CAFI Newsletter #67
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Fri, 25 Jan 2002 17:30:48 -0500
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* CHRISTIAN ACTION FOR ISRAEL NEWSLETTER #67 *
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"ON YOUR WALLS, O JERUSALEM, I HAVE APPOINTED WATCHMEN"
Isaiah 62:6
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Friday, January 25, 2002
IN THIS ISSUE:
1. HOLINESS, JUSTICE AND SACRIFICE
2. TO LIVE WITH TERROR
3. LETTER FROM JERUSALEM: FACE TO FACE WITH ARIEL SHARON
4. WE'RE STILL DIGESTING THAT MURDEROUS LUNCH
5. QUOTES TO NOTE
6. HIGHLIGHT ARTICLES
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1. HOLINESS, JUSTICE AND SACRIFICE
By Moshe Feiglin
A dinner was held on Sunday, January 6, in the
Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, in memory of Rehavam
Ze'evi. ["Gandhi", as he was nicknamed, was Tourism
Minister in Sharon's government, and was the head
of the Moledet movement and was recently murdered by
Palestinian terrorists in a Jerusalem hotel.] Speeches
were delivered at the dinner by several leaders of
the Jewish community in New York, as well as by
three representatives from Israel: Palmach Ze'evi,
Gandhi's son; Binyamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Prime
Minister; and Moshe Feiglin, head of the Jewish
Leadership faction in the Likud. The following is
the text of Feiglin's speech.
* * *
Dear Ze'evi family,
Rehavam Ze'evi was a soldier. He fought in the service of
the nation, fought for Eretz Israel, and always held the
Bible in his hand – the link to the roots of Israel.
Gandhi always remembered captured and missing IDF soldiers,
always mentioned Jonathan Pollard, and helped every Jew
struggling for Eretz Israel. I remember personally how
Gandhi came to give evidence in the trial in which my
colleague and I in the Zo Artzenu movement, Shmuel Sackett,
were charged with civil disobedience. This evening we bow
our heads and remember a dear, beloved, and courageous Jew.
Gandhi was so courageous that since the murder of the
late Rabbi Meir Kahane, he was the only one who dared to
openly declare the suitable solution for the Arabs in Eretz
Israel. Transfer is in fact the sole just and feasible solution.
In this evening in memory of a courageous man, it is
appropriate to act like him and ask without fear the most
difficult questions. How has it happened that although we
are fortunate to have the best and most talented leaders,
the Left continues to rule, even when it seems that we
won in the elections?
Before I boarded the plane to come here, I heard on Kol
Israel an interview with Yossi Sarid. Sarid was asked by
the interviewer to explain the failure of the Left in
the elections. "You call this a failure?" answered Sarid
in amazement, "when Ariel Sharon, the head of the
furthest Right government that you could imagine,
publicly offers the Palestinians a state – something that
we never dared to offer them in the Oslo agreement.
When the Right has totally abandoned its ideology and
is implementing the policy of the Left, you call this
a failure? This is the greatest victory possible!"
Ladies and gentlemen, I think that Sarid is right. I
don't want anyone to think that the problem lies with
Sharon. Sharon is the best figure on the Right that
anyone could imagine. There has never been a greater
military leader than him in Israel, and it would be
difficult to find in Israel a politician who has made
a greater contribution to the settlement cause. So if
the problem is not a personal one, how have we arrived
at a situation in which all Arafat has to do in order
to receive his State in the middle of Eretz Israel is
to stop killing Jews for seven days?
That's all – just restrain yourself and don't kill
Jews for seven days and, in return, we shall destroy
the settlements, evict their residents, and give you the
heart of our country so that you can set up your State…
What we lack is the hand holding the Bible, that Bible
that never left Gandhi's pocket. In order to understand
how the Bible forms the solution, I should like to tell
you a short story.
About a year and a half ago I was invited to participate
in a public debate held in the Jerusalem Theater, with
Feisal Husseini and with the then minister, Mrs. Yuli
Tamir.
The audience consisted entirely of people from the
extreme Left - members of the "Be'tzelem" organization.
Husseini got up to shake my hand, and I refused to do so.
