Rav Dov Fischer

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[Excerpt from full Commentary] [M]y claim to Jerusalem is eternal and unyielding to a Jerusalem indivisible and united, because no one in my family line, going back to the beginning of the exile, ever yielded our claim to Jerusalem. . . [¶] No one compromises on capital cities. America moved her capital around -- from Philadelphia to New York to Washington, D.C. -- but she never offered to split it with the British or Jefferson Davis. No one offers to split Damascus or Beirut or Cairo or Baghdad for peace. No one offers to split Paris or London or Madrid or Prague.  [¶] Even the experience with Berlin is instructive. The world forced onto the Germans -- veritably shoved it right down their throats -- the division of Berlin. It barely lasted half a century before the wall came down and the city was reunited. [¶] We owe no apologies, no explanations. . . .

We're Right, and the Whole World is Wrong

[Excerpt from full Commentary] If we Jews are anything, we are a people of history. From our first patriarch to Israel's precision-targeted destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, which laid the foundation for a successful Operation Desert Storm and the rescue of Kuwait, our history provides the strength to know that we can be right and the whole world wrong. . . .

Why I Love Israel and Am Proud

to Be Judged by Her Standards

[Excerpt from full Commentary] . . . In all of world history, which has seen so many countries pull free people out of Africa to enslave them, only one country ever risked its citizens’ lives in covert operations aimed at extricating African slaves from Africa to set them free as full citizens in their land: Israel. When Vietnamese “boat people” risked their very lives in rickety crafts on the high seas in a desperate effort to escape Communism and totalitarianism, Israel opened its doors and rescued survivors, who today are third generation Vietnamese Israelis. [¶] In Israel there is hope, even though all the surrounding populations aim their weapons at her. Her northern border is not Canada but the terrorist Hezbollah who rain rockets on her. Her southern border is not Mexico but the terrorist Hamas who swear to destroy Israel. And yet, somehow, Israelis keep believing in peace. No one in her region is willing to negotiate a sincere peace with her, yet she remains a nation ever-optimistic that the terrorists someday will change course. From the Palestine Authority to Hamas to Hezbollah, the leaders of those polities manipulate their children, through corrupted kids’ television shows and summer camps and hateful school texts, to hate the Jews next door. And yet Israel teaches peace and mutual acceptance, preparing its children for the day when the others stop hating. . . .

A Day Like Any Other

[Excerpt from full Commentary] Sunday, May 5, seemed a day like any other. The world was concerned about violence in the Middle East. Secretary of State Colin Powell opined on talk shows that Israel must negotiate new agreements with Palestine Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. . . .  [¶] In Colombia, an internecine civil war continued on that Sunday. That war is not 19 months old, not 38 months old. Rather, it is 38 years old, and 3,500 civilians are murdered in its crossfire every year. On that Sunday — while the world fretted about a group of Arafat-backed gunmen hiding in the Church of the Nativity — a group of terrified mothers, young children, and babies fled desperately from terrorists to the sanctuary of a Catholic church in Bojaya, some 58 miles south of Quibdo, capital of the Colombian state of Choco. . . . No one spoke out or noticed as FARC rebels pounded the holy shrine, firing homemade mortars into the church, murdering at least 40 civilians. In all, 108 non-combatants were slain in Colombia that day. According to Colombian President Andres Pastrana, "What happened here was genocide on the part of the FARC."  [¶] [In Nigeria . . , a disagreement arose in the city of Noj, some 200 miles northeast of the capital in Abuja — between the Yorubas of Eto-Baba in the south and the Beroms and Hausas of the north — over where to conduct the balloting. Soon, the vying factions of President Olusegun Obasanjo's ruling People's Democratic Party flooded the streets to resolve the question with knives and machetes. At least 20 civilians were slain, many charred beyond recognition, . . . .

