Arabs and Jews - 1976

K A H A N E”
The magazine of the authentic Jewish Idea
September 1976 – Elul 5736

Arabs and Jews
The illusion of Arab-Jewish coexistence is a delusion that leads directly to tragedy.  On the one hand, it is patently false.  On the other, it encourages mad policies on the part of the Israeli government.  Thus, we find that a group of yeshiva students travelled to the Galilee village of Peki’in to pray at several sacred sites.  What makes Peki’in special is that never since the destruction of the Second Temple was it empty of Jews.  Throughout the long exile there were always Jews in this small place and, today, one lone family remains, a father and his unmarried daughter.

When the students came, they were met with stones by the local Arabs and Druze.  They were forced to call the police and leave. When the Arabs were asked why they had stoned the Jews they replied  “they feared that they had come to settle there”…  [Sounds familiar? Today, Jan 23, 2011, apartment buildings for Jews are being built starting a new Jewish neighborhood in Jaffe.  This led to a huge, loud and angry Arab demonstration in Jaffe, with shouts of  “We don’t want Jews in our neighborhood.” BG]

This is the truth of Arab-Jewish coexistence and the tragedy of the Jewish policy of illusion.  In the JEWISH state, Arabs have reached the point of chutzpah and gall when they can stone Jews and openly explain that they feared that the Jews might try to settle in their village.  There is NO Arab village in the JEWISH state and the Arabs live in the JEWISH homeland by sufferance of the Jews.  For them to have the brazenness to question Jewish rights is both symptomatic of their true feelings as well as the result of the timid and frightened “non-policy” of fear of what the world will say, that has led to an incredible decision to place two soldiers on trial in connection with the death of two Arabs killed in rioting against Jewish sovereignty.  Both deaths occurred as Arab mobs, encouraged by Jewish weakness and hesitation, stoned Israeli troops, threw Molotov cocktails at them and tried to cause conditions of anarchy and revolt that would eventually force Jews to retreat from Judea and Samaria. 

Both deaths occurred as Israeli soldiers were attacked and tried to put down the revolt.  At first, the government refused to put soldiers who were facing an enemy committed to wiping out the Jewish state, on trial. Now, under pressure, they have agreed.  The result will be that any soldier will hesitate before firing and will fear the consequences of his doing what any normal soldier should do.  The result will be that the Arabs will know this and be encouraged.  The result is that, once again, capitulation to the Arabs will breed more arrogance, more demands, more revolt.

[All the above we are living with today. BG]

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A Tale Of Two Letters - 1976

"K A H A N E"
the magazine of the authentic Jewish Idea
September 1976 – Elul 5736

A TALE OF TWO LETTERS
Two letters arrived for me within a few days of each other.  Together they tell an important tale.  It is a tale of the distortion and the misshaping of the authentic Jewish Idea and it is a tale that every Jew should hear and understand.

This first letter came from a Jew – a religious Jew – a Jew whose home is in the State of Illinois.  The relevant parts of this letter read as follows: 

“Sometimes when we become firmly convinced of something, we tend to state it to others with a certain degree of fanaticism.  Of course, you are right that the Jews of the entire world should make Aliyah to Israel.  But let us consider some practical aspects … are all of us going to be able to support ourselves as well as our families in Israel?  Are we headed for an “Auschwitz” America?  I hope and pray it does not happen and I do not think it will.  But if it does, that will mean that America has turned full tilt against Israel and Jews will be no safer than in America.  Prayfully, one day, my family and I will gather enough faith and courage to make Aliyah. But until we do, if we do, we do not require constant harping on this subject.  What we do need now is your spiritual leadership in becoming better Jews where we are.  Prophesize to our brethren in Israel.  Bring them back to Torah.  Prepare the land and the people for us?”

The other letter comes from an Israeli.  A student who lives in Jerusalem and who studies at Hebrew University.  He is not religious, but a firm nationalist.  The relevant parts of his letter are:

“I do not write this letter in my name alone but in the name of many tens of students who agree with all of your main points… The thing that leads to a parting of the ways is “your fanatical religion” as they call it.  Most of the students are irreligious.  Know that many, many would like to see themselves in your camp, but they totally reject Rabbi Kahane because of their fear of “fanatical religion.”  With all due respect, I suggest that you only emphasize the major issue that is common to all including the irreligious.”

