A Thin Veneer of Hate and Fear

Doron Rosenblum has a satire in the Ha'Aretz Magazine that is an expression of hate and fear - the worst kind of reaction because instead of being funny it comes out, if you read it, as spiteful, malicious and demeaning, and false.

Excerpts:

I dreamt I went to Netzarim again.

Evocations of the nostalgic sights passed before my mind's eye: Here is the three-story home with the big flower pot that hides Rafah ... Here is the rusty watchtower at the entrance again, covered with camouflage rags, and again the sand hills and the fences and the army base, and behind them looms that aesthetic and security blight, which we demanded over and over be removed - Gaza City ... And here we are, the lords of the land, owners of the estate called Land o' Israel and the property called the Nation o' Israel - here we are passing like victors through the checkpoint, between the barbed wire, escorted by an APC and a jeep of the tyrant's troops with the hobnailed boots - er, sorry (I am getting ahead of myself) - I mean Israel Defense Forces soldiers, who were then still our faithful watchdogs...

I tried to move my let-my-right-hand-forget and immediately felt in my arm that dull, Jewish, traumatic pain: in part the pain of one who picked up a refrigerator to smash the head of the tyrant, in part the pain of one who brandished a fist at the Cossack from the Border Police: "Executioner! Here is my throat - come and slaughter!" On the other hand, it might be rheumatism.

But it was a pity to waste it. So I hastened to the television studio with my hand in a sling,...The interviewer didn't quite follow my logic, and the truth is that I got entangled myself. So I attacked: Why are you all so hostile? Just because we call you Nazis? Because the finest of our youth threw a few bricks at you? Just because we dictated your agenda with force and cunning for a third of a century and destroyed any chance of a peace agreement?

We didn't have anything to do in the evening, so we streamed into Zion Square in Jerusalem again, to demonstrate. What's that supposed to mean - against what? You stream to Zion Square first of all because of the force of gravity and then you think, why, actually. Besides, all the props and slogans are already ready - all we have to do is switch and update the picture of the latest Israeli prime minister - the latest traitor - and stick his face below the image of the kaffiyeh or above the image of the SS uniform: Rabin, Peres, Barak, Sharon, Olmert, and Bibi too. Every prime minister, be it Eldad or SpongeBob SquarePants, will get his pulsa denura when his day comes.

I was a bit sorry when the demonstration ended. It was like coming out of a warm sauna into the cold air. But regrettably, we have to live in the breaks between the demos, too. If only we could fence off Zion Square and stay there forever, like children in an eternal religious kindergarten...

I looked around and was a bit ashamed of my colleagues: groups of wild-eyed, hate-consumed fanatics whose messianic pioneering has been replaced by loathing and by subversion against the state itself. It was a bit insulting that they looked at me in the same way, as I wrapped the tallit around my chin and pulled my orange headband tighter.

Last night I dreamt I went to Zion Square again.
As I was leaving the square a weird type came up and said, What is it you actually want? Why are you screaming and howling and rattling and twisting? Don't you understand that the majority of the public just doesn?t want the territories? That the die has been cast?

I guffawed with hope, like Bibi: Wait, wait; tomorrow there will be a big terrorist attack, which will just go to show.

And, I suppose, he blames us for the suicide-bombers and other terrorists. It is he who wishes to have both the hate of us and the groveling/kneeling before the terror so he can move back into his own little "Zion Square", the State of Israel a la pre-67 borders.