16^th December, 2006

My Dear Family and Friends, Shalom!

It is three months since last I wrote. So much has happened in the interim but nothing has changed. No, perhaps I am not being quite honest. Things have changed and are still changing. And they are getting worse. A difficult admission for one as optimistic as I usually am.

Last night we lit the first candle for Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. A week from now my Christian family and friends will be celebrating Christmas. At this festive season I want to wish all my readers health and contentment and most of all peace -

Shalom!

Beryl 

www.holyland-ratzer.com

I am sure that most of my readers are aware that Jimmy Carter has just had a new book published. Although I have not read it, the cover and the reviews horrify me. I have chosen an article by David Horowitz, author of numerous books including an autobiography, as it appeared on FrontPageMagazine.com on  December 14, 2006.  If as reputable person as a former president of the USA can ignore, or even worse, twist historical, documented facts why should we expect less from the average Jew/Israel hater?

 Jimmy Carter: Jew-Hater, Genocide-Enabler, Liar. By David Horowitz

Even as Islamic Hitlerites gather in Iran to deny the first Holocaust of the Jews and to plot the second, former president Jimmy Carter tours America with a new book that describes Jews as racists and oppressors, and suggests they are also a conspiratorial mafia that intimidates critics, controls America's media and war policy, and are therefore also the source of Islamic terrorism and the Arabs' genocidal campaign to eliminate them from the map of the Middle East.

In other words, Americans beware of the Jew in your midst.

Here is Carter's description of the Middle East conflict in his own words, delivered during an interview he gave on National Public Radio during the second day of the Holocaust deniers' conference in Teheran:

"I have spent a lot of time in Palestine in recent years. The Palestinians have had their own land, first of all, occupied and then confiscated and then colonized. They've been excluded from their own gardens and fields, and pastures and churches. They have been severely restrained in their movements. They have to have different kinds of passes to go through different checkpoints inside their own lands on their own roads. The Israelis have built more than 200 settlements inside Palestine. They connect these settlements with very nice roads for the Israeli settlers, and then superhighways and so forth going into Jerusalem. Quite often the Palestinians are prevented from even riding on those roads that have been built in their own territory. So this has been in many ways worse than it was in South Africa."

When hundreds of millions of Muslims are calling for the extermination of the Jews of Israel this is more than a lie; it is a blood libel.

It is a lie that Palestinians "had their own land, first of all, occupied". This is like saying that Texans had their own land occupied by Hispanics, ignoring the fact that Hispanics were there first. The very word Palestine is a Roman appellation for the people called Philistines, who were not Arabs but red-haired sailors from the Aegean. The Jews were there as well. In short, first of all the Jews were in the land before the Arabs.

Second of all, the Arabs who inhabited the Palestine Mandate in 1948, at the time of the creation the state of Israel, considered themselves Syrians.(see quotes from the UN debates in 1947. b.r.)

Third, the Palestine Mandate was not created on land taken from the Syrians or the Arabs. It was taken from the Turks. It was not taken from the Turks by the Jews, but by the British and the French. They took it because Turkey sided with Germany in the First World War and, of course, lost. The Turkish empire had ruled the entire region including Syrian, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan for four hundred years before Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan were artificially created by the English and the French. Jordan ­ a state whose majority is Palestinian ­ occupies 80% of the Palestine Mandate.

So it is a preposterous lie to say that the Palestinians had their own land and that it was occupied by the Jews.

Fourth, the individual plots of land that Jews now own were in the first instance bought from the Arabs who regarded themselves as Syrians and who lived in the area of Israel. The only property that was confiscated was confiscated as a spoil of the aggressive war that five Arab states waged against Israel from the day of its birth. Five Arab armies invaded Israel, a sovereign state, with the declared intent of "pushing the Jews into the sea". The cry today of the Muslim majority in the Middle East is to "liberate Palestine from the river to the sea.' In other words push the Jews into the sea.

