FROM THE DESK OF
BARBARA GINSBERG
RABBI MEIR KAHANE in 1988 wrote the following article. As you read it simply change the names and it could have been written today.
Who Said
Violence Does Not Help
A dozen Israeli leaders, including Shamir, Peres and Rabin, solemnly advised the Arabs (for their own good, we must assume) that “violence and riots do not help.”
“Riots do not help? Violence only hurts your cause?” our leaders said.
Balderdash! Of course, violence helps, why else did Mr. Shamir decide to help form the Stern group (cruelly called “gang” by the British and Jewish Establishment types who warned that “violence would not help”…)
And, if violence and rioting did not help the Arab cause, why is it that the “Palestine” question has been headline news almost every day. And what forced the Americans and West who, from the beginning were comfortably isolating themselves from the problem. Now they condemn Israel and demand that a political solution be found?
Who said, “Violence does not help?
The “Palestinians” seeing that every political effort had failed, reasoned, why should violence be perceived as not helping? Knowing that television and news media thrive on “action.” Why should the Arabs not attempt to give them that, knowing that hundreds of millions of people all over the world would be seeing it?
Who said, “Violence does not help?”
What put the Soviet Jewish issue on page on of The New York Times and as the major story on almost every television station, if not violence? And what made the British get out of Palestine? What led to the creation of a Jewish state, if not violence?
How much good did non-violence do for the Jews of the Holocaust? Of course violence helps. It helps to force an issue onto the headlines and consciousness of the world. It makes people talk about the issue. And then, if the violence is accompanied by clever propaganda, it helps remarkably well and that the confused object of your violence does not know how to deal with you and your violence, why – of course – you continue and escalate that violence.
The truth is violence has already succeeded in making Israel retreat. When Shamir and Rabin and Peres declare that as soon as order is restored, Israel will sit down to discuss “complete” autonomy and a political solution of the “Palestine” problem, that is exactly what the aim of the violence was. And had there been no violence, Shamir and the Likud would have been perfectly content to sit for another 20 years with the status quo.
The Arabs understand an essential truth of world relations. They understand that the world cares little about any issue unless it is prodded. Nations and peoples, for the most part, are involved and preoccupied with their own problems. If one wants to be heard, he must not only shout, for the world has long been inured to shouts. The one who wishes to be heard must shock. And there is nothing more shocking than violence.
This is true for all peoples whether their cause is right or wrong. And of course, the Arab case is wrong. But it does not remove the essential reality of the very great effectiveness of violence. On the day that the helpless and hapless Jewish “leaders” stop babbling about the ineffectiveness of violence and concentrate more on improving their own ineffectiveness by putting down of the violence, Israel will be in a much better position of security.
Violence helps the Arabs. Crushing that violence in the most effective and the quickest way helps the Jews.
Anyone reading this Rav Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rav Kahane and would like to be, please contact me at:
barhow@netvision.net.il
Visit my blog for previously e-mailed Rav Kahane writings:
http:/www.barbaraginsberg.blogspot.com
I am also posting Baruch Marzel's activities at:
http:/www.baruchmarzel.blogspot.com
11.01.2009
10.26.2009
Israel-There Are No Moderates
FROM THE DESK OF
BARBARA GINSBERG
K A H A N E
The magazine of the authentic Jewish Idea
May-June 1989 Iyar-Sivan 5749
Israel-There Are No Moderates (excerpts)
“Moderates.” “Moderates.” There are no Arab moderates. There are only clever Arabs and stupid ones. The stupid ones say exactly what they mean: eliminate Israel. The clever ones (and more and more are becoming so) mean exactly the same thing but they are clever. After defeats in four wars and numerous clashes they have learned the secret: say nice, moderate things to guilt-ridden Jews, and they will love you. They will throw money at you. And the Sinai. And hopefully, the “occupied lands”…
There are no Arab moderates. And one salutes in awe the ability of Arafat [today it is Abbas} the arch-murderer, to persuade the Jews of lemmingism of his “change of heart,” of his “moderation.” He must surely be a candidate for the Nobel Prize for not laughing, for not rolling on the floor in hysteria.
He has renounced “terrorism?” Of course, but he firmly maintains that to attack the Zionists who “occupy his country” is not terrorism, but rather a war of national liberation. He accepts UN resolutions 242 and 338? To be sure, but within the context of all the UN resolutions on “Palestine,” including resolution 181, the one that the “poor Palestinians” rejected in 1947, the one that originally established a Jewish State. Today, Arafat accepts it. He is good. Having been humiliated militarily he accepts it, knowing that it would bring the Jews back to the boundaries of 1947. He accepts all the UN resolutions, including the ones calling for Israel to allow the “refugees” to return to their homes in Israel if they desire to. All the “refugees” who were part of the “poor Palestinians” who attempted to wipe out Israel in 1948. Today, thanks to the 40 years of birth, there are more than two million of them.
He has recognized the existence of Israel. True. Much in the same way that we all recognize the existence of earthquakes, disease and roaches. Of course we recognize them, because they exist. We recognize their existence in order to put an end to their existence. So too with Arafat. He recognizes Israeli existence…
Arafat; the PLO; the “Palestinians:” the Arab states. Models of deceit and deception, paragons of duplicity and perfidy. Hands of blood and tongues of pretense. They plan new a Holocaust as they speak peace.
No, there are no Arab “moderates.” They are liars who cannot live together with themselves, let alone Israel. They all believe that the Jewish State of Israel is a bandit, settler state, that has stolen “Palestine” from them. And because of that, and with deep sadness, one knows that there will be no peace. And let none of the comfortable denizens of Peace Now in Beverly Hills or the woodpeckers of Hollywood or the pompous pulpiteers of Reform liberal temples screech in indignation. Kahane does not want peace! Kahane does not want peace? Where do I live and where do they live? I, who live in Israel and serve in its army and whose children serve in the army, desire peace a great deal more than the shallow liberals and leftists of Peace Now and those paragons of Reform shallowness, Alexander Schindler and Balfour Brickner, who regularly trumpet declarations of suicide through Peace.
There will be no peace because the “poor Palestinians” do not wish peace. They wish “Palestine”. All of it. And that includes Israel. So let us not delude ourselves and let us not believe in delusions. The great Rebbe of Kutzk once said: “It is a sin to deceive one’s neighbor. It is a crime to deceive oneself.”
Wishing peace, yearning for peace does not mandate committing suicide for peace. And for all those who cry that Israel has been fighting for 40 years, let it be stated flatly that the Jewish people have been fighting for 4,000 years and had our forefathers been as depressed as some of their present day children, we would have been long since gone as a people.
Cease the weeping and wailing! We have a state of our own and it can be a glorious one and let us give thanks to the Almighty for it. And let us understand clearly that a state is not given on a silver platter; neither is it won by writing a check. A state is a precious thing that is won by sacrifice and blood, and if there are those who are not prepared for this, let them walk away and leave it to those who are – unafraid, who have both faith in G-d and the willingness to climb the ramparts in battle.
We are weary? We are weary of having to serve in the army each year to defend our state? How much would a Jew in Auschwitz have given for the opportunity to see a Jewish army, a Jewish tank, a Jewish plane – and with what joy he would have agreed to serve each year in a Jewish army of a Jewish State, created so as to help guarantee that never again will there be an Auschwitz for its Jewish citizens!
Peace? Of course we want peace. Who does not want peace? It is not the monopoly of the guilt-ridden and self-hating hypocrites, the artists and intellectuals (sic) of the left. We all wish peace; we all fervently pray for peace. We all look for the day when the nations shall beat their swords into ploughshares. But, meanwhile, as they continue to have swords with which to destroy us, let us not be so mad as to wave ploughshares.
Give up land. For “peace” that the “poor Palestinian” is prepared to grant us? The ultimate peace of the dead? Are we mad? The ones who launched four wars of aggression against Israel and lost for wars of aggression, dictate terms to us? The ones who launched four wars of aggression and a thousand terrorist attacks, who slew thousands of Jews, and who lost – now present us with demands? They insist that we, who won, give up land? Let the Arab aggressors and murderers learn a very basic rule of life: Losers lose. Winners win. Losers and especially losers who launched wars of murderous aggression, do not dictate terms. Aggression is not a game in which one attempts to wipe out innocent people, loses and then returns to “Go”. No, aggression is a gamble and if the aggressor loses – let him know the full bitterness of his reality – that he has lost. Then, perhaps, he will think deeply and carefully before embarking on another adventure. For let the “poor Palestinian” know in every fiber of his body, that he had best leave well enough alone. Let him accept a peace that will see him establish a state of his own in Jordan, if he can do it. For should he be so foolish as to begin another murderous war of aggression, let him be certain that that which he still possess in Jordan will be ours too.
