A TIME TO SPEAK
Vol. IV:1 (No. 37)
January 2004 - Tevet-Shevet 5764
SOUND THE GREAT TRUMPET
And on that day . . . you shall be picked
up one by one, O Children of Israel! And in that day a great trumpet shall
be sounded. -- Isaiah 27:12-13
Too often, officials and governments of Israel
and blocs within the population mute the trumpet or play false notes upon
it. It must now ring out loud and clear, proclaiming truth obscured by lies
and ignorance, awakening pride and fidelity where they have gone slack, and
rousing those slipping into self-delusion and weakening of will.
* * * * * * *
The Lord made a covenant with Abram,
saying "Unto your seed have I given this land"
-- Genesis
15:18
"I will bring you into the Land which
I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and I will give it to you as
a possession. I am The Lord." -- Exodus 6:8
I will restore My people Israel.
They shall rebuild ruined cities and
inhabit them,
They shall plant vineyards and drink
their wine;
They shall till gardens and eat their
fruits.
And I will plant them upon their soil,
Nevermore to be uprooted
From the soil I have given them,
Said the Lord your God.
-- Amos 9:14-15
When The Lord turned back the captivity of Zion
We are like those who dream
Then our mouths were full with laughter,
And our tongue with rejoicing.
Then they said among the nations
"The Lord has done great things for them."
-- Psalm 126-1-3
The Land of Israel is a sacred trust, not a
tract of common real estate up for sale or deals. Through 2,000 years of exile
and dispersal, mostly under conditions of cruel oppression and degradation,
the Children of Israel did not relinquish that trust. When at last the Land
has been restored and redeemed, those who would toss it away betray themselves,
their ancestors and their descendants.
Official spokesmen for Israeli government policy
habitually make public statements about land and borders in terms of "security
needs", as though that were a necessary excuse to allow a nation to keep some
bit here and there of its own territory. The people of Israel came home a
land that had fallen into an abandoned, desolate wilderness of desert and
swamp, and restored it once again to a Land of Milk and Honey.
It has no obligation, indeed no right, to bargain
it away to populations who in recent times came in from other regions to take
advantage of what the Jewish pioneers had created. It has no obligation, indeed
no right, to bestow it on the "Arab Palestinians" whose nationality was invented
no earlier than 1967 and to serve no other purpose than the destruction of
an Israel whose existence and accomplishments are intolerable to its neighbors
and their claque in other nations. Israel has no obligation, indeed no right,
to be a willing party to a newly invented international doctrine of To The
Defeated Aggressor Belongs the Spoils.
It is the right, and indeed the obligation,
of governments of Israel to refuse to surrender the heart of its historic
homeland for the invention of a fraudulent terrorist state that will live
only to kill. There are many people in the United States, and some elsewhere,
who are willing to stand against the injustice and folly of forcing such surrender
upon Israel, and of forcing the pioneers of Israel off of the land they have
redeemed and rebuilt. It is unsufferable that any government or prime minister
of Israel should
-- show less righteousness
and faith than these true friends
--.adopt a program
of performing vivisection on the Land of Israel for the sake of setting up
an
enemy state in
its midst
-- use reckless force
against pioneers building Israel, but dares not use
against the would-be
murderers of
Israel.
[For historical data, see further Issue 2, "The
History and Meaning of Palestine and Palestinian{; Issue 6 , "Thy Dwellings,
O Israel"; Issue 8. "Tongue of Deceit - Part I".]
* * * * * * *
One of the most egregious examples of the refusal
of officials to protect the heritage of its nation is the supine policy on
Temple Mount. The place where the First and Second Temples stood has for 3,000
years been of supreme sanctity to Judaism, and all Jews worldwide turn toward
it when they pray.
When Jordan attacked Israel in 1948, with the
support and assistance of Great Britain, it managed to seize Temple Mount.
For the next 19 years of Jordanian occupation, no Jew of any nationality was
permitted to visit it. It was the victim of the most vulgar desecrations.