By the standards of occupation and legitimacy Jimmy Carter invokes, Israel has more legitimacy as a Jewish state than Texas does as an American state, rather than a Mexican province.

The fifth Jimmy Carter lie in this lone Jimmy Carter sentence is the claim that the Jews have colonized anything. "The Israelis have built more than 200 settlements inside Palestine." Why is it wrong of the Jews to live in the West Bank? (The 7000 Jews of Gaza, of course, have already been expunged as result of the Arabs¹ genocidal hate.) Why can't Jews have settlements in the West Bank?

The answer is because the Palestinians Arabs are filled with a racist and theocratic hate towards the Jews. They can't tolerate a non-Muslim, non-Arab people --however small a minority -- living in their midst. (The 7000 Jews of Gaza ­ out of a population of 1.2 million ­ were law-abiding and peaceful and created a horticultural industry that produced ten percent of Gaza's gross national product. But they were Jews. And that was intolerable to Palestine'¹s Nazis. So they had to be removed.)

Contrast Carter's attack on Jews living in the West bank as "colonizers" who must be expelled with the fact that more than a million Arabs live in Israel, where Israel provides them with more rights ­ including the right to vote and elect Arab members of Israel's government ­ than any Arab who lives in any Arab state in the Middle East.

There is indeed a wall now between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. But it is not a wall to keep Arabs out of Israel because they are Arab, as Carter maliciously maintains. There are more than a million Arabs living in Israel. There are indeed checkpoints in the West Bank and into Israel and obstacles to Palestinians crossing them. But this is not because the Israelis discriminate against Palestinians because they are Muslims or Arabs.

It is because too many Palestinians have shown themselves to be bloodthirsty, murderers who have been indoctrinated by their religious leaders and their government to believe in a sick Islamic fantasy that it is their Muslim duty to kill Jews by blowing themselves up; and that, if they do so, they will go to heaven along with 70 members of their family; and, that, if they are lucky enough to be male they will be rewarded by 72 virgins on the other side. On this side they will be regarded as martyrs and saints and honored by their government. Sixty-percent of Palestinians support suicide bombing and this sick, genocidal agenda ­ which is shared by all members of the Palestinians' democratically elected government ­ to kill the Jews.

To ignore these facts and to invert them, as Jimmy Carter does, is to mark yourself as a moral defective. To take on as a mission the spreading of lies that enable Islamic Nazis to carry out their final solution is the epitome of the evil that America's fifth column left and its reprehensible ex-President represent in our time.

Liberals and Antisemitism

From the mail I receive from my readers and of course from a wealth of published articles, it is becoming clear that  many liberal-minded people are concerned that liberals as a group, as a collective, have lost their direction.

Dr. Denis MacEoin, Royal Literary Fund Fellow of the University of Newcastle-on-Tyne, graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, who has taught Arabic and Islamic Studies in Fez, Newcastle and Durham University, and has published extensively on Islamic, writes the following:

 "The  Well-Meaning Road to a Deep Injustice"

Most liberals are well-motivated. We decry injustice, we deplore  tyranny, we protest at the loss of innocent life in wars, we condemn  wrongful imprisonment and the use of torture, we make what Liberation
 theologians call 'an option for the poor', we hate racism, we are never easy  with bigotry, intolerance, or discrimination of any kind, we make a moral stand against religious fanaticism, we defend the weak, we try to do good in  the world. Some of us derive our inspiration for these positions from a  religious belief, others, like myself, are inspired from more secular  convictions.

Of course, we are not always the best of people, whether in our  personal lives or in public, but we do try to place ethical considerations  above other concerns. In our innocence, we are inclined to believe that the
human situation is redeemable, though the more cynical among us tend to  accept the lessons of history and just seek to make the best of a bad case.