Land for peace? By all means. The Jews who were the victims of countless efforts to destroy them and who are the rightful owners, will keep the land and be prepared to graciously give the murderous Arabs, peace.
And above all, no guilt! What causes a Jewish people that has suffered thousands of dead and tens of thousands of wounded and maimed at the hands of the Arabs, fail to understand that they are a cruel and implacable enemy, bent on destroying Israel and decimating the Jews? What causes Jews who see the brutality and treachery and viciousness with which Arabs massacre each other, refuse to see what our fate would be if we would be so mad as to give them the slightest opportunity to do to us what they dream to do to us? Above all, what makes a Jewish people that has only one land and has returned to that land, to feel guilty over it and to accept the myth of a “Palestine” and a “Palestinian people?”
There is no Palestinian people and there is no Palestine! There is not, there never was, and please G-d there will never be.
Anyone reading this Rav Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rav Kahane and would like to be, please contact me at:
barhow@netvision.net.il
Visit my blog for previously e-mailed Rav Kahane writings:
http:/www.barbaraginsberg.blogspot.com
I am also posting baruch Marzel's activities at:
http:/www.baruchmarzel.blogspot.com
BARBARA GINSBERG
K A H A N E
The magazine of the authentic Jewish Idea
May-June 1989 Iyar-Sivan 5749
Israel-There Are No Moderates (excerpts)
“Moderates.” “Moderates.” There are no Arab moderates. There are only clever Arabs and stupid ones. The stupid ones say exactly what they mean: eliminate Israel. The clever ones (and more and more are becoming so) mean exactly the same thing but they are clever. After defeats in four wars and numerous clashes they have learned the secret: say nice, moderate things to guilt-ridden Jews, and they will love you. They will throw money at you. And the Sinai. And hopefully, the “occupied lands”…
There are no Arab moderates. And one salutes in awe the ability of Arafat [today it is Abbas} the arch-murderer, to persuade the Jews of lemmingism of his “change of heart,” of his “moderation.” He must surely be a candidate for the Nobel Prize for not laughing, for not rolling on the floor in hysteria.
He has renounced “terrorism?” Of course, but he firmly maintains that to attack the Zionists who “occupy his country” is not terrorism, but rather a war of national liberation. He accepts UN resolutions 242 and 338? To be sure, but within the context of all the UN resolutions on “Palestine,” including resolution 181, the one that the “poor Palestinians” rejected in 1947, the one that originally established a Jewish State. Today, Arafat accepts it. He is good. Having been humiliated militarily he accepts it, knowing that it would bring the Jews back to the boundaries of 1947. He accepts all the UN resolutions, including the ones calling for Israel to allow the “refugees” to return to their homes in Israel if they desire to. All the “refugees” who were part of the “poor Palestinians” who attempted to wipe out Israel in 1948. Today, thanks to the 40 years of birth, there are more than two million of them.
He has recognized the existence of Israel. True. Much in the same way that we all recognize the existence of earthquakes, disease and roaches. Of course we recognize them, because they exist. We recognize their existence in order to put an end to their existence. So too with Arafat. He recognizes Israeli existence…
Arafat; the PLO; the “Palestinians:” the Arab states. Models of deceit and deception, paragons of duplicity and perfidy. Hands of blood and tongues of pretense. They plan new a Holocaust as they speak peace.
No, there are no Arab “moderates.” They are liars who cannot live together with themselves, let alone Israel. They all believe that the Jewish State of Israel is a bandit, settler state, that has stolen “Palestine” from them. And because of that, and with deep sadness, one knows that there will be no peace. And let none of the comfortable denizens of Peace Now in Beverly Hills or the woodpeckers of Hollywood or the pompous pulpiteers of Reform liberal temples screech in indignation. Kahane does not want peace! Kahane does not want peace? Where do I live and where do they live? I, who live in Israel and serve in its army and whose children serve in the army, desire peace a great deal more than the shallow liberals and leftists of Peace Now and those paragons of Reform shallowness, Alexander Schindler and Balfour Brickner, who regularly trumpet declarations of suicide through Peace.
There will be no peace because the “poor Palestinians” do not wish peace. They wish “Palestine”. All of it. And that includes Israel. So let us not delude ourselves and let us not believe in delusions. The great Rebbe of Kutzk once said: “It is a sin to deceive one’s neighbor. It is a crime to deceive oneself.”
Wishing peace, yearning for peace does not mandate committing suicide for peace. And for all those who cry that Israel has been fighting for 40 years, let it be stated flatly that the Jewish people have been fighting for 4,000 years and had our forefathers been as depressed as some of their present day children, we would have been long since gone as a people.
Cease the weeping and wailing! We have a state of our own and it can be a glorious one and let us give thanks to the Almighty for it. And let us understand clearly that a state is not given on a silver platter; neither is it won by writing a check. A state is a precious thing that is won by sacrifice and blood, and if there are those who are not prepared for this, let them walk away and leave it to those who are – unafraid, who have both faith in G-d and the willingness to climb the ramparts in battle.
We are weary? We are weary of having to serve in the army each year to defend our state? How much would a Jew in Auschwitz have given for the opportunity to see a Jewish army, a Jewish tank, a Jewish plane – and with what joy he would have agreed to serve each year in a Jewish army of a Jewish State, created so as to help guarantee that never again will there be an Auschwitz for its Jewish citizens!
Peace? Of course we want peace. Who does not want peace? It is not the monopoly of the guilt-ridden and self-hating hypocrites, the artists and intellectuals (sic) of the left. We all wish peace; we all fervently pray for peace. We all look for the day when the nations shall beat their swords into ploughshares. But, meanwhile, as they continue to have swords with which to destroy us, let us not be so mad as to wave ploughshares.
Give up land. For “peace” that the “poor Palestinian” is prepared to grant us? The ultimate peace of the dead? Are we mad? The ones who launched four wars of aggression against Israel and lost for wars of aggression, dictate terms to us? The ones who launched four wars of aggression and a thousand terrorist attacks, who slew thousands of Jews, and who lost – now present us with demands? They insist that we, who won, give up land? Let the Arab aggressors and murderers learn a very basic rule of life: Losers lose. Winners win. Losers and especially losers who launched wars of murderous aggression, do not dictate terms. Aggression is not a game in which one attempts to wipe out innocent people, loses and then returns to “Go”. No, aggression is a gamble and if the aggressor loses – let him know the full bitterness of his reality – that he has lost. Then, perhaps, he will think deeply and carefully before embarking on another adventure. For let the “poor Palestinian” know in every fiber of his body, that he had best leave well enough alone. Let him accept a peace that will see him establish a state of his own in Jordan, if he can do it. For should he be so foolish as to begin another murderous war of aggression, let him be certain that that which he still possess in Jordan will be ours too.
Land for peace? By all means. The Jews who were the victims of countless efforts to destroy them and who are the rightful owners, will keep the land and be prepared to graciously give the murderous Arabs, peace.
And above all, no guilt! What causes a Jewish people that has suffered thousands of dead and tens of thousands of wounded and maimed at the hands of the Arabs, fail to understand that they are a cruel and implacable enemy, bent on destroying Israel and decimating the Jews? What causes Jews who see the brutality and treachery and viciousness with which Arabs massacre each other, refuse to see what our fate would be if we would be so mad as to give them the slightest opportunity to do to us what they dream to do to us? Above all, what makes a Jewish people that has only one land and has returned to that land, to feel guilty over it and to accept the myth of a “Palestine” and a “Palestinian people?”
There is no Palestinian people and there is no Palestine! There is not, there never was, and please G-d there will never be.
Anyone reading this Rav Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rav Kahane and would like to be, please contact me at:
barhow@netvision.net.il
Visit my blog for previously e-mailed Rav Kahane writings:
http:/www.barbaraginsberg.blogspot.com
I am also posting baruch Marzel's activities at:
http:/www.baruchmarzel.blogspot.com
10.15.2009
The Chosen Land - Conclusion
FROM THE DESK OF
BARBARA GINSBERG
OUR CHALLENGE - 1974
Rabbi Meir Kahane
THE CHOSEN LAND
The Conclusion - Continued from part 2 (Excerpts)
There has never been an instance of two peoples, both sizable and both fully believing that the land is theirs, which have managed to permanently coexist in the same land. Whether in Northern Ireland, India, Quebec, Yugoslavia, Cyprus, or even Belgium, grave differences in nationality, race, religion, or language have created iron curtains between the groups involved. How much more so in the case of the Jews and Arabs of Israel, where all the above differences exist against a background of hate and war.
The revolutionary Left, liberals of all kinds, and anti-Semites in general will seize upon the “plight” of the Arabs to raise an international hue and cry, to organize worldwide protests and support on behalf of the Arabs. Their efforts will hurt, to an as yet unknown degree, financial support for Israel, both from foreign governments as well as private supporters – including Jews.
