RESTORING JEWISH HONOR Erich Isaac The foremost, immense cause for celebration provided by the Netanyahu victory is that it mends, in some small part, the shattered honor of the Jewish people. By a narrow margin --for given what was at stake, 11% is a narrow margin-- Israel's Jews have voted against their physical and spiritual self-destruction. The ancient Greeks gave the most terrible forces names denoting the opposite. Thus, for example, the Furies were called the Eumenides, or the Kindly Ones. So, too, Israel's government seductively entitled the state's dissolution "the peace process." In a bitter paraphrase of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's famous love poem, Jews worldwide can say to Israel's outgoing government: "How have you shamed us? Let me count the ways." You have shamed us by embracing terror. You transformed Israel from an example unto the nations into a blot upon them. The country that once stood up to terror with greater determination and bravery than any other ignominiously caved in to the most despicable of mass murderers. You have shamed us by embracing injustice. You abolished the fundamental principle of all civilized societies that crime must be punished. The blood of Arabs (killed because they "collaborated" with your security forces) and Jews (killed simply because they were Jews) was equally indifferent to you. Among the thousands of prisoners you released were hundreds of murderers, including people who had tortured their victims, hung them from telephone poles, even burned them alive. You have shamed us by making a mockery of the pledged word of the leader of the Jewish state. Years ago, when there was a conflict between what the leader of Israel said and what an Arab leader said, the world knew the leader of Israel spoke the truth; the Arab lied. Now the word of an Arab terrorist is more credible than that of an Israeli Prime Minister. Time and again it has emerged that Arafat spoke truly about the commitments made to him on Jerusalem, and the Israeli Prime Minister lied when he denied he had made them. You have shamed us by becoming a party to the PLO's phased plan for Israel's destruction. When, again and again, Arafat openly declared this is what he is implementing, you denied, shrugged off, apologized for and reinterpreted his words. When Arafat called for jihad in a mosque in Johannesburg, your Foreign Minister insulted the public's intelligence by endorsing Arafat's claim that he meant a "jihad for peace." You have shamed us by seeking to destroy Israel's very identity as a Jewish, Zionist state. You have sought to eliminate the study of Judaism and Jewish history from Israeli schools. You would strip the state of its Jewish symbols so that Arabs will be more "comfortable." You have talked of eliminating the Law of Return. You are

contemptuous of the very notion of Jewish historical and religious rights to the Land of Israel. Incredibly, your Prime Minister wanted to join the Arab League, which disdainfully replied that Israel could become a member only "after the complete collapse of the Zionist national myth, and the complete conversion of historical Palestine into one democratic state to which all the Palestinians will return." You have shamed us by demonizing and abandoning the finest of contemporary Jewry, the pioneers of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Your Prime Minister called them "foreign weeds" and described rabbis who identified with them as "ayatollahs." When a young school teacher was murdered on her way to the community where she taught, his response was "she should not have been there." You have divided the nation, pitting religious against secular and residents of pre-1967 Israel against residents of post-1967 Israel. You have shamed us by your contempt for democratic norms of conduct. Your mounted police have literally trampled peaceful protesters, including women and children. You have arrested and imprisoned without charge those guilty of nothing but disagreeing with your policies. In place of the murderers you freed, you incarcerated rabbis. The final straw came when the distinguished head of the yeshivas of Shechem and Hebron, Jews worldwide can say to Peres: "How have you shamed us? Let me count the ways." Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh, was manacled and thrown into prison. You have shamed us by groveling before the enemies of Israel and the Jewish people. As the terror chieftains who were your chosen "partners in peace" violated every one of their undertakings, you ignored the violations, pimped money for them in Congress, even attacked true friends of Israel for insisting upon compliance by the PLO. As Louis Rene Beres has pointed out, you approached national annihilation as a healer, and in an altogether unique expression of Jewish self-hatred, actually spawned another enemy state, There are countless other ways in which you have shamed us. You have destroyed the morale of Israel's fine army. Why should anyone risk his life to apprehend an Arab murderer who will be escorted by another soldier back to his home in a matter of weeks, to be celebrated for the murder by his compatriots? You have dishonored every campaign pledge, violated every trust. You will go down in Jewish history among the worst of governments of the people of Israel, alongside Jeroboam who split Israel in two and is remembered as the leader "who sinned and caused Israel to sin." The most important task of the new government is to restore honor to Israel: to once again take leadership in the fight against terror, to tell the truth, to uphold justice, to preserve Zionism and Judaism, to maintain democratic values within the Jewish polity, to stand up for the right of Jews to live free in their own historic (Continued on p.8)

June 1996               - 3 -               Outpost