Yom Ha'Atzmaut 5762
April 13, 2002

This coming Tuesday night Jews in Israel and around the world will be celebrating Yom Ha'Atzmaut, marking Israel's 54 birthday. Our synagogue, together with neighboring Reform, Conservative and Orthodox congregations, will participate in a "Rally for Israel," Tuesday evening at the Manetto Hill Jewish Center beginning at 8:00 o'clock. It will last one hour. It is crucial that you and your family show support for our brethren in Israel at this difficult time by your attendance. I further hope that whoever can, will attend the nationwide rally for Israel to be held this Monday in front of the Capitol in Washington. Up to a million people are expected to participate. I already know of several congregants of the Woodbury Jewish Center who are planning the trip.

This is not going to be a festive Yom Ha'Atzmaut. The situation in Israel is not conducive to a joyous celebration. It comes close to being among the worst times for Israel that I can recall. I am older than the new State of Israel by a few years, and I can recollect many crisis facing our Jewish homeland in the past. My ordination as a rabbi took place a few days before the Six Days War. I remember Elie Wiesel, the main speaker at our ordination ceremony, taking the world to task for standing by silently once again as millions of Jews faced an enemy wishing to exterminate them.

I remember being on the pulpit on Yom Kippur 1973 when a congregant came up and handed me a ticker tape he had gotten from the local newspaper office reporting that Israel had just been attacked in the south by Egypt, in the north by Syria and from the east by Jordan.

Israel has succeeded in all past challenges to its survival, and it will succeed in its current battle against brutal terrorism aimed at its civilian population. But the immediate future looks bloody and grim.

If there is any hope for peace, it must be built on the foundation of truth. To his credit, President Bush has been among the few leaders in the Western World cutting through the cant and speaking the truth. He has unequivocally named the cause of the current crisis in the Middle East - Palestinian sponsored terrorism. He has debunked the claim that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. Our President has made it quite clear that there is no such thing as a good terrorist. We have moved beyond the West Side story's notion of people being depraved because they are deprived. Deprivation is no excuse for killing innocent teenagers have fun at a disco in Tel Aviv and elderly Jews participating in a Passover Seder in Netanya and people doing their Shabbat shopping at the Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem.

But even that claim of deprivation is suspect. If Palestinians have no homeland of their own, they have only themselves to blame. Former President Clinton and former Prime Minister Barak tried their best to give them one. They refused the offer and immediately engaged in a despicable campaign of terror to achieve a better deal. The truth is that Palestinians have adopted suicide bombings as a strategic choice, not out of desperation. This is why President Bush and the Israel government are saying that Palestinian terrorists are not martyrs for their cause. Their cause could be achieved without martyrdom. They are not martyrs but murderers who must not be rewarded. Because if suicide bombing succeeds in its aims in Israel, then, like hijacking airplanes, also the creation of the Palestinians, it will be copied and can eventually lead to a bomber strapping on a nuclear device and threatening entire nations. Unless Western and Arab leaders unite in efforts to stop this form of terror, it will endanger the stability of the whole world.

Let me suggest another piece of cant that we must cut through by stating the truth. On the news, we hear the term "cycle of violence." That term establishes a moral equivalency between those who perpetrate violence and those who react against it. That equation is as morally blind as would be a news report about a fire that failed to make a distinction between the arsonist who started it and the firefighters who tried to put it out. Israel retaliating for the actions of suicide bombers by entering the territory of the Palestinian people - who overwhelmingly support them and provide them refuge - is no different from America going after the Taliban and El Quaeda members in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is not perpetuating a cycle of violence, it is trying to end the violence by getting at the terrorists who are carrying it out. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, described how a country may react to a terrorist attack. He cites these options: "When the United States of America is hit by terrorists, you have a choice. You can say, 'Gee, that's too bad' or you can try to find the terrorists and do something about them. We cannot afford as a country," he said, "not to seek out the terrorists and the countries that harbor them." Israel, too, needs to seek out the terrorists - in the cities and villages that provide them refuge.

One other piece of verbal cant that needs to be addressed. The Palestinian people are complaining about their suffering under a brutal and oppressive regime. They are but the culprit is not Israel. It is the Palestinian authority. Michael Kelly wrote an editorial that appeared in the Washington Post. This is what he said:

The sad truth is that Palestinians are oppressed - almost all Arabs are. But it is by their own leaders whether it is in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudia Arabia, Yemen, Lybia or Algeria.

I predict, without fear of being proved wrong, that should the day come when the Palestinians have attained their own State through legitimate means, the citizens of that state will continue living under a repressive, undemocratic regime run by a corrupt dictatorship just as it is today.

The final peace of truth that must be spoken is that Yasir Arafat is not to be trusted. It is not just Arik Sharon who doesn't have faith in him as a peace partner. No one in Israel does today. The fact is that neither President Bush nor Secretary of State Powell trust his word. And the evidence of his faithlessness was there long ago for anyone to see. In the negotiations that led to the Oslo Accords, Arafat promised to disarm Hamas and his own Fatah gunman. He never seriously tried. In fact, terrorists resumed lethal operations against Israel within a month of Arafat's arrival in Gaza. Between the day Yasir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords and the day Arafat and Rabin won the Nobel Peace Prize for that Accord, Palestinian terrorists killed 90 Israelis. Within five years of signing the Accord, more Israelis had been killed than in the 15 years preceding it.

The truth is that Arafat has not wanted peace. His aim is the destruction of the Jewish State which he has persistently pursued in two ways. One is to demoralize the Israelis by terrorizing their daily lives. The other is to produce so much violence that other parties will fight along side the Palestinians or the world community will insist on imposing a settlement that meets all of Arafat's demands, especially the return of Palestinians refugees to Israel proper so as overwhelm the Jewish population.

Hopefully, Secretary of State Powell's current diplomatic mission to the Middle East will cut through the cant I have just detailed by speaking the truth. Hopefully, he is bringing a message the Arab world needs to hear: that no amount of threats and terror will shift America from its defense of Israel's right to exit; that the Arab world must stop fueling anti-Israeli feeling as a safety valve for discontent in its own societies; that suicide bombings must be denounced by Arab leaders and Muslim clerics; that Palestinian schools must stop indoctrinating their children with virulent anti-Semitic hatred, and that the right to return is a non-starter for peace negotiations.

Secretary of State Powell must get this message across not only for Israel's sake but for everyone's sake. As the political analyst, Steven Cohen, wrote: "The question is whether Palestinian extremists will do what Osma Bin Laden could not. Trigger a civilizational war. We are on the cusp of extremists realizing their destructive power before the majority is mobilized for an alternative. This is why the Israeli-Palestinian war is not just a local ethnic conflict that can be ignored. It resonates with too many millions of people, connected by too many satellite TV's with too many dangerous weapons."

A lot rests in resolving the Palestinian - Israeli conflict. Peace which seems so far away cannot come too soon.

Shabbat Shalom