Guest Letter Writer

My friend, Eve, also feels the need to write a letter to a newspaper and here's one sent to the Jerusalem Post today:-

Sir,

How ironic that on the same day that Rabbi Weiss's article on the lack of perspective of what constitutes a dire problem ("Eliminate the Kiddush Clubs") appears, your lead editorial and a front page article highlight that very same lack of perspective.

The hue and cry over 110 year old Tel Aviv buildings ("Save Sarona") might be better applied to Ahab's palaces, Omri's city of Shomron, Herod's little Temple - all near Sanur in the [northern] Shomron, all slated to be handed to the PA in a few months to meet the fate of Joseph's Tomb. To say nothing of course of the Temple Mount where priceless historical artifacts are destroyed every day.

And yes, Alon Tal of the JNF, it IS a crime to build settlements on Nitzanim beach. Not just because of the havoc it wreaks on the land turtle habitat, but because the request comes due only to the planned travesty of transferring Jews from their homes in Gush Katif.

It may be Sunday morning, but after reading the paper I could use a drink.

Getting Used to It

Get used to the theme of this newspaper headline.

It'll keep repeating itself.

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Israel Agrees to Release 900 Prisoners; Palestinians Want More

JERUSALEM, Feb. 3 - Israel agreed Thursday to release 900 Palestinian prisoners and to gradually pull back troops from West Bank cities, moves intended to improve the political climate ahead of next week's summit meeting between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
But the Palestinians demanded the release of additional prisoners, including some who are ill and those who have already served long terms for serious offenses. Israel, which is expected to free mostly prisoners serving relatively short sentences, rejected the demand, and the talks broke up late Thursday night without agreement on that issue.

Disclaimer Necessary

I found this disclaimer on a web site.

Maybe all newspapers should carry it?

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DISCLAIMER

The S******** is a gossip site which publishes rumors and conjecture in addition to accurately reported facts. Information on this site may or may not be true and The S********* makes no warranty as to the validity of any claims.

Ramon Has It Backwards

In the New York Times of February 4, there was a report on negotiation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israeli Minister Haim Ramon, who supports a prisoner release, said, "The issue which most preoccupies the Palestinians...is the prisoner issue," ("Israel Agrees to Release 900 Prisoners; Palestinians Want More").

His motivation, he explained is that the interest of Israel is "to strengthen public support for Abu Mazen." But Ramon has it backwards.

Israel's need is for a peaceful and pacified enemy, a society that realizes that violence is wrong and that it doesn't pay. Schoolbooks full of hate and airwaves loaded with incitement must be eliminated. It was this education and indoctrination which contributed to these prisoners being were they are by encouraging them with religious hero-worship compensation.

Ever since the 1980s, when Israel first released terrorists en masse, they have consistently returned to the making of war. When a major change in Palestinian society has been achieved, only then should prisoners who aided and engaged in attacks on civilians be released.

The One-sidedness of the NYT's History

Greg Myre writes in today's NYTimes that the issue of property rights has been contentious in Israel "since [its] founding in 1948. In the Israeli-Arab war that year, many Palestinian landowners fled or were driven from property that became part of Israel", (Israel Revokes Decision on East Jerusalem Land, February 2).

Myre fails, though, to mention the fact that Jews also fled or were driven from their property that eventually became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan as well as Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip, as they were in previous hostilities initiated by Arabs, especially in 1929 from Hebron, Gaza City and Shchem (Nablus).

The communities of Neveh Yaakov, Atarot and Bet Ha'Aravah as well as the centuries-old Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem and the Gush Etzion Bloc of four kibbutzim were all overrun in 1948 and ethnically cleansed of Jews.

The community of Kfar Darom in Gaza suffered the same fate.

That war did not produce a singular victim, the so-called "Arab refuggee from Palestine", but created many victims.

Ignoring the integrity of the conflict and the Jewish losses can only complicate possible solutions.

Finding It Everywhere

You can find anti-Israel material everywhere.

For example in a book review in The Times Literary Review. So, I wrote a letter.

Here it is:-

In his review of ADVENTURES IN EGYPT AND NUBIA, on the travels of William John Bankes ("Take walk, make no book"), Mick Imlah writes that Bankes traveled also "in Syria, including modern Jordan and Palestine". This description is misleading.

Palestine always included both modern Israel and Jordan.

All maps of the area portray Palestine as stretching east and west of the Jordan River. Indeed, the original geography of the League of Nations Mandate, granted to Great Britian in 1922, spanned from the Mediterranean Sea to the Iraqi Desert. Jordan was administered, until 1946, as part of the Palestine Mandate.

To avoid mentioning Israel, if done consciously, is to completely miss the compass.

We All Wish We Could Be So Sure

From the NYTimes on the ceremonies at Auschwitz yesterday:

Of all Thursday's speakers, the most impassioned was Merka Shevach, an elderly woman from Bialystok, Poland, who now lives in Israel.
She took the microphone to give an unscheduled, impromptu speech as dusk fell.

"I was here naked as a young girl, I was 16," Ms. Shevach shouted to the crowd. "They brought my family here and burnt them, they stole my name and gave me a number."

She pulled back her sleeve to show the tattoo: 15755.

"Now," she said, "I have a country, I have an army, I have a president, I have a flag and this will never happen again."

IDPs, Getting Used to a New Term

I will expand on this soon but you might as well get used to a new legal term for the residents of Jewish communities in Gaza and Northern Samaria who are scheduled to be expelled from their homes and to have their farms, hothouses, schools, cemeteries and other social institutions either destroyed or physically removed from thm.

It's IDPs which means Internal Displaced Persons.

Yes, there actually is a category like that and even the United Nations utilizes it. Here's how it is described by the Brookings Institute which adminsiters an IDP project:

Over the past decade, tens of millions of people have been forced from their homes by armed conflict, internal strife, and systematic violations of human rights but remain within the borders of their own countries.

The Project on Internal Displacement was created to promote a more effective national, regional and international response to this global problem and to support the work of the Representative to the UN Secretary-General in carrying out the responsibilities of his mandate. The Project is co-directed by Walter Kהlin, the newly appointed Representative of the UN Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, and Roberta Cohen, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

(http://www.brook.edu/fp/projects/idp/idp.htm)

Reacting

I found a Baruch Kimmerling piece in The Nation and, after dealing with him in the Jerusalem Post, I figured I'd continue the whacking.

Baruch Kimmerling's review, "Israel's Culture of Martyrdom", contains several errors which need correction, I wrote.

In discussing the Kastner affair, he claims that Malkiel Greenwald, Shmuel Tamir and Binyamin Halevi were all members of the Lehi underground. In fact, only Tamir was an anti-British resistance fighter and he belonged to the Irgun. Media professor Elihu Katz's term "medurat hashevet" he puts as "tribal campfire". Kimmerling mistranslates here. The word "shevet" does mean "tribe" but it refers to the basic unit of a youth movement, especially the Scouts. There is nothing sinister in the phrase.

And despite his downplaying of the Arab Mufti's role during the Holocaust and his sympathies for Nazi ideology, not only to he launch a Muslim unit in the Balkans to fight alongside German troops but he had two of his lieutenants parachute into mandated Palestine to poison water sources in 1944 and during the 1936-39 revolt, the Mufti extensively exploited Nazi symbols and anti-Semitic frameworks.

Arik Sharon Should Pay Attention

Leon Trotsky’s slogan in 1918 at Brest-Litovsk, when he made a unilateral agreement with Germany to pull Russia out of the war, was

‘Neither victory nor defeat.’.

What would Sharon's disengagement proposal become known as?

And Why Not?

Back on 7 January, a BBC story I read reported that: "Israel has annexed East Jerusalem and sees it as its exclusive domain...The area is often called Arab East Jerusalem because the majority of its inhabitants are Palestinian."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4153465.stmMay

Given this premise, I ask would, then, would the BBC refer to the Gush Katif area, which is a larger area than East Jerusalem, built on lands that were uninhabited for centuries, as "Israeli" or maybe even "Jewish" because the majority of its inhabitants are Jewish Israelis? And why not?

Sloppy Solidarity

Raymond Deane from Ireland is at solidarity with Palestine. He argued this week (25 January), in a letter to the editor of the Irish Times, against a previous pro-Israel writer, Kevin Myers, who denied a right of return to be accorded Arabs who consider themselves refugees.

He impugns Israel by claiming these refugees are the result of 'ethnic cleansing'. He attempts, too, to justify their right of return by referring to the right Jews claim, to return "after almost 2,000 years, to a country that happens to be inhabited by another people".

Given the restraints of a letter, I was concise.

The foremost international body at the time, the League of Nations, recognized in 1922 the historic right of the Jews to reconstitute their homeland. It is not insignificant that the word "Arab" in reference to the non-Jewish communties to be protected therein is missing, for indeed, it was intended that the Arabs fulfill their nationalist aspirations outside the borders of the Palestine Mandate. And they did, in Jordan.

In 1949, the original United Nations resolution is couched in terms of "Palestine refugees", not "Palestinian". Deane, of course, should know that Jews also became refugees, expelled from their homes in Judea and Samaria, what he would call the West Bank, part of then Palestine. Should not the Jewish communities reestablished after 1967 be considered as conforming to this "right" that Deane demands must be applied solely to Arabs?

As for the 'ethnic cleanising' calumny he bandies about, as any historian can testify, it was the Arabs who initiated this horrific policy by destroying Jewish homes, neighborhoods and villages, such as, for example, Tel Hai in 1920, Hebron, Nablus and Gaza in 1929, Atarot, Neveh Yaakov and Bet Arava in 1948. Arab aggression in 1948 in the attempt to eradicate the nascent state, total ethnic cleansing, failed and this is the reason there are refugees today.

As they did not properly use the right of good neighborliness and the respect of international decisions at the time, why should anyone recognize a "right of return" today?