These axioms that I have outlined make up a scenario. What emerges is an unpleasant realization that Israel faces terrible crises that threatens her as no other crisis in the past. I have not even touched upon the growing intermarriage rate between Jews and Arabs, a phenomenon that may not bother “liberals” but that spells doom for Jews just as surely as the pogroms that take their physical lives.
What is the solution? Certainly not to ignore the problem. Certainly not to persuade ourselves that it does not exist or that it is not as bad as some people make it out to be or that it will get better or that it will eventually disappear of its own accord. Not, by illusions or patently impossible brotherhood hopes will this problem be solved.
Illusions will not save the Israelis; good, hard common sense will. Certainly every effort must be made to increase the Jewish population of Israel through a crisis approach to immigration and strenuous efforts to raise the Jewish birth rate. But as least equally as important is the need to find some way to reduce the Arab minority. And here we refer both to the Arabs who are Israeli citizens as well as the inhabitants of the liberated territories.
The best partial solution, the most humane in the long run, and the safest for Jews is an effort to separate the Arab minority from the Jewish majority by a planned and well-funded emigration of Arabs from Israel. I speak here of the idea for an urgent creation of an “Emigration Fund for Peace” and I immediately point out that I refer only to a voluntary one, through the free choice and determination of individual Arabs.
Naturally, the extremist, the proud nationalist will not leave, but many, many other thousands will. If it can be pointed out to the Arabs that Jewish majority rule will never be displaced and that they are being offered an opportunity that, most likely, will never be theirs again – to begin new lives in the West – the chances are excellent that they will leave. What population transfers created for Greeks and Turks, Indians and Pakistanis, and Sudetan Germans, can be repeated here.
The most important obstacle is, of course, the small but vocal group of rootless and frustrated neo-intellectuals who will be the first to attack the plan and smear it with all kinds of labels. Yet it is up to those who love the Jewish people and state and hope to save them both from a disastrous crisis, to ignore the false prophets of false and ignorant “liberalism” and to make this plan a reality. Integration is not always the answer, although it is not always not the answer. In this case, an attempt to integrate the Arabs of Israel can be successful only at the price of a unique Jewish state, and without the willingness to pay that price it is an exercise in dangerous futility. Let us then ignore those who are “overly righteous.” Let us speak of the need for a private body of wealthy and influential Jews to establish and emigration fund with an initial capitalization of at least twenty million dollars. Such money could be raised with comparative ease if wealthy western Jewry would be quietly but firmly persuaded by the Israeli government that this fund is vital to her interests and welfare.
These same people should also begin the task of contacting governments of states that are under populated or in need of manpower to see exactly how many visas they are willing to allocate both for their own self-interest as well as for the purpose of defusing the time bomb that is the Arab population of the Land of Israel. Governments should also be discreetly asked how much they would be willing to contribute to this fund, which would do more to solve the Middle East problem than all the United Nations plans yet created.
With a fund of money, with visas, with exact charts, the Arabs – and here I stress that this plan would be offered to both the Arabs of pre-1967 Israel and those of the liberated lands – would then be approached and offered a sizable sum to emigrate to the country of their choice) within the list of states that has agreed to take them in.) A number of Arab counties might agree to take in skilled labor with capita; this would certainly be preferable to emigration to non-Arab counties.
Will many Arabs leave? I believe that, if given the monetary incentive and promise of a new life free from the eternal threat of hatred and minority status, many will. Whatever the number, Israel will benefit from even that limited emigration. Bear in mind the extraordinarily high birthrate of the Arabs of Israel and that each one who leaves takes with him many future Arabs. It is a plan that is worth trying and that promises blessings for the Jewish state. Above all it is an answer worthy of the most serious thought because of the potential disaster inherent in the lack of an answer.
A brief comment on criticism of the plan from responsible circles, particularly within the government, criticism that condemns the plan for “offending” the Arabs and harming “friendly relations” between them and the Jews. It is difficult to comprehend a cabinet and ruling party that make such statements, which contain more than a little contradiction. One simply cannot understand those leading government officials who publicly call for the return of parts of the liberated lands on the grounds that they do not “want too many Arabs,” and then condemn others for proposing an emigration plan. Do we really think that such a plan would offend the Arabs and make relations difficult? If so, what in the world do we think an Israeli Arab feels when he hears his prime minister, finance minister, foreign minister, deputy premier and other assorted Laborites talk about the danger of too many Arabs in a Jewish state? Do we really think we make friends and influence people that way?
The difference between the advocates and the opponents of the plan is that one group plays games with the Arabs and tries to fool them while the other tells the truth. Labor wants to get rid of the Arabs by giving back Jewish land, we want to try to keep Eretz Yisroel and find some means to convince the Arabs to leave.
What of those who will not leave? They will certainly be the majority, so that under any circumstances the resources and brains of the state must be mobilized to increase the numbers of Jews and the proportion of Jews to Arabs, as well as finding some means whereby the Arabs of the territories will not opt for Israeli citizenship. Let us again repeat that there are two problems posed by the Arabs within Eretz Yisroel. One is the fact of their existence within the borders as a large, potentially dissident and seditious minority. The second is their potential political and electorate power that could threaten the Jewish hegemony of the Jewish state. Both problems could be eased by emigration, but even if large numbers choose to remain, the second problem can still be met and modified.
Those Arabs who remain within the Land of Israel, both pre-1967 and in the liberated lands, pose a politely demographic threat. The threat must be met not by returning land that is sacred and Jewish and whose return would pose a security threat of catastrophic proportions, but by other means. Certainly, nothing can be done to limit the rights of those Arabs who are already Israeli citizens, or their children. But the Arab population of the liberated lands that should and must be made part of Eretz Yisroel can be politically neutralized.
First, it should be made clear that the incorporation of the territories into Israel will not bring with it automatic citizenship and that the non-Jews there will be treated exactly as if they were non-Jews from some other area coming into Israel. That is, they must apply for citizenship that will be given to them after the regular five-year wait.
At the end of that time, the applicant must repeat his intention of becoming a citizen and swearing loyalty to the State of Israel. Notice of such intention and declaration will be printed in three Arab newspapers for two consecutive weeks. The intent here is clearly to discourage the Arab from asking for citizenship. At the same time, the government should make a definite offer to all territorial residents that those who opt for non-citizenship will be automatically freed from national taxes, as well as pushing for a mass program of birth-control education and “liberating” literature for Arab women.
In addition, every conceivable Jewish resource must go into the effort to increase Aliya. Jewish immigration, to mass proportions. There is an extraordinary difference between the small population we have today and a large Jewish state of five million Jews. One does not speak so glibly of wiping out or dismantling such a state.
The overall Arab-Israel problem will not be solved for decades. Indeed, it may never be solved. This holds true also for the Jewish-Arab problem within Israel. For those who ask, “but what will the end be?” the mature answer is that ultimately the Messiah will come and, until then, who knows? Besides, who ever said there must be a solution? Some problems have remained unsolved for centuries despite many honest efforts to solve them. What we must not do is allow our impatience and weariness to push us into a false solution that will lead to disaster. We are obligated to find as much of a real solution as possible.
The Arabs and Jews of Israel and the Middle East may never live in true peace together. Foolish idealism is not substitute for true idealism or even for any kind of reality. What is needed is a reaffirmation of the age-old faith in “the destiny of Israel which will not prove faithless” and a determined, realistic policy aimed at the most important of all Jewish goals – Jewish survival.
Let us not be frightened into guilt feelings and into a retreat from common sense, self-preservation, and our Jewish destiny by the attacks of the lovers of “peace.” Those who advocate Jewish self-preservation are just as anxious for peace as the confused and strident shouters on the Left. Their wives and children face the same threat and their Jewish gabardine is just as legitimate as the cloak of the self-proclaimed “peace-seekers.”
The difference is that the Jewish nationalist lives with reality, not illusion. He had faith in the Jewish destiny, the Almighty’s promise and the strong Jewish hand that brings the miraculous to reality. He knows that the Almighty and Jewish destiny will not desert the Jew, but he knows that success is conditioned on his own efforts at formulating and carrying out a realistic and bold Jewish policy.
In the end, we will be fortunate in that, with the most foolish and myopic of intentions, we will be unable to destroy ourselves and the Almighty will save us from the fruits of our own folly. We have reached that stage in Jewish history and destiny where it is ordained that the Jewish return to the homeland will be permanent, maximum, and glorious. No assortment of timid, fearful, and tiny politicians can undo this. What they can do, however, is cost us great amounts of tragedy in the form of human suffering and lost opportunities. They can retard the salvation and make us pay heavily. In the end however, the redemption will win out, for this is the determination of divine providence.