I don't shake hands with the enemy, I explained, to
the sound of cries of contempt from the hall. Husseini
gave an excited speech about how his family has been
living in Jerusalem for six hundred years, and that
everything was fine until Jerusalem was conquered by
Israel. Yuli Tamir, a minister in the Israeli government,
agreed with him, that is, she agreed that Jerusalem is
an occupied area…
My turn came to speak. "You know, Feisal", I addressed
him by his first name – "We have something in common
that no-one else in the hall has". Husseini looked at
me in amazement. "We both believe in G-d", I continued.
"You believe in G-d, right?"
"Of course", Husseini replied, "I am a Moslem".
"Look", I said to him, "In my bag I have the most
sacred book of the Jews, the Bible".
Husseini looked at me without understanding what I
wanted from him. "Do you know, Mr. Husseini, how many
times Jerusalem appears in the Bible? More than eight
hundred times. But I also have another book", I said,
and took from my bag the Koran. "This is your most
sacred book, right, Mr. Husseini?"
"Of course", Husseini agreed.
I placed the Koran next to the Bible and said slowly:
"Find me, please, the word Jerusalem in your most
sacred book, even once, and then tell me who conquered
whom".
You know what happened – the audience that had
previously booed started clapping.
It turns out that the Bible is a winning argument.
Husseini was used to Israelis presenting arguments
about security against pragmatic claims. It was easy
for him to defeat them. But against the Bible,
against historical Jewish justice, he didn't
stand a chance.
When Egyptian President Anwar Sadat met with Menahem
Begin, he told him that he was prepared to sacrifice
a million Egyptian soldiers in return for the last
grain of the holy earth of Sinai. And what happened?
In Camp David he received the last grain of Sinai
without sacrificing a single soldier.
Sadat did not talk in terms of democracy or peace.
Certainly not! He talked in totally different terms
– he talked about holiness, justice, (the very concept
of returning territory originates in a feeling of
justice), and about sacrifice.
We can learn a lot from the enemy! This is the kind
of leadership that we need today in Eretz Israel!
Leadership based on the values of holiness, Jewish
justice, and sacrifice. This is the sole kind of
leadership capable of extricating Israel from the
cul-de-sac in which it currently finds itself. I have
good news for you this evening: we have such
leadership in Eretz Israel! It is steadily developing.
Do you know where it exist?
It exists in Hebron, where people are living and
thinking in terms of holiness.
It exists in Beit El and Shilo, where it is expressed
as Jewish justice.
It exists on the roads of Judea, Samaria and Gaza where,
unfortunately, every day it takes the form of sacrifice.
The new leadership of the Jewish people will come from
there.
Ladies and gentlemen, I could talk at length about what
is happening in Eretz Israel in general and in Judea,
Samaria and Gaza in particular. The murder of Gandhi is
not the only act of murder we have witnessed recently.
In my settlement alone, in recent months we have buried
three friends and we are currently taking care of orphans,
widows and widowers, and seriously injured people.
But if we want to continue Gandhi's path, the last
thing we must do is request flak jackets, steel helmets,
and other protective measures. A great challenge faces us,
both in Eretz Israel and here in the US: We must establish
leadership capable of really facing up to the problem. We
must establish leadership based on holiness, justice, and
sacrifice. The Jewish people deserves leadership capable
of extricating it from these dire straits and realizing
its mission – putting the world to rights in the kingdom
of the Almighty.
It deserves leadership based on belief.
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2. TO LIVE WITH TERROR
By Naomi Ragen January 24, 2002
To live with terror is to wake up each morning and to feel that
nothing belongs to you - your mate, your children, your life, the
streets you walk through, the coffee shop you sit in with friends,
the building which houses your office, your computer, your new
stockings. Everything can be taken from you in the blink of an
eye -destroyed, ravaged, turned into a rubble of torn metal,
flesh, fabric. The idea that it can and will happen without a
trial, lawyers, jury, the right to appeal: you, yours, all you
ever thought was yours by birth, by right, by law, by simple
human decency will be stolen from you by someone you never met,
who doesn't even know your name, who will become your
self-appointed judge, jury, and executioner.
To live with terror is to wake every morning and count your
blessings, all those you love who've survived one more day
whole, unharmed, untouched.
