Israel - 1989

K A H A N E

The Magazine of the Authentic Jewish Idea

May-June 1989   Iyar-Sivan 5749

           

ISRAEL  (excerpts)

In the Jewish State, a dream of ages becomes a nightmare.  For 2,000 years the Jew had a dream.  No matter where he lived in the Exile – Morocco, Poland, Yemen, Russia, Iraq, Galicia – the Jew dreamed the greatest of all possible dreams – that of shivat Tzion, the return to Zion.  The Jew of the exile, of humiliation, of fear, of terror, of pogroms and death, dreamed that some day he would go up from the fear and terror and humiliation and degradation; that a day would come when he – the Jew – would come home, would come home to his land, would have a state of his own, would exchange fear and terror and humiliation for sovereignty and pride and strength.  A state in which never again would the Jew fear for his life or dread walking anywhere in his land.  A Jewish State!  The dream of generations!

           

And so, today, we have a Jewish State.  Through G-d’s mercies and Jewish sacrifice, there exists, today, a sovereign Jewish State. The dream.

           

 The dream?  There is no fear in the State of Israel?  There is no humiliation?  There is no terror?  There is no gnawing sense of foreboding?  Of “what will be?”

           

 Months and months, a year; more, of an Arab uprising.  And the army of Israel that was able to smash Arab armies, nations; that won a war in Six Days, is unable to put on end to rioting by Arab women and children!  They attack the soldiers with stones, with firebombs – unafraid, taunting, cursing, hating.  And the soldiers of Israel stand in frustration, hobbled by insane orders, drafted by confused politicians who are, themselves, ideologically bewildered and guilt ridden, unsure of the justice of their own cause and fearful of world reaction.  The soldiers’ hands are tied by insane limitations on their freedom to act in self-defense  (The Central Command insists that soldiers attacked by stone throwing Arabs only fire into the air and warn the mob to stand back; then, if still alive or not seriously hurt, to shoot at one of the stone throwers, and then – assuming G-d has been good – to shoot at the crowd).  Is it any wonder that so many soldiers simply do not enter areas of danger? Or, worse, back away from confrontation, knowing that if they do not shoot they may be seriously injured or worse, and if they do, they may be court-martialed, as so many of the finest elite soldiers have already been? 

           

And as the Arabs see the soldiers back away; and as they see that army policy is to allow them, more and more, to do whatever they wish in their own villages – should it surprise us that they grow bolder and more confident, attacking soldiers and vehicles almost with impunity?  Is it surprising that little, autonomous Palestine “states” are springing up daily in various Arab villages where one can see PLO flags flying boldly from minarets and private “armies” of youths training openly with hatchets and swords?

           

And is there anyone who should be shocked as more and more Jews are attacked as they drive along highways in the liberated areas as well as on roads inside the State of Israel itself?  And that is the greatest tragedy of them all!  A Jewish State that rose to free the Jew from terror and fear.  And today, in the Jewish State that did arise, there is terror; there is fear.  Jews are afraid in their own land.

          

 In Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, the Jewish holy city, Jews are attacked daily, with stones and firebombs.  Jews are murdered in cold blood by Arabs who are unafraid.  Jewish automobiles and buses are regularly attacked, with Jews injured – daily.  Jews fear to go into the Old City of Jerusalem through the Arab sections.  Rare are those who enter through Sha’ar Sachem (Damascus Gate).  In Jaffa, buses are routinely attacked. Jaffa is not in the “occupied territories” but is rather the home of Israeli Arabs –our Arabs, our loyal Arabs…

           

In the northern Israeli city of Acre, Jews are physically attacked and less and less dare to go into the Old City there.  Acre is a part of the State of Israel.  Automobiles driving along the Wadi Ara highway are targets of Molotov cocktails and rocks.  The number of Jewish automobiles using the highway has dropped by fully 50%.  Wadi Ara is not in the “occupied territories.”   It is in the heartland of Israel, running between the cities of Hedera and Afula.  In the Galilee, Israeli Arabs attack Jews, a grenade is thrown at a police vehicle, police arrest Arabs of Israel as members of terrorist groups.

           

 Soldiers are attacked as they hitch rides – attacked, kidnapped, murdered.  Women soldiers are forbidden to hitch rides and men are strictly limited.  This is the free Jewish State of which the national anthem Hatikva, says: “To be a free people in our own land…”

           

The bitter truth is that the Jew is afraid in larger and larger areas of his own state land. And the bitterer truth is that the Arab is not.  There is no area in the land, no part of Israel that Arabs avoid.  They fear going nowhere – at any time, day or night.  Arab kiosks and stalls are to be found in every Jewish market place.  There are no Jewish market places in Gaza or any other Arab town or city in any of the liberated areas or, for that matter, in any Arab village in Israel itself.  The Arabs would never allow it….