Anyone reading this Rav Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rav Kahane and would like to be, please contact me at:
barhow@netvision.net.il
Visit my blog for previously e-mailed Rav Kahane writings:
http:/www.barbaraginsberg.blogspot.com
I am also posting Baruch Marzel's Activities at:
www.baruchmarzel.blogspot.com
BARBARA GINSBERG
OUR CHALLENGE - 1974
Rabbi Meir Kahane
THE CHOSEN LAND
The Conclusion - Continued from part 2 (Excerpts)
There has never been an instance of two peoples, both sizable and both fully believing that the land is theirs, which have managed to permanently coexist in the same land. Whether in Northern Ireland, India, Quebec, Yugoslavia, Cyprus, or even Belgium, grave differences in nationality, race, religion, or language have created iron curtains between the groups involved. How much more so in the case of the Jews and Arabs of Israel, where all the above differences exist against a background of hate and war.
The revolutionary Left, liberals of all kinds, and anti-Semites in general will seize upon the “plight” of the Arabs to raise an international hue and cry, to organize worldwide protests and support on behalf of the Arabs. Their efforts will hurt, to an as yet unknown degree, financial support for Israel, both from foreign governments as well as private supporters – including Jews.
These axioms that I have outlined make up a scenario. What emerges is an unpleasant realization that Israel faces terrible crises that threatens her as no other crisis in the past. I have not even touched upon the growing intermarriage rate between Jews and Arabs, a phenomenon that may not bother “liberals” but that spells doom for Jews just as surely as the pogroms that take their physical lives.
What is the solution? Certainly not to ignore the problem. Certainly not to persuade ourselves that it does not exist or that it is not as bad as some people make it out to be or that it will get better or that it will eventually disappear of its own accord. Not, by illusions or patently impossible brotherhood hopes will this problem be solved.
Illusions will not save the Israelis; good, hard common sense will. Certainly every effort must be made to increase the Jewish population of Israel through a crisis approach to immigration and strenuous efforts to raise the Jewish birth rate. But as least equally as important is the need to find some way to reduce the Arab minority. And here we refer both to the Arabs who are Israeli citizens as well as the inhabitants of the liberated territories.
The best partial solution, the most humane in the long run, and the safest for Jews is an effort to separate the Arab minority from the Jewish majority by a planned and well-funded emigration of Arabs from Israel. I speak here of the idea for an urgent creation of an “Emigration Fund for Peace” and I immediately point out that I refer only to a voluntary one, through the free choice and determination of individual Arabs.
Naturally, the extremist, the proud nationalist will not leave, but many, many other thousands will. If it can be pointed out to the Arabs that Jewish majority rule will never be displaced and that they are being offered an opportunity that, most likely, will never be theirs again – to begin new lives in the West – the chances are excellent that they will leave. What population transfers created for Greeks and Turks, Indians and Pakistanis, and Sudetan Germans, can be repeated here.
The most important obstacle is, of course, the small but vocal group of rootless and frustrated neo-intellectuals who will be the first to attack the plan and smear it with all kinds of labels. Yet it is up to those who love the Jewish people and state and hope to save them both from a disastrous crisis, to ignore the false prophets of false and ignorant “liberalism” and to make this plan a reality. Integration is not always the answer, although it is not always not the answer. In this case, an attempt to integrate the Arabs of Israel can be successful only at the price of a unique Jewish state, and without the willingness to pay that price it is an exercise in dangerous futility. Let us then ignore those who are “overly righteous.” Let us speak of the need for a private body of wealthy and influential Jews to establish and emigration fund with an initial capitalization of at least twenty million dollars. Such money could be raised with comparative ease if wealthy western Jewry would be quietly but firmly persuaded by the Israeli government that this fund is vital to her interests and welfare.
These same people should also begin the task of contacting governments of states that are under populated or in need of manpower to see exactly how many visas they are willing to allocate both for their own self-interest as well as for the purpose of defusing the time bomb that is the Arab population of the Land of Israel. Governments should also be discreetly asked how much they would be willing to contribute to this fund, which would do more to solve the Middle East problem than all the United Nations plans yet created.
With a fund of money, with visas, with exact charts, the Arabs – and here I stress that this plan would be offered to both the Arabs of pre-1967 Israel and those of the liberated lands – would then be approached and offered a sizable sum to emigrate to the country of their choice) within the list of states that has agreed to take them in.) A number of Arab counties might agree to take in skilled labor with capita; this would certainly be preferable to emigration to non-Arab counties.
Will many Arabs leave? I believe that, if given the monetary incentive and promise of a new life free from the eternal threat of hatred and minority status, many will. Whatever the number, Israel will benefit from even that limited emigration. Bear in mind the extraordinarily high birthrate of the Arabs of Israel and that each one who leaves takes with him many future Arabs. It is a plan that is worth trying and that promises blessings for the Jewish state. Above all it is an answer worthy of the most serious thought because of the potential disaster inherent in the lack of an answer.
A brief comment on criticism of the plan from responsible circles, particularly within the government, criticism that condemns the plan for “offending” the Arabs and harming “friendly relations” between them and the Jews. It is difficult to comprehend a cabinet and ruling party that make such statements, which contain more than a little contradiction. One simply cannot understand those leading government officials who publicly call for the return of parts of the liberated lands on the grounds that they do not “want too many Arabs,” and then condemn others for proposing an emigration plan. Do we really think that such a plan would offend the Arabs and make relations difficult? If so, what in the world do we think an Israeli Arab feels when he hears his prime minister, finance minister, foreign minister, deputy premier and other assorted Laborites talk about the danger of too many Arabs in a Jewish state? Do we really think we make friends and influence people that way?
The difference between the advocates and the opponents of the plan is that one group plays games with the Arabs and tries to fool them while the other tells the truth. Labor wants to get rid of the Arabs by giving back Jewish land, we want to try to keep Eretz Yisroel and find some means to convince the Arabs to leave.
What of those who will not leave? They will certainly be the majority, so that under any circumstances the resources and brains of the state must be mobilized to increase the numbers of Jews and the proportion of Jews to Arabs, as well as finding some means whereby the Arabs of the territories will not opt for Israeli citizenship. Let us again repeat that there are two problems posed by the Arabs within Eretz Yisroel. One is the fact of their existence within the borders as a large, potentially dissident and seditious minority. The second is their potential political and electorate power that could threaten the Jewish hegemony of the Jewish state. Both problems could be eased by emigration, but even if large numbers choose to remain, the second problem can still be met and modified.
Those Arabs who remain within the Land of Israel, both pre-1967 and in the liberated lands, pose a politely demographic threat. The threat must be met not by returning land that is sacred and Jewish and whose return would pose a security threat of catastrophic proportions, but by other means. Certainly, nothing can be done to limit the rights of those Arabs who are already Israeli citizens, or their children. But the Arab population of the liberated lands that should and must be made part of Eretz Yisroel can be politically neutralized.
First, it should be made clear that the incorporation of the territories into Israel will not bring with it automatic citizenship and that the non-Jews there will be treated exactly as if they were non-Jews from some other area coming into Israel. That is, they must apply for citizenship that will be given to them after the regular five-year wait.
At the end of that time, the applicant must repeat his intention of becoming a citizen and swearing loyalty to the State of Israel. Notice of such intention and declaration will be printed in three Arab newspapers for two consecutive weeks. The intent here is clearly to discourage the Arab from asking for citizenship. At the same time, the government should make a definite offer to all territorial residents that those who opt for non-citizenship will be automatically freed from national taxes, as well as pushing for a mass program of birth-control education and “liberating” literature for Arab women.
In addition, every conceivable Jewish resource must go into the effort to increase Aliya. Jewish immigration, to mass proportions. There is an extraordinary difference between the small population we have today and a large Jewish state of five million Jews. One does not speak so glibly of wiping out or dismantling such a state.
The overall Arab-Israel problem will not be solved for decades. Indeed, it may never be solved. This holds true also for the Jewish-Arab problem within Israel. For those who ask, “but what will the end be?” the mature answer is that ultimately the Messiah will come and, until then, who knows? Besides, who ever said there must be a solution? Some problems have remained unsolved for centuries despite many honest efforts to solve them. What we must not do is allow our impatience and weariness to push us into a false solution that will lead to disaster. We are obligated to find as much of a real solution as possible.
The Arabs and Jews of Israel and the Middle East may never live in true peace together. Foolish idealism is not substitute for true idealism or even for any kind of reality. What is needed is a reaffirmation of the age-old faith in “the destiny of Israel which will not prove faithless” and a determined, realistic policy aimed at the most important of all Jewish goals – Jewish survival.
Let us not be frightened into guilt feelings and into a retreat from common sense, self-preservation, and our Jewish destiny by the attacks of the lovers of “peace.” Those who advocate Jewish self-preservation are just as anxious for peace as the confused and strident shouters on the Left. Their wives and children face the same threat and their Jewish gabardine is just as legitimate as the cloak of the self-proclaimed “peace-seekers.”