Then when Jordan again attacked Israel in 1967, Temple Mount was at last restored
to Israel and the Jewish people.
In meticulous regard for the religious sensibilities
of others, the Muslim waqf was permitted to keep the administration of
the ancient Christian Church of St. Mary of Justinian that Arab conquerors
had converted into the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Since that time,
the waqf had by default been permitted to take over virtual
control of Temple Mount.
It builds what and where it pleases, in a program
to take over the entire Mount as one mosque. Standards laws and regulations
on building are not enforced, even when it puts the ancient walls in danger
of collapse. When the waqf permits repairs to the walls, engineers come
from Jordan as though Temple Mount would be desecrated if the Jews who made
it holy were to touch one of its stones.
Every trace of anything Jewish or Christian
on Temple Mount is being sought out and purposefully destroyed. Scholars and
archaeologists, Israeli and non-Israeli, have pleaded with successive governments
of Israel to stop these depredations, that are costing incalculable losses
in relics, inscriptions, texts, being blotted out of history forever.
The pleas have been ignored.
Muslim worship on Temple Mount is permitted
and protected. Jewish worship is forbidden. It has been known for an Israeli
policeman to arrest a Jewish visitor on charges that he looked as though he
might be reciting a silent prayer. Thus it is official policy to perpetuate
the anti-Jewish bias of the foreign regimes of the past.
Despite proclamations to the contrary, Jerusalem
and Temple Mount are not significant in either Islam or in Arab history. [See
further Issue No. 1 "Jerusalem -- I Pledge", and Issue 34 "Weighed in the
Balance"] It is, however, important to the enemies of Israel to take Jerusalem
and Temple Mount away from the Jews -- knowing, as some Israeli politicians
do not, that an Israel that will throw them away has cut out its own heart.
* * * * * * *
Saying 'Peace! Peace!' but there is no peace. -- Jeremiah 6:14, 8:11
It is definitely because they have misled
My people, by saying 'Peace!' when there is
no peace.
-- Ezekiel 13:10
"The doctrine of peace at any price
had done more mischief than any I can well recall that have been afloat in
this country. It has caused more wars than any of the most ruthless conquerors"
-- Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of Great Britain, 19th
century
The Hebrew word shalom is usually rendered into English as "peace",
and is so much a byword that in everyday speech it serves as both greeting
and farewell -- both "hello" and "goodbye". But "peace" is not an adequate
translation for "shalom". The word comes from a root-concept for "complete"
and the over-all connotation is "well-being". It is thus a word that cannot
be appropriately applied to the "peace" ploys of the past dozen years.
1] The Oslo Accords,
perpetrated in the autumn of 1993, have the shameful distinction of being
one of the worst acts of criminal folly in the 4,000-year history of the Children
of Israel. They were devised by an eccentric political clique noted for hostility
to all Judaic tradition, bred in secret, and foisted on the country even
though a majority of the population and its representatives opposed it.
The substance of the Oslo Accords was to pick
up the dregs of a disintegrating terrorist movement and install it with autonomous
authority over the heart of the Hebrew homeland. The outcome was a bloody
deluge of terror, mass murder, anguish and peril is all too well known today.
And this willfully self-abasing surrender by a nation that had no need to
surrender was seen by its enemies not as generosity but as weakness, met not
with goodwill but with scorn and contempt, inspiring new hopes that Israel
is broken in spirit and can yet be destroyed.
These consequences, so far from being unforeseen
or unpredictable, were widely and resoundingly foretold. The clique then grasping
political power branded all those who raised their voices or took up their
pens as "enemies of peace".
2] As though nothing
had been learned from the Oslo blunder, the next forfeit to "peace" was a
rout out of the security zone on the Israel-Lebanon border. Harassed by
loud protest groups financed by the European Union, the government-of-the-day
withdrew the military guard literally overnight. This precipitate flight
--
(a) abandoned the Christians of South Lebanon who had been
virtual allies
(b) opened the Lebanese
side of the border to the Iranian-Syrian backed Hezbollah terrorists, who
now under the aegis of the United Nations "peacekeepers" abduct and murder
Israelis, fire missiles into Israel, and protect themselves with a shield
of thousands of missiles aimed at civilian targets within Israel.
