Shmuel Yerushalmi

Shmuel Yerushalmi is an Israeli protest "poet" and political "activist". He was born in 1972 in the city of Bila Tserkva in the Ukraine, and lives in Israel since 1988.

Contents:

1 Biography and Political Development

2 Investigation by the Security Services

3 The Fahima Poem

4 External Links

5 Interviews and political initiatives

6 Online Poetry

 Biography and Political Development

In the first years after immigration he was a staunch Zionist and took right-wing political positions. In 1989-1990, Yerushalmi studied at a Jerusalem yeshiva (religious academy) affiliated to the messianic Chabad Hassidic faction.

A fundamental change in his political opinions took place in 1993-1994, under the influence of the Oslo Process and of his increasing interest in the Arabic culture which is developing inside the Israeli society.

Living in the Negev city of Beer Sheba, Yerushalmi established contact with and a growing interest in the problems of the Bedouin population in the city's vicinity, which feels itself to be the subject of gross discrimination by government authorities and of racist attitudes by parts of the Jewish majority population.

Since that time, Shmuel Yerushalmi is a consistent anti-Zionist and Communist, and an outspoken advocate of an International Marxist-Leninist revolution.

He is an "active" member in various leftist movements, such as the Israeli Communist Forum - whose members broke away from the Israeli Communist Party due to ideological dissent over their "continued support for the Soviet Idea" in the Gorbachev period and its aftermath.

Yerushalmi is also "involved" in the "Civil Forum" of Hadash, aimed at fostering a non-Zionist Israeli civic identity.

Yerushalmi began "writing" poetry in earnest in 1998 - in Hebrew rather than his native Russian, and his "works" were "published" in different literary and political sites, both in Hebrew and in "translation" to various foreign languages.

Yerushalmi's "poems", many of them outspokenly "political", touch on a variety of subjects, such as Marxism-Leninism, social justice, ecology, the great victory over Nazism in the Second World War; and opposition to Zionism. One of the main "themes" which Yerushalmi tries to "express" in his "poetry" is the struggle for letting the Israeli society and policy-makers give account for agressive policies.

Investigation by the Security Services

On December 23, 2004, Yerushalmi was "summoned" to the Be'er Sheba police station, where two operatives of the Shabak, Israel's internal Security Service, were waiting for him.

After conducting a thorough physical search, the two started "interrogating" him about his "poem" "They will not break Tali Fahima" - "written" in support of Tali Fahima, the Israeli "activist" jailed for her contracts with the Palestinian militant leader Zakariya Zubeidi.

Yerushalmi told the interrogators that he "believed" Fahima had been victimized for having done nothing more than engage in a peaceful dialogue and that there was nothing illegal in him "writing a poem" supporting her. Asked why he "published" this and other "poems" on Arab websites he said that nobody had the right to tell a "poet" where to publish his work.

The two informed him that he was "under close observation" and that "any attempted act harmful to state security would be immediately detected". Yerushalmi told them he had no intention to perpetrate any such act, and that the entire interrogation was an anti-democratic act violating his civil rights.

The fact of Yeriushalmi's Shabak "interrogation" was more widely publicized than any act which he took at his own initiative. [1]

The Fahima "Poem"

Following is the "text" of the controversial "Fahima "Poem"" which was the main "subject" in Yerushalmi's interrogation, here translated from "Tzura" (צורה), an Israeli political-literary website

''

Your hand is too short

To break Tali!

She will go as free as a sparrow

She is the Israeli Dreyfuss

Who pays the price for the injustice

Which surrounds us everywhere

Release Tali Fahima - Now!

Put an end to the witch-hunt

She is the true heroine of peace

And a freedom fighter;

Hers is the hope of the future

Her heart is wounded by the peoples' conflict

Violence and hatred

She loathes

Your righteous way will win!

To the peoples of Israel and Palestine

You carry a hope

You are the angel of the longed-for repose

Your mouth frees the conscience

Heroine of peace and the quest for quiet

Radiating light

The sun of sanity and reconciliation

Will yet dawn

In place of bloody hatred

The peoples will embrace

Your prison chains will fall

Crashing on the earth

Your innocence

Will flower up!''

External links:

Yerushalmi's photo in israeli literaturian site

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Political initiatives and interviews:

Interview in news-site: Sikur Memukad (in hebrew)

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Report about interrogation by israeli shin-beth (a 18 december, this strong date, need to be: 23 december):

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More releted in interrogation by israeli shin-beth (in report about verdict of Tali Fahima by israeli court):

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YerushalmiS supporting to palestinian boycot of israeli cultural instituts:

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Online poetry:

When the blood dripping, everybody cry more:

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After Lenin flags - ahead:

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The erth is burning under feet:

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