Two letters.  Each in their own way showing the schizophrenia that has seized the Jewish people and that has misshapen and deformed the authentic Jewish Idea.  Two letters from two-Jews, each of whom has forgotten a different side of Judaism.  One, a “religious” Jew who forgets that without the nation there is nothing.  The other, a “nationalist” Jew who does not know that without religion, the Jew is meaningless.  And how important it is for us to understand the totality and truth of the Jew as a RELIGIO-NATION.  For if we do, we suddenly understand the reality of the Jewish Idea; we begin to grasp the truth that will lead to the final redemption.  And if we do not, we continue our descent to tragedy. 

You see, my secular nationalist friend, unlike you, I see nothing at all very special or logical about nationalism, per se.  I see nothing very rational about setting up boundaries and a barrier, separate governments, armies, parliaments, economics, exchange rates and languages.  If anything, nationalism is a barrier to world brotherhood and one of the major fomenters of conflict and war. If I were a secular nationalist I would be hard put to explain why Jews should remain separate and not assimilate and I would struggle for a rational explanation of Jewish behavior – stubborn and obstinate – over two millennia of exile as they suffered every conceivable manner of persecution and yet, refused to disappear.

There is only one reason why Jews should be different, and that is the very special difference, the uniqueness that makes them separate and different from all other peoples.  ONLY the election of Israel, only the concept of a Chosen people, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation; only the “Ata b’chartanu, You have chosen us from all the nations”: only the “hamavdil beyn kodesh l’chol, He who differentiates between and separates between holy and profane, between Israel and the nations”; only the need to be different, apart and separate NOT BECAUSE OF SOME VAGUE LANGUAGE OR HISTORICAL DIFFERNCE but because of the distinct uniqueness of Torah and the commandments as a DIVINE decree – only this gives any validity to the Jew remaining alive as a distinct entity.

There is nothing special about a Jewish tank or jet plane, nothing special about an independent state of your own with a Parliament, Prime Minister, national airline and social-economic-political problems, all nations have them.  There is nothing special about a scientific institute, universities and lawyers, physicians and sanitation men; all nations have them.  But no nation has Torah except the Jewish people, and that is the difference.  The only one.

And so, when I helped to found the JDL and called to people to love Jews so much that they should be prepared to climb barricades for them, fight physically for them, perhaps sit in jail for them, why in the world did I care about some Jew in Leningrad or Damascus more than some Zulu in South Africa?  Only because Ahavat Yisroel follows directly from the special quality of the Jewish people – the DIVINE nation – each of whose members partakes of that divine quality and is my brother MORE than other peoples.  Without my belief in the Jews as the Chosen People of G-d, there would be not the slightest interest for me in them more than in other people.

And if you wonder why secular Jewish nationalism, that which we call Zionism, has proven to be such a disastrous failure among our youth in Israel; and if it bothers you that the youth questions the basic axioms that, to you are truth incarnate, going so far as to dispute the right of the Jews to Israel and even joining an Arab spy ring; and if you are disturbed at the fact that most Israelis have little ties to world Jewry, and so many would like very much to leave the country and make a great deal of money elsewhere; and if the Jew in Israel looks more and more like any other people and feels nothing special about himself and his state – learn an important lesson.

Secular Jewish nationalism – no more than any other kind – can give no rational reason to a sensitive and intelligent young person to see anything special about his people or his state – especially when that state is faced with constant crisis, hardships and sacrifice.   There are those secular Jewish nationalists who remember either the anti-Semitism of the Exile or the nostalgia of Judaism.  Most Israelis know neither and they ask logical questions and demand answers that the letter writer, a secular nationalist, cannot really give him 

As for me, without religion there are NO Jewish people worth fighting for and worth dying for.  There is no Jewish state worth sacrificing so much for and crying out “not one inch.”  Everything that the nationalist writer sees in me as “nationalist” is instead RELIGIO-NATIONALIST, or the authentic Jewish Idea.  Failing to see religion and G-d at the heart of Jewishness; failing to see G-d at the center of Jewish destiny, as the G-d of History; failing to understand that without a return to Torah, nothing will help us – the secular nationalist understands nothing.

And he is joined by the “religious” Jew form Illinois.  A Jew who can say such “practical” things as “are all of us able to support ourselves in Israel?; as “I do not think” an Auschwitz can happen in America; as if America “turns full tilt” against Jews then Israel is also doomed; as advice to stop harping on Aliyah and instead try to make us “better Jews where we are.”

The one writer puts religion on the shelf and thinks that he is a complete Jew, while the other ignores nationalism and prides himself on his being able to be a true Jew.  Both are wrong.  Both are cripples, the one limping on the right foot and the other on the left.