Yet there is something about Israel that seems to bring out the worst in some liberal people. Their motives are often laudable, but the results can be less than a real liberal might like. I know why most liberals support the Palestinians and condemn the state of Israel, and I have sympathy with those feelings. I just happen to think they are, in large measure, misplaced. The Palestinians have no state, they are a displaced people who suffer poverty, their lives are restricted, many of them die as a result of Israeli military intervention. Internationally, they have acquired a reputation as the world's great resisters, nobly fighting against a brutal occupation, coerced by superior military force to use their own bodies as weapons in their anti-colonial struggle. This presses all the right liberal buttons, and I have to admit that, if I didn't know any better, I might fall for that same representation of Palestinian virtue and Israeli evil. In  fact, I do not.

Before I say more about that (and some of this will have to wait for further postings), let me just glance at the most egregious instance of what I consider to be a broad injustice about Israel. Let's for a moment
assume that Israel really is the beast she is painted, that Israelis really are brutal occupiers and sadistic oppressors. Fine, you have every right to protest in the streets and put pressure on your governments to do something about this. But wait a moment. Almost every day, liberals and left-wingers are holding solidarity protests, initiating boycotts, signing petitions, and even traveling to the occupied territories to join hands with the Palestinians. Yet when did you last see a protest about the brutal Chinese occupation of Tibet? When were you last asked to sign a petition condemning human rights abuses in Iran? Who last button-holed you about the monstrous regime in North Korea? Who travels to Darfur to show their solidarity with the Christians and animists who are being slaughtered by Arab Muslim forces? Or to other parts of Africa, where cruelty and corruption mar the lives of millions?

In Bangladesh, a journalist called Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury has just gone on trial for his life. His crime? To ask Bangladesh to recognize Israel and to take steps to end religious extremism before it
leads to further acts of terror. Neither The Guardian nor The Independent have run so much as a news item about this brave man and the likelihood that he will be sentenced to death for seeking peace and non-violence. Nor has the BBC, that great defender of human liberty (and opponent of Israel) mentioned him or the system that may condemn him to death for such horrid 'crimes'. In fact, none of the liberal press has spoken out. Yet these same newspapers and broadcasting organizations feed us a daily diet of  anti-Israel propaganda.

That's only one example. It's very hard not to get the impression that much of the left and centre, urged on by a series of post-modern political convictions (some of merit, others not), has actually become negligent in its commitment to justice and human rights for all, using a heavy-handed approach to the Middle East problem as an excuse for a collective loss of vision when it comes to other parts of the world. What is worse, to make the Palestinians the only truly worthy cause and commitment to them the only real badge of honour on the left and middle ground, serves to erase much if not all of the moral capital that such convictions may have built up.

There is no consistency in any of this. Left-wing academics call for a boycott of Israeli universities, despite the fact that Israeli universities operate a policy that allows entry to all races and religions, do not accept government censorship, encourage open debate, and are not used as centres for Zionist propaganda.

They do not seek to boycott Arab universities that forbid entry to Jews, or Iranian universities that are closed to the Baha'is, the country's  largest religious minority, Egyptian universities that are (according to a
report by Human Rights Watch) drowning in censorship, Muslim universities in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere where the very idea of open debate is anathema, Chinese universities that control what students can and cannot learn and what teachers can and cannot teach, or any of the genuine human rights abuses affecting higher education worldwide. Only Israel. Only Israeli institutions. Only Israeli academics who refuse to condemn their own country.

Israel has an internationally-criticized security fence.. It was built for one purpose only: to reduce or eliminate incursions into Israel by Palestinian terrorists, including suicide/homicide bombers. In that respect, it has been eminently successful, cutting attacks by 80 percent and more where it has been built. Even the Palestinians admit that it now forms a virtually insuperable barrier to their murder operations. In an interview with Hizbullah's al-Manar TV channel (15/11/06), Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shalah stated that the Palestinian terror organizations had every intention of continuing their suicide missions, but that there were factors that interfered with this. 'For example,' he explained, 'there is the separation fence, which is an obstacle to the resistance, and if it were not there the situation would be entirely different'. In other words, the fence saves lives. Why any liberal would want to see it torn down is quite beyond me.

