"Each day, Jews are killed privately and publicly. And every day the papers are bordered with black. At first, when we saw a black border in the newspaper and read that a man of Israel had been killed we could not finish our meal. Now that such events are common, the reader eats his well-buttered bread, reads the paper and says 'Another Jewish man has been killed. Another Jewish woman. A Jewish baby has been killed.' And we sit passively, shrug and say 'Restraint. Restraint. [Havlaga].'

"They kill. They murder. They burn. And we sit and practice havlaga. And what do the authorities do? They impose curfews. And there sit the Jews huddling in their homes and do not emerge so that they won't be shot by the bowmen. And those who shoot wander around, freely shooting their arrows. You can't say the authorities don't do what they should. And you cannot say that we don't do what we should. After all, we are practicing restraint and show the entire world how beautiful we are, how beautiful Jewish morality is, that even though they come to kill us, we keep silent."

Israel's Brainless Trust

Courtesy of the Jerusalem Post, July 12, 2001, a history lesson from Shimon Peres, the CEO of Israel's brainless trust (the triumverate includes Sharon and Defense Minister Ben Eliezer): "Generally I have very little patience for history. I am bored with history, for the simple reason that you cannot change it. You can analyze it, and people say if you don't learn the past, you will repeat the mistakes of the past. Okay, learn the pastthen you will not repeat the mistakes of the past, you will make new mistakes."

One thing we will grant Mr. Peres: with or without consulting history, he has surely made more hideous mistakes, with more terrible consequences, than any leader in a democratic society.

Americans For a Safe Israel
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Outpost               - 12 -               August 2001