Recently an Arab man was murdered in the town of Halhoul, near Hebron. Immediately, Yitzchak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and the rest of the ruling junta declared that Israel's position was weakened in their negotiations with the PLO as a result, and that it was a national priority to find the murderers of this Arab, especially since the murderers were said to be from among the Jewish villagers of the area. They were seen wearing Israeli army uniforms and speaking Hebrew, and an illegal Jewish group anonymously phoned in a claim of responsibility. The State Department in Washington issued a statement condemning the murder, and stating that "it is no surprise that this act was carried out by a group of settlers, who have questionable morals in the first place."
After a week-long investigation by Israeli authorities, it was found that three Arabs committed the murder in the midst of a robbery spree in the area, and that the victim had been known to attract death threats in the past from among the PLO and Hamas. Given that Israeli army uniforms are often stolen, or sold by unscrupulous soldiers, and are readily available in army surplus stores throughout the country, it is not surprising that the attackers were wearing such clothing. Given that Hebrew is the official language of Israel, and that to do any sort of business in the country, one needs at least an elementary knowledge of the language, it is not surprising that the attackers spoke it. And given the freely available technology for making phone calls, it is not surprising that someone would be smart enough to phone in a false claim of responsibility. All this, coupled with the lack of logic that a Jewish group would commit such an act, in such flagrant disregard for their own safety, and then claim responsibility for it, leads me to believe that the true killers are the confessed Arab suspects now in custody. Add to this the lack of co-operation on the part of the family of the victim or any other witnesses, and the story becomes clearer that the Jews of the Hebron area had nothing at all to do with this crime.
But what of all the hasty accusations, and the outright libel spewed at the Jewish population of Israel. Four separate demands in the Knesset for apologies from Rabin and his underlings yielded neither an apology nor even the hint of regret over the comments. Yossi Sarid showed his true love of Israel's Jews when he said, "I don't need to apologize. They have committed enough crimes in the past to warrant a few accusations." And of course, no one even dreams of demanding an apology, or launching a libel suit, against the State Department.
But back to Sarid for a moment. His comments are also libelous. Can he prove even a single incident which would support his comments? Sarid does not surprise me at all. He took the opportunity, as he often does, to show the absolute lack of morals of any sort that is to be found within the Meretz party. Even if he can support his latter comment, that gives him no reason to carry on with his unwarranted assault on the Jewish population of one third of Israel.
By his logic, Sarid should have singlehandedly deported the entire Arab population from Israel because they have committed far more serious and more numerous crimes, as a group, against what is supposedly Sarid's own constituency -- the Jews. Yet, instead of hurling verbal barrages against them, or blaming them for crimes they may or may not have done, Sarid is willing to forgive them and negotiate with them as if they were truly interested in peace. He is willing to forget the thirty-odd people who have been blown to smithereens by Arab bombs on Jewish busses. He is willing to forget that since this government, of which he is a minister, took office, the number of Jewish deaths at the hands of Arabs has more than quadrupled. He is willing to forget that almost as many Jews have been killed by Arabs in the two years since Oslo as in the six years of the Intifadah before it.
The Arabs in Israel have committed enough crimes against Jews in the past thirty years to warrant the imposition of the death penalty against terrorism in Israel. Yet Yossi Sarid continues to be a full participant in the negotiations that are leading to the granting of a full state to these people. At the same time, when an Arab gets murdered by Arabs, he is quick to blame the Jews and apply even greater pressure on the residents of Judea and Samaria.
But none of this is surprising. The unbridled hatred of his fellow Jews, not to mention the plain illogic of his position, is not restricted to Sarid alone. His party's head mistress still leads the pack when it comes to Jewish self-hate in Israel. And together, they serve as a stark example of what is slowly destroying the very heart of the Jewish nation. Thousands of their followers belong to the organization falsely named "Peace Now". What they really stand for is the degradation of the Jews and the sellout of everything Jewish to those who kill us. Witness their response to the murder case in point.
Throughout the entire week of the investigation, Peace Now demonstrators marched in Halhoul in support of the Arabs and against the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria. They carried placards labelling these Jews as murderers who should be forcibly uprooted from their homes and moved out of the area. When it was found that the murderers were actually Arab, many of the demonstrators left. A few stayed on and continued the demonstration just as if nothing had changed. Not one of them turned around and began blaming the Arabs for the murder, or demonstrating against them.
To Peace Now, dead Arabs are even less important than they are to Rabin. Rabin, at least, made the investigation a national priority, even if he did so for the wrong reasons. But to Peace Now, another dead Arab is just another excuse to demonstrate against the Jews and Israel. Even when they are shown conclusively that they are wrong, they still carry on just as before.
The biggest problem with Peace Now is not their self-hate, nor is it their lack of intelligence. Their biggest problem is that such demonstrations, and the support they give to everything anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli actually makes such murder, and the confusion that ensued possible in the first place. If Peace Now would disappear and allow Israel to pursue its real interests, namely peace and security, Israel, the Middle East, and the entire world would be a much better and safer place.
Copyright 1995. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission only.
