If you abhor Jews, I dare to challenge you to read one of the greatest books I have ever read. I first read Leon Uris’s Exodus around 1970. It profoundly opened up my eyes to the other side of the story where much appeasement of Islamists and Arabs goes around but the truth remains a casualty. It also reveals the true nature of the British treachery. The last scene with the ship standing in stalemate still is with me. Never leaves me. It reminds me every day what the British politicians and establishments are like. How the British committed yet again one of their greatest treacheries is still astonishingly around today in the appalling form of anti-Semitism surfacing in the Labour party. I bet Tories are not immune to it either. And they should stop dancing around too. It is just that we are hearing at the moment Labour’s undercurrent of hate.
Israel has been unequivocally a friend to India and without its help; the Kargil war would have been lost in 1999. The duplicity of Congress keeping a distance and trying to keep a foot in both camps has not worked. Arabs always have sided with Pakistan. Modi Government is slowly working to correct this with an equal respect for the Arabs. Sushma Swaraj has taken a stance openly to call Israel ‘a reliable partner’. When you stand honest, you stand tall. Therefore, most Indians will have a respect for Jews.
Two great poets I admire are Yehuda Amichai and Nissim Ezekiel; both are Jews. Yehuda in Israel and Nissim in India. Both have a huge influence on their literature. I have managed to publish both in Skylark. It was not because they were Jews, but both are great poets. If you have hatred in your heart then you are unlikely to admire these greats.
Nissim has this line in his much-celebrated poem, Night of the Scorpion: ‘May the poison purify your flesh’
Will the British politics and media be able to purify their flesh ever with the poison of anti-Semitism, just as the poison of secret racism? No one has yet convinced me. The faith has been leaving me for quite some time now. The saga is not going to end here. The devil has wings of whisky. David Cameron’s bedding with the likes of Murdock and not giving the British public Lord Leveson’s recommendations tells us how politics and media are of the same colour. They will always have ‘us and them’ as a dividing line, either these line are with Jews or Asians.
In his wonderful poem the last lines are:
My mother only said
Thank God the scorpion picked on me
And spared my children.
Here the Jewish sentiments are at play. The Holy Land, the motherland reinvented, Israel, can take the poison, but hopes to spare her children. On the other simple scale, it also reveals about mother’s love. The poetry plays with God as well and His strange reasoning. It is more about humans justifying Gods, even as in the meaning of Islamist terrorists. Unfortunately, our recent British saga tells us that the children in this poem are not spared, be them Jews or Asians.
Yehuda Amichai is one the greatest poets who inspires our soul. He has this remarkable indicting lines:
If the west wind does not come
I will never forgive the walls
The arrogance of the Western media and the politicians of hate for Israel and Jews are unmasked in these lines. He knew the wind from the West would never come to correct things, to refresh new meanings, to flower the universal love, to remove the dust off demonization of Jews. For the West is west. It is the same icon when Jon Snow stands in Palestine to talk about only one side of the story of the Palestinians but not of what they inflict on Jews or what Jewish side of the genuine story is. That is West. Therefore, the poor poet offers us the point of understanding that ‘I will never forget the walls.’ There are many walls he talks about, but one of them is about the prejudice of the West, and in the present troubles of the Labour party, the anti-Semitism.
Here are my lines from one of my poems:
You cut of the rose
Handed me the stem
All prickly
For the taste of blood
What can you do with the wolves that have tasted the blood and revel in its reality? Answers on the postcard, please.
