The Complete Maccabean Online: March, 2008

Let us say the last and essential battle, -- the ongoing battle until that day when the merits of the Children of Israel enable them to perceive and choose the scion of David who is present, ready and eager every day, in every generation to accept his role as king, Bar Nofli, a man born like any other man from a man and woman, husband and wife to lead in restoring the Kingdom of a fully sovereign Israel [1]. This day is near, here amid the deep sleep, the dread and great darkness of these terrible days whose full horror Abraham felt (Genesis 15:12).

We are the walkers of the long road of sanctification, the derekh Yehudi that the nations are rushing to bury, in their chaotic minds, once and for all, to slay the witnesses to and victims of their primal identity theft. Jews have endured so much of the aliens mad power games to attain this far goal of time to survive, triumph, bless and, -- it is necessary, all of history has shown this – to take “revenge against those fools who undermine civilization” [2].

The Minnim, the Hebrew-speaking gentiles oriented to Europe, Rome, Washington and London who have fallen by the wayside and have no share in the world to come [3] work with the nations and their mikhshol gadol (“great stumbling block”) [4] to blot out the nation of Israel so that it’s name not be remembered anymore (Psalm 83). They incite and arm Ishmael against us, -- they, the star-worshipers and notzrim are the virus that stole, deformed, and “poisoned our religion,” -- though the derekh Yehudi is not a “religion” in their fantasy-schizoid sense-- and then, in guilty denial attributed their sins to us, simple people that we are, put on us the viral, bloody and “rapturous” madness that define them: they are in a hurry as their composite civilization collapses of its internal contradictions, -- may the Highest Wisdom help and save all decent people – to crush us till we become vulnerable to their and our meisitim tormenting us 1700 years [5].

May Hashem help the good to thrive for Israel is ruled by “those who betray Jews to gentile authorities” [6] directly and indirectly so that they lose their livelihood, lives, property, the Promised Land itself and with it the possibility of performing true Torah and thus sanctifying the living reality and “Name” of the Creator; ruled by those “who cast fear upon the people for reasons other than the service of God.” Their failure to fight the wars of God is so total that their plan is to habituate Jews in the Promised Land to living in bomb shelters, or running to them, to never going outside with fear, -- if they can arrange it by refusing to fight either the milchemet mitzvah, the mandatory wars that are commanded for times such as these, much less the permitted wars in both of which Israel is commanded to serve not only God but all human beings by “giving their lives for the triumph of Hashem’s Torah and for revenge against those fools who undermine civilization” (supra). Thus the client regime shuts off water and starts to destroy beautiful simple places like Esh Kodesh, so lovingly built while supplying water, food, medicines, and electric power to the terrorists in Gaza. Thus terror and violence draw nearer…

Those who study events even in America, once the Medinat shel chessed, know that it too is being destroyed and that in the ensuing madness those who lament and oppose the destruction often blame the “Zionists” (Jews, they pretend there is a distinction yet never research the history of this matter) while successive administrations have used the media to indoctrinate Americans into believing, against all evidence that Israel is the cause of violence in the Middle East and the world. This is an ancient story: blame the Jews, justify genocide, take their land. Diplomats call it a “peace process.” Of course, at the end of the era of the appropriation and Judaism and Israel language itself is utterly corrupted: “security” is a war process, ignorance is strength and Yesod haTiferet become tattooed sluts. The seed, so precious to Israel, is desolated in the cult of population control.

To endure and conquer these perversions are our “specific challenge and service assignment and challenge from the Highest Wisdom” [7]. There is so much pain for many who strive for the Perfected Community of Yisrael HaShlaimim [ibid]: to be in the midst of this terror-struck world and have so little power save to find the group of men among whom is one fit to be a king of Israel; who watch, study and grieve from afar, trying to arouse and bring the words of the great from days past and present. Those who care for this destiny must unite.

“All those who oppose you shall be lost,” “utterly annihilated” not merely in this world but in the world to come: an eternity with the angel Duma and utter distance from the source of life [8]. Even now when, for decades, those who rule as clients of Edom betray, rebel, proudly sin in public, “cast fear upon the people,” make themselves accessories to murder by arming the enemies of the Eternal One’s beloved servants it will not last. Their tower of lies is collapsing upon itself; hence their haste, their ever more anxious and hollow worship of the goddesses of progress, manipulation and control; their destruction of human beings’ divine right to be free to choose the good, to have use of the land and integrity and sovereignty within their families: all these terrible things and the terrors that ensue are hastening to an end.

“Remember Amalek, what he did to you: ‘remember, with your mouths,’ speak of it; do not forget, -- in your hearts’” [9]. Israel is commanded to offer peace in both mandatory and permitted (reshut) wars; it has done so many times and has required a mandatory war since the 1940s. Lo tirah: Do not fear as they gather to scramble and again bury the dream of a fully humane and simple life of goodness such as is lived on the hills of Judea and Samaria. If Edom uses Ishmael to crush this source of light the world will be fully unbalanced and all borders collapse like chaos over creation, un-creating [10].

The sages of Israel anticipated this time frame and these developments; their prescience and accuracy should make believers of any still in doubt [11]. There are upheavals, grand designs by atheist worshippers of their own plans and power, and there “will be cessation with Hashem alone exalted on that day” (ibid). It will cause too much pain; Shakespeare and the Ramchal are eloquent and clear on this: we all affect each other, nothing is lost. But the basically good will be redeemed by their suffering if not by conscious atonement and the evil will be utterly annihilated, as they now are doing to the precious creation. In the midst of the land the Eternal One “will leave a humble and a forbearing people who take refuge in the Name of Hashem” [12]. These Jews already are there. This is why the powers want to uproot them: they are the living present that honors the past and therefore has a future. They are the antidote to “progressive synthesis” that has no identity, nothing but virtual reality, and no future other than tyranny.

Know the enemy and watch what they do: it is most blatant in the Promised Land because they know that it is there that God’s Name is great and that there is the one true claim they never can match. “Fear not, O men of Israel: I have made you like a new threshing iron with many blades; you will thresh and pulverize the mighty, and make the hills [their petty accomplices] like chaff…a storm wind will scatter them and you will rejoice in Hashem; in the Holy One of Israel shall you glory!” [13]. Those who remain will come to drink and eat, without money, the sustenance, the milk and wine of Judah streaming from the rebuilt Sanctuary on the Creator’s holy hill. “A nation that had not known you will run to you for the sake of Hashem, your God, for the Holy One of Israel” in its “battle for faith against those fools who undermine civilization.”

1. Sanhedrin 96b5; also Rambam, “the Mashiach will be absolutely mortal, born of a man and a woman,” Sefer HaVikuach, cf. Abarbanel, Yeshuach Meshicho; Sanhedrin 99a3, Rav Shmuel notes, “There is no difference between this world and the era of Mashiach except Israel will be free from foreign subjugation.”

Rambam Hilchot Melachim 11:1-4, 12:1-2, 5 affirms and explains this condition and its great results.

2. Rambam, Sefer HaMitzvoth Mitzvah 191 (Moznaim, NY / Jerusalem, 1993), translation Rabbi Shraga Silverstein.

3. Rambam, Hilchot Teshuvah 3:6-7 ff including polytheists, secularists, worshippers of avatars, Darwinists

5. Rambam, Hilchot Avodat Kokhavim 3, 4 passim; see my essay “Rambam on Atheists and Attrition”

8. Isaiah 41:11-12, Ramchal 2.3.1-5; “free will is granted to all men” Rambam, Hilchot Teshuvah 5:1 on Genesis 3:22, cf. 4:6-7

12. Sanhedrin 98a2 Zeiri on Rav Chanina; “the arrogant will be eliminated…the sorcerers (amgushai) and gazirpatai (“idolatrous judges”)

There are two categories of ‘those who betray Jews to gentiles’: one who betrays a fellow Jew to the gentiles so that they may kill or beat him; and one who gives his fellow Jew’s money to the gentiles or to a person who takes property and is, therefore, considered like a gentile. [Rambam, Hilchot Teshuvah 3:6, 12]

The above lines may bring to mind the expulsions of Jews from Gush Katif, the north Shomron towns and the pogrom at Amona. To those with longer memories or to students of history they will recall the Saison and the collaboration and complicity of the official “Zionists” (who still give a bad name to that austere term) with the British and their geopolitics of abetting the shoah. Near at hand, “one who betrays a fellow Jew to the gentiles so that they may beat and kill him” connotes the rocket barrages from Gaza since 2001, the undeclared “wars of attrition” that the Labor and now Kadima-Likud rulers of Israel never allow it to win or even suppress for very long. It also highlights their subservience to foreign kingdoms, especially America and Britain that to scholars like Rambam was a primary sign of the ruin of Judaism and harsh events that precede the restoration of royalty and integrity to Israel (Melachim 1:1, 5:1-5, 11-12; Hilchot Kokhavim 10:4-6; Hilchot Teshuvah 9:2; geula b’ita). “The normal pattern of the world” cannot pertain until Israel is sovereign and Torah complete ( “the oppression of the gentile kingdoms prevents Israel from fulfilling the mitzvoth properly” ibid).

There’s a fake war on, an up-tick in the attrition dialectic to which the nations have damned Israel. The politicians who rule Israel on behalf of the oligarchs, foreign and domestic, are making bold sounds about their determination to “defeat terror.” They are liars and harlots: were they men of truth (no women belong in these positions, Melachim 1:5) the attacks on Gush Katif would have been crushed seven years ago. These rulers and the establishment around them epitomize the “autocratic government” of which the sages warned us (Pirke Avot 2:3). Ever since the days of the Mandate, they desecrate the Name and despoil Israel, -- they cast fear upon the people for reasons other than the service of God (Teshuvah 3:13 and Melachim 1:7, “under no circumstance should a person who lacks the fear of God be appointed to any position in Israel”).

Their contempt for Judaism has been exposed for sixty years as profoundly impractical. Had they had wisdom and respect, they would have delegated sages to establish a court and “appoint a king to fight the wars of Hashem” (Melachim 1:2-3). There would have been a united front against the British publicly demanding massive aliyah; there would have been one hundred Altalena’s instead of one that was sunk, -- by these anti-Jews. The Gilead would have been regained in 1967 and the Lebanon in 1973 or ’82 if not before. An altar would have been built on a re-consecrated Temple Mount and by now the Beit HaMikdash would be standing, sending inspiration and hope throughout the world. Instead there are expulsions of Jews, groveling before enemies, death and terror brought upon the people instead of victory and peace and the ruin of the land, of Judaism and of the Almighty’s honor by the presence not only of worshippers of false gods but of their houses of worship in Eretz Yisrael, houses Israel must destroy (Kokhavim 4 and10).

Many mitzvot are abrogated by the secularists and their “religious party” fig leaves that have ruled Israel on behalf of the gentiles since the 1920s, doling out immigration quotas to Jews until the holocaust when there were almost no “certificates” to be had. These collaborators who betray Jews “have no portion in the world to come” and include “those who cast fear upon the people for reasons other than the service of God “(literally, “the heavenly Name,” Hashem, Teshuvah 3:13).

This discussion is presented as a bit of chinuch about which so much is heard in hopes that more will be done; as parliamentarians say, a “point of information” that may lead to perfected action and “the perfected community” in which we accept our “specific service assignment” to quote Ramchal.

Rambam’s Mishne Torah, enumerating the mitzvoth is particularly striking when one notes the full context, the extraordinary and distinctively Jewish leniency with which he, like chazal generally or Ramchal centuries later speaks of transgressors. In the previous section of this Halacha he has quoted the foundational verse, “all Israel have a share in the world to come” based in Isaiah 60:22 and repeated at the start of each section of Pirke Avot. Moreover, Rambam devotes most of Hilchot Teshuvah 3:4-5 to explaining how a single mitzvah tips a person’s balance toward righteousness and that, after death, when the form of the soul in its knowledge (Yesodei HaTorah 4:8-9) stands ‘naked’ before the Almighty “He does not count a sin that was committed only once or twice” such that the third sin, too “is forgiven because it is considered as a first sin for the first two were already forgiven.” Even “the fourth sin is thus considered as a first and is forgiven according to the same principle until all [sins] are concluded being weighed.” As far as our relation with the Creator goes, forgiveness and mercy characterize Judaism.

