How have we become so apathetic to the current situation, in which the murder of Jews is considered a routine occurrence? How is it possible that after a whole year of negotiations, with rumors that the Israelis were ready to concede everything, there are still those who call this a right-wing government?
Translated by Michoel Leib Dobry
1.
For more than a year there have been continuous negotiations between the representatives of the government of Israel and the terrorist organizations. The forceful arbitrator, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, arrived in Eretz Yisroel again and again, seeking to do the impossible and convince Eisav to love Yaakov. He tried both with assurances and with threats, yet the negotiations failed, as did all those that preceded them. Kerry even promised that the day after an agreement would be reached, a new dawn of lasting peace would emerge and the People of Israel could dwell in their land with safety and security. However, he also made the continuing negotiations dependent upon the release of hardened terrorists who murdered Jews in cold blood. In addition, he sought to link the peace agreement with another freeze on Jewish settlement construction and a commitment to uproot more yishuvim and expel their Jewish residents. This is the standard formula for peace – turn the terrorists into glorious freedom fighters, give them a prize for their murderous activities, and grant strategic territory to terrorist bases – providing them with a commanding view of crowded Jewish population centers. Such is peace, Middle East style.
From the Jewish standpoint, the Netanyahu government agreed to virtually everything. During the past year, terrorists have been released wholesale, more than by all previous governments. Jewish construction has been stopped cold, the settlements are drying up, and above all, the peace talks continued with great vigor.
While no one knows for certain what they’ve been talking about this past year, there surely wasn’t a lot of Jewish pride in evidence there. All that’s left is for us to ask: What benefit did we derive from these talks? As always, the negotiations broke down due to Arab intransigence, and once more, one of the Rebbe’s prophecies has been realized. Decades ago, the Rebbe spoke about how G-d “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” and caused the Arabs to reject the agreements. This is similar to what occurred during the tenure of Mr. Netanyahu’s predecessor, future prison inmate Ehud Olmert, when he agreed to divide Yerushalayim and return to the June 1967 borders. However, it was specifically the chairman of the PLO – the same organization with which successive Israeli governments have negotiated for over twenty years under the title “the Palestinian Authority” – who refused to accept the agreement and ran off with the map.
2.
While some people form an investigative committee whenever something collapses at a state-sponsored ceremony, no one has demanded from the prime minister and his predecessors an answer to a simple question: Why did you free hundreds of terrorists with Jewish blood on their hands, degrading yourselves to the most unfathomable depths of absurdity, if you knew in advance how this story would end? How is it possible that Israeli leaders have persistently conducted negotiations in a manner befitting a “Schlemiel” (the Jewish People have been the “Schlimazels”), without a minimum of backbone, and no one is compelled to pay the price?
As strange as this may sound, we must demand the immediate resignation of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, as a result of the failed diplomatic talks. Anyone who follows a path of guaranteed failure must be made to pay the political price.
According to the prevailing situation, every day that this Prime Minister stands at the head of the government of Israel is pikuach nefesh. His readiness to cave in and pay any price to maintain progress on the diplomatic track is a clear danger to the Jewish People. While Abu Mazen may have saved him this time by his refusal to conclude the negotiations with an agreement, it is forbidden for us to forget what this government was prepared to give away this past year. They even agreed to release Israeli Arabs engaged in terrorist activities, one of the most illogical steps that any self-respecting sovereign nation could possibly take.
Just last week, the heads of the various local councils throughout Yehuda and Shomron issued a stinging letter to Knesset Members and other public figures, revealing the truth about the construction freeze being quietly implemented behind the scenes by the Prime Minister. Even the Minister of Housing and Construction can no longer ignore the facts, and he has been forced to admit that Yerushalayim has been included in the freeze. In other words, the current situation is that the government of Israel is not really sure if Yerushalayim, Yehuda, and Shomron are part of the sovereign territory of Eretz Yisroel, or perhaps our presence in these regions is actually in serious question – a question of time.
