The main road of Palestinian Highlands from Nablus to Jerusalem runs through Wadi Haramiyeh, a narrow defile in the Samaria Mountains. From time to time, its olive-grown walls recede and leave space for a village, tiny En Sinya, a neat and charming cluster of spacious homes, or splendid Sinjil, preserving the name of Raymond de Saint-Gilles, the Count of Toulouse. This is the heartland of Palestine, where every stone keeps memories of old battles and skirmishes. I love this area: in Sinjil, I was taken for a foreign-born son of local folks who immigrated to America in the 1940s. In En Sinya, an old peasant told me of his friend Moshe Sharet, a Palestinian Jew and an Israeli minister of state, who was brought up in the village, years before the Zionist segregation. I drank water from the small spring of En Al-Haramiyeh, guarded by a ruined Ottoman Khan, while another ruin, King Baldwin’s Tower, watches the southern entrance of the defile. Its relief makes it a likely place for brigands’ ambush, and indeed Wadi Haramiyeh means just that, the Valley of Brigands.
On March 3, a Palestinian Rob Roy armed with an old, WWII vintage carbine, succeeded to lay low the whole troop of heavily armed Jews. One after another, he shot the soldiers, and their officers, and escaped unharmed. In one stroke, he erased the overblown myth of Israeli military valiance. Never again the supporters of Israel will sneer at Arab courage, never again they will tell stories of shoes dropped in Sinai and Six Day War. He repeated the feat of Karameh and returned the honor to Palestinians.
He also provided a healthy alternative to the morbid attraction of suicide bombers, and not too early. For a long time I wanted to persuade my Palestinian brothers and sisters to desist from this madness, but I loathed to be seen as an ideological tool of Zionism. I understand the motives of the shaheeds, I salute their courage, but I deeply regret their deeds. They are counterproductive, inefficient, and blind. I am certain that some suicide cells are thoroughly infiltrated by Israeli counterintelligence: Too often they explode in wrong places, in wrong time, against wrong aims. Their deeds are used by Israeli propaganda to its full value. Their death is a terrible loss for the mankind. They sacrifice themselves as the son of Abraham brought himself to be sacrificed, but God replaced his sacrifice with a ram.
The marksman offered a different route to glory, one that does not lead through the Valley of Death. The full story of the Battle at Haramiyeh Pass should be sung by bards, and taught by guerrilla fighters over the world. One against ten, the Lone Ranger hit the most hated symbol of Jewish rule in Palestine, a checkpost, where bored, overfed, sadistic Israeli soldiers daily humiliated, beat and often murdered local people.
Just a day before the battle, the soldiers committed probably the most revolting and cowardly act of cruelty. A Palestinian woman on her way to give birth came to the checkpost, accompanied by her husband. The soldiers let her through and then opened fire. Her husband was killed; the pregnant woman was wounded and gave birth in the hospital. The soldiers were not reprimanded, but the army expressed regrets to the survivors.
Israeli Army’s main concern is to keep the local population vulnerable and unable to defend itself. Soldiers got used to kill unarmed civilians. Their preferred victims are children; the weapon of choice is a long range high velocity sharp-shooter rifle. Their idea of entertainment was witnessed by an expert on the dark side of the (Israel Defense) Force, the chief of New York Times Middle East bureau, Chris Hedges: They pour abuse at children of the refugee camp and shot and maim them as they approach the deadly trap.
Still, the shooting of the pregnant woman was a deed as fateful as the Biblical slaughter of the Levite’s concubine. The evil deeds of Zionist soldiers had to be punished. The curse promised by Lord to the misbehaving children of Israel (Deut. 28) fell on their heads. Whatever will be discovered by the military commission of inquiry, this is the most likely explanation of the event. He Who gave victory to young shepherd David against Goliath, granted victory to the lone warrior in Wadi Haramiyeh.
The surprise attack on the checkpost dealt a deadly blow to the psychotic Israeli superiority complex. Cowards and sadists are unable to cope with a defeat, they respond by homicidal rage. That is why the army began an all-out assault on Palestinian towns and villages.
As I write, soldiers shoot at ambulances that try to remove wounded. The US jets with Israeli pilots bomb the school for blind in Gaza. Crack troops of Golani division accompanied by tanks storm the Tul Karem refugee camps. They plan to repeat the massacre of Sabra and Shatila, the previous feat of Gen. Sharon.
As a manual, they use the Waffen-SS commanders’ memoir of reducing the Warsaw ghetto. They are excited by extremely low casualties of Wermacht in 1943, and hope to repeat their feat while crushing the Palestinians.
Sharon surpassed Hitler: The German dictator carefully avoided giving the orders to kill Jews, the Jewish ruler unabashedly called to kill the Goyiim on the TV in prime time. While many Germans were disgusted by the Nazis and crossed the lines, and served in the Allied armies against the Third Reich, the Jews still hesitate to break the bond of false loyalty to their Third Malkuth. Israelis of conscience refuse to participate directly in the ethnic cleansing. It is very good but it is not enough. We should follow the example of Ernst Thaelmann and Joe Slovo, cross the lines, and join the Palestinian fighters on the barricades of Gaza and Tul Karem. In the British newspaper, the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland called the Israeli protesters, heroes. I reserve this title for the marksman from the Brigands Defile.
(To be continued)
Israel Shamir is an Israeli journalist based in Jaffa. His articles can be found on the site www.israelshamir.net