This regards the Divine, Eternal Justice of the Highest Wisdom, Rambam immediately notes, distinguishing it from what is owed for sins against the [Jewish] community, klal Israel. Citing Amos 2:6, “for the fourth I will not withhold it” [punishment] Rambam states that “reckoning begins with the fourth” sin in regard to transgressions against the entire nation. Given the summary review above, the fourth sin, indeed the four hundredth was committed decades ago and they have showered down in scores daily since the Labor regime seized total control of the State which was before it declared itself independent.

Lest anyone think that Rambam could be used to give a pass to those who keep the dialectic of attrition and Jewish subjugation going, he follows these loving leniencies, so evident in Iggeret HaShmad (see introduction to Yesodei HaTorah or Sefer HaMitzvoth) by detailed description of the Minnim, proselytizers, heretics and apostates and Epikorsin (followers of Epicurus) who deny the fundamentals of Torah – Hashem’s unity, love, and presence, etc., “cause the many to sin,” “betray Jews to gentiles” (supra), “worship stars or other intermediary individuals”; who “dispute the prophecy of Moshe,” “maintain that the Creator is not aware of the deeds of men,” negate the criteria for true prophecy (“neither add to it nor take away”) as distinguished from false prophets (Deuteronomy 13) or those who replaces or nullifies mitzvoth (Teshuvah 3:6-14).

All these sections of Mishne Torah resonate today. The “mainstream organizations” in America, -- the Reform Union, Labor, Bnei Brith, ADL, OU and others who publicly endorsed a “Palestinian” State, a “two-state solution” west of the Jordan in effect are in the category of those who say, “’what value do I have in clinging to Israel while they are debased and pursued. It’s better to cling to those [gentiles] who have the upper hand.’ Such a one is an apostate in regard to the entire Torah” (Hilchot Teshuvah 3:9, last paragraph). Moreover they are in the category of “those who betray Jews to gentiles” in that “they cast fear upon the people for reasons other than the service of God” (ibid 3:13). What a terrible message of despair and isolation they have sent to the Jews of Israel, especially those undergoing rocket barrages and those sent belatedly to fight to damp down the attrition.

So one notes the terrible consequences to body and soul when Israel is ruled by “deviant sorts” (Minnim), Epicureans and other defeatist apostates and those who stand by the blood of their Jewish brothers.

One might expect that in the laws of star and idol worship and how to deal with their servants Rambam would deal with intellectual and legal matters involving niceties of observance. The latter surely comes into play. But it is clear that the Rav is concerned in great measure with the integrity of Eretz Yisrael and of the Jews dwelling there. The chapters that follow treat largely of the dangers done to Israel and Jews by proselytizers and that the strictures against them and against cities or neighborhoods that follow them are meant to insure the survival of Eretz Yisrael. These are the laws of Ir HaNidchat, “proselytized” or “wayward cities” which must be dealt with by a court, Sanhedrin that the leading sages must establish (see previous essay on the potential of Rav Kook and others since to achieve these life and nation-saving mitzvoth).

The Sanhedrin must inquire as to the extent of the mesit (proselytizer against Torah) and musatot (proselytes) and decide the extent to which the city is to be destroyed. If a minority is culpable after having been formally warned to desist, they are executed after witnesses are heard and their property is destroyed. If a majority was led astray, the righteous are spared but their property, along with that of all those who rejected Torah and Hashem is destroyed and the apostates executed (Kokhavim 4:1-2, 5-15). The point is that this “serves as a warning against proselytizing” (4:1) and thus destroying the Source and Torah of Israel and, as a result, its national and individual integrity and life.

If a proselytizer does not heed a warning to desist, it is a positive commandment for the one he proselytizes to kill him (Kokhavim 4:4 on Deuteronomy 13:10) so that the innocent victim and target not share the iniquity and fate of the guilty. There is to be no ‘blaming the victim’ if Rambam can help it. Anyone who refrains from executing a false prophet violates a negative commandment” (Sefer HaMitzvoth 29 on Deuteronomy 18:22).

Still, Rambam’s insight that the integrity of Torah and unification of the Name are one with the integrity of the land is clear when he exempts the “cities of refuge” as well as Jerusalem from ever being destroyed because a majority of Jews there might be led astray. The foundations must be sustained; similarly, “a border city is never condemned as an Ir HaNidchat so that the gentiles will not enter and destroy Eretz Yisrael” (Kokhavim 4:4). For a similar set of practical and holy reasons “three cities bordering each other should not be condemned” because of the practical dangers involved. The land must remain integral and Jews must be redeemed when punishment risks gentile attack.

Contrast this with conditions in modern Israel; the betrayal of Jews, supra has its counterpart in a land pocked with the places of worship to other gods as well as to proselytizers. The Rambam places such great importance for all Israel in carrying out, via the Sanhedrin, the mitzvoth pertaining to Ir HaNidchat that he states that “anyone who administers the judgment of Ir HaNidchat is as if he offered a burnet whole offering, entirely for the sake of Hashem your God,” a great honor of the Temple Mount and rectification of the world (Kokhavim 4:16 re Deut 13:17).

The emphasis on being rooted and intact, shaleim in derekh Yehudi emerges in the reservations Rambam puts on what may be done with a city permeated by a majority of apostates and proselytizers. “It may never be rebuilt” (Kokhavim, 4:8). “It is permitted only to use it for gardens and orchards” (ibid), the glorious song of the earth; all its produce and goods are to be burnt “excluding produce still connected to its source of nurture [earth] and would have to be severed in order to be burnt” (ibid. 4:13). This resembles the prohibition against cutting down fruit trees when besieging an enemy city and reflects on the principle of roots and being rooted in maintaining Israel. It is precisely to safeguard these foundations that “we may not draw up a covenant with idolaters and establish peace with them that allows them to worship idols” (ibid. 10:1 on Deut 7:2, “do not be gracious to them”). Rather, to protect the vine, Israel, Rambam explains the mitzvah “to eradicate Jewish traitors, Minnim, epikorsin, and proselytizers…since they cause difficulty to the Jews and sway them from Hashem.” There are candidates aplenty now.

Just as these strictures, including the provisions of warning to enable teshuva, evidence, inquiry, witnesses and destruction are meant to protect Jews and Judaism so are they meant to protect the integrity of Eretz Yisrael without which none of these mitzvoth can be properly fulfilled (see Sefer HaMitzvoth). This pillar is explicated by Rambam at the conclusion of Kokhavim. It is a matter that is very near and urgent to us today.

It may be debatable whether the current time is “an era when Israel is in exile among the gentiles” as opposed to being primarily scattered to the four corners; but it is clear that it “is an era when the gentiles are in power” for there is no functional Sanhedrin and even though one has been constituted it has scarcely any impact on current events in Israel. Rather its main role so far is to attempt to coordinate the teaching of the Noahide laws to gentiles abroad. This is not trivial; for when Israel is sovereign it is only an observant Noahide (a ger toshav, a “resident alien”) who may visit the land.

However, despite Rambam’s great leniency regarding teshuva, when it comes to the integrity of Eretz Yisrael, the literal basis for the mitzvoth he sets up an iron wall. When “it comes to Jewish traitors, Minnim and apikorsim” and the amgushai (“sorcerers”) and idolatrous judges, gazirpatai discussed in Talmud “it is a mitzvah to kill them, not to love them or show them any favor”; one is commanded “not reduce hatred for them” for they undermine the entire Torah and desecrate Hashem (Kokhavim 10:2). This regards all idolaters, “those who pride themselves in other gods.” Even in an era when Israel is not sovereign and is mostly in exile “it is forbidden to sell them homes and fields in Eretz Yisrael” (ibid. 10:3). It was adherence to this honor and commandment that kept a Jewish majority in the Land till about 350 CE despite the loss of three wars, genocide, ruin of the land and mass enslavement. There is no other such enduring resistance (Amidah) in history and this makes the word “resistance” a particularly apt name for the main Jewish prayer service: faith, humility, national honor and profound strength drawn from witness to the Creator.

Rambam continues that, even in the time when Israel is not sovereign and/or is mostly scattered it is forbidden to rent idolaters more than two homes in any one area lest they constitute a neighborhood. And even though they may rent it is not for a dwelling but only as a warehouse lest they bring idols with them. The primacy of the land, its produce and the principle of rootedness again emerges in the prohibition against renting fields to them or selling a field of standing produce for future harvest (ibid. 10:3-4). Just as the land belongs to Hashem and He gave it to Jacob forever, so too its produce; and while one should provide charity for poor idolaters one should not act as if their holidays are true days of joy, “to wish him well,” etc (ibid 10:5).

So even given Israel’s de facto dependent status today it is forbidden to sell or allow idolaters to rent any land at all or to purchase buildings for residency. When “Israel is in power over them,” truly sovereign “it is forbidden [even] to allow an idolater among us” (ibid 10:6). If they want to ascend to Hashem’s holy House on Sukkot they will have to become ger toshavim, practice the laws of Noah and cleanse themselves of idolatry and their obsession to act as mesit spreading their demented and derivative “gospel.” Even the ger toshavim are to be accepted only when Israel is fully intact which Rambam indicates means it is practicing the Yovel (mitzvot 136-8) and redemption of each family’s landholding. This is the work of a king appointed by the court of seventy-one sages as described in Hilchot Melachim which enables destruction of those who come with open hostilities or decrees against Israel and then building of the Temple and ingathering of the exiles. The purpose of these mitzvoth regarding guarding the land are like those in Melachim explaining that gentiles must be taught the Noahide laws and must not observe or practice Torah as if they were Jews. In each case, Rambam indicates, the overall point is the same, that they should not acquire a foothold in the land and defile it or inhibit Israel’s practice of mitzvot; and that their study not lead them to elaborate a new religion for themselves as has happened with such ruinous results in tyranny, imperialism and madness (Melachim 10:9 and chapters 8-10; Kokhavim 12:11, Yesodei HaTorah 10:3, “a prophet will not come to add or withdraw a mitzvah or to found a new faith,” Melachim 11:4, etc).

Israel and Judaism are anti-imperial. The sages do not yearn for the return of a king and true sovereignty in order to acquire lands outside Eretz Yisrael or to rule over gentiles (Teshuvah 9:2): on the contrary, there is to be a clear distinction between the land of the Jews and the gentile nations (Numbers 23:9, Deut 11:21-9, 32:7, 33:25). The goodness of the Messianic Age is that “sovereignty will return to Israel” and, with this, the wholesome fulfillment of Torah and the attendant blessings that will fill the world whose “natural pattern” thus will be joyous not anxious, abundant not needy, true peace instead of wars of attrition called “peace processes” and “nation-building” (Hilchot Teshuvah 9:2, Melachim 11-12). Israel will rebuild itself as stipulated by Rambam and other greats and there will be grace instead of terror and horror; true peace and Yesod HaTiferet, a Dominion of Priests and a holy nation, a crown of splendor in the ‘hand’ of the Creator, the life energy of the chayyot streaming from the Holy House.

The editions of Rambam’s Mishne Torah used in compiling this essay are those published by Moznaim (Jerusalem) between 1987 and 1993 with translation and annotation by Rabbi’s Eliahu Touger and Shraga Silverstein.

The essence of a state of good is when a Force has the capacity to be illuminated by the Light of God’s Blessed Presence. The opposite is that state which lacks this capacity... The cause of all evil is the absence of this Light. [1]

In the dark aftermath of the murder of eight students at the Yeshiva of Rav Kook in Jerusalem, March 06, 2008, I find my thoughts straying to Hanukkah, its lights and its grace. As the lights of Hanukkah swell to their fullness, autumn fades into winter. The memory of their lights of renewal and dedication sees one into winter and the days of strength and revival, Purim, at its end, when plans and events, light and darkness, evil and good were turned about. Purim brings the joy of wine “that gladdens man’s heart to make the face glow with oil” emphasizing the link between the two latest ordained of Jewish festivals. With the reversal of Purim, spring nears and with it the holy days of the first redemption, Pesach, the threshold event that brought Israel into awareness of its national mission as a model of ordered freedom, of the good and purposefulness of creation and the Creator. This is what the murderers destroy: grace, joy and hope.

