CAFI Newsletter #73
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Fri, 8 Mar 2002 18:44:11 -0500
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* CHRISTIAN ACTION FOR ISRAEL NEWSLETTER #73 *
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"ON YOUR WALLS, O JERUSALEM, I HAVE APPOINTED WATCHMEN"
Isaiah 62:6
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OUR NEW DOMAIN: http://christianactionforisrael.org
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Friday, March 8,2002
IN THIS ISSUE:
1. HOW LONG, MR. SHARON?
2. REDRAWING THE MAP
3. WHAT'S ISRAEL'S CHOICE, COLIN?
4. A NATION READY TO COMPROMISE MUST BE
READY TO FIGHT
5. RABBIS IN ISRAEL DECLARE MARCH 13 A DAY OF
FASTING AND PRAYER THROUGHOUT ISRAEL
6. QUOTES TO NOTE
7. HIGHLIGHT ARTICLES
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1. HOW LONG, MR. SHARON?
Naomi Ragen
(March 8) - How long can the freely-elected
government of a democratic state allow the murder
of its women?
How long?
How long can its army and police force stand
helplessly by as 11-year-olds are machine-gunned to
death in their beds, their mothers shot in the back,
as 18-year-old new recruits are mutilated with
hundreds of machine-gun bullets as they drink
cokes, as 81-year-old grandmothers are gunned
down waiting at bus stops, babies are blown up in
their carriages, toddlers are felled by missiles
exploding in their own backyards?
How long?
How long can politicians continue to collect their
salaries, be driven to air-conditioned meetingrooms
in chauffeur-driven cars, smooth down their ties
inside their suit jackets as they face television
cameras? How many times can they once again
say, as they face a nation of murdered women and
girls and babies: We will respond.
How long?
And how long can a government substitute the
bombing of empty buildings for the struggle with
terrorists who kill their nation's women in their
streets, in their homes, in shops, and buses and
parks, and outside bar mitzva celebrations? How
long can they pull troops in and out, open and close
checkpoints, mumble about limited military actions,
without calling a war a war, and making every effort
to return peace and security through the only means
possible in a war of weapons, decisive military
victory, and a complete military takeover of the
hothouses of terrorism?
How long?
And how long can a nation agree for political
reasons, for diplomatic reasons, to the slaughter of
whole families? To mothers bending over babies in
their carriages? How long must such a nation cater
to its disproven and delusional Left as its daughters,
mothers, grandmothers, sisters, friends die,
unprotected? How long must they agree to bury
them, day after day after day after day after day - to
bury Jewish women? How long?
How long, Mr. Sharon will you make half-decisions
then pull back and wait for the next funeral, the next
atrocity, the next murdered woman and child?
How long will you tiredly send our soldiers to wreck
bricks and mortar, leaving the killers free to roam our
villages and cities with their machine guns, leaving
the mass-murderers the ability to choose which new
town to visit, which women to target next? Babies
have been shot in the head, Mr. Sharon. Whole
families have been torn to bits, Mr. Sharon.
Is there no man in this country who can protect its
women?
And do we call a nation a sovereign state if it allows
its women to be murdered day after day after day
after day? Do we? Or has our state, the sovereign
State of Israel, ceased to exist, and in its place are
strips of land in which anyone with a machine gun
can murder at will, can target women, children,
babies, young men, old men, unarmed civilians,
slicing them to bits with machine guns, and bombs
and artillery shells?
How long, Mr. Ben-Eliezer, will you fail to defend us?
How many times will you say: If they do that, it will be
the last straw, a new ball game, and wait for the
enemy to send you just what you asked for to start
the new ball game, to provide the last straw. Day by
day by day, month by month by month, you let the
women and children of this country die, unarmed, in
their homes, in their streets, at religious celebrations.
How long, can the citizens of a democratic state sit
in their homes as their women die all around them?
How long can they watch death on television, and
listen to useless politicians, and mourn, and wait for
the enemy to murder again?
How long will it take, how many more dead women,
dead children, will it take for the people of this
country to demand its government fulfill its
elementary duties towards its unprotected civilians?
How long will the people of this country continue to
sit in their homes, afraid to protest, afraid to seek
solutions, to try Yasser Arafat for crimes against
humanity, to nullify Oslo, to retake and permanently
demilitarize the terrorist hothouses in the West Bank
and Gaza, to jail extremists, to deport inciters, to
round up and jail all members of terrorist groups
before they strap on their bomb belts and set out for
our cities?
