Rachel Raskin-Zrihen
There are only a couple of possible explanations for why the world is not out even now, protesting the intentional murder of a pregnant woman and her four young daughters by Palestinian gunmen.
I think it's clear that had the shooters been Israeli soldiers and the victims a Palestinian family, millions of righteously indignant protesters would have hit the streets and the airwaves calling for the capture and punishment of the murderers and, no doubt, the immediate dismantling of "the Zionist entity."
They do that when a Palestinian civilian gets unintentionally caught in the crossfire. They do it when actual gunmen and terrorists are killed. They do it when fences are constructed to keep the killers out. They do it when terrorists' houses - their houses, not their families - are destroyed. They do not do it when defenseless Jewish women and children are gunned down in the street.
There are only a limited number of explanations for this - none of them very pleasant.
One must realize that we are talking about the intentional murder of a pregnant woman and four little girls. Someone had to take aim at and shoot an obviously pregnant woman and four small children ages 2 to 11. This was not a case of accidental collateral damage. This was a targeted killing. And, I'm sorry, but there is absolutely no moral equivalency between the targeted killing of an armed (or even an unarmed) terrorist mastermind, and the murder of an unarmed pregnant woman and her children, no matter how much certain people would like there to be. It is the difference not between apples and oranges, but between apples and skyscrapers.
Had the victims been any other pregnant woman and her children, practically anywhere else in the world, there would have been a deafening hew and cry.
So, either much of the world is OK with the Jews as victims or they have a very low opinion of Arabs.
What I mean is, that unless there is a collective understanding that Jews are unimportant, expendable or worse, justifiable targets, the only other explanation is that the world feels the Palestinian Arabs are simply incapable of civilized behavior. Unless the world is collectively thinking, "well, they're Arabs, what do you expect?" then we can explain the deafening silence over this atrocity only through worldwide, systemic and deeply entrenched anti-Semitism.
I'm not crazy about either explanation, but I think I hope it's the former, because there is some chance for the Arabs themselves to change that perception by behaving in a civilized manner, and by calling on their misguided brethren to do so, too.
The latter explanation, on the other hand, has terrifying and far-reaching implications that I'd prefer not to contemplate, and which people all over the world, in the United States in particular, are dismissing as impossible.
Unfortunately, those of us familiar with history know that dismissing unpleasantness out of hand doesn't make it go away. On the contrary, it allows it to fester and grow.
If the international acquiescence to or rationalization of the murder of that Jewish family isn't a function of anti-Semitism or a belief that no better behavior can be expected from Palestinian Arabs, then it can only be a fear, a terror as it were, that to speak out against the wholesale slaughter of innocent Jewish men, women and even children may bring the wrath of the proverbial Hun down upon the protester.
If that's it we're all doomed, of course, because that means the terrorists have already won.
(What make these murders even more horrendous, is the fact that the Arabs involved deliberately came up to the car afterwards and slaughtered the children at close range.)
Sunday, May 09, 2004
Monday, April 26, 2004
Remembering
From Naomi Ragen:
Friends,
One of ther reasons I started this mailing list was to try to share that which we in Israel are experiencing. All day long today, Memorial Day for Israel's fallen soldiers and (for the first time) victims of terror, I tried to think how I could explain to someone outside the country what we here go through.
How can I make someone who doesn't live here understand what it means to sit by your television set hour after hour watching family after family break down in tears as they describe the pain of losing a beloved son or daughter? And the pictures of the fallen, how they flash by, the handsome young men, the winning grin, the dark blue eyes, the strong young bodies, the beautiful young women --and all so young, so young, so very young.
There was one show that filmed mothers and fathers describing the last conversation they had with their child, and then how they learned the terrible news. Some feared it all along; others never suspected. Some were furious at the soldiers who came to tell them; others didn't want to open the door at all; and still others didn't believe a word, trying again and again to call the cell-phone number.
There was the Russian immigrant who had lost her lovely young daughter in a Tel Aviv disco bombing: "I dreamt about her wedding, having grandchildren. Now that will never happen." Was she sorry she'd moved to Israel? "No," she said. "This is our country. This is what my daughter wanted. It was her dream." And the Ethiopian mother who had lost her soldier son....and the friends we have known for years talking about losing their son, a war hero. I remember when David Granit was born. His mother didn't know she was pregnant with twins, identical twin boys, redheads like their mother. Their father Menachem saw one son born, then went home. When he came back to visit his wife, she said: "We have a son." I know, he answered, confused. "No, another son." How we all laughed at this story. David was killed in Lebanon saving the lives of his soldiers who were under heavy fire. "I didn't want a hero," his sister wept. "I wanted my brother."
On the radio, I heard a bereaved mother talking about the importance of memorial day. "For one day the whole country feels like I feel every day." It was important for people to call, to enquire, to comfort. To make those suffering from loss feel surrounded by a cocoon of warmth and love and solidarity, she said. That is so hard, I thought. Because the last thing in the world you want to do is intrude on someone's private grief. But Memorial Day makes that grief public, giving all of us a chance to say: We live because your son, your daughter, your father, your brother, your sister gave their lives to guard and protect us. Our country continues to function because your grandmother, your little girl, took a bus, bought a pizza, sat in a park, and in so doing, lost their lives to those who wish to take our country away from us. Too cowardly to fight our soldiers, they fight our old people, our babies.
When Memorial Day is over, we will dry our tears. We will go out into the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, our hearts still heavy with cumulative grief, and watch the fireworks. And little by little, we will start to smile again, to celebrate that our little country--our little miracle-- is 56 years old. And that, despite everything, we love her and wish her well and would give anything --anything--to protect and nuture her and her people, the bravest and most compassionate people in the world.
Happy Birthday Israel. God Bless the Jewish people, the People of Israel. May He heal our wounds, and dry the tears from all faces.
Friends,
One of ther reasons I started this mailing list was to try to share that which we in Israel are experiencing. All day long today, Memorial Day for Israel's fallen soldiers and (for the first time) victims of terror, I tried to think how I could explain to someone outside the country what we here go through.
How can I make someone who doesn't live here understand what it means to sit by your television set hour after hour watching family after family break down in tears as they describe the pain of losing a beloved son or daughter? And the pictures of the fallen, how they flash by, the handsome young men, the winning grin, the dark blue eyes, the strong young bodies, the beautiful young women --and all so young, so young, so very young.
There was one show that filmed mothers and fathers describing the last conversation they had with their child, and then how they learned the terrible news. Some feared it all along; others never suspected. Some were furious at the soldiers who came to tell them; others didn't want to open the door at all; and still others didn't believe a word, trying again and again to call the cell-phone number.
There was the Russian immigrant who had lost her lovely young daughter in a Tel Aviv disco bombing: "I dreamt about her wedding, having grandchildren. Now that will never happen." Was she sorry she'd moved to Israel? "No," she said. "This is our country. This is what my daughter wanted. It was her dream." And the Ethiopian mother who had lost her soldier son....and the friends we have known for years talking about losing their son, a war hero. I remember when David Granit was born. His mother didn't know she was pregnant with twins, identical twin boys, redheads like their mother. Their father Menachem saw one son born, then went home. When he came back to visit his wife, she said: "We have a son." I know, he answered, confused. "No, another son." How we all laughed at this story. David was killed in Lebanon saving the lives of his soldiers who were under heavy fire. "I didn't want a hero," his sister wept. "I wanted my brother."
On the radio, I heard a bereaved mother talking about the importance of memorial day. "For one day the whole country feels like I feel every day." It was important for people to call, to enquire, to comfort. To make those suffering from loss feel surrounded by a cocoon of warmth and love and solidarity, she said. That is so hard, I thought. Because the last thing in the world you want to do is intrude on someone's private grief. But Memorial Day makes that grief public, giving all of us a chance to say: We live because your son, your daughter, your father, your brother, your sister gave their lives to guard and protect us. Our country continues to function because your grandmother, your little girl, took a bus, bought a pizza, sat in a park, and in so doing, lost their lives to those who wish to take our country away from us. Too cowardly to fight our soldiers, they fight our old people, our babies.
When Memorial Day is over, we will dry our tears. We will go out into the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, our hearts still heavy with cumulative grief, and watch the fireworks. And little by little, we will start to smile again, to celebrate that our little country--our little miracle-- is 56 years old. And that, despite everything, we love her and wish her well and would give anything --anything--to protect and nuture her and her people, the bravest and most compassionate people in the world.
Happy Birthday Israel. God Bless the Jewish people, the People of Israel. May He heal our wounds, and dry the tears from all faces.
Saturday, April 24, 2004
Poor "Palestinians"
From http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200404230833.asp
The Palestinians will, in fact, get their de facto state, though one that may be
now cut off entirely from Israeli commerce and cultural intercourse. This is an
apparently terrifying thought: Palestinian men can no longer blow up Jews on
Monday, seek dialysis from them on Tuesday, get an Israeli paycheck on
Wednesday, demonstrate to CNN cameras about the injustice of it all on
Thursday — and then go back to tunneling under Gaza and three-hour, all-male,
conspiracy-mongering sessions in coffee-houses on Friday.
Thanks, Naomi!
The Palestinians will, in fact, get their de facto state, though one that may be
now cut off entirely from Israeli commerce and cultural intercourse. This is an
apparently terrifying thought: Palestinian men can no longer blow up Jews on
Monday, seek dialysis from them on Tuesday, get an Israeli paycheck on
Wednesday, demonstrate to CNN cameras about the injustice of it all on
Thursday — and then go back to tunneling under Gaza and three-hour, all-male,
conspiracy-mongering sessions in coffee-houses on Friday.
Thanks, Naomi!
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Naomi's back
Dear Friends,
I'm back! I had a wonderful time (sunsets, rainbows, beaches, orchids. Peace.) But I have to say my eyes misted when my plane finally touched down on my little country. And of all the wonderful sights I saw, and all the joy I experienced, there is was nothing like the coastline of Tel Aviv as it neared. The weather is warm and balmy, with no cloud in sight.
My short stay in London was enough to fill me with compassion for the British. Their climate is their punishment. Freezing cold and rainy. As for their security, it is non-existent. Those deep underground subways are a terrorist's dream. After Madrid, Mr. Frost shouldn't be sympathizing with terrorists and condemning Israel. He should be urging his own government to follow suit. But appeasement seems to be part of the British arsenal when it comes to dealng with evil. I have no doubt the British will eventually figure it out as they did the last time. I shudder to think at what cost.
I return to you and my list with renewed vigor and faith. The present of Sheik Yassin in little pieces on the morning of my return was cause for real celebration. As we near Passover, I can't help remember that it was this little Hitler that targeted my family at the Park Hotel on Seder night two years ago.
As for all the remarks on how "now-you've-made-them-mad. Now -you've- made-them- really-really- mad", please. I have always felt that our enemies will kill us as long as they can, and they'll stop when they can't. May all those who mourn the passing of Yassin soon follow in his footsteps. After all, didn't Yassin say that the day of his martyrdom would be the happiest day in his life? I wish all of his mourners many, many such happy days in their lives.
I'm enclosing Bret Stephens' excellent piece.
Every blessing,
Naomi
The Fear Factor
By BRET STEPHENS March 23, 2004; Page A22, The Jerusalem Post
JERUSALEM -- Are Palestinians weeds? It would seem many people think they are. Following Israel's assassination early yesterday morning of Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, the gist of international reaction was that the strike would bring new converts to the Islamist cause and incite a fresh wave of terrorist violence against Israel. In other words, Palestinians are weeds: Mowing them down, as it were, only has the effect of making them grow back stronger and faster.
There are moments (Monday morning was one of them) when I find myself tempted by the metaphor. As I write, my TV screen is filled with images of Palestinian mourners thronging the streets of Gaza, praising Yassin as a martyr and vowing deadly vengeance. This looks like the reaction of an emboldened people, not a frightened one. So what's the sense, in purely utilitarian terms, of further Israeli attacks? Alternatively, what's the sense of showing any restraint at all? If the weed metaphor is right, either Israel should sue for peace on whatever terms the Palestinians extend or it should resort to extreme measures like population transfer. Anything else just fruitlessly prolongs a cycle of violence.
But of course Palestinians aren't weeds. They're human. They think in terms of costs and benefits, they calculate the odds, they respond more or less rationally to incentives and disincentives. And what makes us afraid can also make them afraid.
This is a trite observation, but it's one Palestinians would rather have us forget. Over 42 months of conflict, their strategy has been to persuade Israelis that they, the Palestinians, are made of different stuff. Why else the suicide bombers? Not because of their proven capacity to kill civilians in greater numbers than any other weapon currently in the Palestinian arsenal. That's only a second-order effect. The deep logic of suicide bombing lies in the act of suicide itself. People who will readily die for their cause are, by definition, beyond deterrence. By showing that Israel's tanks and fighter jets are just so much scrap metal in the face of the Palestinians' superhuman determination, they aim to disarm Israel itself.
How does one respond to such a logic? It helps not to be fooled by it. Again, allow me to make the trite observation that Palestinians love their children too. To date, there has not been a single instance in which a Hamas leader sent one of his own sons or daughters on a suicide mission. I once interviewed a Hamas leader, since deceased, as he bounced his one-year-old girl on his knee. Contrary to myth, this was not a man who was afraid of nothing. Unsparing as he was with the lives of others, he was circumspect when it came to the lives of his own.
Indeed, when one looks closely at just who the suicide bombers are (or were), often they turn out to be society's outcasts. Take Reem Salah al-Rahashi, a mother of two, who in January murdered four Israeli soldiers at the Erez checkpoint on the Gaza-Israel border. In a prerecorded video, Rahashi said becoming a shaheed was her lifelong dream. Later it emerged she'd been caught in an extramarital affair, and that her husband and lover had arranged her "martyrdom operation" as an honorable way to settle the matter. It is with such people, not with themselves, that Palestinian leaders attempt to demonstrate their own fearlessness.
In the early months of the intifada, this macho pretense was sustained by the Israeli government's tacit decision not to target terrorist ringleaders, for fear such attacks would inspire massive retaliation. Yassin and his closest associates considered themselves immune from Israeli reprisals and operated in the open. What followed was the bloodiest terrorist onslaught in Israeli history, climaxing in a massacre at Netanya in March 2002. After that, Israel invaded the West Bank and began to target terrorist leaders more aggressively.
The results, in terms of lives saved, were dramatic. In 2003, the number of Israeli terrorist fatalities declined by more than 50% from the previous year, to 213 from 451. The overall number of attacks also declined, to 3,823 in 2003 from 5,301 in 2002, a drop of 30%. In the spring of 2003, Israel stepped up its campaign of targeted assassinations, including a failed attempt on Yassin's deputy, Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Wise heads said Israel had done nothing except incite the Palestinians to greater violence. Instead, Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups agreed unilaterally to a cease-fire.
In this context, it bears notice that between 2002 and 2003 the number of Palestinian fatalities also declined significantly, from 1,000 to about 700. The reason here is obvious: As the leaders of Palestinian terror groups were picked off and their operations were disrupted, they were unable to carry out the kind of frequent, large-scale attacks that had provoked Israel's large-scale reprisals. Terrorism is a top-down business, not vice versa. Targeted assassinations not only got rid of the most guilty but diminished the risk of open combat between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian foot soldiers.
Now a few words about Yassin, the international reaction to his killing, and the likely result for Israel. It may be recalled that Israel released the good sheikh in 1997, after having sentenced him to life in prison, with the promise that he would never again promote terrorism. This was during the Oslo years, when serious people actually thought that such conciliatory gestures served the interests of peace. Today, that is beyond comprehension. At any rate, Yassin didn't keep his promise.
Meanwhile, assorted foreign ministers are in full throat against Israel. "All of us understand Israel's need to protect itself -- and it is fully entitled to do that -- against the terrorism that affects it, within international law," says British Foreign Minister Jack Straw. "But it is not entitled to go in for this kind of unlawful killing."
It would be interesting to know exactly what, according to Mr. Straw, Israel is lawfully allowed to do in self-defense. Perhaps it would be as well if the minister also reminded the Palestinian Authority of its obligations, under the Road Map, to "undertake visible efforts . . . to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning attacks on Israelis." But if Mr. Straw and his colleagues do not do so, it is not from an excess of respect for the Palestinians, but rather its lack. They will, after all, be viewing them merely as weeds, not as humans capable of acting in their own best interests.
Mr. Stephens is editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post.
URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108000585017162510,00.html (Requires WSJ subscription)
=======================================
Naomi Ragen
Please visit my Web page at: http://www.NaomiRagen.com
and subscribe to my mailing list by sending an empty email to: naomiragen-on@mail-list.com
email:Naomi@NaomiRagen.com
I'm back! I had a wonderful time (sunsets, rainbows, beaches, orchids. Peace.) But I have to say my eyes misted when my plane finally touched down on my little country. And of all the wonderful sights I saw, and all the joy I experienced, there is was nothing like the coastline of Tel Aviv as it neared. The weather is warm and balmy, with no cloud in sight.
My short stay in London was enough to fill me with compassion for the British. Their climate is their punishment. Freezing cold and rainy. As for their security, it is non-existent. Those deep underground subways are a terrorist's dream. After Madrid, Mr. Frost shouldn't be sympathizing with terrorists and condemning Israel. He should be urging his own government to follow suit. But appeasement seems to be part of the British arsenal when it comes to dealng with evil. I have no doubt the British will eventually figure it out as they did the last time. I shudder to think at what cost.
I return to you and my list with renewed vigor and faith. The present of Sheik Yassin in little pieces on the morning of my return was cause for real celebration. As we near Passover, I can't help remember that it was this little Hitler that targeted my family at the Park Hotel on Seder night two years ago.
As for all the remarks on how "now-you've-made-them-mad. Now -you've- made-them- really-really- mad", please. I have always felt that our enemies will kill us as long as they can, and they'll stop when they can't. May all those who mourn the passing of Yassin soon follow in his footsteps. After all, didn't Yassin say that the day of his martyrdom would be the happiest day in his life? I wish all of his mourners many, many such happy days in their lives.