Their goal is to make everything seem chance, drawn by lots, a form of augury and divination, death magic enforced by the powers that be; these stealers of mind want also to “steal our eyes,” like conjurors blinding us to the intricate but rational moral purpose in the unfolding of individual and national history [2]. Although their malice and evil can obscure God’s Presence they never can abolish it; the Eternal One’s providential grace will break through their tyranny of encrusted lies like sun banishing mists.

Still they are what they are, the haters of grace, and they will never rest till Israel totally defeats them as it is commanded to do, remembering that relentless malice cannot be appeased but only destroyed.

As one walks through the old city of Jerusalem or travels throughout Israel one sees two different types of being as indicated in the epigraph from Ramchal: faces filled with light, life and kindness and faces dead with envy, hatred and guilty knowledge of stealing the place of another. Israel must obey the Torah and destroy Amalek or continue to suffer shmadot, destructions. There were no faces more beautifully filled with light than those of the yeshiva students: and there are myriads more like them. In the dimension of time, there murder occurred near the full juncture of the two months of Adar of this Jewish leap year, a year pregnant with doubled joy and renewal.

Even before Israel reached Mt Sinai, The threshold event of Pesach (Passover) aroused the forces of darkness and evil in the world, embodied in the hordes of Amalek, grandson of Esau that swarmed from the southern desert to attack Israel. As winter draws toward its long dark end, at Purim Jews read of a time when the Divine Countenance was hidden and malicious evil poised for a triumphant massacre of the Jews, God’s witnesses. We read the Torah portion commanding that we “remember Amalek, what he did to you,” that the Eternal One swore eternal war against them for casting doubt on Providence, and that he commanded Israel to blot them out when it had dominion and peace in its heartland [3]. Perhaps this is why the powers do not want the Children of Israel ever to have peace in their land: they fear that then Israel, free of a petty, corrupt and autocratic government will remember its self, its covenant and rise up, like a single man with a single heart and avenge the blood of His servants that has been spilled. “Whenever the seed of Amalek is found it is to be exterminated!” Because the darkness of evil, the willful propagation of its institutionalized lies and depravity is theft of Israel’s grace and name, the blow it strikes against the root of creation.

It often is noted that in Hebrew, Amalek is an anagram of “doubt”; the destructive horror wrought by the malignant envy of Edom-Amalek, launched so soon after the wondrous punishments visited upon Egypt and the miracle of Israel’s redemption created a chink of doubt about Providence and the Creator, a window through which free-thinkers, emperors of ideology and continents could thrust. The darkness of the Erev Rav, the hidden “mixed multitude” of Egyptian false-converts worked, some say like a magnet to draw and then bind to Amalek’s hatred for Israel: an enemy within and many without, as events show.

Leap ahead thirty-three centuries: the Ottoman Empire is disintegrating, increasing numbers of Jews are returning to the land which, as prophesied is again putting forth its verdure, a promised sign of redemption and vindication of Providence in an empirical age in the process of deifying Darwinian science, and what happens: a German concocts from a satirical French novel the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; a Russian priest re-translates them and the Czar has them disseminated. Pogroms ensue; the British seize the Mandate promising to facilitate restoring “a Jewish National Home” and then their diplomatic elite and the Vatican enabled Hitler and thus the Holocaust, striving to quench the light.

Visit the Middle East and see the dark, loveless faces of Amalek, faces dead with hatred, throwing platters of sweets to cheering crowds when Jews are murdered. Consider the dark faces at the Inquisition that sees these murders as equivalent to the checkpoints at which bags are checked for bombs and guns to murder Jews. Those animated by hatred and envy so enormous that the entire world must belong to them, that Jews must above all must be murdered in their “small notch of territory” are the evil that cannot reflect, indeed that hates the light of God’s countenance.

So I think of Hanukkah, the Festival of lights that see us into winter dark, but also the swelling of nature’s light if not yet its warmth, and its eight lights as I think of the eight Jews, Torah students of pure and sweet spirit who were murdered at the behest and to the joy, differently expressed of Edom and Ishmael.

“From the one remnant of the flasks a miracle was wrought for the roses…eight days established for song and jubilation” [4]… Eight days and eight holy lights for the roses, the children of Israel, like the lights, a segula, an intimate treasure to the Creator for they have the challenge of “the Kingdom of Heaven,” mitzvah yichud, to proclaim and show in their own integrity, completion and wholeness and in that of their land that Hashem is One and His Name is One [5].

Those who saw the pictures of those students, murdered while immersed in Torah study is carrying with him the image of those lights and that unity, “your beloved ones, who elevate the unification and pairing of the holy, supreme attributes.”

Hanukkah and Purim, the oil and the wine; as did so many in the hours and days after the murders, one thinks of the ways of sanctification. To sanctify the Name of Hashem is one of the ten foundational mitzvoth and Rambam adds a comment that was urgently timely in his day, a time of violent mass attempt, East and West to convert Jews, as in ours: this mitzvah obtains [even at the cost of life] only on such an awesome occasion when all men are struck with fear and when His Unity must be publicized and proclaimed.” So the unity of the Creator and of His covenant with Israel so notable in the Hanukkah lamp and lights, in the depth of winter darkness is linked to sanctification in the face of violent efforts by Amalek to make Israel surrender and deny its mission. “Hashem has already assured us through Isaiah,” Rambam continued, “that the shame of Israel will not be absolute but that there will appear among them youths in these sore straits who will not be intimidated by death but will sacrifice their blood and publicize the faith and sanctify Hashem the Exalted One…as it is written, ‘Jacob shall not now be ashamed, nor shall his face grow pale when he sees his children, the work of My hands, in his midst, sanctifying My Name.’ As our sages have stated, ‘it is for this reason that I took you out of the land of Egypt, to sanctify My Name’” [6]. All the Children of Israel that live in Israel and among them those who live, study and practice Torah in Jerusalem the heart of Israel bring the blush of life, of the roses back to the entire nation like a ner tamid, “an eternal light” to the nations. For “studying Torah is comparable to sowing seeds; every seed sown is a completed task.” The beautiful youths, the work of the Creator, who sanctify Him in the midst of Israel” connect Zion and the world to the seed-roots of life that sustain all things, opening it to the light of the Highest Wisdom [7].

One also recalls a comment, perhaps by Rav Kook, that at the first Pesach the blood of the paschal lambs mingled with the blood of circumcision (“no uncircumcised person shall eat of it” and the mitzvah had been rarely practiced in Egypt save by the tribe of Levi) and one thinks of the blood of these lambs of the Creator, witnessing to His love and truth, murdered because they are Jews, “driven like sheep to the slaughter for His sake.” And the ensuing verse of the psalm asks for what was not present at Purim until things were turned about, the “light and gladness and joy and honor” of Providence fulfilled, “illuminate Your countenance for us so we may be saved.” And also, “He will call to the heavens above and to the earth to avenge His people. ‘Gather unto Me my devout ones, sealers of My covenant through sacrifice’” [8]. It desecrates the Sovereign Being, Unity, love, service, and holiness of the Creator to attack His witnesses in any place, above all in Jerusalem, the abode of His sanctity.

It is the primal identifier and act of Amalek to thus sow doubt and darkness in the world, choose to disperse evil and darkness through creation. The “wild beast” attacks the soul of the turtledove, Israel, and “the dark places of the earth” which, by hatred and violence cannot receive or reflect the light of God’s Presence “are full of the habitations of Hamas” [9]. It is the alliance of Edom and Ishmael, with Amalek (Psalm 83) attacking the servants as they “serve the exalted One” in the ways reiterated in the Books of Moshe and elaborated by the sages: “’And to serve Him,’ – this is prayer and, ‘and to serve Him’ – this is Torah study… And ‘serve Him with his Torah; serve Him in His sanctuary,’ that is, seek to pray in it or facing it, as Solomon explained” [10]. The murderous attack on the servants of Hashem, “the youths who will not be intimidated,” on Jacob’s “children in the midst of Jerusalem sanctifying My name” was a direct attack on Judaism and the identity of all Jews; it was of a piece with all attempt to keep Jews from settling and forcing them out of any part of the Promised Land and of preventing them from praying and serving the Creator on the Temple Mount “in His sanctuary” as they are commanded to do. The war of attrition and genocide against the Jews is a war on Judaism: it is the ultimate religious hate crime and is the prime goal of all the powers, wild beasts in violence and hypocrisy: “from on high they speak loftily about oppression, and their tongue struts on earth.”

Two matters, two questions relate the challenge highlighted by this atrocity, and its typically dishonest and scanty notice by the world media, the sorcerers and “stealers of minds” [11]: if the best revenge is living well, what is the right way to live and have justice and vengeance? Related to this point, -- how should one grieve this atrocity, how does it reflect on Divine Providence and on belief itself? And what does this have to do with Purim, especially in a Jewish leap year when joy not only increases in Adar but doubles and re-doubles?

Does the atrocity call into question the existence or justice of a Creator? No, because man is co-creator of the texture of history and the paths it takes. Every physical phenomenon originates with transcendent forces (today we might call them waves of charged particles) but the shape and development of all material things depends on man’s free will. God arranged it so that through free will man can affect, with his deeds, and even his speech and thought” the “transcendent forces in indeterminate ways.” This affects creation so that it changes the natural or “deterministic influences on physical things. Having imparted indeterminacy and freedom into creation and, with them, the possibility for good and evil the events and vicissitudes of our lives “depend on many factors” that “constitute the deep mystery of how God’s Providence works and brings about all there is to be” [12]. “The specific service assignment and challenge of an individual” reflects how he deals with “what precedes, follows and is associated with him,” in time and place. He is judged in relation to his forebears, descendants and the people of his generation, city and community”; this justice can be understood only by the Highest Wisdom, and not by human beings. “God does not withhold his good…love and fear of God are means of drawing one close to His influence, the presence or absence of His light” [13]. The text of Rav Luzzato links the presence or obscuring of the Creator’s light, the themes of both Hanukkah and Purim to the fact of free will, love, fear and service, to the complexity and often sorrow of human events and to the holy observance of the guardian youth. Dealing with the grief of this terrible crime is a severe “service assignment and challenge” whose part in a beneficent providence cannot be immediately understood for we discern the future hazily if at all and our knowledge of the present is almost as sketchy as of the past.

What is the best form of vengeance? How best to partner with the Highest Wisdom and Primary Being as our free will requires we must? In Hanukkah, the grace and light of service, the Torah and the Temple were brought back and the world re-connected to “heaven.” In Purim, a world that was “dark with excessive bright,” the opulent glare of pomp at Ahasuerus’ feast and the comforts of diaspora life throughout the Persian Empire for a while hid the darkness that Haman’s vanity and hatred of Jews brought lowering into view. But love of one’s fellow Jew, “let my life be granted as my request, and my people as my petition, for we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, slain and annihilated” (Esther 4:3-4), fasting, prayer, prompt and unapologetic diplomatic demands and military action turned things about and Amalek, that had been planning to annihilate the Jews was again decimated (ibid. 8:3 – 9:28). As Rambam explains intently, the mitzvah to annihilate Amalek “is a mitzvah for all generations” because, as the Pesach Haggada reads, “in every generation they rise up against us, to destroy us.” And even in the long centuries when Amalek as a people may seem to have vanished from history that same history bears out the teachings of Torah and Rambam’s explication.

So, considering the terrible atrocities that modern Amalekites have inflicted and are striving to inflict on the Jewish people, themselves and through their embedded Erev Rav, the Jewish minnim that rule the state of the turtledove, “why should the nations say, ‘where is their God?’ Let Him be acknowledged among the nations by avenging the blood of Your servants that has been spilled…and repay our neighbors sevenfold into their bosom for the disgrace which they have disgraced You, O Lord!” (Psalm 79:1-12).