           

The intifada grows bolder.  And it will – it must spread into the State of Israel, reaching into more and more Jewish areas.  For in the Middle East, in the mind of the world of the Arab it is strength and weakness that set the tone. When the Arab sensed Jewish strength and a Jewish army unhobbled by anyone – he sat in fear and passivity.  When he began to sense – rightly – Jewish weakness, hesitation and fear, he rose up to carry out the never-ending dream – the return of “Palestine,” a dream to be built on the ruins of Israel, the Jewish State.  The Arab sees Jewish weakness, hesitancy, impotence, indecision, fear – and he prepares the sharpened hatchet and knife.

           

And as the Arab sense of power, pride, victory and, above all – justice of his cause –grows and flourishes, so does there arise, like some noxious weed, a growing number of Jews stricken with a sickness of soul that can  only be termed a kind of  spiritual and psychological AIDS.  Deeply troubled people, ridden with guilt, that time-dishonored Jewish disease, they were conceived in the psychoses of an exile of centuries, and born in the self-hate that afflicts so many of our people.

           

 Their guilt and self-hate drive them to question not only the justice of the Jewish presence in what they outrageously term the “occupied” lands, but even to doubt, in the recesses of their troubled minds, the very right of the Jew to have come to the Land of Israel in the first place, and take the land from the indigenous “Palestinians.”  To be sure, they are not only afflicted with guilt and self-hate, they also lack the courage to cure their affliction, for if it is true for them that the Jews are thieves and have stolen the land from the Arabs, then is not the moral solution for the leftist to stand up and give up, give “back” his kibbutz?  Give it “back” to the poor Arabs?  Of course, that is the normal step for a “thief” whose conscience has been stricken.  But not only does the Jewish leftist and liberal in Israel suffer from a disease-ridden soul of guilt, he also lacks the courage to act on it by returning his “stolen” land. 

           

They wallow; do the leftists and self-proclaimed moralists, in this vomit of guilt, their self-hate growing in proportion to their lack of moral courage.  And so, in a desperate effort to win a crumb of Arab forgiveness and to somehow soothe their own tortured soul, they are compelled to support the Arab position on every issue.  They become trumpets of shrill criticism and attack on the State of Israel, on the Army of Israel, on the People of Israel.  On themselves. They march for the poor “Palestinians,” they bleed and weep for the “Palestinians,” they demand a homeland for the poor “Palestinians.”  “The poor Palestinians?”  Innocent victims of Israeli aggression?

           

 Land for peace?  By all means.  The Jews who were the victims of countless efforts to destroy them and who are the rightful owners will keep the land and be prepared to graciously give the murderous Arabs peace.

           

 And above all, no guilt!  What causes a Jewish people that has suffered thousands of dead and tens of thousands of wounded and maimed at the hands of the Arabs, fail to understand that they are a cruel enemy, bent on destroying Israel and decimating the Jews?  What causes Jews who see the brutality and treachery and viciousness with which Arabs massacre each other, refuse to see what our fate would be if we would be so mad as to give them the slightest opportunity to do to us what they dream to do to us? Above all, what makes a Jewish people that has only one land and has returned to that land, to feel guilty over it and to accept the myth of a “Palestine” and a “Palestinian people?”

          

There is no Palestinian people and there is no Palestine!  There is not, there never was, and please G-d, there will never be.

           

 If something is really yours – you leap upon it, you proclaim it so and you take very step possible to insure that it will be yours forever.  If you do not, then your pious speeches about ownership will be met with doubt and disbelief.  And on the other hand, when the other side – the Arabs – daily, hourly, and loudly,. And proclaim that the land is “Palestine” what the world sees is an apparent choice between Arabs who claim that the land is theirs and who fight and die for it, and Jews who keep a “status quo” which is nothing more than “the occupied territories.”  What do we expect from any objective person?

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What Happened To Us? - 1983

“ K A H A N E”

The magazine of the authentic Jewish Idea

Summer 5743 -1983

VIEWPOINT

What Has Happened To Us?

{change Reagan to Obama, Yamit to Gush Katif)

Jabotinsky compared it to a stagecoach, its coachman thrown from his seat and the horses racing wildly towards the edge of a terrible chasm.  In the coach sit people, eating, drinking laughing, oblivious to the terrible rush to destruction.  One man alone looks in horror at the revelers. “Do something,” he cries.  “Stop the horses!  Quickly, do something before we perish!”