The religious Jew asks that I try to make Jews better “where they are.”  That is exactly what I do when I “harp” on the fundamental mitzvah of Aliyah.  I am desperately attempting to reach the Jew “where he is” in the Exile and make him a better Jew by telling him to fulfill the mitzvah of settling the land.  I reach out to him and try to make him a better Jew who will stop being so casual about a mitzvah that the rabbis tell us is equal to all the commandments of the Torah; who will realize that the rabbis call him, the dweller in Exile, a man who is as one without a G-d; who is called a worshipper of idol impurity; who is promised that in the Exile he will “find no rest for the sole of his foot.”

He wishes me to make Jews better than they are?  Every article I write concerning the immutable place of the nation and the state of Judaism does just that.  Every criticism of religious Jews for failing to understand that there can be no authentic complete Judaism without the Land of Israel is that.   Every time I attempt to teach the lesson of the State of Israel as being the beginning of the redemption and the beginning of the era of Kiddush Hashem is that.

 The religious Jew who does not perceive that the Exile is Hillul Hashem, the desecration of G-d’s name is one who does not understand Jewish history and the Jewish destiny.  If he does not understand that his remaining in the Exile desecrates G-d’s name, guarantees a terrible Holocaust and impedes the swift final redemption – then shout to him the truth over and over again no matter how annoyed he is, or rather precisely because he is annoyed. The Jew who remains in Exile and refuses to live in Israel is NOT a good a Jew as he should be.  The Jew who can fail to understand that the Exile is a curse that is guaranteed to end in Auschwitz, and who can lay aside a mitzvah because “how will we support ourselves” (meaning, in the manner to which we have become accustomed), and who can think that the destiny of Israel lies in the hands of America – is a Jew who badly needs help.  He is as “irreligious” in his way as the secular nationalist in his.

The question of Aliyah is not a peripheral or tangential one.  It is at the heart of the Jewish future and destiny.  And it will be shouted forth so that, in the words of the Book of Ezekiel “whether they listen or cease to listen, but let them know that there was a spokesman among them.”

Somewhere in the Exile, the authentic Jewish Idea became misshapen and deformed.  On the one hand there were those who forgot that the Jew is a religion. On the other hand, there were those who forgot that we are a nation.  Both are helping to bring tragedy upon us.  Until we return to the authentic Jewish concept of a RELIGO-NATION I will continue to receive letters from people who do not understand.  Somehow they must be made to understand and that is why I write.

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Hebron - Redemption or Humiliation? - 1976

“K A H A N E”

The magazine of the authentic Jewish Idea

September 1976  – Elul 5736

Hebron – Redemption or Humiliation?

Below is the text of the speech given by Rabbi Meir Kahane at the Central Hotel in Jerusalem 28 AV (August 24) on the eve of a large demonstration in Hebron.  The audience consisted of mostly American tourists.  The Rabbi wanted these tourists to join him in Hebron and wave their American passport, since the Israeli government’s eyes are raised unto Washington.

Rabbi Kahane spoke:

 

The First Jew came early to the city.  It was burying his wife Sara, “in the field of Machpelah before Mamre – the same is Hebron.”  And there he lived and there he died as did his son Isaac along with Rebekah.  And when Jacob lay on his deathbed in the exile of Egypt, he called his sons together and charged them: “Bury me…in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah which is before Mamre…There they buried Abraham and his wife Sara; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah.”

And the Jews left the exile of Egypt and returned home and Caleb, the Jew who was sent to spy out the land and who found it good, was given as an inheritance that which he desired, the City of Patriarchs: “And Joshua blessed him and he gave Hebron unto Caleb and the son of Jephuneh for an inheritance.”

And the Jews dwelt in the land and their first king Saul fell in battle and David lamented and sought to return from the exile into which he had been driven.  And he asked G-d: “Whither shall I go up?”  And He said: “Unto Hebron.” And David went up unto Hebron and established there his kingdom, his first capital city.  And for centuries the Jews lived in and possessed Hebron until the terrible Roman legions came and burned the Temple, destroyed the land and exiled its Jews.  But the longing of the Jews for their land could not be quenched and slowly they returned and a Jewish presence was once again established in Hebron.  Poor, oppressed, suffering the terrors of both Moslem and Christian persecution, forbidden to go beyond the seventh step of the mosque that the Moslems had built over the Jewish shrine-the Jews nevertheless built their community in Hebron with synagogues, houses of learning, and institutions of charity.  The Avraham Avinu Synagogue, the Istanbul Synagogue, Yeshivat Firra, Yeshivat Magen Avraham, Yeshivat Torat Emet, Yeshivat Knesset Yisroel; all thrived in the Hebron that was poor in Jewish body but rich in Jewish spirit.  All of them-and Chesed L’Avraham.