A Land Without a Name

[Excerpt from full Commentary] It is instructive that the Arab world does not even have a name for the land. Think about it. "Palestine" is a name that the ancient Romans gave the Land of Israel after that now-vanished empire destroyed the last breaths of Jewish freedom in the Holy Land in 135. The Romans renamed the cities and the land to excise all memory of the stubborn Jewish patriots who had defied the empire from within the Holy Land. So, Jerusalem became Aelonia Capitolina. Shechem became Naples. (Naples later became Nablus.) And the country itself was renamed "Palestine" for the Biblical people who preceded the Jews — the Philistines. . . .  [¶] The Arabs have names for countries like Syria, Egypt, Oman, Qatar, Iraq, Libya, and Kuwait. They even have two countries named Yemen. But through all of recorded time they never have had a name for the land of Judea and Samaria. "The West Bank"? Such a name describes Jersey City, lying on that bank of the Hudson. Santa Monica, perhaps, is a more elegant bank, east of the Pacific. And we may note Louisville, reposing on the south bank of the majestic Ohio River. These are cities, not countries. . . .  [¶] To this day, the logo of each and every Palestinian "activist" group, groups ranging from Hamas to Islamic Jihad to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine to Fatah, all depict the map of a "Palestine" that is identical to pre-1967 Israel — no "West Bank." . . . .

The Greatest Mideast Challenge

[Excerpt from full Commentary] In time, Arafat nonetheless will pass from the scene. He is aged and manifestly feeble. And though it is not clear whether the leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade similarly will move on, let us assume — without any basis — that they also will step aside. Even then, after all the terror-stained Palestinian Arab leaders have departed, and after all Palestinian Arab civilians have compromised on their expectation to extend "Palestine" to the Mediterranean Sea — no American Mideast plan will succeed until Washington finally starts following up on its demands for an absolute end to the teaching and transmitting of hate to the people living under the Palestinian Authority's control. [¶] We continually have failed to recognize that Mideast peace ultimately is not about paper promises but about building a vigorous foundational societal framework that proactively promotes a new way of thinking about the Other. Through all the "peace processes" and "peace plans" Washington has endorsed and promoted since Oslo, we always have failed to demand with sustained follow-up that the educational systems and communications media of the Palestinian Arabs and other Islamist societies stop teaching children and young adults to hate the West. Even as we've been pumping more than $200 million of our tax dollars each year into the Palestinian Authority — and have sent hundreds of millions more to the "Palestinian refugee camps" of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency — we consistently have turned a blind eye to the way they use their schools, summer camps, and radio and television — even their "Sesame Street"-type shows — to promote the most vile anti-Jewish stereotypes and crude distortions of Western society. . . .

The Game of Learning to Live with It

[Excerpt from full Commentary] As I read the grim news from Israel daily -- the acts of terrorism, the murders of men, women, and children; the deadly shootings on the roadways -- I am struck increasingly by how Israelis have become inured to it all. And that truly is Israel’s worst problem, that the society has “learned to live with it.” They have “learned how to go on” with their lives. . . . [¶] I am reminded of a “Star Trek” episode from the original series, in which two planets are at war. They have been at war for so long, with no end in sight, that they devise a “brilliant” plan to allow their war to continue forever, without marring their ecologies, their lovely buildings, their art. Essentially, they just play an electronic war game, and each side records how many “hits” it has successfully struck each day -- how many “virtual people” have been “killed” electronically on the opposing planet. Under the rules of this “painless aesthetic war,” each side agrees to accept the losses registered in the game and gamely sends that number of its real-live people, who are resident in the “hit” areas, to a death machine to expire -- pursuant to the losses sustained in the “electronic war game.” Thus, they accept a certain number of deaths each day. They have “learned to live with it.” . . . . [¶] In Israel, if the murderer is caught, and assuming he is tried and convicted, he goes free in a few years. It is all a game. And if Arafat catches him first, then the butcher benefits from an Oslo “double jeopardy” arrangement that basically prohibits Israel from meting justice to someone whom Arafat “punishes" first. So the PLO “catches” the cutthroat, puts him in jail. And then a few days later, he “escapes” -- think: "Get Out of Jail Free" -- and the game ends after a visit to "Free Parking." Shuffle the Jews again and play another round. . . . [¶] We don’t do that in America. So our roads are safe. And no politician would dare soft- pedal the issue. . .