I'm enclosing Bret Stephens' excellent piece.
Every blessing,
Naomi
The Fear Factor
By BRET STEPHENS March 23, 2004; Page A22, The Jerusalem Post
JERUSALEM -- Are Palestinians weeds? It would seem many people think they are. Following Israel's assassination early yesterday morning of Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, the gist of international reaction was that the strike would bring new converts to the Islamist cause and incite a fresh wave of terrorist violence against Israel. In other words, Palestinians are weeds: Mowing them down, as it were, only has the effect of making them grow back stronger and faster.
There are moments (Monday morning was one of them) when I find myself tempted by the metaphor. As I write, my TV screen is filled with images of Palestinian mourners thronging the streets of Gaza, praising Yassin as a martyr and vowing deadly vengeance. This looks like the reaction of an emboldened people, not a frightened one. So what's the sense, in purely utilitarian terms, of further Israeli attacks? Alternatively, what's the sense of showing any restraint at all? If the weed metaphor is right, either Israel should sue for peace on whatever terms the Palestinians extend or it should resort to extreme measures like population transfer. Anything else just fruitlessly prolongs a cycle of violence.
But of course Palestinians aren't weeds. They're human. They think in terms of costs and benefits, they calculate the odds, they respond more or less rationally to incentives and disincentives. And what makes us afraid can also make them afraid.
This is a trite observation, but it's one Palestinians would rather have us forget. Over 42 months of conflict, their strategy has been to persuade Israelis that they, the Palestinians, are made of different stuff. Why else the suicide bombers? Not because of their proven capacity to kill civilians in greater numbers than any other weapon currently in the Palestinian arsenal. That's only a second-order effect. The deep logic of suicide bombing lies in the act of suicide itself. People who will readily die for their cause are, by definition, beyond deterrence. By showing that Israel's tanks and fighter jets are just so much scrap metal in the face of the Palestinians' superhuman determination, they aim to disarm Israel itself.
How does one respond to such a logic? It helps not to be fooled by it. Again, allow me to make the trite observation that Palestinians love their children too. To date, there has not been a single instance in which a Hamas leader sent one of his own sons or daughters on a suicide mission. I once interviewed a Hamas leader, since deceased, as he bounced his one-year-old girl on his knee. Contrary to myth, this was not a man who was afraid of nothing. Unsparing as he was with the lives of others, he was circumspect when it came to the lives of his own.
Indeed, when one looks closely at just who the suicide bombers are (or were), often they turn out to be society's outcasts. Take Reem Salah al-Rahashi, a mother of two, who in January murdered four Israeli soldiers at the Erez checkpoint on the Gaza-Israel border. In a prerecorded video, Rahashi said becoming a shaheed was her lifelong dream. Later it emerged she'd been caught in an extramarital affair, and that her husband and lover had arranged her "martyrdom operation" as an honorable way to settle the matter. It is with such people, not with themselves, that Palestinian leaders attempt to demonstrate their own fearlessness.
In the early months of the intifada, this macho pretense was sustained by the Israeli government's tacit decision not to target terrorist ringleaders, for fear such attacks would inspire massive retaliation. Yassin and his closest associates considered themselves immune from Israeli reprisals and operated in the open. What followed was the bloodiest terrorist onslaught in Israeli history, climaxing in a massacre at Netanya in March 2002. After that, Israel invaded the West Bank and began to target terrorist leaders more aggressively.
The results, in terms of lives saved, were dramatic. In 2003, the number of Israeli terrorist fatalities declined by more than 50% from the previous year, to 213 from 451. The overall number of attacks also declined, to 3,823 in 2003 from 5,301 in 2002, a drop of 30%. In the spring of 2003, Israel stepped up its campaign of targeted assassinations, including a failed attempt on Yassin's deputy, Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Wise heads said Israel had done nothing except incite the Palestinians to greater violence. Instead, Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups agreed unilaterally to a cease-fire.
In this context, it bears notice that between 2002 and 2003 the number of Palestinian fatalities also declined significantly, from 1,000 to about 700. The reason here is obvious: As the leaders of Palestinian terror groups were picked off and their operations were disrupted, they were unable to carry out the kind of frequent, large-scale attacks that had provoked Israel's large-scale reprisals. Terrorism is a top-down business, not vice versa. Targeted assassinations not only got rid of the most guilty but diminished the risk of open combat between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian foot soldiers.
Now a few words about Yassin, the international reaction to his killing, and the likely result for Israel. It may be recalled that Israel released the good sheikh in 1997, after having sentenced him to life in prison, with the promise that he would never again promote terrorism. This was during the Oslo years, when serious people actually thought that such conciliatory gestures served the interests of peace. Today, that is beyond comprehension. At any rate, Yassin didn't keep his promise.
Meanwhile, assorted foreign ministers are in full throat against Israel. "All of us understand Israel's need to protect itself -- and it is fully entitled to do that -- against the terrorism that affects it, within international law," says British Foreign Minister Jack Straw. "But it is not entitled to go in for this kind of unlawful killing."
It would be interesting to know exactly what, according to Mr. Straw, Israel is lawfully allowed to do in self-defense. Perhaps it would be as well if the minister also reminded the Palestinian Authority of its obligations, under the Road Map, to "undertake visible efforts . . . to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning attacks on Israelis." But if Mr. Straw and his colleagues do not do so, it is not from an excess of respect for the Palestinians, but rather its lack. They will, after all, be viewing them merely as weeds, not as humans capable of acting in their own best interests.
Mr. Stephens is editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post.
URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108000585017162510,00.html (Requires WSJ subscription)
=======================================
Naomi Ragen
Please visit my Web page at: http://www.NaomiRagen.com
and subscribe to my mailing list by sending an empty email to: naomiragen-on@mail-list.com
email:Naomi@NaomiRagen.com
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Sarah Honig in JPost: Sleep no more
Jerusalem Post, March 11, 2004
It came to me while trying to avoid decking myself out in a full-blown Purim costume for a party we were invited to. Why not go as a replica of myself, my own impostor? So I drew and cut out a giant lapel-label in the shape of a seedpod and imprinted a bold "snatched body" inscription across it.
My humble homage to the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a sci-fi cult classic about human doubles hatched from mysterious pods, became an unexpected attention-grabber and conversation-sparker. In no time, the chitchat gravitated to current affairs and speculation about which leading politico's body may have been replaced.
By the end of the evening there was unanimity among the merrymakers. Though Ariel Sharon may look, sound, and move like his old self, he's no Arik. We hypothesized elaborate scenarios about his alien abduction, takeover by a mind-controlling physical look-alike, eventual altering of his life-force, and erasure of all emotions and ideals that had moved him previously.
Then someone quipped that "it's as good an explanation as any" for Sharon's bizarre behavior and disquieting surprises, which no longer shock the desensitized population.
Why indeed search for an elusive psychoanalytical diagnosis to account for the settlement champion's out-of-the-blue resort to the term "occupation"? Why construct fanciful concoctions to account for the "constriction minister's" submission to an outsider's road-map-to-ruin? Why burrow for clues to account for the super-hawk's sudden penchant for cowering behind a fence with very mutable lines? Why beat our tired brains trying to account for the quintessential warrior's quizzical propensity for retreat?
We don't need to conjure undying devotion between the PM and his erstwhile produce marketer, who was also the erstwhile father-in-law of Elhanan Tannenbaum, to account for the hardliner's suddenly turning soft on Hizbullah and submitting to its extortionist ransom demands.
THE BODY-SNATCHING theory is as valid as any convoluted cerebral contortion to make sense of the strange goings-on around the national control-board. In fact, it probably makes better sense. The bottom line is that the Sharon currently in the prime minister's office isn't the Arik we once loved or feared, each according to his/her political predilection.
Someone inhabiting Arik's exact likeness is behaving in ways diametrically opposed to Arik's. Thus the very notion that Sharon today can regret Begin's refusal to allow the Egyptian army into Sinai boggles the mind. The whole idea was to make the Sinai vastness a buffer, military movement into which would tip Israel off in time to counter any offensive. The basic logic was to keep the still-menacing Egyptian military machine away from Gaza, the historic highway for numerous invasions of Eretz Yisrael. The rationale was to prevent a re-enactment of 1948, when attacking Egyptian forces endangered Tel Aviv.
Equally mind-blowing is the notion of these chillingly unfriendly Egyptians curtailing weapons smuggling into Gaza. Who's Arik kidding? These are the very Egyptians who at present aid and abet such illicit arms-supplies. They honestly caution that they've no intention of becoming our guardians, so why should we delude ourselves otherwise and not take their word for it?
We already tried to entrust our fragile defense into enemy hands (the Oslo fiasco), and see where that brilliant stroke got us. Who's to guarantee that the latest gamble would pay off, while its predecessor literally keeps exploding in our faces?
How do we know we can now trust Sharon's professed omniscient wisdom any more than we could safely swallow his assurances on the eve of the swap that brought Tannenbaum back? That deal, which only risked returning terrorists to their training bases, was finally exposed as a folly at best. Sharon's grander schemes could risk lots more.
Even his words erode our position. Only the concessions remain, none of the compensations. In the Tannenbaum affair, we didn't rescue a tortured compatriot. Israel's 14 road-map reservations are forgotten. The security fence's beyond-the-Green-Line bulges are fast disappearing, and the mooted annexations in return for a Gaza withdrawal are ephemeral red herrings.
Only dupes would put their trust in anything Sharon advocates or extraterrestrial duplicates.
Maybe Sharon isn't the only leading Likud light snatched. That would explain not only his increasing strangeness but also the lack of resistance from his party's cabinet contingent. Perhaps the Likud ministers too aren't who they claim to be. Their reactions also appear eerily modified. They don't seem to be themselves. That's what comes of prevaricating, acquiescing, letting one's guard down, shutting the eyes.
Indeed, in the relentlessly haunting flick, zombie-like aliens propagate only when folks sleep, when they aren't vigilant. The dormant victim is replaced by an emotionless drone. Eventually the entire town is possessed by pod changelings, and everything is threatened.
The B-picture's original name was Sleep No More. A message for us?
It came to me while trying to avoid decking myself out in a full-blown Purim costume for a party we were invited to. Why not go as a replica of myself, my own impostor? So I drew and cut out a giant lapel-label in the shape of a seedpod and imprinted a bold "snatched body" inscription across it.
My humble homage to the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a sci-fi cult classic about human doubles hatched from mysterious pods, became an unexpected attention-grabber and conversation-sparker. In no time, the chitchat gravitated to current affairs and speculation about which leading politico's body may have been replaced.
By the end of the evening there was unanimity among the merrymakers. Though Ariel Sharon may look, sound, and move like his old self, he's no Arik. We hypothesized elaborate scenarios about his alien abduction, takeover by a mind-controlling physical look-alike, eventual altering of his life-force, and erasure of all emotions and ideals that had moved him previously.
Then someone quipped that "it's as good an explanation as any" for Sharon's bizarre behavior and disquieting surprises, which no longer shock the desensitized population.
Why indeed search for an elusive psychoanalytical diagnosis to account for the settlement champion's out-of-the-blue resort to the term "occupation"? Why construct fanciful concoctions to account for the "constriction minister's" submission to an outsider's road-map-to-ruin? Why burrow for clues to account for the super-hawk's sudden penchant for cowering behind a fence with very mutable lines? Why beat our tired brains trying to account for the quintessential warrior's quizzical propensity for retreat?
We don't need to conjure undying devotion between the PM and his erstwhile produce marketer, who was also the erstwhile father-in-law of Elhanan Tannenbaum, to account for the hardliner's suddenly turning soft on Hizbullah and submitting to its extortionist ransom demands.
THE BODY-SNATCHING theory is as valid as any convoluted cerebral contortion to make sense of the strange goings-on around the national control-board. In fact, it probably makes better sense. The bottom line is that the Sharon currently in the prime minister's office isn't the Arik we once loved or feared, each according to his/her political predilection.
Someone inhabiting Arik's exact likeness is behaving in ways diametrically opposed to Arik's. Thus the very notion that Sharon today can regret Begin's refusal to allow the Egyptian army into Sinai boggles the mind. The whole idea was to make the Sinai vastness a buffer, military movement into which would tip Israel off in time to counter any offensive. The basic logic was to keep the still-menacing Egyptian military machine away from Gaza, the historic highway for numerous invasions of Eretz Yisrael. The rationale was to prevent a re-enactment of 1948, when attacking Egyptian forces endangered Tel Aviv.
Equally mind-blowing is the notion of these chillingly unfriendly Egyptians curtailing weapons smuggling into Gaza. Who's Arik kidding? These are the very Egyptians who at present aid and abet such illicit arms-supplies. They honestly caution that they've no intention of becoming our guardians, so why should we delude ourselves otherwise and not take their word for it?
We already tried to entrust our fragile defense into enemy hands (the Oslo fiasco), and see where that brilliant stroke got us. Who's to guarantee that the latest gamble would pay off, while its predecessor literally keeps exploding in our faces?
How do we know we can now trust Sharon's professed omniscient wisdom any more than we could safely swallow his assurances on the eve of the swap that brought Tannenbaum back? That deal, which only risked returning terrorists to their training bases, was finally exposed as a folly at best. Sharon's grander schemes could risk lots more.
Even his words erode our position. Only the concessions remain, none of the compensations. In the Tannenbaum affair, we didn't rescue a tortured compatriot. Israel's 14 road-map reservations are forgotten. The security fence's beyond-the-Green-Line bulges are fast disappearing, and the mooted annexations in return for a Gaza withdrawal are ephemeral red herrings.
Only dupes would put their trust in anything Sharon advocates or extraterrestrial duplicates.
Maybe Sharon isn't the only leading Likud light snatched. That would explain not only his increasing strangeness but also the lack of resistance from his party's cabinet contingent. Perhaps the Likud ministers too aren't who they claim to be. Their reactions also appear eerily modified. They don't seem to be themselves. That's what comes of prevaricating, acquiescing, letting one's guard down, shutting the eyes.
Indeed, in the relentlessly haunting flick, zombie-like aliens propagate only when folks sleep, when they aren't vigilant. The dormant victim is replaced by an emotionless drone. Eventually the entire town is possessed by pod changelings, and everything is threatened.
The B-picture's original name was Sleep No More. A message for us?
Sunday, February 29, 2004
Friday, January 30, 2004
Daniel Gordis: Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today
*** To join Daniel's list, send a BLANK email to: gordis-subscribe@topica.com. Or see www.danielgordis.org for more information.
*** Just published ..... The last five years of these Dispatches (a revised version of IF A PLACE CAN MAKE YOU CRY), plus other brief essays on life in Israel, are now available as "Home to Stay: One American Family's Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel (Random House/Three Rivers Press).
The Amazon link is http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400049598/
I remember the day they died. And I remember the day that they died again. They were killed, we now know, 1210 days ago in the attack in which they, or their bodies, were captured. The number 1208 was mentioned today by Hayim Avraham, Benny's father, as the number of days that they survived without knowing. Now, he's getting his son back. Not alive, but back. And for the first time in 1208 days, he and his family will go to sleep knowing with certainty that Benny is dead, that he's not in the hands of the same sorts of "people" who blew up a bus full of children and civilians in the heart of Jerusalem today, or who for more than three interminable years kept the most basic humanitarian information -- that the boys were dead -- from their suffering families.
Those families will go to sleep now knowing that their boys are not suffering. That they didn't suffer, at least for long.
The prisoner exchange, in which earlier today we returned more than 400 prisoners for three dead bodies and a probable criminal who apparently got himself captured by Hizbollah only by virtue of his involvement in some nefarious attempt to make money, has been the subject of intense, and now impassioned, debate in Israel. There are those who think we've made a grave mistake. And those who aren't sure. And those who believe that you simply have to "bring the boys home."
That's been the refrain of everyone today, those who agree, and those who don't. Israel "brings the boys home." No matter what. It may make strategic sense, it may not. It may get us information about Ron Arad, the navigator who was shot down five days after our daughter, Talia, who's now being drafted, was born. It may not. It may have been worth it. It may not have. But it has made one point clear. We bring the boys home.
Israeli national television has been broadcasting nothing else (except for periodic interruptions for coverage of the aftermath of the bus bombing -- the bomber, by the way, was a Palestinian policeman from Bethlehem .) all day. At one point, Avi had a friend over, and they joined me watching TV. Here they were, two 14 year olds, headed out to the same army, and perhaps the same fronts, in just a few years. I watched their eyes as they watched the screen, as they watched the video segments of parents who've been interviewed over the past three years and four months, who didn't know whether to mourn or to hope, as they watched the more recent pictures of parents who now know that the hope is over but that relief is ironically just beginning, and I saw them processing. Wondering. What will be. What could be. What would be. Who would do what. At what expense.
And for that moment, at least, it seemed worth it. Without question. Those kids watching TV with me need to know that we bring boys home.
Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today. But they came home to a very different country than the one from which they were stolen. A country that's been at war for three years. A country that when they were killed was just weeks post Camp David, when we thought that virtually anything and everything was possible. To a country that no longer yearns for a peace that we suspect will not be, but still hopes for the sort of quiet that we had for a while. Until this morning. They were stolen on October 7, 2000, just weeks after everything began, when we were foolish enough to imagine that things were bad. We had no idea back then how bad they could get. Or would get. But we're still here. They've come home to a country that has stared evil in the eye, and has persevered. And that brought them home, against all odds.
Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today. They came home to a country that is not afraid to cry. Israeli television tonight alternated between coverage of Beirut, and of the air force base at Ben Gurion airport. Beirut, with the fireworks lighting the sky, the backslapping among the prisoners, the sickening, endless speech by Nassrallah in which he intimated a threat of more kidnappings, and hinted at the possibility of information (just information, though) on Ron Arad in exchange for all the remaining hundreds of prisoners we still have, evoking laughs, jeers and clapping from the throngs of people listening. And then to the air force base, at which a quiet ceremony took place. A ceremony in which no one laughed. Where people cried. Where you could have heard a pin drop, and where you watched fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, and a few grandparents, stifle their cries and wipe their tears away.
