3. Palestinian Ultimatum

Admit defeat. Accept Israel. Educate for peace. Else it's time to face the consequences.

PURE JEWISH ANGER: A post-10/7 poetry anthology

by Daniel Clarke-Serret

OPENING STATEMENT:

I’m a Jew that likes irony

DEFENDANT A: Middle East

Indictments 1 to 5

1. Pure Jewish Anger. // 2. Palestinians are human beings, therefore… // 3. Palestinian Ultimatum // 4. Cultural appropriation // 5. UN Judgment Day: The Prophet will return to judge the nations.

DEFENDANT B: Far (W)est

Indictments 6 to 12

6. Common Will // 7. Ivory Towers: Sold // 8. First they called it racism // 9. The Great Betrayal // 10.War Crimes // 11. Mr Gorbachev, Tear down that Flag! // 12. J’accuse!

DEFENDANT C: Us

Indictments 13 to 16

13. You don’t live here! 14. The Liberal Jew is officially homeless. 15: Matrilineal Descent has got to go! 16. The Stranger

CLOSING STATEMENT:

Imperfect Good v Absolute Evil

APPENDIX: A Sense of Style

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This anthology is exclusively for PAID SUBSCRIBERS! A writer has the right to make some money….

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INDICTMENT 3. Palestinian Ultimatum

Yasser Arafat: criminal of the century.
How to put into words my sheer distain, nay hatred for this man.
Despite his career of terrorism, murder and mayhem, he could have been remembered as a peace maker.
His history of lies, deceptions, Nakba fairy tales, refugee camp creations, foreign governmental destabilisations and Saddam Hussein cheerleading forgotten in a handshake.

Peace was in our grasp.
We could taste it.
The possibility of two states for two peoples was in sight.
He had a willing Israeli Prime Minister. 
A willing Israeli people.

But he failed to rise to the occasion of Oslo;
responding in silence, 
proposing no counter.

Instead he launched the greatest terror wave in history.
Israeli men, women and children attacked day after day in their restaurants, their cafés, their buses and their streets.
Nowhere was safe.
And Israelis still don't feel safe.

He launched 2 decades and counting of hopelessness and misery;
Of endless death,
Gazan confrontations,
rocket attacks,
rape-murder massacres
and a culture of blood and violence for which no Western - let alone Muslim or Arab - leader holds him responsible.

He launched 2 decades and counting of Israel de-legitimisation:
at the United Nations,
on Western campuses,
and among "progressive" elites.

And he launched 2 decades of hopelessness in Israeli politics.
He gave her body politic ever more right-wing political parties;
Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.
He gave us the unending rule of a corrupt right-ocracy.

He infected the world with no consequence Palestinianism:
where you you can reject peace and be celebrated as a victim,
where you rinse and repeat and the euros keep flowing in,
where you destroy the future for instant forgiveness,
where you provoke war for fun, others paying the cost.

He destroyed his people's dreams, hopes and aspirations;
and then he destroyed ours.
He bred a people built to hate for a living,
educated for evil
and schooled on forever war.

This is the Arafat legacy:
Peace can be jettisoned
terrorism can be nutured,
violence can be celebrated,
rape can be lauded,
murder can be glorified
and there isn't any cost.  
THERE'S NEVER ANY COST.

The World will help you rebuild time and time again.
You can turn your city into a bomb-rigged hellscape,
invite carnage,
dance at destruction,
and you can do it repeatedly 
knowing that consequences are reserved for adults.

Well not this time.

Arafat's children
and they ARE children
have destroyed their own future irreparably.
The Hamas-Fatah-Freedom from Peace playground polity,
that bullies and hurts the good kids with impunity,
has finally hit the moral rocks.
The thugs have been beaten up
and no more will misguided parental protection be their saviour.

I am not prepared to pay another penny
for Gazan reconstruction.
Not one more!
No more condos to be financed on the promise of future destruction.
No more schools primed to kill.

Not unless you surrender,
disarm,
admit defeat
and ostracise violence. 

If a PA Leader could advocate peace and survive,
we'd have a future.
If Palestinian peaceniks had a place to proselytize,
then we'd have hope.
But it won’t happen.
We know it won’t happen.

We pray for something that will never come to pass:
that they'll take responsibility,
smell the moral coffee 
and realise the abyss they've created.
But it won’t happen.
We can no longer lie to ourselves.

Let us say it plain.
Palestinians no longer deserve a State.
They have  forfeited the right to self-determination.
They have have harassed their neighbours for last time.
[The Israelis have had their fill,
the Jordanians too
and let's not forget the Lebanese.]

The consequences must finally come.

There is only one way out;
one tried and tested method for cheating prophetic doom:
Admit you lost.
Face your guilt.
Surrender.
And beg like the Germans before you for forgiveness.

If you do that;
and plead for a real
lasting 
peace;
if you finally reject violence,
forming parties of hope,
then we'll consider your plea.

Otherwise go.
Just go.
Get out of our lives
 and leave us be.
Go like the Romans,
like Assyrians in shame.
Like Pharoah before you: Be gone!

Go;
and let my people go!
Be a footnote on history's uncivilised page
deservedly unremembered.
If you have nothing to offer but hate and tears,
then we have no reason to accept.
So offer now.
And offer wisely.

Here's the truth:
It's been awful knowing you.
You've made the school a misery.
But a new headmaster's in town
and the behaviour's going to change.

We hope one day you'll receive a good education 
in a school called civilisation,
in cultures where human dignity is respected.
But alas the bell has tolled.
Your country's been shut down, graded as failing.
Failing its people,
failing our people,
failing the world.

You're a nation of losers.
You lose and lose
and never take the blame;
never take responsibility.
And we've finally had enough.
We've had enough of murderous barbarism.

So we give you one last chance;
one final shot at redemption. 
Accept Israel in peace or face the consequences. 
The choice is yours.

Choose life.

Or Palestine is done.