How long?
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2. REDRAWING THE MAP
March 7, 2002 The Wall Street Journal Lead Editorial
Would Winston Churchill have sat down for negotiations
with an enemy whose ultimate goal was to drive the British
into the North Sea? That essentially is what is being
asked of Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by those who
claim that the alternative to today's escalation of
violence is a "peace" plan, say along the lines of the
one being promoted by Saudi Arabia.
Trawl the Palestinian Authority's Web site and you will
happen upon the map pictured nearby showing the
"historical" Palestine. [Ed: Map shows "Palestine" where
Israel is today.] Some 290 miles long and 85 miles wide
with a long border on the Mediterranean, it is
surrounded on land by Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
The message is unmistakable: This is the Palestine that
we want to create. There is no room for an Israel
here. Kindly look elsewhere.
The Saudi plan is more PR exercise than peace mission.
It proposes returning Israel to the statelet of its 1967
borders -- only eight miles wide at its middle. That
would certainly complicate Israeli defenses, especially
if Palestinian police keep getting rocket shipments from
Iran. Then there are the small matters of the transfer
of more than 200,000 settlers and the handover of
Jerusalem's Old City. But the real problem with the
Saudi plan is that it will not resolve the niggling fact
that denying Israel's right to exist is still de facto
Palestinian Authority, indeed pan-Arab, policy.
Israel is at war once again. The dispute is not over a
chunk of real estate, settlements or holy sites; it is
over the Jewish state's right to exist. This isn't new,
but it's easily forgotten by those who believe peace
is just a question of the right plan with the right
diplomats pushing it.
Mr. Sharon has done much that is right on the
political side of this war. In sidelining Yasser
Arafat as a bargaining partner, he has forced the
Palestinian leader to declare his hand. Either he
has real influence over the suicide bombers and those
who send them to their deaths, or he does not. If he
does, Mr. Sharon will talk. If he does not, what's
there to talk about? Mr. Arafat has responded by
grasping onto the Saudi peace plan, but the suicide
bombings and sniper fire continue.
Mr. Sharon's military strategy is measured, and that
causes him trouble with both Israeli hawks and peaceniks.
In response to his critics, he said this week that
"this will be an aggressive and continuous campaign,
without letup, and when the other side understands
that it can't achieve anything through terror, it will
be easier to enter negotiations." In other words,
Israel's strategy is to ratchet up the damage until
the Palestinians are ready for real negotiations.
Some critics say Israel can't win a drawn-out war of
attrition. They point to opposition from a group of
Israeli reservists, the escalating divisions within
the Sharon government and the growing international
concern over the death toll. The suggestion is that
Mr. Sharon should look for a chance for jaw-jaw
instead.
No normal human being can look at the growing number
of body bags and not wonder whether something might be
done differently. The past week has been one of the
bloodiest since the intifada resumed in September
2000. But it is too early to declare the military
strategy a failure.
If the Sharon strategy can be faulted it is probably
for being too cautious in pursuing the kingpins of
Hamas and Arafat's own Fatah faction of the PLO.
Unless those who recruit, equip, organize and
inspire terrorist attacks are arrested or killed,
the danger to Israeli security will remain
and the war will go on.
Mr. Sharon is now addressing this need. Yesterday
Israeli forces razed the home of Issam Abu Daka,
the fugitive leader of the military wing of the
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and
the man Israelis believe masterminded a deadly assault
against an Israeli outpost several months ago.
A Hamas activist was killed in his Gaza City home and
Israeli troops destroyed several homes of suspected
militants. Also yesterday Israeli F-16 warplanes
flattened an office building used by the Palestinian
"police" chief in Gaza.
Israel has no choice but to wage this kind of war
until its enemies give up the idea of destroying Israel.
A real conclusion to the violence in the Middle East
requires Mr. Arafat and his followers to change the map
inside their heads. Until they do, Jews and
Palestinians alike will continue to suffer, and no
new "peace plan" will make any difference.
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3. WHAT'S ISRAEL'S CHOICE, COLIN?
New Yor Post - March 8, 2002
The Bush administration's frustration with
the growing death toll in the Middle East is understandable.
