Best Wishes to our Friends and Supporters for a Happy and Sweet Passover and a Happy and Peaceful Easter
Outpost

Editor: Rael Jean Isaac
Editorial Board: Ruth King, Rita Kramer

Outpost is distributed free to
Members of Americans For a Safe Israel
Annual membership: $50.

Americans For a Safe Israel
1751 Second Ave. (at 91st St.)
New York, NY 10128
tel (212) 828-2424 / fax (212) 828-1717
E-mail: afsi @rcn.com web site: http://www.afsi.org

We extend our deepest condolences to the Zweibon family on the recent death of Sheila Zweibon, beloved wife and help meet of our late Chairman Herbert Zweibon. ( In Genesis 2:18 it says, “And the Lord G-d said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make an help meet for him.”)May the whole family find peace and comfort in happy memories of Sheila and Herb.

We also wish to extend particular gratitude to their son Mark Zweibon who has continued the Zweibon legacy with such generosity and grace.

Rael Jean Isaac, Ruth King, Rita Kramer

Helen Friedman, Mark Langfan

The scramble to succeed Shimon Peres as his seven-year presidential term draws to a close is not a sight for sore eyes. With the exception of the still (at this writing) unofficially declared Uzi Landau, Minister of Tourism in the Likud-Bayit Yehudi coalition and inarguably worthy of consideration as “our national collective paradigm,” as Sarah Honig asserted in a recent Jerusalem Post column, the field of contenders is as uninspiring a collection of hacks, has-beens wanna-bes, tired old faces and delusionaries as has lately been assembled on a single list.

The early leader of the pack of declared candidates (it requires the support of 10 sitting members of the Knesset to be qualified to run) is Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, ex-general, ex-defense minister, ex-national infrastructure minister, ex-Labor Party chairman, ex-anything else that might come to mind. Having recorded no achievements of note in any of these posts, Ben-Eliezer’s overriding mission, Honig submits, is “to remind people of his existence.” His election platform should certainly do the trick. “Fouad,” the nickname by which he is best known, says his first task will to assure the “moderates” among the Palestinians that he is four-square for the two-state solution, ostensibly with a slice of Jerusalem as the capital for their new state. In the same breath, he insists that Israel can only close a peace deal with “strong” Arab leaders. He isn’t clear on whether the latter are synonymous with the aforementioned “moderates” but he’s dead certain that the one and perhaps only Arab “leader” with enough clout to close the “deal” is Marwan Barghouti, the former Tanzim terrorist chieftain currently serving a couple of life terms in an Israeli lockup for personally executing five Israeli citizens and for issuing the orders resulting in the murder of an additional 20. “It’s imperative,” Ben Eliezer is quoted as declaring, “that we free him [Barghouti] to have someone to talk to–the sooner, the better.”

Mr. Ben-Eliezer would have been a candidate for a padded cell 65 years ago when the presidency of Israel was created as a politically castrated ceremonial gift to Chaim Weizmann from a dominant David Ben-Gurion. Weizmann famously remarked of his divorce from all influence over the nation he helped create that “the only place I’m still allowed to stick my nose is my handkerchief.” Handkerchiefs have gone the way of tailfins and so has the image of Israel’s president as a mummified ribbon cutter. Most of the credit for that belongs to Shimon Peres. Over the seven years of his presidency, with the guile of a master prestidigitator, he has transformed himself from “an indefatigable schemer” (Yitzhak Rabin’s words) into a powerful and beloved national institution and global icon. How he pulled it off is the stuff of books yet to be written but the fact that 64 percent of Israelis in a recent presidential poll announced themselves in favor of non-candidate Peres–a margin of 47 percent above the nearest announced declarer–speaks for itself.

Boycott It

In his “Boycott the New York Times” Italian journalist Giulio Meotti has some (deservedly) harsh words not only for the New York Times but for the Jews addicted to it. What triggered Meotti’s op-ed was the latest example of the Times anti-Israel poison, an article by Jodi Rudoren “Remaking a Life, After Years in an Israeli Prison.”

A few excerpts from Meotti’s op-ed:

“Salah killed Israel Tenenbaum, a Holocaust survivor and security guard at a beach hotel in Netanya, hitting him on the side of the head with a metal rod.

”The New York Times, by telling us the daily routine of a veteran of terror and by presenting his ‘version’ of the events, consistently downplays the genocidal anti-Semitism and corrosive hatred that governs Hamas and Fatah, described therein as “militant” groups concerned with the social welfare of Palestinian Arabs and their families.