They came home to a country in which the carnage of burning buses in our cities, in parts of the country far from anything contested (unless, of course, the whole country is contested, which is clearly the case) has grown so intolerable that we're building a wall, a wall which keeps them out but also pens us in. But it's also a country in which many of us see, sadly, no real alternative to that fence, as problematic as it undeniably is. They've come home to a country that will be "brought to trial" at the Hague for the "crime" of that wall, a country that's now referred to in some quarters as an Apartheid State because of that fence.
I thought about that Apartheid accusation a few times tonight. When the coffins were carried from the plane to the jeeps waiting for them, and the coffin of Omar Souad, a Bedouin, a career soldier who decided that defending the Jewish State was how he wanted to spend his life, was carried to the jeep. Six soldiers, three on each side of the coffin, arrayed to carry him one step closer to his final home. Four who looked Jewish. One who looked Bedouin, though it was hard to tell. And one, an Ethiopian. All by the side of Omar Souad, and then, all saluting him. And then the Chief of Staff, and the bearded IDF Chief Rabbi, standing at the side of his coffin, saluting him and standing at attention. Quite an Apartheid state.
And then during the ceremony, the two Jewish fathers standing together and reciting Kaddish. And after the Kaddish, an Imam, by the side of Omar's father, chanting an Arabic memorial prayer, as his mother sobbed and the honor guard stood at attention, along with the Prime Minister, the President, the Chief of Staff and others. So much for the Apartheid state.
Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today. To a country that's not been weakened by the past three years, but that's been hardened by it. I drove Talia's carpool for the first time in years, yesterday morning. She's got a five minute walk to school, so we never drive carpool, but this wasn't school. She and some friends had to be at the Jerusalem Convention Center at 7:00 a.m. to be bussed someplace else for part of their draft process, so I drove them. Three kids, not really kids anymore, whom I remember just years ago as chatty adolescents, now talking quietly as I drove through the still awakening city and its mostly empty streets, talking about what forms they'd filled out, what they'd have to do during the day. And when I got home from work at about 9:30 that night, she still wasn't home. She got home closer to 10, grabbed a bite, and went to sleep. No fanfare. No complaints. In the past three years, those girls have learned a lot. That the battle to stay here isn't over. That to stay here, they, too, are going to have to do their share. That we have real enemies.
We went to a parents' meeting about a month ago for parents of religious girls about to enter the army. One particular unit was trying to attract these girls, and this evening was for parents to find out more about it. Some of the parents were worried that the unit would make their girls work on Shabbat. The unit had assembled a few of the soldiers, a couple of them kids whom we knew from when they lived in the neighborhood before they left for the army, and a couple of rabbis (among others) to talk about life in this part of the army. Well into the meeting, one father got up and asked one of the rabbis, in a rather aggressive tone, whether the girls work on Shabbat. The rabbi paused for a moment to gather his thoughts, when one of the girls stared the father right in the eye and said, "Of course we sometimes work on Shabbat. The enemy works on Shabbat."
I almost laughed out loud. These kids get it. They understand that there's nothing automatic about our being able to stay here. They understand that staying here means having real enemies. And watching the ceremony tonight, watching the agony of families who should have known three years ago that their sons were dead, I watched Tali watching them. With eyes of steel. Because she, like her friends, knows that the enemy isn't a concept. They bomb the cafes she eats in. The blow up the buses she still rides. And they keep these parents awake for 1208 nights, not knowing if their sons are alive or dead, suffering or in peace. Our kids get it. They know what sorts of neighbors we have.
And they're not running. They grow up too fast, I think, but they know who they are and what they stand for. Few of us would want it otherwise.
These kids get it long before they get drafted. A father of one of Israel's POW's (not one of the three returned tonight) came to Avi's class last year. He talked about how his son was captured, and what they're doing (and have been doing for more than twenty years) to try to get him back. But kids will be kids. They're not afraid to ask what they want to know. So at the end, one of the kids asked him if he's worried that they're torturing his son. No, he said, he didn't think about that. "But when I get into bed each night," he continued, "I worry that maybe he's cold." Avi talked about that for days. And on the rare occasion that he still lets me tuck him into bed at night, I think about that, too. You know, at moments like that, that we just have to bring the boys home. No matter what.
The country to which the boys came home tonight is one in which kids who shouldn't have to be hardened, unfortunately are. When we heard the news of the attack on the bus this morning, I SMS'ed the kids to make sure that they were OK. They were supposed to be in school, but who knew where they really were? So I SMS'ed them on their phones: "There was an attack in Jm this morning. Sms me to tell me you're OK." Talia wrote back to say she was fine. Avi wrote back a short while later.
He wrote, in classic SMS fashion: Im fine and all my friends are fine.
It was my friends bus tho so if he would have been late 2day he would have been killed
That was the whole message. When Adi, Avi and Benny were captured, it would have been unthinkable to us that a fourteen year old could talk about such things so matter-of-factly. Or that he could home and tell us that the mother of one the kids in his school is still unaccounted for, but half an hour later want to discuss the relative merits of the iPod versus the new Dell MP3 player. But that's what things have come to. And perhaps because of that ability to compartmentalize, and to stare evil in the face, we're still here. And no one's thinking of budging.
I remember the second time that Adi, Benny and Omar died. For a year, every Shabbat, our shul had been mentioning them, and the other six (Tenenbaum among them) just after the Torah reading, in a prayer for Israel's captured soldiers. First a prayer for the State. Then for the
army and its soldiers. Then for those in captivity. Nine names only,
so after a while, you know the list. You know it almost by heart, and you certainly notice if someone changes it. Then, about a year after they were captured, the army declared them dead based on new intelligence. Some of the families sat Shiva, but didn't really believe it. And in our shul, that next Shabbat, the person reading the "mi she-beirach," the prayer in which their names were mentioned, started reading, and then stopped. It was as if he couldn't bear to read the list without their names. As if even though he didn't know them, he couldn't give up on the hope. So he didn't mention any of the names, and instead, said something like "all those held in captivity." It was a moment that few of us who were there will ever forget. I was struck then by how personal this was. How despite everything that is wrong here, and that's quite a bit, there is so much that is right. And how, the more they push us, the more we are bonded even to people we never knew. It is, I think, one of those immeasurable things that makes living here so compelling, despite everything. It's one of those things that remind us what a real home is.
As does the evening news. Throughout the entire broadcast tonight, there were two Hebrew words at the bottom right hand side of the screen -- "ve-shavu vanim." "And the sons will return." It's a quote from Jeremiah 31:16, of course. The entire verse reads, "And there is hope for your future, declares the Lord, your children shall return to their country." And that's exactly what happened.
Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today. Tomorrow we'll bury them, along with the victims of today's bus bombing.
Yehi zikhram barukh. May their memories be a blessing.
(c) 2004 Daniel Gordis
You are welcome to forward this e-mail if you would like, but only in its entirety and unedited, including the information below. However, this material may not be published in print or posted on a web site without the express, written consent of the author.
You can subscribe to the list at www.danielgordis.org (see the box on the top left of the screen) or at www.topica.com/lists/gordis. You can also subscribe by sending a BLANK email to: gordis-subscribe@topica.com. Topica will automatically send you a confirmation message to which you must reply. Unsubscription information is included automatically in each newsletter.
*** Just published ..... The last five years of these Dispatches (a revised version of IF A PLACE CAN MAKE YOU CRY), plus other brief essays on life in Israel, are now available as "Home to Stay: One American Family's Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel (Random House/Three Rivers Press).
The Amazon link is http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400049598/
I remember the day they died. And I remember the day that they died again. They were killed, we now know, 1210 days ago in the attack in which they, or their bodies, were captured. The number 1208 was mentioned today by Hayim Avraham, Benny's father, as the number of days that they survived without knowing. Now, he's getting his son back. Not alive, but back. And for the first time in 1208 days, he and his family will go to sleep knowing with certainty that Benny is dead, that he's not in the hands of the same sorts of "people" who blew up a bus full of children and civilians in the heart of Jerusalem today, or who for more than three interminable years kept the most basic humanitarian information -- that the boys were dead -- from their suffering families.
Those families will go to sleep now knowing that their boys are not suffering. That they didn't suffer, at least for long.
The prisoner exchange, in which earlier today we returned more than 400 prisoners for three dead bodies and a probable criminal who apparently got himself captured by Hizbollah only by virtue of his involvement in some nefarious attempt to make money, has been the subject of intense, and now impassioned, debate in Israel. There are those who think we've made a grave mistake. And those who aren't sure. And those who believe that you simply have to "bring the boys home."
That's been the refrain of everyone today, those who agree, and those who don't. Israel "brings the boys home." No matter what. It may make strategic sense, it may not. It may get us information about Ron Arad, the navigator who was shot down five days after our daughter, Talia, who's now being drafted, was born. It may not. It may have been worth it. It may not have. But it has made one point clear. We bring the boys home.
Israeli national television has been broadcasting nothing else (except for periodic interruptions for coverage of the aftermath of the bus bombing -- the bomber, by the way, was a Palestinian policeman from Bethlehem .) all day. At one point, Avi had a friend over, and they joined me watching TV. Here they were, two 14 year olds, headed out to the same army, and perhaps the same fronts, in just a few years. I watched their eyes as they watched the screen, as they watched the video segments of parents who've been interviewed over the past three years and four months, who didn't know whether to mourn or to hope, as they watched the more recent pictures of parents who now know that the hope is over but that relief is ironically just beginning, and I saw them processing. Wondering. What will be. What could be. What would be. Who would do what. At what expense.
And for that moment, at least, it seemed worth it. Without question. Those kids watching TV with me need to know that we bring boys home.
Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today. But they came home to a very different country than the one from which they were stolen. A country that's been at war for three years. A country that when they were killed was just weeks post Camp David, when we thought that virtually anything and everything was possible. To a country that no longer yearns for a peace that we suspect will not be, but still hopes for the sort of quiet that we had for a while. Until this morning. They were stolen on October 7, 2000, just weeks after everything began, when we were foolish enough to imagine that things were bad. We had no idea back then how bad they could get. Or would get. But we're still here. They've come home to a country that has stared evil in the eye, and has persevered. And that brought them home, against all odds.
Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today. They came home to a country that is not afraid to cry. Israeli television tonight alternated between coverage of Beirut, and of the air force base at Ben Gurion airport. Beirut, with the fireworks lighting the sky, the backslapping among the prisoners, the sickening, endless speech by Nassrallah in which he intimated a threat of more kidnappings, and hinted at the possibility of information (just information, though) on Ron Arad in exchange for all the remaining hundreds of prisoners we still have, evoking laughs, jeers and clapping from the throngs of people listening. And then to the air force base, at which a quiet ceremony took place. A ceremony in which no one laughed. Where people cried. Where you could have heard a pin drop, and where you watched fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, and a few grandparents, stifle their cries and wipe their tears away.
They came home to a country in which the carnage of burning buses in our cities, in parts of the country far from anything contested (unless, of course, the whole country is contested, which is clearly the case) has grown so intolerable that we're building a wall, a wall which keeps them out but also pens us in. But it's also a country in which many of us see, sadly, no real alternative to that fence, as problematic as it undeniably is. They've come home to a country that will be "brought to trial" at the Hague for the "crime" of that wall, a country that's now referred to in some quarters as an Apartheid State because of that fence.
I thought about that Apartheid accusation a few times tonight. When the coffins were carried from the plane to the jeeps waiting for them, and the coffin of Omar Souad, a Bedouin, a career soldier who decided that defending the Jewish State was how he wanted to spend his life, was carried to the jeep. Six soldiers, three on each side of the coffin, arrayed to carry him one step closer to his final home. Four who looked Jewish. One who looked Bedouin, though it was hard to tell. And one, an Ethiopian. All by the side of Omar Souad, and then, all saluting him. And then the Chief of Staff, and the bearded IDF Chief Rabbi, standing at the side of his coffin, saluting him and standing at attention. Quite an Apartheid state.
And then during the ceremony, the two Jewish fathers standing together and reciting Kaddish. And after the Kaddish, an Imam, by the side of Omar's father, chanting an Arabic memorial prayer, as his mother sobbed and the honor guard stood at attention, along with the Prime Minister, the President, the Chief of Staff and others. So much for the Apartheid state.
Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today. To a country that's not been weakened by the past three years, but that's been hardened by it. I drove Talia's carpool for the first time in years, yesterday morning. She's got a five minute walk to school, so we never drive carpool, but this wasn't school. She and some friends had to be at the Jerusalem Convention Center at 7:00 a.m. to be bussed someplace else for part of their draft process, so I drove them. Three kids, not really kids anymore, whom I remember just years ago as chatty adolescents, now talking quietly as I drove through the still awakening city and its mostly empty streets, talking about what forms they'd filled out, what they'd have to do during the day. And when I got home from work at about 9:30 that night, she still wasn't home. She got home closer to 10, grabbed a bite, and went to sleep. No fanfare. No complaints. In the past three years, those girls have learned a lot. That the battle to stay here isn't over. That to stay here, they, too, are going to have to do their share. That we have real enemies.
We went to a parents' meeting about a month ago for parents of religious girls about to enter the army. One particular unit was trying to attract these girls, and this evening was for parents to find out more about it. Some of the parents were worried that the unit would make their girls work on Shabbat. The unit had assembled a few of the soldiers, a couple of them kids whom we knew from when they lived in the neighborhood before they left for the army, and a couple of rabbis (among others) to talk about life in this part of the army. Well into the meeting, one father got up and asked one of the rabbis, in a rather aggressive tone, whether the girls work on Shabbat. The rabbi paused for a moment to gather his thoughts, when one of the girls stared the father right in the eye and said, "Of course we sometimes work on Shabbat. The enemy works on Shabbat."
I almost laughed out loud. These kids get it. They understand that there's nothing automatic about our being able to stay here. They understand that staying here means having real enemies. And watching the ceremony tonight, watching the agony of families who should have known three years ago that their sons were dead, I watched Tali watching them. With eyes of steel. Because she, like her friends, knows that the enemy isn't a concept. They bomb the cafes she eats in. The blow up the buses she still rides. And they keep these parents awake for 1208 nights, not knowing if their sons are alive or dead, suffering or in peace. Our kids get it. They know what sorts of neighbors we have.
And they're not running. They grow up too fast, I think, but they know who they are and what they stand for. Few of us would want it otherwise.
These kids get it long before they get drafted. A father of one of Israel's POW's (not one of the three returned tonight) came to Avi's class last year. He talked about how his son was captured, and what they're doing (and have been doing for more than twenty years) to try to get him back. But kids will be kids. They're not afraid to ask what they want to know. So at the end, one of the kids asked him if he's worried that they're torturing his son. No, he said, he didn't think about that. "But when I get into bed each night," he continued, "I worry that maybe he's cold." Avi talked about that for days. And on the rare occasion that he still lets me tuck him into bed at night, I think about that, too. You know, at moments like that, that we just have to bring the boys home. No matter what.
The country to which the boys came home tonight is one in which kids who shouldn't have to be hardened, unfortunately are. When we heard the news of the attack on the bus this morning, I SMS'ed the kids to make sure that they were OK. They were supposed to be in school, but who knew where they really were? So I SMS'ed them on their phones: "There was an attack in Jm this morning. Sms me to tell me you're OK." Talia wrote back to say she was fine. Avi wrote back a short while later.
He wrote, in classic SMS fashion: Im fine and all my friends are fine.
It was my friends bus tho so if he would have been late 2day he would have been killed
That was the whole message. When Adi, Avi and Benny were captured, it would have been unthinkable to us that a fourteen year old could talk about such things so matter-of-factly. Or that he could home and tell us that the mother of one the kids in his school is still unaccounted for, but half an hour later want to discuss the relative merits of the iPod versus the new Dell MP3 player. But that's what things have come to. And perhaps because of that ability to compartmentalize, and to stare evil in the face, we're still here. And no one's thinking of budging.
I remember the second time that Adi, Benny and Omar died. For a year, every Shabbat, our shul had been mentioning them, and the other six (Tenenbaum among them) just after the Torah reading, in a prayer for Israel's captured soldiers. First a prayer for the State. Then for the
army and its soldiers. Then for those in captivity. Nine names only,
so after a while, you know the list. You know it almost by heart, and you certainly notice if someone changes it. Then, about a year after they were captured, the army declared them dead based on new intelligence. Some of the families sat Shiva, but didn't really believe it. And in our shul, that next Shabbat, the person reading the "mi she-beirach," the prayer in which their names were mentioned, started reading, and then stopped. It was as if he couldn't bear to read the list without their names. As if even though he didn't know them, he couldn't give up on the hope. So he didn't mention any of the names, and instead, said something like "all those held in captivity." It was a moment that few of us who were there will ever forget. I was struck then by how personal this was. How despite everything that is wrong here, and that's quite a bit, there is so much that is right. And how, the more they push us, the more we are bonded even to people we never knew. It is, I think, one of those immeasurable things that makes living here so compelling, despite everything. It's one of those things that remind us what a real home is.
As does the evening news. Throughout the entire broadcast tonight, there were two Hebrew words at the bottom right hand side of the screen -- "ve-shavu vanim." "And the sons will return." It's a quote from Jeremiah 31:16, of course. The entire verse reads, "And there is hope for your future, declares the Lord, your children shall return to their country." And that's exactly what happened.
Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today. Tomorrow we'll bury them, along with the victims of today's bus bombing.
Yehi zikhram barukh. May their memories be a blessing.
(c) 2004 Daniel Gordis
You are welcome to forward this e-mail if you would like, but only in its entirety and unedited, including the information below. However, this material may not be published in print or posted on a web site without the express, written consent of the author.
You can subscribe to the list at www.danielgordis.org (see the box on the top left of the screen) or at www.topica.com/lists/gordis. You can also subscribe by sending a BLANK email to: gordis-subscribe@topica.com. Topica will automatically send you a confirmation message to which you must reply. Unsubscription information is included automatically in each newsletter.
