From
Barbara Ginsberg’s Desktop
Beyond Words
Selected Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane,
1960-1990
Volume 6
“Beyond Words” is a newly-published seven volume collection
of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s writings from
1960 – 1990 that originally appeared in The Jewish Press, other serial
publications, and his privately-published works.
“Beyond Words” also includes a number of extra features:
Chronology of Rabbi Kahane's life.
“Beyond Words” now
can be bought at Amazon.com. On the
search line, type… Beyond Words Kahane.
ALONE
The United States decision to speak with the Palestinian
Liberation Organization, a thing that in effect means recognition of the
terrorists as the party that Washington looks to as the representative of the
“Palestinian people,” is a thing that should shock no one. And yet it does.
It shocks and angers Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres
coalitionally and it shocks the twins Moshe Arens and Yitzhak Rabin and it
shocks American Jewish leaders. It
should not, and the fact that it doesn’t speaks volumes for the impotence and lack
of Jewishness of those who are the leaders (G-d help us!) of the Jewish state
and people.
The Arab-Jewish ongoing struggle must, of necessity, become
a thing of which the United States public and Administration will either grow
weary or, seeing it as a threat to their own interests, will take steps to
attempt to end it. The “Palestinian”
uprising is only the latest in a series of events that have moved both
Washington and the American public to a more hostile attitude toward Israeli
policies (or to be more exact, its total lack of any policy). Indeed, the truth is that the history of
U.S.–Israel relations is far less strewn with roses than the Arab lobby in the
United States would have people believe.
From its inception, indeed even before that, the United
States placed immense difficulties in the path of a new Jewish state. American withdrawal of support for the United
Nations Partition Plan in April 1948 was followed by an embargo on all weapons
to the Middle East, which hurt only the Jews.
U. S. Secretary of State George Marshall warned the future first Foreign
Minister of Israel, Moshe Shertok (Sharett), not to declare a Jewish state,
since the U.S. would not help save it from the Arab armies. President Eisenhower, in 1956, compelled
Israel to give up the Sinai and Gaza to Nasser and brutally threatened to
prevent money from the UJA and Israel Bonds from reaching the Jewish
state. Not a bullet was sold to Israel
by the United States until the early 1960s, and in the crucial weeks before the
Six-Day war of 1967, as Israel’s fate hung in the balance, the United States
refused to implement its promise of support made by Eisenhower, in the event
that Egypt again closed the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping and blocked the Gulf
of Eliat. It was fear of United States
reaction that moved Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan to make the criminal step of
allowing Egypt and Syria to strike the first blow in the Yom Kippur War and
thus doom 4,000 Jewish soldiers to die.
And it was the United States that prevented the Israelis from destroying
Egyptian power, their Third Army, when Israel had them surrounded.
This American policy of snatching the fruits of victory from
Israel continued in the Lebanese war, as the golden opportunity to physically
liquidate the terrorists and their leaders in Beirut was frustrated by Ronald
Regan’s pressure. Since then, the United
States has condemned Israel regularly over the intifada, and Secretary
of State Shultz, a man with a reputation as a friend of Israel, exerted
enormous pressure on the Israelis to agree to a disastrous International Peace
Conference. And now, of course,
recognition of the PLO.
So let there be no surprise.
It will get worse, and there is nothing the secularists of the Hellenist
State of Israel can do about it, except.
Except weep and wail and protest and capitulate. Or understand what being Jewish is; what
the miracle of the rise of a Jewish state is; what faith in the G-d of Israel
is.
To be alone is the destiny of the Jew ever since it was
decreed, “Lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone” (Numbers 23:9) For to be alone is to do two things. One, it is to create a separate Jewish
society and state, free of the influences of the gentile culture and
abominations. Two, it is to manifest in
the most graphic way possible the total faith in the
G-d of Israel that is the foundation of the Jewish people
and of Torah itself. Indeed, the final
redemption of the Jewish people cannot come as long as the Jew has even one
ally upon whom he leans. And that is
why, whether the Jew approves of not, the All Mighty will guarantee that there
will be no ally, that Israel will be isolated.
For as long as the Jew has even one ally, he will always
convince himself that his salvation was due to that gentile. A secularized people that has lost its
moorings, its anchor of Judaism, has lost, too the ability to even conceive of
life in a way that transcends what it calls “logic” and “practicality” and
“reality.” It will always cast its bread
upon the waters of the gentile ally, and it is only when they are so soggy that
they sink, and the Jew is left starving, that there exists even the remotest possibility
of his returning to the one and only hope – the G-d of Israel.
And so Israel slides towards isolation. Not the isolation that G-d demands, the
deliberate move of the Jew towards separation and isolation and trust in the
All Mighty. But the forced isolation of
nations moving away from Israel either through support of its enemies or by
taking an “even-handed” stance. The ally,
American is becoming much less than that today, and tomorrow it will be
worse.
But say not “worse,” because in Jewish terms it is better. Best.
Salvation and redemption for the Jew will come only when he is isolated and
alone with his G-d. It will be whether
the Jew likes it or not.
Written January 1989
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