Because free will and genuine freedom is essential to Jewish faith and practice, our tradition states “man must begin and Hashem will complete”; as the sages brought down in the records (Mishna) from ancient days: “You are not required to complete the work, neither are you allowed to refrain from it” [14]. This wisdom perfectly complements the Mishne Torah and the lessons of Purim and Hanukkah. Jews must remember, identify, fight and destroy Amalek. We must not break ranks before them; they must not be allowed to live in our land, and we must not forget or explain away what they have done and are doing to us [15]. There is no better time to do this than Purim because of the example above cited from the Book of Esther, particularly in a leap year known as a Shanah me Uberet, “a pregnant year,” pregnant with strength and possibilities that our choices can activate: pregnant, potentially, and it depends much on us, with a king who will fight the wars of God and a council of sages who will appoint him [16]. For not to do justice for the youth of Yeshiva Rav Kook will create even more violence than quickly going out to avenge their blood by the mitzvoth noted above and the principle, “all Israel is responsible, each for one another.” Israel must rise up and erase the desecration and “disgrace with which they have disgraced You” by “spilling the blood of Your servants”; it must forcefully put an end to the war process because “the sword comes into the world for the delay of justice and the perversion of justice” (Avot 5:10) which is what idolatrous judges serving alien powers lethally impose on the Jewish people in their land, preventing the wholeness of the Perfected Community and the unification of God’s Name. Because they do what is termed “security coordination” with Amalek they become complicit in all destructions. Instead, they should restore all those Jews who have lost lives, loved ones and property as a result of the big lie of the “peace process” which stands exposed as an end game war on Judaism [17]. This war of national salvation, of individual, national and God’s integrity is necessary to drag a mad world away from arrogant emptiness, violence and confusion. “The Master of the House is urgent for the great work” to be done” [18].

Only the Torah Shleimah can produce a nation that is shaleim, whole and complete in each of its individuals and places and secure the bond of heaven and earth, sanctifying our daily lives with holy light. This is the pure fullness particularly marked in a leap year of double Adar climaxing in Purim and the light and joy of oil and wine preparing Israel to help humankind leap from looming slavery into true freedom, on Pesach. This is why the foreign masters always have their clients prepare an anti-Jewish provocation or affliction for this time of year: they know its liberating potential: “today, if you but heed its call...” Let the true servants take up their service assignment and sanctify our lives and the Name and truth of the Highest Wisdom and Mercy. Let justice no more be delayed and with it the endless sword called “peace,” but there is no peace. The damage must be repaired by relief from “the man of Hamas” as described by David in psalms.

Maoz Tzur concludes by singing that “the triumph is too long delayed and there is no end to days of evil.” But Israel can repel Edom to the darkness of its shadow world, its long-running virtual reality con game and bring the light of the Divine Presence back to a dark world.

1. Ramchal (Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato), Derekh Hashem 1.5.7, 3.2.7 (Feldheim, Jerusalem 1978, Kaplan translation; 1999, revised Rabbi Gershon Robinson), 83, 201-02, inter alia.

2. Rambam (Maimonides 1135-1204), Sefer HaMitzvoth (positive and negative commandments arranged in two books published as one volume, in English by Moznaim 1993, R. S. Silverstein, translation), II.32 the prohibition against augury discusses conjuring and necromancy as forms of “stealing the eyes” and “stealing the mind until what is unreal cannot be distinguished from what is real,” that is, virtual reality.

3. Exodus 17:8-17, Deuteronomy 25:17-19; Rambam, Sefer HaMitzvoth I.187-9 & II.59

4. Maoz Tzur (“Fortress Rock”), 5^th stanza verses 3-4 (Mesorah, 1981:1996), Goldwurm, Zlotowitz and Scherman citing Song of Songs 2:2 on Israel and “the roses.”

5. Sefer HaMitzvoth I.2 citing Deuteronomy 6:4-5 “in order to take upon himself the yoke of Heaven” adds Rambam, quoting Berachoth 13a, “acknowledging his Oneness and his belief in it.” In Foundations of Torah, Yesodei HaTorah, Rambam explains the Unity of the Eternal One in 1:6-12 and 2:4. It is built directly upon “the foundation of all foundations and the pillar of wisdom” to “know that there is a Primary being…and that all came into existence through the truth of His Being” 1:1-5 ff.

6. Sefer HaMitzvoth I.9, p. 106-08, Rambam quotes Isaiah 29:22-23 and Sifra on Torah portion Emor 9:6. See also Leviticus 22:33, passim: “I took you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, to be a God to you!”

7. Pirke Avot 2:21 last section: “if you have studied much Torah, much reward will be given you, for the Employer is faithful to reward for your labor…” Comments by Rabbi Tuvia Basser on the Maharal edition of Avot (Mesorah 1997), 138-39; Ramchal 1.5.2, 2.5.6, 3.2.1 op. cit. on roots of existence, and 2.3.8 these “roses” of Israel “benefit others to attain the Perfected Community” (HaKibbutz HaShlaimim), “they rectify the damage of others,” the various kinds of evil, “of their own generation” and even ameliorate “all the spiritual damage done from the beginning,” ibid. 2.3.8; how dark, then the monsters that cropped them.

9. Ramchal op cit. 1.5.5, 7-8; Psalm 74:19-23, Hamas means “violence” or “violent plunder.”

10. Rambam, Sefer HaMitzvoth, op cit. I.5 citing and quoting Exodus 23:25, Deuteronomy 6:13, 11:13, 13:5, Sifrei and the Mishna of Rabbi Eliezer on these verses and 1 Kings 8:23.

11. Rambam ibid. II. 32, Sanhedrin 98a3 on the amgushai; Sefer HaMitzvoth II.65 forbids destruction not only of the Temple and synagogues, but of houses of study. That shmad could have been prevented and is, perhaps a ripple effect of the terrible shmad in Gush Katif.

12. Ramchal op cit. 1.5.4-6; the Eternal One does not form or do anything evil, He creates it as a potential that human beings may, in their freedom, form or fulfill, Ramchal 1.5.8 on Isaiah 45:7, distinguish Hebrew words for create, form, and make, do or complete.

14. Pirke Avot 2:21: “Rabbi Tarphon said, ‘it is not your duty to complete the work, neither are you free to desist from it.” Supra, note 6 for the following lines and comment.

15. Rambam, Sefer HaMitzvoth, I.187-90, II. 58, 54, 59; see Jared Israel’s article on Vatican response to the murders, Israelnationalnews.com 3-13-08

17. Rav Jose said, “Let thy neighbor’s property be as dear to thee as thine own”; he was talking about the property of a fellow Jew in the Promised Land (Pirke Avot 2:17). See Sefer HaMitzvoth II.65, note 9.

18. ibid. 2:20 speaks particularly to the situation of the Jews expelled from Gush Katif and the northern Shomron; the last verse of each chapter of this Mishna (i.e. Pirke Avot) speaks of a Torah Shleimah, “the copious Torah” and “abundant commandments” by which the Eternal Wisdom “makes Israel worthy to exalt and honor.” Only the Torah Shleimah can produce a nation that is shaleim, whole and complete in each of its individuals and places and secure the bond of heaven and earth, sanctifying our daily lives with holy light. This is the pure fullness particularly marked in a leap year of double Adar climaxing in Purim and the light and joy of oil and wine preparing Israel to help humankind leap from looming slavery into true freedom, on Pesach.

During its 7-8pm EDT news hours, on March 19 the Fox network showed a special report on a Catholic Mission of art therapy, psychology and other services to Arabs in Gaza said to be suffering trauma from periodic Israeli helicopter flights. The report was narrated by a fairly new Fox correspondent from Israel and its area, Rena Ninan.

There was extensive discussion of the trauma being experienced by Arab children who the kindly Catholic missionaries and reporters were prompting to draw pictures of how they saw the world now that they’ve been ‘damaged’ by the cruel Israelis. The cameras made sure to show childish scrawls of helicopters with the hated Star of David on them and of Arab children with fountains of blood. There also was stock footage of Arabs carrying people on stretchers, and even some Israeli ambulances though it didn’t say why they would be evacuating Arabs from Gaza (for treatment at Israel hospitals at the expense of Israelis).

Hovering mildly in the background, nuns in their habits, noble emissaries of the religion of mercy instructed the little Arabs about how to express the pain they suffer from the aggressive Jews. How readily their agenda blends with that of the UNRWA, ISM, UN “Human Rights Commission” [sic] and kindred groups worldwide. The wild beasts love to kill especially, via the media when they can kill with feigned compassion and virtual reality.

Notable in their absence were any scenes of the Israeli town of Sderot which has been the target of about 6300 rockets in recent years, nearly two hundred last month. There was no mention of the Jews traumatized body and soul by the unprovoked attacks meant to murder civilians and to render Israel Judenrein; there was no mention of the yeshiva students recently murdered in cold blood: they did not fire rockets or bullets at anyone, their yeshiva was not a launching pad for attacks; their life was studying Torah in Jerusalem. There were murdered only because they were Jewish. There also was no coverage or mention of the fact that the family and entire neighborhood in Jerusalem from which their murderer hailed was not mourning his funeral but celebrating his marriage to the houris, the “seventy-two virgins” that are the reward of every “martyr,” that is, of a Muslim who murders Jews. No; none of this was mentioned or shown but the very same smiling Rena Ninan covered that event, briefly, without mentioning any trauma or showing any of the bodies literally shot to pieces but assuring the world that the Israeli response would be “severe.” But alas for the credibility of FOX and its correspondents, there has been no response except to protect the house where the bridegroom’s “marriage” is being celebrated and to prepare plans, under the guidance of the American government and Quartet to destroy yet more Jewish towns (Migron) and expel Jews from the center of the Promised Land.

Also not shown was any footage of the scenes on Gaza on the evening of March 06 in the hours after the Yeshiva boys were murdered. Then jolly Arabs, perhaps some of those in the ‘trauma story’ were running happily through the streets brandishing weapons while men carried candies on large platters for the pleasure of passing motorists, and speakers from a dais threw handfuls of sweets to the joyous throngs, -- a gigantic festival rejoicing at the intentional murder of Jewish civilians, the staple and desire of Muslims in the Middle East, like the one who stabbed a Rabbi in the neck as he walked in the Old City March 19.

As the Prime Minister of Germany barked her mutter tongue in the Knesset and choked out some ambiguous phrases of German interests in Israel’s “security” FOX went on its way doing propaganda for the Vatican and Hamas, Edom and Ishmael. A few minutes later, their ticker carried statements by Senator McCain saying that Israel had a right to defend itself against rocket attacks (ah, the loving kindness of the West) and that he appreciated its “restraint” and hoped it would continue so they could reach a settlement with “President” Abbas, the holocaust denier, Arafat’s senior colleague who recently boasted for Jordanian media that he had “fired the first bullet” in the PLO’s “struggle” against Israel in 1965. (“PLO” is the English acronym for Fatah under Russian tutelage since 1958 and first formed after WW II with American and exported German aids).

So if you want to know why the West is disintegrating, here is an aspect of the lies and malice responsible: the fish rots from the head down. The report, the comment by the “conservative” candidate for President and the cameo by Konigin Merkel, whose tongue struts on earth” in the original bark heard as the last sound by millions of murdered Jews shows what kind of regime sits in Jerusalem to fulfill this game; it also shows where this culture’s center of gravity is: in a gutter of blood and dreck from which no truth or life will emerge.

Only when it is turned about will there “be feasting and gladness, honor and a holiday” and the light of Israel will bless the world. May it be soon, for everyone’s sake.

As an independent thinker, I've related to your willingness to espouse positions even when they clashed with those of the majority of your political party.

Among many other things (like your positive approach to dealing with real or potential environmental concerns), your willingness to take on campaign finance reform and lobbyists has also been admirable--regardless of the recent New York Times unfounded assertions.

Coming home from work not long ago, I heard on the news that former Secretary of State, James Baker III, has endorsed your candidacy. No shock here, since you're both Conservative Republicans and self-proclaimed admirers of President Ronald Reagan.

The problem emerges from your end of this story. Rather than reinventing the wheel, please read these excerpts from a Jason Maoz article which appeared back on May 12, 2006 in JewishPress.com:

McCain told Haaretz that as president, he would "micromanage" U.S. policy toward Israel and the Palestinians and would dispatch "the smartest guy I know" to the region, presumably to jump-start a new push for a comprehensive accord.