Thursday, January 15, 2004
IsraelPizza.com: pizza and soda for Israeli soldiers!
IsraelPizza.com: Click here to tangibly express your appreciation.
Pizza and a Chat
Arutz 7
Being a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces has its perks – defending the Jewish nation, fulfilling a 2,000 year old dream to control our own destiny and for soldiers serving in Hevron... free pizza.
The residents of Kiryat Arba and Hevron have established an organization called “Israel Pizza” to strengthen the morale of the IDF soldiers on duty there. The organization has a “restaurant” in Kiryat Arba where the soldiers in the vicinity (there are about 2,000 of them stationed in the region) come and enjoy free pizza and beverages.
They have set up a live web-cam so people can speak with the soldiers through the computer as they enjoy the food and drink that has been donated. The web-cam can be viewed between the hours of 6:00 pm-9:00 pm Israel time, 11:00 am-2:00 pm Eastern Standard Time. Just enter the Israelpizza.com site and click on "live" and then "chat".
Kiryat Arba resident Tsivya Tezza described why such services are so helpful. “The army is closing many of its kitchen for lack of funds, leaving soldiers with airline style meals three times a day from now on. Fresh pizza will surely be an improvement on that. Also, with the entire world seemingly against our young soldiers, they need to know that there are people who care about them from all over the globe sending them this food so they can defend the Jewish people. And lastly, by developing a visual relationship with an Israeli soldier through the live web-cam both the donors and the soldiers benefit immensely from the powerful bond of brotherhood."
Four families have been maintaining the pizza distribution. The husband of one of the organizers was seriously injured in the ‘Worshipers’ Way” terror attack last year.
Pizza for the IDF soldiers stationed in Hevron can be ordered by going to the Israel Pizza site at Israelpizza.com. After clicking "Welcome", just click on the pizza picture to the right of the screen to donate a pizza.
For more information and to send a message to the soldiers through email, write to: Israelpizza@hotmail.com
Pizza and a Chat
Arutz 7
Being a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces has its perks – defending the Jewish nation, fulfilling a 2,000 year old dream to control our own destiny and for soldiers serving in Hevron... free pizza.
The residents of Kiryat Arba and Hevron have established an organization called “Israel Pizza” to strengthen the morale of the IDF soldiers on duty there. The organization has a “restaurant” in Kiryat Arba where the soldiers in the vicinity (there are about 2,000 of them stationed in the region) come and enjoy free pizza and beverages.
They have set up a live web-cam so people can speak with the soldiers through the computer as they enjoy the food and drink that has been donated. The web-cam can be viewed between the hours of 6:00 pm-9:00 pm Israel time, 11:00 am-2:00 pm Eastern Standard Time. Just enter the Israelpizza.com site and click on "live" and then "chat".
Kiryat Arba resident Tsivya Tezza described why such services are so helpful. “The army is closing many of its kitchen for lack of funds, leaving soldiers with airline style meals three times a day from now on. Fresh pizza will surely be an improvement on that. Also, with the entire world seemingly against our young soldiers, they need to know that there are people who care about them from all over the globe sending them this food so they can defend the Jewish people. And lastly, by developing a visual relationship with an Israeli soldier through the live web-cam both the donors and the soldiers benefit immensely from the powerful bond of brotherhood."
Four families have been maintaining the pizza distribution. The husband of one of the organizers was seriously injured in the ‘Worshipers’ Way” terror attack last year.
Pizza for the IDF soldiers stationed in Hevron can be ordered by going to the Israel Pizza site at Israelpizza.com. After clicking "Welcome", just click on the pizza picture to the right of the screen to donate a pizza.
For more information and to send a message to the soldiers through email, write to: Israelpizza@hotmail.com
Friday, January 09, 2004
Why Palestinian statehood is a mistake
by Joseph Farah
I now think I understand Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's thinking when it comes to his acceptance of the U.S. "roadmap" plan for the creation of a Palestinian state as early as this year. For a long time I wondered if there was any coherent thought behind Israel's capitulation to Washington and the international community.
I knew there was no moral justification for the creation of a new state of Palestine one that has never existed in the history of the world. I knew it was a bad idea to reward terrorism which is exactly what the creation of the state does. I knew it was wrong to dismantle Jewish communities in traditionally Jewish lands. I knew it was a bad deal for Christian Arabs who happen to live in the territory. I knew it would result in a new totalitarian, Islamic state. I still know all this. But now I think I understand why Sharon is going along with the bad plan.
He's doing it because he believes it is honestly in Israel's best security interests to do so. While I appreciate his position, I still think he is wrong. Sharon believes if this action is not taken, Jews will some day be outnumbered by Arabs in Israel. He sees the creation of another Arab state on lands where Arabs are already in the majority as a defensive measure. By carving up the West Bank, dismantling some Jewish communities and moving Jewish population inside a new green line, he believes he will be acting in Israel's best, long-term security interests.
In addition, by establishing a real Arab state where none currently exists, Sharon will be ensuring that future terrorism will have a real address one that can be held accountable for attacks on Israel. Here's why he is wrong. Here's what he is missing. Here's what he is not projecting because he can't think like his enemy.
The day a new Arab Palestinian state is created, other Arab nations will begin ejecting their own Palestinians to live in the new nation. They will come from Syria. They will come from Lebanon. They will come from Iran. They will come from Egypt. They will come from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
The Arab nations keep the Palestinians and their descendants in squalor. They are denied citizenship rights. They are denied work. They are denied property. They are denied their human rights because they are and always will be a political football in the Arab campaign against Israel.
How many will come? I would expect to see 500,000 at least in the short term. This will result in new refugee camps on Israel's border. This will result in more poverty and dislocation conditions that breed terrorism and senseless violence, which is why Yasser Arafat hasn't minded destroying his own once-healthy economy.
These refugees will not complain about those who really victimized them the Arab leadership. Their hatred will be directed at the Jews. With no more Israeli military patrols taking place, as they do now, the security situation will deteriorate on Israel's fence. The terrorists will develop new tactics and buy new weapons including weapons of mass destruction.
If Israel dares respond to attacks by crossing the border, it will create new international pressures against the Jewish state. This is not a recipe for peace. This is a recipe for delaying disaster. By acknowledging the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause, when there is none, Sharon and Israel will have given up the moral high ground and invited more demands on Israel in the future.
Joseph Farah is a Christian Arab who has a nationally syndicated column originated in WorldNetDaily, where he serves as Editor and Chief Executive Officer
I now think I understand Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's thinking when it comes to his acceptance of the U.S. "roadmap" plan for the creation of a Palestinian state as early as this year. For a long time I wondered if there was any coherent thought behind Israel's capitulation to Washington and the international community.
I knew there was no moral justification for the creation of a new state of Palestine one that has never existed in the history of the world. I knew it was a bad idea to reward terrorism which is exactly what the creation of the state does. I knew it was wrong to dismantle Jewish communities in traditionally Jewish lands. I knew it was a bad deal for Christian Arabs who happen to live in the territory. I knew it would result in a new totalitarian, Islamic state. I still know all this. But now I think I understand why Sharon is going along with the bad plan.
He's doing it because he believes it is honestly in Israel's best security interests to do so. While I appreciate his position, I still think he is wrong. Sharon believes if this action is not taken, Jews will some day be outnumbered by Arabs in Israel. He sees the creation of another Arab state on lands where Arabs are already in the majority as a defensive measure. By carving up the West Bank, dismantling some Jewish communities and moving Jewish population inside a new green line, he believes he will be acting in Israel's best, long-term security interests.
In addition, by establishing a real Arab state where none currently exists, Sharon will be ensuring that future terrorism will have a real address one that can be held accountable for attacks on Israel. Here's why he is wrong. Here's what he is missing. Here's what he is not projecting because he can't think like his enemy.
The day a new Arab Palestinian state is created, other Arab nations will begin ejecting their own Palestinians to live in the new nation. They will come from Syria. They will come from Lebanon. They will come from Iran. They will come from Egypt. They will come from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
The Arab nations keep the Palestinians and their descendants in squalor. They are denied citizenship rights. They are denied work. They are denied property. They are denied their human rights because they are and always will be a political football in the Arab campaign against Israel.
How many will come? I would expect to see 500,000 at least in the short term. This will result in new refugee camps on Israel's border. This will result in more poverty and dislocation conditions that breed terrorism and senseless violence, which is why Yasser Arafat hasn't minded destroying his own once-healthy economy.
These refugees will not complain about those who really victimized them the Arab leadership. Their hatred will be directed at the Jews. With no more Israeli military patrols taking place, as they do now, the security situation will deteriorate on Israel's fence. The terrorists will develop new tactics and buy new weapons including weapons of mass destruction.
If Israel dares respond to attacks by crossing the border, it will create new international pressures against the Jewish state. This is not a recipe for peace. This is a recipe for delaying disaster. By acknowledging the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause, when there is none, Sharon and Israel will have given up the moral high ground and invited more demands on Israel in the future.
Joseph Farah is a Christian Arab who has a nationally syndicated column originated in WorldNetDaily, where he serves as Editor and Chief Executive Officer
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
Scapegoating the "settlers"
By Shalom Freedman
Originally published by Israel National News
There were no settlers in Judea and Samaria and Gaza in 1967. There were none in 1956. Those Jews who lived there in 1947 and 1948, and were murdered or driven out by the Arabs, were not called "settlers," but rather Jews of Palestine living in Eretz Yisrael. Yet, even without the settlers, the Arabs tried to destroy the Jewish presence in the Holy Land, managed to kill Jews in whatever cruel ways they could. This was also true in the 1920s and 1930s. It did not take settlers to 'create a quarrel' between the Jews and their Arab neighbors. And it did not take settlers to induce the Arabs to try to make all of Israel/Palestine Judenrein.
The settlers are not now, and have never been the real cause of Arab hostility to Israel, unless, that is, you regard every Jew in the Holy Land as a settler. In that case, it really is the settlers with whom the Arabs are not willing to live in peace, at all.
Despite this, the world media, under Arab propaganda instruction, see the settlers as the main obstacle to peace. And this despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of them live on land that no Arab lived on. In fact, many of those very left-wing Jews who also 'blame the settlers' do live on properties that Arabs once lived on; while the settlers live on state lands, which were never settled before.
Arab hatred of the settlers comes, I suspect, in part because they understand that the settlers share a certain value with them. The settlers value 'the land' and the Arabs value land above all. The settlers are their rivals in a way that Jews content to dwell in high-rises in the cities are not. The Arabs hate the settlers, because they consider them their real rivals in claims of possession of state lands, which no one really owns.
The scapegoating of the settlers is also the means by which the Israeli Left makes the conflict a 'rational' and 'solvable' one. In order to be balanced, in order to give justification to their vision of peace, the Israeli Left must find the Jewish bad guys. The settlers are given this role. The Israeli Left, because of this vision of 'balancing it out,' has made terrible mistakes of judgment, which have caused Israel many lives. The Left does not understand that the heart of the conflict has nothing whatever to do with the settlers, but has everything to do with the right of Jews to have a state of their own in the Holy Land.
The world too, in order to be fair, has to find a Jewish source of evil to balance against Arab evil, such as Palestinian suicide bombers. The settlers play that role. The absurdity of comparing people whose major crime is living in their ancestral homeland with terrorists, who deliberately kill Jews wherever they can, does not seem to deter Middle East pundits. They know if the settlers would only go away, real peace would be established.
The truth is that it is not because there are too many 'settlers,' but because the Jewish people failed to bring another two million people into Judea and Samaria we continue to hear demands to make these parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland free of a Jewish presence. The great shame and error is not that there are too many settlers, but that there are too few Jews in those parts of the land of Israel that are closest to us historically and religiously.
Originally published by Israel National News
There were no settlers in Judea and Samaria and Gaza in 1967. There were none in 1956. Those Jews who lived there in 1947 and 1948, and were murdered or driven out by the Arabs, were not called "settlers," but rather Jews of Palestine living in Eretz Yisrael. Yet, even without the settlers, the Arabs tried to destroy the Jewish presence in the Holy Land, managed to kill Jews in whatever cruel ways they could. This was also true in the 1920s and 1930s. It did not take settlers to 'create a quarrel' between the Jews and their Arab neighbors. And it did not take settlers to induce the Arabs to try to make all of Israel/Palestine Judenrein.
The settlers are not now, and have never been the real cause of Arab hostility to Israel, unless, that is, you regard every Jew in the Holy Land as a settler. In that case, it really is the settlers with whom the Arabs are not willing to live in peace, at all.
Despite this, the world media, under Arab propaganda instruction, see the settlers as the main obstacle to peace. And this despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of them live on land that no Arab lived on. In fact, many of those very left-wing Jews who also 'blame the settlers' do live on properties that Arabs once lived on; while the settlers live on state lands, which were never settled before.
Arab hatred of the settlers comes, I suspect, in part because they understand that the settlers share a certain value with them. The settlers value 'the land' and the Arabs value land above all. The settlers are their rivals in a way that Jews content to dwell in high-rises in the cities are not. The Arabs hate the settlers, because they consider them their real rivals in claims of possession of state lands, which no one really owns.
The scapegoating of the settlers is also the means by which the Israeli Left makes the conflict a 'rational' and 'solvable' one. In order to be balanced, in order to give justification to their vision of peace, the Israeli Left must find the Jewish bad guys. The settlers are given this role. The Israeli Left, because of this vision of 'balancing it out,' has made terrible mistakes of judgment, which have caused Israel many lives. The Left does not understand that the heart of the conflict has nothing whatever to do with the settlers, but has everything to do with the right of Jews to have a state of their own in the Holy Land.
The world too, in order to be fair, has to find a Jewish source of evil to balance against Arab evil, such as Palestinian suicide bombers. The settlers play that role. The absurdity of comparing people whose major crime is living in their ancestral homeland with terrorists, who deliberately kill Jews wherever they can, does not seem to deter Middle East pundits. They know if the settlers would only go away, real peace would be established.
The truth is that it is not because there are too many 'settlers,' but because the Jewish people failed to bring another two million people into Judea and Samaria we continue to hear demands to make these parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland free of a Jewish presence. The great shame and error is not that there are too many settlers, but that there are too few Jews in those parts of the land of Israel that are closest to us historically and religiously.
Friday, December 26, 2003
A plan to rid the US of Arab terrorism
My friend Professor Jon Ruthven suggests the US do what it wants Israel to do:
In light of the horrible terrorism that struck the US on 11th Sept, we would like to recommend that the US follow the method of dealing with terrorism that the State Dept. has been recommending to the State of Israel:
1. Give the entire US east of the Mississippi to Osama Bin Ladin.
2. Invite him to negotiate a peace agreement AFTER the transfer of land has been completed. If he shows up for negotiations, the US will give him more land [as a reward].
3. Offer Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iran each a state west of the Mississippi if they offer to join the negotiations.
4. No retaliation against the perpetrators because that will increase [continue] the cycle of violence.
5. Offer Osama bin Ladin extra guns so he can police his new territory and prevent terrorism in it.
6. Call the victims "sacrifices for peace" and don't talk about revenge. Actually, it was the fault of the victims to go to work in the World Trade Center, since they knew for many years it was a prime target of Islamic terrorists. In fact, it was the fault of the US for not evacuating the World Trade Center earlier, and it is the fault of the US government for allowing US citizens to occupy buildings or areas of land that could be targeted by bin Ladin. The US should draw up plans for turning potential targets such as the Sears Tower in Chicago and the White House over to bin Ladin.
7. No closure of US borders or airports because that has a negative and unfair impact on people coming into the US. Rather, let more foreigners, particularly from Moslem countries, enter the US as a confidence-building measure.
8. Condemn the US for oppressing foreign countries at the same time that any denunciations of terrorism are made. After all, both sides are morally equivalent.
9. Allocate US tax dollars for bin Ladin to build up his infrastructure. In addition, take the taxes from money that Moslems earn in the US and deliver that money to bin Ladin.
10. Bring UN observers to the US to monitor excesses of violence on the part of the US government and to allow US citizens to be taken hostage from UN-controlled areas.
After all, fair is fair.
In light of the horrible terrorism that struck the US on 11th Sept, we would like to recommend that the US follow the method of dealing with terrorism that the State Dept. has been recommending to the State of Israel:
1. Give the entire US east of the Mississippi to Osama Bin Ladin.
2. Invite him to negotiate a peace agreement AFTER the transfer of land has been completed. If he shows up for negotiations, the US will give him more land [as a reward].
3. Offer Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iran each a state west of the Mississippi if they offer to join the negotiations.
4. No retaliation against the perpetrators because that will increase [continue] the cycle of violence.
5. Offer Osama bin Ladin extra guns so he can police his new territory and prevent terrorism in it.
6. Call the victims "sacrifices for peace" and don't talk about revenge. Actually, it was the fault of the victims to go to work in the World Trade Center, since they knew for many years it was a prime target of Islamic terrorists. In fact, it was the fault of the US for not evacuating the World Trade Center earlier, and it is the fault of the US government for allowing US citizens to occupy buildings or areas of land that could be targeted by bin Ladin. The US should draw up plans for turning potential targets such as the Sears Tower in Chicago and the White House over to bin Ladin.
7. No closure of US borders or airports because that has a negative and unfair impact on people coming into the US. Rather, let more foreigners, particularly from Moslem countries, enter the US as a confidence-building measure.
8. Condemn the US for oppressing foreign countries at the same time that any denunciations of terrorism are made. After all, both sides are morally equivalent.
9. Allocate US tax dollars for bin Ladin to build up his infrastructure. In addition, take the taxes from money that Moslems earn in the US and deliver that money to bin Ladin.
10. Bring UN observers to the US to monitor excesses of violence on the part of the US government and to allow US citizens to be taken hostage from UN-controlled areas.
After all, fair is fair.
Friday, December 19, 2003
Another Tack: The prostitute's price (JPost)
by Sarah Honig
No need to worry about Ehud Olmert's latest pronouncements. He has evinced such dubious originality in the past, most glaringly when he sabotaged the Likud's 1999 campaign and starred in Ehud Barak's electioneering broadcasts, vouching that Barak won't divide Jerusalem. Shortly thereafter, Barak was about to sign everything away save for the subterranean strata of the Temple Mount.
