Gość: dyzma
IP: *.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com
11.04.02, 01:22
Open letter to the world by
Ariel Ben Attar, an Israeli
Dear World,
I understand that you are upset by us, here in Israel. Indeed, it
appears that you are quite upset, even angry. (Outraged?) Indeed, every few
years
you seem to become upset by us.
Today, it is the "brutal repression of the Palestinians"; yesterday it was
Lebanon;
before that it was the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Baghdad and the Yom
Kippur War
and the Sinai campaign. It appears that Jews who triumph and who, therefore,
live,
upset you most extraordinarily.
Of course, dear world, long before there was an Israel, we - the Jewish people -
upset you. We upset a German people who elected Hitler and upset an Austrian
people who cheered his entry into Vienna and we upset a whole slew of Slavic
nations - Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians,
Ukrainians, Russians, Hungarians and Romanians.
And we go back a long, long way in the history of world upset. We upset the
Cossacks of Chmielnicki who massacred tens of thousands of us in 1648-49;
we upset the Crusaders who, on their way to liberate the Holy Land, were so
upset at Jews that they slaughtered untold numbers of us.
For centuries, we upset a Roman Catholic Church that did its best to define
our relationship through inquisitions, and we upset the arch-enemy of the
church, Martin Luther, who, in his call to burn the synagogues and the Jews
within them, showed an admirable Christian ecumenical spirit. And it is
because we became so upset over upsetting you, dear world, that we
decided to leave you - in a manner of speaking - and establish a Jewish state.
The reasoning was that living in close contact with you, as resident-strangers
in the various countries that comprise you, we upset you, irritate you and
disturb you.
What better notion, then, than to leave you and thus love you - and have you
love us?
And so we decided to come home - to the same homeland from which we were
driven out 1,900 years earlier by a Roman world that, apparently, we also
upset.
Alas, dear world, it appears that you are hard to please. Having left you and
your
pogroms and inquisitions and crusades and holocausts, having taken our leave
of the general world to live alone in our own little state, we continue to
upset you.
You are upset that we repress the poor Palestinians.You are deeply angered
over the fact that we do not give up the lands of 1967, which are clearly the
obstacle
to peace in the Middle East.
Moscow is upset and Washington is upset. The "radical" Arabs are upset and
the gentle Egyptian moderates are upset.
Well, dear world, consider the reaction of a normal Jew from Israel.
In 1920 and 1921 and 1929, there were no territories of 1967 to impede peace
between Jews and Arabs. Indeed, there was no Jewish State to upset anybody.
Nevertheless, the same oppressed and repressed Palestinians slaughtered
tens of Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Safed and Hebron.
Indeed, 67 Jews were slaughtered one day in Hebron in 1929.
Dear world, why did the Arabs - the Palestinians - massacre 67 Jews in one day
in
1929? Could it have been their anger over Israeli aggression in 1967? And why
were 510 Jewish men, women and children slaughtered in Arab riots between
1936-39? Was it because Arabs were upset over 1967?
And when you, world, proposed a UN Partition Plan in 1947 that would have
created
a "Palestinian State" alongside a tiny Israel and the Arabs cried "no" and went
to war
and killed 6,000 Jews - was that "upset" caused by the aggression of 1967?
And,by the way, dear world, why did we not hear your cry of "upset" then?
The poor Palestinians who today kill Jews with explosives and firebombs
and stones are part of the same people who - when they had all the
territories they now demand be given to them for their state attempted to
drive the Jewish state into the sea.
The same twisted faces, the same hate, the same cry of "itbach-al-yahud"
(Massacre the Jew!) that we hear and see today,were seen and heard then.
The same people, the same dream - destroy Israel.
What they failed to do yesterday, they dream of today, but we should not
"repress" them.
Dear world, you stood by during the holocaust and you stood by in 1948 as
seven states launched a war that the Arab League proudly compared to the
Mongol massacres.
You stood by in 1967 as Nasser, wildly cheered by wild mobs in every Arab
capital in the world, vowed to drive the Jews into the sea.
And you would stand by tomorrow if Israel were facing extinction.
And since we know that the Arabs-Palestinians dream daily of that
extinction, we will do everything possible to remain alive in our own land.
If that bothers you, dear world, well - think of how many times in the
past you bothered us.
In any event, dear world, if you are bothered by us, here is one Jew in Israel
who could not care less.
Ariel Ben Attar
Israel
