November 2004
November 4, 2004 One country, two governments
November 5, 2004 President Bush and the Holy Land
November 6, 2004 His Great Obsession
November 7, 2004 How and Why America's Christians Must Care for Israel
November 8, 2004 After Arafat
November 10, 2004 Gush Katif Viewpoint
November 11, 2004 Death of a Serial Murderer
November 13, 2004 And the Land is Sold in Perpetuity
November 14, 2004 The Father of Modern Terrorism
November 15, 2004 Arafat Tape
November 15, 2004 Another one bites the dust
November 16, 2004 Upcoming Events
November 17, 2004 Stop the War Against Fellow Jews
November 20, 2004 Onward Christian Voters
November 23, 2004 Pollard Speech - Don't Trade Me For Barghouti
November 23, 2004 Nadia Matar Writes About the Pollard Handcuff Rally
November 23, 2004 The Awakening of Yosef Goell
November 25, 2004 Who Will Fill Arafat's Bloody Shoes?
November 26, 2004 Petition against Deportation of Jews
November 27, 2004 Chanukah Trip to the Shomron!
November 28, 2004 Immoral Politics
November 30, 2004 Not For The Spineless
*******************************************************
November 4, 2004
One country, two governments
by Evelyn Gordon
THE JERUSALEM POST - Nov 1, 2004
For a country to have two governments simultaneously is quite a trick.
But as of last week, that is
precisely what Israel has: one government that we elected, and one that
we did not. The one we
elected handles issues such as counterterrorism and economic reform.
The one we did not
handles disengagement.
It is not merely that in last week's Knesset vote the disengagement plan
earned just 37 votes from
the official government the one that received the Knesset's confidence
after last year's election.
The other 30 votes, which enabled the plan to pass, came from
opposition parties that never won
the confidence of either the Knesset or the people.
Since the disengagement is Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's central policy
initiative, the fact that it
was passed by the opposition rather than the official government is bad
enough. Far worse,
however, is Sharon's unprecedented decision to split the 2005 state
budget in two. One part, the
section that deals with cutbacks and reforms, will be passed by the
official elected government.
The other part, dealing with disengagement, will be passed by the
unofficial, unelected one.
Because the budget is the government's blueprint of action for the
coming year, the annual
budget law has unique constitutional status: Failure to pass it by March
31 automatically
dissolves the Knesset and results in new elections within 90 days. No
other issue can topple a
government without even being brought to a vote.
Unforeseen developments have occasionally caused a government to
submit a supplementary
budget partway through the year. But never before has a key policy
initiative been deliberately
omitted from the budget because no coalition could be found to approve
the entire budget with it
present. What this means is that according to the test explicitly laid
down in Israel's Basic Laws
that no government may survive if it cannot, once a year, find a
Knesset majority to approve its
plan of action for the next year the Sharon government deserves to
fall.
But Sharon has circumvented this constitutional litmus test by a method
so devious that our
lawmakers never thought to ban it: Instead of submitting his whole
work plan for the year, he is
submitting only part of it in the document entitled "The 2005 Budget
Law." The remainder,
funding for the disengagement, will be submitted separately and, like
the disengagement itself,
be approved by an unofficial coalition with Labor and Yahad that never
received the Knesset's
confidence. In the letter of the law there is no barrier to this maneuver.
Nevertheless, it blatantly
violates the spirit of Israel's constitutional legislation.
THE SHARON government is also constitutionally problematic in
another way: It is the first
government in Israel's history that does not enjoy the Knesset's
confidence. There have, of
course, been minority governments before, but these received support
from outside the coalition
that enabled them to claim the confidence of a majority of the Knesset.
That is not true of Sharon's government. A majority of Knesset
members have no confidence in it
and would topple it if they could, but they cannot because of an
anomaly known as "constructive
no confidence" that was added to the Basic Law: The Government in
2001.
This provision states that a government can be toppled only if a
majority of MKs not only loses
confidence in it but can also form an alternate government. In Sharon's
case, this is impossible.
Since his opposition comes from both Left and Right, the majority that
opposes him is incapable
of forming an alternative government.
Clearly, Sharon's survival under these circumstances is legal, since
constructive no confidence is
part of the Basic Law. It is not even unprecedented internationally.
Though rare among Western
democracies, this system is also practiced in Germany. Nevertheless, it
contradicts the very
essence of parliamentary democracy, as expressed in that same Basic
Law (Article 3): "The
Government holds office by virtue of the confidence of the Knesset."
None of these issues greatly bother Israel's chattering class, where the
dominant view is that the
end of dismantling settlements justifies any means, even the subversion
of Israel's constitutional
structure. With a few exceptions Yuli Tamir and Yossi Beilin come to
mind almost no one on
the Left has dared to say that the rules of the game have value in and of
themselves, regardless of
whether or not one likes the outcome.
But they do, and this ought to be of supreme concern to all Israelis
because it is only the rules
of the democratic game that have allowed a politically and religiously
fractured nation to live
together for half a century. If these rules are shattered beyond repair if
too many Israelis
become convinced that all that matters is seizing power, by any and
every means this country
will not long survive. And Sharon has already stretched the rules
dangerously close to the
breaking point.
The simplest solution, of course, would be to call new elections. But a
referendum on
disengagement could also help because much of the opposition to this
plan both within the
official coalition and within the nation as a whole stems from the
sense that it is fundamentally
illegitimate for a man who won the election by running against
unilateral withdrawal to proceed
to implement that very program, which the voters explicitly rejected,
with the aid of the parties
they explicitly rejected.
If disengagement passed a referendum, thereby acquiring unassailable
public legitimacy, Sharon
would probably be able to form a real government around the initiative
one that enjoyed the
Knesset's confidence and didn't depend on anti-constitutional tricks
such as splitting the budget
for its survival. Either elections or a referendum would be expensive
and disruptive. But the
alternative for Sharon to continue warping Israel's constitutional
structure beyond recognition
would, in the long term, be far worse.
The writer is a veteran journalist and commentator.
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*******************************************************
November 5, 2004
PRESIDENT BUSH AND THE HOLY LAND
LETTER FROM RUTH MATAR (WOMEN IN GREEN)
JERUSALEM
Friday, November 5, 2004
Dear Friends,
Finally, I was able to enjoy a good night's sleep. While my American
compatriots stood on line
to vote on November 2nd, the real action here took place at the start of
calendar date November
3rd, because we are seven hours ahead of EST (Eastern Standard Time).
Needless to say, I
couldn't sleep, and I stayed glued to the Fox News TV channel the
entire long night. It certainly
seemed to be a cliff hanger in the very beginning. The exit polls used
by radio and TV stations
early on even projected John Kerry to be the winner!
The final result, of course, was that Bush not only got 274 electoral
votes as against Kerry's 252
electoral votes, but that his popular vote majority was 3.6 million. In the
year 2000 election, Al
Gore actually had the majority of the popular vote, but only a little over
half a million.
What made President Bush's overwhelming victory so astounding?
I feel that there are two camps in America today. There seems to be a
wide gulf between
secularists and those who believe that traditional, moral, and religious
values are of great
importance. It is definitely the latter group, which does not believe in
same-sex marriage, partial
abortion, giving in to terror, etc, which voted for Bush.
In Israel, as well, there are two distinct groups. The people who believe
in G-d's Promise to the
Jewish People that their Holy Land is their eternal inheritance, and
those on the Left of the
spectrum, who feel that the Promised Land can be "disengaged" from in
stages, at any time, for
whatever reason, if they feel this to be politically expedient.
For them, the proclamation of the first Prime Minister of Israel, David
Ben-Gurion, that "the
Bible is our Mandate" is completely irrelevant. In yesterday's
Jerusalem Post there was article
on the attitudes of Israeli politicians, both from the Right and from the
Left, towards Bush and
Kerry.
On Bush's side:
National Union MKs Benny Elon and Yuri Shtern, are both close to
Evangelical Christians.
They said they hope Bush stays on.
"Bush is a much more loyal friend of Israel than any previous American
president," said Elon,
who attended the Republican convention. "He was raised on the Bible;
he's connected to
Evangelical Christians who love Israel; and no one can take away from
the leadership he
displayed on leading the international fight against Islamic extremists."
Elon said that fears Bush would abandon Israel as a second-term
president are unwarranted,
because his loyalty to Israel was never connected to American Jewish
voters, who did not
support him in the first place. He said American Jews who are upset
about the disengagement
plan should blame Sharon, not Bush.
"YOU CAN'T ASK BUSH TO BE MORE CATHOLIC THAN THE
POPE," ELON SAID.
"SHARON CONVINCED BUSH TO SUPPORT A PALESTINIAN
STATE AND BACK
DISENGAGEMENT, SO YOU CAN'T BLAME HIM. BUSH IS
MORE LOYAL TO ISRAEL
THAN MANY OF MY COLLEAGUES IN THE KNESSET."
***
On Kerry's side:
Labor MK Ophir Pines-Paz said he supports Kerry because he believes
he will have a more
interventionist Middle East policy. He also believes Bush's mistakes in
Iraq will make it more
difficult for the US to eliminate the strategic threat to Israel posed by
the weapons of mass
destruction in Iran.
"I back Kerry because I prefer the Clinton approach to the Bush
approach," said Pines-Paz, who
attended the Democratic Convention. "Both Bush and Kerry love
Israel, but I prefer people who
will be more involved in the process here rather than support from afar.
Bush was fully
supportive but passive. Clinton was more critical, but he worked
actively to find a solution to
the conflict."
Yachad (Meretz) MK Yossi Sarid said he opposes Bush because he
fears that as a second-term
president he will act independently against Israel, and because he is
afraid of Bush's religious
beliefs.
"Bush runs the world on the basis of calls from heavens," Sarid said.
"The fact that this man
runs the world gives me goose bumps. Sharon should be careful
because Bush could hear a new
voice from the heavens and change his mind about supporting Israel."
The attitude of opposition leader Shimon Peres (Labor Party), according
to his associates is that
he generally prefers more Liberal candidates.
***
Nonetheless, Sharon and his advisors feel confident that Bush's victory
will be good for the
Disengagement Plan. They may harbor some fears that George W.
Bush will be "unduly
influenced" by the Evangelical Christian Zionists, who love Israel in an
unqualified manner and
who certainly were very influential in his successful reelection. But
Sharon's spokesman,
Ra'anan Gissim, sees it differently:
"Bush is as free as a bird. He is only accountable to history and G-d,
which is a good thing for
us, because both history and G-d are on our side. "
What incredible arrogance! Jewish longing to regain the Homeland
over a period of 2000 years
is legendary. That G-d is on the side of those who want to abandon the
Holy Land to the enemy
is clearly against everything written in the scriptures, the Tanach.
To repeat the words of Knesset Member Benny Elon, "Sharon is the one
who convinced Bush to
support a Palestinian State and to back disengagement. Bush is more
loyal to Israel than many of
my colleagues in the Knesset."
Israel now unfortunately has two governments: one government that we
elected, and one that we
did not elect.
The leader of the Likud Party, Ariel Sharon, has hijacked the Israeli
government, against his own
party's will. He has turned into a devilishly clever manipulative
dictator, who completely ignores
his own party, which he supposedly heads. His Disengagement Plan
was passed, not by his own
coalition, but by an unholy alliance with the leftist opposition. He
cleverly split the 2005 State
Budget in two. The Israeli basic law - the nearest we have to a
constitution - states that no
government can survive if it cannot, once a year, find a Knesset
majority to approve its plan of
action for the next year. By a devious method, Sharon separated the
budget for disengagement
from the general budget. He then passed the disengagement budget by
his unofficial coalition
with the Left: Labor and Yachad (formerly Meretz).
The Disengagement law incorporates evil measures: Member of
Knesset Benny Elon says the
measures are draconian and would enable the government to "starve
settlers who refuse to
evacuate". The Prime Minister plans to issue a decree setting a deadline
for the evacuation of
each group of settlements. After the deadline, no Israelis are to be
allowed in the area without
special permission. The punishment for breaking the evacuation rules
is up to three years
imprisonment. This bill gives the security forces the right to arrest
settlers, including children,
who are gathered in groups of three or more and are demonstrating
against disengagement.
Natan Sharansky says these measures are exactly like those of
Bolshevik Russia. He should
know. He was imprisoned in Russia for ten years.
None of these issues greatly bother Israel's leftists, where the dominant
view is that the end of
dismantling settlements justifies any means, even the subversion of
Israel's democratic structure.
It is fundamentally illegitimate for Sharon, who won the election by
running against unilateral
withdrawal to proceed to implement that very program, which the
voters explicitly rejected, with
the aid of the Left wing parties the voters shunned.
May the Almighty open the eyes of President Bush and make him
understand the reality of Ariel
Sharon's Disengagement Plan. How Ariel Sharon plans to send the
police and the army to
forcibly and illegally evacuate 8,500 of his own Jewish People, and
drag mothers, fathers and
little children from their homes against their will. How Ariel Sharon
means to disinter Jewish
graves in Gush Katif, to make the very earth Judenrein. All this even
though the Bible, which
President Bush certainly believes in, clearly says that G-d gave Gaza to
the tribe of Judah, as
their share of the Holy Land.
When President Bush understands that Ariel Sharon is planning barbed
prison camps for those
who merely demonstrate against his evil plans, he will realize Sharon's
perfidy, and that Sharon
has tried to involve him in an entirely undemocratic evil scheme.
All of us who love the Holy Land, and believe in G-d's promises, Jews
and Christians alike,
congratulate President Bush on his victory. We believe that the G-d of
Israel has chosen him to
do His Will at this crucial time.
With Blessings and Love for Israel,
Ruth Matar
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November 6, 2004
His Great Obsession
by Yossi Verter
Haaretz, 22 October 2004
It was fascinating to hear the way Ariel Sharon's adversaries
and his supporters talked about him this week. According to
members of the Yesha Council of settlements, the prime
minister is encased in a space of his own, cut off, almost a
robot. "He's on Prozac," one of them said. Sharon's
confidants spoke of a person who "looks neither to the right
nor the left," who is in a mental bunker and is taking no
interest in anything or dealing with anything apart from
mustering a Knesset majority for his disengagement plan.
So there you are: for the first time, agreement has been
reached between proponents and opponents. Both sides
saw a man of 76, on the eve of the conclusion of his political
career, who has known many disappointments and defeats
and who, in the twilight of his life adopted a plan that is
totally contrary to everything he said and preached his
whole life. The plan, which Sharon was dragged into willy-
nilly, has become his obsession. It has distanced friends
who were by his side for a generation. It has wreaked havoc
in the Likud, the party Sharon created. It is freaking out the
entire political establishment, from one end to the other, and
it could lead to Sharon's political demise. Or to his political
resurrection.
Sharon spent most of his time this week putting out feelers
to potential supporters and giving pep talks to others. He
held a brief meeting with MK Shimon Peres, who emerged
satisfied, according to sources close to the Labor Party
chairman. Sharon apparently told him what he told other
MKs he met with: that after the disengagement plan is
passed by the Knesset he intends to start talks to expand
the coalition. Others, though, ascribe to Sharon a different
comment: that after the plan is approved the Likud rebels
will calm down and go back to functioning as part of the
faction. The National Religious Party will not leave the
government, at least not in the coming months, and Sharon
will be able to carry on with the current coalition until the
end of the Knesset's winter sitting, next March, which will be
the month of the cabinet votes on implementing the
withdrawal from Gaza.
"Sharon wants to see how things look on Wednesday" - the
day after the Knesset vote - "and then he will decide how to
proceed," the prime minister's aides say. That's one way of
saying that Sharon has no plan, no strategy. The main thing
is to get the disengagement plan approved by the Knesset.
After that, things will take their own course. It's very
possible that the course they will take will lead to elections
in mid-2005 or later next year. If it's up to Sharon, there will
be no elections. There is nothing to be gained from elections
now. He is not convinced that he will be elected Likud leader
again if Benjamin Netanyahu decides to run against him. He
knows he will have a hard time running an effective
primaries campaign on a disengagement ticket, with the
party split and torn between supporters and opponents of
the disengagement plan. He knows that the next group of
Knesset candidates that the Likud Central Committee will
elect will make him nostalgic for the current crop.
"If we go to elections now, before disengagement, we will
get 20 seats," said MK Michael Eitan in a meeting of the
Likud Knesset faction on Monday. "How can I appear at an
election rally together with Uzi Landau? What will I say to
the people there?"
As usual, opinions are divided in Sharon's immediate
vicinity. Some advisers are recommending that he go to
elections now, precisely over the disengagement issue.
