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

 
Flatbush Fanatics

My political views on Israel are fairly right-wing (and politically incorrect) by most standards. I think the project of settlement of Judea, Samaria and Gaza is not only inherently legitimate, but heroic and courageous. I strongly opposed Ehud Barak's surrender to terror and offer to divide Jerusalem after Yasser Arafat launched his terror war. I don't like Prime Minister Sharon's plan to destroy 26 communities and get nothing in return, and I reject Sharon's claim that President Bush's vague letter, in which he hinted that a full return to the '67 borders may not be necessary, means or is worth much.

Basically, I'm in the camp of Likud leaders like Uzi Landau and Natan Sharansky, people who are willing to make significant territorial compromises for real peace with a democratic Palestinian leadership committed to a final end to their war against Israel, but who will not give in to terrorists, or offer a lot for nothing in return. People who are very critical of Sharon, but who reject extremist rhetoric against supporters of withdrawal, and who condemn the notion of "mass refusal" by Israeli soldiers opposed to withdrawal.

To most of the world, this makes me a "hardliner." Thomas Friedman of the New York Times would probably dismiss me as a fanatic, and compare me to Iraqi terrorists (to whom he has compared "settlers").

In some portions of the American Orthodox community, however, this makes me a hopeless, naive leftist. The fanaticism of some of these people - yes, they really are fanatical - is sad. Some of these people haven't visited Israel since the terror wave that began in late 2000, but of course, this won't stop them from demanding that Israel never cede an inch and expressing vitriol toward any Israeli leader who disagrees.

Of course, it's not too hard to express these views when it's not your son who is going off to Gaza or Jenin next month.

The latest nonsense comes from Isaac Kohn in this week's Jewish Press. Reacting to Sharon's statement that he had to hire guards to protect his late wife's grave from desecration threats by Jewish extremists, Kohn goes haywire, expressing his "revulsion" and writing that Sharon is engaged in an "onslaught against all that Judaism stands for."

Kohn insists that Sharon is a liar, that no threats were ever made against Lilly Sharon's grave. After all, "Judaism has set an air of reverence over the eternal resting place of any Jew. No Jew whose heart is permeated with Torah values and teachings would ever so much as entertain the ugly thought of desecrating a grave."

I suppose this is why - to our deepest shame - an observant Jew shot and killed Prime Minister Rabin. Perhaps Kohn would argue that a "Jew whose heart is permeated with Torah values and teachings" might murder another Jew, he just wouldn't "ever so much as entertain the ugly thought of desecrating a grave." But then, that wouldn't explain the disgusting incidents in which observant Jews urinated on Rabin's grave, would it?

Nearly a decade has passed since Rabin was murdered. After that horrific event, many have tried to moderate their stance to their political other, to understand that people of good will can have a different point of view. But a few have simply become more fanatical, spewing hatred from the comfort of their Brooklyn or Long Island perches.

The time has come for the decent majority among us to vomit out the few crazies in our midst. Otherwise, if G-d forbid, another political murder befalls us, we will have no right to deny moral responsibility.
posted on 2/27/2005