But there's another aspect to this fence issue. This is that - whatever the media might want you to believe - it's not the only security barrier in the world. I don't know exactly how many there are, but the first
one I ever became aware of was in my home town of Belfast, where the 'peace wall' kept Protestants and Catholics apart (and, as far as I know, still does in places). Another is the concrete and barbed wire barrier being built by the Chinese government along part of its border with North Korea. Then there's the extensive fence being built by India to keep out terrorists operating from Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, and which will eventually stretch to several hundred killometres. Closer to Israel, the Saudis are building a 550-mile fence to shut their border with Iraq. This will consist of a barbed-wire topped fence, backed by barbed-wire pyramids, sand berms, underground movement sensors, command posts, sniffer-dog patrols, and all  manner of other surveillance techniques. At 550 miles, it will be considerably longer than the 73-mile Hadrian's Wall a couple of miles from where I'm writing. And, if any American liberals should be reading this, do please note that your government is about to start work on an even longer (700-mile) barrier along the Mexican border, not to stop terrorists, but to prevent illegal immigrants getting into US territory. An earlier barrier built in the 1990s near San Diego is a ten-foot high wall of welded steel.
 

Yet one fence and one fence alone figures in news stories, on banners of protest, in political speeches. One fence and that one fence only is forever on the lips of liberals, not in praise of its life-saving properties, but in condemnation of its very existence. A fence designed to save the lives of innocents has become an 'Apartheid Wall', an affront to civilization, a symbol of oppression and racism. Why? Given so many fences
(and those I have listed are by no means the only ones), why does the one fence that has shown itself capable of keeping terrorists away from schools and cafés and shopping malls come in for this disproportionate criticism?

 
Why would liberals be so discriminatory? Is it not racist to say that, of all peoples in the world, the Jews have no right to defend their lives and homes? It's fine for Indians, it's fine for the Chinese, it's fine for the
Saudi Arabs, it's fine for the Northern Irish, it's fine for the Americans to build their fences, but not for the Israelis? Now, I don't doubt that many liberals may find some fault in those other barriers; but they never  say so. They never take to the streets waving placards denouncing those fences. Just the one in Israel. They call the other barriers fences, but the one in Israel a wall. If you can't see that this is ugly, racist, discriminatory, and offensive, I must ask just what sort of liberal you take  yourself to be.
 

In the same way the fence is singled out, so the very state of  Israel is singled out. As a liberal, I don't doubt that you support the whole post-colonial enterprise, whereby peoples round the world have asserted their independence, created autonomous states, and now govern themselves, some well, some badly. We Irish know this better than anyone, for we were the first people in the world to throw off the yoke of  imperialism. We started our battle for independence a couple of centuries before anyone else.. So I sympathize with all people who seek to create viable states for themselves. It is, indeed, a matter of honour for liberals and left-wingers to speak out on behalf of all legitimate nationalist aspirations.
 

But it seems that sympathy for nationalist aspirations ends when it comes to the Jews. Only the Jews, it seems, have no right to build a nation state on their ancestral and religious homeland. Only the Jews are to be condemned to wander the earth for ever, persecuted, driven from land to land as the mood takes one territory or another.. Hooray for the IRA and their bold struggle for a united Ireland, hooray for ETA and the claims of the Basques, hooray for the Tamil Tigers and the Tamil people, above all, hooray for Hamas and Hizbullah and their noble endeavours to take back all the lands that ever belonged to them, historically or mythically, it doesn't matter which. But to oblivion with the Jews for even daring to create a national home where they might be safe from persecution. Let's march with banners that say 'We're all Hizbullah now', condemning Zionism as the greatest evil that ever walked the earth.
 