Asked who that "smartest guy" might be, McCain responded: "Brent Scowcroft, or James Baker, though I know that you in Israel don't like Baker."

McCain foresaw "concessions and sacrifices by both sides" and indicated that Israel would be expected to "Defend itself and keep evacuating." Asked whether that meant "movement toward the June 4, 1967 armistice lines, with minor modifications," McCain, reported Haaretz, "nodded in the affirmative."

Before dealing with that last paragraph above, there's something else that's even more troublesome.

Imagine, for one moment, the public response if you suggested appointing someone for a sensitive, high position in your administration who openly stated, "f_ _ k the Blacks, they don't vote for us anyway" and who referred to Black employees and colleagues as his "Black Boys."

While many are taking Barack Obama to task for his ties to Black racists and anti-Semites, Baker--your buddy--is cut from this same mold.

While you distance yourself from The New York Times' unfair allegations regarding lobbyists, is it wise to embrace the man who most epitomizes the Big Oil and Arab oil potentate petrodollar lobby in America, James Baker III (the lobby that makes AIPAC laughable)? Baker's law firm represents Saudi and other Arab interests and has made G_d only knows how many millions of dollars off of them. His law partner is U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and his firm represents the latter against American 9/11 victims...!

As President George H. W. Bush's Secretary of State, Baker promised Iraq's Saddam Hussein's Syrian Arab twin butcher, Hafez al-Assad, a total withdrawal from the Golan Heights...without consulting Israel.

The Golan was lost as a result of repeated Syrian attacks against Israel launched from the Heights and was ruled by many different peoples--including Jews--throughout history. Indeed, before some imperialist trading after World War I between the Brits and the French, the Heights were to be part of the Mandate of Palestine. Please visit http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/GeraldHonigman51107.htm for further elaboration on this. Nations who repeatedly attack neighbors have often lost lands they launched aggression from.

Let's return to your claim in the quote above that you'd expect Israel to return to its 1949, 9-mile wide, Auschwitz/armistice line existence--the one which requires a magnifying glass to find it on a map.

As a naval aviator, you were shot down defending America's interests many thousands of miles away from home. Recall that America has acquired territories and bases as a result of past wars fought all over the world. Not to mention America's own southwest (in the President's and your own neck of the woods)--which used to be Mexico.

Israel is not three thousand miles wide as America is, does not have a population of some three hundred million, and is not separated from its enemies by two vast oceans.

The wars Israel is forced to fight are not about projecting influence or protecting interests thousands of miles away, but are fought for its very survival and against murderous enemies who deliberately target the most innocent right in its own backyard...on land on which Jews have lived for thousands of years.

Senator, while it's now become proper for you and others to speak of the al-Qaida bogeyman, long before the latter existed, other Arab organizations just like it were disemboweling Jewish kids. By your statement above, you apparently expect Jews to once again expose the necks of their children to such folks.

Neither the alleged good cop Fatah of Abbas and his latter day, necktied Arafatians, nor the more honest bad cops of Hamas are willing to accept a Jewish (as in Polish, Danish, Irish, etc.) State of Israel. Go to their websites, see their textbooks, hear their imams, and listen to what both tell their own people.

Israel was promised, in the wake of the '67 War, that it would not be expected to return to the Auschwitz lines. The final draft of UNSC Resolution 242 called for secure and recognized borders to replace those lines; and any withdrawal at all was to be made in the context of real peace treaties--not Arabs' hudna ceasefire bull manure, designed only to gain the latter time to strengthen themselves.

Here's what President Reagan, whom you and Baker supposedly admire, had to say about this same subject on September 1, 1982:

In the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely 10-miles wide...the bulk of Israel's population within artillery range of hostile armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again.

In 1988, Secretary of State George Shultz declared, "Israel will never negotiate from or return to the 1967 borders."

As Ambassador Dore Gold and others continued to also point out, right after hostilities subsided, President Lyndon Johnson summarized the situation this way on June 19, 1967:

A return to the situation on June 4 (the day before outbreak of war) was not a prescription for peace but for renewed hostilities." He then called for "new recognized boundaries that would provide security against terror, destruction, and war."

Johnson was then backed up by General Earle Wheeler of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and many others as well. Here's a brief excerpt from Wheeler's Pentagon document prepared for Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on June 29, 1967:

...Israel would require retention of some captured Arab territory to provide militarily defensible borders.

Keep in mind that in 1967, in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Israel took these lands in a defensive war from an illegal occupant--Transjordan--which subsequently renamed itself Jordan as a result of its 1949 illegal acquisition of non-apportioned lands of the original 1920 Mandate west of the Jordan River that Jews as well as Arabs were legally entitled to live on. Indeed, Jews have thousands of years of history connecting them to these lands and owned property and lived there up until their massacres by Arabs in the 1920s and 1930s.

Also recall that Transjordan was itself created by the Brits in 1922 on some 80% of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine. The 22nd Arab state the world insists upon--while ignoring the continued plight of 35 million used and abused stateless Kurds--will be the Arabs' second one in Palestine--not their first. Additionally, many, if not most, of the Arabs themselves were relative newcomers, pouring in--as The Records of the Permanent Mandates Commission and other documentation show--from Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere in the region.

General Wheeler's document also envisioned Israel acquiring an adequate buffer zone atop the West Bank mountain ridge, in command of the high ground, giving it at least some semblance of in depth defense.

Surely, as a military man who asserts America's right to fight all around the world on behalf of our own interests (which I largely agree with), your position regarding a miniscule Israel's right to some semblance of defensible borders is a source of serious confusion...especially given the nature of the enemy Israel faces.

After its total withdrawal from Gaza over two years ago, Israel has been attacked daily anyway--Sderot bearing most of the brunt of the death and destruction. This is precisely what Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and so forth can look forward to if Israel is forced into an updated Chamberlain/Munich-style "peace" with either the good cop or bad cop Arab rejectionists. Would an America led by President McCain expose itself this way? If not, then why bully Israel so?

Arafat's hand-picked chief lieutenant, the "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas, heads an organization with at least as much Jewish blood on its hands as Hamas has. He simply sweet talks an all-too-willingly gullible West better. Billions of dollars are at stake, and Arafat's foreign bank accounts are legendary.

Folks like James Baker indirectly cash in on this too. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice already has an oil tanker named after her, not to mention the Bush family's own substantial Arab petrodollar connections. And fear not, the Arabs have not ignored their Democrat buddies either, as Jimmy Apartheid Israel Carter and Bill Clinton can testify to. Millions of dollars were contributed to the latter's library not long after he had Arafat to the White House repeatedly.

The coming presidential election promises to be a close one. There are many qualified folks who are not tainted the way Baker and his ilk are.

All it will take is for folks who are upset with the above (and many besides Jews are) to stay home rather than vote at all to assure a Republican defeat.

While some, if not many, will not vote for Obama or Clinton, they will also not be able to vote for Senator John McCain either.

Ever since the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III (1479-1425 B.C.E.), Gaza has been a major invasion route for Egyptians into the land of Canaan/Israel. Shoshenk I recorded the cities he crushed in Israel.

It appears that the Pharaohs accepted, for one reason or another, the settlement of the area along the coast between Egypt and Canaan by "the Sea Peoples," the Philistines--the Plishtim of the Hebrew Bible, non-Semitic immigrants from the Aegean Sea area around Crete whom the Jews called "the uncircumcised ones." Five cities in that coastal area, including Gaza, became their domain, for long a major headache for the Jews. David slew the warrior Goliath from another one of those cities, Gath; Samson had Philistine girlfriend problems; and so forth. The Hebrew Prophet Amos (9:7) proclaimed, "Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto Me, O children of Israel? saith the LORD. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor (Crete).? "

That last sentence above is especially interesting. If you really want to know the essence of Hebraic monotheism, read the Hebraic Prophets.such as the one above. So much for the Jews' "chosenness" as allegedly meaning that they have some sort of chip on their shoulder. The Prophets relayed to the world a vision of behavior and moral expectations revolutionary for its time and a model for much of the world today. "What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy G_d ?," Micah 6:8.

Okay.I'll end the sermon now, but pay close attention to that last quote above for what comes a bit later below.

In modern times, Egypt's latter day Pharaohs seized Gaza from the Mandate of Palestine in an updated attempted conquest of the Jews in the war over the rebirth of Israel in 1948. For most of the previous four centuries, Gaza was part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. not "Arab" land. And when Arabs did rule it for several centuries, they got it the same way Turks did--via imperial conquest after the Arab invasions of the 7th century C.E.

From 1949-1967, Egypt ruled Gaza. Transjordan--itself created out of the lions' share of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine--seized Judea and Samaria (renaming it, in partnership with British imperialism, the "West Bank") at the same time.

Note that for almost two decades the two Arab states above had control over both Gaza and Judea and Samaria.and no one called for the creation of a second Arab state in Palestine.

After Pharaoh Jamal 'Abd al-Nasir I threw out the UN Peace keeping force stationed in Sinai after the 1956 war, amassed over 100,00 troops on Israel's border, blockaded Israel at the Straits of Tiran (a casus belli), publicly stated he was launching a war for Israel's annihilation, etc. and so forth, Nasser's plans backfired big time. From 1967 onwards, Israel, as in Biblical days, once again gained control of that narrow Gazan coastal strip which served as the millennial Egyptian invasion route into the land of the Jews.

The last bullets had barely stopped flying in the Six Day War when the Jews offered a virtual total withdrawal from territories occupied in that defensive war fought for Israel's very life. Few --if any--nations have ever been so generous with an enemy which rejects its very right to exist. Borders and possessions have changed constantly over wars.including America's. The Arabs' collective response to Israel's offer was "the 3 Nos Of Khartoum"--no peace, no negotiations, no recognition.

So, Israel came back to Gaza, and a flourishing Jewish farm and industrial community emerged on this strategically important land. Israel's renewed presence, however, was a mixed blessing for the Jewish State.

While it is true that, despite fluctuating numbers, Jews had lived in Gaza for millennia; that, since the days of the Pharaohs, Gaza had been used as an invasion route into Israel by those aiming to subjugate it; that Gaza had become a hotbed for terrorists aiming to destroy Israel; that Jewish communities set up in Gaza were not on Arab-owned land; etc. and so forth; it is also true that many Israelis were looking for a way out of Gaza if proper conditions presented themselves.

Many of us had trepidations over Prime Minister Sharon's decision to cave into international pressure and withdraw from Gaza a few years' back.

Under the right conditions--and they had to be right on the money--the withdrawal could make sense.Israel would have to spend less of its blood and capital to secure its virtual forward defensive outposts there; could concentrate defense on a shorter border farther distant from a huge, hostile population; and could give the Arabs a test at how they would govern themselves after a complete Israeli withdrawal. Furthermore, terror would henceforth have an official address for an official response.

Well, after Israel's complete withdrawal making Gaza Judenrein, those who have eyes can see how the latter worked out. But many act like they're indeed missing those wonders of vision. Take the Associated Press for example.

Several months ago, in a January 26th article penned by Karin Laub, the AP gave an alleged chronology of the chaos and breach then occurring along Gaza's border with Egypt. We'll consider that in a moment.

Keep in mind that the Arabs of Gaza elected their Hamas leaders who openly call for Israel's destruction and who have constantly walked the walk not just talked the talk regarding the murder of both Jews and their nation.blown buses, restaurants, pizza parlors, teen night clubs, shopping malls, Passover Seders, and so forth--deliberately targeting the most innocent to spread terror. Pregnant women and Jewish children are often especially targeted by Arabs.not accidentally killed because they were used as human shields the way Arab kids sometimes are.

Since, after Auschwitz, the American State Department (which fought against Israel's rebirth) can't openly ask Jews to virtually walk into the cattle cars and "the showers" yet again, it has tried real hard to allege a distinction between Hamas bad cops and Arafat and his Fatah successors' good cops. In reality, any objective investigation would soon reveal that such distinctions are a joke when it comes to the permanent acceptance of a Jewish neighbor. Fatah and its affiliates have at least as much blood on its hands as Hamas & Co., and both Fatah and Hamas's charters still call for Israel's destruction.