Israel Just Keeps Going and Going and Going

[Excerpt from full Commentary] Regardless of how one views the War in Iraq, virtually all Americans are agreed that we are glad the Taliban and Saddam are out of power, and we want America to get out of there, and we need to get out of there. Some would urge that we get out sooner – like this afternoon. Some would wait another seven months, get power transferred on June 30, see the election of an Iraqi Parliament concluded by January 2005, and then leave. But virtually all Americans, from the Left to the Right, want to get out of there. . . . [¶]  Israel deals with the same people -- Arab Islamists who hate Jews, Christians, the West, modernity, prosperity, civilization, sunlight, concepts, books. Well before the Iraq War, Israel already had to deal with car bombings, dastardly suicide mass murders by Islamists aiming to maximize deaths of civilians in the Islamist belief that terror can achieve their goals and simultaneously land them 72 virgins in Valhalla. But, unlike America, Israel just cannot leave the region this afternoon, or after June 30, or by next January. Israel cannot just bring her armed forces home to Kentucky and South Carolina, to San Diego and to Brooklyn. Israel has to stay in Israel – or just turn off the lights. That is Israel’s choice. It is no choice. . . .

No Terms of Negotiation

[Excerpt from full Commentary] I have been a big-firm business-litigation attorney for nearly a decade. My favorite case matters are those that promptly move towards a negotiated settlement between or among parties who each emerge with something constructive, resulting in a "win-win" outcome. After the parties negotiate their agreement, we attorneys document the settlement and the parties' respective concessions. Invariably, we insert into each settlement agreement a paragraph that seems so obvious, that an attorney omitting it could risk a claim of malpractice: Warranty of Authority to Execute Agreement. Each person executing this Agreement on behalf of an entity or individual and/or in a specified capacity hereby warrants and represents that he or she has been granted the power and authority to make and enter into the agreements and releases contained herein for said entity or individual in the capacity set forth herein . . . . [¶] In plain talk, each party to the agreement affirms that he or she has the authority to negotiate the agreement, the authority to offer concessions in return for counter-concessions, and the authority to enforce the concessions and promises he makes. . . . [¶] If Arafat and, now, Mahmoud Abbas, cannot deliver the goods, then Israel cannot reasonably be expected to offer him concessions and abandon preciously guarded rights in return for peace promises and treaties that are destined to fail ab initio because he lacks enforcement authority. . . .

At Last Israel is Whole: Territories Won Fairly in War Must Be Annexed

[Excerpt from full Commentary]Ultimately Israel must reveal its deepest national secret: an abiding belief that Judea and Samaria are rightly Jewish soil to begin with, comprising the very heartland of the Jewish national home. From biblical patriarchs, matriarchs, prophets and kings to Maccabees, Pharisees and Sadducees -- and continuing uninterrupted through two millennia of Diaspora -- the Jewish people have been linked not so much with Tel Aviv and Haifa as with Hebron, Shechem (Nablus), Shiloh and Jerusalem. If Arabs, who massacred Jews and expropriated what was Jewish in 1929 and 1936, today speak of Hebron as an Arab city, they must be challenged . . . [¶] If land ownership is determined by who preceded whom, then Jews were there first. If, however, suzerainty is a military outcome -- which once saw the Jews displaced -- well, Israel is there now. Hebron is a Jewish city. . . . [¶] Until recently the very word Palestine was synonymous with the Jews of the area, not with the Arab latecomers. Before the Jewish state's renaming, the United Jewish Appeal was called the United Palestine Appeal, the Jerusalem Post was the Palestine Post, and the American League for a Free Palestine raised money not for Arafat's precursors but for Menachem Begin's Irgun. . . .

Israeli Public Relations: Road to Nowhere

[Excerpt from full Commentary] It took me forty years to figure it out, but I think I finally have figured out that Israel is not going to win any PR wars. The best we can hope for is that Fox News remains the way it is, along with the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Until Israel gives up Judea, Samaria, and half of Jerusalem, she will not win any PR wars. [¶] That kind of PR boost in world attention all-too-often seems associated with pictures from Auschwitz and Dachau and Buchenwald when the respective Allies Forces liberated the camps. That is quite a price to pay for world sympthy. One picture may be worth a thousand words, but is it worth a thousand souls?  [¶]  To be sure, if we don't do it, no one else will -- least of all, the Israelis. The Israelis send us, in 99% of the cases, the most useless political hacks for their public relations. People who barely speak English (and thank G-d that they are so hard to understand!), who make the most inane arguments, people whose twenty years' dutiful service in Israel in one or another political party's inner circle, pushing papers from right to left, receive the game-show-like reward -- first prize : an appointment as an ambassador or a consul-general in America.  [¶]    Only rarely did Israel give her supporters a chance to work in America with people who spoke American English -- Golda and Bibi. Both were so successful that they became Prime Ministers. A third guy, Abba Eban, spoke English so beautifully that people who heard him supported Israel even though they (like he) barely knew what he was talking about. The lesson: send people to America who lack clever political acumen, who barely can speak English, and with thick accents at that?

