FORTY YEARS

Rabbi Meir Kahane 1983

Forward to the Second Edition

It was in 1982 that I wrote this book, “FORTY YEARS”.  In the seven years that have passed, the words I wrote and the thoughts I put down here have only been sadly affirmed.  The tragedy, the awful national tragedy and catastrophe I wrote about and that need not be, comes closer and closer.  And my people see nothing and hear nothing.  There are those who, in their tragic ignorance of Judaism and Jewish destiny, simply do not understand what they see and what they ear.  And there are those who do not wish to see and do not wish to hear.  And so it comes closer.

           

My people, my poor people…

           

More than 2500 years ago, the Prophet Ezekiel spoke, in the name of G-d, to the people of Israel, saying: “If I shall bring upon the land a sword – the inhabitants shall take a man from amongst them, and they shall appoint him a tzofe, a watchman for them.  And when he seeth the sword come upon the land he shall blow the shofar and warn the people.” (Ezekiel 33)

            The tzofe the watchman.  Appointed to see the sword come upon the people of Israel and cry out; to blow the shofar and warn his people!  That is the role of every Jew who can see and hear and understand – and who loves his people.  To cry out, to sound the shofar, to warn them!

            That is why this book was written.  It is the nation shofar of our times.  One will hear it’s warning by reading it, by studying it, by taking it to heart.  May the Almighty give us the wisdom to understand and the courage to act on that understanding.  For the forty years of which I speak, have passed.

            And the days of Judgment are here.

26 Tevet 5749  -  3 January 1989                                                    Meir Kahane

An Introduction

            It is seven years since I wrote the manuscript, FORTY YEARS, and with the passing of the 40 years of which I speak in the book, with the Jewish State now past its fortieth year, the terrible realities of which I wrote hem, become starkly clear.  Terrible visions become awful realization.  The Jewish State crumbles and shakes and shudders before our eyes as the gentile enemies gather strength and momentum and the Jew stands astonishingly impotent and paralyzed – at best – and deeply divided by defeatism, abnormal guilt and suicidal tendencies from within.  The dream of centuries becomes a nightmare; the hope that was never lost becomes a thing to be questioned, doubted, attacked.

            But, of course, it could never be anything else.  The fate of the Jew, despite the foolish arrogance of the secularists and the unfathomable loss of the way of apparently religious Jews, has always been based upon the iron law of Divine determination:  “If you shall walk in My statutes and keep My commandments … I will give you peace in the land and you shall lie down and none shall make you afraid… But if you will not hearken unto Me and will not do all these commandments, and if your soul abhor My ordinances so that you will not do all My commandments but break my covenant…I will set My face against you and you shall be smitten before your enemies; they that hate you shall rule over you and you shall flee when none pursueth you.” (Leviticus 26)

FORTY YEARS

The idea first entered my head as I sat, one day, in Ramle Prison. It was the eve of Tisha B”AV, the tragic commemoration of the destruction of both Temples, the beginning of both terrible exiles.  I sat, reviewing the book of Jonah, with its message of repentance, on the day of national tragedy.  Jonah enters the city of Nineveh, to which he has been sent by the Almighty, to warn them of impending destruction unless they repent.  And as I read, the words of Jonah to the people suddenly leaped out at me:  “In forty years, Nineveh shall be overturned!”

            Forty.  The thought suddenly struck me:  How many times, again and again, does that number arise in connection with sin and punishment?  “And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.” (Genesis 7:12), the punishment of a world flooded for it s sin.  Forty.  And centuries later, as the Jews of the desert “despised the pleasant land” and wept over their “home” in Egypt, the Almighty angrily decreed that the generation of the desert would not enter the Holy Land saying: “And your children will wander in the wilderness forty years and bear your faithlessness.” (Numbers 14:33).  Again, forty.  And the punishment of stripes, whipping, is one of “forty shall he strike him, he shall not increase”, and the atonement for sin and the purification process begin with a study of Torah given forty days at Sinai, continuing in a mikva, ritualarium, whose water must be a minimum of forty S’ah.

            Forty.  Again and again, the number forty connected to sin and punishment.  Why forty?  I do not know except to quote the rabbis in Bamidbar Rabah  5:5: “And why does the Torah obligate forty stripes?  For he (the sinner) violated a Torah given in forty days and brought death unto himself (man) who was created in forty days.  Let him therefore, be whipped forty times and be relieved of his punishment, as was done to Adam who sinned, was deserving of death, and was punished with forty.  For the world was cursed, due to his sin, forty curses:  ten for Adam, ten for Eve, ten for the serpent and ten for the land.”

            And in that tiny cell in prison the thought expanded.  Not only was the concept “forty” tied to sin and punishment, it was specifically connected to the warning of G-d to the sinner, a warning designed to avert that punishment.  Jonah warns Nineveh of impending punishment and this gives them a grace period of forty days during which they might search their souls and change their ways.

            In the case of both Holy Temples, the Almighty gave the Jewish people a period

of forty years of grace; time to think and rethink their ways.  Time to return to Him

and save themselves from that punishment.  In the awful final days of the first Jewish

State, the L-rd tells the prophet Ezekiel: “And thou shall lie again on your right

side and bear the iniquity of the House of Judah, forty days; each day for a year,

each day for a year.”(Ezekiel 4:6)

            And the Biblical commentator Rashi declares: “We learn that the time of the

exiling of the ten tribes until the destruction of Jerusalem there was a period of forty

 years.” Forty years:  The Almighty, having brought down His wrath on the ten tribes of

 Israel, begins the countdown to the terrible day of punishment that is decreed for a

 House of Judah that has turned its back on its G-d.  But one final opportunity is given

them, a grace period.  A grace period of forty years.  And so a prophet is chosen, a

 prophet of grace, of final warning – Jeremiah.  And in the words of the rabbis:  “The

 book of Lamentations was more effective for Israel than the forty years that Jeremiah

 prophesied unto them” (Eichah Rabah 4:27)

            And the Second Temple “Forty years prior to the destruction of the Temple, the lot (for the Yom Kippur sacrifice) never was chosen by the High Priest’s right hand; and the red slip outside the Holy of Holies never turned white (as a sign of divine forgiveness) and the western candle would not light and the doors of the Sanctuary opened by themselves until Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai admonished them, saying: “Sanctuary, sanctuary…I know that you are destined to be destroyed…(Yuma 39b).