Back to the January 26th article.The AP gave this sequence of events regarding the current border crisis:

.It started last week with what Israel says was the inadvertent killing of a son of (Hamas's) Gaza strongman Mahmoud Zahar.Hamas retaliated with rocket barrages on Israel.Israel struck back by sealing Gaza hermetically and cutting off fuel shipments. Several days later, Gaza militants blew down the border wall with Egypt.

Now, reading the entire article, no where is it mentioned that, since Israel's total withdrawal over two years ago, thousands of rockets and mortars have been launched daily against Israeli towns--especially Sderot--causing millions of dollars in damage, death, injury, shock, and terror. Indeed, reading the article, it looks like Israel brought the crisis on itself. I mean, how dare the Jews go after those who repeatedly target them! Turn the other cheek, Jew! Sure, just like all of those Christian nations do when faced with their own enemies.

As stated above, Israel's Gaza withdrawal had to be done correctly in order for it to work.

Israel has the ability to disintegrate it as America and the Brits did to Dresden, Hiroshima, and so forth. And make no mistake here, the aims of the Arabs for the Jews are no different today than when Muhammad Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, made his alliance with Hitler.

What would an America, which dwarfs Israel to the point of making the latter virtually invisible, do if Texas border towns were subjected to daily terror and bombardment? Would it limit itself to having to just locate the exact folks firing the rockets, mortars, and such? Indeed, who has tried more than the Jews to indeed do just that.not that it makes any difference to the world's assorted practitioners of the double standard.

In caving in to the demand for the creation of the Arabs' 22nd state, and second one in "Palestine" (who's demanding a state for over thirty million stateless Kurds?), Jews should not be expected to sacrifice themselves on the petroleum-greased altar of international hypocrisy for that additional new state to arise.

Israel owes the Arabs of Gaza (or anywhere) nothing. It improved their education, health, and other living conditions immensely after 1967. Recall that Egypt held it from 1949 until then.

What nation is expected to supply those who seek its destruction with fuel, food, electricity, and so forth? You've got to be kidding, right?

But that's exactly what's expected of the Jew of the Nations. Like when, after it was attacked in 1973, Israel was pressured by America to release its stranglehold on the Egyptian Third Army. And just like America would have listened to someone demanding the same of us given similar circumstances.And does anyone want to be my comedy manager?

The Arab world holds much of the world's wealth due to its black gold. Instead of paying out tens of thousands of dollars each to families whose relatives--shahids--blow themselves up along with their Jewish victims, the money needs to be spent helping their brethren on a more positive life path.

As Jews received anything but help from Arabs in resurrecting and sustaining their sole, tiny state, it's beyond chutzpah that Arabs expect that Israel will continue to assist them in any way while they continue to launch death and destruction against Jews. Should be a no brainer.

Making its controversial decision to withdraw, Israel must now cut itself off completely from Gaza and treat it as any other nation would if attacked from it. And it must ignore the outcries from those who fire bombed or nuked innocent German, Japanese, and other civilians when circumstances of war prevailed (not that the latter were any better in their own conduct).

Make no mistake about this, Israel is constantly fighting a war for its very survival, and blunders it's forced into making for the sake of powerful "friends" today will come back to haunt and bite it no less than the Czechs were bitten after Chamberlain and the Allies forced the transfer of the Sudetenland to Hitler at Munich in the days before World War II.

The Arabs must grow up and not expect the world to constantly pull their derrieres out of fires that they themselves start. Individuals and nations must be held accountable for their actions.

Up until now, much of the world's continuing collective Jew or Jew of the Nations problem has helped Arabs to avoid this political maturity. So Israel gets the special Jew treatment and is forced to act against its own national interests and security as no other nation would be expected to do.

It's up to Israel to have the backbone to resist this. Any hardship suffered by Arab civilians must henceforth be placed on the Arabs' own doorsteps. The pain and suffering of Israel's Sderot isn't going to be relieved by Saudi and other Arab oil despots.but the latter can help fellow rejectionist Arabs in Gaza. Let the former pour in the money to build infrastructure, power plants, and so forth. Let Egypt deal with its Gazan Arab brethren for food, medicine, and such.after all, it's already allowing the smuggling of huge quantities of armaments and explosives to kill Jews. Recall that Egypt has a "peace treaty" with Israel.

Israel must proclaim publicly that each time it is attacked, it will cut off all of its contacts with Gaza for a given period of time. With each subsequent attack, besides exponential military retaliation, that period for fuel, electricity, medicine, and food cutoffs will be increased as well. Note that the Jews forced to withdraw from Gaza grew their own food and got whatever else they needed from fellow Jews.

Israel must give Gaza's Arabs a set reasonable period of time to build their own infrastructure and such. After that time, all non-military contact with Gaza must cease until the day that Israel has a true partner for peace there.not one still aiming at its destruction.

Gaza will thus openly know that the day is shortly coming that it must devote more of the billions of dollars coming in from Western sycophants of the oil spigot to development than to waging war against Jews. But, it is undoubtedly always easier to destroy than to build.an Arab specialty.

Notice I use the word "must" above in terms of how Jews deal with their enemies. I do so because I do believe in the G_d-inspired words of Micah and my people's other Prophets.

Others--like the Arabs themselves--would think nothing of leveling and eradicating such a murderous enemy as Gaza. Indeed, Arabs have done just that with Kurds, black Africans, Berbers, and others who merely sought a modicum of political and cultural rights. Indeed, Assad the Elder wiped out over 20,000 Arabs in a month for opposing his rule in Syria.his "Hama Solution."

Finally, there is actually a hint that what I'm calling for may indeed be on the drawing board.

Another AP article on January 25th stated that Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai caused a stir when he said that Israel sought to gradually relinquish responsibility for Gaza.

As the American State Department and Defense Department are often at odds in terms of policy, let's hope that new Israeli elections will finally produce leadership with the backbone to follow through with these and other such important decisions.

On April 10 two brothers are scheduled to begin serving prison sentences for a crime they never committed. Yitzhak and Daniel Halamish were convicted of aggravated assault and were sentenced respectively, to seven and eight months in jail.

The two men, who live in Ma'aleh Rehavam south of Bethlehem, were arrested on February 22, 2004. The day before their arrest, the brothers were serving as IDF-trained and armed security guards in their community. They were called by Baruch Feldbaum, the head of security at the neighboring Sde Bar community, to assist him in dispersing an illegal gathering of Beduin in land adjacent to Sde Bar.

Feldbaum's concern over the gathering was heightened because Beduin shepherds are suspected of having carried out a number of unsolved terrorist murders in the area. These include the murder by stoning of 14-year-olds Kobi Mandell and Yosef Ish-Ran on May 8, 2001. Feldbaum feared that the Beduin were conducting surveillance of the community ahead of a future attack.

Armed with their IDF-issued M-16 rifles, augmented in Yitzhak's case by a handgun, the Halamish brothers rushed to the scene. Once they arrived the two were surrounded by some 20 rock and club-wielding Beduin. In an attempt to disperse the hostile crowd, and enable the Halamish brothers to escape unharmed, Feldbaum shot a warning shot into the ground. Yitzhak Halamish similarly shot a warning shot in the air with his handgun. The two brothers then pushed their way out of the crowd.

Later in the day, the Beduin filed a complaint with the police against the three guards. They alleged that Feldbaum and the Halamish brothers all shot at them with their rifles and beat them with their fists.

The issue of who was telling the truth was not a purely subjective question of whom to believe. When the police arrested the Halamish brothers, they also seized their rifles. The Halamish brothers had both denied ever shooting their rifles at the scene. Had the police wished to objectively weigh the credibility of the two sides, they could have conducted ballistic tests of the rifles to determine whether or not they had been used. But they did no such thing. Rather, they indicted Feldbaum and the Halamish brothers for aggravated assault and sent them to trial.

Feldbaum was found guilty based on his admission that he shot his rifle. He was sentenced to nine months in prison. His sentence was later reduced to six months community service by then president Moshe Katsav.

Given their denials of ever shooting their rifles, the Halamish brothers were convicted based on the Magistrate Court judge's decision to believe the Beduins' accusations and reject their defense. In his ruling, Judge Amnon Cohen did not take the police's decision not to conduct ballistic tests of their weapons into consideration. His convictions were upheld on appeal to the Jerusalem District Court. The Supreme Court refused to consider the case.

Attorney Yoram Sheftel, who represented the brothers on appeal, focused his arguments on the police's refusal to conduct ballistic tests of their rifles. According to Sheftel, in standard criminal cases, police refusal to examine potentially exculpatory evidence is grounds for an automatic dismissal of charges. In convicting the Halamish brothers and upholding their convictions, Sheftel argues that the courts ignored standard criminal procedures.

Today, with the courts closed to them, the Halamishs' only hope for avoiding prison is a presidential pardon.

Supporters of the Halamish brothers have launched an interesting campaign to lobby for clemency. They have asked for US citizens to call the office of Israel's military attaché at the Israeli Embassy in Washington and demand that the IDF advance their pardon requests with the Justice Ministry and Beit Hanassi. Since the Halamish brothers were effectively acting as soldiers while performing their security responsibilities, their supporters contend that the IDF is honor-bound to defend them.

But the campaign doesn't stop there. Supporters have also asked US citizens to contact their Congressmen and ask them to send inquiries about the case to the embassy. Finally, they have asked US citizens to contact the State Department and complain that the State Department's Human Rights report on Israel is silent on the government's abuse of Jewish civil rights.

THE NOTION of running a campaign for an Israeli presidential pardon of Israeli citizens in the US is alarming for what it says about the Halamish supporters' perception of Israeli democracy. Specifically, as Datya Yitzhaki from Pidyon Shevuim who has spearheaded the campaign argues, they believe that domestic pressure will have no impact on either Israeli political leaders or on the justice system because in their view the Olmert-Livni-Barak government feels no need to account for its actions to Israeli citizens. Indeed, they contend that the only force that can hold the government and the legal system accountable is international pressure and fear of international condemnation.

Organizations like Women in Green and Pidyon Shevuim who are running the campaign cite as precedent the case of Tzvia Sariel. Sariel, 18, was arrested last December on assault charges. She was accused of attacking Arabs who entered her community of Eilon Moreh on December 4. Sariel was incarcerated for three and a half months.

On March 5, the allegedly assaulted Arabs appeared in Kfar Saba Magistrate Court and recanted their accusations against Sariel. One claimed that since he is illiterate, he had no idea what he was signing when he signed his complaint against her. Yet, despite the fact that the prosecution's case fell apart in front of her, trial judge Nava Bechor ordered a continuance until April 4 and sent Sariel back to prison for another month.

An outcry ensued and activists in the US began calling the embassy and the State Department. On March 19, Bechor dismissed charges against Sariel and sent her home. Her supporters believe that without their US campaign, Sariel would still be sitting in prison for a crime that she didn't commit.

Depressingly, activists fighting against civil rights abuses of right-wing opponents of government policies are probably on to something. Through their own actions, Israel's leaders show daily that they are willing to ignore strategic imperatives and their domestic political opponents. Their actions show that indeed, the only pressure that seems to get them to change course is international pressure.

Take Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for example. Since assuming office two years ago, Livni has repeated at countless public appearances that Israel supports a "two-state solution." By couching her government's support for the establishment of a Palestinian state in these terms, Livni implicitly (and often explicitly) argues that Israel - which has existed for 60 years and whose legitimacy is rationally inarguable - can only exist legitimately if a Palestinian state is established. By making this assertion Livni effectively places Israel's right to exist on the negotiating table.

And yet, for his part, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly repudiated Israel's right to exist. By agreeing to negotiate the "two-state solution" with a man who rejects Israel's right to exist, Livni, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and their colleagues are effectively saying that what reality exposes, and Israel's citizenry supports, is irrelevant. The Palestinians alone can confer legitimacy on Israel. And of course, as Abbas has made clear repeatedly, they never will.