To live with terror is to lay in bed and dread what lies beyond
this hour, this minute, this second. But also to breathe more
deeply and notice the sky, hear the click of coffee spoons,
smell the fragrant, brewed cup. It is to taste each mouthful
and take no second chance for granted.
To live with terror is to suspect each strange, to cherish each
friend, to love more deeply, hate more unforgivingly. It is to
have no tolerance for the morally confused who waver, who say:
"Yes, but, on the other hand," to have no tolerance for those
who still claim nothing is black and white.
To live with terror is to see the dividing line, the
demarcation between good and evil like a white road marker:
never was anything more clear, more simple, more stark,
than that which divides those who kill from those that are
killed - the scum of the earth from innocent noncombatants.
To live with terror is to live more profoundly, in greater
touch with truth, good, God, life, innocence, longing, fear,
love, compassion, vengeance, and hope. It is a life that
loses inevitability but gains depth. It is a life that loses
the sense of freedom, safety, justice, logic, and
predictability, replacing them with clarity, despair,
physical alertness, and adaptability.
To live with terror is to live life always with a sense
of imminent endings, but never to lose hope that one day
things will go back to being the same again, each day,
day after day.
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3. LETTER FROM JERUSALEM: FACE TO FACE WITH ARIEL SHARON
By Arlynn Nellhaus - January 22, 2002
The worldwide media were guests at a recent
New Year's reception, featuring a press conference
with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in
Jerusalem.
I was there.
The other international journalists didn't just bring
out their pens.
They bared their fangs.
It wasn't only their questions, it was the superior
tone in which they asked them.
But no tears need be shed over Sharon. He's been
through this a few times. He withstood the attacks
with humor and unapologetic firmness.
This was the first time I'd seen Sharon in person.
He resembles a balloon with legs. His white hair is
startlingly white, and at first, he appeared pale
and drawn. As he responded to the audience, his
face took on healthy color.
In person, his English comes across with far
greater clarity than it seems to over the electronic
media. He might be short and squat, but he's
nimble with the come-back.
When he learned that he was the first Prime
Minister to be at a New Year's reception for
foreign journalists, he grinned and said, "I expect
to do this for several more years."
There were some groaners from the press corps -
the questions that one journalist asks that are an
embarrassment to her colleagues.
The press assumed moral indignation over the
news that the Israeli army had bulldozed 21 or 47
houses (depending on which side is reporting) in a
53-year-old, UN-maintained Gaza refugee camp.
Israel took the action in response to the Palestinian
killing of four Israeli soldiers -- who all happened
to be Arab -- and to destroy some of the 30-plus
tunnels from Egypt into Gaza to smuggle weapons
and drugs.
The tunnels were as deep as 40-50 feet. On the
Gaza side, the destroyed houses -- all of which
Israel insists were empty -- covered the tunnel
openings.
A foreign journalist read from a column in an
English edition of a left-wing Hebrew newspaper.
It attacked the Israeli army's destruction of the 21
or 47 houses.
Sharon stopped her after a paragraph or two,
dryly commenting, "You don't have to bother
reading more. We read the newspapers, too."
A South African reporter postured
sanctimoniously, "As a Jew, I'm morally offended
by the house demolitions."
Sharon responded, "I am a Jew too. And my
responsibility is to protect the Jewish people."
Some other questions raised by the people who
bring you your news from these parts were:
REPORTER:"Have you had a vendetta against
Arafat since 1982?"
"No," Sharon answered, he had no vendetta
against "Mr. Arafat," as he often calls him. (Arafat
should one day be asked if he has a vendetta
against Sharon, since it was Sharon who forced
Arafat from Lebanon in 1982, after Arafat
destroyed that country.)
REPORTER:"How can you make peace, if you
won't talk to Arafat?"
"Mr. Arafat adopted a strategy of terror," said
Sharon. "With Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah
(Arafat's militia) and other groups like the
Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine,
there is a coalition of terror."
REPORTER:"How long are you going to keep
Arafat confined to Ramallah?"
"Until he arrests the killers of cabinet minister
Rehavam Ze'evi," Sharon said. "In the past, Israel
said things, but then there was pressure, and
Israel gave up. This is a different government.
