But there were those among us who shied at the role, reneged on the responsibility, feared the challenge. So they said: "No, we are not heroes, we are not even good or true but rather we are all that you called us for generations, even worse." They carped and criticized, betrayed our goals, our history, denied our valor, our success, our victory. The world, ready to see us as models, began to pick up the criticism fed by these renegades. After all, there had been a major dissonance problem in seeing Jews as heroes after two millennia of abuse, and now they were relieved of that problem as our own brothers called us conquerors and oppressors. And so we were cast as evil again, reviled, despised, hated, and for some Jews this is preferable; they are more comfortable as victims, have come to prefer being victims. And they are succeeding. They led us to renounce our rights, our victory, our legitimacy, our values. We have curbed our power, declaring: "We are not conquerors. We do not want to rule. We only want 'peace.'"

The Holocaust was an attack on the physical body of the Jews. A Palestinian state in the Land of Israel, with its implicit denial of both traditional religious and Zionist belief systems, will mean the loss of the Jewish soul, affecting not only the physical being of the Jewish state, but its spiritual being as well. And it precludes hope.

It had been possible for two thousand years to hope, pray and dream of a return, of reclamation, of rebuilding, of rehabilitation, of revival. But no longer. The effort having been made, and failed --or rather, aborted --it will not be possible to envision a new effort. The establishment of a PLO state within the boundaries of the promised land means utter defeat for the Jewish people: instead of being replanted, we shall be supplanted, instead of reestablished, disestablished.

The erosion of the Jewish hold on the Land of Israel will lead to a total demoralization of the people. They will see themselves sinking, slipping to the abyss. Heads will be hung in shame, to be raised no more. It will mean total hopelessness for the majority who are not sufficiently religious to continue to hope for the coming of the messiah. And no one can survive without hope.

That all this will have come about in a large sense due to the failures of Israelis themselves, who did not have the courage or commitment to fight for their just rights, or whose inner demons drove them to self-destruct, is a tragic aspect of the situation that must be recognized. Further, that it comes about with the collusion --even instigation--of Jews in the United States (Eisenstadt, Rubin, Albright, Indyk, Ross) will be seen as one of the ironies of history.

Soon it will be clear to all that the Arabs remain resolute in wanting us to disappear. They are immutably determined (as we once were) to make this land theirs, and to supplant us. There is no forseeable end and no peacable way of resolution. The choice Israel faces is "to be or not to be." It is not yet too late for Israel to choose "to be."

Netta Dor-Shav is a clinical psychologist living in Herzliya, Israel.

Time is Growing Short

Eugene Narrett

On June 12, a lengthy article in Ha'aretz described how the Palestinians have taken de facto control of the eastern districts of Jerusalem. Agents of half a dozen Arab security forces beat and abduct people off the streets, sometimes directly across from the Israeli Justice Ministry. The abdication of sovereign responsibility has gone so far, wrote Nadav Shragai, that Israeli police routinely refer complainants to the cadres of Jibril Rajoub and Moussa Arafat. This is a direct result of the Madrid-Oslo process of creating a Jew-hating Arab state in the heart of Israel and calling this crazed betrayal "peace."

Seven years ago, when Israel began to relinquish military control of Judea and Samaria, it lost the intelligence provided by Arab friends in those areas, the same failure enacted last month on a grander scale and more precipitate manner in Lebanon. Rather than reverse a clearly dangerous course, Israeli security agreed to let the PA patrol in Jerusalem in return for "preventive intelligence" that never materialized. The agreement was as hollow as were all the other "security arrangements" and "accords" Israel has signed with its hostile neighbors. Having applied the Peres-Beilin plan to create a Palestinian state and a de-Judaized Israel, Israel's Security Services now admits that "the situation is out of control" and that the PA ignores all limits on its operations. "It is a Golem that has risen up against its creator," a Shin Bet official told Shragai.

The PA-provoked and directed mini-war of mid- May showed just how large and dangerous this Golem has become. Jews now travel the roads of Israel at their peril, uncertain from month to month whether their government will deliver them, their families and their homes into the hands of an enemy that vows to drive them into the sea.

By the time this article appears, Shimon Peres may be the President of Israel. He plans to secure the nation by reducing it to a "Pale of Settlement" along the coastal plain. "This little state will be surrounded by a united mass of covetous appetites that agree on one point, -- the 'vineyard' must be captured. How can this Pale be defended? Most of it is lowland, whereas guns can be placed on the Arab hills within fifteen miles of Tel Aviv and Haifa. In a few hours,

Outpost               - 6 -               June-July 2000