From Gush-Shalom

The End of Sicarii Zionism*

by Dov Yirmiya

18/06/10

I am one of the remaining veterans of the Haganah**, who had served in the British Army and thereafter were among the initiators of the Ha'apala [illegal immigration] of Holocaust survivors, struggling with the forces of victorious Great Britain for the right to arrive at the shores of this country.

Its warships and soldiers, those who had just fought and defeated the worst of all enemies, went over to attacking with fury and hatred our cockleshell boats which set to this country from the shores of Italy, full of survivors of the Nazi hell. The warships chased after them, closed around them, sometimes actually crushing them - and shot at them, killing and wounding many of their passengers.

And now I have observed with horror and a broken heart the repetition of the same scenes – but with the roles reversed. It is the soldiers and sailors of the force which boasts of being the "Israeli Defense Forces" who are now the pursuers and killers. There is no limit to the disgrace, the cruelty and the hypocrisy which wrap our criminal acts with words of lie and malice.

I am depressed to the bottom of my heart ... how could we have fallen so low??? How did we become an unjust and cruel people, turning from persecuted to persecutor?

Yes! It could have been expected! For 19 years we have "contented ourselves" with a system of a military government over the Arab minority which remained with us after the War of Independence, dispossessing and discriminating them. There followed the 43 years of intoxicating nationalist bravado, which spread through our people like an addictive drug after our victory in 1967, which brought the Greater Israel movement to the power which it since then holds in Israel.

Our golden opportunity as victors, to make peace with the Palestinian people, vanished at once. The fascist Zionist regime, governing in the style of the Italian in North Africa, violent conquest and rapist settlement of the land of Palestine and its people… But with the latest move, the tragicomic charge of the ridiculous Zionist "armada" in an effort to tighten its stranglehold on an enclave of a million and half miserable Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, our arrogant little people have clearly gone too far.

The huge burden of injustice and mad villainy with which Sicarii Israel is loaded brings about quick disaster. Already in the foreseeable future it is about to finally destroy Israel's chances of survival. The "Mene Mene" of destruction is already inscribed in blood on our walls. Woe to our children, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren to whom we leave such a legacy...

Dov Yirmiya Nahariya

* The Sicarii were Jewish zealots of the First Century. In present day Hebrew the term refers to fanatic nationalists.

** Haganah (Hebrew: "The Defense", ההגנה HaHagana) was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.