In a speech this week to the foreign press corps, Olmert similarly demonstrated that the only support he is interested in securing is foreign support. During his remarks, Olmert claimed that he wishes to conduct negotiations with the Syrian regime towards the surrender of the Golan Heights to Syria. Olmert's statement came just days after President Shimon Peres publicly opposed such negotiations on strategic grounds. In remarks Sunday during a joint press appearance with visiting US Vice President Richard Cheney, Peres explained that Israel has no interest in conducting negotiations with Syria because, "If the Golan is given back, it will boost Iran's influence in Lebanon and the territory will effectively be under Iranian-Syrian control." But when he spoke approvingly of talks aimed at surrendering the Golan Heights to Iranian-Syrian control, Olmert was not concerned with strategic realities. He was similarly unconcerned with what the Israeli public - which opposes such negotiations - believes is in Israel's national interest.

When Olmert made that statement he was interested in what the international, overwhelmingly anti-Israel media would think and write about him personally. And so he went on record supporting an initiative that undercuts Israel's national interests.

Finally, there is Barak's behavior in advance of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's arrival in Israel on Saturday night. When Rice was in Israel on March 4, she pressured the Olmert-Livni-Barak government to abandon efforts to secure southern Israel from Hamas's missile campaign in favor of a cease-fire with the Iranian proxy movement. Eager to please her, the government ordered IDF units to beat a speedy retreat from Gaza.

Today, although the government continues to restrain the IDF, the cease-fire is a joke. Over the past two weeks alone, the Palestinians have launched more than a hundred rockets and mortar shells at Israel. They have further augmented their attacks with sniper fire against Israeli farmers tending fields along the border with Gaza. Hamas is openly using the respite to replenish its arsenals and expand its control over the lives of Gaza's citizens. Moreover, unopposed by Israel, Hamas has succeeded in forcing Egypt to release Hamas terror masters from jail, and has convinced Fatah to negotiate the reestablishment of a unity government with Hamas.

Rice is expected to continue pressuring Israel to let Hamas continue to attack at will. She is also expected to attack Olmert, Livni and Barak for the IDF's counter-terror operations in Judea and Samaria.

In an effort to preempt her assault, Barak announced this week that Israel will allow the PA to import some 600 armored personnel carriers from Russia and deploy hundreds of Fatah forces in terror-infested Jenin. He also agreed to ease travel restrictions on Palestinians in Judea and Samaria.

Barak knows full well that these actions will imperil Israel's security. His own people refer to the moves as "calculated risks." He knows full well that opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu was right when he warned on Wednesday that "those weapons will be turned against IDF soldiers." He knows that by curbing counter-terror operations he will imperil Israeli civilians. But here too, Israel's inherent right to self-defense and the government's sovereign duty to secure the country and its citizens is ignored by the government in order to win points with foreigners whose interests are far from identical to Israel's.

THE HALAMISH brothers' supporters are not people who reject Israel's legitimacy. They certainly would never deny its right to defend itself. Indeed, they are among the most vocal opponents of foreign onslaughts against Israel.

It is a sad commentary on the state of Israeli democracy that patriotic Israelis have come to the disheartening view that their only chance of receiving justice in Israel is to take their campaign to foreign governments. By inducing them to feel this way, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is taking another step towards the delegitimization of Israeli sovereignty.

A core question arises from last weekend's Arab League summit in Damascus. Boycotted by half the league's members, the conference demonstrated the depth of Egyptian and Saudi opposition to Iran's rise to prominence in the Arab world. So too, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki's ostentatious participation at the summit showed the strength of Iran's strategic ties with Syria.

The question that arises from the summit is if Egypt and Saudi Arabia are willing to discard even the semblance of Arab unity in order to make clear their opposition to Iran, why do they support Hamas?

Hamas is an Iranian proxy. It receives its arms, training and orders from Teheran. Its leaders reside in Syria. Given their open opposition to Iran, and their increasingly open opposition to Syria as Iran's client, wouldn't it make more sense - from their perspective - to boycott Hamas?

The reason that Egypt and Saudi Arabia support Hamas in spite of its client relationship with Teheran is that for Egypt and Saudi Arabia, support for Palestinian terrorists trumps opposition to Iran. If they are forced to choose between fighting Iran and collaborating with Iran in support of Palestinian terrorists, they will always choose the latter. This is why they are spearheading negotiations between Fatah and Hamas towards the reestablishment of a Fatah-Hamas unity government. This is why Egypt enables Hamas and Iran to use its territory as their weapons supply route.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia think supporting the Palestinians is more important than fighting Iran because the Palestinians fight Israel. As the heads of the so-called "moderate Arab" camp, Egypt and Saudi Arabia hate the Jews more than they fear the Iranians.

The central question then for policymakers in Washington who are trying to deploy a successful strategy for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and asserting regional predominance is how can the Palestinian war with Israel be defused so that the 'moderate' Arab states will be forced to join them in confronting Iran?

THE CONSENSUS answer that the US has come up with is to pressure Israel to make massive concessions to the Palestinians. It is argued that such concessions will appease not just the Palestinians, but more importantly, they will appease the US's "moderate" Arab supporters in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. As this thinking goes, if Israel can be forced to cough up big enough concessions quickly enough, then the Palestinians will quiet down and the Egyptians and Saudis will be sufficiently satisfied with the "progress" being made to direct their attentions to confronting Iran.

This argument was elucidated this week by Democratic Senator and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton in an interview with the Jewish Exponent. Clinton claimed that the Oslo negotiating process between the PLO and Israel which her husband embraced as his central Middle East policy from 1993 through 2000 brought levels of violence down between Israel and the Palestinians and so engendered regional stability.

In her words, "I think what we did in the '90s was beneficial in a strategic way and led to a period where, at times, there were no attacks being made, no suicide bombings and no deaths." She then went on to criticize the Bush administration which during its first term in office did not pressure Israel to restart negotiations towards Palestinian statehood with the PLO. Clinton added that she would consider opening negotiations with Hamas if she is elected president.

Clinton's argument is notable for two reasons. First, it accurately reflects not only her view, but the view now being pushed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in her bimonthly visits to Israel. As she made apparent in her visit to Israel this week, Rice believes that the only way to reach an agreement is for Israel to empower Fatah and give Hamas a pass. So too, in her clear support for Egypt's negotiations with Hamas, Rice shows that the Bush administration is already holding indirect negotiations with Hamas.

THE SECOND reason that Clinton's argument is notable is because it has been so obviously disproven by reality. During the years that her husband was applying massive pressure on Israel to appease the Palestinians, terror levels against Israel eclipsed anything Israel had seen since the 1950s. In the 15 years which preceded the 1993 Oslo accord, 216 Israelis were murdered in terrorist attacks. In the seven years of the Oslo peace process, 286 Israelis were killed. Indeed, it was only in 1994, when Israel was first transferring territory to PLO control and the Palestinian Authority was building its armies that Israel suffered its first suicide bombing.

During the six years of the Palestinian uprising from 1987-1993, 172 Israelis were killed. During the first six years of the Palestinian terror war against Israel which Oslo produced, more than 1,100 Israelis were killed. Violence levels dropped not because of peace talks, but because of Israeli offensive operations against the Palestinians.

As Yasser Arafat told Palestinian audiences throughout the 1990s, his goal in the Oslo process was to gain the military and political means to continue his war against Israel. Arafat's confidante Faisal Husseini made this Palestinian perspective explicit with the outbreak of the Palestinian terror war in September 2000. Speaking to the Arab media, Husseini said that for the Palestinians, the Oslo process was a "Trojan horse" against Israel. They came to Israel bearing the promise of peace with the premeditated aim of using Israel's willingness to make peace as a means of launching a new round of war whose aim was the political and military destruction of the Jewish state.

THE OSLO process which Clinton praises and Rice apes with her Annapolis process brought the Palestinian issue, which had been buried throughout much of the 1980s to the forefront of the pan-Arab social consciousness and political agenda. This it did to the detriment of other salient issues like Iran's steps towards regional hegemony, Egyptian and Saudi repression of liberal forces in their countries, and, during the 1990s, Saddam Hussein's systematic breach of UN Security Council sanctions.

Here it is worth noting that the pinnacle of US success in building an Arab coalition against a rogue state came in 1990. The Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, which saw the entire Arab world united with the US against a fellow-Arab regime, came not in the midst of a Palestinian-Israeli peace process. It came when there were no diplomatic negotiations whatsoever between Israel and the Palestinians or between Israel and any state.

THERE ARE two principal reasons that the advent of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations weakened pan-Arab interest in working with the US against common threats. First, because the Oslo process empowered terrorists, terror attacks increased. Each terror attack received massive, supportive coverage in the Arab media.

Second, since the Oslo process placed terrorists in charge of Gaza, Judea and Samaria, the Palestinians found themselves ruled by murderers who had no interest in economic development and opposed liberalization and democracy. As a consequence, the Palestinian economic situation went from one of sustained growth to one of massive depredation. The footage of Palestinian terror attacks and Palestinian economic privation shown daily in the pan-Arab media eclipsed coverage of every other issue. And since the US is viewed as Israel's ally, it engendered unprecedented levels of anti-Americanism in the Arab world.

So if the Palestinian-centric model embraced by the US to build an Arab coalition against Iran works precisely to undermine such a coalition by bringing to the forefront the one issue that the Arabs and the Iranians agree on, what would an alternative model of policymaking look like?

The Achilles heel of the US's current strategy is its reliance on Egyptian and Saudi support. Since Egypt and Saudi Arabia prefer fighting Israel to confronting Iran, a better policy for confronting Iran would be to base a US coalition on states that prefer fighting Iran to fighting Israel. Regionally, Israel, Lebanon and Iraq fit this model.

IF THE US were to shore up these allies and stiffen their resolve to confront Iran rather than divert its attention to a policy which simply serves to galvanize Arab attention and energies against Israel and away from Iran, the US would pose a more imposing threat to Iran. It would also push the Iranian threat to the forefront of political discourse in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Such a revised policy would involve not only shoring up Israeli, Iraqi and Lebanese willingness to confront Iran and Syria. It would also involve scaling back US involvement in the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Such a scaling back could only be successful if at the same time as it disengaged from the negotiations process between Israel and Fatah, Washington also gave Israel a green light to defeat Hamas in Gaza. Such an Israeli operation would both end the specter of an Iranian takeover of Judea and Samaria and remove Iran's ability to reignite the Palestinian conflict at will.

Obviously, to advance such a policy option, the US would have to confront an Israeli government that has embraced the incorrect logic of the current failed strategy of winning Arab support for confronting Iran by forcing Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians. So too, it would have to confront an Iraqi government that is afraid to confront Iran, and a UN that seems to have abandoned its previous willingness to acknowledge Syria's culpability for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

It would also have to ensure that Israel's military defeat at the hands of Iran and Hizbullah in 2006 will not repeat itself. That defeat enabled Hizbullah to reassert its control over south Lebanon and acquire an even more sophisticated arsenal than it had two years ago.

Replacing the current failed strategy of squeezing Israel in the hopes of winning the support of unreliable Arab allies for confronting Iran will no doubt be a controversial move. It will win the Bush administration no fast friends in Europe or on American university campuses. It will even anger the Israeli Left which now sues for peace with Syria.

The only advantage to be had from basing America's strategy towards Iran on building a US-led anti-Iranian coalition comprised of states that prefer to fight Iran than to fight Israel is that such a policy has the potential of actually ending Iran's increased domination of the Middle East and of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

After the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, refugees from Jerusalem fled to the Galilean town. Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi, who presided over the writing of the Mishna, or oral law, moved to Tzipori from Beit Shearim, and it was there that he codified the six books of the Mishna and died.

The Jews of Tzipori revolted against the Roman Emperor Constantine, refusing to accept Christianity and the city was destroyed. The Jews later returned during the Islamic period. On and off, for the next millennia, Jews settled, were forcibly removed and resettled the city several times under various conquerors of Israel.

During the 1948 War of Independence, the ancient city was the site of a major battle between the new Israel Defense Force and the neighboring Arab villages assisted by invading forces from Syria and Lebanon. The Arabs were routed. In 1949, Moshav Tzipori was founded.