That's not to say, however, that there's no cause for anxiety - not so much about Olmert, as about his boss, ultra-pragmatist Ariel Sharon. His cronies informally reassure us that our interests are in capable hands, that the wily old man knows best.
That's precisely what should deprive us of sleep at night. Crafty expediency may get us out of assorted jams but land us into life-threatening quicksand.
In this case, the road to disaster is paved with pragmatic considerations.
Pragmatism is akin to focusing on specific potholes in our national path rather than sometimes lifting our eyes from the ground to scan the horizon, survey the sweep of the land and behold the full track ahead. We bog ourselves down with details and neglect the whole. We quibble about issues and forget the basics.
Occasional pragmatism has its uses, but had Zionism's founding fathers been dogged by the demographic demon like Olmert, this state would have never been born. It came to be because of the Herzlian "irrational" resolve that "if you will it, it's no myth." Unlike visionary, against-the-odds Zionists of yesteryear, pragmatists reject dreams, absolutes and truths. Everything is judged by the practical outcome. The quicker and more facile the solution, the better, because impatient pragmatists rarely commit for the long haul.
THUS IF the world, for a host of ulterior motives, contends Israel is the villain and the Arabs its downtrodden victims, we don't quarrel with this basic premise. We throw the howling hostile hounds a few bones to mollify them, ease the pressure, win time.
If the world, for cynical self-serving reasons, equates us with South Africa's old apartheid regime and the Arabs with the oppressed indigenous masses, we don't challenge this odious distortion. We try to improve our image.
If the world decides we're foreign colonists who forcibly usurped the land of peaceful natives, we remove several settler outposts, rather than refute the brazen fabrications and stress our right to our only homeland.
If the world falsely depicts us as the many and the mighty and the Arabs as the few and defenseless, we shy from military solutions to violent conflicts. If the world calls us aggressors, we apologize.
If the world misrepresents this bloody dispute as being about a Palestinian state, we don't protest that it's really about denying the right of a Jewish state to exist. Instead, to please our critics, we concede the Palestinian cause.
By repeatedly conceding the basic assumptions against us, we aggravate our own distress and inevitably succumb to the inimical international axiom that we're in the wrong and that those who would annihilate us are desperate insurgents against injustice. Any means to which they resort are thereby quasi-legitimized and terrorism against Israel not entirely cast out of moral bounds. Our accommodating pragmatism effectively removes Israelis, even Jews, from what the world's anti-terror warriors define as terrorism.
Insidiously, terrorism becomes the indiscriminate targeting of non-Jews.
It's therefore quite counterproductive for us to exclusively harp on the terror theme. We'd do better to go back to basics, proclaim loud and clear that we are here by right; that we were attacked; that the Arabs only conjured Palestinian nationality in order to stake rival claims; that a Palestinian state never existed (i.e. we certainly didn't conquer and subjugate it); that we didn't drive out hapless refugees (who themselves started the war); that they caused their own downfall by plotting genocide and ethnic cleansing against us; that our only sin is surviving. We can remind the world of the Nazi legacy of "Palestinian" hero Haj Amin el-Husseini. We can point to Ahmed Yassin's recent declaration that there's no room in the region for a Jewish state.
Admittedly, we may not convince anyone. The dice are loaded against us. But we've nothing to lose by rediscovering our defiant spirit and lost Zionist ideals. Excessive pragmatism - the sacrifice of national honor for temporary gain - will lose us everything, from our own sense of justice to the souls of our youngsters.
Pragmatism will turn us into the woman once asked by George Bernard Shaw whether she'll go to bed with him for a 1,000 Pounds. When she answered in the affirmative, he offered her a mere 2 Pounds. Outraged, she railed: "What do you take me for? A prostitute?" Shaw replied: "We've already determined that. Now we're haggling over the price."
Sarah Honig is a political analyst and columnist who writes for the Jerusalem Post, where this article appeared on December 12, 2003.
No need to worry about Ehud Olmert's latest pronouncements. He has evinced such dubious originality in the past, most glaringly when he sabotaged the Likud's 1999 campaign and starred in Ehud Barak's electioneering broadcasts, vouching that Barak won't divide Jerusalem. Shortly thereafter, Barak was about to sign everything away save for the subterranean strata of the Temple Mount.
That's not to say, however, that there's no cause for anxiety - not so much about Olmert, as about his boss, ultra-pragmatist Ariel Sharon. His cronies informally reassure us that our interests are in capable hands, that the wily old man knows best.
That's precisely what should deprive us of sleep at night. Crafty expediency may get us out of assorted jams but land us into life-threatening quicksand.
In this case, the road to disaster is paved with pragmatic considerations.
Pragmatism is akin to focusing on specific potholes in our national path rather than sometimes lifting our eyes from the ground to scan the horizon, survey the sweep of the land and behold the full track ahead. We bog ourselves down with details and neglect the whole. We quibble about issues and forget the basics.
Occasional pragmatism has its uses, but had Zionism's founding fathers been dogged by the demographic demon like Olmert, this state would have never been born. It came to be because of the Herzlian "irrational" resolve that "if you will it, it's no myth." Unlike visionary, against-the-odds Zionists of yesteryear, pragmatists reject dreams, absolutes and truths. Everything is judged by the practical outcome. The quicker and more facile the solution, the better, because impatient pragmatists rarely commit for the long haul.
THUS IF the world, for a host of ulterior motives, contends Israel is the villain and the Arabs its downtrodden victims, we don't quarrel with this basic premise. We throw the howling hostile hounds a few bones to mollify them, ease the pressure, win time.
If the world, for cynical self-serving reasons, equates us with South Africa's old apartheid regime and the Arabs with the oppressed indigenous masses, we don't challenge this odious distortion. We try to improve our image.
If the world decides we're foreign colonists who forcibly usurped the land of peaceful natives, we remove several settler outposts, rather than refute the brazen fabrications and stress our right to our only homeland.
If the world falsely depicts us as the many and the mighty and the Arabs as the few and defenseless, we shy from military solutions to violent conflicts. If the world calls us aggressors, we apologize.
If the world misrepresents this bloody dispute as being about a Palestinian state, we don't protest that it's really about denying the right of a Jewish state to exist. Instead, to please our critics, we concede the Palestinian cause.
By repeatedly conceding the basic assumptions against us, we aggravate our own distress and inevitably succumb to the inimical international axiom that we're in the wrong and that those who would annihilate us are desperate insurgents against injustice. Any means to which they resort are thereby quasi-legitimized and terrorism against Israel not entirely cast out of moral bounds. Our accommodating pragmatism effectively removes Israelis, even Jews, from what the world's anti-terror warriors define as terrorism.
Insidiously, terrorism becomes the indiscriminate targeting of non-Jews.
It's therefore quite counterproductive for us to exclusively harp on the terror theme. We'd do better to go back to basics, proclaim loud and clear that we are here by right; that we were attacked; that the Arabs only conjured Palestinian nationality in order to stake rival claims; that a Palestinian state never existed (i.e. we certainly didn't conquer and subjugate it); that we didn't drive out hapless refugees (who themselves started the war); that they caused their own downfall by plotting genocide and ethnic cleansing against us; that our only sin is surviving. We can remind the world of the Nazi legacy of "Palestinian" hero Haj Amin el-Husseini. We can point to Ahmed Yassin's recent declaration that there's no room in the region for a Jewish state.
Admittedly, we may not convince anyone. The dice are loaded against us. But we've nothing to lose by rediscovering our defiant spirit and lost Zionist ideals. Excessive pragmatism - the sacrifice of national honor for temporary gain - will lose us everything, from our own sense of justice to the souls of our youngsters.
Pragmatism will turn us into the woman once asked by George Bernard Shaw whether she'll go to bed with him for a 1,000 Pounds. When she answered in the affirmative, he offered her a mere 2 Pounds. Outraged, she railed: "What do you take me for? A prostitute?" Shaw replied: "We've already determined that. Now we're haggling over the price."
Sarah Honig is a political analyst and columnist who writes for the Jerusalem Post, where this article appeared on December 12, 2003.
Thursday, December 18, 2003
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF or The Maccabean Battles - Reloaded
LETTER FROM RUTH MATAR (WOMEN IN GREEN)
JERUSALEM
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Dear Friends,
Israel's Prime Minister Sharon, under heavy American pressure, has made the decision to destroy Migron, a community in the Judean Hills just minutes from Jerusalem. Migron is home to 43 young Torah-observant Jewish families with over 60 young children. They are professionals, teachers, students, and soldiers. They work in Migron or in Jerusalem, or in the surrounding communities, such as Michmash. (Michmash was the stronghold of Judah Maccabee, who reestablished Jewish sovereignty in this whole area, during the time of the Chanukah wars.)
It is important to understand that Migron is not some little collection of huts. The community has built a Synagogue. They also have a library, their own health care center, a petting zoo, and a kindergarten.
Why Migron? It seems that U.S. Ambassador, Daniel Kurtzer, has instructed Israel Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz that Migron has to be the first "Jewish settlement" to be evacuated, so as to make possible a contiguous Palestinian State. (More than shameful: Kurtzer, a supposedly Orthodox religious Jew, because of personal ambition, lends himself to try to destroy the Jewish State.)
The truth is that Migron was approved by Sharon and the Defense Ministry. In fact, successive previous Defense Ministers have insisted that Migron is essential strategically and must never be abandoned. Migron was built on Land owned by Jews, and the Migron residents have all the legal papers to prove these facts.
What right does Prime Minister Sharon, or U.S. President George W. Bush, (or the State Department?) or the European Union, have to uproot these Jewish families from their homes? What right does anyone have to give away portions of the Jewish Homeland, the Land given to us eternally and irrevocably by G-d, to a bunch of terrorists, or to anyone else for that matter?
This Friday night we are lighting the first candle of the Chanukah holiday. What exactly are we celebrating?
In children's books the story is very simple:
"Many years ago, a wicked king, named Antiochus, captured the Land of the Jews. He ordered them to give up their religion and to worship his Greek gods. All who refused to obey the king's command, were put to death."
But also for adults -- in the popular perception -- the story is not much more complex:
"Chanukah is the victory of a small band of the courageous Maccabees fighting the mighty Syrian-Greek army of King Antiochus. The miracle of Chanukah is the rededication of the Temple, and the triumph of freedom of religion in the face of oppression."
The TRUE Chanukah story is not so simple. Yes, the Maccabean wars were fought against a foreign occupying force, the Syrian-Greeks. But these wars were also waged against another enemy trying to destroy Israel as a Jewish entity, an enemy WITHIN. The Hellenized Jews at the time of the Hasmonians were a dedicated group of "worldly" Jews drawn to the "beauty" of Greek culture and alienated from their own heritage and from the G-d of Israel. They existed to ingratiate themselves by serving the whim of their foreign patrons and to eliminate the yoke of their own heritage -- the Torah. They longed to be like the other nations of the world, free to indulge in whatever they wished, and to eradicate any vestige of what makes a Jew Jewish in the first place: The G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the Land of Israel, and the Holy Torah itself.
The REAL battle of the Maccabees was not only against the Syrian-Greek army of Antiochus. It was also against their fellow Jews, who were willing to sell out their Jewish identity for universality, world citizenship, economic advancement, and of course, acceptance by other nations. They were even willing to give up the Holy Temple, and to allow Jerusalem to become a Greek city, all in order to obtain for themselves "the good life", and to become enlightened "citizens of the world".
Today, our modern assimilationists are very much like the Hellenists of old. We have our own version of disloyal High Priests and our own Hellenizers -- the Sharons, the Olmerts, the Yossi Beilins, the Yossi Sarids, and the Shimon Pereses, and others too numerous to mention.
It is not widely known that Antiochus did not issue anti-religious decrees against any other people than the Jews. He simply conquered many nations POLITICALLY, but did not attack their RELIGION in any way. It was ONLY against the Jews that he instituted anti-religious decrees.
Why just against the Jews? Historians say that Antiochus had no intention of issuing anti-religious decrees against the Jews, but his Jewish friends and collaborators, the Hellenists, advised him to do so. The Hellenists of that time - THEY were the ones who advised Antiochus how to break the Jews.
You want to break the Jewish People? Forbid them to study Torah and forbid them to perform circumcisions, allow their holy places to be desecrated and, above all, forbid them to live on their own Promised Land.
History, in truth, repeats itself! Or in modern terms, we now have "The Maccabean Battles - Reloaded!" The internal Jewish enemies counsel the external enemies, and give them advice on how to break the People of Israel. Hellenist Yossi Beilin is funded by the European Union and goes around the world selling his treasonous Geneva Accords. And Mr. Olmert and Mr. Sharon compete with each other as to who can announce more "painful concessions" to the world on Israel's behalf. THE GREAT TRAGEDY of our present situation is that the war of the Hellenized Jews, who joined the enemy against their Jewish brothers, continues to this very day!
Today, we are faced with the same enemies: world powers that are pushing the tiny Jewish state, pushing hard to divide and give away large portions of the Jewish Homeland, the Land given to us eternally by G-d. The same enemies are still here, including the enemy within.
Like then, the enemy within has the political power in our Land, cow-towing to the world powers that urge the weakening and diminution of our tiny nation. And for what reason? Astonishingly, to appease and reward a vast multitude of Arab terrorists who strive to destroy tiny Israel along with the United States and the rest of Western Civilization. Make no mistake: these are the same Arabs who cheered the destruction and massacre of the Twin Towers, and who today, weep because of the capture of Saddam Hussein, as he hid like a rat in a filthy hole in the ground. Their other role model and hero, Yasser Arafat, also cowers like a rat in his decaying compound in Ramallah, but, alas, he is dangerous. This enemy continues to order and organize the murder of Jews in Israel, inside and out of the absurdity known as the 'green line'. Is he brought to justice for these atrocities, is he stopped, is he captured or killed? No. Instead, he is protected by the United States, and courted by Peres, Beilin, and those of their ilk, the Jewish Hellenists of today.
We cannot afford to loose this fight -- THIS FIGHT IS FOR SURVIVAL.
Yesterday, December 17, our Women in Green went to the Judean Community of Migron, to show our solidarity with the 43 families with their 60 children, who are rebuilding this Biblical city. (Biblical references to Migron: Isaiah 10:28, Samuel I 14:2.) We brought the children toys and candy.
Also yesterday, a large number of Rabbis, under an umbrella called the "Land of Israel Rabbis", went to Migron. Last night they issued the following statement:
"The government is forbidden by a total religious prohibition to evacuate any outpost or settlement and has no right to give away parts of the Land of Israel to strangers, and anything done toward this aim is void. "
The "Land of Israel Rabbis" also stated that thousands of Yeshiva students will come to Migron to try and keep Israel Defense Forces troops from evacuating it.
Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, the Chief Rabbi of the Elon Moreh settlement, said that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government was, "disintegrating the Land of Israel. We have never had a worse government than this one. The core of the problem does not lie with the IDF, the Ministry of Defense, or the Interior Ministry. All roads lead to Ariel Sharon. We are telling Ariel Sharon: You have 24 hours (before his speech at the Herzliya Conference tonight) to regain your composure and to examine your position. Otherwise you will lead us to the biggest disgrace in the history of Israel," the Rabbi said.
The Women in Green support these statements in their entirety. Judah Maccabee started the Maccabean battles by his statement: "He who is for G-d, follow me!" Women in Green will join and follow all those who believe in the G-d of Israel, in order to prevent this shameful attempt of the Hellenist Jews to abandon our Homeland.
I want to conclude with the words of Shimon, the Hasmonean: "WE HAVE NOT TAKEN OTHER PEOPLE'S LAND, NOR ARE WE IN POSSESSION OF OTHER PEOPLE'S PROPERTY, BUT OF THE INHERITANCE OF OUR FOREFATHERS."
With Blessings and Love for Israel,
Ruth Matar
P.S. Go to our website http://www.womeningreen.org/ to see pictures of the children of Migron
JERUSALEM
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Dear Friends,
Israel's Prime Minister Sharon, under heavy American pressure, has made the decision to destroy Migron, a community in the Judean Hills just minutes from Jerusalem. Migron is home to 43 young Torah-observant Jewish families with over 60 young children. They are professionals, teachers, students, and soldiers. They work in Migron or in Jerusalem, or in the surrounding communities, such as Michmash. (Michmash was the stronghold of Judah Maccabee, who reestablished Jewish sovereignty in this whole area, during the time of the Chanukah wars.)
It is important to understand that Migron is not some little collection of huts. The community has built a Synagogue. They also have a library, their own health care center, a petting zoo, and a kindergarten.
Why Migron? It seems that U.S. Ambassador, Daniel Kurtzer, has instructed Israel Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz that Migron has to be the first "Jewish settlement" to be evacuated, so as to make possible a contiguous Palestinian State. (More than shameful: Kurtzer, a supposedly Orthodox religious Jew, because of personal ambition, lends himself to try to destroy the Jewish State.)
The truth is that Migron was approved by Sharon and the Defense Ministry. In fact, successive previous Defense Ministers have insisted that Migron is essential strategically and must never be abandoned. Migron was built on Land owned by Jews, and the Migron residents have all the legal papers to prove these facts.
What right does Prime Minister Sharon, or U.S. President George W. Bush, (or the State Department?) or the European Union, have to uproot these Jewish families from their homes? What right does anyone have to give away portions of the Jewish Homeland, the Land given to us eternally and irrevocably by G-d, to a bunch of terrorists, or to anyone else for that matter?
This Friday night we are lighting the first candle of the Chanukah holiday. What exactly are we celebrating?
In children's books the story is very simple:
"Many years ago, a wicked king, named Antiochus, captured the Land of the Jews. He ordered them to give up their religion and to worship his Greek gods. All who refused to obey the king's command, were put to death."