"J Street," Growing up on the Street, and Street Survival: Why Israel Cannot Abide the Morons Who Call Themselves "Friend"

[Excerpt from full Commentary]  Today’s “J Street” was yesterday’s Peace Now and Breira. Always rushing to “make peace,” to trust Arafat to keep his word, to encourage and push Israel to sign Oslo Accords. [¶]  I like to think of myself as an intellectual, too. I do not cede that ground to the “J Street” crowd. But I also grew up a bit on the streets. I know both sides – the people who attended Columbia University with me, the law school types, the scholars. And I know street fighters.  [¶] Then Israel ceded Gaza. “Who needs Gaza anyway – with all its Arab overpopulation and all the trouble? It’s not worth it – let them choke on their own suffering! They will be so busy running an economy and a government that they will not have time to bother Israel.” Yeah. So Hamas took over and turned Gaza into an arcade, with terrorists raining down missiles and rockets on Sderot. [¶]  There is no way to get them honestly to live with us except to persuade them that the cost of fighting us is too dear. That is how Israel took Jordan and Egypt out of the confrontation – beating them in war after war, until those governments gave up on destroying Israel.

1. Pollard did a terrible, terrible thing.
2. A terrible thing. Just terrible.
3. Horrible. And he messed up the position and status of Jews in American government. He fed into anti-Semites’ worst diatribes about Jews being of diverted loyalty to foreign powers. He had no right to imperil the Jewish position in this country and, thereby, to lend credence to haters elsewhere in the world who wonder about Jews and our loyalties in those countries. . . .
[¶] 19. A final word: I cannot emphasize enough that Pollard did terrible, terrible stuff. I am not impressed with some people's arguments that he needed to do what he did, that he gave Israel documents that America was obligated to share with Israel anyway, that he had to do it to save lives. But, for G-d’s sake, after 23 years in prison, his continued incarceration no longer is about him. It is about us -- it is about Jews. It is a statement to American Jews that says to us every day: “We in Washington regard you differently from Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, African-Americans, German-Americans, Polish-Americans, Latino-Americans. You may need a reminder that other people don’t need. You need to remember what we do to people who are not loyal to this country, who have loyalties diverted elsewhere.” Thus, Pollard's continued incarceration is personally offensive to the Jewish community. . . .

The Mumbai (Bombay) Massacre of Jews

[Excerpt from full Commentary] Not all Jews, even the Torah-observant Jews among us, even Chassidic Jews, count themselves as Chabad Jews. There are doctrinal differences, sometimes very significant, that individuate Chabad from the larger normative Orthodox community.[¶] Nevertheless, virtually each and every one of us has been at some end-of-the-earth place where even MasterCard/Visa is not accepted, but where a Chabad House exists to provide a kosher meal, a local Jewish resting place, an address for Shabbat. . . . . And for so many people who today are members of shuls like Young Israel of Orange County, their first step into normative Torah practice took place at a Chabad House or at a campus Chabad.[¶] It is the paradox of the Jewish experience in history that we so uniquely among peoples get caught in others’ cross-fires. [¶] Ask the average Jew his thoughts about Kashmir, and he will tell you that he cannot afford it and buys sweaters made from Shetland wool instead. We do not know what it is, where it is, and -- maybe the ultimate indicator -- it is so far off our radar and alien to our world that there is not even a Chabad in Kashmir. [] Things happen for reasons. Bad things sometimes happen for the purpose of laying foundations for great things. As Rav Avigdor Miller brings out, all of our Patriarch Yaakov’s setbacks in his relationship with Esav were necessary for the expansive formation of a Jewish People. [¶] That is how setbacks work for Jews. One must wait twenty years (as during Yaakov’s sojourn with Lavan), and sometimes 200 years or even 2,000 years, to know how it all will play out. And this tragedy in Mumbai that has no words for its pain is not the final word on how the result of this incident will play out. . . .