The generous and charitable Jew of Bagdad, Yosef Avraham Shalom, decided, in 1909, to build a hospital for the Jewish community of Hebron.  He and the famous Sasoon family of India, contributed handsomely and on Lag Baomer of the year 1911, in the presence of the rabbis of Hebron led by the Haham-Bashi, Rabbi Saliman Mani, the cornerstone was laid.  And a Turkish deed, dated 1910, still exists today, confirming title to the building as residing equally with the Rabbis Mani and Franco.  The hospital was to serve Jew and Arab alike, healing their pains and illnesses.  It was Jewish built and Jewish owned and it went into tragedy along with all the other Jewish buildings of Hebron on that hot summer Sabbath eve in August, 1929.

The Arab mobs began to gather in the afternoon.  The mood was ugly and the perfidious British advised the Jews to remain in their houses.  But, the first victim was already counted as the matmid, the diligent student, at Yeshivat Hebron, Shmuel Rosenholtz who never left his study, sat alone in the Study Hall and the mobs turned his body into sieve with their knives.  But it remained for the next day, the Holy Sabbath, for the horror to be completed.  That Arabs raged through the town as the Jews cowered in their homes.  Moshe Goldschmidt was castrated, his eyes gouged out, and murdered; Nahum Segal saw his two-year-old son snatched from his arms and his head cut off; they thrust Noah Immerman’s head into a stove and he was burned alive.

And Chesed L’Avraham, now operated by Hadassah to serve all the citizens of Hebron, was put to the torch.  As the flames leaped high into the Judean air, in the adjoining building the Arabs dealt with 65-year-old Ben Zion Gershon, the pharmacist who had done so much for them.  His eyes, nose and hands were cut off and as he died the mob stabbed his wife with nailed clubs and knives so that she took two weeks to die; his daughter was raped before she died.  Seventy Jews took refuge in the home of A.D. Slonom, the banker and lone Jewish representative on the Hebron Town Council, in the belief that he, the dignitary, would be spared.  Most died along with their illusions and along with Slonom.  Within a few days nothing was left of the Jews of Hebron.  Nearly seventy were buried and all the rest fled to Jerusalem.

From that day forward, Hebron remained Judenrein.  Its emptiness of Jews was symbolized by Chesed L’Avraham-Hadassah standing silent, empty of its Jews as Arab murderers and robbers took possession.

And then came the Miracle.  “And thou shalt smash west and east and north and south…”  The miracle of the Six Day War as Jews, armed with the decree of the All Mighty, smashed through the Arabs to free their homeland unto the Jordan, and Hebron, city of Patriarchs, rejoiced in its first freedom in 19 centuries and wept tears of happiness as the flag of the Jews went up.  And Chesed L’Avraham, too, looked on its Jewish soldiers and waited to be redeemed.

The Messiah knocked on the door as the call of Redemption rang out and Rachel, weeping for her children, saw them returning to their borders.  Redemption was waiting, waiting for the Jews to understand her, to seize and embrace her.  Woe unto a people that saw nothing, called darkness light and light, darkness…

The Arabs of Hebron, cowering in fear as they anticipated their just punishment, were stunned to find the Defense Minister of the Jews, Moshe Dayan, race into town to comfort them with the news that the Cave of the Patriarchs would remain theirs and that the Jews would only be allowed to use it at certain hours.  How the Arabs could not believe it as the Jews were barred from returning to their city, their homes and property.  How the Arabs-who would have slaughtered every Jew they found had the positions been reversed and who waited in their homes with white flags hanging from every window-stared in disbelief as the insane Jews heard the Messiah pounding on the door and turned him away!  How they could not comprehend the Jews allowing Sheikh Ja’abry, inciter of murder in Gush Etzyon in 1948, to remain mayor and to wine him and dine him in the process.

How the Arabs watched in amazement in contempt for the stupidity of the Jews, as a handful of Jewish believers in the Messiah tried to open the door by coming to Hebron on Passover of 1968 to demand Jewish settlement there, only to be viciously attacked by Dayan.  (And how they ground their teeth as the Jews of Moshe Levinger defied the gentilized Dayan and government, and who with faith and stubbornness and sacrifice,created a Kiryat Arba.}

But Hebron itself remained Judenrein and the desecrated Synagogue of Avraham Avinu

-built in 1604 by Sephardi Jews - remained a wreck, buried under the droppings of sheep who used it as a pen leased to the Arabs by the Jewish military government of Hebron.

