                                                           B"sd

                      A Voice from Hebron
                     by Gary M. Cooperberg
    Who turned the Lion of Judah into a Whimpering Pussycat?
                        December 3, 1998
                                
     Last night the people of Israel were treated to a televised front row seat of a modern day
version of the ancient Roman practice of feeding Jews to ferocious beasts for entertainment. 
Clearly the spectacle was staged as the cameras were in place way before the event occurred.   A
mob of Arab students of hatred from Bir Zeit University in Ramallah congregated at a busy main
intersection not far from the Jewish community of  Beit El, and began to systematically stone all
Jewish vehicles that passed by.  One unfortunate fellow, who for some reason did not have
protective plastic windows on his car, was pelted mercilessly by dozens of murderous rock-
throwing rioters, as he was forced to slow down by the traffic.   Not being able to either back up
or speed away, and having all of his windows blasted away by the ceaseless barrage of rocks, he
saw no choice but the desperate hope to get out of the car and run for his life.  In the back of the
car was a Jewish soldier who had hitched a ride with him.  As he exited the car, not even
bothering to put on the brakes, he shouted to the soldier to do the same.  For whatever reason,
the soldier stayed inside the car which continued to be pelted with rocks and finally stopped when
it ran into a concrete wall.  The enraged mob converged on the car and continued to stone it. 
They reached inside and beat the soldier, eventually dragging him outside where they continued to
kick and beat him, and they stole his rifle.  Miraculously the soldier managed to escape from the
mob and ran away sustaining only minor injuries.  The car was set on fire and totally destroyed.

     The military Monday-morning quarterbacks are talking today about bringing the soldier up
on charges for not having shot at the mob.  But the fact is that the blame lies squarely upon our
military leadership for creating an atmosphere in which a soldier is afraid to use his weapon even
when he is in mortal danger!  Where is the precedent by which a soldier shot and killed an
attacker and was not punished for it?  The theory may give him the right to shoot when in danger,
but in practice no one can be certain what being in danger means until it is too late to matter.  If
the soldier is murdered, then we can be certain that he was in danger and should have shot.  But if
he is still alive, then there is always an uncertainty.  And where there is an uncertainty the soldier
is almost always blamed for lack of restraint.

     There are those who really believe that what took place here was just a political
demonstration.  Any honest person who has the courage to face reality can see that this was an
act of war.  The soldier was beaten because he was a Jewish soldier.  The rioters were trying to
kill the enemy of the PLO and further their goal to liberate "Palestine" from the Jewish people. 
Peace is not the goal of our Arab neighbors.  Their goal has never changed.  They have learned
from experience that they cannot defeat us in battle, so they employed women and children to
humiliate us by stoning Jewish civilians, as well as soldiers.  If we would shoot women and
children we would have a moral crisis.  If we didn't we would lose the war.  We didn't, and we
are losing.

     What we fail to realize is the fact that it matters not who throws the stones.  What matters
is the fact that they are sacrificing their safety and even their lives in order to destroy us.  This
being the case it is a moral imperative for us to destroy them.  Instead we have surrendered to
them.  Every surrender we make only makes them more confident that they will achieve their
heinous goal and they continue to demoralize and victimize us.  They use our own pathetic
attempt to call the surrender a "peace process", to evoke more and more "good will gestures"
from us.  And the best we can do in response is to make lists of all of their violations of signed
and meaningless agreements.

     The Oslo agreement was flagrantly violated by the PLO even before the ink dried.  Instead
of stopping it in its tracks, the Israeli government signaled to our enemies that we want this
agreement so badly that we will accept almost any violation rather than give up on it.  And, what
is even worse, when we finally threw out the perfidious government which authored this disaster
and replaced it with a right-wing government, we got promising rhetoric but the process
continued.  The only difference between this government and the former one is a matter of degree
and pace.  Both have legitimized the systematic surrender of our sovereignty to our enemies.  The
only difference between "Land for Peace" and "Reciprocity" or "Peace with Security", is
semantics.  They all mean the same thing.  "If you promise not to murder us, we will give you our
homeland."  
     
     When the riot was over the humiliation continued.  The military commander informed the
media that the PLO army returned the soldier's stolen weapon, and that the IDF was now
counting on the PLO to bring the rioters to justice!  What better example can there be of self-
contempt?  The PLO is not yet a sovereign entity.  Such a brutal and cold-blooded attack
warranted a military response by the IDF, not a complaint to those who authored the attack.

     We still have the best army in the world.  The problem is that we have the worst
leadership in the world.  A brilliant leadership is able to inspire its people to turn defeat into
victory.  It takes an entirely unique kind of leadership to be able to demoralize its people to turn
victory into defeat.  It is only our Jewish leadership which has placed us in such a desperate
situation.  It was they who openly invited our sworn enemies to take up military positions within
our sacred boundaries.  It was they who went so far as to arm and train them as well!  And it is
they who have surrendered Jewish land, and promise to surrender even more, to those who have
openly declared their intention to use what ever they get as a means to take the rest from us.   The
"threat" to declare a PLO state is needless.  They already have it.   We have given it to them by
permitting them to attack and murder Jews with impunity.   We beg them to catch and punish
murderers, knowing full well that these murderers are their heros.

     The time is coming when all will realize that we have no choice.  We can only save
ourselves by fighting and driving our enemies out of our homeland.  The longer it takes for us to
realize this fact, the more difficult it will be to accomplish.  