A Rose By Another Name

Sometimes I think that the British simply can't forget/forgive their Mandate experiences and their periodicals are always open to radical, anti-Zionist ideas.

The London Review of Books is one such base of debasement. Recently, in their issues of 4 November, 16 December 2004 and 6 January 2005, there has been a remarkable exchange of opinions in articles and letters. So, I decided to join in.

And this is what I wrote:-

The discepting antagonists - Jacqueline Rose, Avril Mailer, Avi Shlaim and Asher de Bentolila Tlalim - regarding terrorism in mandate Palestine and the attitudes and actions of members of the Revisionist Betar youth movement have raised not only issues of historical accuracy (for example, Shlaim errs; Aryeh Yitzhaki died in a premature blast while preparing letter-bombs) but moral standards and political expediency, then and today. The argument needs refocusing.

Shlaim befuddles us by claiming that the Arab Revolt of 1936-38 was but "a desperate response" to Zionism supported by Britain. The Arab riots in Jerusalem in 1920, in Jaffa and Jerusalem in 1921, the country-wide attacks which killed 133 in August 1929 and their riots in October 1933 were also "desperate" or, may we assume that Jews returning to their homeland are but to expect that they are legitimate targets for Arab violence?

In the Shlomo Ben-Yosef incident, the immediate trigger to his act was the slaughter of five Jews, one child, three women and the driver, travelling in a taxi between Haifa and Safad on March 28, 1938. One of the females was 17 year-old Alegra Mutzari who was to be married a few days later. She was raped. On April 16 that year, four men were shot by a marauding band of Arabs near Hanita. One of them was a close persoanl friend of the Betar members at Rosh Pinna.

To get beyond the details, however, one must recall that the Jews were divided about the preferred solution to the conflict. Arab opponents of Zionism always had the advantage of working with binationalists, concessionists, anti-Zionists (ultra-orthodox and secular) and other stripes of "peace" activists. That advantage, which continues today, conjoined with the non-sympathy, and even an undercurrent animosity, of too many Gentiles to Jewish nationalism has been manipulated by Arabs.

Far from being "desperate", Arab leaders, from the Mufti El-Husseini to Yasser Arafat, have been confident that their total rejection of Zionism and their violence will be understood and tolerated. They rarely used diplomacy and always resorted to violence, exclusively targeting civilians. Ethnic cleansing was another weapon with Arabs razing Jewish communities such as Tel Hai (1920), Hebron and Beer Tuvia (1929), Atarot, Bet HaArava and the Gush Etzion Bloc (1948) among others. Active support, including mobilzing Muslims for the Nazi Wafffen SS, on behalf of Germany during World War II was ignored by "enlightened" Europe.

It is, then, in this light, or better, shades of darkness, that Rose's twisted thinking is to be considered as well as Shlaim's abject apologia.

All Black

Ian Black wrote on 24 Jan 2005 in the UK Guardian that the horror of Auschwitz is "a grim, incontrovertible reminder of why so many angry Arabs and Muslims feel that Israel is the price Palestinians are still paying for European racism". If anything, though, that "anger" should be seen, on the backdrop of Auschwitz, as an irrational hatred and a perversion of history.

The link between Jews and the geography of their homeland, once called Judea, Samaria and Gaza, but becoming Palestine as a result of the Roman conquest in 135 CE, predated not only the Holocaust but many other centuries of persection in Spain, Europe and Asia. Jews do not merit a state because of what brought about Auschwitz and its sister camps. That state was declared worthy of reconstitution and on that basis, Great Britain was awarded the Mandate to establish that state.

If there is any reminding needed, it is that the Arabs of the Palestine Mandate in no small numbers, and led by their spiritual head, the Mifti Haj Amin, supported the Nazi ideology and policies even to the extent of enlisting in Germany's service and having Muslims mobilized into Wehrmacht units while the Mufti broadcast from Berlin.

Arab suicide bombers are the mutant extensions of the evil force that stoked the crematoria fires of Auschwitz.

HOW CAN ONE NOT REFUSE?

“I believe that in matters intrinsically linked to the rights of man and citizen that cannot be negated, a free man is permitted, and at times, even obligated, to disobey formalistic instructions, if the essence of those matters impairs those rights, on the condition that he is prepared to take the consequences for his act”.

The above statement could have been spoken by Mahatma Gandhi, Bertrand Russell or Martin Luther King, all heroes of enlightened societies everywhere. The words represent the core belief of all non-violent protesters over the decades to come to terms with their consciences even, and especially, at the risk of punishment. I could have found the statement be in any collection of ‘quotable quotes’ but I didn’t. And although spoken by an Israeli, none of the various left-wing refusal groups over the years such as Yesh Gvul and The Courage to Refuse have adopted these words.

Indeed, it would be very surprising for the five high school pupils who recently underwent a military trial, or the pilots who refused to bomb targets they thought irrelevant to Israel’s defense or the soldiers in the Sayeret Matkal who last autumn expressed their unwillingness to serve across the Green Line to discover that it was Menachem Begin who said these words in the Knesset on June 18, 1955.

Genuine refusal, as Begin makes clear, takes into consideration the very real probability that the government of the day will apply all legal and judicial instruments to force the conscientious objector to retreat. No one has promised those who refuse a flower-covered path. While in most cases, that comes much later, ostracism, financial punishment and negation of freedom, including jail, are the usual lot of those who select to oppose government policy

The question, then, is can refusal be justified?

Some claim that civil disobedience campaigns such as that promoted by the Zo Artzeinu group in 1995 was illegitimate because it can be used only in oppressive, non-democratic regimes but has no place in Israel. Israel allows a large margin of protest activity.

This aspect can be now argued with since many, including several outstanding figures of the liberal camp in this country, would say that several fine lines dividing democracy from an oppressive regime have been broken. Despite the fact that the High Court of Justice declined to adjudicate the petition of the ministers fired by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the clamping down on free expression by dismissing ministers even before they voted to assure his cabinet majority, a move that would have be nullified if it had occurred in the directorate of any government or private company, academics such as Professor Mordechai Kremnitzer are extremely uncomfortable with that decision.

Sharon has reneged on his commitment to abide by the internal Likud referendum and ignored his party’s central committee decisions as well as exploiting near-dictatorial moves to fire his opponents. All this provides potential refusers with a moral basis that is very necessary in taking such a step.

Another aspect of a refusal campaign is that of basic human rights. The residents of Gush Katif and Northern Samaria are not terrorists nor criminals. In fact, their contribution to the economy of the state and its defense is immeasurable. They are living in areas the League of Nations decided would be the reconstituted Jewish homeland. Can they be turned out of their homes and factories and educational and social institutions? Is the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, specifically Article 17 regarding property and Article 18 relating to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, to be violated? Are the Gaza residents to be victims of discrimination, treated worse than Arab citizens of the state?

What do really moral people think? Well, here is one opinion: “If I would be obligated to destroy a house in the territories, where women, children and the elderly live, due to the fact that one of its members engaged in terror against Israel, I would refuse. He who was brought up on the ethics of our Prophets must refuse to destroy homes.”

These words were spoken by former MK and Minister Shulamit Aloni, an outstanding human rights activist, as recorded by the Hadashot news daily on February 25, 1990. One could assume that she would be the first to assert that what cannot be done to an Arab should not be visited on a Jew.

Refusing orders is an ancient Jewish custom. The first instance of what we now term civil disobedience seems to be in the Bible, Exodus 1:17: “And the midwives did not do what they were commanded because they feared God”. The Talmud, Sotah 11B, adds that their non-cooperation was based on their caution that what they were asked was an immoral crime. Their refusal was later on rewarded.

The current Attorney-General, Menny Mazuz, who already has expressed empathy for those who refuse orders, should reflect on his predecessor’s outlook. Michael Ben-Yair, Attorney-General 1993-96, wrote in Haaretz, on March 3, 2002, “their refusal [of those opposing Israel’s administration of Yesha – YM] to serve is an act of conscience that is justified and recognized in every democratic regime. History's verdict will be that their refusal was the act that restored our moral backbone”.

Can one, then, refuse not to refuse?

The NYT Gets Sinister

The editorial in today's New York Times, "A Double Blow to Peace" (Jan 15), terms the cutting off of contacts with Palestine Authority officials by Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "a precipitous Israeli overreaction."

Furthermore, Sharon, it claims, is an "unwitting ally" of the terrorism and murder of civilians of "Gaza militants". That description itself is preposterous and sinister.

Sharon, during the period of the elections, indecently restricted Israeli defense measures. The Kassam rockets continued to fall, the shootings from ambushes went on as did attempts to infiltrate Israel through and under fences. Israelis were unprotected and died as Sharon seeks to promote a dangerous policy of disengagement.

There is a limit to what any Israeli politician can ignore.

Mahmud Abbas has the capabilities to end the terror. He does not need Sharon's help or cooperation, for it is his own choice if there is to be peace. If anyone is an ally of the Hamas and Jihad in Gaza, it would appear
to be Abbas, unless he does something to change that.

Two Banks; But One Palestine

The New York Times of January 13 carried a story dealing with the refugees in Jordan who did not participate in the Palestine Authority balloting. I found something wrong and wrote this letter:-

Your correspondent, Hassan M. Fattah, notes that "no Palestinian outside the occupied territories was allowed to vote" in the balloting for Palestine Authority Chairman last week ("Jordan's Guests, Deeply Palestinian and Deeply Skeptical," Jan. 13).

It should be recalled that Arabs residing in the Hashemite Kingdom who consider themselves refugees, and still pine for the former homes west of the Jordan River, are, nevertheless, still located in Palestine.

The bureaucratic decision of Winston Churchill in 1921, formalized two years later, to establish Emir Abdullah as ruler of Trans-Jordan, does not alter the geographic fact that Arab refugees there today may have left their homes in 1948 but not their country.

