On March 7, 1994, she wrote an open letter to the world on behalf of her 23-year-old son, Ayal Noked. Ayal is a father of two young children, and a resident of Hevron. He was arrested on an administrative order issued February 25 following the massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs. The order was put out by the Commanding Officer of the Central Region, and allowed for a period of detention of three months without charge. According to the media, Ayal is one of the leaders of the Kach organization, which has recently been outlawed. But his family, friends, neighbours, and even members of the organization, have all denied that he is in any way involved with them.
Ayal is an obscure victim, one of countless many, of the Rabin government's mad drive to silence its opposition. Rabin and his subordinates appear to be ready and willing to do anything to appease a group of Palestinian terrorists, with the greatest murderer alive today at its helm, in order to obtain the favour of the Western world. This includes Rabin turning his back on the people he has sworn to protect and represent favourably to the world.
It is interesting that this world, whose favour Rabin is trying so desperately to curry, will not hold Israel in high esteem for long. This is especially true for an Israel that cares not for its own citizens. Herein is the fundamental difference between Yitzchak Rabin and all the other Israeli leaders of the past fifty years. Take Golda Meir, Rabin's predecessor as Prime Minister in the 1970's. When Golda Meir decided that she wanted something, she went so far as to threaten Richard Nixon to get it. Rabin, on the other hand, plays up to every self-annointed leader, pirate, and terrorist as if this cowardice is going to convince the world to like Israel.
Israel is a country based on firm democratic values, as well as the necessity of the Jews of the world having a national state in their ancestral homeland. These values have been utterly compromised by Israel's current government. Rather than democracy, we now see a blind witch-hunt reminiscent of Joe McCarthy in the 1950's. Law-abiding Israeli citizens are being detained indefinitely without charge, and without a real reason. Rather than democracy, we have a government in Israel that appears bent on national suicide, without care for the opinion of the public. Rabin has shown that the opinion of the public, and even that of his cabinet, do not matter to him unless they are supportive of what he wants to do. And rather than Zionism, Israel now has a government intent on killing, and cremating Zionism in favour of capitulation to Israel's worst and most dangerous enemies.
It is interesting to juxtapose the absence of these two values in the current Israeli government in light of the recent invocation of the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance of 1948. Under this law, anyone associated in any way with a terrorist organization is subject to imprisonement for between three and twenty years, depending on the level of association and activity. Yasser Arafat is subject to twenty years in jail under Israeli law. So are Faisal Husseini, Nabil Sha'at, and Yasser Abed Rabbo, the three Palestinian Arabs most prominent in the negotiations leading to and following the Oslo accord. Hanan Ashrawi is subject to five years in jail under this law, and Israeli Knesset Member Yael Dayan, of Rabin's Labour party, is subject to three years, as are most of the reiging members of the Meretz party, Rabin's most important coalition partner.
Instead of impelenting this law in the spirit in which it was meant -- namely, the prevention of terrorism against Jews in Israel -- the Rabin government has turned it on its head. Instead of imprisoning these people and insuring greater safety and protection for Israeli Jews, the government is negotiating with these terrorists as heads of state. Instead of using this law on Arabs who attack Jews, the Rabin government has now chosen to use it against Jews who haven't attacked anyone -- all in the name of further legitimizing anti-semitic terrorism.
Ayal Noked didn't shoot anybody. He was shot three years ago by a Palestinian terrorist, and permanently disabled. He didn't throw stones at anyone. He had them thrown at him regularly. He didn't interrupt anyone's life. Instead, the military occupation of Jewish Israel prevented him from attending the circumcision and naming ceremony of his own new-born son on February 27.
Children growing up in Israel are educated in stories of the Bible, the history of the land of Israel, and the heroes that helped to ressurect the Jewish state in our times. Evelyn Lourie is now a grandmother to two small children. Her parents are Holocaust survivors. When Israeli soldiers smashed into her home at three o'clock in the morning on March 6 looking for her son, she at once had a story that she could tell those grandchildren. Unfortunately, that story won't be about heroes and martyrs. It will be about a cowardly government, afraid of the whole world, that gives in to terrorism. It won't be about the ancient and glorious history of the Jewish people. It will be about a government that re-imposes the hatred of generations past on a people that looks to it for salvation. It won't be about a Bible and a morality that the Jewish nation bestowed on the world. It will be about the absence of morals and the hatred of religion that this government exhibits through its members and its policies.
And what will become of those children? What will they think of Israel when they hear these stories? What will they think of the Jewish people when they hear that a mere fifty years after the horror of the Holocaust and the triumph of Independence, our government is re-enacting nocturnal witch-hunts in order to hand our independence over to our swron enemies? These questions grow more difficult to answer each day that Rabin is allowed to run this circus. I fear the answers.
Copyright 1994. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission only.