But also for adults -- in the popular perception -- the story is not much more complex:
"Chanukah is the victory of a small band of the courageous Maccabees fighting the mighty Syrian-Greek army of King Antiochus. The miracle of Chanukah is the rededication of the Temple, and the triumph of freedom of religion in the face of oppression."
The TRUE Chanukah story is not so simple. Yes, the Maccabean wars were fought against a foreign occupying force, the Syrian-Greeks. But these wars were also waged against another enemy trying to destroy Israel as a Jewish entity, an enemy WITHIN. The Hellenized Jews at the time of the Hasmonians were a dedicated group of "worldly" Jews drawn to the "beauty" of Greek culture and alienated from their own heritage and from the G-d of Israel. They existed to ingratiate themselves by serving the whim of their foreign patrons and to eliminate the yoke of their own heritage -- the Torah. They longed to be like the other nations of the world, free to indulge in whatever they wished, and to eradicate any vestige of what makes a Jew Jewish in the first place: The G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the Land of Israel, and the Holy Torah itself.
The REAL battle of the Maccabees was not only against the Syrian-Greek army of Antiochus. It was also against their fellow Jews, who were willing to sell out their Jewish identity for universality, world citizenship, economic advancement, and of course, acceptance by other nations. They were even willing to give up the Holy Temple, and to allow Jerusalem to become a Greek city, all in order to obtain for themselves "the good life", and to become enlightened "citizens of the world".
Today, our modern assimilationists are very much like the Hellenists of old. We have our own version of disloyal High Priests and our own Hellenizers -- the Sharons, the Olmerts, the Yossi Beilins, the Yossi Sarids, and the Shimon Pereses, and others too numerous to mention.
It is not widely known that Antiochus did not issue anti-religious decrees against any other people than the Jews. He simply conquered many nations POLITICALLY, but did not attack their RELIGION in any way. It was ONLY against the Jews that he instituted anti-religious decrees.
Why just against the Jews? Historians say that Antiochus had no intention of issuing anti-religious decrees against the Jews, but his Jewish friends and collaborators, the Hellenists, advised him to do so. The Hellenists of that time - THEY were the ones who advised Antiochus how to break the Jews.
You want to break the Jewish People? Forbid them to study Torah and forbid them to perform circumcisions, allow their holy places to be desecrated and, above all, forbid them to live on their own Promised Land.
History, in truth, repeats itself! Or in modern terms, we now have "The Maccabean Battles - Reloaded!" The internal Jewish enemies counsel the external enemies, and give them advice on how to break the People of Israel. Hellenist Yossi Beilin is funded by the European Union and goes around the world selling his treasonous Geneva Accords. And Mr. Olmert and Mr. Sharon compete with each other as to who can announce more "painful concessions" to the world on Israel's behalf. THE GREAT TRAGEDY of our present situation is that the war of the Hellenized Jews, who joined the enemy against their Jewish brothers, continues to this very day!
Today, we are faced with the same enemies: world powers that are pushing the tiny Jewish state, pushing hard to divide and give away large portions of the Jewish Homeland, the Land given to us eternally by G-d. The same enemies are still here, including the enemy within.
Like then, the enemy within has the political power in our Land, cow-towing to the world powers that urge the weakening and diminution of our tiny nation. And for what reason? Astonishingly, to appease and reward a vast multitude of Arab terrorists who strive to destroy tiny Israel along with the United States and the rest of Western Civilization. Make no mistake: these are the same Arabs who cheered the destruction and massacre of the Twin Towers, and who today, weep because of the capture of Saddam Hussein, as he hid like a rat in a filthy hole in the ground. Their other role model and hero, Yasser Arafat, also cowers like a rat in his decaying compound in Ramallah, but, alas, he is dangerous. This enemy continues to order and organize the murder of Jews in Israel, inside and out of the absurdity known as the 'green line'. Is he brought to justice for these atrocities, is he stopped, is he captured or killed? No. Instead, he is protected by the United States, and courted by Peres, Beilin, and those of their ilk, the Jewish Hellenists of today.
We cannot afford to loose this fight -- THIS FIGHT IS FOR SURVIVAL.
Yesterday, December 17, our Women in Green went to the Judean Community of Migron, to show our solidarity with the 43 families with their 60 children, who are rebuilding this Biblical city. (Biblical references to Migron: Isaiah 10:28, Samuel I 14:2.) We brought the children toys and candy.
Also yesterday, a large number of Rabbis, under an umbrella called the "Land of Israel Rabbis", went to Migron. Last night they issued the following statement:
"The government is forbidden by a total religious prohibition to evacuate any outpost or settlement and has no right to give away parts of the Land of Israel to strangers, and anything done toward this aim is void. "
The "Land of Israel Rabbis" also stated that thousands of Yeshiva students will come to Migron to try and keep Israel Defense Forces troops from evacuating it.
Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, the Chief Rabbi of the Elon Moreh settlement, said that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government was, "disintegrating the Land of Israel. We have never had a worse government than this one. The core of the problem does not lie with the IDF, the Ministry of Defense, or the Interior Ministry. All roads lead to Ariel Sharon. We are telling Ariel Sharon: You have 24 hours (before his speech at the Herzliya Conference tonight) to regain your composure and to examine your position. Otherwise you will lead us to the biggest disgrace in the history of Israel," the Rabbi said.
The Women in Green support these statements in their entirety. Judah Maccabee started the Maccabean battles by his statement: "He who is for G-d, follow me!" Women in Green will join and follow all those who believe in the G-d of Israel, in order to prevent this shameful attempt of the Hellenist Jews to abandon our Homeland.
I want to conclude with the words of Shimon, the Hasmonean: "WE HAVE NOT TAKEN OTHER PEOPLE'S LAND, NOR ARE WE IN POSSESSION OF OTHER PEOPLE'S PROPERTY, BUT OF THE INHERITANCE OF OUR FOREFATHERS."
With Blessings and Love for Israel,
Ruth Matar
P.S. Go to our website http://www.womeningreen.org/ to see pictures of the children of Migron
Sunday, December 14, 2003
Nadia Matar: About Pigs and Transfer of Jews
(The following is a translation of Nadia Matar's Hebrew show on Arutz 7 Internet)
We are now in a new period. Until a few days ago, we did not know where the Israeli Government was leading us, and we could still think that Ariel Sharon "is only talking, but doesn't mean it"; now things are crystal-clear: the Sharon Government intends to betray, hand over, uproot, destroy, and transfer.
The Prime Minister's mouthpiece, Minister Ehud Olmert, said this: in his opinion, Israel is incapable of controlling the entire area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, and, therefore, we must withdraw. This is Sharon's political plan: to withdraw from most of the regions of Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza District, and even from part of Jerusalem. Why? We all know that this will only increase the enemy's appetite. A withdrawal will be interpreted as surrender to terror - and if we withdraw from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, the Katushas will start to fall on Tel Aviv, Ben-Gurion, and Haifa. But nothing fazes Sharon and Olmert. According to them, we have to fold.
It is not important now whether Sharon implements this as a unilateral withdrawal, or as a withdrawal that is the result of yet another disastrous agreement with the Arabs. What is important to know is that this time Sharon is serious, and that he wants to be rid of most of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, to uproot settlements, and to transfer Jews. As Sharon already said in the past, only he is capable of doing this.
This is not the place to begin a lengthy analysis of how it happened that people from the national camp suddenly become Yossi Beilin clones. In my opinion, the reality proves that only a believing leader, who believes that God gave us this land, is capable of standing firm in the face of pressures. The moment that you base our being in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza on a security reason, without the Bible, without any Divine promise, you have no "case," and, ultimately, you surrender and cave in.
But, as we noted, now is not the time for analyses of what and why, now is the time to ask: What is to be done? How do we organize in order to thwart Ariel Sharon's malicious plans? First of all, we must state, clearly: 1) What the entire struggle is all about? The struggle is not over Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. The battle is not to save one settlement or another. The struggle is to save the State of Israel, and for the Jewish people's right to exist in its land. The moment that the government of Israel will agree to uproot settlements in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, it will have swept away from under its very feet our moral right to be in any other place in Eretz Israel. For if we were to retreat from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, what moral right do we have to remain in Sheikh Munes in Tel Aviv? [Sheikh Munes is the neighborhood where Shimon Peres lives, which used to be an Arab village before 1948]. Accordingly, when we will act to prevent the uprooting of a settlement such as Migron, we actually will be struggling to save Tel Aviv, Beersheva, Tiberias, and Jerusalem.
2) This is not an evacuation! We must not use the expressions "evacuation or removal" or "shifting" of settlements. This is the uprooting of settlements and transfer for Jews. Politicians who want to mitigate and downplay the crime that they intend to commit use words that do not shock the public. We have the task of crying out that this is actually the brutal uprooting of settlements and the transfer of Jews. It is extremely racist, anti-Semitic, and would involve a virtual Civil War with Jews fighting Jews.
3) About the eating of pork and the uprooting of settlements Question: if 120 Knesset members and an overwhelming majority in the government were to legislate the obligatory eating of pork, would those who observe kashrut obey this "democratic decision"? Obviously not. They would say that despite the decision having been made by majority vote, this is a patently illegal decision, over which a black flag flies. Such a decision is not to be obeyed. If they insisted and sent companies of policemen and soldiers to feed us the pork, we would forcefully resist and we would proclaim: We shall not let you! Period. In other words: over my dead body. The same holds true for the uprooting of settlements. A majority in the government or in the Knesset does not make the handing over of portions of Eretz Israel legal and moral. We shall not obey if the government or the Knesset were to betray the homeland. Accordingly, the residents in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza must remain in the settlements, and IDF soldiers must refuse to participate in the uprooting of settlements and the transfer of Jews.
According to various reports in the media, the authorities believe that some 85 percent of the residents in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza would consent to leave of their own free will if they were to receive suitable compensation, and that the security forces would be required to deal with "only" about 15 percent of the "problematic" ideological inhabitants. We must show them that the numbers are exactly the opposite, and that an overwhelming majority of the residents will remain where they are and refuse to leave. If this will be the situation, uprooting and transferring would not be possible.
4) On the Judenrat and the serious fear of a provocation by the authorities, Yair Sheleg, a journalist and member of the Israel Democracy Institute, wrote a position paper on The Political and Social Significance of Evacuating Settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. In this paper he compares the uprooting of the Yamit settlements to what is liable to happen in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and he gives the authorities recommendations how to facilitate the work of uprooting. (Incidentally, it must be understood that Yamit and Judea, Samaria, and Gaza cannot be compared. We were in Yamit only for several years, while a third generation of children is growing up in Judea. Samaria, and Gaza. In Yamit we were only a few thousand, the majority of whom left of their own free will. In Judea, Samaria, and Gaza we are at least a quarter of a million people - not including the massive amount of relatives, friends, and supporters who live in pre-1967 Israel and are willing to come on the day of reckoning.) The bottom line in Sheleg's position paper is that the work of uprooting the settlements will indeed be difficult, but he hopes that the local leadership of the settlers will honor the democratic decision to uproot settlements, aid in calming the waters, help the authorities, and cooperate with them. In more blunt language: Yair Sheleg hopes that the leaders of the settlers (the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, rabbis, educators, and the like) will constitute a sort of "Judenrat" that collaborates with the transfer government. I would like to hope that this would not be the case, and that the leadership in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza will head the total resistance to this crime.
In such an instance, there exists the frightening possibility that the authorities will find another way to expedite the labor of transfer for them. We must already warn against such a possibility, and declare that we are aware of the fact that the authorities may plant several provocateurs within the public in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and that these agents will commit some terrible act (such as shooting at soldiers) to shock the public, to delegitimize us, and to silence our struggle. If this should happen, we will know that these individuals do not belong to our camp, and that they are new "Avishai Raviv"s.
5) What has to be done: It is time to awaken and begin to organize. I believe with total faith that, with God's help, it is within our power to prevent the crime that the government intends to commit. Battalions of lawyers are already working on appeals to the High Court of Justice to prevent the uprooting of outposts and settlements, using legal tools. The national members of Knesset must organize and give Sharon a clear and unequivocal message that if even a single family will be uprooted, his government will fall.
And we must begin to take to the streets in droves, to show the world that the people of Israel firmly opposes defeatist and suicidal political plans. In the emergency meeting of the joint staff of the extraparliamentary organizations, that was attended by the rabbis of "Piku'ah Nefesh," Professors for a Strong Israel, Gamla Shall Not Fall Again, Matot Arim, and the Women in Green, the following decisions were taken:
(a) the uprooting of outpost settlements and settlements that the government is plotting would constitute patently illegal racist transfer and ethnic cleansing, over which a black flag flies. This uprooting itself constitutes civil war. We call upon our soldiers to take advantage of the opportunity given them by the IDF not to participate in such actions.
(b) We stand behind the rabbis of "Piku'ah Nefesh" in their announcement to the public that they regard the "uprooting of Jews from their land" as a betrayal of the Jewish people. We ask the Attorney-General to add us to the list of those to be interrogated.
(c) We call upon all those loyal to Eretz Israel to mobilize on behalf of the settlements. We, for our part, have prepared the means for sending out the alert, transportation, and the method for bringing people.
(d) the upcoming activities are: a demonstration, under the slogan: "Olmert Is Dividing Jerusalem" on Sunday, December 14, at 7 p.m. opposite the Jerusalem Theater, against Minister of Communications Olmert who is to speak there. There will also be a demonstration against the Prime Minister on December 12 in Herzliyah during the time of the speech in which he is to announce his intent to hand over the heart of the land to the enemy. Details will be forthcoming in the coming days.
We conclude with the words of Simon the Hasmonean (I Maccabees 15:33-35): "We have not taken other people's land, nor are we in possession of other people's property, but of the inheritance of our forefathers; it was wrongfully held by our enemies at one time, but we, grasping the opportunity, hold firmly the inheritance of our forefathers."
Nadia Matar, Co-Chairperson of Women in Green
We are now in a new period. Until a few days ago, we did not know where the Israeli Government was leading us, and we could still think that Ariel Sharon "is only talking, but doesn't mean it"; now things are crystal-clear: the Sharon Government intends to betray, hand over, uproot, destroy, and transfer.
The Prime Minister's mouthpiece, Minister Ehud Olmert, said this: in his opinion, Israel is incapable of controlling the entire area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, and, therefore, we must withdraw. This is Sharon's political plan: to withdraw from most of the regions of Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza District, and even from part of Jerusalem. Why? We all know that this will only increase the enemy's appetite. A withdrawal will be interpreted as surrender to terror - and if we withdraw from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, the Katushas will start to fall on Tel Aviv, Ben-Gurion, and Haifa. But nothing fazes Sharon and Olmert. According to them, we have to fold.
It is not important now whether Sharon implements this as a unilateral withdrawal, or as a withdrawal that is the result of yet another disastrous agreement with the Arabs. What is important to know is that this time Sharon is serious, and that he wants to be rid of most of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, to uproot settlements, and to transfer Jews. As Sharon already said in the past, only he is capable of doing this.
This is not the place to begin a lengthy analysis of how it happened that people from the national camp suddenly become Yossi Beilin clones. In my opinion, the reality proves that only a believing leader, who believes that God gave us this land, is capable of standing firm in the face of pressures. The moment that you base our being in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza on a security reason, without the Bible, without any Divine promise, you have no "case," and, ultimately, you surrender and cave in.
But, as we noted, now is not the time for analyses of what and why, now is the time to ask: What is to be done? How do we organize in order to thwart Ariel Sharon's malicious plans? First of all, we must state, clearly: 1) What the entire struggle is all about? The struggle is not over Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. The battle is not to save one settlement or another. The struggle is to save the State of Israel, and for the Jewish people's right to exist in its land. The moment that the government of Israel will agree to uproot settlements in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, it will have swept away from under its very feet our moral right to be in any other place in Eretz Israel. For if we were to retreat from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, what moral right do we have to remain in Sheikh Munes in Tel Aviv? [Sheikh Munes is the neighborhood where Shimon Peres lives, which used to be an Arab village before 1948]. Accordingly, when we will act to prevent the uprooting of a settlement such as Migron, we actually will be struggling to save Tel Aviv, Beersheva, Tiberias, and Jerusalem.
2) This is not an evacuation! We must not use the expressions "evacuation or removal" or "shifting" of settlements. This is the uprooting of settlements and transfer for Jews. Politicians who want to mitigate and downplay the crime that they intend to commit use words that do not shock the public. We have the task of crying out that this is actually the brutal uprooting of settlements and the transfer of Jews. It is extremely racist, anti-Semitic, and would involve a virtual Civil War with Jews fighting Jews.
3) About the eating of pork and the uprooting of settlements Question: if 120 Knesset members and an overwhelming majority in the government were to legislate the obligatory eating of pork, would those who observe kashrut obey this "democratic decision"? Obviously not. They would say that despite the decision having been made by majority vote, this is a patently illegal decision, over which a black flag flies. Such a decision is not to be obeyed. If they insisted and sent companies of policemen and soldiers to feed us the pork, we would forcefully resist and we would proclaim: We shall not let you! Period. In other words: over my dead body. The same holds true for the uprooting of settlements. A majority in the government or in the Knesset does not make the handing over of portions of Eretz Israel legal and moral. We shall not obey if the government or the Knesset were to betray the homeland. Accordingly, the residents in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza must remain in the settlements, and IDF soldiers must refuse to participate in the uprooting of settlements and the transfer of Jews.
According to various reports in the media, the authorities believe that some 85 percent of the residents in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza would consent to leave of their own free will if they were to receive suitable compensation, and that the security forces would be required to deal with "only" about 15 percent of the "problematic" ideological inhabitants. We must show them that the numbers are exactly the opposite, and that an overwhelming majority of the residents will remain where they are and refuse to leave. If this will be the situation, uprooting and transferring would not be possible.