And Chesed L’Avraham-Hadassah remained silent, empty of its Jews, mourning for the dead who would never return and for the living that were as dead to redemption as all those who lay in the Jewish cemetery.  And, indeed, something inside the Jewish government of Israel had died.  It looked and saw nothing, it saw and understood nothing.  The men at the helm, the men to whom G-d is an abstraction, the men of socialism and secular nationalism and rationalism - did not understand that the rise of the Jewish State and the smashing of the enemy was the hand of G-d, the beginning of the Redemption.  They did not comprehend that the resurrection of Israel was the beginning of the end of the era of Hillul Hashem, the desecration of the name of the L-rd, which had been epitomized by the humiliation, persecution and the graveyard of the exile.  They were blind to the fact that a Jewish State was the beginning of the Sanctification of the name of the L-rd, putting an end to His humiliation, putting an end to the gentiles’ nineteen-century laughter, as they mocked the down-trodden Jews by saying: “Where then is your G-d?”  They did not see that the Jewish State, Jewish return, Jewish government, Jewish army and Jewish power were the Sanctification of G-d, were proof of His Omnipotence, were the answers to the mockery of the baffled gentiles who now blinked to see their holy places under Jewish sovereignty.  They did not have the vision to grasp the fact that refusal to allow Jews to return to Hebron because of realpolitik, because of fear of what the gentile world would say, was a retreat from Jewish might and sovereignty and that in turn was a retreat from Sanctification and from Redemption – a return to humiliation and desecration.  They did not realize that the refusal to return to Chesed L’Avraham was a refusal to open the doors to the Messiah and would bring down a terrible and needless tragedy on the Jewish State. 

When Jews of faith demanded return to Chesed L’Avraham, the gentilized Hebrews replied that they were bound by Jordanian law and that the law had turned over Chesed L’Avraham, to the United Nations!  When aged Avraham Franco showed his deed of ownership, the Defense Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres, replied:  “Jordan took over Jewish property under the Enemy Property Law and gave it to the UN.  We in turn pledged to the UN to honor their holdings in the occupied (sic) territories.  We have no intention of breaking that pledge.”

And so, the Messiah sighed and remained outside in the cold, while the Jewish Defense Minister of Israel continued to honor enemy definition of enemy property as “Jewish” – and Chesed L’Avraham and all the rest were zealously kept from the enemy by the enemy…

But there are good Jews in Israel.  There are Jews who understand the Divine origin of the state, the era of sanctification.  There are Jews who hear the Messiah’s knocking and who struggle with the government to open it.  They are Jews of Kiryat Arba, of Gush Emunim, who returned to Chesed L’Avraham-Hadassah with the deed of Avraham Franco in one hand and the deed of Abraham, our father and his One G-d, in the other.  The building is ours, they cried, the building is Jewish!  Open the doors to us, open the doors to the Messiah!

And the gentilized Hebrews refused and arrested them.  And when more came they arrested them, too, and put up barbed wire and soldiers with guns to make sure that the Jews and their Messiah would not enter.  And the gentilized Defense Minister of Israel complained that the Jews of faith were “inciting” the Arabs and swore that Chesed L’Avraham would not go back to the Jews, that he, the enemy, would keep the enemy property from entering the hands of the enemy…It is a desecration of all the holy and martyred dead who fell on that Sabbath 47 years ago.  It is a disgrace to the living Jews who won the battle for Hebron and lost the war as the Arabs stand and laugh because they know that just as they shouted during the pogrom of 1919, “the government is still with us…”

And what will be?  What will be depends in such great measure on the good Jews of America.  What will be depends on whether the Jews of the Exile who have such power because they have the money and influence that the government of Israel needs, will act.  It depends on whether the American Jew who loves the state will understand that there is a difference between the state he loves and its government which is such a disaster.  What will be depends on the American Jew saving the state from its government.

What will be depends on the American Jew rejecting the false anger of the Israelis who demand UJA money from him as an obligation because he is a Jew, and then telling him that he has no business interfering in Israeli affairs because he is not an Israeli.  It depends on his shouting back: “Precisely because I am a Jew I have the right to save Israel by more than just money.  Because I am a Jew I have a right and an obligation to save Israel from a disastrous government that leads her to tragedy.  It is not I who will cause more Jewish tragedy and losses but the government of Israel because I am a Jew I must stop this.  Because I am a Jew I know that this is not an “Israeli” issue but a Jewish one.  Because I am a Jew I have an obligation to go to Hebron and to open the doors of Chesed L’Avraham-to open the doors of the Messiah.