Again, Politics of Appeasement Isolate Jews

[Excerpt from full Commentary] No one in my family was directly touched by the Nazi Holocaust. Nor did any of my friends lose any relatives to Hitler. While that unspeakable tragedy has deeply affected the psyche of every Jew born in the past half century, not many of us directly experienced what it was like to be a Jew in that era. . . . [¶] Until now. Since Thursday night, when the first Iraqi Scud missiles landed in Tel Aviv and Haifa, I have been emotionally spent. Although I have close family and dear personal friends in Israel, my concern for their safety and security is not the source of my deep angst. Many of them live in the Samaria region of the West Bank, which is, ironically, Israel's safest neighborhood right now. Scuds are not very accurate, and if Saddam Hussein aimed at Samaria, he would probably annihilate the Arab city of Kalkilya instead. . . .

Who Will Watch the Watchdogs?

[Excerpt from full Commentary] United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed a three-person investigative committee to visit the site in Jenin where Israeli efforts to uproot the infrastructure of terror have prompted Arab allegations of "massacre." However, before the "fact-finding team" is dispatched, those who care about fairness should carefully investigate the investigators. . . . [¶] Shaken reservists have come home to tell of the horrors of Jenin - recounting Arab atrocities aimed at them. Of booby-trapped wheelchairs - with apparent invalids sitting in them, wired to explode. Of booby-trapped corpses. Of female suicide bombers running directly into Israeli fire, hoping to detonate themselves close enough to kill soldiers. . . .

When Professors Throw Rocks

The Quana Incident

[Excerpt from full Commentary] The Israeli bombing this weekend in the Arab town of Qana was the subject of widespread condemnation.  It even prompted the Israeli Prime Minister to announce a suspension of air attacks for 48 hours.  It is important to recognize that Hezbollah deliberately establishes rockets and launchers, and stations its headquarters and fighters, in the heart of civilian populations.  That is how Arafat did it.  That is how Hamas and the PLO and all the others in Fatah and Islamic Jihad and Force 17 and Tanzim and Al Aqsa Brigades do it.  They pack ambulances with explosives.  They set up bases in hospitals, schools, even mosques and churches.  Just consider how often Sunnis blow up enemy Shiite mosques to stop their attackers, and vice-versa. . . .

A Country With Only One Option

[Excerpt from full Commentary] When the thunderous claps in Heaven jolted Orange County out of our rooms a few Sunday mornings ago, I thought of Israel.  When the earth – almost simultaneously – thundered below our feet in a 3.8 earthquake, I thought of Israel.  What must it be like to live in Nahariyah, Tz’fat, Ashdod, or Haifa – and be jolted out of bed all night and out of one’s home all day by incessant thunder and earthquake?. . . . [¶] Hezbollah now has 12,000 missiles aimed randomly at Jewish population centers in Israel.  At the rate of the 100 rockets they launch against Israel every day, Hezbollah can keep the murder and terror going non-stop for the next 120 days – four months.  Iran and Syria stand ready to resupply, if only they can access the bridges and highways by which to transport their tools of mass death.  America would not abide such a threat from either of our borders.  No country would.

Taking the West Bank Off the Chopping Block

[Excerpt from full Commentary] Through the millennia of Jewish Diaspora, long after Arabs invaded and conquered by right of sword, the land of Judea and Samaria never became an Arab territorial entity. By the 20th century, with the rise of political Zionism, Jews still were the "Palestinians." Thus, the predecessor of the Jerusalem Post was called the Palestine Post. The predecessor of the United Jewish Appeal was the United Palestine Appeal. Even the American support group for Menachem Begin's nationalist Irgun underground called itself the American League for a Free Palestine.[¶] The Arabs have names for countries like Syria, Egypt, Oman, Qatar, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait and two Yemens. But through all recorded time they never have had a name for the land of Judea and Samaria. "The West Bank"? Such a name describes Jersey City.[¶] In 1964, when the Palestine Liberation Organization was founded, it was eponymously created to liberate "Palestine" -- namely, the country of Israel -- from Haifa to Tel Aviv to the Negev. The Palestine Liberation Organization had no interest in the territory west of the Jordan River illegally occupied by Jordan. PLO terrorists did not murder Jordanian children, as they did Israelis. They did not hijack Jordanian airplanes. They did not bomb Jordanian buildings. They had no interest in the land without a name. To this day, the logo of each and every Palestinian "activist" group, from Hamas to Islamic Jihad to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine to Fatah, all depict the map of a "Palestine" that is identical to pre-1967 Israel -- no "West Bank."[¶] Yasser Arafat uses names from the Hebrew Bible for the cities he covets in Samaria and Judea. He claims Hebron (Genesis 23). He claims Bethlehem (Genesis 35). He claims Jericho (Joshua 5). His people burned down the Tomb of Joseph (Joshua 24). But he cannot use the Hebrew Bible's names for the land that the Christian Scriptures (Matthew 1), no less than the Tanakh, calls Judea -- because it would sound ridiculous complaining that "the Jews have stolen Judea from the Arabs." Almost as silly as suicide bombers in Hamas calling themselves "Samaritans."[¶] There never -- ever -- has been an Arab Palestine west of the Jordan River.

