A clandestine undertaking on behalf of Israel, the Jets and the Jews.

 
Barghouti and Yad Vashem

Today's Jerusalem Post and Haaretz both published excellent editorials in today's paper.

The Jerusalem Post's editorial line has become somewhat more leftist since David Horovitz became editor-in-chief, but that didn't stop them from strongly objecting to a release of Fatah terrorist leader Marwan Barghouti. Their editorial states, in part:

"[Barghouti] seems to have captured the imagination of some Palestinian, American, and even Israeli opinion makers...

"If there is anyone more responsible than Yasser Arafat for the needless terror war that has cost thousands of Israelis and Palestinians their lives, it is Barghouti, who proudly claims to be that war's architect...

"To some, all of this is a non sequitur, since it is not up to Israel, after all, to choose a new Palestinian leader. If a majority of Palestinians want Barghouti to lead them, why should Israelis, particularly those who believe in democracy, stand in the way? Why should Israel insist on keeping him in jail?

"The reason is a matter of both national dignity and the rule of law...

"It is ironic that many of the people who say we should not choose Palestinian leaders are ready to anoint Barghouti as the only legitimate leader, especially when that 'legitimacy' is based mainly on slaughtering Israelis. Should our highest aspiration for the post-Arafat era be someone who tried to out-Arafat Arafat?"

Haaretz's editorial concerns the new database on the Yad Vashem website which has posted the names of, and information about, 3,000,000 of the Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust.

In part, Haaretz editorialized:

"It is very difficult to digest the scope of the horror of the Holocaust. How can one grasp the murder of six million Jews whose only crime was that they were Jews? But perhaps now, through the Internet, it will be possible to look at the picture of innocent Leah of the house of First, hugging her two children, Shifra and Salek, who died in Warsaw, or at Heinrich and Margarete Yaacobi of Berlin, who died in Theresienstadt, and from their life stories, the visitors can begin to build a broader picture.

"Beyond the unfathomable tragedy in the destruction of six million people, a tour of the Pages of Testimony also reveals how great the loss was to the Jewish people, and not merely the numerical loss. So many many scientists, rabbis, artists, intellectuals and public servants, people who fulfilled their potential and people who only partially did so, whose lives were ended instantly and whose contributions to the Jewish people and the state of Israel can only be guessed at...

"When we visit the Yad Vashem web site and look at the faces of the dead, it is not a one-way view. Those people, who could have been with us and part of us now, look back at us, and with questing eyes."

While not intended, the Haaretz editorial is further reason for why Barghouti must not be released. The murder of many Jews (and a Greek Orthodox monk) by Barghouti is also an unfathomable tragedy to the Jewish people. Some of the victims fulfilled their potential and some of them only partially did so. All of their lives were ended instantly and their contributions to the Jewish people and the state of Israel can only be guessed at. Releasing their murderer is the ultimate indignity to both them and us.
posted on 11/24/2004