American Jews.  Come tomorrow to Hebron.  Bring your Jewishness and your American passport.  Wave the first before the world and shout: I am a Jew!  Make Hebron Jewish!  Open the doors of the Messiah!

And then wave your American passport that is so respected and revered by the men who rise each morning and say:  “I raise mine yes unto Washington, from Ford shall come forth my salvation…”  Wave it before those who have nothing but contempt for the Israeli citizen but who nervously need the American UJA contributor and Bonds purchaser.

American Jews!  You can do that which no one else can.  Hebron is not an Israeli issue but a Jewish one and you are Jewish.  Be Jewish.  Come to Hebron tomorrow and open the doors of Chesed L’Avraham.  And when your return to America-temporarily, before your immigration home-join the struggle against the tragic policies of a tragic government.  In the exile, open the Jewish struggle for a Jewish State.  Cease being intimidated.  Israel is as much yours as any Jew.  If you truly love Israel, you will know that “any love that does not have within it chastisement is not real love.”  Love Israel.  Save her from those who bring tragedy upon her by barring the way of the Messiah.  On to Hebron and the final redemption.

[Jews have returned to Hebron, by their blood, sweat and bravery – but the battle to remain and keep on building, and liberate all of Hebron still continues by the brave, devoted Jews.]

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Israeli Arabs: Fathers and Sons and Daughters Part 1

THEY MUST GO – 1981

RABBI MEIR KAHANE

Excerpts from: Israeli Arabs: Fathers and Sons and Daughters

Part 1 of 2 parts

Israeli Arabs.  Fathers and sons-and increasingly daughters.  For the Israelis have liberated the Arab woman, too, in order that she may also vote for anti-Zionists and teach anti-Israel hatred.  Thus, when the prime minister’s office boasts that “the expansion of the educational system has helped to raise the standard of education of the younger generation of women” and “the fact that Arab women are coming into closer contact with the Jewish population is opening up new horizons,” one gropes for an explanation for the smug satisfaction.  The most that can be said for Israel’s liberal policy is that it has created a new generation of Jew haters with due care to ensure that the source of the hate is equal, with discrimination because of sex..

The generation of the fathers is dying destroyed by the Israeli government’s “head-and-stomach” policy.  The father is dead; long live the son and daughter, whom Israel created.  They will do their best to destroy the Jewish state, and, of course, the Jewish state will continue to produce them.  The first generation of Israeli Arab university graduates immediately produced the El Ard anti-Israeli movement in the 1960’s.

Indeed, even then there were those who saw and understood-and those who did, terrified by what they saw, put it out of mind.  In the Midstream magazine (December 1962) Nissim Rejwan, an Israeli writer, said: “One of the more alarming aspects of the Israeli problem is that the new generation of Israeli Arabs generally shows even less willingness, not to speak of eagerness, to accept the fact of Israel’s existence than do their fathers and grandfathers.  The so-called Arab ‘intelligentsia’ in Israel which seems to embrace every literate person from university graduates to those who finished a few secondary classes, are in the majority of cases swayed by the heady talk…about ‘settling scores with Israel.’  Many of them, it would appear, cannot reconcile themselves to their status as a minority in a Jewish state and keep hoping for some sort of savior.” Was anyone listening?

The rise of the new generation of educated Israeli Arabs who did not know, the bitter taste of defeat and who openly moved toward confrontation with Zionism and the Jewishness of the state was itself given enormous impetus by the Six-Day-War.

Again, ironically, it was Jewish military victory that the Jews turned into yet another political defeat.  For the first time in nineteen years the Arabs were able to meet and talk with other Arabs who were not Israelis, who called themselves  “Palestinians,” and who openly spoke of the day when the hated Jews would leave.  The Israeli Arab suddenly, realized that he was neither meat nor milk, fish nor fowl.  He was not an Israeli, but now he was struck by the awesome realization that he had not been a “Palestinian” all those years either?  He was looked upon by the West Bank “Palestinians” as a traitor who cooperated with, and accepted, Israeli citizenship from the Jews who had stolen the land from his people.  In one fell swoop, all the factors that went into creating the new radical Israeli Arab came together.  Things could never be the same.

Not only were there new contacts with the West Bank “Palestinians,” but this was also the beginning of joint cooperation.  Thus, Israeli Arabs participated in a “Palestine Week” held in 1978 at the Universities of Bethlehem and Bir Zeit.  They helped organize it, and they printed and distributed a leaflet calling for the support of the PLO.  In defiance of the law several Israeli Arab students have begun studying in schools in the liberated territories.

