removal: they are free men and women; they knew what they did when they accepted the lands and houses in Gaza. There are hundreds of American Jews who want to buy their houses, there are Palestinians who would be willing to buy - so there is no problem, whoever wants stays, whoever wants to leave sells his house and leaves. If they will be nasty to their neighbors, they will flee; if they will be good neighbors, they will flourish.
Indeed, when the British left Palestine, or India, or Africa, they did not evacuate their citizens by force. Whoever felt that he caused too much grief to the natives left for England, and whoever preferred to stay stayed.
Kenya is a good case to consider. The country had a sizable English settler community, as well as a very active Mau-Mau native resistance movement, much more violent than the Palestinian one. Nevertheless, when Kenya was granted independence, the settlers stayed. I have met them in the Highlands near Lake Rudolf: prosperous farmers, strong and sunburned, similar to old-style Israelis, they speak the local language and are involved in local life. Many of them have their small airplanes and pop into Nairobi for an evening drink whenever they get tired of watching pink flamingos at the lakeside.
This is the example for the Israeli settlers to emulate, and the Israeli government should not tell them what to do and where to live. Their settlements won't be 'for Jews only'. They will have native neighbors, not only farm hands, but native officials, native police and native judges. The evacuation discourse that has brought Israel to the verge of civil war can't be comprehended outside of the general nasty picture of Jewish exclusiveness.
The case of the Gaza settlers may be used to undermine and destroy the "Jewish character of the state". There is no reason to play into the game of Jewish exclusivity, whether in Thailand or in Gaza.