Others would like to see him impose a new government on
the Likud faction, one with Labor and the Haredim (ultra-
Orthodox) as partners. Still others are urging him to start
forming a new party, a kind of all-inclusive center party,
based on the vision known as the "big bang." Sharon is not
keen on that idea. He finds it a bit fanciful, at his age, to
embark on an adventure like that.
Shimon Peres this week made the following observation: "A
moshavnik," he said, referring to a resident of a farming
village, "never buys another house. He never buys more
land. And he never goes to elections. Why? Because
everything like that costs him money. Sharon is a
moshavnik."
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November 7, 2004
HOW AND WHY AMERICA'S CHRISTIANS MUST CARE FOR
ISRAEL
by Professor Louis Rene Beres
The Land and People of Israel are now in great peril. Day
after day, men, women and children are fiendishly murdered
by Arab terrorists because they are Jews (ONLY because
they are Jews). And again, not all that many years after the
Holocaust, the people of Israel are widely abandoned to
villainous slaughterers - this time in a land wherein they
were promised safety; a "Promised Land."
In a large scientific poll undertaken for the European
Community just before the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom,
the nations of that marvelously civilized continent proudly
identified Israel - together with the United States - as the
world's two most dangerous and evil countries. Syria, Iran,
Saddam's Iraq, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, North Korea barely
even made the list. So much for rational judgment in
"civilized" Europe.
Arab terror in Israel has only one overriding purpose:
Annihilation of the Jewish people in their own land, and
transformation of the Jewish State into "Palestine." This
purpose is openly genocidal - even by the codified
standards of contemporary international law - and it is not
kept hidden from anyone. The prevention of a second
Holocaust, however, is not only a Jewish responsibility. It is
a Christian responsibility as well, an absolutely sacred
responsibility. I refer to G-d's Covenant with Israel and to the
indisputable Christian view that Israel will be G-d's people
forever.
-------------
I am a Jew, and I am also a university professor. As a
professor I could simply ask you to understand that the
uniquely barbarous terror of Palestinians against Jewish
civilians is morally and legally unforgivable, and that merely
as compassionate human beings - we must oppose such
barbarism. After all, there is no other single insurgency on
the face of the earth where so-called "suicide bombers"
intentionally direct their murderous violence against nursery
schools, ice-cream parlors and municipal buses.
Nor is there any other insurgency on the face of this
bleeding planet where the "martyrs" fill their explosive
containers with nails and screws dipped in rat poison, to
maximize the pain and suffering of primarily children. Nor is
there any other terror movement that is so filled with
cowardice, as the plainest motive of the suicide-bomber is
not to die, but rather to conquer death altogether. It is only
by killing Jews that this coward is able to convince himself
that he shall in fact live forever. For him, the act of dying is
merely a momentary inconvenience on his fiery way to
heaven and the explicit promise of 72 virgins.
But I wish to speak to you this day in Houston ... as a Jew
as the Jewish son of Holocaust survivors who fled Austria
to Switzerland on their wedding night many years ago - on
July 31, 1938. The promise of the continuation of the people
of Israel and their ingathering to the Land of Israel is
revealed to all of you in Genesis (15:18): "On that day the
LORD made a covenant with Abraham, saying, `To your
descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt
as far as the great river, the river Euphrates.'"
At the heart of G-d's covenant with Israel is the promise to
the Jewish people - His People - to the land of Israel. For
Christians, this promise is the only "Road Map" of value. No
secular authority, not the Secretary General of the United
Nations, not even the President of the United States, can
revoke G-d's covenant with Israel. Israel is not "Palestine."
Israel, if we are to take G-d's word seriously, is the place for
ingathering of the Jews. Period! Whenever the Jews are in
their own land, the deserts bloom and water springs forth,
exactly as foretold in G-d's promise at Isaiah (43: 18-21) and
elsewhere.
As for the Palestinian Arab populations who wish to eject
the Jewish People from their own land, their presence in the
Land of Israel has surely not brought waters to the
wilderness or rivers in the desert. There are no gardens in
Gaza or edens in Ramallah, only feverish preparations for
bringing still more murderous violence to the Jews. The
Scriptures make it all very clear: The Lord G-d of Israel has
regathered His people from the four corners of the earth.
Since June 1967, His holy city of Jerusalem is back in the
hands of His people. Sometime, perhaps sooner than we
think, the great Jewish Temple will also be rebuilt - in
Jerusalem.
I will bless those who bless thee, and curse those who curse
thee." G-d's plan for those who stand against His land and
His people is clear, in Genesis. America's Bible-believing
Christians shall not stand by silently and watch the
persistent Palestinian assault upon Israel. (The Presbyterian
and Episcopalian churches should take heed.) So it is
written. Rather, they must show their care and love for G-d's
people and land in every way within their grasp and with
every fiber of their being. There is no more sacred
responsibility.
In the matter of Israel, our religious obligations - as
Christians and Jews - are entirely consistent with our
patriotic obligations. The enemies of Israel are the enemies
of the United States. Make no mistake about it, all of the
Palestinian terror groups are closely intertwined with Al
Qaeda; all the Palestinian terror groups wept at our capture
of Saddam Hussein (with whom they collaborated during the
1990-91 rape of Kuwait); and all the Palestinian terror groups
celebrated wildly on 9/11. Palestinian hatred of America is
passionate and undisguised. Israel's love of America, on the
other hand, is evident in every corner of the Jewish State.
These unassailable facts notwithstanding, we give annually -
from our hard-earned American tax dollars - several hundred
million dollars to Yassir Arafat's Palestinian Authority -
money which is converted directly into weapons for the
mass murder of Jews in Israel and is also distributed
meticulously to loyal Arafat henchmen involved in organized
crime and narcotics trafficking. In this way our very own
American government - seeking a politically correct way to
straddle the slippery fence of Middle Eastern politics - has
now become directly complicit in serving the enemies of
Israel.
"I will bless those who bless thee; and curse those who
curse thee." Yassir Arafat, whose hands are soaked in the
blood of thousands of Jewish women and children (in some
cases by his actual participation in killings and torture), was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This is what we can expect
from a world that places politics above G- d's promise.
Yassir Arafat is a billionaire; one of the richest men in the
world. His family lives in unimaginable splendor as he doles
out $10,000.00 rewards to the impoverished families of Arab
suicide bombers. This is the man whom Israel has been
pressured to keep alive by our leaders in Washington.
Even for this president - although somewhat less than for
his predecessor (President Clinton's influence on Israel's
security was entirely nefarious) - the promise of Genesis has
become less important than the promise of power. Israel has
been asked, again and again, to depend upon the hollow
promise of international treaties and agreements. But
international law is not a suicide pact.
As even Thomas Jefferson once noted, in a scholarly essay
on the French Treaties, no nation is obliged to comply with
international agreements that would bring about its own
destruction. But whether one refers to the Oslo Agreements,
or to the "Road Map," or even to the privately-negotiated
(and especially repulsive) "Geneva Initiative," these human
compacts have had only one purpose for the Arab side - that
is, to remove the Jewish People from their own land.
There is ample and revealing evidence in Scripture for the
kind of agreements still being extracted from a tiny and
beleaguered Israel: "We have made a covenant with death,
and with hell are we at agreement....We have made lies our
refuge and under falsehood have we hid ourselves." (Isaiah
28, 15).
How big is Israel - G-d's own land? It is half the size of Lake
Michigan, or - for those who prefer less watery references -
half the size of San Bernardino County in California. Any
comparison to Texas, of course, would make Israel's size
even more incomprehensibly small. The people of Israel -
who include, of course, thousands of deeply committed
Christian Zionists - live under not only hourly threats of
extermination, but also under one of the most frenetic
barrages of insidious propaganda in human history.
Every day the news media - in this country including THE
NEW YORK TIMES; LOS ANGELES TIMES; CHICAGO
TRIBUNE; CNN; etc - transforms the Jewish victims into
victimizers, David into Goliath.
When, in desperation, the people of Israel build a fence to
keep their children from being burned and disemboweled by
Arab terrorists (disembowelment was prominently featured
and secretly filmed in the Palestinian "police" lynchings of
two Russian Jews who had lost their way in Ramallah), the
World Court does not put Arab terrorism on trial - it puts the
fence on trial. Again and again, the world is reminded that
the life of a Jewish child is substantially less valuable than
the olive tree of a Palestinian farmer; that the Israeli fence
crosses illegally into "Arab land;" that the Arabs must suffer
no "inconvenience" or "humiliation" (President Bush).
Better that Israel should suffer another bus load of
murdered and burned Jewish children.
Even if we should discard the Scriptural "Road Map" - and
we surely should never do that - there is ample evidence in
international law, including the terms of the League of
Nations Mandate and the results of repeated Arab
aggressions from 1948 onward, that Israel and the so-called
"territories" are Jewish land. Indeed, if we can recall that
Transjordan (later Jordan, in 1949) was illegally created by
Great Britain from Mandatory lands in 1922, there is even
good jurisprudential argument that Jordan is an integral part
of Israel.
The Arab world is comprised of 22 states of almost five
million square miles and 144 million people. The Islamic
World contains 44 states with one billion people. The Islamic
states comprise an area 672 times the size of Israel. Israel,
with a population of about 5 million Jews, is - together with
Judea/Samaria and Gaza - so small that its name on maps
must be printed off its own land mass, far out in the
Mediterranean Sea.
Speaking of maps, there are no official maps anywhere in
the Arab world that include Israel. The official Palestinian
Authority (PA) map of "Palestine" includes all of Israel. For
the PA, the PLO "Phased Plan" of 1974 is still fully-
operational. There is no "Two-State" plan for the
Palestinians; no Israel living side- by-side with "Palestine."
There is only "Palestine." The Palestinians continue to
speak - together with their "civilized" European allies whose
traditional anti-Semitism is now reinvigorated by
Arab/Islamic Jew hatred - of "occupied territories." Yet the
PLO was formed in 1964, three years before Israel even took
control of Judea/Samaria and Gaza - an inadvertent control
dictated by an indispensable war of self-defense.
What, then, was the PLO planning to liberate between 1964
and 1967? Not just Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but also
"mainstream" and "moderate" PLO still calls for Israel's
"liquidation." To this very day - after all of the bowing and
scraping of American presidents before the defiled altars of
Arab terrorism - the PLO Charter still calls openly for Israel's
elimination. Unashamedly; self-righteously.
As for the Charter of Hamas, its position is rather
unambiguous: "There is no solution to the Palestinian
problem except by Jihad. We must imprint on the minds of
generations of Muslims that the Palestinian problem is a
religious one to be dealt with on this premise: ~I swear by he
who holds in His hands the Soul of Muhammad: I indeed
wish to go to war for the sake of Allah! I promise to assault
and kill; assault and kill; assault and kill.'" These are the
exact words from the published Charter of Hamas. Are they
ever even quoted on the evening news or in our most
important newspapers?
Israel's conflict with the Arab/Islamic world has almost
nothing to do with Arab/Islamic interest in Jewish lands.
Israel comprises 1.2% of the land in the Middle East.
Arab/Islamic states take up 98.8 % of these lands. Israel is
despised in the Arab/Islamic world because it is Jewish.
Period.
As painful as are the torments for Israel of suicide-bombings
- the most blatantly cowardly forms of modern terrorism -
there is an even far- greater danger. I refer to the very real
prospect of WMD terror attacks upon Israeli populations, or
even of chemical/biological/nuclear war. Presently, with Iraq
immobilized by our own country's Operation Iraqi Freedom,
the main nuclear threat to Israel lies in non-Arab Iran. (And
let us not forget that Israel's own preemptive destruction of
Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor on June 7, 1981 is THE reason
why we can't find any nuclear weapons in Iraq today - it is
the ONLY reason). Moreover, it is not out of the question
that a nuclear-armed Islamic adversary of Israel might be
irrational; that is, it might be the individual Islamic suicide-
bomber in macrocosm - A state willing to "die" itself in order
to achieve a religiously- desired outcome. Nuclear
deterrence is based upon assumptions of rationality. Where
such assumptions might be unfounded, deterrence could be
immobilized. With this in mind, Israel - preferably together
with its only ally - the United States of America - must
prepare, once again, for acts of anticipatory self-defense.
Alternatively, it could place all of its hopes in ballistic
missile defense - in Israel the system is called the Arrow -
but these would be decidedly vain hopes. As we know from
our own recent American experience with the Patriot ATBM
system, even we are very far from achieving a minimally
high probability of interception. Best estimates are that in
the first Gulf War our American reliability of BMD intercept
was less than 10%. ....
A popular Palestinian refrain today is this: "Today the
Saturday people; tomorrow the Sunday people." We are both
now despised as "occupiers" in the imperiled Land of Israel
- Jews and Christians alike - and we both have an obligation
to protect and serve G-d's own chosen land. None of us -
Jew or Christian - now has any right to stand silently by as
Israel suffers grotesque calumny from the Arab/Islamic
world and growing threats to its physical survival from that
world. All of us must now recall from Isaiah a most sacred
injunction: "For Zion's sake, I will not hold my peace, and for
Jerusalem I will not be still."
What shall we do? We - Jews and Christians - know full well
that Israel and America are not the problem. We know that
Israel and America are the solution. We - Jews and
Christians alike - know full well that the Arab/Islamic world
of the Middle East is largely animated by a resurgent
medievalism - a giant leap backward into history that now
seeks to replace coexistence with Jihad (Holy War) and to
supplant Reason with hateful indoctrination.
The Christian world, along with its kindred Jewish world,
has already seen the violence of militant Islam - not only in
Israel, but in places like Lebanon; Egypt; Algeria; India; the
Sudan; Ethiopia; and elsewhere. Now is the time for
Christians to stand by their Jewish brothers and sisters
against a common and retrograde threat.
We together - Jews and Christians - have already borne
witness to the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy in the Land of
Israel. We have witnessed the ingathering of the Jews to
Zion and the recovery of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.
We both know and recognize that Jerusalem is the exclusive
and eternal capital of the Jewish State - even when that
knowledge and recognition is denied by the President and
Secretary of State of these United States. (Contrary to
Congressional authorizations, our embassy remains in Tel
Aviv). Zionism and its corollary protection of Israel must
quickly become a LIVING article of faith for all Christians in
this great land of America. Christians believe that Zionism is
a prelude to the Redemption. For Christians, as for Jews,
Zionism is necessarily understood as a great and holy
movement. Zionism is understood by all Christians as a
divine process that cannot be turned back - and most
certainly not by a resurgent medievalism that seeks to
separate G-d's land from G-d's people through mayhem and
murder.
It is time to end. In conclusion, let me become more
pragmatic.America's Christians have an obligation to fight
anti-Semitism wherever it rears its ugly and decidedly un-
Christian head. America's Christians must stand up for
Israel in the newspapers, on the radio, on television,
wherever the Jewish State is under propagandistic and
violent attack. This includes horribly misguided statements
of "divestment" from Israel by America's Presbyterian and
Episcopal churches. America's Christians must recognize
and condemn the altogether unique barbarism of Palestinian
terrorism, acknowledging publicly that there is no "Cycle of
Violence" in the Middle East - no "equivalence" between
terror and counterterror - but only an endless cycle of Arab
attacks upon Jewish civilians followed by unavoidable
Israeli efforts at essential self-defense.
America's Christians should visit Israel, showing solidarity
with the Jewish People. America's Christians should have
courage, and should now join together with other churches
and movements that seek to protect Israel - e.g., the National
Unity Coalition; Christians For Israel Political Action
Committee (CIPAC); and the International Christian
Embassy in Jerusalem. (Also, my current work with Gary
Bauer, who is a great and heroic champion of Israel).
America's Christians should read beyond the mainstream
press, both at internet sources and informed print media. ....
America's Christians should become engaged politically in
defense of Israel, speaking out against politicians who
would themselves prefer personal power over Christian
duty.
Finally, America's Christians must pray for Israel, for the
Jewish People and for the Peace of Jerusalem - not a peace
of surrender to the new and sinister forms of totalitarianism,
but for a peace that would recall G-d's blessing upon
Abraham: "And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse
Him that Curseth thee: and in thee shall all the families of
the Earth be blessed."
===============
LOUIS RENE BERES was educated at Princeton (Ph.D.,
1971) and is the author of many books and articles dealing
with international relations and international law. He is Chair
of "Project Daniel," a small advisory group on nuclear
matters to Israel's Prime Minister. The above was a speech
delivered in Houston, Texas before a predominantly
Christian Audience.