When it comes to our security, there will be no
compromise whatsoever."
REPORTER:"How do you feel about Labor Knesset
members Avraham Burg and Yossi Beilin going to
South Africa to meet with Palestinian Authority
representatives during the Presidential Peace
Retreat on the Middle East (which ended the day
before)?"
Sharon answered, "The problem is, people can
pretend they represent the State of Israel. But they
are on their own. They only represent themselves.
They create false expectations. Israeli citizens
should demonstrate more self control."
REPORTER:"Do you think you kept your
campaign promise and brought peace and
security?
"We have fought Arab terror for 120 years. I'm
making the effort," Sharon said. "It depends not
only on us. We don't see the slightest effort on the
other side."
REPORTER:"Why should the Palestinians stop
their struggle against the occupation when you
refuse to speak with their chosen leader?"
Sharon replied, "We aren't interfering with their
leaders. I don't think that Mr. Arafat is looking for
peace. At Camp David, he would have gotten
more than anyone thought an Israeli Prime
Minister (Ehud Barak at the time) would give.
And he turned it down.
Sharon added, "No Israeli Prime Minister will give
him this much in the future. Arafat rejected it and
embarked on a strategy of terror.
"Compared to the United States, Israeli casualties
proportionally are as if we have suffered 13,000
killed and 117,000 injured since the intifada broke
out in September 2000.
"And at some point, Arafat has to stop causing
suffering to his own people. Until he takes certain
steps, we can't negotiate."
Sharon then listed these steps:
1. Arrest terrorists "seriously," and not run them
through a revolving door.
2. Dismantle the terror organizations.
3. Collect illegal weapons and hand them to
American representatives to be taken out of the
Palestinian Authority area.
4. Stop incitement "Once he takes these steps," the
Prime Minister said, "We'll be ready to negotiate.
So long as there's terror, we can't negotiate.
He added, "The sooner they understand this, the
sooner we can have peace. We accepted the
(American) Tenet and Mitchell Plans.
"I think we, Israelis, understand peace and want
peace more than any other nation in the world."
Sharon is almost 74. He feels he accomplished a lot
in his career, but one goal remains.
"I want to reach a settlement between Israel and
the Palestinians. Then I can go back to my farm.
"But Palestinians don't understand that peace can
be as painful as war. You have to make painful
concessions.
"Israelis are more and more disillusioned over the
Palestinians. It gets harder to reach a settlement,
but I think I can do it."
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4. WE'RE STILL DIGESTING THAT MURDEROUS LUNCH
Robert Harris - The Daily Telegraph Jan.24.02
Sixty years ago this week, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee,
15 of Germany's most senior civil servants gathered for a
buffet lunch.
They ate good food, drank fine wine and brandy and talked
for about two hours. It was snowing outside, but inside the
atmosphere was warm: The meeting was "conducted very
quietly and with much courtesy," according to one
participant, "with much friendliness -- politely and nicely."
Anniversaries of events in the Second World War come and
go with such bewildering frequency that they tend to glaze
the eye. But this one is different.
Not only was the so-called Wannsee Conference of Jan. 20,
1942 (convened to implement "the final solution of the
Jewish question"), the most murderous lunch in history: It is
also one of those events that seem to grow, rather than
dwindle, in significance as the years pass.
This is, I think, unique. The Battle of Britain, Stalingrad,
D-Day -- these were, indisputably, momentous military
turning points. They continue to fascinate, even as they slip
into history.
But somehow, for all that, they are history now: To children
they are already becoming as remote as Waterloo or the
Somme. But Wannsee falls into a different category.
What happened during those two "polite" hours continues to
reverberate, and the consequences -- moral, psychological
and political -- remain raw and very much alive.
Wannsee was never talked about in the immediate
aftermath of the war, for the simple reason that nobody
beyond those involved knew about it. Only 30 copies of the
minutes of what was discussed were distributed; only one --
number 16 -- survived; and only in March 1947, six months
after the major war criminals were hanged at Nuremberg,
was this solitary copy discovered by accident in a German
foreign office file.
When it was rushed round to the lawyer in charge of the
Nazi prosecutions, General Telford Taylor, he could scarcely
believe what he was reading: "Is such a thing possible?" he
asked.
