Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”: this proud and beautiful motto, engraved on the pediment of each and every town hall of France and its colonies since 1880, is the official motto of the French Republic, written down in both the 1946 and 1958 Constitutions. It needed time to impose itself: In 1790 the Convention rejected Robespierre’s proposition to include it on flags and uniforms. From 1793, Parisians wrote down on their houses: “Unity, indivisibility of Republic; liberty, equality, fraternity or y death”, but soon they will be invited to erase the last part of it; it’s too associated to Terror... 

Every state has its motto, its flag, its national anthem and its Constitution. But one state does not follow this rule: Israel. Besides, what kind of political system has this State? Monarchy? Republic? No one can answer it, as even if Israel has a flag and a national anthem it has neither Constitution nor motto. It is also the only United Nations state member that has not deposited a map of its borders before the UN.

So wanting to repair the oblivion of the State of Israel founding fathers we propose a motto. It is in German, therefore it will easily understood by a big chunk of Israeli citizens. For those who don't understand German, here is a small explanation:

In German Liberty is Freiheit. In our proposition, it becomes Frechheit = cheek, brashness. It is the exact equivalent of the Hebrew/Yiddish word chutzpah, the fact of being insolent, brash, in a few words of being shameless. Chutzpah seems to be the main characteristic of any Zionist.

Equality is Gleichheit. In our proposition, it becomes Gleichgültigkeit = indifference. Indeed, Zionists’ other characteristic is their indifference to the fate of those who, to their eyes, are not Jewish, are either goyim (gentiles) or “self-hating Jews” (they define so any Jew who is critical with regard to Israel).

Fraternity is Brüderlichkeit. In our proposition, it becomes Unbarmherzigkeit = cruelty, derived from unbarmherzig = without compassion, pitiless. It is useless to explain this pitiless character: it is enough to contemplate the 60 year history of the Zionist state.

Therefore from this proposition cartoonist Ben Heine has drawn a Zionist “Myriam”. At glance everybody will recognize Delacroix’s Marianne standing up on 1830 barricades from the famous picture “Liberty guiding the people”. However she is armed with a menorah, the Jewish seven branches candlestick. It is possible that her bare breasts could shock orthodox rabbis, although Zionists can be accused of anything except prudery. Evidently, this Zionist Myriam should be suspicious and keep a distance from Israel’s fallen president Moshe Katsav, a sexual harasser of women.

So we have repaired an oblivion and henceforth the state of Israel has a motto. In short we will start writing a Constitution tailored to this State, directly inspired from the the Bible’s Decalogue, the 10 Commandments transmitted to Moshe by Yehova on Mount Sinai.

 Below are two variants on the same theme:

© Copyright 2006 by AxisofLogic.com

The original French text by Fausto Giudice can be found at Tlaxcala*. 

Tlaxcala - Translated by Manuel Talens and revised by Nancy Almendras. Added illustrations by Ben Heine. The four are members of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity.