The relevant rabbis to contact r e s p e c t f u l l y in this connection are:
* Rabbi Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, Rabbi Avi Shafran, and Rabbi Gertzulin - Public Affairs Department, Agudath Yisroel 212-797-9000
* 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
Please cc or bcc all communication with the above parties to faigerayzel@aol.com
Dear ListThis makes sense to me. Today at shul a renowned brilliant and leading rabbi talked about the meaning of Shushan Purim - including taking the offensive to rid the world and ourselves of Amalek. I asked him about teshuva in light of the Jerusalem attacks and he said that never before - and because of the yeshiva attack - has there been such awareness of the need to take the stand to protect ourselves against Amalek. When I asked about teshuva and whether we as a people did not need to do more - regarding this and the mentality which has allowed Sderot to be bombed - his response included that he is not political.I didn't know what to say because the position of leading rabbis has been to be not involved in politics. But something didn't sit right. Is this politics of the kind that one can afford to not be involved in? Is this not a politics which demands involvement for the sake of our survival? It's not the same kind of "politics" that we can afford to stay away from, but I didn't have the words. And this arcticle provides what I was missing.RABBI SHMUEL M. BUTMAN
The Jewish Press, March 14, 2008
Many who protect the insane policies of Israel's leaders hear the refrain: "We don't want to get involved in politics." However, our focus is not on trivial politics, such as who'll enjoy the cozy perches of power or receive the most government largesse. Our concern is lives — the safety and survival of our brothers and sisters in the Holy Land, and, by extension, our entire people's continued safety and security, even their very existence, in every corner of the world.
Over 40 years ago, with incredible miracles, Israel won the Six-Day War and gained an enviable position of strength. For the first time since independence in 1948, the Jewish state attained a position where its existence was not directly threatened. In the South, it gained vast territorial depth — the entire Sinai — insulating its heartland from direct Egyptian attack. In the North, it gained the dominating Golan Heights, so that Syrian guns could no longer threaten the whole Galilee. In the East, it gained Judea and Samaria, including the land's strategic central highlands and a straight, far more defensible, border along the Jordan.
Despite symbolic protests from the Soviet block and others, the world then was ready to let Israel keep all its gains and to settle Jews in all liberated territories - just as, de facto, it had acquiesced to Israel keeping its gains after the 1949 armistice with the invading Arab nations. But, Israel's leaders (for some inexplicable reason perhaps having to do with the perverted Jewish psyche. jsk), felt uncomfortable with their conquests. Right after the 1967 war, they sent messages to Washington that they were ready to relinquish all those territories!
Ever since, the situation has deteriorated, stage by stage. When the Arabs saw how Israel was embarrassed by its gains, they instantly ratcheted up their demands. It encouraged them to provoke the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which threatened Israel's very survival.
When Jimmy Carter decided he had to redeem his presidency by making a peace deal in the Middle East, Israel's embarrassment with it's conquests enabled him to twist Menachem Begin's arm to forfeit all the Sinai's strategic territorial depth — together with its flourishing Jewish settlements, its oil wells developed by Jewish ingenuity, and its lucrative tourist resorts. Israel exchanged all this for a worthless slip of paper promising peace, the terms of which Egypt immediately violated and has done ever since.
The Camp David Accords provided the model for all later pressure. If the IDF could forcibly evict Jews from their homes in Yamit, why not pressure Israel to do the same elsewhere? It encouraged the PLO to make terrorist attacks on Israel's north, from Lebanon and later the Arabs within the Holy Land to start the first Intifada. It encouraged the rest of the world to press for more and more Israeli concessions.
In 1982, Israel had no choice but to enter Lebanon. It had the PLO by the throat, but was too embarrassed to finish off the job, caving in to let them to leave for Tunisia. Yet, instead of letting them stay there, Israel's leaders, with incredible naivety, decided in 1993 to welcome the PLO "thugocracy" into the very heart of the Holy Land, raising them to the status of a quasi-sovereign government, arming them — with the na?ve intention of stopping own hoodlums from terror acts against Jews and awarding them generous funding!
Naturally, the PLO utilized these unexpected gifts to do their thing — to escalate terror against Jews to unprecedented highs. But, Israel's leaders still didn't learn their lesson. The PLO has never kept any of its agreements, so Israel has had every right to cancel them. But, Israel has been too embarrassed to show it does not meekly turn the other cheek. Instead, ever since, all its leaders again and again have rewarded the PLO with more territory, more arms, more funds and more concessions.
Even when Sharon decided — without any external pressure — to award them the entire Gaza Strip, although it meant uprooting many thousands of peaceful Jewish citizens from their homes, he gained no points with the Arabs, or with the rest of the world. Instead the area turned into a brand-new rogue state, a front for Iran and Al Qaeda, that commits daily aggression against Israel's citizens and threatens the stability of the whole Middle East and, potentially, of the entire world.
Have Israel's leaders learned their lesson yet? Of course not! They're still running after the PLO to agree to negotiate with them, and after Syria to agree to take back the Golan. Even when PLO leader Abbas boasts how he started the original violence against Israel and that he still intends to use violence when it will work, even when his Fatah and Al-Aksa brigadiers continue to commit terrorism — which could not be without his knowledge. Nevertheless, Israel's na?ve leaders are begging him for the honor of accepting everything they have to offer him.
Protesting against this stupidity is called politics? Inspired by the repeated prophetic warnings of the Rebbe over 25 years, we're just pointing out what any sane, objective person realizes on his own; that these misguided policies place the life of every Jew in the Holy Land in dire peril. First, it was the Jews beyond the "Green Line" — in Judea and Samaria. Then it's the Jews of Sderot, and gradually more and more communities in that area. Now it's already reaching Ashkelon. How long will it take to reach Ashdod and then Tel Aviv?
Furthermore, it's not that this doesn't affect us in the Diaspora. Anti-Semitic incidents are increasing frighteningly across Europe and around the world, because all Jew-haters everywhere are encouraged by their comrades' successes in the Holy Land. Let's call a spade a spade: This isn't politics! Our very survival is at stake. Israel's leaders are playing games while every Jew's future is burning!
In the meantime, the leading Diaspora organizations are too frightened and deliberately uninformed to accept the truth. Instead they use "not their right to get involved" as a cop-out. G-d forbid, they will sooner than later experience the dire consequences of this cop-out just as generations have done before thus contributing directly in their own demise.
IZZY KAPLAN
416 824 2858
416 256 2858
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