May 2001
May 4, 2001 Meir Sheetrit, A Worthy Successor of Beilin
May 4, 2001 Sarah Honig Fired!
May 4, 2001 Independence Day, 2001
May 7, 2001 Protest the Firing of Sarah Honig
May 7, 2001 Kever Rachel
May 8, 2001 More on Kever Rachel
May 11, 2001 For Kobi and Yosef -- May Their Blood Be Avenged
May 14, 2001 Sarah Honig -- Chapter 2
May 15, 2001 Mitchell Report: Emergency Fax Campaign
May 17, 2001 What Price -- Unity Government?
May 17, 2001 Act Now for Jonathan Pollard's Freedom
May 18, 2001 Say NO to Mitchell's "White Paper"
May 18, 2001 The Mitchell Committee's New "WHITE PAPER"
May 21, 2001 73 Jerusalem Sites for Jerusalem Day
May 22, 2001 The Pot Calling the Kettle...
May 25, 2001 Securing Peace
May 27, 2001 The Oslo Wedding Hall
May 30, 2001 Punishing the Guilty Architects
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Jerusalem, May 4, 2001
Meir Sheetrit, A Worthy Successor of Beilin
It was no surprise that the Department of Pardons of the Justice Ministry
announced today that it will recommend to Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit
that he should NOT recommend to President Katzav to pardon Margalit Har
Sheffi. The pardon procedure requires that first the Justice Minister
should recommend to the President of Israel whether any such pardon was to
be granted. You may recall that Justice Minister Sheetrit's predecessor in
office was the infamous Yossie Beilin.
Women In Green has demonstrated outside of the Department of Pardons in
question, and knew that its top personnel were hard line Labor oriented
people. As such they were not inclined to be persuaded by what the public
had to say. Accordingly, they would have found nothing wrong with the
manner in which Yossi Beilin shoved the Oslo Agreement down the public's
throat, Beilin had illegally secretly negotiated the Oslo Agreement with
the PLO. He had no appreciation for the public’s desires, which is typical
of Bolshevik conduct.
The over 40,000 signatures gathered in a short time by Women In Green of
people who signed the Petition which sought that Margalit be pardoned,
would not impress Justice Minister Shitreet nor those in the Department of
Pardons. If they understood public relations, they would know that if
40,000 actually signed such a Petition, that in fact means that at least
more than 12 times 40,000 or close to 500,000 of the public would favor a
pardon for Margalit. That is a very impressive number, and any democratic
oriented person would respect the wishes of that large a segment of the
Israeli public.
Nor was the Department of Pardons impressed that one of the Supreme Court
Judges who decided her case, stated that Margalit should not serve any
prison time. Neither apparently was Meir Shitreet, who timidly always
accedes to the dictates of the "left." The public realizes that Justice
Minister Sheetrit is behind these maneuvers, and is merely hiding behind
the personnel in the Department of Pardons.
Moreover, the Justice Minister's office was acting unethically in its
answers to the many letters sent to Sheetrit. Those letters asked him to
recommend a pardon for Margalit to President Katzav. His office was telling
those who wrote, that the Justice Minister could not act in the matter
because he had not received a request for a pardon from Margalit or her
family. However, even after, admittedly, that office received the required
request, it continued to answer letters in this same manner as before.
Recently, the present Justice Minister has demonstrated his Beilin-like
views. He criticized publicly his fellow Minister of Building & Housing,
Natan Sharansky. He said Sharansky was giving too much money for the
natural expansion of settlements. Sheetrit told the Media that, in his
opinion, a natural expansion of a settlement should be limited to only one
percent, and not as Sharansky was doing. The media has found in Sheetrit a
person who they can turn to in order to criticize the Sharon Government.
There is no doubt that Beilin, were he in a position to do so, would deny a
pardon to Margalit. Shitreet has acted in an identical way. Sheetrit and
Beilin have the same contempt for the wishes of the public. Both of them
are prepared to say: "Let the Public (and Margalit Har Shefi) be damned."
Ruth and Nadia Matar
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Jerusalem, May 4, 2001
Sarah Honig Fired!
Yesterday, Thursday, 3 May 2001, Sarah Honig, the most popular and most
veteran writer for the Jerusalem Post for the past 33 years, received the
following registered letter:
Please accept this letter as notice of our intention to dismiss you as of
today, due to a general strategic reorganization in our firm. As per the
collective agreement you are kindly asked to cease work immediately....