4) On the Judenrat and the serious fear of a provocation by the authorities, Yair Sheleg, a journalist and member of the Israel Democracy Institute, wrote a position paper on The Political and Social Significance of Evacuating Settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. In this paper he compares the uprooting of the Yamit settlements to what is liable to happen in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and he gives the authorities recommendations how to facilitate the work of uprooting. (Incidentally, it must be understood that Yamit and Judea, Samaria, and Gaza cannot be compared. We were in Yamit only for several years, while a third generation of children is growing up in Judea. Samaria, and Gaza. In Yamit we were only a few thousand, the majority of whom left of their own free will. In Judea, Samaria, and Gaza we are at least a quarter of a million people - not including the massive amount of relatives, friends, and supporters who live in pre-1967 Israel and are willing to come on the day of reckoning.) The bottom line in Sheleg's position paper is that the work of uprooting the settlements will indeed be difficult, but he hopes that the local leadership of the settlers will honor the democratic decision to uproot settlements, aid in calming the waters, help the authorities, and cooperate with them. In more blunt language: Yair Sheleg hopes that the leaders of the settlers (the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, rabbis, educators, and the like) will constitute a sort of "Judenrat" that collaborates with the transfer government. I would like to hope that this would not be the case, and that the leadership in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza will head the total resistance to this crime.
In such an instance, there exists the frightening possibility that the authorities will find another way to expedite the labor of transfer for them. We must already warn against such a possibility, and declare that we are aware of the fact that the authorities may plant several provocateurs within the public in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and that these agents will commit some terrible act (such as shooting at soldiers) to shock the public, to delegitimize us, and to silence our struggle. If this should happen, we will know that these individuals do not belong to our camp, and that they are new "Avishai Raviv"s.
5) What has to be done: It is time to awaken and begin to organize. I believe with total faith that, with God's help, it is within our power to prevent the crime that the government intends to commit. Battalions of lawyers are already working on appeals to the High Court of Justice to prevent the uprooting of outposts and settlements, using legal tools. The national members of Knesset must organize and give Sharon a clear and unequivocal message that if even a single family will be uprooted, his government will fall.
And we must begin to take to the streets in droves, to show the world that the people of Israel firmly opposes defeatist and suicidal political plans. In the emergency meeting of the joint staff of the extraparliamentary organizations, that was attended by the rabbis of "Piku'ah Nefesh," Professors for a Strong Israel, Gamla Shall Not Fall Again, Matot Arim, and the Women in Green, the following decisions were taken:
(a) the uprooting of outpost settlements and settlements that the government is plotting would constitute patently illegal racist transfer and ethnic cleansing, over which a black flag flies. This uprooting itself constitutes civil war. We call upon our soldiers to take advantage of the opportunity given them by the IDF not to participate in such actions.
(b) We stand behind the rabbis of "Piku'ah Nefesh" in their announcement to the public that they regard the "uprooting of Jews from their land" as a betrayal of the Jewish people. We ask the Attorney-General to add us to the list of those to be interrogated.
(c) We call upon all those loyal to Eretz Israel to mobilize on behalf of the settlements. We, for our part, have prepared the means for sending out the alert, transportation, and the method for bringing people.
(d) the upcoming activities are: a demonstration, under the slogan: "Olmert Is Dividing Jerusalem" on Sunday, December 14, at 7 p.m. opposite the Jerusalem Theater, against Minister of Communications Olmert who is to speak there. There will also be a demonstration against the Prime Minister on December 12 in Herzliyah during the time of the speech in which he is to announce his intent to hand over the heart of the land to the enemy. Details will be forthcoming in the coming days.
We conclude with the words of Simon the Hasmonean (I Maccabees 15:33-35): "We have not taken other people's land, nor are we in possession of other people's property, but of the inheritance of our forefathers; it was wrongfully held by our enemies at one time, but we, grasping the opportunity, hold firmly the inheritance of our forefathers."
Nadia Matar, Co-Chairperson of Women in Green
Thursday, December 11, 2003
Naomi Ragen: The Awakening
Naomi Ragen writes:
Now, if only the Palestinians would wake up and throw off the leadership that has stolen their money and sent their children to commit murder/suicide. If only they would march in the thousands against terrorism and for peace and democracy...
Peter Jennings, are you reading this? CNN?
Naomi Ragen
Iraqis for the "Occupation"
By Dr. Walid Phares
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 11, 2003
Yesterday's demonstrations in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities were a benchmark: Iraq's resistance to terrorism has begun. Ironically, the first TV station to report such a revolutionary development was none other than al-Jazeera, the jihad channel across the Arab world. But the exclusive airing of such footages was not so innocent. The Qatar-based media understood much faster than Western networks the real dimensions of these marches. Therefore it decided to report it first, and, through condescending coverage, demean it in the eyes of Iraqi and Arab viewers, a traditional-yet-efficient subversive tactic. But whatever were the desperate attempts to pre-empt the unfolding realities, the latter rolled on.
Almost 20,000 men and women - twice the number reported by al-Jazeera - marched across central Baghdad, while others repeated the move in different cities of Mesopotamia yesterday. The demonstrators, from all walks of life and from all religions and ethnicities of Iraq, shouted one slogan in Arabic: "La' la' lil irhab. Na'am, na'am lil dimucratiya." That is: "No, no to terrorism. Yes, yes to Democracy!"
Taking the streets of the former capital of the Ba'athist prison, Iraqi Shiite, Sunni, Kurds and Christians bonded together against the "enemies of peace." Responding to the call of the newly formed "Popular Committee against Terrorism," tens of thousands of citizens slapped Saddam and his former regime in the face. Speakers at a central square declared clearly:
"We will resist the return of the dictatorship to power. With or without the Americans, we are now a resistance against the Baath and the foreign Terrorists."
The masses, finally taking their courage in their hands, have exposed their deepest feelings. Many intellectuals, writers, women activists, students were seen in the front lines of the demonstration. "We will not allow the remnant of the intelligence service of Saddam destroy this new experiment of democracy and freedom," said one leader live on al-Jazeera television. The scene was more reminiscent of Prague and Budapest than any other recent battlefield.
More significant yet was the open participation of labor unions. Unexpectedly, Iraqi workers were the most excited participants in the march against Wahabi and Baathist Terror. "We need factories, we need peace, no fascists, no fanatics," sang the laborites, as though they were in Manchester or Detroit. But there was even a more significant element in the marches. Cadres from the "Hizb al-Dawa al Islamiya" - a rather conservative Islamic "movement" whose members were walking under the same banners of resistance to terrorism. Why? Well, we need to understand the Shi'a drama. By the day, mass graves are being uncovered with thousands of bodies of men, women and children, all massacred by the Saddam security. How on Earth would the Shiite majority ever accept the return to power of the Sunni-controlled Ba'ath Party?
Let's note two matters about these demonstrations. First, they were almost not reported in much of the Western media. Until late last night in Europe and the Western Hemisphere, news focused on the operations against Coalition forces. But the Iraqi people's genuine calls for democracy were not heard, not seen, and not factored in the game. The BBC and CNN downplayed the events, while al-Jazeera mislead the Arab world about them. The jihad network spent more editorial energy undermining the objectives and the credibility of the event than reporting it.
The anchors, to the disbelief of many viewers in the Arab world, said the marchers were "expressing views against what they call terrorism" (emphasis added). Al-Jazeera evidently reserves to itself the definition of terrorism. Since September 11, the network has systematically added "what they call terrorism" to each sentence reporting terror attacks by al-Qaeda, other jihadist factions and the Saddam. In sum, that is not terrorism, but a Western view of what is legitimate violence. But al-Jazeera's sour surprise with the first steps of popular resistance to jihadism in Baghdad took the network by surprise. As it was airing the segment, its anchors lost linguistic balance and added this time: "The demonstrators are criticizing what they call violence!" Hence, the editors in Qatar were trapped ideologically. They couldn't even accept the idea that Arabs could be marching against violence, so they described tens of massacres and bombings as "alleged violence," (ma yusamma bil unf). The al-Jazeera debacle was probably the most important victory of the demonstration.
But two others ironies were also hanging over Baghdad last night. One was the link between President Bush's drive to push for democracy in Iraq and the region, and the other was the silence of those who were supposed to drive that wagon around the world. Observers drew my attention to the fact that yesterday's march came after another smaller one, which took place the day after the U.S. President visited their city. They also noted that many of the banners were pasted from Bush's speeches to the Arab world last month. I was invited to make a link. Eventually I saw it. The workers, women and students in Iraq didn't mention the name of the Presidential visitor, but they heavily quoted his words. What's the message here? You can read it on the mushrooming underground websites in the region. People want freedom and democracy, even at the hands of aliens (what the Left calls "occupation" and the Iraqis call "liberation").
This leads us to the second irony. While the underdogs are barking freely in the streets of Baghdad, challenging the Ba'athist shadows and the jihadist terrorists, human rights and democracy groups in the West lack the courage to come to the rescue of their fellow progressive forces in the Middle East. As a group of Iraqi students told me, "Isn't it terrible to see that Western elites came here to demonstrate in support of Saddam against the Coalition, and when we took the streets to demonstrate against the Saddam war crimes, they didn't show up?"
Yesterday was a benchmark in Iraq. Maybe a small step in the long journey toward human dignity, but all genuine marches for freedom are of eternal value.
Now, if only the Palestinians would wake up and throw off the leadership that has stolen their money and sent their children to commit murder/suicide. If only they would march in the thousands against terrorism and for peace and democracy...
Peter Jennings, are you reading this? CNN?
Naomi Ragen
Iraqis for the "Occupation"
By Dr. Walid Phares
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 11, 2003
Yesterday's demonstrations in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities were a benchmark: Iraq's resistance to terrorism has begun. Ironically, the first TV station to report such a revolutionary development was none other than al-Jazeera, the jihad channel across the Arab world. But the exclusive airing of such footages was not so innocent. The Qatar-based media understood much faster than Western networks the real dimensions of these marches. Therefore it decided to report it first, and, through condescending coverage, demean it in the eyes of Iraqi and Arab viewers, a traditional-yet-efficient subversive tactic. But whatever were the desperate attempts to pre-empt the unfolding realities, the latter rolled on.
Almost 20,000 men and women - twice the number reported by al-Jazeera - marched across central Baghdad, while others repeated the move in different cities of Mesopotamia yesterday. The demonstrators, from all walks of life and from all religions and ethnicities of Iraq, shouted one slogan in Arabic: "La' la' lil irhab. Na'am, na'am lil dimucratiya." That is: "No, no to terrorism. Yes, yes to Democracy!"
Taking the streets of the former capital of the Ba'athist prison, Iraqi Shiite, Sunni, Kurds and Christians bonded together against the "enemies of peace." Responding to the call of the newly formed "Popular Committee against Terrorism," tens of thousands of citizens slapped Saddam and his former regime in the face. Speakers at a central square declared clearly:
"We will resist the return of the dictatorship to power. With or without the Americans, we are now a resistance against the Baath and the foreign Terrorists."
The masses, finally taking their courage in their hands, have exposed their deepest feelings. Many intellectuals, writers, women activists, students were seen in the front lines of the demonstration. "We will not allow the remnant of the intelligence service of Saddam destroy this new experiment of democracy and freedom," said one leader live on al-Jazeera television. The scene was more reminiscent of Prague and Budapest than any other recent battlefield.
More significant yet was the open participation of labor unions. Unexpectedly, Iraqi workers were the most excited participants in the march against Wahabi and Baathist Terror. "We need factories, we need peace, no fascists, no fanatics," sang the laborites, as though they were in Manchester or Detroit. But there was even a more significant element in the marches. Cadres from the "Hizb al-Dawa al Islamiya" - a rather conservative Islamic "movement" whose members were walking under the same banners of resistance to terrorism. Why? Well, we need to understand the Shi'a drama. By the day, mass graves are being uncovered with thousands of bodies of men, women and children, all massacred by the Saddam security. How on Earth would the Shiite majority ever accept the return to power of the Sunni-controlled Ba'ath Party?
Let's note two matters about these demonstrations. First, they were almost not reported in much of the Western media. Until late last night in Europe and the Western Hemisphere, news focused on the operations against Coalition forces. But the Iraqi people's genuine calls for democracy were not heard, not seen, and not factored in the game. The BBC and CNN downplayed the events, while al-Jazeera mislead the Arab world about them. The jihad network spent more editorial energy undermining the objectives and the credibility of the event than reporting it.
The anchors, to the disbelief of many viewers in the Arab world, said the marchers were "expressing views against what they call terrorism" (emphasis added). Al-Jazeera evidently reserves to itself the definition of terrorism. Since September 11, the network has systematically added "what they call terrorism" to each sentence reporting terror attacks by al-Qaeda, other jihadist factions and the Saddam. In sum, that is not terrorism, but a Western view of what is legitimate violence. But al-Jazeera's sour surprise with the first steps of popular resistance to jihadism in Baghdad took the network by surprise. As it was airing the segment, its anchors lost linguistic balance and added this time: "The demonstrators are criticizing what they call violence!" Hence, the editors in Qatar were trapped ideologically. They couldn't even accept the idea that Arabs could be marching against violence, so they described tens of massacres and bombings as "alleged violence," (ma yusamma bil unf). The al-Jazeera debacle was probably the most important victory of the demonstration.
But two others ironies were also hanging over Baghdad last night. One was the link between President Bush's drive to push for democracy in Iraq and the region, and the other was the silence of those who were supposed to drive that wagon around the world. Observers drew my attention to the fact that yesterday's march came after another smaller one, which took place the day after the U.S. President visited their city. They also noted that many of the banners were pasted from Bush's speeches to the Arab world last month. I was invited to make a link. Eventually I saw it. The workers, women and students in Iraq didn't mention the name of the Presidential visitor, but they heavily quoted his words. What's the message here? You can read it on the mushrooming underground websites in the region. People want freedom and democracy, even at the hands of aliens (what the Left calls "occupation" and the Iraqis call "liberation").
This leads us to the second irony. While the underdogs are barking freely in the streets of Baghdad, challenging the Ba'athist shadows and the jihadist terrorists, human rights and democracy groups in the West lack the courage to come to the rescue of their fellow progressive forces in the Middle East. As a group of Iraqi students told me, "Isn't it terrible to see that Western elites came here to demonstrate in support of Saddam against the Coalition, and when we took the streets to demonstrate against the Saddam war crimes, they didn't show up?"
Yesterday was a benchmark in Iraq. Maybe a small step in the long journey toward human dignity, but all genuine marches for freedom are of eternal value.
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Backspin: Border Fence
The border security fence is comprised of many sections totaling scores of miles. Some sections are concrete, others sheet metal.
The barrier is three layers deep in parts, fifteen feet high and surrounded by razor wire. The area around it is lit by spotlights, monitored by cameras, motion detectors and magnetic sensors, and patrolled by armed guards with attack dogs.
But enough about the USA border with Mexico, let's talk about Israel....
Backspin: Border Fence
The barrier is three layers deep in parts, fifteen feet high and surrounded by razor wire. The area around it is lit by spotlights, monitored by cameras, motion detectors and magnetic sensors, and patrolled by armed guards with attack dogs.
But enough about the USA border with Mexico, let's talk about Israel....
Backspin: Border Fence
Sunday, November 30, 2003
Geneva Sellout
By Charles Krauthammer
On Monday, a peace agreement will be signed by Israelis and Palestinians. This "Geneva accord" has gotten much attention. And the signing itself will be greeted with much hoopla. Journalists are being flown in from around the world by the Swiss government. Jimmy Carter will be heading a list of foreign dignitaries. The U.S. Embassy in Bern will be sending an observer.
This is all rather peculiar: The agreement is being signed not by Israeli and Palestinian officials, but by two people with no power.
On the Palestinian side, the negotiator is former information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, who at least is said to have Yasser Arafat's ear. The Israeli side, however, is led by Yossi Beilin, a man whose political standing in his own country is so low that he failed to make it into Parliament. After helping bring his Labor Party to ruin, Beilin abandoned it for the far-left Meretz Party, which then did so badly in the last election that Beilin is now a private citizen.
There is a reason why he is one of Israel's most reviled and discredited politicians. He was the principal ideologue and architect behind the "peace" foisted on Israel in 1993. Those Oslo agreements have brought a decade of the worst terror in all Israeli history.
Now he is at it again. And Secretary of State Colin Powell has written a letter to Beilin and Rabbo expressing appreciation for their effort, and is now planning to meet with them.
This is scandalous. Israel is a democracy, and this agreement was negotiated in defiance of the democratically (and overwhelmingly) elected government of Israel. If a private U.S. citizen negotiated a treaty on his own, he could go to jail under the Logan Act. If an Israeli does it, he gets a pat on the back from the secretary of state.
Moreover, this "peace" is entirely hallucinatory. It is written as if Oslo never happened. The Palestinian side repeats solemn pledges to recognize Israel, renounce terror, end anti-Israel incitement, etc. -- all promised in Oslo. These promises are today such a dead letter that the Palestinian side is openly bargaining these chits again, as if the Israelis have forgotten that in return for these pledges 10 years ago, Israel recognized the PLO, brought it out of Tunisian exile, established a Palestinian Authority, permitted it an army with 50,000 guns and invited the world to donate billions to this new Authority.
Arafat pocketed every Israeli concession, turned his territory into an armed camp and then launched a vicious terror war that has lasted more than three years and killed more than 1,000 Israelis. It is Lucy and the football all over again, and the same chorus of delusionals who so applauded Oslo -- Jimmy Carter, Sandy Berger, Tom Friedman -- is applauding again. This time, however, the Israeli surrender is so breathtaking it makes Oslo look rational.
A Palestinian state, of course. Evacuating every Jewish settlement in new Palestine, of course. Redividing Jerusalem, of course. But that is not enough. Beilin gives up the ultimate symbol of the Jewish connection and claim to the land, the center of the Jewish state for 1,000 years before the Roman destruction, the subject of Jewish longing in poetry and prayer for the 2,000 years since -- the Temple Mount. And Beilin doesn't just give it up to, say, some neutral international authority. He gives it to sovereign Palestine. Jews will visit at Arab sufferance.
Not satisfied with having given up Israel's soul, Beilin gives up the body too. He not only returns Israel to its 1967 borders, arbitrary and indefensible, but he does so without any serious security safeguards.
