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RAV MEIR KAHANE'S 2007 YAHRZEIT

by Meir Jolowitz

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak invited Yasir Arafat, a mass murderer, into his home in the exclusive community of Kochav Yair, on Erev Shabbat. The mass murderer placed a kiss on the forehead of the Prime Minister's daughter –– an act that Barak said melted her: "She was so deeply moved –– she was so excited."

Did Ehud Barak –– today in charge of Israel's defense –– ever invite to Kochav Yair, on Erev Shabbat, one of the young Jewish soldiers that he once commanded –– perhaps one who lost a limb fighting against those mass murderers?

And this past Sukkot, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert invites as his guest, to his sukkah, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), Arafat's deputy for 40 years, financier of the Munich Massacre, and a Holocaust denier who still praises Arab terrorists as martyrs of a holy war. And make no mistake about it –– Israel's next prime minister will invite into his home, Marwan Boughouti, who is presently in an Israeli prison, serving 5 lifetime sentences for terrorism against the Jewish people.

You can count on it –– The Israeli prime minister will prostrate himself before this mass murderer and petition for peace.

Last month, President George Bush invited 90 Muslim leaders to a White House dinner to mark the end of the fast of Ramadan.

Bush opined that the United States has a proud history of standing with Muslims and "mainstream citizens across the broader Middle East." Those invited to the White House were Bush's moderate Muslims. Referring to the extremists who conduct the unyielding war against western civilization, Bush stated: "You don't represent Muslims, you do not represent Islam –– and you will not succeed."

As long as we are right; as long as we are brave; and as long as we proclaim the truth -- we shall remain the minority within a minority.

Tragically -- the truth is not self evident, and nor is there a guarantee that it shall prevail. But, there is one thing we were all taught by Rabbi Meir Kahane -- that we must fight the fight nonetheless. that God rewards us for trying, not for succeeding.

Arab versus Jew, and Jew versus Jew. And, inevitably, these two conflicts intersect.

The issue is not only "Will there be peace?" but "Will Israel remain a Jewish state?"

The battleground that will determine the winner is not only the narrow nine-mile wide waistline that defines Israel's vulnerability, but more importantly, the battleground of ideas where the Arabs, for a generation, have been joined by leftist Jewish and Israeli allies, with whom they together endeavor to negate the Jewish character of the state.

This second war front is directed at Israel by the "so-called" progressive forces of a liberal-leaning world, led by scholars, academicians, writers, and other cultural elitists, many of them Jews.

It is an effort to see Israel cease to be a "Jewish" state, to be replaced, they envision, with a universal, or democratic one.

Of course, this is nothing but a euphemism for the elimination of the Jewish State.

Two decades ago, Rabbi Kahane warned the people of Israel -- "You will either get Kahane, or you will get Arafat." Remarkably -- in Israel today -- the yellow shirt, bearing the Kach emblem, is banned. Not so, the colors of the PLO. Israeli police arrest, and Israeli courts summarily convict Jewish citizens who shout at a soccer match "Kahane tzadak (Kahane was right); while they ignore Arab parliamentarians sitting in Israel's Knesset who openly praise Israel's declared enemies and call for the Arab intafada to burn Jewish towns.

And while the Jews fight the Jews, the Arabs, and the oil-thirsty world that aligns itself with them, wait in the wings, while step by step, censure by censure, measure by measure, Israel becomes less Jewish, and frighteningly, less at ease with its own right to exist. And the so-called leaders of Israel look everywhere –– or anywhere –– for partners to make peace. The Israeli government today convinces itself that it can make peace with the very organization whose Charter still calls for Israel's elimination.

If nothing else, let's be blunt: In meeting and negotiating with these terrorists, Israel is cooperating in its own murder.

Rabbi Kahane once wrote, the words which perhaps more than any other, explain this march of madness...

Is it simply an illusion, or worse, is it self-delusion? 100 years ago, T.S. Eliot wrote: "...humankind/ Cannot bear very much reality."

The unbearable reality is that Israel's yearning for peace is shared neither by the Arab world in general, nor by the Palestinians in particular.

It seems imperative that we understand this simple fact... that the Arab objection is not to "anything Israel has done, or failed to do", but to the very fact that it exists at all.

For as long as Israel has existed as a sovereign state -- for 60 years -- it has been the subject of attack in almost every international arena. After more than half a century of independence, Israel is still considered an illegitimate state –– by enough nations, George Will once remarked in quoting Abba Eban, that they could muster enough support in the United Nations to adopt a resolution confirming that the earth is flat.

Freedom is slavery.
Justice is injustice.
Jewish settlement is occupation.
Zionism is racism,
And war is peace.

Yes, in the language of George Orwell, Arab murderers are peacemakers, And Yasir Arafat is a Nobel Peace Laureate.