So everyone is allowed to have a state except the Jews. If you will take care to read their literature, you will see that the Palestinians do not just want a state of their own. They want the Jews out. Every last one of them, from every inch of Israel. If the Jews won't leave, they will kill them. They will leave no trace of them, their synagogues, their kibbutzim, their hopes, their aspirations, their love for their Holy Land. And all those people-supporting left-wingers and liberals out there shake hands with that aspiration, saying Israel has no right to exist, denouncing the very idea of Zionism as fascist and evil, endorsing the idea that the  Jews are behind every conspiracy, that Zionists control the media, tell the US how to frame its foreign policy, and are the masterminds behind the global economy.

If you think that, or half of that, or a quarter, let me explain something to you, very calmly, very quietly, and in short words. You may  think you are a liberal, but you are not. You may think you are an internationalist, but you are not. You may think you are a socialist, but you are not. You are an anti-Semite. Think it through. How much of your anti-Israel rhetoric would Adolf Hitler have found hard to stomach? How would the notion that Jews alone of all the earth's peoples have no right to govern themselves or to protect themselves from those who seek to kill them run in the far reaches of the far right? How would the Palestinian aspiration to commit a second Holocaust play in the degenerate middens of totalitarian fascism?

If you have got thus far please don't stop now. I have saved the best for the last. Yehuda Avner was privileged to work with many of Israel's more illustrious Prime Ministers and his memories of the personalities and the events in which they participated are most entertaining.

Even a total non-believer cannot but pause and wonder how is it possible that someone over three thousand years ago could so accurately describe the Jewish people in the twentieth (oops, the twenty first) century. I refer to the Torah. More precisely the Book of Numbers. (Numbers 22 - 24)

The case for 'dwelling alone'

Yehuda Avner

Jerusalem Post, October 12, 2006 

Golda Meir, Israel's most celebrated model of strait-laced probity, once gave a pep talk to 15 diplomatic probationers at the Foreign Ministry whose head she was in 1958. Clearly wishing to take our measure, she leaned leisurely into her chair, combed back her bunned hair with the fingers of both hands, lit up a cigarette, and eyeing us through the flame of the match, said in a Hebrew filled with Milwaukee-sounding pronunciations, "Are you sure you greenhorns want to join the Foreign Service? Representing the Jewish state can be a very lonely experience. I'll tell you why: When I'm at the United Nations I look around me and think to myself, we have no family here. Israel is entirely by itself in the international community, less than popular, and certainly misunderstood. All we have to fall back on is our own Jewish, Zionist faith."

Whereupon, her tone gritty, her fists balled, she proceeded to ask herself, "Why should this be? Why such solitude? Why is it that we are the one country in the world that is Jewish? Why are we the one country in the world whose language is Hebrew? Why is it that we have no independent kith and kin, or any historic relationship with any other state, or group of states, or cultures, or religions, or languages, as do say, the Anglo-Saxon nations, or the Christian nations, or the Muslim nations, or the Nordic nations, or the Slav peoples, or the Francophonic nations, or the Spanish-speaking, or the Arabic-speaking, or the Chinese-speaking peoples?"

Here she paused to rummage inside her copious black leather handbag, from the depths of which she extracted a handkerchief with which she blew her bulbous nose, and then, shoulders stooped, face glum, voice pensive, continued, "Everybody in the world has sovereign and cultural family except us. Everybody in the United Nations is grouped into blocs bound by a common geography, or religion, or history, or culture, except us. They vote in solidarity, like family. We belong to no family. Our most natural regional allies—our Arab neighbors—don't want anything to do with us. Indeed, they want to destroy us. So we really belong nowhere and to no one except to ourselves, impelled by our own Jewish, Zionist faith."

With that, the foreign minister stubbed out her cigarette and brooded over the ashtray, clearly pondering her next thought. When it came her voice was mulish: "Since we have no blood ties to stand by us in solidarity we suffer severe diplomatic consequences. Nobody recognizes Jerusalem as our capital city. We have no membership in any international regional alliance. We have no membership in any trade area. We enjoy no international recognition of our national medical emblem, the Magen David Adom. We have no accredited membership in any United Nations regional grouping. Consequently, we are the only UN member that has no prospect of ever becoming a member of the Security Council.