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November 8, 2004
After Arafat
by Caroline B. Glick November 6, 2004
So PLO chieftain Yasser Arafat, the godfather of Islamic
terrorism, is now dying or dead in a French military hospital.
Will the passing of this mass murderer and master
propagandist have an immediate impact on the
Palestinians_ interest and ability to reach an agreement with
Israel? Can his death bring about the end of the Palestinian
terror war against Israel and perhaps usher in a period of
peace in the Middle East?
In his press conference Thursday, President George W.
Bush said that people who don_t believe in the applicability
of democracy to the Arab world cannot really believe in a
two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict with Israel. That
is, as long as the Palestinians remain governed by terrorists,
there is no way that they will be willing to live at peace with
Israel.
Is Arafat_s retreat from this world all that is required for the
Palestinians to achieve a democratic transformation that will
enable them to live at peace with Israel? In answering this
question, we should take an example from one of Arafat_s
guiding lights throughout his career: Adolf Hitler. Hitler_s
suicide in his bunker in Berlin in May 1945 was not what
enabled Konrad Adenauer to lead a democratic West
Germany. Adenauer could not have led, and certainly would
never have been a democrat, if all he did was take over the
reins of power from Hitler in May 1945. Aside from Hitler
dying, the Nazi regime he created was necessarily militarily
vanquished to the point of unconditional surrender. As well,
Nazi leaders -- both political and military -- were brought
before war crimes tribunals and hung or sentenced to long
prison terms.
Adenauer also presided over a German democracy whose
borders were determined by the Allies; where the Allied
Occupation Forces expunged Nazi propaganda from the
schoolbooks; barred Nazis from positions of power and
influence in all walks of life; forced the Germans to teach
their schoolchildren the evil they had wrought in the war;
and outlawed Nazis or anyone espousing a similar racist
ideology from entering politics in Germany. That is,
Adenauer_s ascension to power was only enabled as a
result of the total destruction of the Nazi power apparatus.
This historical precedent for the death of a dictator is
pertinent in the case of Arafat not merely because of his
ideological affinity with Hitler, but because Arafat, like Hitler,
has built an entire apparatus of power in Palestinian society
in his own murderous image. All of Arafat_s presumed heirs
_ from Mahmud Abbas to Ahmed Qurei to Muhammed
Dahlan to Jibril Rajoub are terrorists.
Abbas and Qurei owe their prominence to the fact that they
co-founded the Fatah terror group with Arafat. Abbas, who
has been upheld by the US and Israel alike as a _reformer,_
wrote his PhD dissertation and later a bestselling book
explaining why the Holocaust is a hoax. Abbas has overseen
and facilitated terrorist attacks for the past several decades
including in the now four year old Palestinian terror war.
Qurei, who also has a rich history of terror involvement and
apologetics, has bee the PLO_s chief money man for the
past three decades. From Tunis to Lebanon to the Gulf
States to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Qurei has overseen
a confidence operation that puts the Sicilian mafia to shame.
He has managed to simultaneously shakedown Palestinian
businessmen for hundreds of millions of dollars and to
blackmail the international community into contributing
billions of dollars in aid to the PLO. Qurei continues to
overtly support and applaud terrorist attacks against Israeli
civilians and as recently as September has made open calls
for terrorists to murder Israeli civilians. Muhammed Dahlan,
who with his Pierre Cardin suits and his flashing smile
easily won the hearts of Israeli and American policymakers
alike, is one of the architects of the current terror war. In
1994, Arafat placed him in charge of coordinating activities
with Hamas. Dahlan_s militia in Gaza has taken an active
role in carrying out attacks against Israeli civilians including
the infamous bombing of an Israeli school bus in November
2000 in which three people were murdered and a half dozen
school children lost their legs and arms. Since then
Dahlan_s forces have retained their leadership role in terror
attacks, as well as in the weapons smuggling and
development in Gaza. For their part, Gazans hate and fear
Dahlan for his strong arm tactics against businessmen and
day laborers in Israel.
Jibril Rajoub, Dahlan_s counterpart and rival in the West
Bank was responsible for setting up the PLO_s terror
infrastructure in the West Bank from 1994-2000. Since the
Palestinian terror war against Israel began in September
2000, Rajoub_s men have taken an active role in carrying
out terror attacks in Israel while still retaining their salaries
from his militia. Like Dahlan in Gaza, Rajoub is despised by
Palestinians on the West Bank for his extortion of
businessmen; confiscation of farmland; and raping of
Palestinian girls. And so on, down the line. There is today
not one Palestinian political party that is not a terrorist
organization. Of the twelve militias that Arafat formed in the
West Bank and Gaza since arriving on the scene in 1994,
there is not a single one that is not deeply involved in terror
activities. Documents seized by the Israeli army during
major combat operations in the West Bank have shown
Arafat_s generals ordering the carrying out of suicide
bombings and authorizing the payment of terrorist cell
members.
Under Arafat_s leadership, Palestinian society in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip has been indoctrinated to jihad in a
way that is unmatched throughout the Arab world, perhaps
with the exception of Al Qaeda training camps. Children
have been brainwashed to believe that they should see their
lives fulfilled by carrying out acts of genocidal mass murder
of Jews. Women have been inculcated with the inhuman
belief that rather than being the sources of life, their wombs
are bomb factories.
Through the Palestinian media, the school system, the
religious institutions, the sports teams and the
iconographers in art studios and on city streets, Palestinian
society over the past decade has been brought to believe
that their sole purpose as a people is to liquidate the Jewish
people. Suicide bombings in Israel are greeted with carnival-
like celebrations in the West Bank and Gaza. There is no
remorse, nor regret, no shame and no guilt in the face of the
wanton brutality and barbarity of suicide bombings. And so,
in light of the current state of derangement of Palestinian
society, does Arafat_s passing bear any significance for
policymakers?
On the one hand, the death of an evil man, of a mass
murderer is always a cause for celebration and hope. Yet on
the other hand, Arafat_s death will only constitute an
opportunity for building a better future if the Bush
administration uses his disappearance as a catalyst for a
true overhaul of Palestinian society. And this requires more
than just applying pressure on Israel to meet with and make
concessions to a new PLO warlord who was raised on
Arafat_s knee.
There is no doubt that there are Palestinians alive today who
have the potential to be Palestinian Adenauers. But for these
leaders to come forward the apparatus of genocide and
terror that Arafat has wrought over the past four decades
must first be dismantled. Arafat_s heirs have no more
chance of bringing peace and democracy to the Palestinians
than Hitler_s heirs could have brought to Germany. For
peace to arise, Palestinians must make a clean break from
their past.
Caroline Glick was a member of Israel's negotiating team
with the PLO from 1994-1996. She is currently the Deputy
Managing Editor of The Jerusalem Post and the Senior
Middle East Fellow at the Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid. in Washington, DC.
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November 10, 2004
GUSH KATIF VIEWPOINT: A LAWYER CALLS BE
REALISTIC!
by Rachel Saperstein, Neve Dekalim
My cousin's daughter, a Tel Aviv lawyer, called last night. Be
realistic she said. You know that you are going to be
expelled from Gush Katif. So get yourself a lawyer and start
negotiating for money now! We chatted a bit about family
news and then I explained why I wouldn_t discuss the
expulsion or compensation law with her or with any lawyer.
My dear lawyer/cousin, please understand. There is
something otherworldly about Gush Katif. We are tucked
into a corner of the world with our homes and lawns but
more than that we have a sense of purpose. For four and a
half years we have been bombarded and instead of fleeing
as is normal to do, we stayed, refusing to budge. My friend,
Zimra, said it is hard to be a Jew and obey the
commandments of Hashem. But the settlement of Eretz
Yisroel is one of the most important commandments of all. If
we choose to live in danger to fulfill this mitzvah then we
expect our children to do the same.
Living in Gush Katif means having an exceptional
relationship with the Almighty. We personally see His
endless miracles and we acknowledge them. Psychologists
visit to give us strength but they leave having been
strengthened by us. We have heard that Gush Katif people
are beautiful and our faces reflect an inner glow that sends a
clear message to the Prime Minister and his Knesset that we
will not give up the land of Israel to the Arab enemy. If the
Good Lord had wanted us to depart he would have
weakened our resolve. Instead we show strength and will
not capitulate to the draconian laws that the Knesset has
just passed. Have you read the Laws of Compensation, dear
lawyer?
If we do not agree to give away our homes or farms by a
certain cut-off date, our homes will be confiscated. All of our
personal belongings will belong to the State without
recourse to compensation. We will be forcibly removed,
brought to a makeshift court to be included into the prisons
now being built. We will have no recourse to a lawyer.
Specially trained soldiers and police can beat us. If we resist
we can be given a five-year prison sentence. In a short while
the law against demonstrations or meetings between more
than three people will be put into effect. The list goes on and
on.
We heard that Natan Sharansky turned white when he read
the 89 pages of the Disengagement plan. It reminded him of
his period of incarceration in Russia because he refused to
capitulate to the law. Sharansky said this is worse than the
worst laws of the Soviet Union. No, we are not realistic. For
the sake of Israel and for the future of democracy in Israel
we dare not be realistic.
Dear lawyer, read the laws that the lawmakers have just
signed. The laws are illegal and immoral. Gush Katif will
remain long after this Knesset falls.
*******************************************************
November 11, 2004
DEATH OF A SERIAL MURDERER
LETTER FROM RUTH MATAR (WOMEN IN GREEN)
JERUSALEM
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Dear Friends,
I am writing this Letter from Jerusalem only moments after
Yasser Arafat was finally pronounced dead.
It is with deep sadness that I read about the world's reaction
to this serial murderer's death. I am not going to discuss
the reaction of the Arab Muslim world. Arafat was their
standard bearer, their great hope of dislodging the "Jewish
Cancer" from the Holy Land. They were complicit in helping
Arafat create the fiction of a "Palestinian People" and a
"Palestinian Homeland", in what they perceived to be their
own interest.
No, what makes me sad is that the world leaders have
bought into this extraordinary lie of the Arabs and Arafat,
and are pledging to help make Arafat's "vision" of an Arab
state on Jewish Biblical Land a reality. This is the very land
which the G-d of Israel promised the Jewish People in our
Judeo-Christian Bible.
"I will ratify My covenant between Me and you and between
your offspring after you, throughout their generations, as an
everlasting covenant, to be a God to you and to your
offspring after you; and I will give to you and to your
offspring after you the land of your sojourns - the whole of
the land of Canaan - as an everlasting possession; and I
shall be a God to them." (Genesis, 17:7-8)
Some examples of the reactions of world leaders to Arafat's
death:
U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL KOFI ANNAN: "I am deeply
moved. It is tragic that he did not live to see his vision
fulfilled!"
What vision? To drive the Jews into the sea?
FRENCH PRESIDENT JACQUES CHIRAC called Arafat a
"man of great courage and conviction".
BRITISH PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR wants to remind us
that Arafat was a Nobel Peace Laureate.
FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT CLINTON: "Arafat's greatest
moment was September 13, 1993... which led to seven years
of negotiation and relative peace."
"Relative peace"? Does Bill Clinton mean that ONLY 1,288
people were killed on Arafat's DIRECT orders since 1993?
This would be equivalent in American terms to 64,400
murdered!
Most disturbing to me were the remarks of President George
W. Bush who, was just reelected with a popular vote
majority of 3.6 million. He said that Arafat's death was a
"significant moment" in Palestinian history. That remark, of
course, could be interpreted in different ways.
However, President Bush has previously endorsed the
establishment of a Palestinian State on Jewish Land. He
renewed that pledge immediately after his reelection last
week.
President Bush said that with a new Palestinian leadership
that asks for help in building a democratic, free society
"there will be an opening for peace". When that happens,
Mr. Bush said, the "United States of America will be more
than willing to help the institutions necessary for a free
society to emerge so that the Palestinians can have their
own state".
"The vision is of two states, a Palestinian state and Israel
living side by side," he said, "and I think we have got a
chance to do that, and I look forward to being involved in
that process".
Who is that wonderful moderate leadership which President
Bush is talking about? Arafat has built an entire apparatus
of power in Palestinian society in his own murderous image.
All of Arafat's presumed heirs - from Mahmud Abbas to
Ahmed Qurei to Muhammed Dahlan to Jibril Rajoub - are
terrorists.
(The following information about the so-called "moderates"
in line to succeed Arafat is taken from an article by
Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick.)
MAHMUD ABBAS owes his prominence to the fact that he
co-founded the Fatah terror groups with Arafat. He wrote
his PhD dissertation and later a bestselling book explaining
why the Holocaust is a hoax. He has planned and overseen
terrorist attacks for the past several decades, including the
latest four year old Palestinian terror war.
AHMED QUREI also co-founded the Fatah terror group with
Arafat. He has been the chief PLO money man for the past
three decades. He has blackmailed the international
community into contributing billions of dollars in aid to the
PLO. He continues to overtly support and applaud terrorist
attacks against Israeli civilians, and as recently as
September he has made open calls for terrorists to murder
civilians.
MUHAMMED DAHLAN is a favorite of Israel and American
policy makers alike. He is one of the architects of the
current terror war. In 1994, Arafat placed him in charge of
coordinating activities with Hamas. Dahlan's militia in Gaza
has taken an active role in carrying out attacks against
Israeli civilians, including the infamous bombing of an
Israeli school bus in November 2000, in which three people
were murdered and a half dozen school children lost their
legs and arms. He is active in weapon smuggling to Gaza
and in frequent terror attacks.
JIBRIL RAJOUB is Dahlan's counterpart and rival in the
West Bank from 1994 to 2000. Rajoub's men take an active
role in carrying out terror attacks in Israel while they still
retained their salaries from Arafat.
Today there is not one Palestinian political party that is not a
terrorist organization. Of the twelve militias that Arafat
formed in the West Bank and Gaza, since arriving at the
scene in 1994, there is not a single one that is not deeply
involved in terror activities. Documents seized by the Israeli
army during major combat operations in the West Bank and
Gaza, have shown Arafat's generals ordering the carrying
out of suicide bombings and authorizing the payment of
terrorist cell members.
Are these the moderate Palestinian leaders that President
Bush is talking about? Are Mahmud Abbas or Ahmed Qurei
or Muhammed Dahlan or Jibril Rajoub going to be any
different than Arafat himself? After decades of murdering
and of indoctrinating young people to murder as a way of
life, can we really believe that these "moderate leaders"
would suddenly metamorphous into Jeffersonian
democrats?
To my surprise, after the U.S. election, I received quite a few
letters from Evangelical Christians telling me that they could
not bring themselves to actually cast a vote for George W.
Bush, because of his stated intention to divide the Hold
Land. Nonetheless, they were happy that Kerry lost.
The reason that I myself, and millions of Bible believing
Christians and Jews voted for President Bush despite his
expressed support for a Palestinian state on Biblical Land
is, I believe, twofold.
1. A belief that John Kerry was a great danger both to the
interests of the United States and Israel.
2. That his Christian constituency will ultimately convince
the President of the danger for the United States to go
against G-d's Word.
Judea, Samaria and Gaza, are all part of Israel's Biblical
Heartland. Beit El, Shilo, Hebron, Shchem (Nablus) and
Jerusalem should be just as much a grassroots issue as the
belief in family values, and opposition to partial birth
abortion and gay marriage.
At the heart of G-d's covenant with Israel is the Promise to
the Jewish People - His People - to the Land of Israel. For
Bible believing Jews and Christians, this is the only "Road
Map" of value.
The Land and People of Israel are now in great peril, both
from within and without. The Prime Minister of Israel, in an
unholy alliance with the Israeli Left, the architects of Oslo, is
planning to drag Jewish families forcefully out of their
homes in Biblical Gush Katif. The Quartet, the United
Nations, the European Union, Russia, and unfortunately the
United States, is hell-bent on dividing Israel and giving the
Arabs an additional state carved out of the Holy Land.
Could a Holocaust happen again?
The prevention of a second Holocaust is not only a Jewish
responsibility. It is a Christian responsibility as well. We
should remember G-d's blessing upon Abraham: "I will
bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee:
and in thee should all the families of the Earth be blessed."
With Blessings and Love for Israel,
Ruth Matar
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November 13, 2004
(The following is a translation of a Hebrew article which
appeared on Tuesday, November 9, 2004, in the Yediot
Ahronot, one of Israel's leading newspapers.)