His incredulity was understandable. "Here," in the words of
the British historian Mark Roseman, "was the distinguished
ambience of an elegant villa, in a cultivated suburb, in one
of Europe's most sophisticated capitals.
Here were 15 educated, civilized bureaucrats, from an
educated, civilized society, observing all due decorum. And
here was genocide, going through, on the nod."
Before the Wannsee lunch, the Nazis had killed only 10% of
the six million Jews who were to die during the Final
Solution; in the 12 months after it, 50% of the eventual total
were liquidated.
In other words, it accomplished what the man who
convened it, SS-General Reinhard Heydrich, sought to
achieve: It energized the formidable German administrative
machine, enabling Europe, as he put it, to be "combed
through from east to west" until it was clear of Jews. The
foreign ministry ensured that other European countries
co-operated.
The minutes are euphemistic about how the Jews were
actually to be killed -- most were to be worked to death and
any survivors "dealt with appropriately" -- but according to
Adolf Eichmann, who drafted the official record, the
participants certainly discussed methods of mass murder,
including gassing.
"Not only did everybody willingly indicate agreement," he
testified at his trial in Israel in 1961, "but there was
something else, entirely unexpected, when they outdid and
outbid each other, as regards the demand for a final
solution to the Jewish question."
Eichmann professed amazement at the enthusiasm of these
normally fussy administrators, and who can blame him?
Eight of those around the table had doctorates.
Small wonder, then, that Wannsee, more than any other
recent anniversary of the Second World War, resonates so
strongly. The pitched land, air and sea battles of 1939-45,
for all their epic scale, have an old-fashioned quality: Even
such a relatively tiny conflict as Afghanistan revealed
advances in military technology that make the weapons
used during the last war seem as quaint as muskets and
cavalry horses.
The bureaucrats of Wannsee, by contrast, have a horrible
freshness about them. There are people like this in every
government, in every country: the prim Wilhelm Stuckart,
who pedantically makes the case for compulsory
sterilization as a "humane" alternative to extermination; the
creepy lawyer from occupied Poland, Josef Buehler, who
"had only one request -- that the Jewish question be solved
as quickly as possible"; the self-aggrandizing
"Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan," state secretary
Neumann, who has no problems with mass murder as long
as it does not affect "industries vital to the war."
One would like to think that the Wannsee lunch could never
happen again; one knows in one's bones that it could. And
when one looks around at the modern world, from Israel's
understandable paranoia about its security, to Germany's
understandable desire to subsume itself in a wider Europe,
one feels the long shadow of that snowy day in a Berlin
suburb 60 years ago.
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5. QUOTES TO NOTE
“…When Israel first came into existence, the Arabs
casually assumed they would destroy it. But Israel
did something right. For 45 years the state defended
itself with a toughness and determination that had,
by 1993, left the Arabs reeling. It was a moment
when Israel should have pushed its advantage…Instead,
the Israelis…offered advantageous deals to their two
main enemies, the Syrians and Palestinians…Rather
than being seen as far-sighted strategic concessions…
they were interpreted as signs of Israel’s
demoralization…Diplomacy, in other words,
unintentionally revived Arab dreams of obliterating
the Jewish state….”
Director of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum,
Dr. Daniel Pipes (Wall Street Journal, Jan. 18)
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6. FEATURE ARTICLES ON OUR SITE
Can anyone realistically envision Yasser Arafat in anything
but that ridiculous uniform with the peaked kaffiyeh, his
mouth ever murmuring the same propaganda while under siege
in different redoubts? Can you see him as the leader of a
small, peaceful state, worrying about the balance of trade,
civil service pensions, garbage collection and all the
mundane tasks that go with being a head of state instead
of a guerrilla chieftain?
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/jan02/no_exit.html
ANTI-SEMITISM IN FRANCE
The wave of anti-Semitism sweeping through France has
triggered mounting concerns about the safety and welfare
of Western Europe's largest Jewish community. Though a
surge in violent attacks against Jewish schools and
synagogues in recent months has elicited the usual
condemnations of anti-Semitism from French politicians,
it seems that France's government has yet to recognize
the seriousness of the problem or take appropriate measures
to counter it.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/antiholo/france.html
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