"Of course," she added with a pious smile, "there is one important exception—our natural blood ties with our fellow Jews in the Diaspora. But everywhere they are a minority, and nowhere do they enjoy any form of national or cultural autonomy, let alone sovereignty."

Thus spoke this extraordinary woman, then in her early sixties, making no attempt to answer her own earth-shattering question: why, indeed, was the Jewish state without any sovereign kith or kin in the family of nations? Why was Israel the odd state out?

Years later, when she was prime minister and I a member of her staff, I discovered she had an aversion to analytical, conceptual discourse of any sort. A tough character with a domineering streak, Golda Meir knew to ask the right questions but was wont to simplify the most complex issues and go straight to the crux of the matter for a practical answer. Impatient with the convoluted theorems favored by academics and seasoned career diplomats, she wanted bottom-line answers. And, for her, "Jewish, Zionist faith" was a bottom-line answer.

This enigma, of Israel's diplomatic solitude, once came up for discussion at the Bible study circle which Menachem Begin regularly hosted at his home when he became prime minister in 1977. Every Saturday night 20-odd people, among them Bible scholars of repute, would seat themselves…around the couch on which Mr. Begin sat, and for an hour or so would zestfully delve into an attention-grabbing biblical text.

On the Saturday night in question the chosen text was from the Book of Numbers, chapters 22 to 24, in which the Bible records how, 38 years after the children of Israel embarked on their Exodus from Egypt and two years before entering the Promised Land, the heathen prophet Balaam was coaxed by the Moabite king Balak to curse the advancing Israelites and thereby devastate them. However, Balaam, impelled by God's command, and much to Balak's fury, found himself involuntarily blessing them profusely instead.

The discussion that evening centered primarily on the evocative verse nine of chapter 23, in which Balaam foretells with remarkable prescience the future destiny of the Jewish people, predicting that "this is a people that shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations."

Reading the verse out loud, Prime Minister Begin fixedly peered at the page of his Bible as though studying a museum manuscript and, sounding a mild chuckle, said, "One does not have to be a mystic for the imagination to be stirred by such an improbable vision of a nation 'dwelling alone.' What Balaam said is a startlingly accurate prophecy of our Jewish people's experience in all of history."

Professor Ephraim Urbach, a rotund, semi-bald scholar of refinement, wit and brilliance, cited classic commentators to suggest "dwelling alone" really meant voluntarily setting oneself apart. In other words, the Jewish nation distinguished itself from other peoples by virtue of its distinctive religious and moral laws, and by the fact that it had been chosen by God as the instrument of a Divine purpose within the family of nations.

A woman in her fifties raised a finger for attention. She was fairly tall and lean, her face equine, her dress an unfussy nut brown, her beret a plain gray, her shoes sensible, and her eyes brilliantly intelligent. This was Nehama Leibowitz, famous for her profound biblical scholarship and for her immensely popular weekly Torah discourses, composed in a comprehensive and highly comprehensible style, graspable even to laymen.

Deftly, she drew attention to the verse's grammatical structure, elaborating upon and reinforcing Professor Urbach's comment, explaining that the verb yit'hashav, generally translated in English to mean reckoned—"this is a people that shall not be reckoned among the nations"—was here rendered in the reflexive form [hitpa'el], meaning, "this is a people that does not reckon itself among the nations."

As an aside, she pointed out that this form of that particular Hebrew word—yit'hashav—occurs but once in the whole of Scripture.

Professor Ya'acov Katz, a slight figure with dour features and a deeply analytical disposition, broke in to refer to the eminent talmudist Marcus Jastrow. Citing Jastrow's talmudic sources, Katz showed the hitpa'el of the root word hashav, ["reckon"] signifies "to conspire," meaning that Israel "is a people that dwells alone and does not conspire against other nations."