The opening of the borders between the State of Israel and the liberated areas was seen by the incredibly obtuse Israelis as allowing the better-fed Israeli Arabs to demonstrate the benefits of Israeli occupation.  Of course, a child could have known that the exactly the opposite would occur.  The Israeli Arabs were suddenly given the opportunity to meet, regularly, with their own people who were struggling for what the Israeli Arab understood to be a common goal: freedom.

The mayor of Hebron, Fahd Kawasma, said (January 22, 1979): “The Israeli Arabs have remained foreigners and their lot remains ours. There is no possibility of blurring the fact that they and we are part of the same people, and the fact that they live in Israel does not make them less Palestinian.”

In his newspaper interview, Bir Zeit President Nasir added: “The destiny of the Arab College at Bir Zeit is to be the nucleus around which is built the Palestinian State.”  Indeed, the Arab students being trained in the Jewish universities of Israel see themselves in the same light.  They are the seed of the future “Palestine” leaders in the area of “Palestine conquered in 1948.”  They give leadership and examples to high school students and are the PLO leaders of tomorrow.

The irony is that the most extraordinary rise in the brazenness has taken place under the supposedly tough Begin government.  Maariv reporter Yosef Tzuriel commented on this as long ago as April 26, 1978.  “The rise of the Likud to power created a certain amount of tension in the first months among Arabs of Israel and the territories who expected a firmer policy against them. but after a short while it became clear that the new government was as liberal as its predecessor, if not more so.”

What is the real result of the millions of dollars poured into higher Arab education and the hundreds of millions spent on secondary (high school) training?  Consider:  In December 1979 the Progressive National Movement (PNM) won the election for control of the Arab Student Committee at Hebrew University.  In its platform the PNM called for:

·         acceptance of the Palestinian Covenant (which calls for the elimination of Israel)

·         the creation of a “democratic, secular Palestine” in place of Israel

·         acceptance pf terrorist activities as part of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination.

And indeed, in 1979, students and visitors at the university were startled to find mimeographed copies of the Palestinian National charter being distributed.

And should one have any doubt, the immensely frank interview with Mahmud

Muhareb would dispel all of them.  Muhareb, an Israeli Arab citizen of Lydda and at the time chairman of the Arab Student Committee at Hebrew University, presented his views to Maariv Israel’s largest newspaper (January 20, 1978): “We, the Arab students in the university, constitute and indivisible part of the Arab Palestinian nation, and we struggle in its service in order to achieve its goals.”

“As for me and my personal lot, I am first and foremost a Palestinian, resident of Lydda. Israeli citizenship was forced upon me. I do not recognize it and do not see myself as belonging to the State of Israel.  The law requires me to carry an Israeli identity card and passport.  As a Palestinian, I would prefer Palestinian ones.”

There is nothing new or startling about this.  The signs of Arab intellectual hatred of Israel and deep desire for the dismantlement were obvious to all who wished to see.

[Continued next week]

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Israeli Arabs: Fathers and Sons and Daughters Part 2

THEY MUST GO – 1981

RABBI MEIR KAHANE

Israeli Arabs: Fathers and Sons and Daughters[

(Excerpts)  Part 2 conclusion

Between 1978 and 1980 we have seen an inevitable rise in Arab hostility toward the state.  After winning the elections of leadership of the Arab students at Hebrew University, the Progressive National Movement opened an office in the student dormitories on Stern Street, hanging out a eye-catching sign: “Progressive National Movement.”  How a group such as the PNM was allowed to run for office or its members remain as students rather than to be prosecuted for sedition would seem difficult to explain.  Bear in mind however, that this is a university that allowed an Arab student Fares Saur, a member of a terrorist group that planted a bomb in the school cafeteria, to continue his studies after finishing his jail sentence.  The school explained that the criteria for acceptance to the university was purely academic. 

In its publication Tachadi for December 1978 the PNM wrote of its opposition to “any settlement with a recognition of the Zionist entity in any part of Palestine.”  The student author called for a war “beginning with leaflets and demonstrations and concluding with armed military struggle.”  Above all, the PNM made this point crystal-clear: “ The struggle is not limited to the ‘occupied territories.’  We must widen it to all parts of the Arab motherland.”

