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By Moshe Saperstein
March 11, 2008
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In an Ashkelon supermarket the place was abuzz about the Grad rockets hitting various points in the city. No other subject of conversation could be heard. Most spoke in whispers, betraying a degree of anxiety. At one counter a woman ahead of me went on and on about the injustice of it all. Finally, seeing the pickled herring I wanted moldering with age, I broke in: "We told you so" I said. "We told you this would happen if we were thrown out of Gush Katif."
She turned and stared. My pickled herring was decomposing before my eyes. "Relocating you was the right thing to do" she said. "We have to take risks for peace."
My friend Moshe Dan said "The Left never gets it until it 'gets it'".
I fear they don't get it even when they 'get it'.
I've heard of religious Jews in the death camps who were accosted by secular Jews saying "It's all because of people like you that Hitler is doing this."
And I would bet that when the Arabs rush in to finally solve the Jewish problem there will be those who say "It's all because of people like you?"
We cried watching the television coverage the night of the slaughter. We cried again watching the funerals the following day. But it wasn't until yesterday [March 10] sitting at the kitchen table and staring at the faces of the eight murdered boys on the front page of the Jerusalem Post that we wept uncontrollably. One looked like one of our grandsons; another, like one of our nephews. One is the grandson of our Jerusalem neighbor Rav Avihail. Several lived in communities where they were neighbors with good friends of ours. These could have been our children. These are our children.
Tears of sorrow were replaced by tears of anger. Page 3 of the same paper had an article headlined TERRORIST'S FAMILY CAN MOURN HIM 'JUST LIKE THE GOLDSTEINS', DICHTER AIDE SAYS. "I don't remember anyone asking Baruch Goldstein's family to stop mourning him in public after he shot dead Arabs. This is the same act?" said a senior aide to Public Security Director Avi Dichter.
I don't know if this is stupidity or malevolence. Actually I do know. It is simply a manifestation of the hatred of our secular elite for religious Jewish nationalists. A terrorist is not mourned in the way that someone who died of natural causes is mourned. A terrorist's death is not mourned at all, but celebrated. Instead of a wake there is a party. Neighbors bring candy and all celebrate the 'martyr's glorious death'. The family is congratulated and basks in the praise and reflected glory of the departed hero. Nor should we forget the family that will soon receive the equivalent of US$25,000 from the moderate peace-loving Saudis.
I might add that directly under this article was another: AMMAN FORBIDS PUBLIC MOURNING OF MERKAZ HARAV KILLER. I guess the Jordanians don't have to prove how enlightened, progressive and humane they are.
The mention of Baruch Goldstein opens an old wound.
For those of you with short memories or short attention spans, or both, it was the eve of Purim during the reign of the late, unlamented Nobel Peace Prize winner Yitzhak "I'll Drink to That" Rabin. Mr. Rabin had been trying for some time to remove Jews from Hebron as a confidence building gesture to Israel's newly-minted peace partners, but the religious-fanatic-enemies-of-peace had refused to go.
Dr. Baruch Goldstein, an army physician living in Kiryat Arba [adjacent to Hebron], was told by his commanding officer to prepare a large infirmary for expected civilian casualties.
When Goldstein questioned him about this unusual order he replied that the army had information to the effect that there would be large-scale attacks by Hebron's Arabs on Hebron's Jews. If that is true, Goldstein asked, why doesn't the army act to prevent the attacks?
Because, replied the commander, we have instructions from higher up to respond only after the attacks are well under way. In other words, not until a significant number of Jews had been killed or injured was the army to act. And one of their prime orders was to move all of Hebron's surviving Jews to Kiryat Arba "for their own protection".
Dr. Goldstein, despairing of any other way to save his fellow Jews, preempted the slaughter of the Jews by martyring himself in killing their would-be attackers. For which he was almost universally reviled and condemned.
My source for this information is his widow and the transcript of the inquest following his death. All of which is worth a separate letter. Someday?.
For now Baruch Goldstein is a demon to the left and the mass of uninformed, but a great hero to me. I visit his grave whenever we are in Hebron.
So, a government of Israel was prepared to sacrifice Jews to achieve a policy goal.
Since the onset of the peace process charade following our expulsion from Gush Katif the government here has pretended it is being forced to perform 'confidence building measures'. Chief among these is the dismantling of checkpoints in Judea and Samaria, the checkpoints the world laments as dehumanizing our peace partners.
The government knows the checkpoints save lives. Indeed, almost every dismantling is followed by a shooting attack resulting in injury or death. But it is a win-win situation for our ruling elite. They get credit for 'taking risks for peace' when in fact all they are risking are the lives of people they abhor. And don't forget, the more dead and injured settlers, the more amenable they'll be to the coming expulsion.
Which brings us toYeshivat Merkaz HaRav. We are told the Shabak [Security Services] have been successful in preventing any attack for the past four years, but that this was the act of a loner who had never been in trouble and could therefore not have been prevented.
Then we are told that he had to acquire his weapon somewhere, and had undergone training. So clearly he wasn't acting alone. Did I mention that eight others have already been arrested in connection with this attack?
We are told the Shabak has twice in the past week warned the government of imminent attacks in Jerusalem, and that Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav was at the top of the list of potential targets. Why wasn't the yeshiva warned?
And today we learned that the first to arrive at the scene, while the shooting was underway, were the police. And that though they heard the shooting they didn't even attempt to enter, but limited themselves to standing outside and redirecting traffic. Huh?
It is my belief that the government knew of the attack beforehand and chose to let it happen. After all, the Arabs are our peace partners, have been since Oslo, and their status as enemies has been reassigned to us, the religious nationalists. So Merkaz -- "the flagship of religious Zionism" -- was attacked, and some young untermenschen, enemies-of-peace, were killed. That'll larn'em!
Another subject? actually, the same subject from another angle.
Our academic/intellectual elite, determined not to be outdone in Jew-hatred by their colleagues abroad, is working overtime and with some success. Its latest accomplishment is a doctoral dissertation -- approved, with honors! -- by a Hebrew University student. The subject is why, unlike the practice of soldiers and police in much of the civilized world and all of the uncivilized world, Jewish Israeli soldiers and police don't rape or otherwise molest Arab women.
If you are as naive as I am you might assume it is because of a moral code or a sense of decency. But no! The reason, as explained in the dissertation, is that Jews view Arabs as sub-human and -- if you'll forgive my recourse to scientific jargon -- you don't dip your wick in dirt.
The brilliance of it is overwhelming. Damned as barbarians if we do and damned as racists if we don't. Bravo to our Enlightened Ones.
But there is a developing situation that is deeply disturbing. Our policemen, who wouldn't dream of touching an Arab female, are increasingly touching Jewish girls in wholly inappropriate ways. And this despite a stated policy that only female police can handle female demonstrators. At demonstration after demonstration, particularly in Judean and Samarian 'outposts' away from close scrutiny, male police are molesting young female demonstrators. Is this to punish them? To humiliate them? To break them in spirit? Whatever the reasons, they wouldn't be doing this without encouragement from higher up.
To those of you who think all of the above is dementia brought on by what happened in Gush Katif, let me remind you that those who know me can attest to my being demented from way back. And let me apprise you of a truism: No matter how bad things appear to be, the reality is far worse.
Views expressed by the author do not
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