Jabotinsky spoke of the coach and blind passengers in the years just preceding World War II.  The coach was Europe and the blind revelers were the Jews and they saw, heard, and understood nothing.  And all of Jabotinksy’s pleas availed him nothing.  The horses raced to the edge, plunged over and carried six million passengers to their doom.  Only then – at the final moment – did they understand.  It was too late.

I stand and watch the coach of our days rushing madly towards tragedy.  Inside are, again, revelers.  They see and hear and understand nothing.  All the things that occur pass them by as if in a dream that fades from view.  And there is so little time…

What has happened to us?  What has happened to a nation that was once described as “a wise and understanding people?”  Wise?  Say, rather, incomprehensibly foolish!  Understanding?  Of nothing, absolutely nothing.

Look at us.  Fury at Reagan?  Did we expect anything else?  But, of course, we did.  The uncomprehending, foolish Jews who have lost their Jewish way, expected goodness and friendship from the gentile.  How they cheered the anti-Communist Reagan, all the Jewish “nationalists” who know not an Aleph from and Aleph.  How all our Beginites, and Tchiyayites and politically “conservative” Jews mocked the liberals and boasted of a different kind of president and policy in this shift to the Right.  How they cheered and how they understood nothing these empty-headed nationalists who are ultimately – in their ignorance – as blind as the labor Party and its Peresites.

The Almighty repays in His own quiet way, exact measure for measure.  He looks from the heavens at the Jewish dwarfs and says: You trusted Reagan; you leaned on the broken reed that is the gentile?  Enjoy the fruits of your leaning.  In the measure that you turned to the goy, so shall you suffer the disappointments of your foolish illusions.

The Little Jew, the myopic Jews, the dwarfs and pigmies.  See them write angry letters-to-the-Jewish-editor condemning the gentile they cheered only yesterday.  See them decide to go with pseudo activist rabbis to protest the actions of the goy they loved so just a short time ago.  Read the columns by the consistent columnists – consistently wrong and blind.  See the editorials in the papers condemning the president – the very same papers that boasted in the not very distant past of how their support elected him.

Foolish coach riders!  Myopic Jews!  What do you want from the goy?  What did you expect from Him?  What has happened to a people that once understood everything and, today, comprehends nothing?  What has happened to a Chosen people that insists upon being dull and ordinary, as the gentiles?

What has happened to a people that once understood and believed that it is the L-rd, G-d of Israel, who Alone decrees and decides and gives victory and salvation?  What has happened to that people that, today, has become so assimilated by foreign concepts and cultures that it lifts its eyes up to Washington thrice daily, looking for salvation?

What has happened to a people that once possessed the pure faith that understood that “Israel is delivered by the L-rd; that the hands of man are impotent and unavailing; that “a horse is a false thing for safety, neither doth it afford escape by its great strength,” that “these may come with horses and these with chariots but we will make mention of the name of the L-rd, our G-d;’ that spoke and believed in “the G-d that girdeth me with strength and maketh my way straight;’ that was supremely confident so that, “I am not afraid of ten thousands of people that have set themselves against me round about?”

What has happened to that same people that today weeps at the thought of the goy in Washington taking from us horses and chariots and withholding from us the weapons that we, daily, proclaim to be meaningless in the face of the L-rd?  What has happened to a people that shrinks in fear of losing its “ally”, of being alone, isolated, forsaken by Man – the same people that piously proclaims in its Torah “It is a people that dwells alone and is not reckoned among the nations?”

It is a people that turns its prayer service into lip service; that has managed to produce Orthodox atheists who believe in mitzvoth but not in the G-d who created them; that has fallen from the heights of the Chosen, special and supreme of all nations to the depths of mediocrity and ordinariness and equality of spiritual poverty.

Stop it!  It is not Regan the gentile who is the key to our misfortune.  Like the Assyrians who once stood in his position, he is but the staff of the anger of G-d.  He is but the vehicle of the Almighty’s fury at His Jewish people who threw away their mantle of greatness and chose gentilehood.

Measure for measure!  This is the way of G-d.  We pay today for Yamit (have we so soon forgotten, we who have become so utterly insensitive to spiritual realities?). We pay today for the obscene scene in Beirut.  We pay for our fear of the gentile and our bowing to him – and how disgusting are the hypocrisies of the Prime Minister who crows that “we Jews bow only to G-d” and then proceeds to collapse before Reagan?