A Time to Mull

[Excerpt from full Commentary] So it turns out that the Arabs of Judea and Samaria really hate the guts out of us Jews. [¶] For seven years, Israel had been engaging in confidence-building steps. Israel even gave Yasser Arafat weapons to build a police force and agreed to patrol in "joint Israeli-Palestinian patrols" to maintain the civility of the polity in Judea and Samaria. For peace, Israel pulled back from Jewish holy sites and ceded land she rightly could have claimed for eternity.[¶] Arafat never quite softened his rhetoric, still speaking of gun battles for Jerusalem, still praising violent Hamas bombers at their public funerals. Arafat's television stations and newspapers continued spewing anti-Jewish vitriol. His first lady told the media that Jews were poisoning Arab wells. His summer camps kept training children in his land to kill Jews, and new textbooks kept teaching them the same lessons of anti-Jewish hate in more formal classroom settings. [¶] We wanted so much to believe that Arafat would become more temperate once saddled with the responsibilities of government and of civil administration. We hoped, somehow, that he would stop the terror once he would be stuck with budget-balancing, HMO policies, questions of affirmative action, school vouchers and capital gains taxes - whatever it is that keeps politicians busy and off the streets, out of harm's way. [¶] So we chose to focus wistfully on the future, seeking to build confidence with concessions for peace. Yet we were troubled that Arafat never did seem to honor his part of so many key promises he had signed in Oslo. We slowly accepted the novel premise that Israel unilaterally could build confidence after generations of mistrust and animus - without insisting on reciprocity. The very word - reciprocity - was condemned as an Israeli provocation. [¶] Arafat was supposed to turn over to the Israelis the terrorists within his borders who murdered Jews. Instead, he consistently moved them furtively out of the spotlight by hustling them before quickie tribunals, ultimately tossing them into jails pending their release or "escape." He never did turn over a terrorist to Israel. [¶] There was something about the Palestine parliament abrogating from the Palestine Charter objectionable paragraphs calling for the destruction of Israel and the expungement of Zionism. Something like that, or at least something about Arafat forming a blue-ribbon committee that would report back with recommendations for revising the Charter. But we never followed up on that one either. We stopped being picky about Oslo numerical limits, while that "police force" grew into the size of an army. We stopped monitoring the types of weapons they were importing. We disregarded reports of their military maneuvers. . . .

It Would be Nice if We Did Something

[Excerpt from full Commentary] Several years ago, before I became an attorney, the news of Iran's star-chamber proceedings and convictions of Jews would have sent me protesting in the streets. I would have joined - or organized - massive protests, including nonviolent sit-downs at major arteries, like Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles and Park or Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. [¶] Now, because I am an attorney, I will not do that. And I essentially believe that nothing less than that will help these Iranian Jews. I believe that prayers to G-d will not change this verdict. And I am an Orthodox, Torah-observant Jew. There are times when G-d demands action, when He will not do everything Himself. Yes, He may help the action succeed. He may perform miracles to augment the action. But He demands action, not just prayers out of a book.[¶] When Soviet Jews were held in prison, we prayed. We also acted. By all rights, the actions of small numbers of Jews in New York, Los Angeles and other cities need not and should not necessarily have worked. It was G-d's miracle that the actions really made a difference, that they "worked." It was His miracle that the Soviets reacted as they did, that Americans responded as they did, that those who did the actions and performed the actions and perpetrated the actions somehow never really did prison time, while the process unfolded before our eyes that culminated in the liberation of Soviet Jewry and ultimately the fall of communism.[¶] Until now, we have been told that it would hurt American foreign relations if Flatow collects his judgment. We also have been told that it would hurt American foreign relations if we move our embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It would be nice if some renewed action on one of these issues would develop from within our community, whether to get Flatow his money or to move that embassy to Israel's capital - just as we put our embassies in the capitals of all other countries, ranging from those in China and the former Eastern bloc to the smallest countries of Africa, the Caribbean, wherever.[¶] It would be nice if, in response to Iran's latest crimes against humanity, we would do something. Not just pray, for G-d's sake.