The ridiculous fact is that even those four hundred housing units that the Prime Minister brandishes again and again as proof of his plans to build in Yerushalayim are actually apartments being constructed in the ultra-Orthodox Ramot Dalet neighborhood. This is a residential project within the neighborhood’s currently existing boundaries, and it will not increase the sovereign territory of Yerushalayim by one inch.
3.
The call to halt the construction freeze in Yerushalayim, Yehuda, and Shomron is not merely a demand to build in all parts of Eretz Yisroel. We’re talking about a practical decision, in light of the prevailing housing need. In recent years, the Shomron has been transformed into the area with the largest population growth in Eretz Yisroel. The demand for residential units in the Shomron is tremendous, yet the supply is extremely limited due to political considerations by the Netanyahu government, past and present, which halted all Jewish construction in these liberated territories in an effort to appease Abu Mazen, may his name be erased. All this has been done despite the fact that most of Yehuda and Shomron is vacant and unoccupied.
Even in Yerushalayim the situation is not normal. While everyone talks about strengthening the capital and reinforcing its Jewish sovereignty, the costs of apartments in Yerushalayim deny Jews of average income the opportunity of living in the Holy City. The quiet construction freeze of the past few years has caused apartment prices in Yerushalayim to skyrocket, as the capital city of the Jewish People is unable to satisfy the demand. For years there has been no discussion of building a new neighborhood in Yerushalayim, and no housing units can be added within the city’s currently existing residential districts. The last time a new neighborhood was built in Yerushalayim was nearly two decades ago, during Olmert’s tenure as the city’s mayor, when Har Choma (Chomat Shmuel) was built on land annexed by Israel following the Six Day War.
Thank G-d, despite all the tremendous pressures, both Yerushalayim and the region of Yehuda and Shomron remain the most preferred residential areas in Eretz Yisroel. The People of Israel are voting with their feet and their homes, and in the face of all the efforts to separate us from this land, they have discovered that “settlers” is not a derogatory term and that it’s possible to live happily in Yehuda and Shomron.
4.
The collapse of the diplomatic negotiations should be a warning sign to anyone who still thinks about trying to tear away our portions of Eretz HaKodesh and handing them over to the terrorists. It has now been proven beyond all reasonable doubt that there is absolutely no chance of conducting further negotiations with the terrorist organizations, and even just talking with these killers encourages greater terrorist activity and leads to more Jewish bloodshed. This is the very conclusion underlying the vicious end to the “peace talks,” with the Erev Pesach murder of Baruch Mizrachi Hy”d in Chevron and the murder of Shelly Dadon Hy”d a week after Yom tov. Two innocent Jews, slain in cold blood in Eretz Yisroel, while diplomatic talks came to a crashing halt as the Arabs demanded the additional release of hundreds of terrorists.
Just imagine for a moment: What would Israeli leaders say if we would hear that in a certain country, a Jew is taken out once a month and murdered in cold blood, simply because he was Jewish? Yet, this is exactly what is happening now in Eretz Yisroel - and no one makes a whimper!
Therefore, before we start rejoicing over the collapse of the latest diplomatic negotiations and the shelving of the Prime Minister’s second phase of disengagement, we must understand: How have we become so accustomed to the current situation, in which the murder of Jews is considered a routine occurrence? How is it possible that after a whole year of negotiations, with rumors that the Israelis were ready to concede everything, there are still those who call this a right-wing government?
Anyone who claims that things could get much worse apparently doesn’t understand what’s going on now.
The bottom line is that this government agreed to all of Abu Mazen’s conditions, stubbornly settling for only one prerequisite: “the recognition of the Jewish state.”
Apart from this condition, the Netanyahu government placed no obstacles or red lines. They agreed to another construction freeze, the release of hundreds of murderers, including Israeli Arab terrorists, negotiations on Yerushalayim, territorial exchanges, uprooting settlements, expelling Jews, and more.
The only reason why the negotiations have had no bearing upon the presence of the Bayit Yehudi Party in the government is the refusal of the terrorist organizations to accept anything less than everything.