And the Land Is Sold in Perpetuity
by Aryeh Eldad
Sharon has already decided to relinquish East Jerusalem,
and Olmert is aiding him. The Zionist Organization
established the Jewish National Fund as an instrument for
the redemption of the land and its transformation into
national land. Jews were called upon to donate to this Fund,
also by means of the blue-and-white boxes with the map of
Eretz Israel emblazoned on them, that were distributed
throughout the world. Generations of tots sang "This is our
box, the redemption of our soil."
But in the last generation the box has become a collector's
item, the map of Eretz Israel has been expunged from our
hearts and from political programs; the concept of
redemption has become a disgraceful term that the Prime
Minister includes in the definition of "messianism" when he
seeks to disengage from the bearers of the flag that only
yesterday he marched under.
The Zionist movement, from the time of Ussishkin and
Hankin, the redeemers of the lands of the Jezreel Valley, to
that of Moshe Zar, the redeemer of the lands of Samaria, and
Irving Moskowitz, the redeemer of the lands of Jerusalem,
knew that it was right to purchase lands from Arabs. They
paid the full price, and at times even for double and triple
what the land was worth. They made this land available to
Jewish settlers. Now, right before our very eyes, this trend
is being reversed.
A number of months ago the Hebrew University sold 91
dunams [about 23 acres] in the Beit Hanina neighborhood of
Jerusalem to a Palestinian bank. This is a plot of land that a
Jewish family of German immigrants donated to the
University 70 years ago, and now the need arose to make
use of it as the solution to financial distress. The University
first offered to sell the plot to the Israel Lands
Administration. The ILA declined, and Irving Moskowitz's
representative entered the picture. But even though the
price that he offered was higher than that of the Palestinian
bank, the land passed into Arab hands.
I directed a Knesset query on this matter to Vice Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert, who is also responsible for the Israel
Lands Administration, and who responded after three
months: "The Israel Lands Administration decided to reject
the offer to purchase lands, because the land is situated in a
settled area within the bounds of the city of Jerusalem, its
realization would have required construction for the citizens
of the State of Israel. The purchase of the lands in these
circumstances would have been done for the purpose of
marketing by tender to that [i.e., Arab] population."
Of what concern to him is redemption? Of what concern to
him is national land? A donation of land in Jerusalem
became commercial property for the Hebrew University, and
the person charged with responsibility for the national lands
declares that he would sell the land to Arabs if he had
purchased it - and therefore it did not matter whether the
University sold it, or the ILA. The Jewish National Fund had
an inviolable principle, not to sell national lands in
perpetuity, not even to Jews! Those entrusted with
responsibility for the national land give lip service to the
strengthening of [Jewish] settlement in Galilee, in the
Negev, and in Jerusalem, and abandon land that is already
Jewish owned. With the money of the oil states, the Arabs
are establishing an Ishmaelite National Fund, to buy lands
from Jews. And the guard? Has he fallen asleep? No, he
simply collaborates and sells, brazenly.
Sharon has already decided to relinquish East Jerusalem,
and Olmert is merely his faithful agent. They are so
occupied in denouncing "messianism" that these two have
turned themselves into the obedient beasts of burden of the
Israeli left and of Arab national aspirations. Also in
Jerusalem. Whoever deceives himself that the
disengagement will stop at the fences of the Gaza District
and northern Samaria should look closely at the actions of
the Prime Minister and his Vice Prime Minister, also in
Jerusalem, and he will understand: they are selling Israel. In
perpetuity.
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November 14, 2004
The Father of Modern Terrorism
by Andrew McCarthy
The true legacy of Yasser Arafat.
For the last week of his life, the scuttlebutt about the
Palestinian movement's centrifugal force concerned whether
his impending demise was driven by AIDS, likely contracted,
according to leaked foreign-intelligence reports, by his
omnivorous, orgiastic sexual appetite. This as if, after three
quarters of a century's worth of megalo-sadism, additional
indicia of Yasser Arafat's throbbing depravity were somehow
necessary. And so, evidently, they were. Thus is reflection on
his life, a signal emblem of the late 20th century's triumph of
terror and fraud over security and reason, as instructive
about our times as it is about him.
A Thug's Life
About him, while there is much to say, there is little to glean.
He was a thug. One of the most cunning of all time for sure,
but quite simply a ruthless, thoroughly corrupt, will-to-power
thug.
As is often the case in the modern information age, just about
everything in his life is known and almost nothing in his
proffered legend is true. The man airbrushed in Thursday-
morning encomiums from Kofi Annan and Jacques Chirac
(among others) as the courageous symbol of Palestinian
nationalism was not really named Yasser Arafat, was not a
native Palestinian, and tended to sit out warfare with Israel
whenever conventional fighting was involved.
Although he occasionally claimed to have hailed from what
are now the Palestinian territories, Muhammad Abdel Rahman
Abdel Rauf al-Qudwa al-Husseini was actually born in Egypt
in 1929, the fifth child of a well-to-do merchant. He was
educated in Cairo, although, after his mother's death when he
was four, he lived at least part of the time with an uncle in
Jerusalem.
Jerusalem was then the heart of the territory known as
Mandatory Palestine, which chafed under British rule as a
result of a 1918 League of Nations mandate. The era, to put it
kindly, was not the Crown's finest hour. Sowing seeds for
recriminations that persist to this day, the Brits appeared
during WWI to promise some or all of the territory
alternatively to Arabs and to Jews, only to exacerbate matters
by keeping Palestine themselves for three decades.
Arafat's formative years were thus spent in a milieu of
sectarian violence, annealed in a hatred for Jews that, far
from ever subsiding, propelled him. As an engineering
student in Cairo during World War II, he was powerfully
influenced by Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Islamic mufti of
Jerusalem who was closely aligned with Hitler and schemed
from Berlin to import the Fuhrer's genocidal program to
Palestine. Indeed, as the New York Sun observed in an
editorial last week, one of el-Husseini's biographers relates
that Arafat was a blood relative of the mufti, who preferred
him to another up-and-comer, George Habash (al-Hakim),
among the fiercest of Israel's Nasserite enemies who
eventually founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP), a frequent Arafat ally.
Nevertheless, though he may have been a local gun-runner,
the 19-year-old Arafat refrained from combat in 1948, when,
upon Israel's declaration of independence, it was attacked by
the Arab League (Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, and
Iraq), which was defeated in the war still regarded by
Palestinians and other Arabs as "al-Nakba" (the Catastrophe).
Nor did he partake in the 1956 Suez War, although, as
recounted last week by the Wall Street Journal's Bret
Stephens, he later claimed to have done so.
Raising Terror
While Arafat's mantel as the "Father of Palestine" is dubious
given that he is singularly responsible for the failure of a
Palestinian nation to emerge, his credentials as the "Father of
Modern Terrorism" are solid. In the late 1950's, he co-founded
Fatah, the "Movement for the National Liberation of
Palestine." His me'tier, and thus Fatah's, was the sneak attack
on soft Israeli targets, the better to maximize carnage and
fear. The first efforts were ham-handed: failed attempts in
1965 to bomb the national water carrier and the railroad. But
the organization soon hit its stride, successfully attacking
villages and civilian infrastructure. By 1969, Arafat was the
chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the
umbrella group he never ceased to dominate after merging
Fatah into it a year earlier. The PLO had a single purpose: the
destruction of Israel.
Actually, make that two purposes. The PLO was also a
fabulously profitable criminal enterprise. Though Arafat
purported to have made it big in the engineering business in
Kuwait, British investigators, as Stephens reported,
concluded after a searching probe that his wealth stemmed
from sidelines his organization maintained in "extortion,
payoffs, illegal arms-dealing, drug trafficking, money
laundering and fraud" that yielded billions. Throughout his
career, moreover, Arafat proved a master at culling funds -
whether from levies on strapped Palestinian workers or
gushing subsidies from starry-eyed European and American
governments. From these, he skimmed millions and stashed
them throughout the world - including in Israeli banks -
keeping his wife on a lavish $100,000-per-month allowance in
Paris while his people starved, and, of course, blamed Israel
for their troubles.
By the late 1960s, the PLO had set up shop in Jordan,
wreaking havoc in the kingdom. Arafat and his affiliates soon
became innovators in a tactic later refined by al Qaeda: the
civilian airliner as terror weapon. On February 21, 1970, the
PFLP - by then also under the PLO arch - bombed SwissAir
Flight 330 enroute to Tel Aviv, murdering 47 passengers and
crew. Eight months later, on September 6, they attempted a
spectacular atrocity: a quadruple hijack, which now appears
an eerie harbinger of the tectonic bin Laden operation on
another September day 31 years later.
As recalled in the riveting account of "Black September" by
hostage David Raab, all the hijacked flights were bound from
Europe to the United States. One, a Pan-Am 747, was taken to
Cairo, where it was blown up on the tarmac just after the
passengers were allowed to exit. A second, targeting an El-Al
aircraft, was foiled in flight by Israeli sky marshals. But a TWA
707 and a SwissAir DC-8, with a combined 310 passengers
and crew, were hijacked to a Jordanian dessert. The terrorists
segregated Israeli, American, Swiss, and West German
passengers for captivity - releasing the others - and
threatened to kill the hostages and blow up the planes unless
jailed militants were released. Under international pressure,
King Hussein resolved to reassert control. War broke out on
September 13. By the time it ended two weeks later, the
hostages had been released, but over 2,000 people had been
killed as Arafat and his terrorist band were driven out of the
country.
In the first of his many rises from the ashes, Arafat relocated
to Lebanon. Staging from there, the PLO embarked, almost
exactly a year to the day later, on another of the late 20th
century's most infamous murder sprees. On September 5, in
the midst of the Munich Summer Olympic Games of 1972,
eight PLO operatives (a wing of Arafat's Fatah group known
as the "Black September" brigade) carried out a plan that
enabled five of them to steal into the Olympic village, quickly
murder two members of the Israeli team (the wrestling coach
and a weightlifter), and take nine other Israeli athletes
hostage. The terrorists demanded the release of 200 Arab
prisoners and safe passage back to the Middle East. German
authorities lured them, with their captives, to the airport, but a
rescue attempt was badly botched. In the resulting battle, the
Palestinians killed all nine Israeli athletes by grenade and
gunfire, as well as murdering a German policeman. Five of the
terrorists were killed in the struggle, but German authorities
managed to capture the remaining three. True to form,
Arafat's organization responded the following month by
hijacking a Lufthansa jet and taking the passengers hostage.
The Germans capitulated, releasing the killers.
Arafat, meanwhile, also kept Israel's support network, the
U.S., in his sights. On March 1, 1973, another eight-member
Black September cell raided the Saudi embassy in Khartoum,
Sudan, taking as captives two American government officials,
Ambassador Cleo Noel and the Charge d'Affaires George
Curtis Moore, as well as a Belgian diplomat named Guy Eid.
The terrorists demanded the release of Sirhan Sirhan in
California (jailed for the 1968 slaying of Robert F. Kennedy),
of Palestinians imprisoned in Jordan (including Black
September's own Abu Daoud, who later claimed to be the
master-planner of the Munich Olympics massacre), and of
Palestinian women jailed in Israel. When they were rebuffed,
the terrorists murdered Noel, Moore, and Eid, and then
anxiously surrendered to the Sudanese authorities.
These murders, theoretically an act of war against the U.S.,
were never "solved" in the sense of convicting the man
ultimately responsible. The FBI was reported to have
reopened an investigation of them earlier this year, and at
least one State Department spokesman has strangely claimed
the link between Arafat and Black September was never
conclusively established - even as he acknowledged Black
September's membership in Arafat's own Fatah faction.
Nonetheless, a number of Israeli and American intelligence
officials have long maintained that Arafat personally ordered
the killings by issuing a radio message, to wit: "Why are you
waiting? The people's blood in the Cold River cries for
vengeance" - Cold River reportedly being a predetermined
code directing the executions. Furthermore, in the kangaroo
court that passed for a Sudanese prosecution, one of the
terrorists, Salim Rizak, testified: "We carried out this
operation on the orders of the Palestine Liberation
Organization"; while another witness, the Sudanese official
who conducted interrogations, reported that the killers had
taken their cues from radio messages emanating from Fatah
headquarters in Beirut. Thus abound dark suspicions, not to
mention an explicit allegation by former NSA official James J.
Welsh, that Arafat's complicity was shunted aside for what
was perversely perceived as the greater good of
diplomatically cultivating him. Meanwhile, of the eight
surrendering Black September terrorists, two were released
immediately by the Sudanese due to purportedly insufficient
evidence, while the remaining six were convicted, sentenced
to life-imprisonment, and...released the very next day to the
open arms of the PLO.
From his Lebanese perch, Arafat's rampage of Israel
continued apace. On April 11, 1974, the PLO slaughtered
eighteen residents of Kiryat Shmona in their apartment
building. A month later, on May 15, Palestinian terrorists
attacked a school in Ma'alot, murdering 26 Israelis, including
several children. Then, in June, the PLO - through the
"Palestinian National Council" - endorsed what it called a
"phased plan" to obliterate Israel.
Weak-Kneed Appeasement
Seven years earlier, of course, Egypt, joined by Syria and
Jordan, had foolishly launched yet another war of aggression
against Israel. They were routed in the Six Day War of June
1967, at the end of which Israel's territorial holdings had
drastically swelled to include the West Bank and East
Jerusalem (taken from Jordan), the Suez and Gaza (from
Egypt), and the Golan Heights (from Syria). It was understood
that this expansion would not be permanent - in accordance
with U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, Israel agreed
eventually to withdraw from some undetermined portion of
these territories in exchange for peace treaties that settled
borders and acknowledged Israel's right to exist. In Arafat's
1974 phased plan, however, the PLO reaffirmed its rejection
of Resolution 242 and committed itself to establish, in any
ceded territory, a Palestinian state that would work toward
Israel's destruction.
Adumbrating the global strategy for dealing with terror that
would reign supreme through the quarter century leading up
to the 9/11 attacks, the world reacted to Arafat's
contemptuous belligerence with weak-kneed appeasement.
The PLO was rewarded with observer status in the U.N., and
on November 13, 1974, a triumphant and utterly unrepentant
Arafat, holster strapped to his hip, addressed the General
Assembly in New York City. By 1980, the European Economic
Community recognized him as the "sole legitimate
representative" of the Palestinian people.
Not that there weren't setbacks. In 1979, Israel had struck a
historic peace deal with Egypt in which it agreed to a phased
pull-out from the Sinai (completed in 1982) and acknowledged
that there should eventually be some form of autonomy for
the Palestinian enclaves of the West Bank and Gaza. With its
southern flank calmed, Israel wearied of continuing missile
attacks and other sorties launched against its northern
communities from the PLO's Lebanese stronghold. Israel
invaded in 1982, inducing Arafat to flee to Tunis.
From Killing Klinghoffer to "Nobel" Star
The PLO's bloodlust did not abate. In 1985, a cell identifying
itself as the Palestine Liberation Front, led by Mohammed
Abu al-Abbas, hijacked the Italian cruise ship, Achille Lauro.
As his horrified wife looked on, the terrorists viciously shot a
69-year-old, wheelchair-bound Jew named Leon Klinghoffer,
then tossed him overboard to die in the sea. Despite
indications that the PLF was acting on instructions from PLO
headquarters in Tunis, a State Department spokesman
incredibly contended as late as 2002 that the PLF had been a
renegade group broken off from the PFLP, and that Arafat
was probably blameless in the Achille Lauro operation. But,
aside from the fact that the PLO's website (for its U.N.
mission) listed the PLF as one of its constituents, Abbas had
actually been a member of Arafat's own PLO Executive
Committee. More to the point, when Abbas died last year in
Iraq (where he had been harbored by Arafat's staunch ally,
Saddam Hussein), Arafat issued an official statement lavishly
praising him as a "martyr leader" and "a distinguished fighter
and a national leader who devoted his life to serve his own
people and his homeland."
Not long after Achille Lauro, Arafat began in 1987 to blaze the
path that, by the mid-1990's, sickeningly transformed him into
a regular White House guest and a Nobel Laureate. As was
his Orwellian wont, he started on the road to faux
respectability with a terrorist barrage that became known as
the First Intifada. (With Arafat, it had to be the First Intifada
because there would, of course, be a Second.)