(c) inspired the
terrorists that Oslo had ensconced in Judea, Samaria and Gaza to believe that
if they ratchet up violence and the flow of blood, then they too can put
Israel to flight.
3] As though nothing had been learned from the
catastrophic miscalculations of Oslo and Lebanon, the current Prime Minister
of Israel and self-dubbed "Warrior" Ariel Sharon has inveigled a bare majority
of his cabinet to accept the Roadmap designed by the alien "Quartet". The
designers are the European Union, Russia, the United Nations -- whose credentials
and records guarantee ill-will to Israel -- and the U.S. Department of State,
whose stance is opposite to that of the American people. The motive for the
Roadmap is to ensure that the damage done by the Oslo Accords should not be
undone but, rather, should be made even worse. [See Issue No. 28, "Express
Road to Doom"]
4] Yossi Beilin, arch-perpetrator
of the Oslo Accords and current errand-boy of the European Union seems to
think that he has learned something -- that with egomaniacal effrontery and
contempt for democracy he can succeed once again in imposing his will on his
unwilling country. This time, by way of his Geneva
Initiative -- aptly termed by some commentators "a suicide-note". [See Issue
No. 35, "Making Mischief"] His hoax violates the law against private citizens
negotiating with foreign parties, he has yet to be subject to any legal action
and verbal admonitions from the government officials have been disquietingly
subdued.
5] This prime minister
and his party won office by unprecedented electoral margins because they promised
the voters a reversal of the lethal policies of its rejected predecessors.
But rather than carry out those reversals demanded by the public, the platform
of the winners is discarded and the failed, discredited and rejected policies
of the losers adopted in its place.
Facing a sadistic enemy openly determined on
the destruction of Israel, and delighting in the mass murder of Israelis,
his policy is not victory but accommodation, trying to persuade the enemy
to "reform" just enough to let him accede to its demands and gratify its ambitions.
To this end, he has presented the enemy with a fierce ultimatum: Either lower
the level of terrorist mass-murders long enough for me to give away the Land
of Israel to you, or else I will unilaterally run away and abandon it to
you.
The catchword for this policy is "disengagement"
and it is disengagement indeed -- from legitimate rights, from history, from
faith, from pride, dignity, self-respect and from survival.
* * * * * * *
"We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves,
and so we must have looked to them."
-- Numbers 13:33
1] Public spokesmen for official policy, who
seem chosen for their lack of verbal or visual qualifications, appear on the
airwaves after every atrocity to reiterate the plea for "negotiations" to
make "peace" with the homicidal offspring of Oslo.
2] After every atrocity, there is an official
threat/promise of "response". More often than not, there is no response. When
there is a response, it is primarily directed against empty buildings.
3] When Hezbollah terrorists fire missiles across
the border into Israel, sometimes killing with them, there is an official
assurance that Israel "reserves the right" to take action. Reserves the right,
but does not exercise it.
4] As part of Sweden's preparation for an international
conference on genocide to be held in Stockholm, a stupid display was installed
in the courtyard of the national museum. It promotes in the guise of Snow
White a female jihad-bomber who murdered scores of Jews and Arabs in a restaurant
in Israel. (Israel's ambassador to Sweden disconnected the spotlights on Snow
White, and was denounced worldwide for "vandalizing a work of art".)
The government of Israel announced that it would
not send a delegation to the conference unless the exhibit was removed. The
exhibit was not removed. The government of Israel sent a delegation anyway
-- but upheld the dignity of the Jewish people by replacing the designated
personnel with participants of lower rank.
* * * * * * *
An
obsession with showing "good will" too often achieves no good, and too often
does great harm. Succumbing to pressure from outside meddlers can be fatal.
