To begin with, Avital went on record condemning leading US Jewish representatives for their plans to attend a large rally planned for this Monday evening in defense of Jerusalem. The rally, organized by Yisrael Ba'aliya leader Natan Sharansky and Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert, is in response to the government's plans to divide Jerusalem, and to give control over all that is holy (the Old City, the Temple Mount, etc.) to the very same Arabs that have recently escalated their campaign of love and peace against Israel.
Sharansky travelled to New York last week to do some fundraising for the event and to attract these US Jewish leaders to the cause, and like all Jews everywhere, these leaders, who are concerned for the fate of Judaism's central focus, have agreed to attend and to support his efforts.
Enter Colette Avital. Avital is famous for her sour relations with honest Jews in New York during her tenure as Israeli Consul-General there. She succeeded during that time to alienate most Jewish groups with an ounce of Jewish pride through her constant unabashed loathing of all things Zionist. Following her unceremonious return to Israel, she was elected to the Knesset from the Labor party, and now has a platform from which to continue her anti-Zionist rantings.
"I think it's a dangerous precedent that the Jews of the United States … are coming to take part in rally of the opposition against the Prime Minister," she pontificated.
It seems that Avital never did get the message while she was in New York. So let me make it perfectly clear to her. When the Prime Minister decides to abandon Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and the entire Jewish heartland with them, the Prime Minister deserves the opposition of all Jews everywhere. The Temple Mount, Jerusalem, and all the rest, do not belong to the Prime Minister, nor do they solely belong to the people in Israel. They belong as an eternal possession, to the entire Jewish nation, and that nation has some pretty powerful representatives in New York.
"We know that they (the rally's organizers) did not contact anyone representing the government. "The Jewish organizations," continued Avital, " are supposed to represent the government of Israel."
Well, to a certain extent, she is correct. But when the government of Israel is sworn to abandon the entire reason for the State's existence, namely our possession of our historical homeland, that government ceases to be legitimate, and deserves no invitations to public demonstrations of support for Jerusalem. They deserve no support from anyone, including Jewish leaders outside of Israel.
As a parting shot, Avital condemned Sharansky for organizing this rally during an election period. Sharansky, you will remember, is the consummate Jewish hero of our time, a man with perhaps more understanding than anyone else of the primacy of Jerusalem in our lives. As he was sentenced in Moscow in 1977, he was asked if he had any statement he wished to make to the court. He responded, "Next Year in Jerusalem," and sat down.
If Jerusalem can hold such a central place of importance in the lives of Jews in the Diaspora, then such Jews can rally to her defense any time the need arises. Especially when that need is the result of a government that has decided to use its future as an election ploy. If Colette Avital didn't want the rally to take place during an election campaign, her government should not have made the Temple Mount an election issue.
The other two femmes fatale in this sorry spectacle at least made some sense. Naomi Chazan, a Meretz member of Knessset, stated that, "anything that provokes further tension in an already immensely tense situation is inadvisable, and perhaps dangerous."
This, perhaps is Meretz's guiding philosophy, and explains their response to increasing Arab terrorism against Jews. Since that terrorism increases tension, it is inadvisable, and therefore Israel must acquiesce to the increasingly strident demands of these terrorists - demands that now include the destruction of the Temple Mount.
But perhaps the government should take her words to heart. The tension, after all, has been caused by the government's suicidal drive to divest Israel of every reason for Jewish residency here. And no proud Jew, Israeli or otherwise, is prepared to accept such policies.
Meretz's positions are the diametric opposite of the Zionist spirit upon which Israel was founded. The situation is tense because our enemies have made it so. What Sharansky's efforts are aimed at is renewing the Zionist spirit to stand for our history and our values at a time when they are directly threatened not only by our Arab enemies, but by those in our government as well.
And then there is Yael Dayan. She is one of those Israeli leftists who has never uttered a sensible word throughout her political career. Until now. Dayan was quoted in the same story, with words that really speak for themselves. What a surprise, therefore, that they came from someone who has until now proven herself to be one of the leading advocates of national suicide on the Israeli scene. Now, I find myself using the words of this very woman to make a statement most Zionists would be arrested for.
"The meaning of all of it is 'Vote for Sharon' because he is the only one who will secure our lives, and the other one is responsible for the dead."
Apparently, she couldn't even bring herself to mention Ehud Barak by name. But she went even further, adding that "calling the even a rally for not giving up the Temple Mount implies that any Israeli contemplating compromise on sovereignty there should be regarded as a traitor."
Well, there you have it. In Yael Dayan's own words, Ehud Barak is a traitor. I need not fear arrest for writing these words. After all, one of the darlings of the suicidal left has uttered them, and I am merely fulfilling my service to my nation by giving them wider disemination.
The pity is that, after all, Yael Dayan belongs firmly among the femmes fatale. For she uttered these words explaining the positions of the other two. She herself remains committed to Israel's national self-destruction, and is against the rally.
Copyright 2001. Yehuda Poch is a writer living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission only.