The siege was ignited by two unconnected events in the
powder keg of Gaza: the December 6 murder of an Israeli,
followed quickly by the tragic December 10 death of four
Palestinians in a car accident which was falsely, but
unrelentingly, hyped as a revenge killing. Skirmishes quickly
broke out in Gaza, and careened through the West Bank and
East Jerusalem. The violence, a roller-coaster of lulls and
explosions, lasted over six years. In the first four years - that
is, the period before the ebb that marked the onset of the
1991 Gulf War - Israeli defense forces responded to more
than 3,600 Molotov cocktail attacks, 100 hand grenade
attacks, and 600 assaults with guns or explosives, all of
which killed 27 and wounded over 3000. Although the PLO
was rivaled in the operation by militant Islamic groups such
as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Arafat's group dominated the so-
called "Unified Leadership of the Intifada," using leaflets to
direct the days and targets of attacks.
Israelis were not alone among the terror casualties. Arafat
unleashed PLO death squads to kill numerous Arabs who
were deemed to be collaborating with the enemy. In 1990, the
Arabic publication Al-Mussawar reported Arafat's defense of
the tactic: "We have studied the files of those who were
executed, and found that only two of the 118 who were
executed were innocent." As for those putative innocents,
Arafat sloughed them off as "martyrs of the Palestinian
revolution."
Even as the violence hummed, Arafat assumed his
statesman's face for the West, to great effect. As the body
count mounted in 1988, the U.N. granted the PLO's observer
mission the right to participate, though not vote, in General
Assembly sessions. In addition, the administration of George
H. W. Bush held open the possibility of direct dialogue if
Arafat would renounce terrorism and agree to be bound by
Resolution 242. This he purported to do on December 16,
1988, claiming to acknowledge "the right of all parties
concerned in the Middle East conflict to exist in peace and
security...including the state of Palestine and Israel and other
neighbors according to the Resolutions 242 and 338"; and
asserting: "As for terrorism...I repeat for the record that we
totally and absolutely renounce all forms of terrorism,
including individual, group and state terrorism." Like the
Europeans, the U.S. officially recognized Arafat as the
legitimate leader of the Palestinians.
The bankruptcy of these claims was revealed as the Intifada
ensued and Arafat blundered by publicly aligning with
Saddam both after the invasion of Kuwait and throughout
Iraq's scud missile attacks on Israel. But just as it seemed he
might finally fade away, the strongman caught a lifeline when
Gulf War victory failed to carry the first President Bush to re-
election. Bush's successor, President Bill Clinton, saw in the
intractable Israeli/Palestinian conflict the chance for an
enduring legacy, and saw in Arafat a viable "peace partner."
With Clinton as determined midwife, Arafat and the
government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the
ballyhooed Oslo Accords of 1993. The Palestinian Authority
was created, Arafat was appointed its chief executive, and a
plan for eventual self-government by Palestinians in the West
Bank and Gaza was set in motion. But euphoria over this
seeming breakthrough blurred appreciation of both Arafat's
innate mendacity and Oslo's patent failure to resolve key
contentious issues, including final borders, the status of East
Jerusalem, and the rights of Israeli settlers and Palestinian
refugees - under the delusion that Arafat would work in
good faith toward a peaceful, comprehensive settlement with
Israel over a five-year period.
The mega-murderer was suddenly statesman, star, and, in
1994, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize - a once-coveted
honor now, by his attainment of it, reduced to a joke best
listed among his countless victims. Thanks to this peace
partner, it soon became clear that Oslo was a charade, a case
of a credulous American president choosing his honey over
his lying eyes.
The Palestinian Authority reneged on its promises of
democratic reform and establishment of the rule of law -
holding elections exactly once and never again after Arafat
was overwhelmingly elected. Arafat also failed to honor,
despite incessant pleading by Clinton administration figures,
a commitment that the Palestinian National Charter would be
amended to remove clauses calling for the destruction of
Israel. The PA made a show of appearing to comply,
disingenuously noting the provisions purportedly slated for
nullification and calling for a new draft of the Charter to be
produced. No revised Charter, however, was ever
forthcoming. Meanwhile, what education system existed in
the territories, much like Arafat's public statements in Arabic
(always far more menacing than the English he spoke to the
Western world), continued to instill hatred for Jews and calls
for the demise of their state. Naturally, the terrorist activity
also proceeded, with the PA ineffectual in halting it - when
not encouraging it outright.
There should have been surprise in none of this. As Stephens
reports, in 1996, Arafat brayed to an Arab audience in
Stockholm, "We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and
establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life
unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population
explosion.... We Palestinians will take over everything,
including all of Jerusalem." Asked about his plans on
Egyptian television in 1998, Arafat explained that strategic
pause was a venerable Islamic strategy, referring specifically
to the "Khudaibiya agreement" in which the Prophet
Mohammed made a ten-year treaty with the Arabian tribe of
Koreish, but broke it after two years - during which his
forces used the security of the pact to marshal their strength
- and then conquered the Koreish tribe.
Such machinations were certainly no secret to the
governments and media in the U.S., Europe and Israel itself.
They knew precisely who Yasser Arafat was. But politically
and culturally, hopeful hearts and good intentions were for
them more essential than results on the ground - the
"process" always took precedence over the "peace." Thus, in
the Wye River Accords of 1998, the Clinton administration
and Israel, now led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
took the terrorist at his word when he promised, yet again, to
crack down on terror, this time in exchange for a pull back of
Israeli forces (which had entered the territories in response to
terror attacks), the ceding of additional territory to PA control,
and even the release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners -
many of whom had been incarcerated for terrorism offenses.
14 9/11s
The violence never stopped. Yet, with his presidency winding
down in 2000 and desperate for an accomplishment that
might balance a record besmirched by scandal, President
Clinton boldly sought a final time to forge a comprehensive
settlement. He brought Arafat and yet another new Israeli
Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, to Camp David. Under intense
U.S. pressure, Israel offered the creation of a Palestinian state
over 90 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza, with its
capital to be in East Jerusalem. In a move comprehensible
only if one accepts that Arafat was incorrigibly devoted to
Israel's extermination - in which case, it was entirely
comprehensible - Arafat rejected this stunning offer, with
poison-pill insistence that millions of Palestinians be
accorded a right of return to Israel.
The breakdown of negotiations resulted, like night followed
day with Arafat, in a new round of terror: the Second Intifada,
which continues to this day. This program has been pursued
mostly by suicide bombings - often including explosives
strapped to children encouraged by the culture of shahada, or
martyrdom, which thrived under Arafat's corrupt and
dysfunctional leadership. In the main, attacks have willfully
targeted civilians in busses, restaurants, shopping centers,
synagogues, hotels and other public centers. Since 2000,
approximately 900 Israelis, three quarters of whom were
civilians, have been murdered. To extrapolate to American
proportions, for a country the size of Israel this is the rough
equivalent of over 40,000 dead - or, as the Hudson Institute's
Anne Bayefsky has calculated, about 14 9/11s.
Arafat's world, like everyone else's, radically changed on
September 11, 2001. The Bush Doctrine, announcing a
commitment to eradicate terrorists and terror supporting
governments, did not immediately spell the end for the
Palestinian strongman. He was, however, gradually
marginalized and reduced to pariah status - but for the
markedly less frequent, and ineffectual, paeans from Europe,
the Islamic world and the U.N.
The magic began to fail even his most trusted old tricks. For
example, on December 16, 2001, with American forces
suppressing terrorists in Afghanistan, an ostensibly
chastened Arafat appeared on PA-controlled Palestinian
television to warn Hamas and Islamic Jihad against "all
military activities" against Israel, and to purportedly "renew"
his "call to completely halt any activities, especially suicide
attacks, which we have condemned and always condemned."
This time, the ploy fell flat - undercut, no doubt, after the
Nobel laureate characteristically followed it up only two days
later with a speech at a Ramallah rally - the kind of red meat
always conveniently ignored in the halcyon pre-9/11 days.
"With God's help," he boasted:
"next time we will meet in Jerusalem, because we are
fighting to bring victory to our prophets, every baby, every
kid, every man, every woman and every old person and all the
young people, we will all sacrifice ourselves for our holy
places and we will strengthen our hold of them and we are
willing to give 70 of our martyrs for every one of theirs in this
campaign, because this is our holy land. We will continue to
fight for this blessed land and I call on you to stand strong."
The jig was up. Arafat's celebrity might be a product of the
"international community" but his relevance was strictly
made-in-the-USA, and America was no longer buying. The
administration of President George W. Bush let it be known
that Arafat would no longer be dealt with. When the president
eventually proposed his "roadmap" to resume negotiations
toward an eventual Palestinian state, he snubbed Arafat and
made unconditional cessation of all Palestinian terrorism a
nonnegotiable prerequisite. Critically, the administration also
eased the restraints that had for decades compelled Israel to
accord its sworn enemy so wide a berth.
Now under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel responded
forcefully to the terror onslaught, including through high-
profile "targeted assassinations" of Hamas leaders. Its forces
tightened the noose around Arafat. Unable to leave his
squalid Ramallah compound with any assurance that he'd
either survive or be permitted to return, the "president" of
what was more a racket than a government - and decidedly
not a nation - remained holed up there for over two years
until his evacuation to Paris, in extremis, in late October.
There he died on Wednesday, one of history's most repulsive
conmen and killers.
"The power of bad men," Burke famously observed, "is no
indifferent thing." The power of this evil man informed an age
- the age of terrorism. The Israelis and Palestinians may
never coexist peacefully, but as long as Yasser Arafat lived
they didn't even have a chance.
******
Andrew C. McCarthy, who led the 1995 terrorism
prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven
others, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of
Democracies.
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November 15, 2004
Arafat Tape
Audio tape of Arafat's famous speech in English,
in Johannesburg, South Africa, on May 10, 1994
Price: $7 (Includes shipping, handling and a transcript)
Only a few months after he signed the Clinton-Arafat-Rabin
Agreement (the Oslo Accords), Arafat discloses his true
intent to a Muslim audience in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Arafat promised, in his speech, to do exactly what the
Prophet Mohammed did when he was militarily weak.
Mohammed signed a peace treaty with the Jewish tribe of
Koraish, but as soon as he became militarily strong, he
abrogated this agreement and slaughtered the entire tribe.
To order the tape, send a check to: Women in Green, P.O.B.
7352, 91072 Jerusalem, Israel.
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November 15, 2004
Another one bites the dust
By Joseph Farah
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Who says we shouldn't rejoice when an evil person dies?
Certainly not the Bible.
In fact, Proverbs 11:10 says: "When the wicked perish, there
is shouting."
I feel like shouting today. I feel like rejoicing. The world is a
better place today because that cold, calculating monster is
no longer in it. He is meeting his eternal judgment. And I hear
it is crazy cold down there.
Why don't I agree with the New York Times, Kofi Annan,
Jimmy Carter and others who are actually mourning this
degenerate pervert?
Yasser Arafat was a murderer of Christians, Jews, Israelis
and Americans – including U.S. diplomats, tourists, innocent
women and children. Yasser Arafat was an unrepentant
terrorist – the modern-day inventor of Arab terrorism, an
inspiration for Osama bin Laden and others. Yasser Arafat
was an exploiter of his own people, keeping them in squalor
and perpetuating their hatreds while padding his own Swiss
bank accounts.
I had my own experiences with Arafat as a Middle East
correspondent. He tried to kill me, too, while I was visiting
Lebanon once. But he missed with his rockets and artillery.
I'm still here, but Arafat is dead.
Arafat had tried to take over Lebanon. But he was chased out
by the Israelis. He directly or indirectly caused the deaths of
about 40,000 Lebanese, however.
He killed tens of thousands, some in cold blood, others – like
the U.S. diplomats in 1973 – through his gleeful orders.
Why should we mourn a monster like this? Why should we fly
a flag at half-staff – unless we approve of his antics?
Do Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter and the New York Times
understand that Arafat – their hero, their friend – was a Nazi
sympathizer? Would the truth about that make any difference
to them?
In an interview in 2002 published in Al Sharq al Awsat, a
London Arabic daily, reprinted in the Palestinian daily Al
Quds, Aug. 2, and translated by Palestinian Media Watch,
Arafat called the Arab leader and Nazi ally, Hajj Amin al-
Husseini, "our hero." He drew an analogy between himself
and al-Husseini who survived as a leader despite world
pressure against him because of his Nazi ties.
"We are not Afghanistan," said Arafat in the interview. "We
are a mighty people. Were they able to replace our hero Hajj
Amin al-Husseini? There were a number of attempts to get rid
of Hajj Amin, whom they considered an ally of the Nazis. But
even so, he lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 war,
and I was one of his troops."
Arafat seldom tells the truth, but, in this case, his facts were
correct.
Hajj Amin al-Husseini was the grand mufti of Jerusalem
leading up to World War II. He supported the Nazis. He met
with Adolph Hitler. He was a strong proponent of the Nazi
program for mass murder of the Jews.
In fact, Arafat's hero became a German agent, and the British
tried repeatedly to arrest him as a spy.
Perhaps the mufti's "greatest achievement" was the
recruitment of tens of thousands of Muslims in Bosnia-
Herzegovina and Albania to the German SS. His Arab legions
later participated in the massacres of thousands of partisan
Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.
On March 1, 1944, Arafat's hero was in Berlin making a
dramatic radio broadcast: "Arabs! Rise as one and fight for
your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This
pleases God, history and religion. This saves your honor."
The Nazi mufti visited numerous death camps and
encouraged Hitler to extend the "Final Solution" to the Jews
of North Africa and Palestine. In fact, his only condition for
recruiting the Arab legions in the Balkans was a promise from
Hitler to wipe out the Jews of the Middle East after the war.
The grand mufti was not just Arafat's "hero," as he says.
Arafat was, in fact, so close to al-Husseini that the young
terrorist called him "uncle." Arafat's real name is Rahman
Abdul Rauf el-Qudwa al-Husseini, though his actual blood
relationship with al-Husseini is in question. His entire career
was sponsored by the dreaded Nazi mufti. He was, indeed,
Arafat's mentor, his inspiration for 40 years of terror, murder,
hatred and international duplicity.
Let this be Arafat's final epitaph: He was a terrorist. He was a
murderer. He was a liar. He was pro-Nazi scum.
I, for one, am glad to see him dead.
********
Joseph Farah is founder, editor and chief executive officer of
WND and a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host. He is
also the founder of WND Books. In addition to his daily
column in WND, he writes a nationally syndicated weekly
column available to U.S. newspapers through Creators
Syndicate.
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November 16, 2004
Upcoming Events
Dear friends-
The following weeks and months are crucial for the state of
Israel. PM Ariel Sharon is going ahead, with his suicidal plan
against the will of the public,. But Women in Green has
good news. It is in the power of the People of Israel to stop
Sharon's plan and thus to save Israel from its crazy political
leadership. For this all of need to participate in the (many!)
upcoming events. Mark your calendar and join us.
1) SUNDAY AFTERNOON, NOVEMBER 21st,2004
Handcuffed Human Chain for Jonathan Pollard
Media Release -From: The Committee to Bring Jonathan
Pollard Home
Contact: Nissan GanOr and/or Adi Ginzburg
JONATHAN POLLARD THE NATION IS WITH YOU!
On November 21, 2004 (8 Kislev) Jonathan Pollard will
complete his 19th year in prison and enter year 20 of a life
sentence for his activities on behalf of
Israel.
The Committee to Bring Jonathan Pollard Home invites the
public to show their support for Jonathan on the 20th year
anniversary date by participating in a handcuffed human
chain event on November 21st. Participants will sport plastic
handcuffs and form a human chain from the American
Consulate in Jerusalem to the Prime Minister's residence.
Former Prisoners of Zion and former POWs will all be there to
participate. You can participate too! Here are the details:
When: November 21, 2004
Where: Jerusalem, Israel
Time: 5:30 PM [17:30]
Location: Meet in Independence Park on Rechov Agron
(Independence Park is opposite the American Consulate)
Donning of plastic handcuffs in the Park and formation of
human chain will be followed by a demonstration outside of
the Prime Minister's residence at 6:30 PM [18:30]. Come one!
Come all!
For further information and to arrange transportation: 054-
643-7218 or isit www.FreePollard.org
Hebrew Flyer for this event at www.jonathanpollard.org
******
2) MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22nd, 2004
SIGNING UP RESERVISTS ON THE "I REFUSE TO EXPEL
JEWS FROM ISRAEL" PETITION
Where: Jerusalem, main entrance to Central Bus station
When: 9:30am
Please call to confirm you are coming: Nadia
050-5-500834 or Anita 050-5-777254
******
3) TUESDAY , NOVEMBER 23, 2004
WOMEN IN GREEN MEETING OF MEMBERS DETAILING
PLAN OF ACTION.