Another participant, whom everybody knew simply as Srulik—a ginger, bushy-haired archeologist and Bible prodigy in an emerald-green yarmulke which he had picked up at the door—provocatively remarked that whatever which way one interpreted Balaam's prophecy it stamped the Jewish people as an eternally abnormal nation within the family of nations. This flew in the face of the classic Zionist creed which expounded that Zionism's aim was to normalize the Jewish people so that it should become a goy k'chol hagoyim—a nation like other nations.

Indeed, the central thesis of the Zionist theorists and thinkers of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries was that once Jews possessed what every other normal nation possesses—a country of their own—they would automatically become a normal nation within the international community. And the consequence of that, so the classic Zionist theory went, would be that anti-Semitism would wither and die. (Sadly, as we see today, they couldn't have more wrong!!!!!!! b.r.)

To which Dr. Haim Gevrayahu, chairman of the Israel Bible Society, and involved in one way or another in many high-profiled Bible study circles throughout the country, added words to the effect that, in making their confident predictions, one wondered in hindsight what led those brilliant secular Zionist founding fathers of yesteryear to believe that Jewish self-determination would, of itself, lead to national normalization and put an end to anti-Semitism. Indeed, were Jews to become a normal people they would cease being Jewish. But that could never happen because nothing could ever put an end to anti-Semitism. In fact, one thing to be learned from the biblical portion under review was that the so-called prophet Balaam was the archetype anti-Semite. His whole intent was to curse the Jews, not to bless them. The blessing was God's doing, not his.

This triggered off a firestorm of controversy because some of the scholars present took the Bible as a paradigm of God's own writing, while others related to it secularly as a piece of extraordinary literature.

Listening attentively, Mr. Begin lowered the temperature by saying in an earnest voice that it could hardly be denied by any reading of the text that the Jewish people did, indeed, live separate, apart, and often alone. And to prove his point he picked up a volume called A People That Dwells Alone. This was an anthology of the utterances of Dr. Ya'acov Herzog, confidant of several prime ministers, and universally admired for his remarkable gifts as a diplomat, philosopher, talmudist and theologian. Scion of a famous rabbinic family, he was the son of Israel's first chief rabbi, Yitzhak Isaac Halevy Herzog, and younger brother of Chaim, who was to become Israel's sixth president. He died in 1972 at the age of 50. To me, he was a mentor, counselor and tutor.

The prose of Ya'acov Herzog's anthology reads like a great rolling stone, accumulating intellectual threads and philosophic concepts as it gathers momentum and accelerates deeper and deeper into the mysteries of Jewish identity and eternity. And it was one such concept that Menachem Begin chose to quote that night to the members of his Bible study circle. He read:

"The theory of classic Zionism was national normalization. What was wrong with the theory? It was the belief that the idea of a "people that dwells alone" is an abnormal concept, when actually a "people that dwells alone" is the natural concept of the Jewish people. That is why this one phrase still describes the totality of the extraordinary phenomenon of Israel's revival. If one asks how the ingathering of the exiles, which no one could have imagined in his wildest dreams, came about, or how the State of Israel could endure such severe security challenges, or how it has built up such a flourishing economy, or how the unity of the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora has been preserved, one must come back to the primary idea that this is "a people that dwells alone." More than that, one must invoke this phrase not only to understand how the Jews have existed for so long; one must invoke it as a testimony to the Jewish right to exist at all in the land of their rebirth.

"So there you have it," concluded Begin, closing the book with a resolute air. "Cease 'dwelling alone' and you cease to exist. What a conundrum!"  

And the question that I have to ask myself is: "Should I therefore believe that the more anti-Semitism there is the more this prophecy is proven to be accurate?" From which it follows that I should accept it  and not get so worked up and upset!!!!!!!!

16^th December, 2006.