Dvar Torah on Shalit

In marking the release of Gilad Shalit, Prime Minister Netanyahu referred to this week’s Haftorah reading which is from Isaiah’s ‘Light Unto the Nations’ passage in chapter 42. He quoted verse 7 where G-d is seen to “open blinded eyes, to remove a prisoner from confinement and dwellers in darkness from a dungeon”.

I don’t think I have ever blogged a Dvar Torah so far, but will make an exception for this one.

Many have remarked that Shalit’s release corresponded with the traditional Ushpizin (sukka visitation) day of our patriarch Joseph who was himself falsely imprisoned in Egypt 3,500 years ago. This followed Joseph’s abduction and sale by his brothers into slavery to a passing caravan of Ishmailites. It might not have mattered where that caravan originated from had the verse (Genesis 37:25) not gone out of its way to record it was from: Gilad.

As we all know, Joseph was released and promoted to viceroy after interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams of impending famine and implementing a master plan to save Egypt. After revealing himself to his brothers they return home to tell their grieving father Jacob: “Joseph is alive and is a ruler in Egypt” (Genesis 45:26).

The Targum on that verse translates the word ‘ruler’ as: Shalit.

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Gilad & Guantanamo

"A question for my human rights colleagues. Why doesn’t the fate of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit trouble you in the same way as the fate of the Guantanamo prisoners?"

This is the rhetorical question posited by Yelena Bonner, widow of former Russian dissident and Nobel laureate dissident Andreo Sakharov, in a major speech to an anti-Durban II gathering in Oslo.

The text of her speech is well worthwhile reading:

At the age of 14, I was left without my parents. My father was executed, my mother spent 18 years in prison and exile. My grandmother raised me and my younger brother. The poet Vladimir Kornilov, who suffered the same fate, wrote: ‘And it felt that in those years we had no mothers. We had grandmothers.’ There were hundreds of thousands of such children…
…Read Sakharov’s Memoirs. It’s a pity his Diaries haven’t been translated; they were published in Russia in 2006. Apparently, the West isn’t interested now in Sakharov.
The West isn’t very interested in Russia either, a country that no longer has real elections, independent courts, or freedom of the press. Russia is a country where journalists, human rights activists, and migrants are killed regularly, almost daily. And extreme corruption flourishes of a kind and extent that never existed earlier in Russia or anywhere else. So what do the Western mass media discuss mainly? Gas and oil — of which Russia has a lot. Energy is its only political trump card, and Russia uses it as an instrument of pressure and blackmail… Russia will remain the way it is now for decades, unless there is some violent upheaval.
…They say people are coming together — but in reality, they are growing apart. And that isn’t because an economic depression suddenly burst forth, and swine flu to boot. [It] began on September 11, 2001. At first, anger and horror was provoked by the terrorists who knocked down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and by their accomplices in London, Madrid and other cities, and by the shahids, suicide bombers who blew themselves up at public spaces like discotheques and wedding parties, whose families were rewarded $25,000 each by Saddam Hussein.
Later, Bush was blamed for everything, and as always, the Jews — that is, Israel… So it is about Israel and the Jews that I will speak… At one time, the Nobel Peace Prize was the highest moral award of our civilization. But after December 1994, when Yasser Arafat became one of the three new laureates, its ethical value was undermined. I haven’t always greeted each selection of the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Storting with joy, but that one shocked me. And to this day, I cannot understand and accept the fact that Andrei Sakharov and Yasir Arafat, now posthumously, share membership in the club of Nobel laureates.
In many of Sakharov’s publications… [he] wrote and spoke about Israel. I have a collection of citations of his writing on this topic. If it were published in Norway, then many Norwegians would be surprised at how sharply their contemporary view of Israel differs from the view of Sakharov. Here are several citations from Sakharov: …
“All wars that Israel has waged have been just, forced upon it by the irresponsibility of Arab leaders.” “With all the money that has been invested in the problem of Palestinians, it would have been possible long ago to resettle them and provide them with good lives in Arab countries.”
…Now, a new motif is fashionable (in fact it’s an old one): ‘Two states for two peoples.’ It sounds good. And there is no controversy in the peace-making Quartet, made up of the U.S., the UN, the EU, and Russia (some great peace-maker, with its Chechen war and its Abkhazian-Ossetian provocation). The Quartet, and the Arab countries, and the Palestinian leaders (both Hamas and Fatah) put additional demands to Israel. I will speak only of one demand: that Israel accept back the Palestinian refugees. And here a little history and demography are needed.
According to the UN’s official definition, refugees are considered those who fled from violence and wars, but not their descendants who are born in another land. At one time the Palestinian refugees and the Jewish refugees from Arab countries were about equal in number — about 700-800,000. The newly-created state Israel took in Jews (about 600,000). They were officially recognized as refugees by the UN Resolution 242, but not provided with any UN assistance. Palestinians, however, are considered refugees not only in the first generation, but in the second, third, and now even in the fourth generation. According to the UN Works and Relief Agency’s report, , the number of registered Palestinian refugees has grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than 4.6 million in 2008, and continues to rise due to natural population growth. All these people have the rights of Palestinian refugees and are eligible to receive humanitarian aid.
The entire population of Israel is about 7.5 million, of which there are about 2.5 million ethnic Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. Imagine Israel then, if another five million Arabs flood into it; Arabs would substantially outnumber the Jewish population. Thus, created next to Israel will be a Palestinian state cleansed of Jews, because in addition to the demand that Palestinian refugees return to Israel, there is also the demand that Judea and Samaria are cleansed of Jews and turned over to Palestinians – while in Gaza today there is not a single Jew already.
The result is both strange and terrifying, not only because Israel will essentially be destroyed… Because the plan “two states for two peoples” is the creation of one state, ethnically cleansed of Jews, and a second one with the potential to do the same thing. A Judenrein Holy Land - the dream of Adolph Hitler come true at last. So think again, those who are still able, who has a fascist inside him today?
And another question that has been a thorn for me for a long time. It’s a question for my human rights colleagues. Why doesn’t the fate of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit trouble you in the same way as the fate of the Guantanamo prisoners?
You fought for and won the opportunity for the International Committee of the Red Cross, journalists, and lawyers to visit Guantanamo. You know prison conditions, the prisoners’ everyday routine, their food. You have met with prisoners subjected to torture. The result of your efforts has been a ban on torture and a law to close this prison. President Obama signed it in the first days of his coming to the White House…
But during the two years Shalit has been held by terrorists, the world human rights community has done nothing for his release. Why? He is a wounded soldier, and fully falls under the protection of the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions say clearly that hostage-taking is prohibited, that representatives of the Red Cross must be allowed to see prisoners of war, especially wounded prisoners, and there is much else written in the Geneva Conventions about Shalit’s rights.
The fact that representatives of the Quartet conduct negotiations with the people who are holding Shalit in an unknown location, in unknown conditions, vividly demonstrates their scorn of international rights documents and their total legal nihilism. Do human rights activists also fail to recall the fundamental international rights documents?
And yet I still think (and some will find this naïve) that the first tiny, but real step toward peace must become the release of Shalit. Release - and not his exchange for 1,000 or 1,500 prisoners who are in Israeli prisons serving court sentences for real crimes.
Returning to my question of why human rights activists are silent, I can find no answer except that Shalit is an Israeli soldier, Shalit is a Jew. So again, it is conscious or unconscious anti-Semitism. Again, it is fascism.
Thirty-four years have passed since the day when I came to this city to represent my husband, Andrei Sakharov, at the 1975 Nobel Prize ceremony. I was in love with Norway then. The reception I received filled me with joy. Today, I feel Alarm and Hope (the title Sakharov used for his 1977 essay written at the request of the Nobel Committee).
Alarm because of the anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment growing throughout Europe and even further afield. And yet, I hope that countries, their leaders, and people everywhere will recall and adopt Sakharov’s ethical credo: “In the end, the moral choice turns out to be also the most pragmatic choice.”

Power for Shalit

Remarkable that even Olmert has come to the end of the road in offering concessions to free Gilad Shalit from captivity in Gaza.

Of course, no-one offers the enemy more than Olmert.

Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights, Jerusalem … anything you like.

So it’s back to basics.

We either take Gilad back Entebbe –style or do what we should have done 1,000 days ago:

Cut off the power lines to Gaza until Shalit walks free back across the border.

Just like Sharansky walked across the Glienicke Bridge in 1986 as a result of the massive pressure applied on the USSR by Ronald Reagan; America's 40th president and the last one with balls.

Once the plugs are pulled out, the Free World will cry FOUL! and protest this inhuman collective punishment.

