By Yossi Schwartz the ISL the section of the RCIT in Israel/Occupied Palestine, 02.03.2023
“Get up and walk through the city of the massacre,
And with your hand touch and lock your eyes
On the cooled brain and clots of blood
Dried on tree trunks, rocks, and fences; it is they.
Go to the ruins, to the gaping breaches,
To walls and hearths, shattered as though by thunder:
Concealing the blackness of a naked brick,
A crowbar has embedded itself deeply, like a crushing crowbar,
And those holes are like black wounds,
For which there is no healing or doctor.
Take a step, and your footstep will sink: you have placed your foot in fluff,
Into fragments of utensils, into rags, into shreds of books:
Bit by bit they were amassed through arduous labor—and in a flash,
Everything is destroyed…
And you will come out into the road—
Acacias are blooming and pouring their aroma,
And their blooms are like fluff, and they smell as though of blood.
And their sweet fumes will enter your breast, as though deliberately,
Beckoning you to springtime, and to life, and to health;
And the dear little sun warms and, teasing your grief,
Splinters of broken glass burn with a diamond fire—
God sent everything at once, everyone feasted together:
The sun, and the spring, and the red massacre!” [1]
“In the City of Slaughter” is Haim Nahman Bialik’s poem about the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, a terrible ethnic riot during which the large Jewish community of this small city in the Russian Empire was attacked over the course of three days by mobs of the black hundreds.
The most famous line of this poem is: “Vengeance for the blood of a small child, Satan has not yet created”
This poem is relevant to the pogrom the Zionist settlers in the 1967 occupied West bank carried out protected by the Zionists armed butchers.
Israeli settlers have carried out at least 300 attacks, including shootings and arson, in a rampage through Palestinian villages in the Nablus area of the occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials say, in what has been described as a “pogrom”.
“A 37-year-old Palestinian man identified as Samih al-Aqtash was shot in the stomach on Sunday night by settlers protected by the Israeli army in the village of Zaatara south of Nablus. He died of his injuries. The father of five returned home five days ago after volunteering to help earthquake survivors in Turkey.”
“At least 390 Palestinians were injured in the settler rampage across the villages of Huwara, Zaatara, Burin and Asira al-Qibliya – all south of Nablus, the Palestinian Red Crescent said, adding that the majority were wounded from tear gas fired by the Israeli army as well as smoke inhalation from widespread fires set by the settlers.” [2]
“Saddam Omar, a resident of Huwara, described the violence as “barbaric”. “Yesterday we witnessed a new level of colonizing settler crimes, where they aggressively attacked everything,” he told Al Jazeera on Monday. “I mean literally shops, people, supermarkets, houses, trees, cars, car garages,” he said. “They tried to enter the houses. They burned almost everything.” Omar added that the settlers “were 100 percent protected by the Israeli army”. At least 30 Palestinian homes and 100 cars were set on fire by settlers” [3]
Out of 200,000 Zionist protesters against the Legal reform, 1000 came out in the entire country to protest against the pogrom. A spokesman for the Standing Together social justice group said that more than 1,000 protesters turned out Monday night in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, and Beersheba, for an “emergency protest” against the “settler government lighting the country on fire.” The protest came less than 24 hours after hundreds of extremist settlers entered the Palestinian town of Huwara to carry out a pogrom.
A military source said Israeli troops were not involved in the shooting that killed 37-year-old Sameh Aqtash. There was no immediate comment from Border Police officials on the incident, and it remained unclear whether he had been shot by the settlers.
Protesters on Monday in Tel Aviv and elsewhere waved Palestinian flags and sported placards with anti-occupation messages, including “the settler government is bad for all of us” and “there is no democracy without freedom,” as well as messages of solidarity with Huwara.[4] Judging by the slogans it is likely supporters of Hadash.
This of course is much better than the 200,000 protesters, mostly Ashkenazi middle class, who have ignored for six weeks the oppression of the Palestinians and the nature of the Zionist apartheid. However, this protest is very different from the best revolutionary Russian workers who defended the Jews against the pogroms in 1903 and 1905 with hammers, pistols and metal poles. The settlers who organize the pogrom must be smashed. It is important to demand from the Arab states to send heavy weapons to the Palestinian fighters and at the same time to explain that there is no chance that the local Arab ruling class will support the armed freedom fighters. It is also important to say the truth that Netanyahu ‘s government is very racists but so were the former governments of the left Zionists like the former governments of Ben Gurion (responsible for the ethnic cleansing of 1947-8), Golda (responsible for the settlers in Hebron), Peres (minister responsible for the massacre of Jenin 2002), and Rabin (who ordered to break the hands and legs of the Palestinians).
Gideon Levy writes in Haaretz: “In 1982, the Israeli military did not stop the Phalangists carrying out a massacre of 600 men, women and children in a Lebanese refugee camp. This week in the West Bank, no one stopped the extremist settlers from running amok in Hawara” [5]
Amos Harel writes in Haaretz: “The West Bank has known many instances of rioting by Jews in response to terrorist attacks, but what we saw on Sunday evening in the Palestinian town of Hawara seems to be unprecedented in scope. Over a period of hours, scores of settlers ran riot in the town after the murder of Hillel and Yagel Yaniv, two brothers from the settlement of Har Bracha. The rioters assaulted Palestinians and torched homes and vehicles. The army and the police, which had stationed relatively small forces there despite mounting warning signs of what was about to happen” [6]
The Zionist state must be destroyed and be replaced by a Palestinian socialist state with civil rights for the Jews.
Endnotes:
[1] Excerpt from the poem “In the City of Slaughter”, translated by Vladimir Jabotinsky
[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/27/unprecedented-israeli-settlers-wreak-havoc-on-occupied-nablus
[3] Ibid
[4] https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-clash-with-tel-aviv-protesters-rallying-against-huwara-settler-rampage/
[5] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-02-28/ty-article/.premium/israeli-settlers-hawara-pogrom-was-a-preview-of-sabra-and-chatila-2/00000186-94ae-d3a9-a1cf-b5ff5adb0000
[6] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-02-28/ty-article/.highlight/the-west-bank-is-erupting-israels-top-brass-finally-see-the-writing-on-the-wall/00000186-94c1-d9b3-a587-beef854f0000