TOPIC: "Together we can stop Sharon's transfer plan"
Where: at WIG headquarters, 23 Pele Yoetz Yemin
Moshe, Jerusalem
When: Tuesday, November 23rd, 2004 at 7:30 pm
New members can join at door (100NIS)
******
4) DECEMBER 1st, 2004
WE ARE ALL GUSH KATIF & SHOMRON!
YESHA is organizing a two-week protest tentcity in front of
the Knesset starting Monday, November 22nd . Every day
hundreds of people will be participating in different activities
of protest around the knesset. The two weeks of protest will
end with a mass demonstration in front of the knesset on
Wednesday December 1st. Details will be available in the
newspapers in the coming days.
******
5) HANUKA WITH WOMEN IN GREEN IN THE SHOMRON!
Reserve the date: CHANUKKA, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 12,
2004- from 8:30am till 6:00pm
an exciting trip to two of the four communities in Northern
Samaria that Ariel Sharon wants to destroy, expel its Jewish
inhabitants and hand over to the Arab enemy. Come and see
with your own eyes why Israel cannot give up on those
crucial areas. In addition we will distribute toys and candies
to the children of those brave communities . A day you do not
want to miss. Call our office today and reserve seats on the
bus as places are limited.
Price: 75 NIS per Adult; 35 NIS per child under 13
years old
*******
6) WATCH MACHSOMWATCH
For the past few months, Women in Green teams have been
going on weekly trips to the different IDF checkpoints-
handing out drinks and treats to our dear brave soldiers and
helping them deal with the horrendous harassment from
Machsomwatch (The women of the extreme left who come to
the IDF checkpoints to harass the IDf soldiers and thereby
help the Arab enemy). In order for our campaign to be even
more succesful, we need more people to join us. We urge
you to help us continue by * donating to Wig, or raising
funds for this campaign * organizing parlor meetings in
your synagogue or church and community centers and
homes. Where possible, we will gladly come and explain why
this campaign is so vital and what it accomplishes. However,
we are sure you will be able to handle such meetings by
yourselves. as the purpose and goals of our being at these
checkpoints and assisting IDF soldiers are self-evident.
"While you alone can not complete all that has to be done,
you are not free from the obligation to make the necessary
effiorts.." (Ethics of the Fathers 2:21 ) There is much that has
to be done and accomplished ...... See you at all of the above
scheduled events!
Ruth and Nadia Matar
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Novemer 17, 2004
STOP THE WAR AGAINST FELLOW JEWS
LETTER FROM RUTH MATAR (WOMEN IN GREEN)
JERUSALEM
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Dear Friends,
Our son, David Matar, my co-chair Nadia's husband, called
us last night.
"I want you to hear it from me," he said, "What I just
decided to do, before you hear it on the news. I have sent
a letter to my commander General Elazar Stern, who is
responsible for manpower in the Israeli Defense Forces,
that I am no longer able to do my reserve duty."
The following is an English translation of David's letter in
its entirety:
To Chief Manpower Branch IDF
General Elazar Stern
Dear Sir,
My name is Dr David Matar, ID # 015484298, army ID #
4662007, rank: Medical Officer.
I have served as a chairman of a medical committee at the
IDF Jerusalem Recruitment Office for the last 15 years,
beginning with my regular duty for a year and a half in '89-
'90, when I served as Chief Medical Officer in the
Jerusalem Recruitment Office, and since then, as a
reserve officer on one-day duty, that has usually exceeded
thirty days a year. I am supposed to serve, according to
the current law, until January 2006, that is another 14
months.
To my great chagrin and sorrow, the Knesset has
approved the so-called "disengagement plan" and
"evacuation-compensation" law of PM Ariel Sharon. As
you know, the term "disengagement" is a euphemism for
the forcible expulsion of more than 8000 Jews from their
homes and lifework in the Gaza district and the Northern
Shomron, and the uprooting and destruction of tens of
flourishing communities, including every last synagogue
and cemetery.
The Prime Minister has charged the army with the overall
responsibility for the execution of his plan, even though
the actual act of expulsion is supposed to be carried out
by the Border Patrol and Police. The media is full of
reports on serious preparations by the army to carry out
Sharon's program, including detailed planning,
intelligence gathering, training of picked army units on
"dummy settlements", and the construction of detention
camps for citizens who dare to resist, all with the openly
declared intention to use any and all means to suppress
any resistance of the Jewish residents to expulsion from
their homes and destruction of their life's work.
All this means that the army hierarchy has received and
accepted orders to declare war on a large group of
innocent and loyal citizens, to define them operationally as
a hostile target, and to break into their homes by force, in
order to drag out men, women and children. These are
preparations for battle, by any definition, featuring planned
violence by our security forces against Jewish citizens,
which will degenerate very quickly into tragedies
reminiscent of the Altalena episode. These self-inflicted
losses do not include the heavy casualties in our midst
from Arab fire during, and especially after, the period that
the plan is carried out.
This insane order is patently illegal, and therefore every
soldier, Jew or non-Jew, should adamantly refuse to obey.
The IDF was founded to defend the people and land of
Israel by fighting Arab enemies - not by attacking Jewish
brothers. In addition, as a religious Jew who tries to
observe the Torah's commandments, I view any order that
conflicts with the commandment of building the Land of
Israel as equivalent to a command that attempts to impose
the desecration of the Sabbath or the eating of swine.
Such orders cross a red line, since they force the soldier
to choose between his commitment to the most
fundamental ideological principles, as opposed to his
loyalty to the institutions of army and state.
Even though I, personally, as a doctor in the Jerusalem
Recruitment office, do not expect to receive orders to
uproot our brothers from Gush Katif and the Northern
Shomron, I am not even now able, emotionally and
ethically, to serve in a hostile army that has declared war
on me, on my family, on my friends and neighbors, and a
large part of our people. This remains true even if a
thousand "disengagement" laws are passed by all 120
Knesset members, with the combined sanction of a
popular referendum, Israel's Supreme Court, the U.N., and
the U.S. State Department.
Therefore, I am hereby returning my army reserves card. I
am, of course, ready to bear the consequences of this act -
including a court-martial.
I am actually looking forward to an opportunity to raise my
views in a public forum, so that others, who serve in the
reserves in non-combat positions, can be inspired to do
likewise. It goes without saying, that if Sharon's plan is
officially shelved or cancelled, that I will be happy to return
to serve as I have faithfully done these past 15 years.
Dr. David Matar, IDF Medical Officer
* * *
It is fortunate that David warned us, because the airwaves
are now full, pro and con, of his decision not to be party to
the illegal expulsion of 8,000 fellow Jews from their
homes.
David is our first born son. He has always been our pride
and joy. He did his premed studies at Columbia University
in New York where he graduated summa cum laude.
Subsequently he completed his studies at Harvard Medical
School, where he chose Pediatrics as his specialty.
The possibility of Jewish mothers with babies being
forcibly dragged out of their homes has long loomed like a
nightmare in his mind. He felt, I am sure, that he had to
personally do what he could to stop this insane illegal plan
to wage war against fellow Jews.
Michael and I are, of course, very proud of David. But, as
a mother, I am concerned about the army's threat to court-
martial him. However, we both respect our son's decision
and pray that others serving in the reserves will have the
courage to follow in his footsteps.
With Blessings and Love for Israel,
Ruth Matar
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November 20, 2004
Onward Christian Voters
By Michael Freund, Jerusalem Post
By now it should be clear that George W. Bush wasn't the
only big winner to emerge from this month's US
presidential election.
In terms of flexing political muscle and shaping the
outcome of the vote, no group proved more successful
than America's evangelical Christians. They flocked to the
polls, boosting the incumbent and helping to set the
country's political agenda for the next four years.
While some American Jews view this development with
mounting concern, my reaction is far more sanguine, even
upbeat: Israel should be thanking God for the rise of the
Christian Right. They are the best hope for ensuring long-
term US diplomatic support for the Jewish state in an
increasingly hostile world.
Sure, American Jews still wield a great deal of political
power, thanks to their concentration in key states and their
extensive involvement in the political process. But the
American Jewish community is in the throes of a
protracted demographic decline and their power will
inevitably diminish over time.
By contrast, US evangelicals, many of whom proudly refer
to themselves as Christian Zionists, are clearly on the
upswing.
According to the Pew Research Center, evangelical
Protestants accounted for 23% of the entire American
electorate, or nearly one out of every four voters, in the
recent election.
And, as the Los Angeles Times noted, "Christian
evangelicals provided much of the passion and manpower
for President Bush's reelection" (November 12).
Indeed, political guru Arthur Finkelstein was even more
blunt, telling the Israeli daily Ma'ariv that "Bush's strategy
secures the power of the American Christian Right not
only for this term. In fact, it secures its ability to choose
the next Republican president."
Even outside the ballot box evangelical Christians are a
force to be reckoned with.
A recent study by the Scripps Survey Research Center at
Ohio University found that an astonishing 38 percent of all
Americans describe themselves as being "born-again"
Christians.
In places such as the southern United States, the survey
revealed that a majority of residents, or 52 percent, fall
into this category.
And because of their attachment to the Bible, more and
more evangelical Christians are stepping forward to
embrace Israel, demonstrating a level of commitment and
support that is both sincere and deeply-rooted.
For years, groups such as the Unity Coalition for Israel
have been toiling both to build grassroots political support
for the Jewish state and to explain Israel's case to
members of Congress. They have helped win Israel
numerous friends in mid-western American states such as
Kansas, where the Jewish community is small.
Others, such as Pastor Robert Stearns of New Jersey,
have succeeded in organizing evangelicals to pray on
Israel's behalf. Last month, Stearns launched an annual
"Day of Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem, a worldwide
effort that involved tens of thousands of churches from
Korea to California.
Organizations such as Bridges for Peace, the International
Christian Embassy in Jerusalem and the International
Christian Zionist Center have been at the forefront of
encouraging Christian tourism to Israel and raising funds
for various social welfare projects, while leaders such as
the Rev. Pat Robertson have been outspoken on Israel's
behalf.
Hence, it is about time Israel and American Jewry put
aside many of their reservations and doubts and started to
engage evangelical Christians more candidly and openly.
Of course, we must remain on guard against missionary
elements seeking to proselytize Jews. But it would be
unfair, and even wrong, to suspect all Christian supporters
of Israel as being surreptitious soul-snatchers.
Many are sincere and devoted in their love for Israel, their
sole motivation being to live in accordance with God's
promise to the patriarch Abraham: "I will bless those who
bless you, and those who curse you shall be cursed."
To turn down their friendship and backing because of
misguided stereotypes regarding their motivations would
be an act of sheer folly on our part.
As Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder of the International
Federation of Christians and Jews and a pioneer in the
field, has argued, "It is wrong and shortsighted of Israel
and the Jewish community not to reach out to these
people, even as they become more and more powerful.
The Jewish community needs to get its act together."
That message is beginning to get across. MK Yuri Stern
recently created a Christian Allies Caucus in the Knesset,
which works to promote better relations between Israel
and Christian groups. And the Israeli Ministry of Tourism
has been working more closely with US Christians to
promote visits to the Holy Land.
But far more needs to be done. The bond between US
Christians and Israel has all the makings of a historic
alliance, one that could both heal the painful wounds of
the past while paving the way for tremendous
accomplishments in the future.
Properly cultivated, the relationship could help strengthen
our position immeasurably and guarantee bedrock US
support for Israel for years to come.
***
The writer served as Deputy Director of Communications &
Policy Planning under former Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu.
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November 23, 2004
Pollard Speech- Don't Trade Me For Barghouti
[IMRA has obtained an English translation of the speech
slated for
presentation in Hebrew at the Handcuffed Human Chain
Rally in
Jerusalem, November 21, 2004]
What do Marwan Barghouti, Dennis Ross and I have in
common?
- Marwan Barghouti is serving multiple life sentences in an
Israeli prison for
murdering Jews.
- Dennis Ross, a Jew, is the former US Special Envoy to
the Middle East
(1988 to 2000).
- I, Jonathan Pollard, am serving a life sentence in America
for my activities
on behalf of Israel.
The common thread that links us all is the amorality of the
Israeli
Government, and its constant willingness to sacrifice its
people on the altar
of political expediency. I would like to discuss that idea
with you today in
honor of an historic occasion. On this day, 20 years ago,
an historic record
was set. For the first time in modern history, a bona fide
agent was expelled
from the embassy of the country he served, and thrown
out into the street to
be arrested by local security services. The nation he
served became the
first and only nation in the history of modern espionage to
cooperate in the
prosecution of its own agent. Indeed, they did such a
thorough job, that he
received an unprecedented life sentence for an offense
that usually merits a
2 to 4 year sentence, or less. I am that agent; and Israel is
the nation I
served.
Now in my 20th year of a life sentence with no end in sight,
it is irrelevant to
talk about whether or not I was abandoned and betrayed
by the country I
served. The facts speak for themselves.
Lately there has been a barrage of speculation in the
Israeli media about a
new proposal to secure my release. The deal is that I may
be traded, along
with Azzam Azzam (the Israeli Druse in prison in Egypt) for
the release of
Marwan Barghouti, murderer of Jews and mastermind of
the Intifada. Let
me state from the outset that I have always been opposed
to gaining my
freedom in exchange for the release of murderers and
terrorists. My
position has not changed. I deserve to be released
because my sentence is
unjust and because the U.S. has promised my release on
more than one
occasion, including a commitment by the President of the
United States at
the Wye Summit in 1998. Someone who fundamentally
agrees that I
should be released because my sentence is unjust, and
not in return for
unilateral concessions by Israel, is the former US Special
Envoy to the
Middle East, Dennis Ross.
In his new book, "The Missing Peace" (Farrar Straus
Giroux, N.Y., 2004)
Ross writes that at Wye the President asked him if freeing
me would be
important to Israel. "Yes," [Ross replied] "because he is
considered a
soldier for Israel and there is an ethos in Israel that you
never leave a
soldier behind in the field." (page 438) In a footnote on the
same page
Ross added: "I also said I was in favor of [Pollard's]
release, believing that
he had received a harsher sentence than others who had
committed
comparable crimes. I preferred not tying his release to any
agreement..."
No sooner does Ross acknowledge the injustice of my
sentence and that I
deserve to be freed unconditionally, than he advises the
President NOT to
free me! Why? Because of my great value as a political
asset and a
bargaining chip. Ross writes that he cautioned the
President against
releasing me until greater concessions from Israel could
be secured during
final status talks. Referring to me as "it", he told the
President: "It would be
a huge payoff [for Israel]; you don't have many like it in
your pocket...You
will need it later, don't use it now." (page 439)
By understanding Ross' attitude towards me as an asset,
not a person, it
becomes possible for the first time to understand Prime
Minister Sharon's
indifference towards me. Sharon has deliberately,
calculatedly ignored
every opportunity to secure my release ever since he took
office. Why?
Because he too sees me as a political asset, and not as a
human being.
Sharon is apparently reserving me for a time that my
release will be the fig
leaf for some very, very dastardly initiative. Perhaps
something as dastardly
as enabling another mass murderer of Jews to become
prime minister of
the P.A. just as Israel once did for the arch murderer,
Yassir Arafat. In the
meantime, the Government of Israel recognizes that the
Americans regard
me as a very valuable bargaining chip. But instead of
pressing for my
release, Israel has learned how to exploit the bargaining
chip without ever
having to pay the price. Israel has learned how to
manipulate my name and
my fate in the media in order to sell the Israeli public on its
morally
repugnant actions.
Over the years, when it was calling for relinquishing the
Golan Heights;
when it was determined to divide Jerusalem; when it
abandoned Hebron;
when it wanted to renounce the Temple Mount - and so on
- the
Government publicly raised the hope that I would be
released as a reward
for making these terrible concessions. Each time the
Nation comforted
itself, thinking, well at least we will get Pollard... But it was
a lie. Even at
Wye, the bid for my release was simply to be the fig leaf to
sell a bad deal
to the Israeli public. As Dennis Ross puts it (page 455):
"[The Prime
Minister] said he couldn't do the deal without it. He said
that he'd made
concessions on the prisoners based on the assumption
that he would have
Pollard and on that basis he could sell the prisoners
[release], indeed, could
sell the whole deal". But like anything expendable, I was
dropped from the
agenda when the Americans reneged on their commitment
to free me. And
Israel released the Arab murderers and terrorists all the
same.