Wishing you much success in the future,
Jeff Barak (editor)
Tom Rose (publisher)
--------------------
Sarah Honig provides us with insights which we rarely get from other
sources. Her analysis of events in Israel is incisive and invaluable to the
majority of the readership of the Jerusalem Post. It is incumbent upon all
of us to register our strong protest at the attempt to remove this
important voice in the vital debate about Israel's future. Today's column
will be Sarah Honig's last one, if we do not protest to the Jerusalem Post
immediately.
Women in Green call upon all Jerusalem Post readers to contact
Tom Rose (the publisher) with a copy to Jeff Barak (the editor)
and to Sarah Honig.
Tom Rose: e-mail: trose@jpost.co.il
fax: 972-2-538-78-62
Jeff Barak: fax: 972-2-537-65-53
e-mail: editors@jpost.co.il
Fax number of the Jerusalem Post: 972-2-538-9527
Sarah Honig: e-mail: saraho@netvision.net.il
Shabbat Shalom,
Ruth and Nadia Matar
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Jerusalem, May 4, 2001
Independence Day, 2001
The following is the translation of the Hebrew text of the Yom Ha-Atzmaut
(Independence Day) program by Nadia Matar, chairperson of Women for
Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), on Arutz 7.
Shalom to all our listeners!
Yom Ha-Atzmaut Sameah!
This is Nadia Matar speaking -
Today, in honor of Yom Ha-Atzmaut, we will have a short program, and God
willing, next week we will return to the regular hour.
Let us be honest with ourselves. This year we - presumably - do not any
real reason to celebrate and be happy on Yom Ha-Atzmaut. Every day there is
terror, every day terrorist attacks, casualties, murder victims, funerals,
and the end is not in sight. It transpires that the new political
leadership that promised to eliminate terrorism is not much different from
the previous government.
Some people correctly ask themselves, Why, really, should we celebrate?
What are we celebrating? This feeling of depression is intensified if we
listen to State media.
The phrase that best describes the State media is "crybabyish defeatism."
The song that was heard all day on Memorial Day was one that the children
of the Yom Kippur War presumably sing: they tearfully address the adults
and say, "You promised peace, but it didn't come," or something to that
effect. Kinderlich, no one promised you peace. I don't know where this idea
came from.
And so, my listeners, in order to leave behind the atmosphere of depression
and the defeatism that the left tries to impose on us, we must adopt what
Dr. Samizdat wrote in an Internet article, in which he calls upon us to
once again see what is happening here in the correct perspective. "Israelis
have lost their sense of Jewish perspective"..."Israelis are incapable of
viewing their problems and that of the State within the perspective of
Jewish history"....All sense of proportion has been lost. In ALL of
Israel's wars, something like 19,000 soldiers died (counting civilians
killed by terrorists and counting those killed before Israel was declared).
This is a bit more than the number of Jews murdered every two days at
Aushwitz at the height of its 'efficiency.' In other words, had Aushwitz
operated for only two days longer that it did, the loss of Jewish life
would have been the same as all of Israel's military losses. And the
soldiers killed in Israel died in valor, defending their people and country."
Dr. Samizdat continues that it is the Oslo accords that have caused us to
lose all historical perspective. "In Orwellian Israel, defeatism is the
greatest form of triumphalism, cowardice is the highest form of courage,
and McCarthyism is the greatest expression of democracy."
Ever since the Oslo accords, every time that a Jew is murdered, the left
calls to give up additional parts of Eretz Israel. What is this?
My listeners, this Yom Ha-Atzmaut, our task is to return to the correct
Jewish historical perspective, and to understand that the danger facing us
today is not caused by the external situation around us, the threat rather
is from our attitude.
The difference today is not the fact that our enemies murder us. This
happened during the Inquisition, during the Middle Ages, and during the
Holocaust - in every period.
The difference is in the manner in which we contend with the situation.
Every time the enemy hits us, we cannot indulge in a kind of depression. On
the contrary -- we cry for every Jew who is murdered, but we go on from
strength to strength. We go on -- to settle our Land and tell the enemy
clearly: nothing will make us leave our Land.
We must return to the days of Jewish redemption. We must explain to our
youth what we are doing here, and why it is worthwhile to live here, and,
yes, also to die for a Jewish state in Eretz Israel. We must remind
ourse