Daisy: "And besides, everyone has a close relative or a friend among them...".

News item: Democratic candidate (leading in the polls and raising the most money) Howard Dean says if elected he will deal with the Middle East unlike past presidents. He intends to be more "even-handed," code, many say, for being unyieldingly pro-Arab, anti-Israel. Dean has referred to Hamas terrorists as "soldiers."

Berenger: "So everybody's mixed up in it?"

Dudard: "Everybody's in the same boat!"

After it is clear that everyone has become a rhino, Berenger, towards the end of the play, utters such lines as: "We're all alone, we're left all alone...They've all gone mad...The world is sick. They're all sick." What follows is the last line of the play, Berenger's, when even his lover, Daisy, has joined the rest of them as a rhinoceros. "I'm the last man left, and I'm staying that way until the end. I'm not capitulating!"

This drama, quite popular when Absurdist Theater was the rage, was translated from French into English by Derek Prouse. Here's part of this translator's summary: "In Rhinoceros, Eugene Ionesco has given us a savage commentary on the absurdity of the human condition made tolerable by self-delusion."  

Jack Engelhard is the author of the novel Indecent Proposal and the award-winning memoir Escape From Mount Moriah. His novel The Days of the Bitter End is being prepared for movie production.

Editor's note: The following letter from Ida Nudel was sent in response to the November 2003 issue of Outpost, in which Ruth King denounced Israel's surrender of its legitimate and historical rights to Palestine, and evoked the strength, resiliency and Zionist determination that had created a Jewish state.

Ida Nudel personifies Zionist courage and determination. She was one of the founders of the "refusenik" movement which defied Soviet oppressors and focused the world's attention on the plight of Soviet Jewry. Ida Nudel was banished to Siberia for four years, hounded, harassed and taunted by the KGB. From her Siberian prison, living under incredibly difficult conditions, she wrote: "I am fortunate because I add another page to the history of Jewish resistance, because my efforts have helped thousands of Jews to leave this barbarous country, because I have helped prisoners of Zion to keep their spirit and survive in such unimaginable hell. I know that I must pay for this fortune in full. No matter how I am tormented, how weak I am, how lonely or senseless my present life, I do not regret or renounce any of my actions."

Finally, in 1987, the Soviet Union bowed to international pressure and permitted Nudel to go to Israel. She received the Ze'ev Jabotinsky Award for an Exceptional Personal Contribution to the Struggle for the Jewish People's Rights. Today, Ida Nudel encourages AFSI and Outpost to criticize the legislators of Israel and remind them of their responsibility to a Jewish State. These are welcome words for AFSI coming as they do from one of the true heroines of the Jewish people.

I've read your article "A Jewish Road Map," published in Outpost, and feel I must respond.

Your article is full of pain and pleads with us, the Israelis, to be brave and to loudly proclaim our rights to our land and country. Then, you write, our friends will support our courageous stance. Peace will only come when Israel demonstrates determination, unity and strength.

Some words about unity:

A few weeks ago, the courts ruled to close an independent nationalist-oriented broadcasting station, Channel 7 (Arutz Sheva), and its editors and other staff are now under threat of prosecution;

The media campaign has begun calling for closing the station's web site;

Citing "freedom of expression," the Supreme Court refused to ban the screening of the cynical, slanderous anti-Semitic film Jenin, Jenin;

Numerous individuals and associations, both Arab and Jewish, freely spread anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda, false and heavily distorted informationand nobody seems to care. Paradoxically, many of them are subsidized by the New Israel Foundation;

Projects for the final solution of the Jewish question in Israel are today on the agenda of the world's civilized and democratic nations;

The British Political Cartoon Society recently awarded its 2003 Political Cartoon of the Year award to

January 2004               - 7 -               Outpost