But Secretary of State Colin Powell's harsh criticism of
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's tough strike-back policy is
both surprising and shor tsighted.
Powell's public criticism seemed to suggest - erroneously -
that Sharon had declared war against Yasser Arafat's
Palestinian Authority.
"If you declare war on the Palestinians and think you can
solve the problem by seeing how many Palestinians can be
killed," Powell told Congress Wednesday, "I don't know
[whether] that leads us anywhere."
Certainly, it's surprising language - given the military
campaign the United States is waging in the same region
against al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Like America, Israel is fighting a war imposed on it by
terrorists determined to obliterate their enemy. American
forces, rightly, aren't practicing restraint in Afghanistan.
Should Israel?
When Sharon told Israelis last week that "we are in a war,"
he was simply acknowledging the situation on the ground -
and making clear, as he said again yesterday, that Arafat,
"who initiated the war, has the power to stop it."
Indeed, a headline in yesterday's New York Times spoke to
the reality of the situation. A profile of Marwan Barghouti, a
top leader of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, was headlined:
"For Fatah, Only a War Can Bring Peace to Mideast."
And that's the problem: While Powell & Co. rightly demand
that Arafat "make a maximum effort" to end the terrorist
war he's unleashed, there's been little in the way of actually
holding his feet to the fire.
Powell's admonitions, and those like President Bush's
yesterday to both Arafat and Sharon, have done nothing -
nothing - to curb Palestinian attacks. But publicly criticizing
Israel's exercise of self-defense only tells Arafat that his
tactics are working - and that, ultimately, Sharon will be
pressured to roll over.
Surely, anyone criticizing Israel for its defensive policies has
an obligation to suggest a meaningful alternative to rein in
Palestinians' bloody offensive ones.
As the Israeli writer Hillel Halkin wrote last fall in The Wall
Street Journal: "If you have better advice for Israel, feel free
to give it. Just don't tell us it's our duty to die."
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4. A NATION READY TO COMPROMISE MUST BE
READY TO FIGHT
By YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI March 8, 2002
JERUSALEM -- Even for those of us living in the
belly of the Arab-Jewish war, attack and
counterattack tend to blur into one more awful
Middle East day. It's probably inevitable, then, that
outsiders would be tempted to dismiss this conflict as
a bloody tantrum thrown by "both sides."
Yet maintaining clarity about the causes of the latest
phase of the 100-year Middle East war is crucial
because what's at stake is whether terrorist
blackmail will be resisted or indulged.
Palestinian leaders insist that this is a war of
liberation against occupation, a desperate act of last
resort. But the Palestinian terrorist offensive that
began 18 months ago is a calculated attempt to win
additional concessions through violence rather than
negotiation.
It is terrorism as diplomacy by other means. The horror
isn't a struggle for Palestinian freedom but for a few
percentage points of contested territory or worse,
a gambit to force Israel back to the 1967 borders
without offering reciprocal concessions, such as
accepting the legitimacy of a Jewish state in any
borders.
The tragic irony is that a majority of Israelis were
ready to accept almost any territorial concession in
exchange for peace--real peace.
A decade ago, during the first intifada, many Israelis
came to realize that the occupation was untenable and
that the Jews hadn't returned home after a history of
suffering only to oppress another people. We began a
painful reexamination of the history of the Middle East
conflict and gradually conceded that the Palestinians
too had a case.
I learned those lessons as a soldier in Gaza's refugee
camps, from which I emerged convinced, along with many
others, that maintaining the occupation would poison
Israel's soul. The result of that collective awakening
was the Oslo process, which Israel itself initiated.
Israelis swallowed hard and empowered their most
brutal enemy, Yasser Arafat, who'd become a pariah
even in the Arab world for his support of Saddam
Hussein during the Gulf War. We desperately wanted
to believe that the arch-terrorist had transformed
himself into a peacemaker because the alternative--
that Israel would sink ever deeper into an endless
occupation--seemed unbearable.
The premise of the Oslo process was that Israel would
gradually trade territory for Palestinian promises of
peaceful intent--land for words. The more reassurance
the Palestinians could offer, the more Israelis would
feel safe enough to yield additional territory.
Instead, Arafat incited a culture of violence and
hatred and death. Perhaps worst of all, he continued
to teach his people that the Jews were aliens without
legitimate claim to any part of the land. And he did
so at a time when Israel's prime minister wasn't
Ariel Sharon but Yitzhak Rabin.