More recently, when debate was raging in the media about
the morality of
swapping terrorist chiefs Obeid and Durani, plus hundreds
of terrorists, for 3
dead Israelis and one live Israeli, Tanenbaum, my name
was linked to the
deal to soften the blow. As soon as the Israeli public got
used to the idea of
this obscene deal, my name was dropped and the deal was
done. There
was never any intention of including me in the deal, only of
raising the
Nation's expectation that I would be. Now, apparently,
Israel is planning to
do the same thing in order to justify releasing Marwan
Barghouti, the
multiple murderer of Jews. But this time, the stakes are
higher. And this
time, Israel might actually be forced to follow through.
When news of the proposed 3-way deal broke, my close
contacts began to
investigate. Here is what we have learned from reliable
sources in this
country and in Israel:
1. It is Israel, not the Arabs, who is pressing for
Barghouti's release. Officially,
Israel insists that it will never free Marwan Bargouhti. He is
a murderer sentenced to
multiple life sentences and freeing him, they claim, would
undermine the rule of law.
Unofficially, sources, including one very close to the
Prime Minister, admit that Israel
has been grooming Barghouti in prison to be the next
leader of the Palestinian
people. It is an open secret in Israel that top officials have
been secretly meeting
with Barghouti throughout his incarceration. He is taken
out of his prison cell and
brought to clandestine locations for these meetings, to
enlist his help in promoting
various initiatives with the Palestinians, such as the cease
fires. These secret
sessions are part of the "grooming" process.
2. It is Israel, not Barghouti's military Tanzim, who leaked
the story that there are
talks aimed at putting together a 3-way swap for
Barghouti's release. Officially,
Israel reviles Barghouti and dismisses any possibility of
releasing him. Unofficially,
Sharon's Government and his closest people believe that
Barghouti is someone that
they can work with, someone who can control the
Palestinian street. They see him
as someone who can unite the warring factions among the
Palestinian militias and
hold them in check.
3. It is Israel, not the Arabs, which is now secretly
supplying positive PR material to
the media about Barghouti. More than just whitewashing
Barghouti, Israel is
seeking to create the impression that there is such
popular support amongst the
Palestinian people for Barghouti, that it cannot be resisted
or denied. This is an
attempt to create an atmosphere where the U.S. feels it
must step in and direct
events. The Americans can then "force" Israel to release
Barghouti, and Israel can
do so with "clean hands."
4. It is Israel, not the Arabs, which is attempting to recast
Barghouti as the
Palestinian version of Nelson Mandela. Israel has done
more behind-the-scenes
work in the media in the last week to ensure the release of
the murderer Barghouti
and his subsequent election as Prime Minister of the PA,
than it has over the past 20
years to lay the foundations of my release! In fact, in the
last 2 decades, Israel has
never done anything in the media to help explain my case
to the American public or
to the Israeli public - in spite of my repeated requests for
this kind of help. My
contacts tell me that for Barghouti, they are working
overtime. Israel's behind-the-
scenes diplomacy and secret advocacy for Barghouti is
just another reflection of
government amorality. It is not a question of ethics but of
expediency. Morality has
nothing to do with it, and that is what makes this so
contemptible.
Finally,
5. It is Arab public opinion, not Israeli public opinion
which prevents Israel from
releasing Barghouti outright. Israel must make it appear
that it is being forced to
free Barghouti, and that a high price has been paid for his
release. Unless Israel
gains something very valuable in return for Barghouti, the
Palestinian "street" will
consider him a traitor, a collaborator, an Israeli stooge; his
credibility will be zero and
his life in danger. There are not many high-priced
bargaining chips left, and fewer
yet, of great value that won't cost the Palestinians
anything. Unfortunately, nothing I
say about my own unwillingness to have any part in such
a morally degenerate
scheme will make any difference. The Government will do
whatever it must, to get
what it wants, regardless of what I or anyone else may say
or do.
If they succeed, remember that only G-d knows how the
full story will turn
out. It says in Tehillim that sometimes G-d allows evil to
flourish, only to cut
it down all the more thoroughly (Psalm 92, Verse 7).
Although some may
believe that they rule the world, our fate both as
individuals and as a Nation
is, was, and always will be in the hands of the Almighty. As
G-d fearing
Jews we take our motto from Tehillim (Psalm 62,Verse 7):
In G-d is my
salvation and my glory; the rock of my strength, and my
refuge is in G-d!
Twenty years ago, on November 21, 1985, when I was
thrown out of the
Israeli Embassy, the Torah portion of the week was
Vayeitzei. Literally:
"And he went out". And I went out of the Embassy. This
week, for the first
time in 20 years, the Torah Portion corresponding to the
November 21st
anniversary is once again Vayeitzei. Let us hope that this
time, Vayeitzei
means, "And he went out of prison."
May the G-d of Israel bless us all and keep us safe from
harm! May He
speedily redeem us all - individually and collectively - to
do His will. May He
return me and my beloved wife, Esther, swiftly to the Land
so that the next
time we meet at a Pollard rally, it will be for the purpose of
giving thanks to
HaShem. Amen! So it be His Will!
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November 23, 2004
Nadia Matar Writes About the Pollard Handcuff Rally
Justice4JP Release - November 23, 2004
J4JP Prefacing Note:
Nadia Matar, co- leader of Women for Israel's Tomorrow wrote the
following
email to Esther and Jonathan to describe the Handcuffed Human Chain
Rally in
Jerusalem on November 21, 2004, marking the start of Jonathan's 20th year
in
prison. The rally was organized by Nissan GanOr and Adi Ginzburg, co-
chairmen of
The Committee to Bring Jonathan Pollard Home. J4JP received glowing
reports
about the event. Everyone reported the amazing spirit of all the
participants,
who repeatedy, spontaneously broke into song and dance for Jonathan.
They
cheered and chanted for him from the heart. The letter below is reprinted
with
permission of the author.
Dearest Esther and Jonathan,
I want you to know how incredible the handcufffed demonstration was!
Countless, endless numbers of our People, youngsters and adults,
handcuffed, holding
Jonathan's picture and shouting out loud in the streets of Jerusalem "FREE
JONATHAN POLLARD"- "FREE JONATHAN POLLARD"!!
There were tons of media present, and there were many, many cars driving
by,
and all were honking in support! In a word: very moving! The Committee to
Bring Jonathan Home is doing a great job!
I want to share a thought with you that may seem at first a little out of the
ordinary, but I was thinking about it yesterday while being handcuffed and
shouting and cheering for Jonathan.
I do not know if you know, but the south of Israel was attacked- yesterday-
by the plague of "arbeh"- locusts. The entire media was only talking about
that. How hundreds of thousands of locusts have "attacked" Eilat and were
going up
slowly, to the Arava and to the Negev etc...
The media was pointing out how this has not happened in Israel since the
1950's and what terrible damage could happen to Israel. And I was thinking
how we,
believing people, believe that everything in this world is done by Hashem
and
has a reason. And how, davka, especially on the day we mention
Jonathan's
20th year in jail, God sends to us the plague of locusts,
the plague God sent to Pharaoh when he refused to "let our people go".
Jonathan represents all of Am Yisrael. When Jonathan is in jail, it is as if
we are all in jail. And in order to let Am Yisrael out at the time in Egypt,
there was a need to send to Egypt ten plagues. At first one should think
then
that the plague should have been sent to the USA for Jonathan is jailed
there.
But no, the plague attacked us here in Israel- in the south.
The south is where Sharon has his Shikmim farm. The south is the area
that
Sharon wants to abandon (Gaza). And I feel G-d is maybe telling us,
today's
Pharaoh is Sharon. He has his heart hardened and does not do a thing to
release
Jonathan, to 'let Jonathan go". We all know that the keys to Jonathan's
freedom
are in Sharon's hands. He just needs to ask Bush , to make the case to him,
and Jonathan could be home with us.
I know this may sound a bit far-fetched to a non-believer. But the
coincidence, in my eyes, between the plague that attacked us and the
"anniversary" of
Jonathan's jail term, was just too amazing. It is simply a fact: the fate of
Jonathan is intimately connected to the fate of the Jewish people in Israel.
The conclusion in my eyes, should be the following:
At the time of the Egyptian slavery, we had great leaders who believed in G-
d
and had no fear of saying "Let my people go". Today, our political
leadership is so corrupt that they have cast themselves in the role of our
adversaries.
A political leadership that does nothing to bring Jonathan home, that
basically abandons Jonathan, is the same political leadership that does
nothing to
really fight and overcome the Arab enemy, basically capitulating to all the
terrorists' demands and thus abandoning the Jewish people.
Today, it is the People of Israel who are strong and believing and thus it is
the People of Israel who will have to act to free Jonathan and themselves.
The youngsters like Adi Ginzburgh, who with Nissan GanOr, organized the
demo
represents this generation of strong proud Jews who are not afraid to say:
"Jonathan is my brother- let him go!!".
Yesterdays demo was a success and hopefully will bring upon more and
more
activities for Jonathan, till, please G-d, we will be able to celebrate his
coming here to Jerusalem, as a free Jew, together with you Esther, his
loyal and
devoted wife.
We love you. Continue to be strong.
love,
Nadia
PS Attached is a photograph of our baby daughter, Nava Elisheva,
handcuffed
at the demo.
It was published in today's Hazofe. Her name is Nava Elisheva. Elisheva
stands for "ein lanu Yehuda v'Shomron bli Aza" *[To view photo click here
(coming
soon to the web)]
SEE ALSO:
Jonathan Pollard's Speech for 20th Year in Prison Anniversary
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2004/112104.htm
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November 23, 2004
The Awakening of Yosef Goell By Prof. Paul Eidelberg
The Arab barbarism displayed at the burial of Yasser Arafat in Ramallah
had a profound impact
on Jerusalem Post columnist Yosef Goell. Suddenly, Mr. Goell found the
courage to admit the
obvious, that the fictitious Palestinians do not deserve a state! Their use of
children as human
bombs to reduce Jews to body parts was not enough to awaken Mr. Goell
from his dogmatic
slumbers; no, it took a few Arabs to kill two Arabs at Arafat_s funeral to
arouse that somnolent
political scientist......
For the past eleven years, Mr.Goell slept while Allah_s pagan
worshippers_the fictitious
Palestinians_ murdered more than 1,200 Jews. He slept while the fictitious
Palestinians
wounded some ten thousand more Jews, many of them maimed for life. He
slept while these
fictitious Palestinians traumatized many tens of thousands of Jewish
children. But at last, he has
awakened to say No to the Palestinian state which Prime Minister Sharon
wants to bestow upon
these murderous _Palestinians._
Of course, Israel_s PM wants them to become normal human beings. Well,
it_s a bit too late for
that, Mr. Sharon. It would take at least one or two generations to humanize
these monsters.
Israel is now confronted by pathological Jew-killers. This did not prevent
Mr. Goell from
advancing the idiotic solution: let Egypt take over Gaza and Jordan take
over Judea and
Samaria. Israel would then revert to the halcyon days preceding the Six-
Day War!
Never mind that Egypt has been the primary arms supplier of these Jew-
killers. Never mind
what these killers would do to Jordan. And never mind JUSTICE, the grief
and pain these Arab
Nazis have brought to countless more Jews in Israel. Go back to sleep Mr.
Goell!
So what should be done with these hate-filled Arabs, who elected
Yasser Arafat as their
leader, and who are therefore responsible for his evil deeds; indeed, did
they not support his
repeatedly announced jihad, to drive the Jews into the sea, hence to
continue Hitler_s genocidal
solution to the _Jewish Problem_?
Before answering this question, let me cite, as I have in the past, these
words of a reputed
pacifist, Albert Einstein:: _ The Germans as an entire people are
responsible for the mass
murders and must be punished as a people if there is justice in the world
and if the consciousness
of collective responsibility in the nations is not to perish from the earth
entirely. Behind the Nazi
party stands the German people, who elected Hitler after he had in his book
[Mein Kampf] and in
his speeches made his [genocidal] intentions clear beyond the possibility
of misunderstanding. _
Einstein_s words apply to the Arabs who call themselves _Palestinians._
Therefore, I propose
that the present government be toppled by a general strike, and that its
pusillanimous prime
minister be replaced by one with sufficient backbone to implement the
words of the American
Civil War General Philip Henry Sheridan (1831-1888)_I mean a prime
minister who would
_deal as hard blows to the enemies_ soldiers as possible, and then cause
so much suffering to the
[Arab] inhabitants & that they will long for peace and press their
government to make it&.
Nothing [Sheridan concluded], should be left to the people [i.e., these
Arabs] but eyes to lament
the war._ You will then see a steady stream of these Arabs _ who will find
no jobs in Israel _
voluntarily leaving for other climes. That_s right, war is hell.
And to Arik_s successor I say, loud and clear: _Know that the only way to
win the war against
the fictitious Palestinians is to make them feel they are descending into hell
rather than ascending
to heaven where 72 virgins await them._ Hey! Did you hear that Mr. Goell?
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November 25, 2004
WHO WILL FILL ARAFAT'S BLOODY SHOES?
LETTER FROM RUTH MATAR (WOMEN IN GREEN) JERUSALEM
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Dear Friends,
The candidates waiting in the wings to succeed the late Arafat are the same
kind of terrorists as
he was. They may speak in a more cultured way. They may not walk
around with a three day
stubble. They may give smooth interviews to the non-Muslim world,
designed for Western ears
- but underneath they are all killers with one goal in mind - to annihilate the
Jewish People and
the Jewish State.
On Tuesday, November 23, 2004, Yasser Arafat's three top successors -
PLO Chairman
Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, and interim
Palestinian Authority
Chairman Rouhi Fattouh - spoke at a special session of the Palestinian
Legislative Council in
Ramallah to commemorate Arafat.
All three of these candidates vowed to continue in Arafat's footsteps:
1. Not to compromise on the right of return for all refugees. (According to
statistics, 600,000
Arabs fled Israel, urged to do so by the leaders of surrounding Arab states.
They were promised
that they would be able to return within a couple of days, to take over
Jewish homes and
possessions. The Arabs now insist that there are more than 4 million
refugees!)
2. Not to compromise on the establishment of a Palestinian State on the
entire West Bank and
Gaza. (Biblical Judea and Samaria were dubbed the "West Bank" by the
late King Hussein of
Jordan.)
3. Not to compromise on Jerusalem being the capital of a Palestinian state.
There are additional candidates: Jibril Rajoub, Mahmoud Dahlan and even
Marwan Barghouti,
who is serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli prison for murdering
Jews.
(Permit me a disturbing digression: lately there have been persistent media
leaks that Israeli top
officials have had secret meetings with Barghouti to groom this convicted
killer to become the
next Palestinian Authority leader. Somehow, the Sharon government feels
that Barghouti is
someone it can work with, someone who can control the Palestinian street.
I have often thought that the Sharon government cannot reach a further
nadir of immorality. But
apparently they are able to do this.
Israeli Interior Minister Avraham Poraz speculated last week: "We are
looking for a partner for
the Gaza withdrawal. It seems that this will have to include releasing
prisoners... [Perhaps even]
including Barghouti."
To think of releasing a convicted multiple killer of Jews in order to get a
"partner" for the goal to
expel Jews from their homes? I believe that this is as immoral as anyone
can get.)
In this Letter from Jerusalem, I will concentrate on the background of Abu
Mazen (Mahmoud
Abbas), since he is the current frontrunner, having been elected by the
Fatah Central Council as
its candidate for Palestinian Authority Chairman in the January 9 elections.
If the situation
warrants, I will focus on some of the other candidates in a subsequent
letter.
* ABU MAZEN co-founded the Fatah terror group with Arafat.
* ABU MAZEN does not actually differ from Arafat on any major position.
He insists on the
right of four million of Palestinian refugees (this imaginary figure supplied
by the Arabs)
throughout the Middle East to "return" to Israel - which would swamp Israel
demographically -
and spell the end of Israel's existence as a Jewish State.
* ABU MAZEN wrote his PhD dissertation and later a bestselling book
explaining why the
Holocaust is a complete hoax. He said that not only did the Holocaust
never happen, but that the
Jews invented this story to make the world feel sorry for them, so that they
could go ahead and
steal Arab Land.
* ABU MAZEN was involved in the murder of the eleven Israeli athletes,
including American
citizen David Berger, in the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Abu Mazen was
responsible for the
financing for this operation.
* ABU MAZEN denies that there ever was a Jewish Temple on the Temple
Mount, the holiest
site of the Jewish People. He states that he might consider the right of
Jews to pray after a peace
settlement has been reached.
