For many years I have been an admirer of yours. I came to this country as an immigrant in the aftermath of World War II. America was our beacon. We came here with appreciation for the values and freedom of a great democracy and gratitude to the American military for its role in defeating the Nazis and ending the Holocaust. Furthermore, I grew up in the South Bronx, not far from your home.

Yours is a noble and inspiring story. Despair among young Americans is an equal opportunity predator and you are a role model for young Americans of every faith, every color and every ethnic background. You found your calling in a distinguished military career and public service. You are also a fair-minded and just man.

As Secretary of State, you have the power and prestige to formulate much of our policy, a daunting task in view of our current war and the continuing threats against our nation. We respectfully urge you to reconsider the pressures being applied to Israel. We urge you to revisit Israel's history while making policy decisions which will irreversibly affect its destiny.

Israel is a nation that has emerged as a civilized democracy in spite of overwhelming odds and implacable enemies. In 1948, the young Jewish State emerged, traumatized by the horrific events of the Holocaust in which one out of three of all the world's Jews were killed. Determined to create a haven for the wretched human survivors of extermination camps, the Jews accepted a partition plan which gave the surrounding Arabs the bulk of Palestine.

This partition was in addition to the 80% of Palestine which was given to the Hashemites in 1922 in order to create the state of Jordan (then known as Trans-Jordan). The Arabs rejected the offer and declared war.

Israel won the war, but the Arabs held eastern Jerusalem (the Old City), Gaza, and the hills and valleys of Judea-Samaria. The Arabs desecrated all Jewish and Christian shrines in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Jericho, and Hebron. They rejected repeated overtures by Israel to negotiate peace and coexistence and they continued to terrorize Israeli civilians.

During this period, Israel welcomed and assimilated over a million refugees, including 800,000 from the Arab nations. These immigrants left everything behind, many arriving in Israel with only the clothing on their backs. They received counseling, vocational training, housing, shelte,r and schooling from the state. Most important of all, they shed refugee status immediately as the young state conferred on them full citizenship and civil rights. This rescue, epic and historic, was shadowed by the Arabs' total rejection of all dislocated Palestinian Arabs. In contrast to the Jewish efforts at resettlement, Arabs herded other Arabs into squalid and miserable "refugee camps" where they remain after several generations. To consider a "right of return" for Arabs is perverse. Full responsibility for their resettlement resides with their fellow Arabs who subjected them to over five decades of neglect and abuse.

As a military man, you can appreciate a nation with a citizen army like Israel's. All youngsters, boys and girls, rich and poor, white and black, must serve in Israel's army. For some it may be life interrupted, and for others a patriotic calling, but they do not dodge service and they don't protest it. In fact, in a nation with such highly advanced social and scientific and cultural institutions, the military is the most respected and admired institution of all.

Imagine an enemy who, as Golda Meir once put it, hate Jews more than they love their children.

Israel's army has thwarted enemies who have never relented in their drive to expunge a Jewish presence from the Middle East. After every war--1956, 1967, 1973--Israel offered a return of territories in exchange for a real peace. All these offers were rejected until the Camp David accords, when Israel withdrew from the entire Sinai Peninsula. The peace with Egypt, like so many treaties signed by Arab states with each other, has been relegated to a dustbin as Egypt has violated virtually every one of its stipulations. You need only read the vitriol in their government-controlled newspapers.

In spite of the Oslo accords, the Arabs have increased terrorism against innocent civilians in Israel. Mr. Secretary, we Americans are so wounded by the attacks on New York and Washington. Imagine the wounds of Israel's population whose innocent civilians are attacked in pizzerias, at bus stops, in cars, on hikes, in cafes. Imagine an enemy who, as Golda Meir once put it, hate Jews more than they love their children. These are the enemies who encourage the suicide bombers who target schools, community centers, and, alas, our Pentagon and the World Trade Towers.

Mr. Secretary, don't be beguiled by the empty promises of the Palestinian Arabs or the misleading premises of the Mitchell Plan. The latter is another of those quick fixes for peace based on the false, dangerous, and immoral concept of a necessary equivalence between both parties in a dispute. In his desperation for a "peace agreement," former Prime Minister Barak offered irresponsible concessions which Arafat rejected. The PLO embarked on renewed terrorism against Israeli civilians.

Outpost               - 4 -               December 2001