“The goal of this most recent article is to continue to humanize and exculpate Arab-Islamic Palestinian terrorists who commit atrocities against Jews and stimulate the ever-increasing genocidal Arab fantasies and expectations.

“The only things more repugnant than the glorification of terrorism are all the ignorant fellow Jews who subscribe, who support and who finance the “Grey Nazi”.
“If you treat Holocaust survivors killed by terrorists as a mere footnote to a narrative of Palestinian innocence and redemption, I intend to boycott you. Readers should do the same as I have with the New York Times and its Jewish collaborators.”

Negotiating for What?

As a founder and the first chairman of Americans for a Safe Israel, I have been asked a number of times to say something about the origins of the organization, now forty-three years old.

To my knowledge, the only information in print is in Shmuel Katz’s The Hollow Peace (which centers on the Camp David accords) published in 1981. This is Shmuel’s brief account:

“In 1970 there arrived in Israel, for their sabbatical, a uniquely scholarly couple from the United States, Professor Erich Isaac and his wife Rael Jean. They both took an interest in the Land of Israel Movement, on which Rael wrote a doctoral thesis. They also encouraged me to implement an idea of mine and of fellow members of the movement–that I should go to the United States and there try to establish a framework for the dissemination of the movement’s doctrine. Thus it came about that in the spring of 1971 I started out on my trip to the United States. With the help of the Isaacs, my first sponsors, I began to create a series of contacts there.”

There is more of a back story and much more of a forward story, for Shmuel goes on to describe his meetings with leading politicians and major figures in the Jewish community rather than saying more about AFSI’s founding.

As far as the back story is concerned, Rael’s thesis, the research for which she did in Israel from 1969-1970 (Shmuel mistakenly said we arrived in 1970), was on the divisions the 1967 war had caused in Israeli politics and focused on both the Land of Israel Movement and the opposing peace movement. Apart from the fact that we found the Land of Israel Movement had much the most cogent arguments, it was a far more interesting movement, for it brought together prominent individuals from the hitherto bitterly ideological poles of Israeli politics. Shortly before the Six Day War, a left wing kibbutz had invited Palmach veteran Benny Marshak to debate Shmuel Katz. Marshak had refused on the ground he would not enter the same room with Katz. Now these men, and others whose differences were no less intense, were working together on the executive of the Land of Israel Movement. (The peace movement was comprised of squabbling groups that could agree on neither the scope of retreat or to whom the relinquished territories should go.)

I was struck by how little awareness there was in the United States that the Land of Israel Movement even existed and was invited by the movement to speak on this issue at their conference in November 1969–my title “The Lack of the Movement’s P.R. in the U.S.” The speech was printed in the November 21, 1969 issue of Zot Haaretz, the movement’s biweekly publication. Here is an excerpt: “At a recent meeting this month between Golda Meir and representatives of American Jewish organizations at the home of Eli Wiesel in New York, the idea of Erez Yisrael Hashlema (that territorial sacrifice is an existential calamity) was not even brought up in the discussion. An effort must be made to present the view that the entire land belongs to Israel, for only if the effort is made will it be possible to discover if there are potential supporters of this position.” I went on to describe the most likely–and least likely–places in the Jewish community to find such support.

This need to develop support in the U

(Editor’s note: This is excerpted from a much lengthier piece which Sharon wrote in February 1996 and to which he returned in October 2011. Sharon observed then that nothing had changed: “The situation in the Middle East is the same, the ideas are the same and the dangers to Israel are the same or even greater.” In March 2014, the same holds true.)

There has been no change in the language or contents of the material published in the Arab countries about Israel or the Jews in the wake of the political process hailed by the Israeli and Western media as a “peace process.” There has not been even the slightest attempt to get the Arab public used to what is seen in the West as a “new era.”

The most outspoken in the rejection of the normalization of relations with Israel, let alone its legitimization, or its right of existence, are the Arab teachers, university lecturers, writers, and other intellectuals responsible for educating the children and young people, the would be implementers of peace.

On the other hand, since the fall of the ghetto walls in the 19th century, Jews have been at the forefront of the liberal movements in Europe and America. When the State of Israel was established these same humanistic and liberal ideas governed its political, cultural and social life.

Peace has always been the expressed policy of the government of Israel which was translated into a program of education. In the schools of Israel peace is a subject taught as part of the ordinary curriculum. Hundreds of songs about peace are constantly transmitted by the electronic media, and there is hardly a political discussion which has not touched upon the subject of peace, one way or another.