* ABU MAZEN urged Arafat to reject Prime Minister Ehud Barak's offer in
2000 at Camp
David saying it was "a trap by all standards... and we managed to get out of
it." Even Yossi
Beilin said at the time that Abu Mazen was more extreme than Arafat.
* ABU MAZEN has overseen terrorist attacks for the past several decades,
including the last
four years of terror war against Israel.
The Women in Green Movement has been aware of Abu Mazen's true
nature for some time. I
found a photograph in my files printed in the Jerusalem Post of June 4,
2003, of a Woman in
Green holding a placard at a demonstration with the picture of Abu Mazen
and Yasser Arafat.
The captions read "Yasser Arafat and Abu Mazen Blood Brothers" and
"Birds of a Feather Kill
Jews Together."
On June 24, 2002, President George W. Bush pronounced that "the first
prerequisite for progress
is for the Palestinian people to produce 'regime change'. I call upon the
Palestinian people to
elect new leaders not compromised by terror. The Palestinians must have
new leaders, new
institutions and new security arrangements."
Surely President Bush cannot believe that Abu Mazen meets these criteria?
Surely President Bush cannot believe that any of the other candidates meet
these criteria?
This brings me to a very serious question, which should be of interest to all
Americans. Why is
the United States government anxious to financially help, to the tune of 20
million dollars, this
crew of terrorists to stage an election on January 9, 2005? Why grant U.S.
tax payer money
when Arafat and the PA have billions, not millions, stashed away in secret
accounts in
Switzerland, when it has been proven that the Palestinian Authority used
the majority of aid
funds not only for their own luxurious lifestyle, but also for terror attacks
against Israel? 20
million, by the way, is peanuts for the Palestinian Authority. They have
just granted Suha
Arafat a generous 22 million dollars as an annual stipend.
Fortunately this plan has met with serious resistance on Capitol Hill, led by
majority leader Tom
DeLay.
Let us not continue fooling ourselves! Let us face reality! The candidates
for the leadership of
the Palestinian Authority waiting in the wings are the same terrorist killers
as the late Arafat.
After Hitler was defeated, did the Allies look for his successors amongst
the rest of the Nazis?
No, they did not! They worked hard to denazify Germany. They held
lengthy trials for the top
Nazi leaders at Nuremberg between 1945 and 1949. They punished these
leaders for their
horrendous crimes against humanity, most of them even received the
death penalty.
Does it make sense to put a new set of terrorists in charge to continue their
Jihad against the
Jewish State, and against the rest of the non-Muslim world?
Does it make sense to reward these terrorists with a state of their own,
illegally carved out of G-
d's covenant Land?
With Blessings and Love for Israel,
Ruth Matar
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November 26, 2004
Petition against Deportation of Jews
This past Tuesday, Women in Green held a meeting of members in which
we
detailed our plan of action as to how to stop Sharon's deportation
plan. Our campaign is starting this coming Sunday morning, November
28th,
at 9:30 A.M. at the Central Bus station in Jerusalem. We will be signing
up reservists on the "I refuse to participate in the uprooting of Jews"
petition. We urge you to come and take part.
Some explanation and background: Up until the vote in the Knesset, the
focus of the struggle was the parliamentary scene. Moetset Yesha and the
Gush Katif Council organized very large and successful demonstrations,
like
the Likud Referendum victory, the Human Chain, the 100-City Protest
etc,. The purpose of those protests was to remind the politicians that -
as the elections had proven - the majority of the people in Israel oppose a
unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and the Shomron, and also strongly
oppose
the idea of destroying Jewish communities and deporting Jews from parts
of
Israel, in order to hand it over to the Arab enemy.
Unfortunately, some of the Likud Knesset Members betrayed the Likud
platform and their constituency and, in order to keep their Volvo and their
seat, stabbed a knife in the back of the National Camp and voted in favor
of Sharon's plan. Today, we are at a point where the Knesset has voted in
favor of Sharon's plan and has even passed, in the first reading, the "law
of uprooting ".
What do we do now? Is the battle lost? The answer is a clear "NO". We can
still prevent this plan from being implemented! But now the focus of the
struggle has to change. Even though we must continue to try and
convince
the Knesset Members to bring down the government, the parliamentary
battle
has become a side issue.
The name of the game now is DETERRENCE. We must show the world that
even
though Prime Minister Sharon wants to uproot us, he simply will not be
able
to do so. The campaign that Women in Green is launching, is a joint
campaign with all the extra-parliamentary organizations.
The campaign is called 'Chomat Magen" (Protective Shield) and has been
started by Noam Livnat (ironically the brother of Limor Livnat, Minister of
Education). Noam Livnat lives in Elon Moreh. The idea is to build a
protective shield around those who are meant to be uprooted, so that the
forces who are meant to uproot them will never reach them. It is important
that we succeed in preventing the order from ever being given! If, G-d
forbid, the order is given, there hopefully will be so many soldiers and
policemen refusing orders, and so many tens of thousands of supporters
surrounding the communities, that it will be impossible to implement the
uprooting.
The main focus of Women in Green in the upcoming weeks will be to call
upon
all reserve soldiers and regular soldiers to listen to their conscience and
not to give a hand to the crime of uprooting Jews from the Land of
Israel. Noam Livnat has succeeded in already gathering over 3000
signatures. Dr David Matar, son and husband of the signatories of this
letter, has even gone one step further and has returned his reserve
card. We must join forces and get at least 20,000 signatures over the next
few weeks!.
To those who feel uncomfortable with the idea of calling upon soldiers to
refuse the order of deporting Jews, we will remind them that this order is
patently illegal. To deport Jews, to brutally drag Jewish women, men and
children from their homes against their will, to destroy entire Jewish
communities, to raze synagogues, to desecrate Jewish cemeteries by
disinterring the bones of their loved ones, is morally reprehensible. The
IDF is meant to fight the Arab enemy, not to fight their fellow Jews.
Therefore, a soldier refusing to do all the above will actually be
preserving the IDF's honor and will be preventing civil war. Yes, the
propaganda saying that refusing the order will cause civil war and will
destroy the army, is a lie. It is exactly the opposite! Refusing to
attack your brothers and sisters, refusing to fight your fellow Jews, will
keep the army united.
Those refusing to uproot Jews are not to be compared to those on the
"left"
who refuse to serve in Yesha. Those on the "left", who refuse to fight the
Arab enemy, endanger the lives of all Israeli citizens. Those on the right,
who refuse to fight their own brothers, actually preserve unity.
This campaign is very important! Prime Minister Sharon is not fazed by
any
"love campaign", nor by quiet tent city demonstrations. He is a bulldozer,
who, like a true dictator, wants to raze the entire settlement
enterprise. Against a bulldozer one does not fight with a campaign of love
and flowers. We must do battle by means of DETERRENCE. We learn from
this week's Parsha in Vayishlach that when Yaakov gets ready to meet
Esau,
he believes that Esau seeks his destruction. He therefore prepares his
camp with "tefila, doron and milchama" (prayer, gifts and war).
Prayer we do everyday. Gifts have been given out by the Gush Katif people
ad nausea. (As one Neve Dekalim lady told me: how many tomatoes and
lettuce
I have given out!!! How many quiet demonstrations have I gone to? Now
we
must prepare for WAR!.
Let it be clear that when we say "WAR" we do not mean violence. We mean
non-violent civil disobedience and an all out call to our security
forces: "Do not give a hand to the crime of deporting Jews from parts of
Israel. Do not give a hand to the handing over of our G-d given Biblical
Homeland to the enemy." If we succeed to pass on the message to Sharon
that he simply has no army to carry out the crime of deportation, then,
please G-d, the order will never be given.
We urge you to come on Sunday, November 28, at 9:30 A.M.to the Central
Bus
Station to sign up people. In addition, we will be sending, by regular
mail, the petition to our whole Membership List. Ask your friends,
relatives and neighbors to sign this Petition and then fax it to us
(02-624-5380.) For those who do receive this letter, please advise us of
anyone who may be interested in signing our Petition.
Shabbat Shalom,
Ruth and Nadia Matar
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November 27, 2004
CHANUKAH TRIP TO THE SHOMRON!
Ariel Sharon is disengaging not only from Gush Katif, but also from
Northern Samaria. Both of
these areas are part of our Biblical Heartland. Our answer is to plan our
annual Chanukah trip to
two communities in Samaria, which Ariel Sharon has put on the chopping
block, SA-NUR and
CHOMESH. We will bring toys, treats and entertainment to the children of
these communities.
It is our very own brethren in these endangered communities. But even
more important, we need
encouragement ourselves, and we will be strengthened by the courage and
steadfastness of the
pioneers in these two communities.
On SUNDAY, DECEMBER 12 (Chanukah) we will leave in bullet proof
busses from the
INBAL Hotel in Jerusalem, AT 8:30 A.M. Promptly! We will return
approximately at 6:00 PM.
The price is 75 NIS for adults and 30 NIS for children under the age of 12.
You do not have to
pay for babies who do not require a seat. Early reservation required!
Please call our office to
reserve a seat on the bus. Preferably give us your credit card number, or
send us a check, to
secure your reservation.
CALL TODAY! Seats are limited. Additional bullet proof buses are
impossible to order on short
notice!
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November 28, 2004
Immoral Politics
Jan Willem van der Hoeven
The following are very telling quotes and comments from a variety of
sources, and although
long, very worthwhile to read!
The former great and beloved Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces,
General 'Raful' Eitan,
in one of his very last interviews given to the paper 'Iton Tel Aviv' in
January before he tragically
died, had this to 5say: "My opinion is that all these efforts [referring to
Sharon's disengagement
plan - ed.] are for naught. With the Arabs, we will never be able to make
peace... This is a
struggle between civilizations. We are a foreign culture, and in my opinion,
Islam will never
make peace with our foreign entity, and with the fact that it has political
independence and even
defeats them in wars. They'll never agree...
Why should we, who are so small, give land to those who are so big, for
something uncertain?
We should have said this from the outset. But did anyone ever think that
this [Exile-like]
leadership would make such a request?... A leadership that does not insist
on its honor, and has
no national honor. We should pay for having defeated them in wars that
they started?! Where's
the logic, the straight thinking?"
British Foreign Secretary laid a wreath at the grave of Yasser Arafat as
reported by Herb Keinon
in the Jerusalem Post (26/11/2004): "When you lay a wreath at someone's
grave, you are
identifying with what the person believed in," a senior Israeli diplomatic
official said. "It is
infuriating that foreign leaders will now want to identify with Arafat's
legacy."
... James. A. Baker, the former U.S. secretary of state, who currently serves
as the Bush
administration's special envoy on Iraqi debt, called on the Israeli
government to release Marwan
Barghouti. - Why didn't he ask the President Bush to release Al-Qaida
terrorists from
Guantanamo Bay prison? He made a cheap shot against Israel to boost his
stand as a US
representative in Iraq. And, no one in Bush administration has reprimanded
him!
... If British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw can lay a wreath at Arafat's grave
- a known terrorist -
and James Baker can advise Israel to release the equally dangerous
terrorist Marwan Barghouti -
then this hypocritical world has lost its compass! And if Israel in her
weakness and folly will
agree to this advice, she will only have to blame herself for all the
bloodshed that will
undoubtedly follow his release...
Thank God that the courage and steadfastness of our Gush Katif brethren
in face of their coming
expulsion is truly amazing as Dror Vanunu, secretary general of the Katif
Region Development
Fund writes:
Almost two weeks have passed since the Disengagement Authority
launched its website, which
features a compensation calculator and all the forms necessary for
receiving advanced
compensation. So far, not one resident has applied for the early
compensation, which would
require residents to leave their homes almost immediately...
I was therefore thankful for the letter I received from a Jewish professor in
the States who wrote:
Dear Jan Willem
I thank you profoundly for making a statement, strong and clear in defense
of the Jewish people.
Everything you say about evacuated areas becoming bases for terror is
obviously true. The real
question is what's behind this rush toward self -destruction? There are
obviously international
forces at work that have overwhelmed the Israeli leadership. The costs of
disengagement are
much higher than you set out. The uprooting of Jews from the Land
(Heaven forefend) will have
a demoralizing effect on the army and the people that can lead to
disastrous consequences.
Sharon knows full well the effect of morale on troops in battle. Yet, he is
willing to pursue with
such urgency a course fraught with terrible consequences. Why aren't the
Jews both in Israel and
everywhere else demanding that he be thrown out? Why is there this
terrible apathy here in
Berkeley and everywhere else in the Diaspora? In place of a leadership of
mediocrities, I am
confident that one day soon this Jewish ! people will find in its collective
roots leaders with the
wisdom of Solomon and the holy combativeness of Joshua and David, to
lead them out of the
morass and on to becoming a holy people, a nation of priests and teachers
to all of mankind.
With kindness and appreciation,
Jesse S., (Ph.D) ...
God bless you all!
Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director
International Christian Zionist Center
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November 30, 2004
Not For The Spineless
By Prof. Paul Eidelberg
Israel is at war, a war for its very survival. One would hardly know this
judging from Israel's
Neronian Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. Like Nero, Sharon fiddles while his
country burns, but
unlike Nero, Sharon doesn't know he's fiddling.
Moral cowardice permeates the Sharon government. No outrage by Likud
ministers when Sharon
reneged on his pledge to abide by his party's referendum on unilateral
disengagement-the policy
he campaigned against in the January 2003 election.
And of course no public denunciation of Sharon's electoral thievery and
political skullduggery.
But what can one expect from people that have been conditioned by Israeli
governments to
tolerate the murder and maiming even of Jewish women and children?
What can one expect
from ordinary citizens given the spineless character of Israeli prime
ministers?
And what about the Israel's general staff? Not a single general resigned
from the Israel Defense
Forces in protest against Sharon's indefensible disengagement policy, or
to the sacrificing of
Jewish soldiers to avoid killing anything but innocent Arab civilians.
So I write for another day. Perhaps men will yet rise to take the helm of
state. With them in mind
I offer, or rather adapt, some guidelines which another author penned for
America in its war
against an enemy related to Israel's.
I. Accept the fact that Israel is hated, not misunderstood.
A. Israel is hated because
1. Jews inhabit land which Muslims claim, rightly or wrongly, as theirs.
2. Israel is a sovereign and independent state, whereas Jews, according to
Islam, are supposed
to be dhimmies.
3. A Jewish majority in Israel rules an Arab minority, overturning Islam's
moral universe.
4. Israel has defeated Arab armies, thereby assaulting Arab pride—for
which affront Arabs must
wreak vengeance on the Jewish state.
5. Israel is an outpost of American cultural imperialism, of materialism and
hedonism, which
may infect and corrupt Islam.
6. Israel is a democracy, a threat to the power structure of Islamic
autocracies.
7. Israel's existence places Islam in question as well as Allah.
B. Hasbara - information programs - will not endear Jews to Arabs or
Muslims.
1. Better to be feared than loved, for fear depends on you, whereas love
depends on the other.
2. Truth has never been the currency of nations.
II. Israel's security depends on its ability to kill its enemies.
A. Daintily applying military power-such as targeted killings and brief
incursions into Arab-held
territory-only prolongs the war.
1. Moderation or self-restraint in war arouses Arab contempt for Israel
2. Moderation in war undermines martial virtue and undermines the
soldier's confidence in the
justice of Israel's cause.
B. To secure its way of life, Israel will have to use military force in the way
the U.S. used
military force in France and on the Pacific Islands, and from skies over
Dresden and Tokyo.
1. Progress in war must be measured by the pace of killing and, sorry to
say, by body counts.
2. Among Israel's enemies the dead will include as many or more civilians
as combatants
because most of Israel's enemies wear no uniforms or provide havens for
those who do.
3. This bloody-mindedness may not be admirable, but it will shorten the
war and reduce
casualties on both sides.
III. Cant will kill more and more Jews
A. Cease trying to make war civilized.
1. Enough of this deadly nonsense that "self-restraint is strength"!
2. Stop the moral clap trap about "purity of arms."
B. Israel, to repeat, is in a war for survival.
1. Stop moralizing by saying "we do not want to stoop to the level of our
enemies"which is sheer
cant, the language of moral cowardice and defeat.
2. War is hell, hell, hell. American ferocity in World War II did not damage
the nation's moral
fiber.
3. Don't worry about world opinion. Israel is condemned for killing one
terrorist. Kill as many as
possible in the shortest possible time, but do not stop until the enemy is
completely disarmed and
utterly incapable of waging war another day.
No doubt some readers will be outraged by these guidelines. Would that
such rage would erupt
among Jews whose fellow-citizens were reduced to human debris.
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