LAST FRIDAY afternoon, the struggle for Jewish control of Tzipori, the Galilee and the Land of Israel as a whole continued on the ancient ground. On that quiet afternoon of Purim, under the blistering sun, three horses stood happily grazing in a field of shrubs and grasses. The only problem with the otherwise pastoral scene was that the horses belong to Arab squatters from the Kablawi clan. In recent years, the Kablawis have built themselves an illegal village of some 20 houses masquerading as storage containers on stolen Jewish National Fund land adjacent to Tzipori's fields. The horses, who entered through a hole cut into the field's fence, pranced about and ate, destroying the field that was painstakingly cultivated for the moshav's cattle herds.

The farmers and ranchers of the Galilee, like their counterparts in the Negev are at wits' end. Fearing Arab riots or political condemnation by the Israeli Left, Arab leaders, the Islamic Movement and their allies abroad, the police and the state prosecutors have simply stopped enforcing the laws against the Galilee and Negev Arabs. Surrounded by increasingly hostile and lawless Arab and Beduin villages, local Jews' livestock and crops are continuously plundered.

They are faced with three equally unacceptable options for contending with this state of affairs. They can do nothing and let their livelihood and lives' work be destroyed. They can pay protection money to Arab criminal gangs, who in exchange agree not to rob them. Or they can try to sell off their lands and abandon agriculture altogether.

The obvious recourse - filing a complaint with the police - is an exercise in futility. Thousands of complaints are filed each year. Almost none of them end in indictments or trials. Most of the files are closed by the police due to "lack of public interest."

ON FRIDAY, the field in question belonged to a cattle rancher named Haim Z. Over the past few years, Haim has filed more than 250 complaints against local Arabs from the Kablawi family and from neighboring Arab villages like the Islamist stronghold Mashad with the police. None have ever gone anywhere. Last year, a helpful police officer recommended that Haim simply start paying protection money.

Last year Haim told his son that he had had it. The son of the moshav's founding generation, Haim said that he just couldn't go on anymore. The state's refusal to protect Jewish property rights had forced him to devote all of his energies to playing cat and mouse games with Arab poachers. He couldn't invest in his herd. He couldn't develop his land. All he could do was sit by and watch as year in and year out, his lands were plundered, his cattle stolen and the work of his life and his father's life was destroyed.

HIS SON, a 23 year old soldier in one of the IDF's elite commando units decided that it was up to him not only to save his father's farm, but to stem the tide of Arab infringement on Jewish land and property rights. Due to his position in the IDF, his name is classified. We'll call him J - for Jew.

In response to his father's desperation, J. took a storage container to a hilltop that overlooks Tzipori's fields, the surrounding Arab villages and the access routes to the moshav's fields. He placed a sofa, a bookshelf full of Jewish history books, religious texts and philosophy classics, and canned food inside and moved in during his furloughs from the army. Rather than hang out with his friends, he began standing guard. He confronted every Arab he caught infiltrating the moshav's fields, and both filed complaints with the police and chased them away.

Given his impossible schedule, J. enlisted his friends to help out. The sons of other desperate farmers, who also serve in combat units, they joined him enthusiastically. Within months, J. had set up an organization of more than a hundred young volunteers - soldiers, college students, and high school students from his moshav, other moshavim in the lower Galilee and surrounding non-agricultural communities.

He called the organization, Hashomer Hayisraeli Hahadash - or the New Israeli Guardsmen. The original Hashomer, or Guardsmen was established in the Galilee in 1909 for the same purpose - protecting Jewish farming communities from Arab marauders who demanded protection money from the farmers. It was the progenitor of the Haganah, which in turn, became the Israel Defense Force.

As J. puts it, "We're not simply a security service. We see ourselves as a new movement. Our activities rest on three foundations: securing the land, expanding our operations throughout the Galilee and the Negev, and teaching Zionist and Jewish values to our members, our communities and the general public."

TZIPORI, ONE of the stops of the Cross Israel Hiking Trail, is a popular destination for school groups, youth groups and just regular hikers. J. has organized visits to his guard post for thousands of hikers over the past year. During their visits the hikers listen to lectures about the New Guardsmen, about the Jewish history of the Galilee and the development of agriculture in the area, and topics of general interest provided by local residents, politicians and professors.

Friday afternoon, after noticing another encroachment on his father's field, J. called the police at the Nazareth police station. Joined by two of his fellow guardsmen, who are also sons of farmers and soldiers in commando units, they waited in the sun for over an hour for the police to arrive and planned their moves. They approached the horses with reins and bits.

"We will seize the horses and bring them back to our stable. If the Kablawis pay the damages, then I'll give them back, if not, I'll sell them," J. explained.

As the young men approached the horses, Yasser Kablawi, the head of the clan appeared. According to Haim, over the past year, the Kablawis have trampled his fields with their animals on more than 20 occasions.

Haim, who arrived at the scene some 10 minutes before the police made their grand appearance turned toward Kablawi and said, "Why are you doing this?"

"This land belongs to the JNF, not to you," Kablawi said.

"Why are you lying? I sat in your home with the JNF inspector months ago, and he told you straight that this is my land. You know you are stealing from me, and you're doing it while you're illegally squatting on JNF land. You've caused me tens of thousands of shekels in damages by trampling my fields today alone, and you know it."

By the time the police arrived, J. and his friends had roped one of the horses. Kablawi was joined by three grandsons and four sons. J. was joined by another seven Guardsmen. It was a standoff.

THE POLICE, who were informed of the presence of a journalist at the scene, acted with some resolution. After speaking with the JNF inspector, they explained to Kablawi that he could either sign a statement acknowledging that the land belongs to Haim and that he would be arrested if he trespassed again, or they would allow Haim to seize his horses. Kablawi signed.

J.'s activism is not just a personal quest to save his father from economic ruin. "If it were just about me and my family, my brother and I could take care of the thieves. They'd leave us alone. But then they'd just move on to our neighbors. It isn't about one family. This is a question of control over the land of Israel. The state is weak. We need to be strong if we want to remain here."

Last month, J. registered the Guardsman as a non-profit organization. He has a grand vision for the future.

"In the space of just a few months, I have brought in thousands of people, exposed them to our mission. I have more than a 100 volunteer guards. We have reduced theft by 80 percent.

"I want to raise money to buy night vision goggles and some all terrain vehicles to do proper patrols. I'd like to be able to give students scholarships so that they can guard and study at the same time. I've been in touch with farmers and ranchers in the Negev and they are anxious for us to expand to the south. I believe that within five years, the Guardsmen can end the protection rackets."

BACK IN June 2005, then vice premier Ehud Olmert gave an American audience his opinion of the Israeli people. "We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies," he whined.

Young people like J. and his colleagues, secular, yet deeply rooted Jewish sons and daughters of Galilee and Negev farmers, like their religious friends prove everyday that Olmert was not speaking for his countrymen. Whatever messes Olmert and his colleagues in the government still manage to make before they are finally thrown from office, it is absolutely clear that these young people and millions like them are willing and able to clean them up for themselves, their countrymen, and for the next generation of Jews in the land of Israel.

         Complaints we have in Israel against American Jews are not directed at the various George Soroses or Noam Chomskys, or at those Jews uninterested in the fate of the Jews in the Jewish state. We address our cries to those for whom Eretz Yisrael still holds a place in their hearts – and to their organizations and institutions. We ask them the following: Where are you in our hour of need? Don’t you know that if we sink, the ground beneath your own feet will quake? Have you not yet learned that the very fact that the Jews have their own country has buttressed your status in the Diaspora?

         Until this very day you regret your silence during the Holocaust, which derived from your great admiration for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and from the fear of being accused of dual loyalties. Today when you weigh those fears against the annihilation of the millions, you see matters in their proper proportions. Yet today your conscience is called upon once more to make a similar decision – albeit one much simpler, for today’s America is not like the anti-Semitic America of that time.

         Don’t you understand the danger looming over Israel? The entire world, led by the United States, is hunting Israel down to wrest from it Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, the Land of the Bible – its entire raison d’etre as a Jewish state.

         Don’t you see how the entire Negev and the country’s south are being shelled or are under threat of shelling from rockets and missiles as a result of the Gaza withdrawal, the destruction of dozens of settlements and the transformation of 10,000 Jews to refugee status? Did their outcry touch your heart? Do you hear today’s cries coming from Sderot and Ashkelon?

         Don’t you know that while the rockets are falling in the south, Syria and Hizbullah in Lebanon are preparing an attack from the north, and that at this moment tens of thousands of their missiles are aimed at the heart of our country?

         Take note that only the center of the country still enjoys calm. The only reason for that is that the army controls Judea and Samaria, and that is because there are hundreds of Jewish towns there (“the settlements,” in the language of our enemies). And now, the United States is pressuring your Jewish brethren in Israel to dispense with even that defense. President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have sworn to establish a Palestinian terror state right next to Tel Aviv, Netanya, Hadera and Haifa before year’s end – and toward that end, expel 300,000 of our Jewish brothers and sisters.

         And faced with all this, you remain silent? Worse, most of your organizations support this anti-Jewish, pro-Arab policy! Today, missiles are flying from the ruins of Gush Katif and landing in the Negev. On the day that missiles are being launched from the ruins of the Jewish towns in Samaria, please don’t say, “We didn’t see. We didn’t hear. We didn’t know.”

         You knew very well! The Annapolis Conference, in which a blind, stumbling, defeatist Israeli government open to American pressure knowingly consented to commit national suicide, occurred in your country. Rice, whose total identification with Palestinian interests is patently obvious, is applauded by your audiences. And you call President Bush, the man with the “vision” of a Palestinian state that will endanger every city and village in Israel, “the greatest friend Israel ever had in the White House.” You say this when in reality (and history will be the judge) he is the first president openly and explicitly raising the demand and exerting heavy pressure to establish in our midst a devil, a dragon, a dybbuk – in the form of an Islamic, Arabic, radical terrorist state called by the false name of “Palestine.” That state would transform every day in the life of the Jewish state to Hell. And all this for the sake of a fictitious people and a fictitious land that never existed throughout history.

         Other voices in the Republican camp, namely Vice President Dick Cheney, senators and congressmen, have not enjoyed support from most of American Jewry, and have subsequently become silent. Quite the opposite, countless Jewish organizations have been supporting the Palestinian agenda.

         Many Jews in America have good reason to be embarrassed that the only organized American community supporting the rights of the Jewish people to its historic homeland in Judea and Samaria and its eternal capital, Jerusalem, consists of non-Jews. They are the Evangelical Christians. For Jews faithful to their patrimony, some Christian churches are more open today than many Jewish temples. Their organizations and media are more open to nationalistic Jews than are the mainstream Jewish establishment. They visit Hebron, Shiloh and Beit El – places that many Jewish leaders stay away from.

         Everyone talks about the political power of American Jewry, but from here we see only the weakness and lockstep obedience to every presiding administration. We ask ourselves, “Why do Christian pastors have no inhibitions about criticizing their president regarding his policy toward Israel, while Jewish rabbis wouldn’t dare?”

         Today, money is not the critical factor. It is political pressure capable of meeting the enormous Arab pressure. Regarding your historic omission during the Holocaust, when you failed to exercise your power as Queen Esther did in her time (ignoring the risk to her own life), you have tried to atone with money. Yet all the money in the world cannot bring back to life a single Jewish child. Even today, it is not money that can save us, but rather the political power that you are afraid to exercise. It looks like today, when the American Jewish community is flourishing as never before and enjoying the height of acceptance by the public at large, you do not feel secure enough; hence you are doing the only safe thing – swimming with the flow and cheering on the regime, even at the expense of your besieged brethren in the Holy Land.

         I conclude with two requests: First, that those Jews who support the Palestinian line should at least not emphasize their Jewishness, and add the weight of their “Jewish witnessing” to the brunt of pressure being applied on us. Second, that the not insignificant number of Jews who, like Mordechai in the Scroll of Esther, do not bow down before the president of the United States when he sets out to replace the vision of the prophets with the “vision” of Palestine, should organize themselves and establish an organization paralleling the Jewish protest organizations that in Israel face off with the government and block with their bodies the slippery slide down the Palestinian slope.