Hermeneutics and Politics

Probably the first instance of civil disobedience and refusal of a direct orderis Exodus 1:17 -“And the midwives did not do what they were commanded because they feared God”.

The Talmud, Sotah 11B, adds that their non-cooperation was based on their caution that what they were asked was an immoral crime. Their refusal was later on rewarded. This is fairly straightforward.

In fact, they even went beyond the decree to kill the Hebrew babies and did a very good deed in supplying food for the babies and caring for them more than just allowing them to live. And, indeed, Pharaoh first asks them, in the next verse "why have you done this?", instead of what should have been, in the chronological order of events, his question: "why did you not put them to death"?

My hermeneutic reasoning?

Their act caused even Pharaoh to realize his edict was wrong and should have been refused. But to move on from there to feeding and clothing them was something even beyond the grasp of a Pharaoh.

In this campaign for Gush Katif we have not only to stall and stem and halt the evil decree of destruction but we need to go even further on behalf of settling our homeland so that this extra effort will convince our opponents that their original idea of disengagement was wrong.

We need to be two steps ahead which is hard. But it's possible.

Tale of the Reversed Narrative

THE TALE OF THE REVERSED NARRATIVE

By Yisrael Medad

This is not a normal mystery tale. There is no Sherlock Holmes nor a Dr. Watson involved. Nevertheless, it has always been an enigma to me, and perhaps others, how figures of Israel’s Post-Zionist camp get away with their sleight-of-mind propaganda shenanigans.

Post-Zionism I consider the most deconstructionist (no pun intended) unarmed element to Israel’s security and future existence. The Hebrew University’s Baruch Kimmerling, a leading icon of this camp, published an example of its outlook this month at the trendy Salon.com web site. Entitled “The two catastrophes”, he asserted, in a claim of fatuous equivalency, that both Israelis and Palestinians have memories “marked by inconceivable tragedy” that need be understood so that each can move beyond the past.

Kimmerling’s warped approach becomes even more devious for he goes on to claim that “the ethnic cleansing of Arabs must be seen within the context of the Holocaust”, a situation that need be balanced so as “to reach a certain ‘equilibrium of catastrophes’." In doing this, Kimmerling would appear to play loose with historical facts. His alternative, post-zionist narrative is less than authentic. It is, indeed, more than disingenuous for he, like his fellow travelers, is hiding the truth.

While he agrees in the article with the late Edward Said that even though in 1948, “the Jews carried out [brutal] ethnic cleansing”, this “cannot be compared with the systematic genocide of the Holocaust”. But he is less than generous with his sympathy because he considers the introduction of the Holocaust into the discourse “insufferable because the Palestinians are not an ‘involved party’ to the Holocaust.”

Going one step further, Biblical roots of Jews in the Holy Land, the Hebrew University professor points out, are but a 2,000 year old argument which is countered by one of just a mere 57 years ago. “This whole strange game of ‘who preceded whom’ is,” to Kimmerling’s thinking, “an absurdity.”

Here, then, is where the two narratives, one a complete reverse of the actual course of events, must unlink themselves.

First, ethnic cleansing, used here as a predated solecism, was pursued first by the Arabs of the Palestine Mandate. In March 1920, Arabs expelled Jews from Tel Hai and in 1921 tried to do oust the Jews from Petah Tikva, then a 40 year-old settlement. In August 1929, they succeeded, through a brutal three-week pogrom campaign, to cleanse Hebron, Shchem and Gaza of its Jewish population that extended back centuries. Other communities were razed. Later, in the 1948 war, Jews of Bet Ha’Arava, Kfar Darom, Neveh Yaakov, Atarot and the Old City of Jerusalem were “cleansed” out of their homes.

But more basically, throughout that pre-state period, Arabs opposed any right of domicile whatsoever of Jews anywhere in the Mandate territory, which, we need be reminded, extended from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. It was their constant demand to limit and restrict and, eventually, depopulate the country of Jews. That pernicious attitude continues today but is ignored by the proponents of a “post” era.

Second, too often overlooked is the crucial influence the Arabs of Palestine had on British colonial policy in the late 1930s that dovetailed with the eventual horrific consequences of Hitler’s intentions. The Arab violence, both urban and rural, in 1933 and then, beginning with Sheikh Aziz A-Din El-Qasam in 1935 and continuing throughout 1936-1939, was the main factor that caused the British regime to close the gates to Jewish immigrants from Europe.

Palestine Arabs, supported by the weapons and irregular forces of neighboring Arab countries, effectively allowed Hitler to catch as many as six million Jews in his Holocaust net rather than tens, or perhaps, hundreds of thousands escaping to the Land of Israel. It was, in the main, their terror that pressured the British into formulating the White Paper of 1939 that limited land purchases and prevented entry to Jews fleeing persecution. British archives, as Bernard Wasserstein revealed in his 1979 study “Britain and the Jews of Europe”, are full of the notes of colonial officials who thwarted attempts to get refugees out of the clutches of the Nazis, then were caught up in the death camps, due to Arab influence.

The Holocaust could not have been as accomplished as it was without the lending hand of the Arabs. They cannot escape their culpability and pseudo-academics who ignore this ugly chapter in the relations between Jews and Arabs during the Palestine Mandate period

Third, Kimmerling overlooks the very active participation of the leader of Palestine’s Arabs, Mufti Amin El-Husseini, and others in Holocaust efforts. These included propaganda broadcasts to the Arab world, mobilizing Muslim units to fight alongside Hitler’s Waffen SS, parachuting Arab agents into the Mandate to poison its water supply as well as residence in Berlin. He called on Hitler to “accord to Palestine…the right to solve the problem of the Jewish elements…by the same method, that the question is now being settled in the Axis countries.”

Kimmerling and others of his ilk promote the false idea that Israel was founded and built upon the ruins of an Arab society and culture, a tale of a reversed narrative.

(a slightly different, edited version of this piece appeared in the Jerusalem Post on December 30, 2004 at
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/P/Subs/Entry&cl=1&finish=ContentServer%3Fpagename%3DJPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull%2526cid%3D1104291022963 )

Outline of A Legal Strategy Against Disengagement

I am trying to develop a legal line for a possible appeal to either Israel's High Court of Justice (Bagatz) or even the International Court of Justice.I am well aware that many of the lawyers I have turned to either fear that Israel's justices are too far left in their personal opinions to be sympathetic with the arguments or that the international tribunal even less so.

Nevertheless, since I do think my arguments logical and truthful, and becausein a very fundamental sense the protest activity we are engaged in and what Pinchas Wallerstien is now promoting - a non-violent but direct action campaign -is based on these arguments, we are going to have to "go public" eventually in some forum, even if it be magistrates' courts as a result of being arrested in Gush Katif or on the way there.I will keep my points short and concise. As we are still waiting the publicationof Howard Grief's book, much more detail can be found here:
http://www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/02-issue/grief-2html

http://www.therightroadtopeace.com/infocenter/Heb/HowardGriefAttachE.html

Please review this and let me know what you think. And if there are any lawyers out there who can write this up as a proper petition, you must get in touch with me.

Here's the outline:

1. The right of a Jew to live, reside and make a livelihood, a right grounded in religious, demographic and historical traditions, custom and realities a 3,000 years old, was recognized by international law in 1920 at the San Remo Conference and thencodified by the highest international body at the time, the Supreme Council of theLeague of Nations in its July 1922 decision granting Great Britain the Mandate for Palestine.

2. That decision can be broken down into these elements:

a. the territory was originally to be all of what was then considered Palestine, east as well as west of the Jordan River.
b. even though Trans-Jordan was suspended from the terms of the Jewish National Home, for sure all of the area west of the Jordan River, i.e., Judea, Samaria and Gaza, were included.
c. the purpose of this decision was to reestablish and reconstitute in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people. Not one word was mentioned about "Arabs".
d. to accomplish this sacred undertaking, political, economic and administrative conditions to secure this development needed to be taken (Article 2).
e. no territory of Palestine (at the least, J, S & G) was to be ceded, leased or in any way placed under the control of the government of any foreign power (Article 5).
d. the right of Jews to closely settle on the land was of paramount consideration (Article 6).

3. This decision was to be implemented by the Jewish Agency of the World Zionist Organization.

4. The 1952 Law of the Status of the JA/WZO designated the JA/WZO as the body to continue to operate for the development and the settlement of the country. A second law, in 1954, established a "pact" which granted the JA/WZO the right to represent World Jewry in the fields of immigration and settlement.

5. Ever since 1967, J, S & G have indeed been "settled" by the JA/WZO.

6. Thus we come to the crucial part of my argument which may be a bit new:
While the state of Israel can, theoretically, withdraw its forces from J, S & G, they cannot expell and transfer Jews out of their homes, farms and factories. This prohibition is based on international law and the laws of the state of Israel itself. A Jew has the principled right to live anywhere in J,S & G.
Therefore, any Jew currently living in Gush Katif or any of the northern Samarian communities who belongs to the WZO (being a member of NRP, Likud, Moledet, etc. is enough to qualify your standing in this case as they are members of ther WZO) should be able to petition the courts against the Disengagement Law and any subsequent actions taken based on that law.

The Pervasiveness of Bias

As the NYT's correspondent Greg Myre reports, Arabs of the Palestine Authority voted in "orderly municipal elections" and that "the turnout was large and the voting went smoothly, with no major glitches or security problems reported" ("Palestinian Voting Is Held Without Serious Incident", Dec. 24, 2004).

This reality, of course, highlights the falsity of the media-hype that was generated by PA spokespersons seeking to accuse Israel, aforehand, as interfering with the process of democratization upon which a peace depends. Israel, they succeeded in doing, is first guilty and when proven correct, no one remembers. This tactic is successful, too often, due to the bias that has crept into Western thinking as Senator Charles Schumer pointed out in his own letter published on the same day.

