The 90`s

So-called progessives buy Arab bigotry

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of April 13th - April 19th, 1994

There is now going to be  a "Temporary International Presence" in Hebron (TIPH) and this doesn’t officially include the Reverend Jesse Jackson who's traveling there this week.

The Israeli government has acquiesced to the PLO's demand for international observers in Hebron in the wake of the massacre in the Tomb of the Patriarchs.  This adds an extra helping of vigorish to the already existing accords with the PLO. Arafat, as you may recall has been both petulant and indigent about returning to the bargaining table for the past month, so here comes the Peres Patrol galloping at a fast grovel to accommodate the willy PLO chief.

The Israelis have agreed to allow 160 field observers and their support staff from Norway, Denmark and Italy.  They won't have police functions, rather, their mandate will be "to promote stability and enhance the well-being of Jews in Hebron or anywhere else.  This decision to allow an international presence has grave ramifications in that it establishes the principle that Israel is solely an occupying power and has no inherent claims or rights to the area.

Media accounts have taken as given truths Arabs assertions that Jews living in Hebron and Jews living with Arabs in general as being "provocative", "explosive", "incendiary" and the like.  Many breast-beating Jews have also taken up the same mantra. What is this provocation? What makes things "explosive"? Why, the very fact that the Jews have the unmitigated chutzpah to want to live in Hebron at all!  What nerve the Jews have in violating the sanctity of the Arab patrimony by soiling it with the presence of the vile, infidel Jews -- Jews who won't allow themselves to be persecuted, to the religious traditions that consider Hebron to be Judaism's second-holiest site and who won't abandon the holy graves of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Lead and Rebecca.

It never ceases to amaze me how so-called progressives can buy into the lard of logic that ennobles and enshrines what is, to put it bluntly, Arab anti-Semitism, bigotry and intolerance of Jews.  Real liberalism in my view is living peacefully with one another, with respect for each other's beliefs and differences, but you really can't sell that to many Arabs in Hebron or to the factotums at PLO headquarters in Tunis.   If the mere fact of Jews living next-door or in the same neighborhood as non-Jews were described as non-desirable, "explosive," or "provocative" in Boise, Boynton Beach, Bel-Air or Brooklyn, we all know that these same breast-beaters would ne up-in-arms over the injustice of it all.

If a synagogue were vandalized in Hebron, Pennsylvania, Jews killed by the KKK and Jews barred from every returning to worship in that synagogue what would your reaction be?   Would you tolerate such blatant discrimination? Why should the original Hebron and our holy Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs be any different?

Meanwhile, in the Knesset, Likud Party Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that "if anyone would attempt to uproot Jews from Hebron, all the people of Israel would come to protect the rights of Jews to live in the city of our forefather"  Member of Knesset Ariel Sharon, quoted in Yediot Aharonot called for "wide-spread, non-violent popular resistance" should the government decide to remove Jews from Hebron. Sharon called on the Israeli public to go to Hebron and use non-violent means to prevents the removal of Jews and asserted that "I will be there myself."

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the United States has just pledged $6,000,000.00 worth of police equipment for the upcoming Palestinian Police.  Your tax dollars at work. The Russians have been asking to be a part of any multi-national force in the territories and have been sending their Mid-East envoy, Victor Posuvalyuk to parley with Arafat quite regularly, in fact, five times over the past two weeks.  The Russians have not ceased their arms sales to the likes of Syria's Assad and Libya's Khadaffi and would no doubt like to be one of the godfathers for a Palestinian State. But why should anyone be nervous about this?

Real peace cannot come about by restricting Jews from their holy places.  It can't come about by tolerating anti-Semitism from any source and that includes anti-Semitism directed at the Orthodox by elements of secular Jews or the vilification of patriotic Jews living in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan by people who may be more concerned with political expedience's, with inking a deal before the 1996 elections that with the long-term viability of ou rights and claims to all the Land of Israel.  There is a saying that before we agree to give anything back we first consult with two people, our grandfathers who are no longer alive and our grandchildren who are not yet born, because these decisions effect the continuum of Jewish existence, not just ourselves today.