We would do well to remember the words of Isaiah: "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil"

Those who champion the rights of the Arabs –– these self-appointed purveyors of a twisted moral code that preaches a "turn the other check" philosophy are no less the enemy. Consider this quote, attributed to the Zionist leader Berl Katznelson, on May 1, 1936:

Katznelson would turn in his grave to know that the sovereign state of Israel has mastered the art of self-hatred.

Today, in a world gone mad, We are no longer the good guys, and Arab murderers are no longer the enemy.

"We are both at fault" Yithak Rabin suggested, before he went on to meet his Maker (who, I am certain, told him otherwise). Needless to say, such mindless exercises in "moral equivalence" are obscene, and mock the whole Zionist enterprise.

What the British Mandate, when it occupied Eretz Yisrael, could not do with its commissions, its sanctions, and its blockades; What the Arab nations in four major wars, and subsequent wars of attrition, could not accomplish –– ...The Jewish political, cultural, educational and intellectual voices seem to have succeeded in accomplishing –– ...To bring Zionism to its knees.

One is characterized by the thousands of rockets that have fallen on Israeli towns, by the suicide bombers that have invaded our streets, and by the establishment of a nuclear capability within reach of the heart of Zion.

The other was launched at Oslo, officially in 1993, although planned long before, after Menachem Begin agreed to retreat from Jewish lands in exchange for the promise of peace.

This is a war called "peace". It is a war that Israel is losing. It is very much a war over Israel's legitimacy. It is a battle being waged by Islam and aided by the post-Zionists... and so-called friends of Israel. Only utopians or real fools fail to understand that Israel is in fact losing.

Every day.
In the classroom.
In the media.
In the courts.
In the hearts and minds of its own citizens.
We are losing because of a policy that is bereft of ideology ... in a nation without a statesman, and without a national leader.

During the past generation, we have been witnesses to the intellectual, cultural and educational collapse of Zionism. It is a retreat that has been especially accelerated during the past decade. The American journalist Charles Krauthammer has observed –– correctly –– that the most improbable story of the 20th Century is the return of the Jews to sovereignty in their original homeland.
After 2000 years of exile.
After Two thousand years of powerlessness.

In 1948, the Jewish nation realized a dream that only one hundred years ago –– at the founding of the modern Zionist movement –– seemed at best delusional.

Krauthammer wrote: "The only thing more improbable is this: That after only 50 years of independence, the Jews of Israel would tire of it, lose faith in the enterprise, and forfeit their redemption."

This is the peace of Oslo. The Road Map. The Withdrawal from Gaza. And... the surrender of Jerusalem, which is being planned, even as I speak.

My friends, we have been living a lie. There is no peace process. There is a pathetic and pathological retreat from everything that our nation once found noble and worth fighting for.

At the turn of the last century, those few Jews who championed the cause of a sovereign Jewish state, were labeled by both Jew and non-Jew alike, as being "lunatics."

At the turn of this century, with a Jewish state that has been extant for nearly 60 years, we have Jews, both in Israel and elsewhere, labeling those who still believe in the Zionist enterprise, those who believe as the early Zionists did –– in Jewish labor, and in settling the land –– as "lunatics."

It has been said –– We live in a world that would have us believe that every people is entitled to a homeland of their own, save the Jews, who are expected to coexist peacefully in the homelands of those who brought upon them inquisitions, pogroms, expulsions, ghettos, forced baptisms, quota systems, and the final unspeakable horror –– the Holocaust –– and worse, ...the world's terrifying disinterest in it.

Incidentally, at the turn of the last century, on January 1, 1900, the three leading newspapers in the world the –– New York Times, The London Times, and Le Monde –– uniformly predicted that economic prosperity, made possible by scientific technology and democracy, would produce an era of universal peace in the twentieth century. Tell that to six million Jewish souls. Today, those same newspapers, and millions of their readers, have joined world leaders calling for Israel to make further concessions in search of another "peace in our time."

The Israelis are "an exhausted people, confused and without direction." They are, some knowingly, and others almost blindly, actively engaged in the destruction of their own national spirit. In 1978, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, having drawn from the experiences of the Yom Kippur War five years earlier, came to the conclusion that Israel could not be beaten militarily, in a single stroke – in a war of annihilation. Sadat launched a "peace offensive" choosing instead to weaken Israel through a process of attrition –– "salami tactics" –– until which time, with a weakened Israel, he could pursue the real objective: peace without Israel.

In the ensuing years, through Camp David, and a peace treaty signed on Jimmy Carter's White House lawn, he achieved what the Arabs could never achieve through war. A vanquished Israel. Israel surrendered even as it celebrated. And loudest to celebrate were the post-Zionists. In every sense, Sadat was an innovator. You see, it took the other Arab leaders another fifteen years to understand what he did. That Israel can be coaxed to commit suicide. Through a series of gradual and incremental surrenders, Israel's retreat has been supported by the United Nations, the United States, and most disturbingly, the Jews themselves. The peace process, founded upon a series of false assumptions and unreasonable expectations, has always been an Arab Trojan horse leading Israel towards certain disaster. It's as simple as it is foolish: Israel will give, the Arabs will take.