(One sentence in your Dec. 18 editorial "Timely Help for the Palestinians" betrays the subtle and inherent bias against Israel that pervades too much of Western thought. When supporting the removal of Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, you write, "While those checkpoints have undoubtedly reduced the number of attacks by suicide bombers, they have made it virtually impossible for average Palestinians to move freely, whether going to the polls or simply trying to go to work."

Doesn't it make sense that Palestinians should be required to eliminate the suicide bombers
in their midst before Israel is forced to open checkpoints? What other nation would be asked
to put the ability of its adversaries to move freely over the need to protect the lives of its people?

Charles E. Schumer, U.S. Senator from New York
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/24/opinion/l24schumer.html

The Lost Raiders

Here's a Reuters story. Arabs die in a "raid". But who led the raid?
Was it the Pals. or the Israelis?
And which "raid" started first? Who "began" it?
=============================

December 19, 2004

2 Palestinians Die in RaidBy REUTERS

GAZA, Dec. 18 (Reuters) - Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinian militants on Saturday,
the second day of a raid in Khan Yunis, a refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip,
medics and witnesses said.

Israel began the raid on Friday to curtail mortar attacks on Jewish settlements.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/international/19mideast.html

Anyone Seen Any Terrorists?

Well, the terminology gets a bit more complicated. We're in Iraq with this story. In addition to "militants" (who kill pupils with bombs), we also have "insurgents". But still no "terrorists".
===============================

INSURGENTS
Militants' Bomb Misfires, Hitting School Bus; Pupil Dies
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
Published: December 19, 2004

ERBIL, Iraq, Dec. 18 - One Iraqi eighth grader was killed and six others wounded Saturday morning in Mosul when insurgents trying to detonate a roadside bomb in the path of a routine American patrol misfired and hit a school bus full of children, the military said.

American troops identified and fired at insurgents nearby, killing one, military officials said, following the 7:45 a.m. attack in Mosul, in northern Iraq.

Insurgents also staged several attacks in north-central Iraq on Saturday, killing one Iraqi and wounding eight others at an election center near Samarra and wounding four American security contractors in Baiji.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/international/middleeast/19iraq.html

Something Missing

In practically all the media reports on the collapsed tunnel in Rafiah over Friday and Saturday, the element left out was the most intriguing from a media point-of-view.

Israel diverted its military efforts to aid in the rescue of Arabs who had been trapped 23 hours in a collapsed underground weapons smuggling tunnel. Ambulances were allowed into the no-go area.

Israel's standards of morality recently have been questioned regarding the shooting of children, harassment at checkpoints and mutiliation of the dead. That Israel, whose citizens suffer daily bombardment and shootings from the weapons brought in from Egypt via these tunnels, would deign to expend its resources to rescue these terrorists once again illustrates its high level of commitment to all human life.

And, of course, the non-reporting of the story reflects negatively on the media.

Who is Escalating Whom?

notice the use of "escalate" by Israel and the Pals. in this UPI story:
===========================

Violence grows in post Arafat era
GAZA, Dec. 18 (UPI) -- A Palestinian report released Saturday suggests the Israeli army escalated its military actions against Palestinians after Yasser Arafat's Nov. 11 death.

The PLO report said that between Nov. 11 and Friday the Israeli army has not stopped carrying out incursions, demolishing houses and committing assassination. The report also noted Israel did not stop the construction of the barrier, which Palestinians call a wall, in the West Bank in addition to confiscating Palestinian land and imposing curfews.

Palestinian militants during the same period escalated their mortar and missile attacks on Jewish settlements in Gaza and southern Israel, as well as firing at Israeli troops and Jewish settlers' vehicles.

http://interestalert.com/brand/siteia.shtml?Story=st/sn/12180000aaa0171f.upi&Sys=siteia&Fid=WORLDNEW&Type=News&Filter=World%20News

Another example of balanced, ethical, reliable and non-discriminatory reporting.

Crying Over a Weeping Friedman

Thomas L. Friedman is weeping ("Holding Up Arab Reform", Dec. 16) because the publication of the third Arab Human Development Report is being delayed due to a U.S. demand that its prologue, critical of Israeli occupation and the American invasion of Iraq, be rewritten.

Friedman belittle's the prologue but he is being disengenuous. That introduction assigns the primary responsibility for all that needs reform in the Arab world at Israel's doorstep. It is biased, unfactual and academically unprofessional.

And if Friedman excuses it "to give political cover to the Arab authors", then he is need of reform himself.

No Damage Caused?

Quoting from an AP report, the New York Times informed
its readers that an anti-tank missile was fired into a
civilian Jewish community in Gaza. While it caused no
damage or injuries, the missile had exploded near a
nursery school.

The report then noted that "Palestinian militants
frequently fire rockets and mortar shells at
settlements and army bases, but they rarely cause
casualties." ("Israel, Palestinians Reach Election
Plan", Dec. 8). This last phrase is obviously a
throwaway, as if to say 'well, nothing happened so why
get all upset and injuries or worse are rare, so who
really cares'.

Rarely caused casualties are not to be dismissed as
insignificant. The intent of the planning and effort
of these "militants" is to kill and maim innocent
civilians and, in this specific case, infants and
young kindergarten children. They are not 'militants'
but coldblooded killers, terrorists.

I hope that the NYT will pursue the issue of the questionable journalistic validity of continuing to use the term "militants"
and its use will soon come to a conclusion and that the word will not be employed to describe such actions and operations.

The wording of the AP report should not have been
adopted by the New York Times.

Follow the Money Trail

Greg Myre writes in the New York Times that Palestinians are dependent on international aid "which has approached $1 billion dollars annually for a Palestinian population of fewer than four million" ("Poverty Worsening in Israel and Palestinian Areas, 2 Studies Find", Nov. 24).

Unfortunately, he neglected to note that many tens of millions of those donor nation funds have been embezzeled by corrupt Palestinian Authority officials, from Yasir Arafat on down. Kickbacks and skimming are most rampant. Other monies feed the terror campaign. This is one aspect of the poverty that cannot be blamed on Israel, or can it?

So, When is a Terrorist Not A Militant?

I found this report on the NYT web site on November 21. (URL below).

Islamic Jihad is an officially recognized terror group.(*)
Why, then, does the NYT insist on using the term"militant" when the group itself acknowledges the person's organizational affiliation while on a mission of violence? Why not "terrorist"?

The report:
"In violence Sunday, Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian militant who tried to attack a Gaza road frequented by Jewish settlers, the Israeli army and Islamic Jihad said. The army confirmed it killed one militant during the incident, which occurred in an off-limits area not far from a crossing point into Israel. It said soldiers chased after another armed man, but Islamic Jihad said he escaped unarmed. The Islamic Jihad confirmed in a statement one of its men was killed in the incident.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html

-------------------------------------------------
(*) State Department Identifies 37 Foreign Terrorist Organizations
A listing of terrorist organizations and groups is included in "Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003", areport released by the Department of State on April 29. Designation of a group as a foreign terrorist organization results in the U.S. government blocking assets held in U.S. financial institutions, denying their members visas, and making it a criminal offense for U.S. citizens or persons within U.S. jurisdiction to provide them with material support or resources.

Following is the list of Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations, determined by the Secretary of State, plus a list of other terrorist organizations that the report identifies as active in the past year Patterns of Global Terrorism: 2003U.S. Department of StateWashington, D.C. April 29, 2004
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade
HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement)
Hizballah (Party of God)
Kahane Chai
Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ)
Palestine Liberation Front (PLF)
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)

To which, I received this reply:-

Dear Yisrael Medad,

Thanks for the message. Mr. Okrent briefly touched on this in a recent web journal post where he also said he would be revisiting this issue at some point during his tenure.

http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/thepubliceditor/danielokrent/index.html?offset=31

Personally, I was torn until a conversation I had last week with a reader from Germany. Absent any clear definition, I felt, it seemed reasonable to use "abuse" if it helped keep temperatures down, much as the use of "militant" instead of "terrorist" in the Palestine-Israel conflict suggests a sometimes misplaced wish neither to take sides nor to be inflammatory (many supporters of Israel feel very differently about this, and I expect to address the specific issue in a future column). I will keep the example you sent us on file for him.

Sincerely,
Arthur Bovino
Office of the Public Editor
The New York Times

Sharon Worse Than Clinton?

President Bill Clinton's Library opened and I searched through its site. Did you know that,
of all people, he refused to commit to a Palestinian state? Maybe Sharon should review his American policy history and realign with what is in Israel's best interests?

================
For Immediate Release September 28, 1998
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
IN PHOTO OPPORTUNITY WITH PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU
AND CHAIRMAN ARAF
AT The Oval Office 12:45 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I would like to publicly welcome Prime Minister Netanyahu and Chairman Arafat. We have had a very, very good meeting today, following the one-on-one meeting that the Prime Minister and the Chairman had last night, their first face-to-face meeting in a year. I believe that we all agree that we have made progresson the path to peace... And again I want to thank both these men for the open, candid, respectful way in which they worked and we worked together. And we're going to work at this now to see if we can get it done.

Q What are the major sticking -- Q Mr. President, there was --

THE PRESIDENT: Wait, wait. One, two, three. We'll do them all. Go ahead.

Q Mr. President, do you support the Palestinian state in principle, and do you think the Palestinians have the right to have a state made for -- or in principle, and self-determination for them?