Time to Survive

[Excerpt from full Commentary] Either the authoritarians of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority have the power to direct, control, intercept and stymie Arab terrorist attacks against Israel, or they do not. If this year's proliferation of Arab mass murder has been within the Palestinian Authority's power to control, then those events confirm that the Palestinian Authority has no right to exist as a polity. On the other hand, if the Palestinian Authority cannot control the anti-Israel terror emanating from within its borders, then it also has no right to exist as a polity. [¶] And if Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon does not finally launch a full-scale defensive operation formulated to eradicate the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Tanzim, Force 17 and the whole bunch of them -- and to re-take the areas of Judea and Samaria that now are occupied by the Palestinian Authority -- then Sharon's unity government also enjoys no further right to exist. [¶] The first -- and possibly only -- reason for government is to provide security and protection, internally through the police and externally through armed forces. A government that will not do everything possible to protect, because of secondary sociological considerations, has no right to exist. [¶] The recent bombings at the Tel Aviv Dolphinarium and the Jerusalem Sbarro restaurant arise from a failure by the Israeli government to protect and secure the society that seated it. [¶] I have had three daughters in Israel this summer on three different summer programs. On the day of the Jerusalem bombing, one of them was six blocks from the epicenter, heard the loudest explosion in her life, and felt the earth shake as it never had in two decades of California quakes. [¶] But this general's holding position is not working, and civilian casualties on the home front are not an acceptable sacrifice for the goodwill of Europe that will not be forthcoming anyway.

A Killer Walks

[Excerpt from full Commentary] It was three years ago this week that Palestinian Arab murderers bombed Jerusalem's cheery, cafe-lined Ben Yehuda Street into a nightmare of death and destruction - murdering, among others, Yael Botwin, a 14-year-old girl from Claremont. This past week, Mahmoud Abu-Hanud, the butcher who masterminded the murders, finally was uncovered. Yet, paradoxically, he still walks free, while three Israeli soldiers lie dead after their failed effort to apprehend him.  [¶] If the good news is that this murderer who topped Israel's most-wanted list was wounded in the shootout with Israeli soldiers, the bad news is that he managed to elude capture and make his way safely and securely to the nearby city of Shechem (Nablus), which now is controlled by Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority. The authoritarians who run that Authority have announced that Abu-Hanud will not be handed over to the Israeli defense forces. And in the World of Oslo, there is nary a thing that Israel can do about it.  [¶] That compels us to pursue justice - to "think outside the box." Indeed, there is another option for getting this butcher before the bar of justice: American law formally authorizes the prosecution in the United States of individuals who murder Americans abroad. Thus, Abu-Hanud may be tried for murder right here in California, just like Buford O'Neal Furrow Jr.  [¶] In the aftermath of the tragically failed Israeli attempt to nab Abu-Hanud, seven member-organizations of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations have urged President Clinton to demand that the Palestinian Authority surrender Abu-Hanud to the U.S. for prosecution. And a citizens' group of American survivors, all wounded in Abu-Hanud's attacks, have issued a statement noting that "Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has referred to Arafat's justice system as a 'revolving door.' Terrorists detained by Arafat are routinely set free or given shockingly lenient sentences. Abu-Hanud must be brought to the United States and face American justice."  [¶] [W]e even can ask our rabbis to help raise public consciousness of this unnecessary outrage by recalling from the pulpits the tragedy of Yael Botwin and of the fallen Israeli soldiers and demanding, for once and for all, that Arafat hand over the butchers whom he and his Authoritarians are protecting.  [¶] He can hand them to the Israelis, as Oslo requires. He can hand them to the United States as American law provides. His choice. But it is time.

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