Well, the Free World is in no position to make judgments until its own citizens have been held hostage incommunicado for 1,000 days during which all patience has been exhausted.

The Free World is not totally surrounded by enemies. It’s not under daily rocket fire. It’s not under a madman’s explicit threat of annihilation by a nuclear bomb which the free world helped him build.

Hillel said: Judge not thy friend
until thou standest in his place.

When the Free World starts treating Israel like a Free Nation – they’ll find us more than willing to live by their lofty standards.

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Who Dares Wins

I've just finished reading the Israeli newspapers' report of retired IDF general Yisrael Ziv's hand in the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt from 6 years' jungle captivity in the hands of FARC guerillas.

A modest man, now in private business as a global security consultant, it is a great shame he went into retirement.

It beggars belief that the army which 30 years ago rescued a planeload of Jewish hostages from 3,800 km away in darkest Africa on a week's planning, is unable after 2 years to rescue Gilad Shalit from its own backyard in Gaza; a tiny parcel of land in which the IDF can identify every backroom, alleyway and cellar.

The truth must be that, 30 years on, with all the gadgetry and pilotless drones at its disposal, the IDF is well capable of mounting a rescue. It's just that Mr. Olmert in his own words is 'tired of fighting and tired of winning'.

But most of all, he is worried about upsetting his 'peace partners' by daring to win.

With people like Yisrael Ziv in charge, scenes like this might soon be repeated for the Shalit family. And what an enormous shot-in-the-arm such a rescue would be for Israel right now!

What about the kid ?

Letter to the JEWISH NEWS

Charlie Wolf lauds the Gaza truce as a good deal for Israel which he claims has arisen from Israel's demonstration of 'power and the projection of power'. That this analysis is so far removed from reality proves the effectiveness of the 'smoke and mirrors' that keeps the utterly discredited Ehud Olmert in power.

Hamas has effectively said: 'We'll stop rocketing Sderot if you send us fuel and food and give us enough time to rest and stock up our arsenal. We'll let you know when we're ready for the next round … with a new barrage of Kassams.'

Is Schalit in the deal? No.
Will the arms smuggling stop?
Hell no … in fact it can now be continued overground - just as it does under the noses of UNIFIL in Lebanon, without risk of intervention by the air force so long as we - the good guys - are keeping our part of the truce.

And as for Charlie's 'power and hardball' thing … what's that all about?
Where has Israel projected power and deterrence lately?
In the surrender of Gaza and the uprooting of 8,000 Jews from their homes?
In the spectre of burning synagogues reminiscent of Kristallnacht?
In turning the other cheek to 9 out of 10 Kassam rocket attacks, with the 10th meriting a raid on empty Gaza office buildings?
What's intimidating about writing out million-dollar cheques to Abu Mazen and shipping him ammunition and armoured jeeps?

And then there is Olmert's ceaseless prattle about 'painful concessions' in giving up the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem. And saying that people are 'delusional to think that Jews may retain anything beyond the pre-'67 borders'. Is this a demonstration of power? It sounds more like a unilateral surrender of Jewish rights to the land of Israel. And what of Olmerts' profligate, and obscenely one-sided, offerings to free Arab terrorists? Is this a sign of strength? Bereaved families would say it was an insult to the memories of their loved ones and a devaluation of Jewish blood to almost nil.

The truth is that Israel has not demonstrated its strength and resolve in Gaza since the Spring of 2004 when Sharon's air strikes dispatched Hamas' spiritual leader Sheikh Yassin to his 70 virgins, quickly followed by his commander-in-chief Rantisi in just as many little pieces. That had them running for cover, instead of the rocket launchers. Since then, it has been kid gloves at best or outright appeasement at its worst.

Were it not so tragic for the Shalit family and all those who long for 'the spirit of Entebbe', the deal with Hamas would be reminiscent of Woody Allen's stand-up piece about being kidnapped as a kid. It went something like this:

The FBI surround the house: "Throw the kid out,", they say, "give us your guns, and come out with your hands up."
The kidnappers say "We'll throw the kid out, but let us keep our guns, and get to our car."
The FBI says "Throw the kid out, we'll let you get to your car, but give us your guns."
The kidnappers say "We'll throw the kid out, but let us keep our guns - we don't have to get to our car."
The FBI says "Keep the kid."

Get real Charlie.
The only side which is playing 'hardball' is the enemy.
And they are playing for keeps.
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