THE PRESIDENT: In the Oslo Accords, that question was left for the final status negotiations. Because of the heavy involvement of the United States in the peace process, I believe it would be in error for me to comment on that. I think the important thing is that has to be resolved in the final status negotiations as provided for in the Oslo Accords. As long as the peace process is going forward, whatever the United States says on that publicly will be unhelpful to the ultimate outcome.
Q Mr. President, the First Lady commented on this in public --
Q Mr. President, is it your assumption --

THE PRESIDENT: She did, but she's not the President and she's not trying to manage this peace process.That's a different thing. But I'm telling you the --we gave our word when we agreed to try to be an honestbroker to respect the Oslo process. And therefore -- I have to tell you, when I'm in Israel or when I'm with American Jewish groups, they also try to get me to say things that I said before I was the President and the broker of the process that I can no longer say. So it's a different -- I gave my word that I would be faithful to the process that these two parties set out for the resolution of their agreement, and I have to try to do that.

http://www.clintonpresidentialcenter.org/legacy/092898-remarks-by-president-in-photo-op-with-arafat.htm

Vote Absentee

I would think there is a simple solution to the Palestinian Authority demand that elections scheduled for January 9 be conducted in Jerusalem, a demand that U.S. Secretary of State Powell forced Israel to commit to.

Why not absentee ballots?

If millions of Americans can vote abroad in a presidential and congressional campaign, as done earlier this month, less than 200,000 Arabs in Jerusalem should present no logistical nor political problem. That is, unless PA officials are interested in creating one.

Misquotation in NYTimes

Judith Miller's obituary of Yasir Arafat (Nov. 11) quotes Menachem Begin, Israel's former Prime Minister, as referring to Arafat as "a beast on two legs".

Actually, on June 8, 1982, Begin spoke during a debate in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. He referred to Arab terror directed against civilians, specifically children as his context. The minutes of the session read: "the children of Israel will happily go to school and joyfully return home, just like the children in Washington...We will defend our children. If the hand of any two-footed animal is raised against them, that hand will be cut off...".

Begin did not mention Arafat, but rather terrorists in a generic sense, those who deliberately target children. These were the "animals".

Quoting the Wrong Quotations

I first met Menachem Begin personally in a synagogue in Queens in 1968. He was on an Israel Bonds tour and I and other Betar youth movement members provided an honor guard for the event. Of course, I had earlier "met" Begin through the books he wrote, which I had read. I had also been present, during my year of training in Israel in 1966-1967, at outdoor rallies and indoor meetings where he had spoken. Later, as a result of my work in the political field, I even took dictation from Mr. Begin in the summer of 1982 at coalition talks when he was prime minister.Thus, it was with interest and curiosity that I listened to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon presenting his disengagement program to the nation. In his statement before the Knesset last week, he recalled words Begin spoke over two decades ago during the first debate on his autonomy plan. He also quoted two lines from a song penned by Begin's mentor, Ze'ev Jabotinsky. Obviously, he was seeking to underpin his drastic turn-about from traditional nationalist camp policies by attaching himself to luminaries of the past.There can be a problem in drawing historical parallels based on the relevance of what was once said, and it is obvious that Sharon was not that successful in attempting to mobilize this postmortem support. Let me start with Jabotinsky.Sharon noted that Jabotinsky possessed a vision for partnership and peace among the peoples of this land. In an article published in his last collection, The Jewish War Front, he even proposed the possibility of an Arab president for the future state of Israel. In the plenum, Sharon read two lines from a song written in 1934 that became a popular song of the Betar movement.Its fourth stanza reads: "There he will benefit from bountiful plenty and joy, the son of the Arab, the son of Nazareth and my son." The song's title, Sharon neglected to inform his listeners, is "The Left Bank of the Jordan" and the "there" in the line quoted is quite a different geographical reality from Sharon's disengagement. Jabotinsky's "there" was the entire area of the mandate granted to Great Britain by the League of Nations in 1922.To Jabotinsky's great regret, the mandate was whittled down considerably and all of Trans-Jordan, east of the Jordan River, was awarded to a Saudi Arabian refugee named Abdallah, a scion of the Hashemite family. Forced by his personal commitment to institutional discipline, Jabotinsky, as a member of the Zionist Executive, did not vote to reject the loss of homeland territory. But he later resigned in protest and his Revisionist party championed the concept of the integrity of the homeland.So, while Sharon sought to don a mantle that Jabotinsky once wore, in truth, his quotation was, to put it kindly, a slight misrepresentation. And now, to what Menachem Begin said.On December 28, 1977, then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin presented his plan for Palestinian autonomy. Sharon quoted the following excerpt, where Begin refers to criticism directed against him from Chanan Porat of Gush Emunim:"I once said, during an argument with people from Gush Emunim, that I love them today, and will continue to like them tomorrow. I told them: 'You are wonderful pioneers, builders of the land... However, you have one weakness - you have developed among yourselves a messianic complex.... I call on you today, my good friends from Gush Emunim, to perform your tasks with no less modesty than your predecessors, on other days and nights. We do not require anyone to supervise the kashrut of our commitment to the Land of Israel!"It is easy to understand why Sharon selected these lines at this moment, faced as he is with his decision to expel some 8,000 people from their homes. Begin's legalistic approach, we know, led him to distinguish between Sinai and the former Mandate area. Sinai, Begin insisted, was not Eretz-Yisrael. Sharon, however, is dealing with Gaza and a portion of northern Samaria. This is another matter entirely.In fact, a few paragraphs on in his speech, we read Begin saying: "When it was demanded of us [in Washington] that we agree to the establishment of a so-called 'Palestinian' state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, we replied that in no way would we accept such an entity, which represents a mortal danger to the state of Israel."Moreover, in Begin's last public address, on August 14, 1983, he said: "As far as Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district are concerned, we have a perfect right to live and stay there;" a clear indication that his vision of the people of Israel in the land of Israel was quite different from that of Mr. Sharon.Words are important. People remember them. They remind us. Care, too, we now know, must be taken to guard them and to recall them in their context and circumstances. To do otherwise is to distort, something public debate should not tolerate.

From Left to 'Wrong'

I admit that in joining the Betar Zionist youth movement when I was 16 I
was not aware I was becoming a member of yet another minority within a
minority.

The move to Betar was borderline heresy in the black yarmulke world to
which I belonged, despite my having only joined it three years previously.
I was leaving my childhood friends behind and aligning with
the political Right just when the civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam protest
movement was about to burst on to the scene.

While the ethos of the New Left beguiled much of my generation, I went
down a different road. At Zionist youth council meetings and joint kumzitz evenings
as well as at the annual folk dance festival at Madison Square Garden, "fascist" was
the epithet hurled at those of us in Betar by members of the pioneering youth movements.
It was they who came to control the Zionist apparatus and its budget within the World
Zionist Organization. The pioneers were ostensibly nonpolitical youth groups. In practice,
they were partisan and left-wing. Our movement's ideology, our reading of history, left us convinced that Hashomer Hatza'ir or Habonim were wrong. Our take on the communist threat to Israel
and to the Jews of the Soviet Union left us unenthused about the value of linkingup
with progressive forces.

Four decades later I have the sense that I am still part of a much-maligned minority, and that left-wing ideas shape the political orientation and cultural landscape of Israel's civil society.

GENE SHARP is the doyen of nonviolent direct action strategy at the Albert Einstein Institute in Boston. Recently I wrote him about Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan for unilateral disengagement from Gaza andnorthern Samaria.I drew his attention to the draconian elements of the new Disengagement Law being prepared for legislation. Paragraph 27(A) [2-3] decrees up to three years' imprisonment - five years if a policeman is endangered -for those who refuse to leave their homes. Thus employing the tactic
of passive resistance, such as a sit-in, is outlawed.

Sharp's reaction was striking. "Such an extreme law against explicitly nonviolent opposition may
drive people who prefer to use nonviolent methods instead to use violent methods."But Israel's Left,
in the media, Knesset and other corridors of power seem almost oblivious.

From where I sit, it seems that the Right is a particular target offree-speech restrictions. For example, any national camp figure employing the phrase "Oslo criminals" is excoriated. But when Yossi Sarid wrote in the September 23 edition of Haaretz that "the time hascome to admit that the crime of the settlements is the greatest crime in the history of the country" - inflammatory and inciteful from our point of view - nary a criticism was leveled. And what are we to make of Yahad MK Avshalom Vilan's August 20 interview
in Haaretz in which the Peace Now founder said, "I am telling you that the goal of the extreme Right is to create Jewish shaheeds."... In the end a situation is liable to be created in which the trigger will have to be squeezed slowly, responsibly, coolly and intelligently."But when Ofra's Uri Elitzur talks about having anti-disengagement demonstrators shoving soldiers trying to remove them, he is targeted as a seditionist.

And what are we to make of the sympathetic treatment Tali Fahima has been getting - at least judging by the advertisements that have appeared in the prestige press, and the talk radio chatter? She's the activist who was placed in administrative detention for allegedly intending to carry out a terrorist attack inside Israel
in conjunction with a Jenin-based terror cell.

Contrast her case with that of far-Right activist Noam Federman, who failed to garner expressions of concern about his eight months in administrative detention from progressive voices concerned with civil liberties.
More recently, rabbis who urge their pupils to talk to their commanders about not taking part in the disengagement plan have been pilloried. But soldiers who refuse to serve in the territories are upheld as paragons of morality.Haifa University philosopher Ilan Gur-Ze'ev is within his rights in advocating that Israelis embrace an exile-oriented education. But, then,why should talk on the theological Right about a Messianic Zionist
education be denigrated?

In September 2003 former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg wrote in Yediot Aharanot that " The Israeli nation today rests on a scaffolding of corruption, and on the foundations of oppression and injustice... [a state]
run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawmakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies.
A state lacking justice "

Harsh words. Perhaps as harsh as the words of Nadia Matar, who compared disengagement head Yonatan Bassi to a Judenrat official. The difference is that Matar's remarks landed her an appointment with the police, while Burg's didn't. Despite all the years that have passed since my decision to align mysel fwith the Zionist Right, I have still not become inured to the sense that my progressive opponents enjoy an unfair advantage.

The Jerusalem Post
October 17, 2004

Just How Militant?

A letter to the special Middle East news editor of the BBC:-

Sir,

See, please, the item from today on the BBC web site.

Just how "militant" was this militant?