Moreover, the Israeli Left has gone out of its way in the sacrifices which it is ready to make for peace and the risks which is ready to take, jeopardizing the virtual existence of the State. From “Brit Shalom” (“Covenant of Peace”) in the thirties and the forties to “Peace Now” today, there is one straight line of thinkers, educators, artists, writers virtually begging the Arabs for Peace.

In September 1995, Israel suggested that Egypt, Jordan and Israel cooperate in a joint operation to clean the coasts of the gulf of Eilat-Aqaba. The operation was presented as a symbolic act demonstrating the peace prevailing between Israel and its two Arab neighbours. The actual cleaning of the coasts was to be carried out by students from the three countries. On September 18 the Israeli students from the University of Tel-Aviv arrived at the border pass at Taba to receive the Egyptian students. They had also presents ready for the Egyptians. They waited four hours only to be eventually told that the Egyptian side had canceled all the joint programs with the Israelis. The Jordanians had already sent a message that they refused to take part in the operation “because of political considerations.” The Israeli students, in their eagerness to demonstrate their yearning for any sign of acceptance from the Arab side, bought the bus tickets to Eilat and the presents to the Egyptians from their own pockets. “The peace is very important to us; we were eager to meet them and we are very disappointed” their spokesperson said (Maariv, 19.9.95).

(Editor’s note: The “solution” offered by Caroline Glick, treated here as “audacious” and “bold,” is of course what AFSI has been advocating since its founding 43 years ago.)

By any standard, the Palestinian problem involves the strangest criteria in modern history.

To begin with, refugees are defined as individuals who have been forced to leave their land of origin. A new definition of refugee status, though, was invented exclusively for Palestinian Arabs, who count as refugees their descendants to the nth generation.

All the world’s refugees are the responsibility of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, except for the Palestinians, who have their own refugee agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine. Among all the population exchanges of the 20th century–Greeks for Turks after World War I, Hindus for Moslems after the separation of India and Pakistan after World War II, Serbs for Croats after the breakup of Yugoslavia during the 1980s–the Palestinians alone remain frozen in time, a living fossil of long-decided conflicts.

Some 700,000 Jews were expelled from Muslim countries where they had lived in many cases more than a thousand years before the advent of Islam, and most of them were absorbed into the new State of Israel with a territory the size of New Jersey; 700,000 or so Arabs left Israel’s Jewish sector during the 1948 War of Independence, most at the behest of their leaders, but few were absorbed by the vast Muslim lands surrounding Israel.

Instead, the so-called refugees were gathered in camps (now for the most part towns with a living standard much higher than that of the adjacent Arab countries thanks to foreign aid) and kept as a human battering ram against Israel, whose existence the Muslim countries cannot easily accept. Some 10 million Germans who had lived for generations in what is now Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic were driven out at the end of World War II (more than half a million died in the great displacement).

Imagine that Germany had kept these 10 million people in camps for 70 years and that their descendants now numbered 40 million–and that Germany demanded on pain of war restitution of everything from the Sudetenland to Kaliningrad (the former Konigsberg). That is a fair analogy to the Palestinian position.

It is a scam, a hoax, a put-on, a Grand Guignol theatrical with 5 million extras. Because polite opinion bows to the sensibilities of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims, it is treated in all seriousness.

As a matter of full disclosure, I want to put my personal view on record: The mainstream view amounts to a repulsive and depraved exercise in hypocrisy that merits the harshest punishment that a just God might devise.

In this looking-glass world of hypocrisy and hoax, though, the most noteworthy deception is the physical existence of the Palestinians themselves: in Judea and Samaria (sometimes called the occupied West Bank), there are perhaps half the number of Arabs as the Palestinian Authority’s census has counted, or the international community acknowledges. As Jerusalem Post reporter Caroline Glick reports in her new book, Israeli researchers have demonstrated that the 1997 Palestinian census was a fraud. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics [PCBS] had exaggerated the Palestinian population figures by nearly 50 percent, or 1.34 million people… First, it had inflated the existing Palestinian population base. In the 1997 census, the PCBS had included 325,000 Palestinians who lived abroad. It had also included 210,000 Arab residents in Jerusalem, who had already been accounted for in Israel’s population count.

Rabbi Meir Kahane, who founded The Jewish Defense League (JDL) and the Israeli political party Kach was controversial, charismatic and unrelenting. He was killed in November 1990 by an Arab gunman after delivering a fiery speech in a Manhattan hotel. Andrew McCarthy, prosecutor and author of several books on Islamic terrorism, has cited that murder as the first act of jihad committed in the United States by Al Qaeda.

Kahane’s legacy as a staunch Zionist is blotted by the opprobrium heaped upon him, some of which he deserved.