Some examples are cited in "Lethal Gestures", by Dan Diker, Jerusalem Issue Brief, 18 December 2003:
[. . . .] Israeli gestures
in the absence of Palestinian security measures have had proven lethal consequences
for Israeli civilians and soldiers alike. Improving the economic situation
of the Palestinians is important, but the precipitous removal of security
measures can cost lives. This point should be remembered before Israel is
asked again to undertake similar risks in the future.
[. . . .] While security officials
report receiving 52 separate warnings of impending terror attacks as of
December 17,2 the IDF announced
it would continue to ease restrictions on the movement of Palestinians throughout
the West Bank.
The Israeli moves followed
sharp criticism by U.S. Middle East envoy David Satterfield who on December
11 'slammed' Israel for continued 'restrictions on the movement of Palestinian
civilians' and 'the consistent failure to issue permits
to Palestinians identified as critical to the success of the reform effort'
. . . . In addition, Secretary of State Colin Powell
urged Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom on December 12 to do more to alleviate
Palestinian hardship . . . .
Israel continues to pay
a high price for acceding to American pressure to ease West Bank restrictions.
On December 3, at the last minute, Israeli security forces prevented two Palestinian
suicide attacks in Israel by Islamic Jihad terrorists, one against a public
school in Yokneam and another in Beit She’an. According to news reports,
the terrorists, under the direction of Islamic Jihad headquarters in Damascus,
sought to enter Israel through the northern Jordan Valley after the easing
of security restrictions. Because
of Israel’s new security fence that separates Yokneam from the terrorists’
staging area in Jenin, they were forced to travel a much longer route around
the fence to the Jordan Valley, providing the IDF with critically needed time
to learn of their plan and thwart it. While the security fence has already
repeatedly proven its utility, U.S. officials continue to express their reservations
about the entire project.
On November 18, IDF
sergeants Shlomo Belski and Shaul Lahav were shot and killed at close range
by a Palestinian terrorist as they stood guard at a checkpoint near Bethlehem
on the tunnel road linking Jerusalem to the Gush Etzion communities south
of the capital. The attack was carried out by Jabbar al-Ahmad, 21, a member
of the Palestinian security services as well as the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades,
a Fatah terror group under the direct control of Yasser Arafat. According
to IDF sources, this attack was only the latest in a series of Palestinian
terror actions against Israeli targets in the area since Israel turned
over full security control of Bethlehem to the Palestinian Authority on July
1, 2003, as a goodwill gesture to former PA prime minister Abu Mazen in exchange
for promises that the PA would combat terrorism and maintain security control. On October 24, a Fatah terror cell originating
in Bethlehem opened fire at IDF soldiers guarding the same checkpoint. . .
. . According to Israeli security sources, “In the five months since the IDF
turned over security control of the Bethlehem area, Palestinian security agencies
have yet to prevent terror activities emanating from the area, despite PA
statements to the contrary. [. . . .]
Since the unilaterally
announced Palestinian hudna (cease-fire) of June
29, 2003, 85 Israelis have been killed and 417 wounded in Palestinian terror
attacks, as of December 16, 2003.9 The
hudna came to a violent end
on August 19 when a Hamas suicide bomber blew up a Jerusalem city bus, murdering
23 Orthodox Jewish worshippers returning from evening prayers at the Western
Wall, many of them children, and wounding nearly 150. One Israeli official
noted immediately following the attack that the bomber had 'first looked
into the eyes of his victims before detonating his explosive belt.'
On September 9, 2003,
Hamas terrorists struck twice more, murdering 16 people and wounding over
80 in two suicide bombings within the space of six hours. Ihab Abdel Kader Salim,
19, killed nine Israeli soldiers and wounded scores of others at a soldiers’
hitchhiking post near Tel Aviv. Israeli security sources confirmed that
Salim had been released from Israeli administrative detention on March 3,
2003.
That same evening, Ramez
Fahmi Az Aldin Salim, 22, detonated an explosive belt that killed seven Israelis
and wounded 50 others at Café Hillel in Jerusalem. The bomber had been
released from IDF administrative detention on February 2, 2003. Among those killed in this attack were
Rabbi Dr. David Appelbaum, head of Shaare Tzedek Hospital’s emergency room,
and his daughter Nava, who was to have been married the following day. Dr.