Was he fiercely militant? Meekly militant? Non-violently militant? Was he militant enough to kidnap a CNN reporter? To carry an AK-47? To fire a Kassam missile into a civilian center of non-militant Israelis in Sderot? To launch a mortar shell into another civilian center in the Gush Katif area?
Was he a Hamas militant? an Islamic Jihad militant? A Fatah militant?  Was he as militant as a "settler" or less so?
Yisrael Medad

------

Militant killed in Gaza incursion
A Palestinian militant has been killed during an Israeli military incursion
in the northern Gaza strip, reports say.

^

The Terminology of Reuters

Here's something I noticed about the Reuters story on the Riyad kidnapping:No "militants", no "activists". Just plain ol' "armed" likepolicmen are armed, like army personnel are armed.Certainly not "armed guerrillas" or "armed militiamen".Gee, how low can Reuters go?

====GAZA (Reuters) - Armed Palestinians seized an Israeli Arab producer for theCNN television network from a car in Gaza City on Monday after asking forhim by name.

Missing

Did anyone notice that the op-ed in Sunday's NYTimes, today, September 26,
describing Iraq's nuclear weapons development history was missing something?
This op-ed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/opinion/26obeidi.html

Like, missing Israel's bombing raid on the Osaryk reactor on June 7, 1981?
The one that saved the world from a nuclear holocaust.
The reactor assisted by France.
The bombing ordered by Menachem Begin.

Nadia Matar Has Surprised Me

No, I wasn't surprised by Nadia's use of Holocaust analogies, intimations and semantics in comparing what Yonatan Bassie, head of the Disengagement Office to remove the Jews from the Gaza District, is doing to what the Judenrat's were asked to do.

The very first demo of the Women in Green, I recall, when they went out to the Green Line, was one in which Holocaust-recalling terminology was used, specifically "ghetto". I have consciously tried to avoid use of the Holocaust but have succumbed in one respect: when I point out to critics of Israel that I cannot recall one single instance when a Nazi, having found out that a few Jews were still living in some bunker, forest lair, ghetto or shetel or concnetration camp or death march, strapped on some dynamite and tossed himself in among them to kill them, But the Arabs, who supposedly are less evil than Nazis (according to our "friends" abroad and our Lefties at home), hate us so much that they are willing, and even orgiastically excited enough, to kill themselves if only to be able to kill more Jews.

But, getting back to my main point, Nadia Matar and Ruth Matar surprised me. Nadia was visciously attacked in the Jerusalem Post for her Holocaust remarks and, of course, misquoted and quoted out of context. But when I opened my Jerusalem Post this morning, Friday, there was a WIG ad with an Oleg cartoon (I haven't gone through the JPost web site so I don't know if any WIG ads are there).

Why surprised you are still asking yourselves? Well, I would have thought that Nadia and Ruth would have pulled their ad. Now, I know that the JPost is one of the main outlets of advertising to Jews living abroad, who, like for many institutions and advocacy groups, including those that I am affiliated with, contribute handsomely to our causes, for which we are very grateful. But, nevertheless, the blow that the JPost struck WIG would have, I thought to myself (and now I am thinking out loud to all of you), was mean.

In other situations and circumstances of the politics and policy of demos of Women in Green, I think Nadia and Ruth would have advocated withdrawal of financial support as a means of expressing intense displeasure. In fact, that's what they are berating Bassie for, offering money to the Gaza district Jewish residents.

Moreove, they even demanded that Yonatan Bassie himself give up his job and yield financially.

Of course, maybe they did try to pull the ad but it was already too late or maybe they have a long-term contract that Michael Matar (Ruth's husband, a lawyer) can't break so quickly. If so, this being Yom Kippur eve, I request apologies from all concerned.

But, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Shaul Magid purports in the Jerusalem Report that "radical settlers…rejectstate authority if it conflicts with their messianicvision” and that they are “adopting anti-Zionist andanti-state attitudes” (The Settler Secession”, Sept.20). Actually, his view is a twisted reflection ofhis own broken mirror.Our Zionism is the traditional kind, the one bothsecularists and the religiously observant lived,labored and died for for over a century since theadvent of Herzlian political Zionism, the one that wasapproved by the world’s foremost international bodyback in 1922. That Zionism sought the reestablishmentof the Jewish National Home through close settlementon the land, as the League of Nations decision readwhen Great Britain was awarded the Mandate.If there is a change of vision, it is a result ofthose, like Magid abroad and other academics and thecultural elite in Israel, who promote the idea of“State” above all. If the “State” declares the Osloprocess to be followed, when dead Jews become, asShimon Peres termed them, “sacrifices of peace” and ifthe “State” seeks to expel and exile Jews from theirhomes, but will prosecute citizens who talk of thetransfer of Arabs, then who is the radical, theextremist and the real anti-Zionist?

Tariq's Tricks

Tariq Ramadan, the controversial Swiss Islamist, published an op-ed in the NYTimes of September 1. He outlines the “legitimate criticism of American foreign policy” which cause the Arab and Islamic world “misgivings” and lists them as “five specific grievances”.

The first, naturally, is the “unbalanced role” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The fact that in a neutral countup, America essentially supports perhaps as much as 90% of Palestinian demands regarding territory, Jerusalem and settlements (or, if we stiill go with Ehud Barak’s plan, we can up that to 97%).

Then we have American support for authoritarian regimes in the Arab world and indifference to democratic movements, particularly those of a religious bent. Well, in my opinion, it is the Arab world that supports these dictatorships and I have not read, heard or saw any religious-based democractic Islamic movement.

Third is that Washington’s policies are driven by short-term economic and geo-strategic interests. Excuse me? If it wasn’t for oil, the Arab countries would still be back in the dark ages of camel caravans. They don’t share these interests?

Fourth is the tolerance of some prominent Americans of Islam-bashing. Aw, gee, at least they don’t chop off fingers, hands or heads.

Fifth and last is the use of military force as the primary means of establishing democracy. Of course, the major establishment of American democracy was the result of the War of Independence and a Civil War some 85 years later, quashed a fallout of American democracy. The defense of that democracy was accomplished in another military action called World War II, when the Arabs fought with, supported or otherwise avoided fighting against the Axis powers.

Tariq Ramadan should add stand-up comic as an additional performance ability.

In the New York Times editorial of August 23, "Folly in the West Bank",
the paper insists a peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian issue "To be just, workable and sustainable...will have to divide that land into two coherent territories...".

While supposedly a logical idea, one needs recall that that proposal was tried in 1922, when TransJordan was lopped off the original mandate area, in 1937, when the Peel Commission partition was put forward and in 1947 when the UN Resolution predicated itself on partition. While the Zionist movement accepted the principle of surrendering Jewish rights to its historic homeland, the Arabs never sought any peace based on geographical division and never accepted such.

During 1948-1967, Palestinian Arabs, as fedayeen and later, as Fatah,
sought to "liberate" a Palestine that was but in reality the eradication of Israel. Even with Lebanon, yielding up all the territory Israel controlled in 1999 does not satisfy the Hezzbolah while the other territorial occupation by Syria is ignored by international forums.

Perhaps the New York Times can suggest a better plan, that might work?

How to Skew The News

Steven Erlanger, in his report published today, Friday, sought out additional
commentary and quoted from two Israelis, Nahum Barnea and Yaron Ezrahi.
Ezrahi also was quoted in another report this past week by Erlanger.

As a long-time observer of the New York Times' reporting on Israel, and having
had personal contacts with many correspondents, I wrote the following to the
newspaper's Public Editor:-

I have noticed that this aspect of journalism is particularly problematic. In the past, Thomas
Friedman would include quotations from Rabbi David Hartman as well as his Persian
grocery store owner. Other reporters also concentrated on just a few'outsiders'.

The problem is that the NYT reporters here almost exclusively rely on sources
who are Leftist or moderate, 'peace' pro-activists, anti-religious and anti-government.
I amnot referring to persons involved in the story but to those, like in Erlanger's report,
who are brought in from academia or the media to provide 'ambience" to the story.

This reliance on a rather cliquish and an elite band of sources will bias the reports
read by the NYT readers. Rarely is there a Rightist, a staunch Zionist or a conservative
philosopher or cleric. This is unfortunate and imbalanced.

I hope that my drawing attention to the area will prove a benefit to the
professional ethical reporting of the NYT.

And I could and should have added that these sources are always nebulously identified
without reference to their political views and ideological positions.


============
Mr. Sharon's largest problem is that his Gaza disengagement policy is
not what most Likud members want, said Nahum Barnea, a columnist with
Yediot Aharonot. "He's committed to continuing negotiations with Labor and
his disengagement plan," Mr. Barnea said. "But it's hard. He's weakened,
and he could really split Likud. And when you're weaker, people tend to
raise the price.''
Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist at Hebrew University, said Mr. Sahron might
not consider it a catastrophe if Likud split. "He could head a huge center bloc
that would back his policies, if he could only get these guys in Likud off his back,''
he said.The temptation is for Mr. Sharon, Labor's Mr. Peres and Shinui's Tommy
Lapid, all over 75, and all of whom largely agree on Gaza and the dismantling
of some settlements, to unite to run on a single party list in the next election,
marginalizing the far right and the religious parties.But Mr. Barnea thinks that is
a very unlikely outcome, given the complexities. And Mr. Sharon seems to
understand that he needs at least some religious party to deal with the honest
agonies of the Israeli settler population.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/international/middleeast/20mideast.html

Morality and Israel

James Bennet's final climatic chords in his profile of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, "Sharon's Wars", that he had published in the New York Times Magazine this past Sunday, August 15, 2004, refer to an Israel that is "morally alert...morally conflicted but...also morally compromised in the eyes of the world". He then selects as a final nail in his coffin carpentry a statement spoken by extreme left-winger, Yaron Ezrahi, a former Peace Now spokesperson, that Israel could become ''the largest ghetto in modern Jewish history."

