This fact will come as news to the thousands of victims of Arab suicide bombers, who have caused havoc and death on airplanes, in schools, bus stops, airports, synagogues and Jewish communal centers all over the world.
According to Abdul-Latif Arabiyat, Secretary General of the Islamic Action Front, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal of November 19th, 1999, "The Koran tells us that one who kills himself with a solid tool will feel its pain in doomsday till the day of judgment." Are we to conclude that grenades and bombs are not considered "solid tools?"
For further elucidation, the reporter turned to Ahmed Hisham, a professor at Birzeit University near Ramallah. Hisham explains, "A suicide is the worst kind of crime because it is murder that is self-inflicted. A suicide mission is an act of sacrifice for the welfare of others."
So, a suicide "mission," i.e. killing innocent and helpless civilians, exculpates the believer from the sin of self-murder. A sickening thought.
A friend recently sent me a copy of a letter from Menachem Begin to Ronald Reagan written in September of 1982. I read it with great melancholy because for me it underscores the extent to which Israel's subsequent leaders lost their way. Addressed simply to "Ron" and signed "Menahem," it states:
"What some call the 'West Bank,' Mr. President, is Judea and Samaria, and this simple historic truth will never change. There are cynics who deride history. They may continue their derision as they wish, but I will stand by the truth. And the truth is that millennia ago there was a Jewish Kingdom of Judea and Samaria where our kings knelt to God, where our prophets brought forth the vision of eternal peace, where we developed a rather rich civilization which we took with us in our hearts and in our minds, on our long global trek for over 18 centuries; and, with it, we came back home. By aggressive war, by invasion, King Abdullah conquered parts of Judea and Samaria in 1948; and in a war of most legitimate self-defense in 1967, after being attacked by King Hussein, we liberated, with God's help, that portion of our homeland.
"Geography and history have ordained that Judea and Samaria be mountainous country and that two-thirds of our population dwell in the coastal plain dominated by those mountains. From them you can hit every city, every town, each township and village and, last but not least, our principal airport in the plain below.
"Mr. President, you and I chose for the last two years to call our countries 'friends and allies.' Such being the case, a friend does not weaken a friend, an ally does not put his ally in jeopardy. This would be the inevitable consequence were the 'positions' [Begin refers here to the Reagan Plan which called on Israel to withdraw to the 1967 lines] transmitted to me on August 31, 1982, to become reality. I believe they won't. 'For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest.'(Isaiah 62)."
Menachem Begin's words are as valid today as they were then, but both Israel and American Jews seem to have forgotten their historic, religious, and strategic mandate.
Many newspapers recently featured the story and pictures of the eviction of Jewish settlers from Maon Farm, south of Hebron. In a nonviolent action, settlers were forcibly removed from their homes and gardens. Most of the media in Israel and the United States congratulated Barak for his "tough" stance against "illegal settlements." A breath of fresh air and reasonable thought came from the Connecticut Jewish Ledger, published in Hartford. It bears quoting here.
"This and other evictions are the result of the Palestinians' stubborn and illogical refusal to tolerate having Jewish neighbors.
"The Jewish communities in the territories, Maon included, have not displaced any local Arabs. Anybody who has visited those regions knows that the Jews have taken barren, neglected land, and made it bloom--much
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Outpost - 10 - December 1999