The difference is that the Jewish nationalist lives with reality, not illusion. He had faith in the Jewish destiny, the Almighty’s promise and the strong Jewish hand that brings the miraculous to reality. He knows that the Almighty and Jewish destiny will not desert the Jew, but he knows that success is conditioned on his own efforts at formulating and carrying out a realistic and bold Jewish policy.
In the end, we will be fortunate in that, with the most foolish and myopic of intentions, we will be unable to destroy ourselves and the Almighty will save us from the fruits of our own folly. We have reached that stage in Jewish history and destiny where it is ordained that the Jewish return to the homeland will be permanent, maximum, and glorious. No assortment of timid, fearful, and tiny politicians can undo this. What they can do, however, is cost us great amounts of tragedy in the form of human suffering and lost opportunities. They can retard the salvation and make us pay heavily. In the end however, the redemption will win out, for this is the determination of divine providence.
Anyone reading this Rav Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rav Kahane and would like to be, please contact me at:
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10.07.2009
The Chosen Land - part 2
FROM THE DESK OF
BARBARA GINSBERG
OUR CHALLENGE - 1974
Rabbi Meir Kahane
THE CHOSEN LAND
Part 2 continued from last week (Excerpts)
We must begin to disabuse ourselves of the illusion that the demon of Arab demography will be disposed of by getting rid of the lands that hold a million post-June 1967 Arabs. I put it to one and all that the problem of Arab numbers and an ever-growing Arab minority will not be disposed of by disposing of the territories, and that this gnawing problem exists in the form of the Arabs of that part of Israel that existed before 1967. Indeed, I hasten to add, the Arabs within what is known as “the Green Line” will pose a far more dangerous and explosive threat to Israel than those of Hebron and Gaza. What I am really saying is that the signing of a peace treaty with the Arabs, the setting up of a “Palestine” state that is free and independent, the recognition of Israel by the Arabs – all these impossible dreams, even if they were fulfilled, would still leave Israel with an Arab time bomb that could blow up the state and bring to life all the problems we thought were solved.
Let us assume that a peace will somehow be achieved and all the “outside” Arabs plus those in their own new “Palestine” state will accept Israel. What will happen is that Israel will not have been freed of an Arab nationalist problem. It will not have been freed of an Arab population problem. It will not have been freed of a large body that hates the Jewish majority and the Jewish state and seeks its destruction or at least its total overhaul and change of identity. All of these problems will remain in the form of the Israeli Arabs. Concerning these Arabs, we have begun to believe all kinds of myths.
Thus our third dangerous illusion: “The way to reach peace and understanding between Jew and Arab is to raise the Arab standard of living and create a new generation of educated Arabs. Already, Israel has succeeded in raising the living standards of its own Arabs to the point where they are the highest in the Arab world and where more and more Arabs enter high schools and universities each year. If this continues there is hope of bridging the Arab-Israel gap.”
No nationalist was ever bought by an indoor toilet and electricity in his home. And that is exactly what those who preach peace through materialism are doing. They are buying, or attempting to buy, the Arab nationalist and his love and pride in nationhood and state. Such an attempt is as immoral as it is self-defeating. What the “moderates” and the “compromisers” do not realize is that the Arab nationalist is as committed to his own people and to what he considers his own land as the Jews of Israel are to theirs. The Western colonialists who sincerely and honestly believed that they were benefiting the Asians and Africans whom they ruled, found that their arguments fell on deaf ears of native peoples who preferred poverty with independence to high living standards under foreign rule. Why should we expect the Arabs to be any different? Why should they not have the same pride that Israelis expect their children to have?
Certainly with this present generation, mostly illiterate peasants, large numbers can be “bribed.” But in the years to come, as the sons of the peasants contemptuously reject our “favors.” No, let us not deceive ourselves into believing that by raising the Arab living standards we will win his peace and friendship.
The illusions concerning education are even more incomprehensible. Has not history shown a hundred times over that it is precisely the educated intellectuals who are the most nationalistic and extreme? It is not the fellah, the Arab peasant, who is the danger to peace with Israel, but rather his son who goes to high school and from there to university. He, who ahs economic opportunities that were undreamed of by his father, will not be “grateful” to the Jew for allowing him to enter new worlds. Quite the contrary.
The university Arab sits and reads of the great nationalist movements of history, demands the same for his own people and land, acquires the knowledge, sophistication, and tools of leadership and becomes the most extreme, the most nationalist, and the most talented of the Arabs. Peace and understanding from the university Arabs? Anything but.
And despite this most elementary lesson, there are those in the government who are able to speak about and find funds for an Arab university. Money for the poverty areas of Israel, we do not have. Money to meet the communal gap, we are told, is simply nonexistent. But funds to finance a school for Arab nationalists, extremist leaders who will lead the battle for our destruction, suddenly appear. We Jews are indeed a strange people
There is another aspect of the problem that we ignore at our peril. It is not only the Arab of the lands liberated in 1967 who conceives of himself as a “Palestinian” and who believes that the Jews have stolen his homeland. The Arab who lived in pre-1967 Israel, the one who is granted Israeli citizenship and has been an Israeli citizen since 1948, the free and equal Arab citizen of the Jewish state thinks exactly the same way. And if he is a young Arab, who was born after Israel came into being and lived his whole life under Israeli sovereignty, he feels even more strongly about it.
He does not conceive of himself as part of the state: he is an Arab, not a Jew; a “Palestinian,” not an Israeli. He does not feel he owes loyalty to his government; he does not look upon it as his government. He resents and hates the Jewish majority. He is at heart a strong “Palestinian” an Arab nationalist as the West Bank Arab, and because of guilt feelings engendered by his acquiescence in Israeli citizenship, he is a potentially greater and a more dangerous one. He wants to prove his Arabism. He rejects categorically the constant assertion by various government officials that the Israeli Arab is an equal citizen of the state.
And here we come to the final illusion: “The Israeli Arab is equal to the Israeli Jew in the Jewish state.”
So long as Israel remains the Jewish state, and that is its reason for being; for being; so long as Israel is the fulfillment of the Zionist dream, a homeland for the Jewish people where they can be a majority and plan their own destiny, so long as there is a Law of Return, which grants every Jew (not Arab) automatic citizenship upon request, precisely in order to assure a Jewish majority – the Arab in Israel will never be as equal as the Jew. It will always be a Jewish state, the state of the Jew, not the Arab.
All the “liberals,” “progressives,” and leftist may grind their teeth, but if they believe in Zionism in whatever shape, and in a Jewish state, they must accept this fact. No amount of dialectics or sophistry will make it vanish. A Jewish state means that there is an inherent difference between the Jewish citizen and the Arab one.
And why not? If the purpose of moving large numbers of Jews to Israel was not for the purpose of setting up a Jewish state with a permanent Jewish majority, why leave New York City with its two million Jews, or the Soviet Union with its three million? A large Jewish minority is not the answer that Zionism proposed to the question of anti-Semitism. We have had large Jewish minorities in the past and they have availed us nothing. A large ghetto is till a ghetto, not a Jewish state. Israel was conceived a Jewish state, a Jewish majority state. It was conceived as the one home of the Jewish peoples just as every nation has its home with its majority. For this concept, there is no need to apologize. But it does present us with a fact that the “progressive” and the left always pass over in embarrassment. The fact is that the Arab in Israel may be a citizen, he may be given equal opportunity in education and employment, but he is doomed to a minority role because he is an Arab in a Jewish state. And from there flows the inescapable resentment on the part of any minority, which is compounded by the Arab’s belief that the state is really his, and that he should be the majority.
What is more, the growing rootlessness and lack of Jewish values among Israeli Jewish youth is bound to lead to a condition, similar to that in the United States and almost every western country, wherein “majority” intellectuals, driven by their lack of values to a neurotic self-hate and the need to attack the parental and state. Establishment will latch on to the “oppressed” Arab as a means to channel their own destructive impulses. Exactly as in the United State, intellectual Jewish youth will find themselves a cause, the “persecuted” Arabs, and give them (the Arabs) the thing they most lacked to make their revolt meaningful: Majority leadership. A minority can never win against a determined majority, but when that majority is divided, when its youth and intellectuals are driven by doubt, self-hate and mistrust of their own government, then the conditions are ripe for revolt, tension, and anarchy.
What we will see as the years pass is the growth of educated Arabs whose nationalism will be bitter and extreme. We will also see a corresponding growth of Arabs whose intellectual and educational achievements will not find an appropriate occupational outlet, with many hundreds unable to find the professional and political jobs their ambitions demand. We will see a society where most of the laboring jobs are Arab and the better ones Jewish. This will lead to increasing frustrations, protests, riots, and revolt. Growing numbers of young Jews will actively support these Arabs; the Israeli left, from the Moscow-puppet Rakach party to the schizophrenic Mapam, will aid them politically; and there will be created conditions similar to those in the Untied States civil rights revolt – which has only begun and which will yet see warfare in the streets.