            And again: “For forty years did Rabbi Zadok sit and fast in the hope that Jerusalem not be destroyed.” (Gittin56a)

            And again: “For forty years prior to the destruction of the Temple, the Sanhedrin exiled itself (from the Temple) and sat in the market place.” (Avoda Zara 8b)

            Once again, the period of grace.  Forty years.  The final hope of the Almighty that, perhaps, His final warning would be heeded.  The countdown of forty years, the last chance.

And it was then that the full impact of the thought stuck me:  if it is true that in the first Jewish state and in the second, the Almighty granted us a grace period of forty years – is it possible that the same could be true with the third state?  Our state – the State of Israel?

            The thought has become an ongoing one; call it obsessive, if you will.  After all, the final redemption is one that our rabbis have explained as coming in one of two ways – and there is no third.  “In its time, I will hurry it (the Redemption).” (Isaiah 60).  And the rabbis explain:  “If they, the Jews, merit it I will hurry it.  If they do not merit it, it will come in its time”.

            The difference is more than chronological It is a qualitative difference that goes to the very essence of our existence.  A “hurried redemption is one that comes with majestic glory and free of pain and tragedy.  But one that is “in its time”, by the very fact that it comes despite our unworthiness, is accompanied by terrible destruction and holocaust as the deserved punishment that precedes the final glory and salvation.  How important it is for us to avoid this awful and needless suffering!  And how convinced I am that the Almighty pleads with us to do just that; to replace a redemption “in its time” with one that is “hurried”; to search our ways and return to Him  And how convinced I am that just as in the past He has given us a period of grace, so, too today we have been granted it.

            And it becomes clearer and clearer to me that, once again, it is forty years; forty years of warning, admonition, opportunity.  The final chance.

            The State of Israel, that most incredible of miracles, marked the beginning of the final redemption, a redemption born – not out of the betrothal of Jew to his Maker through faith and return – but rather out of the wedlock of Holocaust that was the depths of desecration of the name of G-d, the Hillul Ha’Shem that was mockery, humiliation, and denial of the prowess or very existence of the G-d of Israel.  It was that Holocaust which broke the patience of a G-d of Israel who watched His name mocked and dragged in the gentile dust for 20 centuries.  “Not for your sake do I do this, O House of Israel, but rather for My Holy Name that you desecrated by the very fact of being among the nations.” (Ezekiel 36).

            And so, a Jewish State rose from the crematoria and ashes, not because we deserved it, but because the gentile did.  Because the punishment and awesome wrath of G-d were being prepared for a world that had mocked and humiliated the name of the

L-rd, G-d of Israel.

            The State of Israel, which rose up in the year 1948, I am convinced, is the beginning, not only of the redemption, but also of the grace period granted us.  In the very marrow of my bones, I feel that the Almighty, in His infinite mercy and goodness, gives us the final beseeching opportunity to turn needless suffering into glorious and instant redemption.

 

            Forty years. The number may not be exact; it may be a few more, a few less, but the period is clear.  Forty years of warning, of heartfelt cry from our Father in Heaven.  Forty years of grace, of a last opportunity to reverse needles disaster, to bring the redemption with grandeur and majesty

            For make no mistake.  The magnificent miracle of return and rise of a Jewish State is surely the beginning of the Final Redemption, but hardly the end.  The true finality, the magnificent era of the Messiah, comes to fruition gloriously and majestically and breathtakingly only if we cleave to the great axiom “If you walk in My statutes…I will give peace in the land.” (Leviticus 26)

            This is the immutable law of the People of Israel.  There is no escaping it. What will be with the Jew; whether his future will be bright or black; whether he will enjoy peace or horrors, depends only on his cleaving to his role, obligation and mission in this world, upon his bending his neck and will beneath the yoke of Heaven.

            “If you walk in My statues… I will give you peace…  But if you will not hearken unto Me… I will appoint terror over you.” (ibid.).

             

This is the choice; the only choice. All the rest is nonsense. And time ticks away and the decision is in our hands.

           

Dear Jew, the Almighty gives us this day life or death.  Will be choose life?

My people; my dear and foolish people!  We speak of your life and that of your seed, your children and grandchildren.  Choose wisely!  Choose life!  The magnificence is yours for the asking.  The horror will be yours for the blindness.  Choose life, but quickly; there is little time left.  The forty years ticks away.

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ALONE - 1989

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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THEY MUST GO Israeli Arabs: Fathers and Sons and Daughters (conclusion)

THEY MUST GO – 1981

RABBI MEIR KAHANE

Excerpts from: Israeli Arabs: Fathers and Sons (and Daughters)

2^nd article and 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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THEY MUST GO Israeli Arabs: Fathers and sons and Daughters

Barbara Ginsberg’s Desktop

THEY MUST GO – 1981

RABBI MEIR KAHANE

Excerpts from: Israeli Arabs: Fathers and Sons (and Daughters)

Part 1

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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