It Cannot Continue -1979 Part 1

Rabbi Meir Kahane

On Jews and Judaism, May 11, 1979

Inflation has a numbing psychological effect.  After a while, as the numbers grow and multiply, people who until recently were aghast and angry at relatively small rises begin to fatalistically accept horrendous increases. They learn to live with the inflation of costs – and they pave the way for learning to perish because of it.

That is what is happening in Israel today, but it is not of that kind of inflation that I write.  There is a second kind of inflation that grows today in Israel and it too has begun its terrible effect.  It is the inflation of terror.

Not a day seems to go by nowadays without an act of terror or attempted terror.  Terrorists cut through the fence in Lebanon and Jordan; by the grace of G-d they are caught and stopped before they can commit mass murder.  Terrorists are stopped as they attempt to attack an El Al plane in Brussels; twelve passengers in the general terminal area are wounded. A terrorist ship is caught off the coast of Israel on its way to murder as many men, women and children as possible. A katyusha rocket aimed at downtown Jerusalem is found and dismantled seconds before it is to go off.  All these are things that failed and the Almighty grants us more time and more time to do the things we should, to return to him in faith and sacrifice and courage.  But how much longer will he wait and aid?

And then there are the bombs that did not fail to go off. A bomb goes off in the marketplace of Lydda; a Jew is killed and many wounded.  How many buses are targets for Arab bombs?  The number 12 line in Jerusalem’s Bayit Vegan area runs into East Jerusalem.  More than 5 bombings have resulted in the deaths of innocent young Jews.  The reaction of the authorities is to urge greater security; to take out the back seats on many buses; to add a number 39 line in Bayit Vegan…  They are measures that are not calculated to have any effect on the terrorists.  They guarantee more Nahariyas.

And the public grows numb. It has come to accept as natural. Life with terrorist bombs.   That which, years ago, led Jews to angrily attack Arabs and demand action, now leaves them apathetic and fatalistic in the acceptance. It is the inflation of terror. The more attacks, the greater the acceptance of them as a way of life.  The more dead, the less we seem to be able to look upon them as individuals who lived and left behind families.  Their very repetition makes the bombings lose their “newness” and the radio and television reports no longer are “exciting” or “fresh.”

But, it cannot continue.  We cannot allow the situation to continue.  Every victim is a beloved one who leaves behind loved ones and sorrow and tragedy.  Every victim is a fellow Jew.  Every death and outrage is a Hillul Hashem, a desecration of the name of the L-rd, G-d of Israel.  Our apathy, our acceptance of the situation, only guarantees further and worse inflation of terror.  It guarantees further deaths, cripples, and agony and anguish.  It cannot continue, and it must as long as Arabs are allowed to live and wander freely in the Land.  The solution is ultimately only one:  the removal of the hostile and dangerous Arab minority from the Land of Israel, and until then, an immediate program that includes:

1)      The death penalty for all terrorists for whatever the crime, and a policy of not taking prisoners.

2)      The expulsion from the land of a fixed number of Arabs after every     terror incident; the number to be greater in the event of physical injury.

3)      Terror against terror.  Retaliatory terror in Arab areas on the part of a special anti-terror group.  The government need never acknowledge its existence or it can deal with it on the same basis as the relationship between the PLO and the Arab host governments. 

There will surely be those who will speak of this as “immoral.” To these products of gentilized culture, one can only recommend the words of the rabbis: “He who is merciful at a time when he should be cruel, is destined to be cruel at a time when he should be merciful.” (Kohelet Raba, 7:16)

    

And “When one comes to slay you  – slay him first” (Sanhedrin 72a) This is Judaism, this is the religion that destroys the merciless before they ravage the innocent.

(To be continued next week)

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