(Conclusion next week)
Anyone reading this Rav Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rav Kahane and would like to be, please contact me at:
barhow@netvision.net.il
Visit my blog for previously e-mailed Rav Kahane writings:
http:/www.barbaraginsberg.blogspot.com
I am also posting Baruch Marzel's Activities at:
www.baruchmarzel.blogspot.com
BARBARA GINSBERG
OUR CHALLENGE - 1974
Rabbi Meir Kahane
THE CHOSEN LAND
Part 2 continued from last week (Excerpts)
We must begin to disabuse ourselves of the illusion that the demon of Arab demography will be disposed of by getting rid of the lands that hold a million post-June 1967 Arabs. I put it to one and all that the problem of Arab numbers and an ever-growing Arab minority will not be disposed of by disposing of the territories, and that this gnawing problem exists in the form of the Arabs of that part of Israel that existed before 1967. Indeed, I hasten to add, the Arabs within what is known as “the Green Line” will pose a far more dangerous and explosive threat to Israel than those of Hebron and Gaza. What I am really saying is that the signing of a peace treaty with the Arabs, the setting up of a “Palestine” state that is free and independent, the recognition of Israel by the Arabs – all these impossible dreams, even if they were fulfilled, would still leave Israel with an Arab time bomb that could blow up the state and bring to life all the problems we thought were solved.
Let us assume that a peace will somehow be achieved and all the “outside” Arabs plus those in their own new “Palestine” state will accept Israel. What will happen is that Israel will not have been freed of an Arab nationalist problem. It will not have been freed of an Arab population problem. It will not have been freed of a large body that hates the Jewish majority and the Jewish state and seeks its destruction or at least its total overhaul and change of identity. All of these problems will remain in the form of the Israeli Arabs. Concerning these Arabs, we have begun to believe all kinds of myths.
Thus our third dangerous illusion: “The way to reach peace and understanding between Jew and Arab is to raise the Arab standard of living and create a new generation of educated Arabs. Already, Israel has succeeded in raising the living standards of its own Arabs to the point where they are the highest in the Arab world and where more and more Arabs enter high schools and universities each year. If this continues there is hope of bridging the Arab-Israel gap.”
No nationalist was ever bought by an indoor toilet and electricity in his home. And that is exactly what those who preach peace through materialism are doing. They are buying, or attempting to buy, the Arab nationalist and his love and pride in nationhood and state. Such an attempt is as immoral as it is self-defeating. What the “moderates” and the “compromisers” do not realize is that the Arab nationalist is as committed to his own people and to what he considers his own land as the Jews of Israel are to theirs. The Western colonialists who sincerely and honestly believed that they were benefiting the Asians and Africans whom they ruled, found that their arguments fell on deaf ears of native peoples who preferred poverty with independence to high living standards under foreign rule. Why should we expect the Arabs to be any different? Why should they not have the same pride that Israelis expect their children to have?
Certainly with this present generation, mostly illiterate peasants, large numbers can be “bribed.” But in the years to come, as the sons of the peasants contemptuously reject our “favors.” No, let us not deceive ourselves into believing that by raising the Arab living standards we will win his peace and friendship.
The illusions concerning education are even more incomprehensible. Has not history shown a hundred times over that it is precisely the educated intellectuals who are the most nationalistic and extreme? It is not the fellah, the Arab peasant, who is the danger to peace with Israel, but rather his son who goes to high school and from there to university. He, who ahs economic opportunities that were undreamed of by his father, will not be “grateful” to the Jew for allowing him to enter new worlds. Quite the contrary.
The university Arab sits and reads of the great nationalist movements of history, demands the same for his own people and land, acquires the knowledge, sophistication, and tools of leadership and becomes the most extreme, the most nationalist, and the most talented of the Arabs. Peace and understanding from the university Arabs? Anything but.
And despite this most elementary lesson, there are those in the government who are able to speak about and find funds for an Arab university. Money for the poverty areas of Israel, we do not have. Money to meet the communal gap, we are told, is simply nonexistent. But funds to finance a school for Arab nationalists, extremist leaders who will lead the battle for our destruction, suddenly appear. We Jews are indeed a strange people
There is another aspect of the problem that we ignore at our peril. It is not only the Arab of the lands liberated in 1967 who conceives of himself as a “Palestinian” and who believes that the Jews have stolen his homeland. The Arab who lived in pre-1967 Israel, the one who is granted Israeli citizenship and has been an Israeli citizen since 1948, the free and equal Arab citizen of the Jewish state thinks exactly the same way. And if he is a young Arab, who was born after Israel came into being and lived his whole life under Israeli sovereignty, he feels even more strongly about it.
He does not conceive of himself as part of the state: he is an Arab, not a Jew; a “Palestinian,” not an Israeli. He does not feel he owes loyalty to his government; he does not look upon it as his government. He resents and hates the Jewish majority. He is at heart a strong “Palestinian” an Arab nationalist as the West Bank Arab, and because of guilt feelings engendered by his acquiescence in Israeli citizenship, he is a potentially greater and a more dangerous one. He wants to prove his Arabism. He rejects categorically the constant assertion by various government officials that the Israeli Arab is an equal citizen of the state.
And here we come to the final illusion: “The Israeli Arab is equal to the Israeli Jew in the Jewish state.”
So long as Israel remains the Jewish state, and that is its reason for being; for being; so long as Israel is the fulfillment of the Zionist dream, a homeland for the Jewish people where they can be a majority and plan their own destiny, so long as there is a Law of Return, which grants every Jew (not Arab) automatic citizenship upon request, precisely in order to assure a Jewish majority – the Arab in Israel will never be as equal as the Jew. It will always be a Jewish state, the state of the Jew, not the Arab.
All the “liberals,” “progressives,” and leftist may grind their teeth, but if they believe in Zionism in whatever shape, and in a Jewish state, they must accept this fact. No amount of dialectics or sophistry will make it vanish. A Jewish state means that there is an inherent difference between the Jewish citizen and the Arab one.
And why not? If the purpose of moving large numbers of Jews to Israel was not for the purpose of setting up a Jewish state with a permanent Jewish majority, why leave New York City with its two million Jews, or the Soviet Union with its three million? A large Jewish minority is not the answer that Zionism proposed to the question of anti-Semitism. We have had large Jewish minorities in the past and they have availed us nothing. A large ghetto is till a ghetto, not a Jewish state. Israel was conceived a Jewish state, a Jewish majority state. It was conceived as the one home of the Jewish peoples just as every nation has its home with its majority. For this concept, there is no need to apologize. But it does present us with a fact that the “progressive” and the left always pass over in embarrassment. The fact is that the Arab in Israel may be a citizen, he may be given equal opportunity in education and employment, but he is doomed to a minority role because he is an Arab in a Jewish state. And from there flows the inescapable resentment on the part of any minority, which is compounded by the Arab’s belief that the state is really his, and that he should be the majority.
What is more, the growing rootlessness and lack of Jewish values among Israeli Jewish youth is bound to lead to a condition, similar to that in the United States and almost every western country, wherein “majority” intellectuals, driven by their lack of values to a neurotic self-hate and the need to attack the parental and state. Establishment will latch on to the “oppressed” Arab as a means to channel their own destructive impulses. Exactly as in the United State, intellectual Jewish youth will find themselves a cause, the “persecuted” Arabs, and give them (the Arabs) the thing they most lacked to make their revolt meaningful: Majority leadership. A minority can never win against a determined majority, but when that majority is divided, when its youth and intellectuals are driven by doubt, self-hate and mistrust of their own government, then the conditions are ripe for revolt, tension, and anarchy.
What we will see as the years pass is the growth of educated Arabs whose nationalism will be bitter and extreme. We will also see a corresponding growth of Arabs whose intellectual and educational achievements will not find an appropriate occupational outlet, with many hundreds unable to find the professional and political jobs their ambitions demand. We will see a society where most of the laboring jobs are Arab and the better ones Jewish. This will lead to increasing frustrations, protests, riots, and revolt. Growing numbers of young Jews will actively support these Arabs; the Israeli left, from the Moscow-puppet Rakach party to the schizophrenic Mapam, will aid them politically; and there will be created conditions similar to those in the Untied States civil rights revolt – which has only begun and which will yet see warfare in the streets.