The PNM, running for control of the Arab student body, had distributed literature outlining its program and goals in which they demanded that “the right of national self-determination for the Palestinian people also included the masses in [Israel’s] Galilee and the Triangle.”  And so in January 1979 several Arab students distributed a pamphlet calling for support of the PLO and the disappearance of the “Zionist entity.”  Moreover, some Arabs fired off a cable to the Damascus meeting of the Palestine National Council to voice their support of the PLO’s struggle against the ever-present “Zionist entity.”

A furor arose in Israel; more “shock”, more demands for expulsion of all PLO -supporting students from the school. The universities did nothing, but tough General Avigdor Ben-Gal issued “stay-at-home” orders to six of the students.  The orders kept them limited to their villages and were to be in effect for three months – enough time to make them heroes and thus allow them to return and continue their incitement.

The six came from six different Israeli villages: Tamra, Araba, Kfar Yasif, Musmus, Sandala, and Umm al-Fahm.  It is instructive to look at two of the students so that we may get a clear picture of the insanity of the Israeli policy, as reported by Yosef Valter in Maariv (February 16, 1979).

Masoud A’jabria, twenty-four, is completing his M.A. at Hebrew University in international relations while going to law school.  Besides Masoud, there is his brother, Sa’id, learning chemistry at the Mizrachi-religious-sponsored Bar-Ilan University; a sister, studying at a teacher’s seminar in Hadar Am, and five younger brothers and sisters are attending high school.  Naturally, someday they will go on to university.  Yosef Valter visited the family and reported:  “from a brief conversation you find that all of them think and speak like Masoud, the older brother.”  That is a starkly frightening sentence when one remembers that Masoud A’jabria said: “In order to achieve a Palestinian revolution we must shed rivers of blood.”

Jamal Mahajana, twenty-one, comes from Umm al-Fahm.  Mahajana is a product of the integration Israeli myopics teach.  He studied in the mostly Jewish Afula high school and says, “I was not discriminated against.”  And so, having received the same education his Zionist neighbors received, and having been accepted into Hebrew University while 50,000 poor Sephardic Jews remain outside, Mahajana says in his telegram to the PLO in Damascus:  “We emphasized that we are Palestinian Arabs living in the State of Israel and, like others, we claim that the PLO is the sole representative of the Palestinian people… The Zionist regime is an oppressive regime…”

The total lack of any coherent and consistent policy on the part of Israel toward the Arabs was seen two weeks later, when the national Arab Student Union announced that it, too, saw the PLO as the exclusive leader of the Palestinian people.  No one was arrested, no one placed under house arrest. Little wonder that in the year that followed Arab boldness increased.

Arab students held an unauthorized demonstration at Hebrew University in November 1979 to protest the planned expulsion of Shechem’s PLO mayor Bassam Shaka.  The Arabs shouted, “We are all Arafat,” and “The state is ours,” a fight broke out involving chains, rocks, and knives.  Three Jewish students were injured.  A Jewish student group was formed called Students Who Are Disgusted. 

At Haifa University, on May 4, 1980, 50 Arab students marched through school buildings, disrupting classes and shouting against “Israeli fascism.”  Three days later a swastika and the words “Death to the Jews” were painted on doors at Haifa’s Technion.

At Haifa University, the Arab students published a paper called Bian, in which, among other things, they said:  “We are an indivisible part of the Palestine Arab people and the PLO is our sole legal representative…Zionism is a racist, colonialist movement…”

The young Arabs of Israel.  The fathers are dying.  The sons remain, and they will have sons and daughters-many.  The young, educated, modern Arab.  The Golem of Israel, created by Jews who believed that by caring for his body and expanding his mind, they would lead the Arab to accept being a permanent minority in a Jewish state.

If examples of Israeli blindness were not so prevalent, no one would believe them.  But consider:

“In January 1979 Knesset Education Committee chairman Ora Namir paid a well-publicized visit to the schools of Umm al-Fahm, one of the centers of Israeli Arab hate. Passing a wall on which had been painted “Long live Fatah,” she told the Arabs that “we are committed to doing everything we can to make Arab schools equal to Jewish schools,” despite a government decision to freeze and cut spending levels for Jews.”

And then Mrs. Namir, a Knesset member and a leader in Israel, said:  “The fact that you do not have enough latrines in the schools is, for me, even more tragic than not enough classrooms.  You will have the budget.  But you will have to promise me that the latrines will be first.”

Not by latrines does an Arab live, and he will never trade his national passions for them.  The latrines we give him he will take.  But the education he receives from Israel he will use to bring closer that day when Jews will be a minority and he can generously offer them the latrines.

[We can see that the power that the Arabs have today, was a long-time in the making.] 

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