Adopting a tactic that Norman Podhoretz called "at once brilliant and evil" -- the Arabs have exploited every casualty of a war that they themselves manufactured.

In analyzing Israel, in a piece that appeared in Commentary, titled "Death of an Illusion," Podhoretz stated: "the virus of self-hatred has spread in recent years, sapping the national morale and the old-time national resolve."

The Arabs, dangling a carrot called peace, while still seeking the eradication of Israel, are in full control.

It is a propaganda triumph, William Safire correctly claimed, that wears down Israel's will. The results –– an Israel broken in spirit, and broken in morale. Remarkably, seemingly intelligent Jews display little common sense. And, even less courage.

In 1924, the prolific Jewish writer, Maurice Samuels, wrote a book entitled You Gentiles. Daring to call Jews a "separate & holy people" he concluded his book with the following admonition: "I console myself with the thought that if this book offends by its assertiveness, God knows that the infinite tactfulness of thousands of other Jews seems to have offended no less. Whatever we do we are damned -- and I would rather be damned standing up, than lying down." My mentor was a rabbi who was in fact damned – damned standing up, but never lying down.

Rabbi Kahane, for two decades warned us, through word and through deed, of the impending catastrophes, if we chose to follow Washington, and if we place our trust in princes, who would, when the final showdown came, to use the language of Pierre Van Passan: "evaporate like snow on a summer day's sun"

The Rabbi understood: There was peace only through strength. Not because they loved us, but because they could be made to respect us...

He would often remind us that the Jew needed to stand on 2 legs – the religious, and the nationalistic.

Bold, brazen, and never bashful, Rabbi Kahane commanded the ability to engage in intellectual discourse that made even the most erudite opponent shrink before him; And, he could shift gears effortlessly, and communicate, masterfully, with the young and disenfranchised.

But, the more they tried to silence him, the louder he seemed to get.And the louder he got... the more he rippled the pond.

Today... there is no one to ripple that pond. The Jews are a people that behave, as Jabotinsky fore-warned over 70 years ago ago, as if they are chloroformed.

On January 30, 1996 -- several years after signing his peace treaty with Israel, and having been invited many times as an honored guest to the White House – Yasir Arafat, the Nobel Peace Laureate, addressed 40 Arab diplomats at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, and delivered a lecture that he entitled "The Impending Total Collapse of Israel."

We invite these terrorists into our homes on Erev Shabbat –– And with Jewish blood still fresh on our soil, they are invited to visit our Prime Minister's sukkah.

We march on –– an act of madness.
We offer them a state –– at the expense of ours.
It is a policy guided by an illusion, that is driven by an un-forgivable self-delusion.

Something terrible is happening to Israel. Is anyone listening? Does anyone really care?

Many years ago, my father, a survivor of thirteen concentration camps, sat me down on his knee and said: "Do the right thing. Decent people will stand by you... the others...really don't count."

Rabbi Meir Kahane –– more than any man of our generation –– stood up and did the right thing.

Seventeen years ago, when the sun set before its scheduled time, we lost the most noble Jew of our generation.
Courageous & Committed.
Dedicated & Daring.
Audacious and intrepid.
Often brazen.
Always controversial.
Never apologetic.
Unencumbered by the need to appease unappeasable opponents, he was painfully truthful.
He was –– a true Torah Jew.

Tragically, it seems that we really didn't deserve him, and must now fend for ourselves.

Today, at a pivotal moment of Jewish history, we are leaderless. The Jewish people are wandering ...without a guide and without direction, ... in a desert of our own creation.

The struggle continues. And it continues without the voice, or the hand, of the most noble and courageous Jew of our generation.

And, it seems so much harder today to say: "Od lo avda tikvateynu." –– Our hope, is not yet lost.

[Editor's Note: These are some of Rabbi Kahane's teachings:
"One of the great problems with Americans is that –– being decent people –– they assume that everyone else is equally decent.
They assume that all cultures are similar in concepts and values. But that is simply not so. It is not decency and goodness or gentleness that impresses the Middle East but strength. Because of this, the U.S. is looked on as a paper tiger –– with all the accompanying contempt." (USA Today, Feb 12, 1987).

Kahane noted that in the Talmud it says: " he who raises his hand to bless you, bless him first; he who raises his hand to kill you, kill him first" He concluded: "One doesn't deal with terrorists, one doesn't bargain with terrorists, one kills terrorists." (USA Today, Feb 12, 1987)]