The Jewish Defense League’s vandalism and violence, in my opinion, accomplished nothing. Bombing Soviet diplomatic, cultural and trade missions did not free a single Russian Jew. The 1972 attack on impresario Sol Hurok’s office for booking Soviet artists was inexcusable and caused the death of a young employee who was the daughter of a committed Zionist.

In 1971 Kahane emigrated to Israel where he was arrested more than sixty times on charges that he fomented violence in his speeches and writing. In 1984 his party Kach won a seat in Israel’s parliament. Kach’s platform called for a state based on Jewish law, annexing Judea, Samaria and Gaza and offering local Arabs monetary compensation to leave in order to keep a Jewish majority. Shunned and vilified by the establishment, his popularity increased and his supporters had strong hopes for more seats in the 1988 elections. These hopes were crushed when, in 1985, probably fearing that his supporters’ hopes were justified, the Knesset passed an amendment barring “racist” candidates from running.

The Knesset’s banning of Kach while it tolerated openly treasonous Arabs in parliament is a blot on Israeli democracy.

With time, more and more, Kahane’s writings look prescient. Here are some excerpts.

From “Amman and Jerusalem” 1968:

“There is great agitation and indignation within the United Nations today. It all centers around demands for return by Israel of the land won from Jordan last year. What land? The area that is commonly known as the West Bank of the Jordan. There is really more than a little irony in this demand. Indeed, it approaches the heights of chutzpah. It is not only that a state which attempted to destroy another one and lost has the gall to demand terms more properly suited to a victor. It is not even the fact that the land Jordan demands was never legally and rightfully annexed by it in the first place. It is really the fact that the state that calls itself Jordan is an entity that is illegal, per se.

Outpost

Editor: Rael Jean Isaac

Editorial Board: Ruth King, Rita Kramer

Outpost is distributed free to Members of Americans For a Safe Israel

Annual membership: $50.

Americans For a Safe Israel

1751 Second Ave. (at 91st Street)

Editor’s Note: This is excerpted from Begin’s address on Israel’s independence day on the Irgun’s radio station. His words are worth remembering in this time of unprecedented challenges to Israel’s right to exist.

Citizens of the Hebrew Homeland, Soldiers of Israel, Hebrew Youth, Sisters and Brothers in Zion! Today is truly a holiday, a Holy Day, and a new fruit is visible before our very eyes. The Hebrew Revolt of 1944-1948 has been blessed with success — the first Hebrew revolt since the Hasmonean insurrection that has ended in victory. The State of Israel has arisen in bloody battle. The highway for the mass return to Zion has been cast up. The foundation has been laid — but only the foundation — for true independence.

One phase of the battle for freedom, for the return of the entire People of Israel to its homeland, for the restoration of the whole Land of Israel to its God-covenanted owners, has ended. But only one phase. We should recall that this event has occurred after 70 generations of dispersion and unending wandering of an unarmed people and after a period of almost total destruction of the Jew as Jew. Thus, although our suffering is not yet over, it is our right and our obligation to proffer thanks to the Rock of Israel and His Redeemer for all the miracles that have been done this day, as in those times. We therefore can say with full heart and soul on this first day of our liberation from the British occupier: Blessed is He who has sustained us and enabled us to have reached this time. The State of Israel has arisen. And it has risen “Only Thus”: through blood, through fire, with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm, with sufferings and with sacrifices. It could not have been otherwise.

And yet, even before our state is able to establish its normal governing institutions, it is compelled to fight, or rather, to continue to fight satanic enemies and blood-thirsty mercenaries, on land, in the air and on the sea. In these circumstances, the warning sounded by the Philosopher-President Thomas Masaryk to the Czechoslovak nation when it attained its freedom after three hundred years of slavery has a special significance for us. In 1918, when Masaryk stepped out on to the Wilson railway station in Prague, he warned his cheering countrymen: “It is difficult to set up a state; it is even more difficult to keep it going.”

We are surrounded by enemies who long for our destruction. Our one-day old state is set up in the midst of the flames of battle. And the very first pillar of our state must therefore be victory, total victory, in the war which is raging all over the country. For this victory, without which we shall have neither freedom nor life, we need arms; weapons of all sorts, in order to strike the enemies, in order to disperse the invaders, in order to free the entire length and breadth of the country from its would-be destroyers. But in addition to these arms, each and every one of us has need of another weapon, a spiritual weapon, the weapon of unflinching endurance in face of attacks from the air; in face of grievous casualties; in face of local disasters and temporary defeats; unflinching resistance to threats and cajolery.