                      A Voice from Hebron
                     by Gary M. Cooperberg
                         March 25, 1996
                        Enemies of Peace
                                
     Shimon Peres is leading a quest for peace.  Bill Clinton so admires this quest that he has
offered the help of the United States in this noble effort.  Yasser Arafat and Husni Mubarak are
also stalwart partners in this utopian goal to bring peace and tranquility to the Middle East and to
all of Mankind.
     The problem is that peace has enemies.  There are individuals and groups in this world
which have one common goal . . . to murder peace.  These people hate peace.  They prefer a
world of chaos where women and children are blown up and shot; where poverty prevails; and
where life itself hangs on a slender thread.
     There are Arabs who hate peace, and there are Jews who hate peace.  The Arabs who hate
peace strap bombs to their bodies and blow themselves up together with as many Jewish civilians
as they can take with them.  They have no personal qualms with their victims, it is only peace
which upsets them and which they seek to destroy.  And Jews who insist upon living in Judea,
Samaria, and Gaza, merely because their ancestors once lived there, are also enemies of peace. 
They could just as easily make their homes in Haifa or Tel Aviv, but the very idea that, by doing
so, peace will descend, finds them putting up with rocks, bullets and bombs rather then leave. 
They hate peace so much that they subject themselves and their families to life threatening
hardships in order to destroy it.  
     Can anyone, with a modicum of intelligence, honestly accept such a premise?   Yet this is
the exact premise set before us by the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of
Israel!  
     Indeed, it may be true that there are interests in this world which see war as a positive
goal.  Those interests, however, are almost exclusively based upon economic interests alone. 
Munitions manufacturers and those whose business is the production of materials of war, stand to
benefit by war and may, understandably, be called "enemies of peace."  But how, even by the
most energetic stretch of the imagination, can anyone believe that an ideology, based upon either
religious or national goals, would desire to destroy peace?  Such a suggestion is merely a
simplistic camouflage to the real, irreconcilable, differences which cause conflict in this world.
     The fact, which Clinton and Peres hide from, is that the Arab suicide bomber wants peace
even more than they do!  He has demonstrated how far he was willing to go for his ideology.  He
paid the highest price for it.  What have the world leaders sacrificed for their beliefs?  The Arab
did not murder 
himself and countless others because he hated peace.  He committed, what he believed to be, an
act of self sacrifice to bring his concept of peace to the world.  
     The Moslem believes that only he knows how to bring real peace to the world.  In his
view the very existence of a Jewish state of any size in his exclusively Islamic world is what is
preventing world peace.  Thus, any effort to remove this obstacle is a holy effort and any means
taken is justifiable.  Enemies of peace?  Hardly.  Enemies of the Jewish State?  Obviously.
     The Jew believes that only he knows how to bring real peace to the world.  In his view, by
fulfilling the commandment of G-d to return to his homeland and rebuild a society based upon
Biblical principles there, is the only way to arrive at real peace.  Enemies of peace?  Hardly. 
Enemies of Islam?  Obviously.
     Can any honest individual presume to mitigate between these two conflicting views of
how to arrive at peace?  Is there a compromise which both sides can live with?  Can either side
truly be called an enemy of peace?  Of course not.  





     This is the essence of the conflict which plagues the world today.  It is not a conflict
between nice people who like peace and evil people who hate peace.  It is a conflict between
Islam and Judaism.  It is a conflict of definitions of Truth.  It is a repeat performance of the
Biblical narrative of the Exodus where the King of Egypt believed that only he possessed Truth
and that the concept of One supreme G-d was false.  Pharaoh had the power on his side.  How
dare a slave society presume to foist its strange ideology upon the greatest power on earth!  
     "And Pharaoh said, Who is the L-rd that I should obey His voice . . .?" Exodus 5:2 
     This then is the real conflict which remains to be resolved.  It will never be resolved by
Nobel peace prizes or by international conferences to eradicate terror or to establish peace.  It is
simply not open to compromise.  While the Jewish nation does not seek to force its point of view
upon others, rather to simply live as an example of G-dliness which the nations of the world will
observe and desire to emulate; by the very fact that it chooses to exist on land which Moslems
view as exclusively theirs creates a perception of forcing its views upon them.   Shall the
Moslems, for the sake of peace, discard their ideological beliefs and accept this "intrusion?" Shall
the Jews, for the sake of peace, abandon their ideological beliefs and all move to Brooklyn?
     Such solutions are patently ridiculous.  One cannot compromise on Truth.  Of the two
ideologies one is True and the other simply isn't.  But how is Truth determined?  There is only
one way.  Both ideologies must continue upon the path which it feels is true.  Which ever prevails
is the one which holds the Truth.  This may seem to be a formula for war, and maybe it is.  But
there is no other way to resolve this conflict.  
     It matters not which political leader takes the reigns in Israel today.  The basis for the
conflict remains the same.  Even if we find ourselves with a Jewish leader who totally rejects all of
his religious beliefs, this leader will, eventually find himself confronted with the option to either
voluntarily dismantle the Jewish state, or fight to maintain its existence.  Thus the question is not
one of peace or war.  It is rather a question of will we stand up for our principles now, when we
are still strong, or will we wait until we have drastically weakened ourselves.  Logically the
decision should be an easy one to make.  But we are living among leaders who really think that
there are "enemies of peace" and that Arafat will compromise on Islam, the way Peres
compromises on Judaism, to create peace.   