On irony and the bulldozer of history:
a letter to Ariel Sharon

Ahmed Bouzid

Dear Mr. Sharon:

The irony is thick, everyone laments now, with you at the head of the government: how ironic that your very reckless act of September 28th, they say, has propelled you to the very pinnacle of power -- and more importantly for you, of prestige and respect! How ironic, they say, that your very brutality, your very racist bigotry, your contempt for Palestinian life and welfare, your expansionist drive, your qualities as a man of violence and not as a man of peace, have attracted an angry electorate to your message of "peace through strength". How ironic. Of course, Yassir Arafat and the Palestinians are the ones to blame, as always: they should have known better than to spurn the generous Barak, we are told. They saw you coming all along and yet they didn't blink, and so now they have you to contend with. Irony of ironies, they say, how in their fight to liberate themselves, the Palestinians have brought to power the one man who will not and cannot listen to their cries for freedom. And now, they reap what they have sown.

And yet, we all know that the wheels of history do not stop with an election, nor are they jammed by a thick irony. You know that full well, Arik, as you sit on top the world today, when once you wallowed in the mire of ignominy. After all, what is history if not a heap of ironies piled one on top of the other?

And so, once your absurd tenure has expired its last vile breath, history will note a thicker irony still: how your final demise was brought about by your very ascension to the premiership. Where once only Palestinians and Arabs knew of your crimes against humanity, now the whole world will know them in their full glorious gore. Now that you are no longer merely an eccentric bully but a prime minister, career hungry reporters and young scholars will dig into your past and resurrect those ghosts that have much to tell. Ask Pinochet: he thought the world had forgotten after twenty seven years -- but it hadn't. Now, he fakes dementia and clings to his few fascist supporters for a scrap of dignity. But he knows he will go down in history as a villain, not a hero. And so will you.

History will also note another irony: just as Ehud Barak's crackdown on the intifadha guaranteed that the intifadah will intensify, so your election to the premiership will only strengthen Palestinian resolve to push on with the resistance. And you, of all people, should know better: you have driven them out of their homes, confiscated their land and demolished their houses, forced them into exile, killed and maimed them, perpetrated massacres against them, poisoned their life and strangled their freedom with settlements deep inside their land -- and yet, they have not relented and they have not submitted! And so, instead of stemming the tide, history will duly note that your arrival ushered an era of unprecedented solidarity, not only among Palestinians, but among all Arabs and Muslims.

Yet another irony that history will surely not fail to note will be the disgrace that your election brought upon the Israeli people as a whole. You won by a 20% landslide -- a record. And it is clear why you won. You won because you convinced the electorate that you are ready to mete out more punishment to the indigenes who stubbornly refuse to accept their assigned lot. And so, where once Israel was viewed as a bulwark of civilization and democracy in a sea of third world tribalism, now the truth comes out that deep down Israel is nothing of the sort but a mere colonial outpost, functioning very much along the classic lines of a racist imperial presence.

And perhaps irony of ironies, and the biggest blow of all, will turn out to be that your election will make the task of whitewashing Israel and absolving it of all misdeeds, big and small, that much more intractable. Your dear friends in the United States have been clamoring for you to head Israel since time immemorial. Well, their wish has now come true. But now they may very well be wondering if it was a wise wish to have in the first place, when all is said and done. How can one defend a war criminal? How can one defend a killer of civilians? Ehud Barak is gone – the so-called "dove" – and with him are gone the last few remaining thin curtains behind which Israel's defenders have been hiding. You promised to make but the most meager and miserly of offers, so no more bashing Arafat for spurning generosity. Your have made it clear that you will not refrain from using force, so no more claims of restraint. Irony of ironies, with your election, you have taken from your friends all of their favorite weapons. And so, they stand now, unarmed, scratching their heads: how on earth to proceed.

Your tenure will be brief, Arik, and when you exit, you will discover that thanks to you, your fascist dreams of a Greater Israel and an extinguished Palestinian identity will have vanished with you forever into the dark of oblivion. History will go on, once you are out of the way, and history will record, as it has never failed to record, that a people fighting for their freedom and dignity always prevail, sooner or later.

History is the bulldozer, Arik, not you.