Palestine promises to acquire and buy no more weapons than specified in some treaty annex. This is a joke. Oslo had similarly detailed limitations on Palestinian weaponry, and nobody even pretended to enforce them. Last year, a massive illegal boatload came in from Iran on the Karine A. What did the world do about it? Nothing.
Today, however, Israel still has control over Palestine's borders. Under Beilin, this ends. Palestine will be free to acquire as much lethal weaponry as it wants.
And on the critical question that even the most dovish Israelis insist on -- that the Palestinians not have the right to flood Israel with Arab refugees -- the agreement is utterly ambiguous. Third parties (including among others the irredeemably hostile Syria and its puppet Lebanon) are to suggest exactly how many Palestinians are to return to Israel, and the basis for the number Israel will be required to accept will be the mathematical average!
This is not a peace treaty, this is a suicide note -- by a private citizen on behalf of a country that has utterly rejected him politically. That it should get any encouragement from the United States or from its secretary of state is a disgrace.
Charles Krauthammer is an important and well known syndicated columnist for leading newspapers and is widely read.
On Monday, a peace agreement will be signed by Israelis and Palestinians. This "Geneva accord" has gotten much attention. And the signing itself will be greeted with much hoopla. Journalists are being flown in from around the world by the Swiss government. Jimmy Carter will be heading a list of foreign dignitaries. The U.S. Embassy in Bern will be sending an observer.
This is all rather peculiar: The agreement is being signed not by Israeli and Palestinian officials, but by two people with no power.
On the Palestinian side, the negotiator is former information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, who at least is said to have Yasser Arafat's ear. The Israeli side, however, is led by Yossi Beilin, a man whose political standing in his own country is so low that he failed to make it into Parliament. After helping bring his Labor Party to ruin, Beilin abandoned it for the far-left Meretz Party, which then did so badly in the last election that Beilin is now a private citizen.
There is a reason why he is one of Israel's most reviled and discredited politicians. He was the principal ideologue and architect behind the "peace" foisted on Israel in 1993. Those Oslo agreements have brought a decade of the worst terror in all Israeli history.
Now he is at it again. And Secretary of State Colin Powell has written a letter to Beilin and Rabbo expressing appreciation for their effort, and is now planning to meet with them.
This is scandalous. Israel is a democracy, and this agreement was negotiated in defiance of the democratically (and overwhelmingly) elected government of Israel. If a private U.S. citizen negotiated a treaty on his own, he could go to jail under the Logan Act. If an Israeli does it, he gets a pat on the back from the secretary of state.
Moreover, this "peace" is entirely hallucinatory. It is written as if Oslo never happened. The Palestinian side repeats solemn pledges to recognize Israel, renounce terror, end anti-Israel incitement, etc. -- all promised in Oslo. These promises are today such a dead letter that the Palestinian side is openly bargaining these chits again, as if the Israelis have forgotten that in return for these pledges 10 years ago, Israel recognized the PLO, brought it out of Tunisian exile, established a Palestinian Authority, permitted it an army with 50,000 guns and invited the world to donate billions to this new Authority.
Arafat pocketed every Israeli concession, turned his territory into an armed camp and then launched a vicious terror war that has lasted more than three years and killed more than 1,000 Israelis. It is Lucy and the football all over again, and the same chorus of delusionals who so applauded Oslo -- Jimmy Carter, Sandy Berger, Tom Friedman -- is applauding again. This time, however, the Israeli surrender is so breathtaking it makes Oslo look rational.
A Palestinian state, of course. Evacuating every Jewish settlement in new Palestine, of course. Redividing Jerusalem, of course. But that is not enough. Beilin gives up the ultimate symbol of the Jewish connection and claim to the land, the center of the Jewish state for 1,000 years before the Roman destruction, the subject of Jewish longing in poetry and prayer for the 2,000 years since -- the Temple Mount. And Beilin doesn't just give it up to, say, some neutral international authority. He gives it to sovereign Palestine. Jews will visit at Arab sufferance.
Not satisfied with having given up Israel's soul, Beilin gives up the body too. He not only returns Israel to its 1967 borders, arbitrary and indefensible, but he does so without any serious security safeguards.
Palestine promises to acquire and buy no more weapons than specified in some treaty annex. This is a joke. Oslo had similarly detailed limitations on Palestinian weaponry, and nobody even pretended to enforce them. Last year, a massive illegal boatload came in from Iran on the Karine A. What did the world do about it? Nothing.
Today, however, Israel still has control over Palestine's borders. Under Beilin, this ends. Palestine will be free to acquire as much lethal weaponry as it wants.
And on the critical question that even the most dovish Israelis insist on -- that the Palestinians not have the right to flood Israel with Arab refugees -- the agreement is utterly ambiguous. Third parties (including among others the irredeemably hostile Syria and its puppet Lebanon) are to suggest exactly how many Palestinians are to return to Israel, and the basis for the number Israel will be required to accept will be the mathematical average!
This is not a peace treaty, this is a suicide note -- by a private citizen on behalf of a country that has utterly rejected him politically. That it should get any encouragement from the United States or from its secretary of state is a disgrace.
Charles Krauthammer is an important and well known syndicated columnist for leading newspapers and is widely read.
Sunday, November 23, 2003
To Be A Jew In A Hostile World
Nowadays it is fashionable to be anti-Semitic. What used to be whispered, and said in low voices, has now been allowed to be openly and publicly stated. The Arab and Muslim world have had tremendous success with their incessant propaganda in this regard. In view of the tremendous positive contributions Jews and Judaism have made to mankind and to Western Civilization throughout the ages, this is not to be understood. One can only marvel as to why these unwarranted and false accusations have gained prominence and are so widely repeated.
The facts are that this relatively tiny and gifted people have had a tremendous impact on this world of ours. Especially is this true with regard to religion, but in many other fields as well. Mankind is better off today because there are Jews. The spiritual concept of One G-d is Jewish in origin, and of course the Jewish Prophets have had an impact on whatever morality that exists in the world today. The Old Testament Bible is still hallowed as a major source of religious belief. Many people, both Christians and Jews, live by its precepts.
Despite the recent Holocaust that decimated the Jewish People, they have returned to their ancient Homeland, and miraculously rebuilt it. They made the wasteland they came to into a democratic land of milk and honey, excelling in science, technology, and agriculture. They freely gave these contributions to the world. Due to Arab continued hostility, they have had to relearn the art of military warfare, and of necessity, to excel in it.
All out of proportion to their numbers, they have continually won Nobel Prizes in health, science ,technology, and in many other fields of endeavor. The benefits to mankind down through the ages have been quite phenomenal. Nevertheless, anti-Semitism persists and is spreading. Jews and Israel, in recent European polls, are claimed to represent a threat to world peace. In the light of their magnificent contributions to mankind, this type of nonsense makes no sense whatsoever.
To be a Jew in a hostile world is not easy. Yet, any Jew can take enormous pride in the accomplishments of His People to make this a better and safer world. Israel is in the forefront of this endeavor, and should be encouraged and supported by America and many other nations. Unfortunately, in this imperfect world, that is not the case. The absurd Arab funded propaganda directed against the Jews and Israel is being widely believed. That Arab campaign has no foundation in fact or truth and will, if followed, eventually only cause great harm and damage to all of mankind.
Jerusalem, November 22, 2003
Ruth and Nadia Matar
Women in Green
The facts are that this relatively tiny and gifted people have had a tremendous impact on this world of ours. Especially is this true with regard to religion, but in many other fields as well. Mankind is better off today because there are Jews. The spiritual concept of One G-d is Jewish in origin, and of course the Jewish Prophets have had an impact on whatever morality that exists in the world today. The Old Testament Bible is still hallowed as a major source of religious belief. Many people, both Christians and Jews, live by its precepts.
Despite the recent Holocaust that decimated the Jewish People, they have returned to their ancient Homeland, and miraculously rebuilt it. They made the wasteland they came to into a democratic land of milk and honey, excelling in science, technology, and agriculture. They freely gave these contributions to the world. Due to Arab continued hostility, they have had to relearn the art of military warfare, and of necessity, to excel in it.
All out of proportion to their numbers, they have continually won Nobel Prizes in health, science ,technology, and in many other fields of endeavor. The benefits to mankind down through the ages have been quite phenomenal. Nevertheless, anti-Semitism persists and is spreading. Jews and Israel, in recent European polls, are claimed to represent a threat to world peace. In the light of their magnificent contributions to mankind, this type of nonsense makes no sense whatsoever.
To be a Jew in a hostile world is not easy. Yet, any Jew can take enormous pride in the accomplishments of His People to make this a better and safer world. Israel is in the forefront of this endeavor, and should be encouraged and supported by America and many other nations. Unfortunately, in this imperfect world, that is not the case. The absurd Arab funded propaganda directed against the Jews and Israel is being widely believed. That Arab campaign has no foundation in fact or truth and will, if followed, eventually only cause great harm and damage to all of mankind.
Jerusalem, November 22, 2003
Ruth and Nadia Matar
Women in Green
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Life in Israel now
Naomi Ragen writes:
Friends,
The Washington Post published a piece by Richard Cohen in which the writer speaks to an American oleh who says he left Israel because his business went under, and he's afraid for his family, etc. etc. In short, Israel is losing the war.
Well, that's one point of view. But I live among many, many Israelis with American passports. Not one person I know has picked up and left. Not one.
The Cohen article also veers off long enough to tell us that all of Israel's problems would be solved if they just left "the occupied territories..." Hello? Look at a map. Look at Israel, and then look at who surrounds her. Occupied territories? If we jumped into the sea maybe. Then we'd have a nice, long, quiet rest. Just like they arranged for us in Europe 60 years ago. Then no Americans would be leaving Israel, except, perhaps, in a box.
No thanks. I'll stay here. Along with every, single other American oleh I've met in the last 30 years.
Below is an article from an American-Israeli who says it all.
All the best,
Naomi
Not the Israel I Know
By Joseph M. Hochstein
Monday, October 20, 2003; Page A23
TEL AVIV -- In his Oct. 7 column Richard Cohen writes about an American who lived in Israel for more than 20 years ["Israel Is Losing," op-ed]. This person has left Israel, probably permanently, Cohen writes, "because he cannot take life there any longer. . . . His business had gone to hell, his life was always in danger and he simply could not take it any longer."
Cohen calls this American "a nonstatistic -- a living victim of terrorism." Cohen adds, "In the perpetual war against Israel, its enemies are winning."
I doubt Cohen's conclusion, but that is not my purpose in writing. Like Cohen's unidentified American, I have lived in Israel for more than 20 years. I arrived from Washington, where I published the Jewish Week newspaper for 18 years.
The Israel in which I live does not match Cohen's description. Cohen says despair is palpable in the Israeli press. But bad news is only part of the story. Recent survey research found more than 80 percent of Israelis happy with their lives, despite all hardships. The economy is in deep trouble, but the country remains a dynamic place culturally, technologically, commercially, even politically. The Hebrew press covers this, too, by the way.
Cohen reports that he rode a bus in Israel and found it "gut-wrenching." He is not the first columnist to confess to uneasiness at visiting Israel. But his is a subjective, outsider's reaction. Ordinary Israelis have to get to work or to school five or six days a week, and the country's buses carry 1 million riders every workday. Tel Aviv's central bus station is said to be the largest in the world.
We in Israel continue going out to cafes, restaurants, theaters, sports events, concerts and public festivals. The motto "life must go on" has achieved the status of an unofficial national slogan, uttered even by a child interviewed on television the other day after a 10-year-old classmate's death in a suicide bombing.
Here is a personal note. To borrow Cohen's words, I am a living victim of terrorism. A suicide bomber from the Islamic Jihad sent me to a hospital -- and nearly killed me -- a few years ago. Other, worse things happened over the years. One of my sons, a paratrooper, was killed in a Hezbollah ambush. Yet, in my view, life in Israel remains desirable.
I live in Tel Aviv, not far from where my mother was born in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. My surviving son and daughter live in walking distance and are pursuing challenging, creative careers that feed their families. I have five grandchildren, aged one year to 12. I spend time with intelligent, stimulating and decent people. Most of us are part of an Israeli majority that, according to the polls, supports efforts to achieve peace but doesn't expect miracles any time soon.
I worry about the family's safety now and also about prospects of my grandchildren's army service in a few years. In weighing the danger, I cannot escape the thought that my immediate family and I, despite whatever hardship we have suffered, are more fortunate than our numerous relatives in France, Russia and Lithuania who were murdered in the Nazi era and who had no army to protect them. I entertain similar thoughts about our extended family in Israel, wondering what their fates might have been had they stayed in Austria, Poland, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran.
I am hopeful. The clash between Arabs and Jews is often violent, but it is relatively recent in origin. I and other Israeli volunteers work to bridge the political and doctrinal arguments that divide Arabs and Jews, in hope that future generations can coexist without bloodshed.
Cohen says his unidentified American lost hope. Hope is part of the Israeli character. It's the title of the national anthem, "Hatikva," which means "the hope." Without hope, it could be impossible to make it here.
Fear and hope are highly subjective and personal, of course. An objective reality that U.S. journalists generally ignore is that Israel's terrorism death toll -- measured in fatalities per 100,000 residents -- is much lower than the homicide rate in the District of Columbia and dozens of other U.S. cities. But that's another story.
The writer is former editor-publisher of Jewish Week (now known as Washington Jewish Week) and a former managing editor of Congressional Quarterly.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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Friends,
The Washington Post published a piece by Richard Cohen in which the writer speaks to an American oleh who says he left Israel because his business went under, and he's afraid for his family, etc. etc. In short, Israel is losing the war.
Well, that's one point of view. But I live among many, many Israelis with American passports. Not one person I know has picked up and left. Not one.
The Cohen article also veers off long enough to tell us that all of Israel's problems would be solved if they just left "the occupied territories..." Hello? Look at a map. Look at Israel, and then look at who surrounds her. Occupied territories? If we jumped into the sea maybe. Then we'd have a nice, long, quiet rest. Just like they arranged for us in Europe 60 years ago. Then no Americans would be leaving Israel, except, perhaps, in a box.
No thanks. I'll stay here. Along with every, single other American oleh I've met in the last 30 years.
Below is an article from an American-Israeli who says it all.
All the best,
Naomi
Not the Israel I Know
By Joseph M. Hochstein
Monday, October 20, 2003; Page A23
TEL AVIV -- In his Oct. 7 column Richard Cohen writes about an American who lived in Israel for more than 20 years ["Israel Is Losing," op-ed]. This person has left Israel, probably permanently, Cohen writes, "because he cannot take life there any longer. . . . His business had gone to hell, his life was always in danger and he simply could not take it any longer."
Cohen calls this American "a nonstatistic -- a living victim of terrorism." Cohen adds, "In the perpetual war against Israel, its enemies are winning."
I doubt Cohen's conclusion, but that is not my purpose in writing. Like Cohen's unidentified American, I have lived in Israel for more than 20 years. I arrived from Washington, where I published the Jewish Week newspaper for 18 years.
The Israel in which I live does not match Cohen's description. Cohen says despair is palpable in the Israeli press. But bad news is only part of the story. Recent survey research found more than 80 percent of Israelis happy with their lives, despite all hardships. The economy is in deep trouble, but the country remains a dynamic place culturally, technologically, commercially, even politically. The Hebrew press covers this, too, by the way.
Cohen reports that he rode a bus in Israel and found it "gut-wrenching." He is not the first columnist to confess to uneasiness at visiting Israel. But his is a subjective, outsider's reaction. Ordinary Israelis have to get to work or to school five or six days a week, and the country's buses carry 1 million riders every workday. Tel Aviv's central bus station is said to be the largest in the world.
We in Israel continue going out to cafes, restaurants, theaters, sports events, concerts and public festivals. The motto "life must go on" has achieved the status of an unofficial national slogan, uttered even by a child interviewed on television the other day after a 10-year-old classmate's death in a suicide bombing.
Here is a personal note. To borrow Cohen's words, I am a living victim of terrorism. A suicide bomber from the Islamic Jihad sent me to a hospital -- and nearly killed me -- a few years ago. Other, worse things happened over the years. One of my sons, a paratrooper, was killed in a Hezbollah ambush. Yet, in my view, life in Israel remains desirable.
I live in Tel Aviv, not far from where my mother was born in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. My surviving son and daughter live in walking distance and are pursuing challenging, creative careers that feed their families. I have five grandchildren, aged one year to 12. I spend time with intelligent, stimulating and decent people. Most of us are part of an Israeli majority that, according to the polls, supports efforts to achieve peace but doesn't expect miracles any time soon.
I worry about the family's safety now and also about prospects of my grandchildren's army service in a few years. In weighing the danger, I cannot escape the thought that my immediate family and I, despite whatever hardship we have suffered, are more fortunate than our numerous relatives in France, Russia and Lithuania who were murdered in the Nazi era and who had no army to protect them. I entertain similar thoughts about our extended family in Israel, wondering what their fates might have been had they stayed in Austria, Poland, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran.
I am hopeful. The clash between Arabs and Jews is often violent, but it is relatively recent in origin. I and other Israeli volunteers work to bridge the political and doctrinal arguments that divide Arabs and Jews, in hope that future generations can coexist without bloodshed.
Cohen says his unidentified American lost hope. Hope is part of the Israeli character. It's the title of the national anthem, "Hatikva," which means "the hope." Without hope, it could be impossible to make it here.
Fear and hope are highly subjective and personal, of course. An objective reality that U.S. journalists generally ignore is that Israel's terrorism death toll -- measured in fatalities per 100,000 residents -- is much lower than the homicide rate in the District of Columbia and dozens of other U.S. cities. But that's another story.
The writer is former editor-publisher of Jewish Week (now known as Washington Jewish Week) and a former managing editor of Congressional Quarterly.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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Tuesday, October 07, 2003
Steyn in JPost: Palestinian death cult
The Perceptive Mark Steyn hits the nail on the head again:> "Palestinian" society is perverted and horribly sick. Read this article.
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