After seven bitter years of Oslo, most Israelis were
forced to concede that we'd been tricked. The result
was that a despairing electorate turned to Sharon.
With the current wave of violence, Arafat has exposed
himself as the same terrorist leader whose Palestinian
Liberation Organization in the 1970s specialized in
hijacking airplanes and targeting schoolchildren.
His goal is straightforward: to terrorize Israelis
into a unilateral withdrawal from the territories.
Some Israelis are debating whether to respond to
Arafat's assault through military escalation or to
accept defeat and yield the contested territories
without a negotiated settlement.
One left-wing Israeli columnist recently wrote that
we should surrender to Arafat's "legitimate demands"
and thereby test whether that "will bring us closer
to the end of this conflict." Those Israelis who
oppose fighting this war are right when they insist
that ultimately there is no military solution to the
Palestinian problem. Neither is it worth the
bloodletting if the goal is to retain settlements and
biblical territory.
But this isn't a war for settlements but for the
inviolate principle that the Middle East dispute
can be resolved only through negotiations, not
suicide bombings.
Withdrawal under fire will only draw greater fire.
In the post-Sept. 11 world, there should be no place
for indulging terrorism, even when it speaks the
beguiling language of national liberation.
It is precisely those of us who believe in
reconciliation with the Palestinians and who are
prepared to make the necessary concessions for
real peace who must resist the temptation to surrender
to blackmail. A nation ready to compromise must also
be ready to fight. Otherwise, the longing for peace
becomes appeasement of terror.
Yossi Klein Halevi is author of "At the
Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for God
With Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land"
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5. RABBIS IN ISRAEL DECLARE MARCH 13--
A DAY OF FASTING AND PRAYER THROUGHOUT ISRAEL
Barbara Richmond of www.foryourglory.org Mar 06, 2002
Israel Radio reported ago that the Rabbis of Israel
have called for next Wednesday, March 13, to be a
national day of fasting and prayer for the protection
of the nation of Israel and for Jews worldwide. I am
asking all to join in this fasting and prayer with
Israel next Wednesday. A special Prayer Service will
be held at the Western Wall which I plan to attend as
I arrive in Israel this Sunday and am especially
delighted that I can be there to participate in
Jerusalem in this national day of Prayer.
However you are able to participate, please do so.
If you can fast, in full or in part, please join us
in a worldwide day of intercession for the land and
people whom God calls His chosen. I will send a
report from Jerusalem that evening about the Prayer
Service at the Wall.
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6. QUOTES TO NOTE
“Which population in the world would allow itself
to be intimidated and terrified as this whole
population is, where you can’t send your kid out
for a pizza at night without fear he’ll be blown up?
Let’s really let the [Palestinians] understand what
the implication of their actions is.
Very simply, wipe them out. Level them.”
—Rabbi David Hartman (International Herald Tribune, March 2-3)
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7. HIGHLIGHT ARTICLES
THE SAUDI 'PEACE' PLAN (Sham)
In 35 years of studying the Middle East, I have rarely
seen anything to rival the Saudi ``peace plan'' for
cynicism (of those pushing the plan) and gullibility
(of those buying it). If it were not so tragic it
would be comic.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/mar02/peaceplan.html
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN NAZARETH
During these difficult times, the decision of a ministerial
committee headed by Construction and Housing Minister
Natan Sharansky to block the building of a large mosque
in the main square of Nazareth may seem to be of
peripheral interest. The decision, however, may
eventually be seen to be a landmark victory against
extremism and for religious freedom, and be taken as a model
for how to respond to other instances of crass bullying.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/mar02/nazareth.html
A CULTURAL INABILITY TO FACE THE TRUTH
I think the proposal bears repeating slowly. Israel, it's
suggested, should give up territory, buffer zones, and
Jerusalem's Temple Mount in exchange for a declaration
of "recognition" by Middle East countries -- that is, the
very countries whose inhabitants either think that Sept.
11 was the work of the Israelis (about 60%), or that
crashing hijacked airliners into Lower Manhattan was
justified (about 30%).
http://christianactionforisrael.org/islam/inability.html
For more great reading, visit our new EDITORIAL ARCHIVE
http://christianactionforisrael.org/previous.html
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