Bennet's pessimism is but a reflection on the refusal of too many to accept that Israel, and its driving nationalist ideology, Zionism, have a place at all in the scheme of things. Kept away for centuries from its rightful sons, our land became a neglected desert and, starting in the 1930s, when we Jews were kept away from the land by restrictive immigration policies, millions were eventually cremated and buried alive in the Holocaust. Land and people are inextricably bound up.

Prior to 1967, the disputed territories were somehow not "occupied" by Jordan or Egypt and the "Palestine", it became obvious, that terrorists attempted then to "liberate" was but Israel itself. That unpleasant fact was, and still is, ignored.

Israel is in Judea, Samaria and Gaza as a result of Arab aggression but it is there by the right of historical and legal primacy. These areas are the Jewish heartland where our kings, priests and prophets lived and bequeathed to the world the highest degrees of religious and cultural morality.

To ban Jews, like myself, from living in sites such as Shiloh, Beth El and Hebron, whether initiated from within by Israeli politicians or forced on our leaders from without, is the immorality that cannot be tolerated.

When is a "Militant" not a "Terrorist"?

Here's a short letter I dashed off to the Public Editor
of the New York Times today:-


Sir,
The following headline appeared over a story that appeared in the New York Times on August 13: "Militants' Blast Kills 2 Palestinians by Israel
Checkpoint".

As the story notes, a Palestinian bomber detonated explosives near a busy checkpoint, where scores of civilians gather to pass into Jerusalem, killing two Palestinian passers-by and wounding about 20 people, including 6 Israeli border police officers, 3 of them seriously.

In the past, the New York Times has deigned from replacing the term "militants" which it considers 'neutral' with a more value-content word such as 'terrorist'. The reasoning, I understand, is that the NYT does not want to define a national liberation movement either as 'freedom fighters' or 'terrorists' but to let the acts speak for themselves.

The implication, by perforce, is that when Palestinians kill Jews they are but militants, rarely, if at all, terrorists. But in this case, the bomber knew that his bomb was left in the midst of dozens of Palestinian civilians and that they would necessarily be injured and worse in the blast even if the bomber's main target was Israeli security forces.

That the NYT headline writer still selected to use the word 'militant' is beyond me.

Here's the reaction of the New York Times to my intimation regarding the media ethics of the photographers who had perhaps laid in wait for the bomb to be exploded against the Israeli tank:-

Dear Mr. Medad,

Our public editor is on vacation, and his office has passed your correspondence to me as standards editor of The Times.

Normally we are unable to reply individually to letters to the editor that are clearly intended for publication. But since you asked the public editor for a comment, I'll try to give you one.

Your letter poses a hypothesis from which The Times is at least three levels removed.

First, the cameramen in question were employed by news agencies, not by The Times; you might wish to address your comments and questions to The Associated Press and Reuters.

Second, the suggestion that the cameramen had been alerted in advance is based on nothing more than what you describe as questioning by leading media observers. I do not know who they are, or what makes them "leading."

What we have here is rumors and speculation, metamorphosing before our very eyes into an assumption of scandal. The "symbiotic relationship between terror groups and the press" is not something I recognize as characteristic of The Times.

Finally, while it is not unusual for reporters and photographers to accompany military units when accredited, I cannot imagine that a Times journalist would collude in terrorist activity or a plan to shed innocent blood.

Sincerely,
Allan M. Siegal
Assistant Managing Editor/Standards
The New York Times

And Ayelet's Father Writes of Goldberg

The "outpost" is called Amonah, a neighborhood of Ofra, There are two dozen families living there. There are no Arab villages nearby, so no one "trekked through Arab villages" to get there. There's a paved road from Ofra, half a kilometer away.

There were no "radical nationalists" (whatever that means) there. Dress was casual. My ex-father-in-law, Yossi Ben-Aharon (Shamir's former Bureau Chief) was the sandek. Carrying weapons is a necessity given the on-going terrorism, so I carried mine. Everyone who does so is licensed and trained. Facts of life.

Perhaps Jeff thinks that I too am one of those apocalyptic zealots, though I wouldn't have guessed from the many hours we spent together in warm and friendly conversations.

The Amalakites didn't attack "the Children of Egypt" (sic) but who knows, maybe in his reading of Torah they did.

My son-in-law Akiva was not at the brit; he was in court for participating in a Kach demonstration without a permit. Anyway, all charges were dropped. My daughter denies speaking to Goldberg at the Brit; she was with her girlfriends.

I don't know to whom he talked or what "radical yeshivot" he is referring to. I introduced Goldberg to Rav Dudkevitch, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva in Yitzhar (who spoke to Goldberg on my recommendation), and many others. He said he was impressed by their moderation and sincerity.

Avi Dichter (and HaNegbi) admitted openly that they had no information about radical elements (it was just their intuition) and of course no arrests were made. It did capture the headlines for a while. The media loves that sort of thing, especially when it's against religious Jews.

I found Goldberg's comparison between yeshiva students and Al Quida a bit exaggerated.

Reference to Rabin's "murder on the alter of settlements" was also strange, since Amir was not a settler. According to polls taken at the time he was murdered, he was the most unpopular PM in our history, with more than 2/3 of the people against him.

Rav Nevensal gave an halachic answer to an halachic question; he was quick to add that such a position does not condone violence in any way.

Rabin did not lead the Israeli army in 1967; he was depressed and holed up somewhere according to military historians. The people who openly called Rabin a Nazi and displayed pictures of him were "fake settlers" who were actually Shabak agents, like Avishai Raviv, Amir's handler.

Gosh, Goldberg

The Jeffrey Goldberg saga, continuing (expect more postings soon)
=============================================

Dear Jeffrey,

I just managed to get over being dumped from your New Yorker piece after spending
a good deal of time with you at my office at the Begin Center and on the phone (and after waiting a long time between your first approach to me and then finally sitting down to talk) and now your NYTimes op-ed.

You had me fooled, I'll admit. I took you for a serious, open-minded individual,
knowledgeable of the circumstances, the instricacies and at times, the covoluted narratives of Israeli officialdom, Arabs, and the Jewish revenants who reside in portions of the historic land of Israel not yet under sovereign Jewish rule. But reading carefully through you two last products, I'm stumped.I presumed that I did not make it into your New Yorker opus because I was not extremist enough or, to be self-conglaturatory, that I was too cogent, rational and logical and had a good enough answer for every question you raised. I was under the impression that you were objective and wanted to tell the story as it is, a simplistic but very fundamental journalistic credo, one they teach or sort of mention in passing in
Journalism 101.

Of all the figures you included there, I was chagrined that I didn't even merit a small two sentence paragraph. After all, I've been in Yesha, in my community of Shiloh, since 1981, managing to participate in the first settling attempt at Sebastia in 1975 and serving as part of the English-language information & PR team of Gush Emunim for three decades.

I was even at the Yesha delegation that shadowed Yitzhak Shamir at the 1991 Madrid
Conference and during 1983-1988, served as editor of Counterpoint, the Gush Emunim
periodical, was founding editor of The Yesha Report in 1990 and sat on the Yesha Council and the Nekuda editorial board. As a second-echelon person, I think my opnions could have counted for some literary value.Then comes your latest in this week's New York Times.

If you go to my blog web site, - www.myrightword.blogspot.com - you'll see that I wrote these comments, pithy and concise(with a few newly added notes):-

a) Why dateline "Ofra"? Nothing in the story relates to Ofra. Why not Jerusalem?(I now know you were at Amona. But if so, why dateline it Ofra?)

b) Okay, we have a Kachnik, one. Does that reflect on 250,000 other Jews?
c) The last political assassin was not a "settler". Why emphasize the "settlers" in this if the issue is the future assassination of Sharon?

d) If Dichter believes 200 potentials are out there, and he believes in administrative detention (=A.D.), how come no one is in A.D.? After all, they put Noam Federman in (and had to release him as, we suppose, they had no real proof), why not Haim, Yankel or even Mrs. Ayelet?

e) He misquotes Rav Neventzahl.(the Rabbi said that while he cannot erase the Halachic principle from our books, it should not be part of "hashkafa" - sort of philosophical outlook).

f) Meir Kahane was assassinated by a Muslim fanatacist - according to Goldberg's logic, should we start then assassinating muslim fanaticists (or are we already doing that and now Goldberg says its okay)?

g) Wilder claims he didn't exactly quote him in proper context.(I spoke with him yesterday)

h) Sharon himself could be doing a lot more to prevent, heavens forbid, his future assassination if he acted at least within democratic parameters, no? Wouldn't a liberal like Goldberg support that position?(could it be that this is a form of "liberal projection"? That the liberals are set on uprooting people from their homes and so need a counter-criminality from the Right?).

In addition, the spokeswoman of Ofra, Ruchie Avital, wrote this:

Although Jeffrey Goldberg datelined his article, "Protect Sharon From the Right," Ofra, West Bank, nowhere in the article is Ofra mentioned and none of the people referred to or quoted live in Ofra. I fail to understand the reason for this - did Mr. Goldberg stop off on his way and write the story on his laptop in the Ofra bus stop or local restaurant? The dateline could just have well have been Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. He seems to imply that Ofra is somehow part of the alleged threats and violence he discusses in the article, while this is not at all the case. Goldberg, I would think, has violated basic journalistic ethics in this case.

and this, too, she penned:

From the description, I had no way of understanding from the article itself where the
"outpost" Mr. Goldberg mentions is. He mentions it being "in the radical settler heartland near Nablus." Ofra is 15 minutes north of Jerusalem and 10 minutes from Ramallah - Nablus, on the otherhand, is a good 50-60 minutes to the North. Amona itself, the "outpost" Goldberg visited, is only about 8 miles north of Jerusalem,
as the crowflies, as I'm sure he could clearly see from the synagogue where the Brit was held. Being a very small country, these distances are verysignificant. Additionally, he mentions "rough trek through Arab villages to get to this hill." To reach Amona, one travels a well-paved highway to Ofra - both from north and south - a large community of about 550 families, and then drives up a paved road.

