                       Voice from Hebron
                     by Gary M. Cooperberg
                          May 6, 1996
                       The Right to Dream

     When asked about Arafat's continual open expression of his intention to establish a
Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital, Prime Minister Peres condescendingly commented
that he feels that chairman Arafat has the right to dream.
     What Mr. Peres fails to fathom is the fact that all genuine ideals are born from dreams.  It
is an ironic and bitter fact that every Israeli government which ever ruled in the modern state of
Israel played an active role in creating the dream of Arafat.  Were it not for that active role such a
dream could never have come into existence.  It is we who created this "dream" by telling the
vanquished Arab back in 1948 that we welcome him to be an equal citizen in our homeland.  It
was we who nurtured that dream in 1967 by failing to incorporate Judea, Samaria and Gaza into
the Jewish homeland.  The seeds to this dream were fully sown at Camp David when Menachem
Begin officially recognized the fraudulent concept of an Arab Palestinian as legitimate.  It is thus
no one's fault but ours that this Arab dream has come home to roost as our worst nightmare
where we find both Labor and Likud accepting the reality of an Arab foe with legitimate rights on
sovereign Jewish soil.
     Peres has his dream, Arafat has his dream, Natanyahu has his dream and the Jewish People
still have not forgotten their dream.  Zionism is an ancient Jewish dream over 2000 years old. 
There may be many who have forgotten that dream, but, thank G-d, there are still many who have
not and will never forget.  As a Jew who has come home to his People and his homeland I simply
cannot find it within my soul to tamper with that dream which was so carefully preserved for me
by my holy ancestors in so many generations and so many foreign countries.  How dare I consider
all of their sacrifices, recognize the fact that I am the beneficiary of those sacrifices, and now,
upon seeing the dream nearly completed, willingly participate in its demise?  Better I should fall,
and a thousand like me, than to willingly part with the holy dream of my fathers, the dream of
Zion.







     Arafat is a reality.  The Oslo agreements are reality.  The fact that Arabs have been given
parts of the Jewish homeland and recognized as a legitimate entity on Jewish soil is also reality. 
These realities only further the dream of the Arab world to eliminate Israel and replace it with an
Arab Palestine.  No Jew has, by any stretch of the imagination, an obligation to accept these
"realities".  On the contrary.  It is an obligation of every Jew, and so much more so of Jewish
leaders, to obliterate those realities in any way possible.  These "realities" only bring tragedy to
Jews.  
     Unfortunately in life there are times when cancer is a "reality".  If it is not obliterated it
will take over its host body until it destroys it.  There are only two ways to deal with  cancer. 
Either to submit to it and perish, or cut it completely out of the body.  Our cowardly leaders have
actually invited our cancer to nest within our homeland!  Rather than cut it off before it could
infect us, we actually aided the malignancy.  Our blind leaders choose to ignore the true reality
that you cannot live in peace with cancer.  The only way to treat it is to completely remove it. The
longer we wait the more radical will be the surgery which will, eventually, have to be performed in
any event.
     So, in response to my Prime Minister's assertion that Arafat has the right to his dreams, I
would tell Mr. Peres that he has an obligation to the Jewish People and to the Jewish State (and to
be quite honest, if he really respects the murderer, Arafat, even to him) to make it abundantly
clear that the dream to destroy Israel will never be fulfilled.  Rather than nurture this cursed dream
he must do all in his power to obliterate it, before it obliterates him.