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Please forward to anyone on your list that has any influence on Agudath Yisroel of America, the OU, Young Israel and Chabad International begging and pleading them to speak up for the Torah Roadmap and our Biblical Covenant!! Mr. Zweibon writes "Not realizing what lay ahead, the residents of Sderot were passive when the Sharon government forfeited their security by destroying the Jewish communities of Gaza." Will we make the same mistake?
The relevant rabbis to contact r e s p e c t f u l l y in this connection are:
* Rabbi Perlow, Rosh Moetzes Agudath Yisroel, Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, Rabbi Avi Shafran, and Rabbi Gertzulin - Public Affairs Department, Agudath Yisroel 212-797-9000 and anyone on the Board of Directors.
* Rabbi Pesach Lerner at The Young Israel 212-929-1525
* Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb of the OU 212-563-4000
* Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, Chabad Headquarters 718 774.4000 / fax 718 774.2718
Please forward this article to: plerner@youngisrael.org, dzwiebel@agudathisrael.org, shafran@agudathisrael.org, execthw@ou.org, hq@lubavitch.com
Sderot Now, Tel Aviv Tomorrow
Herbert Zweibon
On February 17 a Kassam rocket exploded near a preschool in Sderot sending several people into shock. A week earlier two brothers, Rami and Osher Twito, were on an errand to buy after-shave lotion for their father's birthday when a Kassam struck, leaving both boys lying in a pool of blood and severing 8 year old Osher's leg. In one four day period over 150 rockets exploded in Sderot and its surroundings. Nor are the citizens of Israel being targeted "settlers"—they live within the 1949 Green Line, an area not the subject of negotiations, that not even the most appeasement minded Israeli would call "occupied territory."
Desperate, people from Sderot demonstrate in front of the Prime Minister's Office, pitch tents before the Supreme Court, block the main entrance to Jerusalem, close the main entry road to Tel Aviv, anything to draw attention to their plight.
As Sderot teeters close to collapse, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert worries not about the lives of his people but that he might be impelled to do something. "I am fending off heavy pressure to launch a major ground operation in Gaza" he told Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik. His government does virtually nothing to perform its most basic task: protecting the security of its citizens. Yet as legal scholar Abraham Bell points out, under international law the right to self-defense authorizes Israel to initiate military action in Gaza, regardless of whether or not it is seen as having independent sovereignty.
The Olmert government's behavior is yet worse: it holds the people of Sderot hostage. Over 20% of the population has left and fearful of projecting an image of defeat, the government seeks to impel the rest to remain. It refuses to help those with mortgages to leave (under current conditions no one will rent or buy) and thousands living in public housing are in the same predicament, refused alternative accommodation elsewhere. Israel Schwartz, deputy director-general of the Housing Ministry, is candid: "Assisting Sderot residents and the Gaza envelope pay the rent is akin to declaring the evacuation of settlements."
Not realizing what lay ahead, the residents of Sderot were passive when the Sharon government forfeited their security by destroying the Jewish communities of Gaza. At present the Olmert government is preparing a similar fate for the residents of Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel Aviv and the entire coastal plain. It is negotiating the transfer of Judea and Samaria and much of Jerusalem to Fatah. What happens when the terrorists control the high ground of Judea and Samaria? What happens when a missile brings down an airplane flying into or out of Ben Gurion airport? Can there be any doubt that every single airline, with the single possible exception of El Al, will cease flying to Israel? What then happens to Israel's vaunted economy? And what happens—remember that Israel is a mere nine miles wide at its waist—when missiles fall on Netanya or Nahariya or Tel Aviv? The exodus of Jews that Arafat foresaw will become a rapid reality, as those who can most easily leave—Israel's most productive citizens—will rush for the exits, even as many of those who can leave, now flee Sderot.
Noting that Sderot has put the government's ability to protect its citizens to the test, Eeki Elner, who directs the Center for Leadership in Sderot, writes: "The collapse of Sderot would mark the Zionist vision's collapse. It constitutes the collapse of what is left of the trust in our national leaders. It would be the collapse of our hope and faith in our right to cling to our land."
The government's failure to protect the most populated parts of Israel—indeed its willful turning of Israel's heartland into a target for terrorists—will surely spell the total collapse of the Zionist vision.
Will the Jews of Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem wake up like the Jews of Sderot – when it is too late?
IZZY KAPLAN
416 824 2858
416 256 2858
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