In addition, Goldberg's screed against settlers and Orthodox Jews is filled with inaccuracies and selective facts; to mention just a few: Rabin was not assassinated by a settler, the vast majority of Jews living in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, including among the younger generation, do NOT support Kahane or his extremist followers, and Kahane himself was murdered by a Muslim fanatic in New York.

But the most important fact of all is that besides their strongly felt moral repugnance towards the idea of murder, political or otherwise, the Jews of Judea, Samaria and Gaza are well aware that nothing could bemore disastrous for the entire settlement movement than an attempt or even hint of an attempt to harm Ariel Sharon. Goldberg claims to have heard 14 people express a desire to murder the prime minister. I must admit, I have never heard even one.

And now back to me, Yisrael Medad:

I was contacted by Ayelet's father-in-law who claims that she denies the circumstances and narrative of her meeting with you that you included in your story. Gosh, Jeff, have we a problem with you or have you a problem with yourself?

The conflict between us Israelis and us revenants is bad enough without fabrications
and muddling interference from either clumsy ignoramuses or high-minded "save-Israel-from-itself" crusaders. Jeff, decide, are you an op-ed writer, a journalist and a media person or are you a Peace Now activist in disguise?

Please, you have your right to be either, but don't disguise your purpose in life.

Yisrael Medad

Journalistic Ethics

Reporting on the deaths of three Arabs in the Gaza Strip in the August 4 edition of his newspaper, caused by a prematurely exploded bomb, New York Times correspondent Greg Myre notes that "videotape taken by Associated Press Television News showed a group of Palestinians placing a detonator in an alley". Other camermen, including Reuters, were present as well.

Media observers should have been quickly off the mark to ask this question: were these camermen informed beforehand of the expected attack that was to be denonated against the Israeli target? Did they know what was about to happen to the Israeli soldiers (but didn't)?

The symbiotic relationship between terror groups and the press raises questions regarding proper professional journalistic ethics in covering such violent activity. The thought of a press that lies in wait to snap a picture of an Israeli soldier being injured or worse, knowing full well that blood will be shed, is a horrific situation to contemplate.

Goldberg Goldbricks

Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker published an op-ed in the New York Times today, August 5, 2004 (see below).

My comments, pithy and concise:-

a) Why dateline "Ofra"? Nothing in the story relates to Ofra. Why not Jerusalem?
b) Okay, we have a Kachnik. Does that reflect on 250,000 other Jews?
c) The last political assassin was not a "settler". Why emphasize the "settlers" in this one if the issue is the future assassination of Sharon?
d) If Dichter believes 200 potentials are out there, and he believes in administrative detention (=A.D.), how come no one is in A.D.? After all, they put Noam Federman in (and had to release him as, we suppose, they had no real proof), why not Haim, Yankel or even Mrs. Ayelet?
e) He misquotes Rav Neventzahl.
f) Meir Kahane was assassinated by a Muslim fanatacist - according to Goldberg's logic, should we start then assassinating muslim fanaticists (or are we already doing that and now Goldberg says its okay)?
g) Wilder claims he didn't exactly quote him in proper context.
h) Sharon himself could be doing a lot more to prevent, heavens forbid, his future assassination if he acted at least within democratic parameters, no? Wouldn't a liberal like Goldberg support that position?

================================

August 5, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Protect Sharon From the Right
By JEFFREY GOLDBERG
OFRA, West Bank

Not long ago, at a West Bank settlement outpost surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by dyspeptic German shepherds, I attended a joyful event: a brit milah, the circumcision of an eight-day-old boy. This outpost was home to just a handful of families, but more than 100 people came to celebrate with the boy's parents.
Many of the visitors made the rough trek through Arab villages to get to this hill. These young settlers are the avant-garde of radical Jewish nationalism, the flannel-wearing, rifle-carrying children of their parents' mainstream settlements, which they denigrate for their bourgeois affectations - red-tile roof chalets, swimming pools, pizzerias - and their misplaced fealty to the dictates of the government in Jerusalem. These new pioneers set out for the Samarian mountains and the hills of Hebron, where they live in log cabins and broken-down trailers, in settings sufficiently biblical and remote to allow for the cultivation of a new variant of apocalyptic zealotry.
The mohel's table stood at the rear of a double-wide trailer that serves as the outpost's synagogue. I stood by the door, near the tables holding plates of hummus and bottles of schnapps. I fell into conversation with an acquaintance of mine, a woman named Ayelet, who is in her late teens, pregnant, the daughter of a former assistant professor of history at City College. She is a resident of an outpost in the radical settler heartland near Nablus. We were interrupted by the newborn's father, a goat farmer, as he began giving a d'var Torah, an interpretation of a Bible passage. He turned, rather quickly, to the threat posed by the Amalekites, the eternal enemy of the Jews, a tribe that, according to the Bible, attacked Moses and the Children of Egypt on the exodus from Egypt.
"Amalek," in the language of the settler hardcore today, often stands for the Arabs, the existential enemy of the Jews. "I am looking at our life today, and what Amalek wants to do is swallow up the people of Israel," the father said. "This is the snake. This is the snake."
I turned to Ayelet. She wore a long skirt, her hair was covered, and she carried an M-16. I asked her if she thought Amalek was alive today. "Of course," she said, and pointed out the door, toward an Arab village in the distance. "The Amalekite spirit is everywhere. It's not just the Arabs."
Who else, then? "Sharon isn't Amalek," she said, "but he works for Amalek."
I had not seen Ayelet before with a rifle. She told me it belonged to her husband, Akiva, who couldn't be here, because he was in court in Jerusalem. He was, she said vaguely, answering charges related to his work for Kach, the racist movement founded by the late Meir Kahane.
I asked her if she would use the M-16 only against Arabs, or against Jews who came to tear down her outpost. "God forbid," she said. "We wouldn't want to hurt a Jewish soldier."
What about a Jewish prime minister?
"Sharon is forfeiting his right to live," she said.
I asked her if she would like to kill him.
"It's not for me to do. If the rabbis say it, then someone will do it. He is working against God."
Over the past year, I've heard at least 14 young Orthodox settlers - in outposts, and in yeshivas in the West Bank and Jerusalem - express with vehemence a desire to murder Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his men, in particular the deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the defense minister, Shaul Mofaz. I've met several more who actively pray - and, I suspect, work - for the destruction of the Dome of the Rock, the Muslim shrine on Jerusalem's Temple Mount. And I have met dozens more who would not sit shiva, certainly not for the Dome, but not for their prime minister, either.
The threat of the radical right has become a matter of terrible urgency in the Israeli government. Avi Dichter, the chief of the Israeli internal security service, has been for months running around - to borrow a phrase from George Tenet - with his hair on fire over the threat. He has warned of the potential for attacks against the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aksa Mosque, on the Temple Mount; such a strike, he said, would set off global war between Muslim and Jew - a goal the radical yeshivas of the West Bank share with Al Qaeda.
Mr. Dichter told a Knesset committee last month that his agents believe there are 150 to 200 settlers hoping to kill Mr. Sharon. A member of the committee asked, "If we were talking about Palestinians and not Jews, would you place these people in administrative detention?" Mr. Dichter answered, "Absolutely."
Now, there is surely something strange about an Israel in which Ariel Sharon, the invader of Lebanon and the father of settlements, is in mortal danger from the right. And it should be noted that Mr. Sharon's withdrawal plan has flaws and limitations. Yet what is most interesting here is that the settlers grasp something about the plan that Mr. Sharon's critics on the left do not, which is that Mr. Sharon poses a greater threat to theologically motivated settlers than even Yitzhak Rabin.
The difference between Mr. Rabin - who was murdered on the altar of settlement nine years ago - and Mr. Sharon is the difference between bilateralism and unilateralism. Mr. Rabin's plan depended on Yasir Arafat, and he undoubtedly would have come to see Mr. Arafat as no partner for peace. But there is only one indispensable man in Mr. Sharon's plan, and that is Mr. Sharon himself. If Mr. Sharon evacuates a settlement - and if the sky does not respond by falling - the logic of dismantlement may take hold; a majority of Israelis already support the unilateral shutting of many settlements.
Which is why the Orthodox right is in panic. The rabbi of the Old City of Jerusalem, Avigdor Neventzal, announced in June that anyone who gives up a part of the land of Israel - even a single settlement - to a non-Jew could be the target of a religiously sanctioned murder. The official spokesman of the Jewish community in Hebron, David Wilder, wrote in June: "Nobody wants violence. Especially against our own brethren. But it's time to wake up. The reality is, if Sharon insists on trying to implement his 'Jewish transfer' from our homes and land, it's going to happen."
In the summer of 1995, Yitzhak Rabin was more or less alone. The man who led the Israeli Army to victory in the Six-Day War - making possible the settlement movement in the first place - was called a Nazi at public rallies; radical Orthodox rabbis cursed him; and much of world Jewry was silent. Today, once again, the atmosphere is one of tolerance for murder. "God's name is being invoked against Sharon, but where are the rabbis?" asked Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League and one of the few American Jewish leaders to take heed of Mr. Dichter's warning.
The extremist yeshivas that give rise to fundamentalist thuggery are financed in part by Orthodox Jews in America. Several Orthodox rabbis in America took the lead in demonizing Mr. Rabin. And Meir Kahane, the inspiration for so much fanaticism, was an Orthodox rabbi from Brooklyn.
The mainstream Orthodox rabbinate - in America and in Israel - failed nine years ago to defend Yitzhak Rabin against extremism. It could be doing a great deal more today to prevent the murder of Ariel Sharon.
Jeffrey Goldberg is a staff writer for The New Yorker.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/opinion/05goldberg.html