The Almighty is telling us:  You who feared the Americans and betrayed faith in Me; you who decided that the gentiles are a safer refuge than the rock of Israel; you who, out of fear of the goy, gave up Yamit and refused to wipe out the enemy of G-d in Beirut – will now enjoy your goy.  Anger?  Let it be directed against the Jewish leaders, beginning with the Prime Minister who understood nothing of the Jewish destiny and who plucked defeat from the jaws of victory by kneeling before the American goy.  Fury?  Let it be directed against ourselves for our failure of nerve, which was based on failure of faith.  Let it be directed against ourselves who – with or without ritualism – ceased long ago to really believe and who – piously payetic or not – have made the G-d of Israel an irrelevant thing in all areas of importance and who assign Him His place as long as He knows it.

Flee from the leaders, rabbis and lament alike, leftists or nationalists, moderates or pseudo-activists, who understand nothing.  Their attacks on Reagan may warm your hearts and swell their heads – but they understand nothing.

Let us return to the most basic of things: Total, complete faith in the G-d of Israel.  Let it be proven by the real deeds that transcend political hypocrisy of a Prime Minister or the irrelevancies of musar discourse in a yeshiva that is full of exhortation and fury, signifying nothing.  The reality of faith in G-d is proven by our total rejection of fear of the gentile.  By our ignoring his threats and demands.  By our rush to be isolated and alone with Him.  By policies – including annexation of the liberated lands, including Lebanon; unlimited settlement; removal of the Arabs; emergency aliya from the impurity of the exile – that prove that though the night is dark and dangerous, we believe, we truly believe.

“Then would they peace be as a river and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.” 

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What Will Be? - 1977

K A H A N E”

The magazine of the authentic Jewish Idea

May 1977 – Sivan 5737

WHAT WILL BE?

There is, generally, a gap of three weeks between the writing of this magazine and its publication.  Because of that, when these words are read two events will have already taken place.  The elections for the Knesset will be over and the results already known.  And the effort to have a groundbreaking ceremony for the first Jewish settlement in ancient Shchem since the Exile began, will have been made.

At the moment of writing, however, neither event has taken place and I do not know whether on May 18, after the two events have occurred, I will sit in the Knesset or in an Israeli prison.  What is clear, however, is that the two events are intrinsically bound, one to the other.

The trip to Shchem is part of the drive to – once and for all – establish the principle of Torah law over contradictory secular law, when the latter attempts to prevent Jews from obeying their obligation to the former.  It is part of the drive – once and for all – to do away with the humiliation and desecration of huge parts of the Land of Israel that are nominally under Israeli control, but in fact dominated and arrogantly possessed by Arabs.  It is an effort to stop the Washington plan to force Israel into suicidal concessions and the Israeli preparation to give in to at least a large part of the American demands.  It is part of the hope that a tempest will be planted in the hearts of enough Jews so that they will join the call to the Israeli government: We will not allow you to give up the land and we will refuse to obey orders to retreat if we are soldiers and join a campaign of civil disobedience if we are civilians.

That is why I plan NOT to ask the government for permission to go to Shchem, for no permission is needed for a Jew to go anywhere in his country.  That is why I plan to ignore the order barring me (sic) from the liberated lands that has been issued by the army.  That is why I plan to call upon the troops, if stopped, to refuse to violate Jewish law by barring a Jew from the Land of Israel and to disobey the illegal orders given them.

That is why I do not know where I will be listening to the Knesset election results.  And as to what the people of Israel will do – who can say?  There are many things I might not have said that would have gained me votes.  But doing that would be turning into a politician and making the Knesset more important than the reason for wanting to be in it.  The Knesset, for me, is nothing more than a forum, an opportunity to have my voice heard – and that is vital.  But the voice itself and what it says is even more vital and when one begins to compromise and rationalize that compromise by thinking that the end of entering the Knesset justifies the means of compromising – then there is never an end

to the deceit.  Then one does the same once he is in the Knesset so that he be re-elected or become a cabinet minister.  No, the truth is not a thing you play with.

The truth has been said in this campaign: That the Jewish people is the Chosen people of G-d and that “what will be” depends on their cleaving to the concepts and the mtizvot of Torah; that the fundamental concept is the faith and belief and trust in G-d that is measured in terms of the difficult sacrifices and dangers embodied in such yardsticks as rushing to the aid of a Jew, refusing to violate Torah by giving up sacred Jewish land, refusing to place one’s trust in allies and Washington, leaving the exile with its impurity and prohibition to live there and coming home to the Jewish land, removing the specter of the Arabs who, by their refusal to recognize the Jewish right to Israel, desecrate the name of G-d.

The truth has been said and I have preached and practiced.  That I will sit either in the Knesset or prison is clear.  Which one, what will be – only the Jews of Israel can decide.  By the time you read this they will have decided and you and I will both know.