Appelbaum’s death was a particularly profound loss for the Jewish state as
he was widely recognized as a global authority on emergency medicine and had
personally cared for thousands of victims of Palestinian terror since 1981.
Despite Israel’s repeated
goodwill gestures and the widespread easing of travel restrictions on Palestinians,
as well as the prime minister’s recent public statements indicating his intention
to take unilateral steps to improve the humanitarian situation of the Palestinians,
senior Israeli security officials warn that such moves could create a terrorist
'wonderland,' enabling them to 'rest, rearm, and upgrade.' With Yasser Arafat once again in control
of the PA’s armed forces and his encouragement of numerous splinter terror
groups, there is little doubt that additional gestures Israel may be compelled
to make could have a lethal impact on Israeli citizens in the future.
It is easy to conclude
a U.S.-Israeli diplomatic meeting with a call for seemly innocuous gestures
on the part of Israel intended to improve the everyday life of Palestinians.
The betterment of Palestinian living standards is an important goal. However,
Israeli gestures in the absence of Palestinian security measures have had
proven lethal consequences for Israeli civilians and soldiers alike. This
point should be remembered before Israel is asked again to undertake similar
risks in the future.
* * * * * * *
In the military action against a terrorist base
in Jenin, 23 Israeli soldiers, z"l, lost their lives unnecessarily because
their consideration for Arab civilians led them into an ambush. (This was
the real "Jenin Massacre", the term misapplied by hysterical news media and
lying UN officials to an imaginary mass slaying of Arabs that never happened.)
Avihu
Keinan, z"l, a young soldier from the community re-established at biblical
Shilo, lost his life when the military doctrine of humane restraint put him
in unnecessary peril. His father, Moshe Keinan, speaks out in "A True Jewish
Morality Not A False One," Reported by IMRA (Independent Review and Analysis)
11 October 2003:
Moshe Keinan, father of Givati Brigade reconnaissance
unit soldier, Avihu Keinan, who was killed in action the day before Rosh Hashanah
while searching for a terrorist commander, will be marching to Jerusalem from
his home in Shiloh. He will depart from his son's grave in the Shiloh Cemetery
on Sunday morning, October 12.
He is demanding that the Israeli armed forces
be instructed to fight the war against terror in a manner consistent with
true Jewish morality, and not the false morality which endangers our soldiers
and citizens.
He is demanding that the army act in a truly
moral way; it should not care more for the enemy and the enemy's supporters
than it does for Israeli soldiers.
He is demanding a morality that is not perverted
by unnecessary feelings of guilt, a morality that does not irresponsibly endanger
our soldiers to the benefit of our enemy.
Moshe Keinan does not view as "moral" a policy
that does not first and foremost protect the lives of our soldiers and citizens. A 'morality' that cares more for the lives of the leaders
of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad than it does for the lives of our soldiers
and citizens is a false morality.
A true Jewish morality protects Israeli children
on buses, teenagers in shopping malls, young couples in coffee houses and
adults in restaurants over the lives of the terrorists and their supporters.
Even the Geneva Convention acknowledges that
civilians cannot be used as shields. The lives of these
civilians are their own responsibility of those who place them in danger.
Those who support this false morality are themselves
immoral; they are endangering and damaging the lives of Israeli civilians
and soldiers. [. . . .]
Avihu Keinan is buried in his home town of Shilo,
one of the communities that Ariel Sharon is threatening to abandon to the
terrorists who killed him. Mr. Keinan has sworn never to be pulled away from
his son's grave.
* * * * * * *
It is more and more often questioned by Israel's
friends in the world, whether this young-ancient nation has lost the spirit
and courage which created and sustained it. It has not. But it is ill-served
by those who advanced themselves to its leadership and then proved themselves
unworthy to lead. They toot on a penny-whistle, when it is past time to Sound
the Great Trumpet.
END