(Conclusion next week)
Anyone reading this Rav Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rav Kahane and would like to be, please contact me at:
barhow@netvision.net.il
Visit my blog for previously e-mailed Rav Kahane writings:
http:/www.barbaraginsberg.blogspot.com
I am also posting Baruch Marzel's Activities at:
www.baruchmarzel.blogspot.com
10.04.2009
The Chosen Land - 1974 - part 1
FROM THE DESK OF
BARBARA GINSBERG
OUR CHALLENGE - 1974
Rabbi Meir Kahane
“The Chosen Land” (Excerpts)
We are inundated with all kinds of illusions and delusions. Let us return this land or that land and we will have blessed peace. Let us not dare to settle Jews in Eretz Yisroel lest it anger the Arabs and jeopardize blessed peace. Let us make partial and semi-partial and total and semi-total agreements that call for compromise and we shall have blessed peace. Let us not move Arabs form the borders and settle Jews there; let us not dare to bomb terrorists lest we hit innocent civilians; let us be “better than they are” – and thus gain blessed peace. Let us recognize the existence of a “Palestine people” despite the refusal of every other Arab country to do so, at a time when they might at last have set up a partial “Palestine” state after 1947. Let us negotiate with our friends the mayors of Gaza and Shehem and Hebron, for they are the solution to the problem of peace. Let us, perhaps, even consider a binational state for the sake of blessed peace. Let us realize that we can reach peace and brotherhood with the Arabs by political concessions and compromises.
It is time for the Jew in Israel to throw away those negative attitudes that he retains from the Galut, the Exile. Chief among these is an unwillingness to look at bitter reality. We may not enjoy hearing it, but the truth is that for many years at least there will not be a sincere de jure peace with the Arabs. It may affect the tender souls of the more spiritually intellectual among us, but one can never attain either peace or security by “compromise” with bitter enemies who have no intentions of compromising with you. Those in Judea, Samaria and Gaza who do sit down with you because they have no choice, do so only in the hope of getting rid of you as soon as possible. Our enemy, in the long run, is weariness. It is against this enemy that we must struggle. We must gird ourselves with tenacity and determination never to tire of what appears to be a never-ending struggle. For that is what it may very well become: “a struggle for Jewish existence and a Jewish state that will never cease to be a struggle; a realization that between us and the Arabs stand a massive barrier that may never be breached; a determination by two peoples to live in a land that at least one will never compromise on. There will grow the weariness of having to send our children to the army without stop. There will grow the weariness of having to leave each year for reserve duty. There will grow the weariness of terrorist attacks on the borders or at the Lod airport or at the Tel Aviv bus terminal. There will, perhaps, again grow the weariness – and the heartbreak – of victims of a new war of attrition. There will grow the weariness of all this, rising to a crescendo with the frustrating cry. “When will it finally end?”
Only the weak succumb to such frustrations; only the weak surrender to time. A strong and tenacious people know that there may never be an end to the struggle and the sacrifice. But they also look about them and see what their refusal to surrender has accomplished: a state, and today a big one, in much of our Eretz Yisroel; a Jewish state with nearly three million souls and many more to come; the creation of a new and proud Jew. None of these things would have come about had we listened to the intellectual precursors of our modern-day intellectuals and doves. In the name of “peace” there would be no Jewish state; in the name of “morality” there would be no free Jewish nation.
If we hope to survive in the literal sense of the world, let us not succumb to the siren call of easy answers and the tempting promise of “peace.” Above all, let us, please, have no illusions. The Arabs intend to wipe us out; we must be strong enough to stop them. The Arabs who live with us in Eretz Yisroel, both those who have done so for twenty-five years and those for just five, do not love us and never will – and one cannot blame them. Let us not play games with them or with ourselves. We give them civil rights and political freedom, but what Jew will ever agree that they should become a majority? What Jew will ever agree to allow Arabs to come in on the same terms as Jews do today under the Law of Return? Israel was formed as a Jewish state. Arabs may have social, economic, and much political equality but, in the end, it is not their state. For the individual Arab we offer much, but for the Arab nation, Israel offers nothing. It is not an Arab state, it is a Jewish state. It came into being because Jews knew that for them there was no hope in a world that thirsted for their bodies and souls. It came into being under the realization that neither king nor republican nor Marxist had the solution to the Jewish problem. That in the end it was the words of the rabbis that proved to be eternally true: “It is a law, it is known that Esau hates Jacob.”
And so, Eretz Yisrael, the land of the Jewish people, exists. It can never be anything but that and both we and the Arabs know it. Such a fact allows for few illusions over peace. Perhaps peace will come some day; I, for one, doubt it. Until it does, let us not listen to the delusions that float down to us daily from the ivory tower or from the self-hating Left. Strength and tenacity – they and they alone assure Jewish survival.
A second dangerous illusion that must be dispelled is the one that states: “the policy of the government of Israel not to officially declare Jewish sovereignty over the liberated lands, but nevertheless to hold on to them with a vague promise of readiness to return parts, has proved to be a great success.”
This liberal attitude of Israel manifests itself on the one hand by Jewish refusal to allow Jews to settle in any of the West Bank cities, to settle major areas of the region, or to pray without limitation in the second holiest of Jewish shrines, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. On the other hand, this policy allows Arabs to cross from Jordan and into Jordan, invest money in the lands to raise the economy and lets Arab laborers and tourists visit Israel almost without restriction, collaborates even with Arab leaders whose activities during massacres of Jews are known, and encourages a feeling that some day the Arabs of the West Bank will be independent. This policy, it is said, has proven to be a resounding success as evidenced by the fact that peace and tranquility have been the rule in the lands and a growing trust and closeness has been created.
Stuff and nonsense. The “peaceful” Arab has been so only because he feels beaten and helpless in face of the Jewish army and the excellent Israeli intelligence service with its network of paid informers. If the present situation continues and a new generation of Arabs – not wedded to the soil or the fellah (peasant) mentality it produces – grows up well educated, urbanized, and extreme in its thinking, we will see an end to the idyll.
But far more important are the terrible, negative results of the government’s policy. In the short run this policy appears to be a success, but in the long run it can prove to be disastrous. Why?
In the end, the Arabs alone can never hope to overcome Israel. They will need outside help. And the most important help they can get will come from the Israelis themselves. If the greatest of Israeli weapons, confidence in the rightness of our cause, is overcome, if large numbers of Israelis can be led to believe that there is something immoral about Israel’s stand on the “Palestine” question, then we will see in Israel a repetition of the United States’ Vietnam tragedy, wherein hundreds of thousands or Americans actively participated in attacking government policy and in helping the enemy to win the kind of diplomatic victory it could never have hoped to gain on the field of battle.
The present policy of the Israeli government toward “Palestine” will do exactly that in Israel. If, for example, the West Bank – Judea and Samaria- was really ours, really Jewish, then Israel should have declared so immediately after the June 1967 war. Had they done so then, the world would not have opened its mouth to protest. A man who has regained possession of something that he lost, leaps on it and shouts, “This is mine.” One who does not do so brings into question his own legitimacy; he raises grave doubts as to whether he is really the rightful owner, and when he then continues to hold on to it, making all kinds of vague offers to return part of it to the one who was holding it in the past, he is patently less than genuine.
Such a lesson is not lost on the minds of thousands of young Israelis. They are not fools and neither are they imbued with the attitude of their predecessors that allowed the latter to excuse every seeming inconsistency in the name of the Jewish people. This failure of the Israeli government to take a resolute stand, this “halting between two opinions,” has seriously eroded the confidence in the policies and morality of their own state of more youth than the government would like to admit. This is the most dangerous thing that can happen to a nation and its consequences, as we will know, can be disastrous.
If we wish to avoid a terrible rise in mistrust of the government by our young; if we want to prevent the rise of a conviction among various sectors of our population that we are indeed a conquering and robbing army; if we wish to make it very clear to any budding Arab nationalists that no amount of pressure will avail them anything since we do not intend to leave; if we hope to keep secure borders; if we want to shut off the protests of the hypocritical world; above all; if we intend to realize the enormous miracle and promise of Jewish renaissance and return to historic Eretz Yisroel – then the present policy of trickery, ruse, and dishonesty must be abandoned.
In its place a new, honest and direct policy must be implemented that consists of: (1) immediate permission for Jewish settlement in every part of the liberated lands, and city and countryside; (2) crash programs for immediate Jewish settlement directly in the heart of major cities – such as Hebron, Shehem, Jericho, Gaza and Ramallah – that will direct new immigration into these areas and the creation of western-style cities with western capital to attract western immigrants. In a word, the liberated lands must be speedily and immediately re-Judaized.
This, in brief, is what must be done to bury the illusions concerning the territory and population of the liberated lands as well as the general Arab-Israeli conflict. There remain, however, other illusions concerning one other aspect of the Jewish-Arab dispute the Arabs of the State of Israel within the pre-1967 borders.