MAPS

The pressure on Israel to withdraw totally from the liberated lands will mount with every passing week following the elections.  The demand will be that, in return for a spurious and nebulous “peace” Israel accept a fraudulent and non-existent people and state known as “Palestine”.  It is important to know exactly what the map will look like in case such as state should ever come into being next to Israel.

Along the coastal strip, Arab guns and troops will be 22 kilometers (some 15 miles) from Tel Aviv; 15 kilometers (11 miles) from Netanya; 14 kilometers at the narrowest point between Netanya and Herzeliya.  They will naturally be right next to Jerusalem which will return to being the border and will return to 10 kilometers (some 6 miles) from Beersheva and 8 kilometers (5 miles) from Afula.

Not a plane will get up into the air over the costal strip without facing the withering fire of the SAM missiles that Arafat and his people will set up all along the border.  The Israeli cities on the coastal plan (Tel Aviv, Holon, Bat Yam, Ramat Gan, Benei Brak, Givatayim, Petach Tikva, Herzeliya, Netanya) will become prey to ceaseless bombardment in any “war of attrition” begun by the “Palestinians” and their Communist block, Cuban, Asian and African allies they care to invite in as “volunteers.”  One who knows what happened to the Egyptian cities along the Canal during the 1970 War of Attrition knows, too, exactly how Jewish cities may look, G-d forbid, should the front lines be shifted from the Canal, the Golan and the Jordan to the heartland of Israel.

The prohibition against giving up Jewish land will either be obeyed or not.  We will either trust in G-d or in man.  If we prove to be faithless Jews, divine punishment will come in its most natural form.  We will suffer the natural consequences of our actions – the scenario I have described, above.  “Not one inch” is more than a theological point.  It is tragically practical. 

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Viiolence Does Not Help - 1988

RABBI MEIR KAHANE in 1988 wrote the following article.  As you read it simply change the names and it could have been written today.

Who Said

Violence Does Not Help

A dozen Israeli leaders, including Shamir, Peres and Rabin, solemnly advised the Arabs (for their own good, we must assume) that “violence and riots do not help.”

“Riots do not help?  Violence only hurts your cause?” our leaders said.

Balderdash!  Of course, violence helps, why else did Mr. Shamir decide to help form the Stern group (cruelly called “gang” by the British and Jewish Establishment types who warned that “violence would not help”…) 

And, if violence and rioting did not help the Arab cause, why is it that the “Palestine” question has been headline news almost every day.  And what forced the Americans and West who, from the beginning were comfortably isolating themselves from the problem.  Now they condemn Israel and demand that a political solution be found?

Who said, “Violence does not help?

The “Palestinians” seeing that every political effort had failed, reasoned, why should violence be perceived as not helping?   Knowing that television and news media thrive on “action.” Why should the Arabs not attempt to give them that, knowing that hundreds of millions of people all over the world would be seeing it?

Who said, “Violence does not help?”

What put the Soviet Jewish issue on page on of The New York Times and as the major story on almost every television station, if not violence?  And what made the British get out of Palestine?  What led to the creation of a Jewish state, if not violence?

How much good did non-violence do for the Jews of the Holocaust?  Of course violence helps. It helps to force an issue onto the headlines and consciousness of the world.  It makes people talk about the issue.  And then, if the violence is accompanied by clever propaganda, it helps remarkably well and that the confused object of your violence does not know how to deal with you and your violence, why – of course – you continue and escalate that violence.

The truth is violence has already succeeded in making Israel retreat.  When Shamir and Rabin and Peres declare that as soon as order is restored, Israel will sit down to discuss “complete” autonomy and a political solution of the “Palestine” problem, that is exactly what the aim of the violence was.  And had there been no violence, Shamir and the Likud would have been perfectly content to sit for another 20 years with the status quo.

The Arabs understand an essential truth of world relations.  They understand that the world cares little about any issue unless it is prodded.  Nations and peoples, for the most part, are involved and preoccupied with their own problems.  If one wants to be heard, he must not only shout, for the world has long been inured to shouts.  The one who wishes to be heard must shock.  And there is nothing more shocking than violence.

This is true for all peoples whether their cause is right or wrong.  And of course, the Arab case is wrong.  But it does not remove the essential reality of the very great effectiveness of violence.  On the day that the helpless and hapless Jewish “leaders” stop babbling about the ineffectiveness of violence and concentrate more on improving their own ineffectiveness by putting down of the violence, Israel will be in a much better position of security.

Violence helps the Arabs.  Crushing that violence in the most effective and the quickest way helps the Jews.

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