Anyone reading this Rav Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rav Kahane and would like to be, please contact me at:
barhow@netvision.net.il
Visit my blog for previously e-mailed Rav Kahane writings:
http:/www.barbaraginsberg.blogspot.com
I am also posting Baruch Marzel's Activities at:
www.baruchmarzel.blogspot.com
BARBARA GINSBERG
OUR CHALLENGE - 1974
Rabbi Meir Kahane
“The Chosen Land” (Excerpts)
We are inundated with all kinds of illusions and delusions. Let us return this land or that land and we will have blessed peace. Let us not dare to settle Jews in Eretz Yisroel lest it anger the Arabs and jeopardize blessed peace. Let us make partial and semi-partial and total and semi-total agreements that call for compromise and we shall have blessed peace. Let us not move Arabs form the borders and settle Jews there; let us not dare to bomb terrorists lest we hit innocent civilians; let us be “better than they are” – and thus gain blessed peace. Let us recognize the existence of a “Palestine people” despite the refusal of every other Arab country to do so, at a time when they might at last have set up a partial “Palestine” state after 1947. Let us negotiate with our friends the mayors of Gaza and Shehem and Hebron, for they are the solution to the problem of peace. Let us, perhaps, even consider a binational state for the sake of blessed peace. Let us realize that we can reach peace and brotherhood with the Arabs by political concessions and compromises.
It is time for the Jew in Israel to throw away those negative attitudes that he retains from the Galut, the Exile. Chief among these is an unwillingness to look at bitter reality. We may not enjoy hearing it, but the truth is that for many years at least there will not be a sincere de jure peace with the Arabs. It may affect the tender souls of the more spiritually intellectual among us, but one can never attain either peace or security by “compromise” with bitter enemies who have no intentions of compromising with you. Those in Judea, Samaria and Gaza who do sit down with you because they have no choice, do so only in the hope of getting rid of you as soon as possible. Our enemy, in the long run, is weariness. It is against this enemy that we must struggle. We must gird ourselves with tenacity and determination never to tire of what appears to be a never-ending struggle. For that is what it may very well become: “a struggle for Jewish existence and a Jewish state that will never cease to be a struggle; a realization that between us and the Arabs stand a massive barrier that may never be breached; a determination by two peoples to live in a land that at least one will never compromise on. There will grow the weariness of having to send our children to the army without stop. There will grow the weariness of having to leave each year for reserve duty. There will grow the weariness of terrorist attacks on the borders or at the Lod airport or at the Tel Aviv bus terminal. There will, perhaps, again grow the weariness – and the heartbreak – of victims of a new war of attrition. There will grow the weariness of all this, rising to a crescendo with the frustrating cry. “When will it finally end?”
Only the weak succumb to such frustrations; only the weak surrender to time. A strong and tenacious people know that there may never be an end to the struggle and the sacrifice. But they also look about them and see what their refusal to surrender has accomplished: a state, and today a big one, in much of our Eretz Yisroel; a Jewish state with nearly three million souls and many more to come; the creation of a new and proud Jew. None of these things would have come about had we listened to the intellectual precursors of our modern-day intellectuals and doves. In the name of “peace” there would be no Jewish state; in the name of “morality” there would be no free Jewish nation.
If we hope to survive in the literal sense of the world, let us not succumb to the siren call of easy answers and the tempting promise of “peace.” Above all, let us, please, have no illusions. The Arabs intend to wipe us out; we must be strong enough to stop them. The Arabs who live with us in Eretz Yisroel, both those who have done so for twenty-five years and those for just five, do not love us and never will – and one cannot blame them. Let us not play games with them or with ourselves. We give them civil rights and political freedom, but what Jew will ever agree that they should become a majority? What Jew will ever agree to allow Arabs to come in on the same terms as Jews do today under the Law of Return? Israel was formed as a Jewish state. Arabs may have social, economic, and much political equality but, in the end, it is not their state. For the individual Arab we offer much, but for the Arab nation, Israel offers nothing. It is not an Arab state, it is a Jewish state. It came into being because Jews knew that for them there was no hope in a world that thirsted for their bodies and souls. It came into being under the realization that neither king nor republican nor Marxist had the solution to the Jewish problem. That in the end it was the words of the rabbis that proved to be eternally true: “It is a law, it is known that Esau hates Jacob.”
And so, Eretz Yisrael, the land of the Jewish people, exists. It can never be anything but that and both we and the Arabs know it. Such a fact allows for few illusions over peace. Perhaps peace will come some day; I, for one, doubt it. Until it does, let us not listen to the delusions that float down to us daily from the ivory tower or from the self-hating Left. Strength and tenacity – they and they alone assure Jewish survival.
A second dangerous illusion that must be dispelled is the one that states: “the policy of the government of Israel not to officially declare Jewish sovereignty over the liberated lands, but nevertheless to hold on to them with a vague promise of readiness to return parts, has proved to be a great success.”
This liberal attitude of Israel manifests itself on the one hand by Jewish refusal to allow Jews to settle in any of the West Bank cities, to settle major areas of the region, or to pray without limitation in the second holiest of Jewish shrines, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. On the other hand, this policy allows Arabs to cross from Jordan and into Jordan, invest money in the lands to raise the economy and lets Arab laborers and tourists visit Israel almost without restriction, collaborates even with Arab leaders whose activities during massacres of Jews are known, and encourages a feeling that some day the Arabs of the West Bank will be independent. This policy, it is said, has proven to be a resounding success as evidenced by the fact that peace and tranquility have been the rule in the lands and a growing trust and closeness has been created.
Stuff and nonsense. The “peaceful” Arab has been so only because he feels beaten and helpless in face of the Jewish army and the excellent Israeli intelligence service with its network of paid informers. If the present situation continues and a new generation of Arabs – not wedded to the soil or the fellah (peasant) mentality it produces – grows up well educated, urbanized, and extreme in its thinking, we will see an end to the idyll.
But far more important are the terrible, negative results of the government’s policy. In the short run this policy appears to be a success, but in the long run it can prove to be disastrous. Why?
In the end, the Arabs alone can never hope to overcome Israel. They will need outside help. And the most important help they can get will come from the Israelis themselves. If the greatest of Israeli weapons, confidence in the rightness of our cause, is overcome, if large numbers of Israelis can be led to believe that there is something immoral about Israel’s stand on the “Palestine” question, then we will see in Israel a repetition of the United States’ Vietnam tragedy, wherein hundreds of thousands or Americans actively participated in attacking government policy and in helping the enemy to win the kind of diplomatic victory it could never have hoped to gain on the field of battle.
The present policy of the Israeli government toward “Palestine” will do exactly that in Israel. If, for example, the West Bank – Judea and Samaria- was really ours, really Jewish, then Israel should have declared so immediately after the June 1967 war. Had they done so then, the world would not have opened its mouth to protest. A man who has regained possession of something that he lost, leaps on it and shouts, “This is mine.” One who does not do so brings into question his own legitimacy; he raises grave doubts as to whether he is really the rightful owner, and when he then continues to hold on to it, making all kinds of vague offers to return part of it to the one who was holding it in the past, he is patently less than genuine.
Such a lesson is not lost on the minds of thousands of young Israelis. They are not fools and neither are they imbued with the attitude of their predecessors that allowed the latter to excuse every seeming inconsistency in the name of the Jewish people. This failure of the Israeli government to take a resolute stand, this “halting between two opinions,” has seriously eroded the confidence in the policies and morality of their own state of more youth than the government would like to admit. This is the most dangerous thing that can happen to a nation and its consequences, as we will know, can be disastrous.
If we wish to avoid a terrible rise in mistrust of the government by our young; if we want to prevent the rise of a conviction among various sectors of our population that we are indeed a conquering and robbing army; if we wish to make it very clear to any budding Arab nationalists that no amount of pressure will avail them anything since we do not intend to leave; if we hope to keep secure borders; if we want to shut off the protests of the hypocritical world; above all; if we intend to realize the enormous miracle and promise of Jewish renaissance and return to historic Eretz Yisroel – then the present policy of trickery, ruse, and dishonesty must be abandoned.
In its place a new, honest and direct policy must be implemented that consists of: (1) immediate permission for Jewish settlement in every part of the liberated lands, and city and countryside; (2) crash programs for immediate Jewish settlement directly in the heart of major cities – such as Hebron, Shehem, Jericho, Gaza and Ramallah – that will direct new immigration into these areas and the creation of western-style cities with western capital to attract western immigrants. In a word, the liberated lands must be speedily and immediately re-Judaized.
This, in brief, is what must be done to bury the illusions concerning the territory and population of the liberated lands as well as the general Arab-Israeli conflict. There remain, however, other illusions concerning one other aspect of the Jewish-Arab dispute the Arabs of the State of Israel within the pre-1967 borders.
Anyone reading this Rav Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rav Kahane and would like to be, please contact me at:
barhow@netvision.net.il
Visit my blog for previously e-mailed Rav Kahane writings:
http:/www.barbaraginsberg.blogspot.com
I am also posting Baruch Marzel's Activities at:
www.baruchmarzel.blogspot.com
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