"Will the Americans approve? Will the Russians be angry? Will the Christian world react? Will Africans, Asians, and United Nations condemn? These are the questions that make up the Galut mentality of too many in Israel and that drive government and politicians to shrink from doing and not doing things according to Jewish values"

-Rabbi Meir Kahane (Our Challenge, 1974, p.137)

PEACE?

PEACE! Peace Now! Peace in twelve minutes if only we will give up the "occupied territories." Peace INSTANTLY! There will be no peace. There cannot be peace. The Stranger sees us as robbers and his national pride and soul will see him hating the Jewish "bandit" and "thief" forever. As long as there is an Israel, a Jewish state, there will not be peace. And let none of the sterile intellectuals and lamentable liberals and corpulent wealthy Establishment types leap to their feet in indecent indignation and shout: "The Kahanists do not want peace!" Foolish little gnomes. Those who live in Newton Center and New Rochelle and Westport and the Island and the Valley (and all other places that begin with a definite article) and who belong to the Temple (praying to G-d knows what, for surely it is not G-d), rail against the one who lives in Israel. Those who never served in the Israeli Army and whose sons and sons-in-law never did and never will, climb the barricades for "peace" and rail against the one who does and whose sons and sons-in-law do. Of course, we do not want peace. Of course, we enjoy seeing our children serve in the army. Of course, we want them to fight in a war. Not only are the gnomes tiny people with tiny minds, they are indecent, too.

Of course, we want peace and so does every Jew in Israel. The problem is that the ARAB does not. He does not because he sees the peace that the Jews desire as being unfair, as being a legitimization of the robbery of his land and his country. Does any Jewish liberal know how many kibbutzim are built on land that was once Arab before they fled in 1948? That they want that land back? How many Jewish Establishment types know that the artsy-craftsy village of Ein Hod, in which sit and "create" Jewish artists and sculptors and writers of the leftist, humanist and universalist persuasion, stands on the ruins of an Arab village that was named Ein Chut and that some of its former inhabitants who were forced off are now asking that their village be given back to them? Are we prepared to do that? Are we THAT mad? What does peace mean to the liberal, leftist, humanist Jew and leaders of the Jewish Establishment? It means the existence of a Jewish state that stands on what the Arabs call "Palestine." It means that a large area, taken from the Arabs and now controlled by the Jews in a state that they call a Jewish state, will be legitimized. It means that the Arab in that Jewish state will be a stranger, albeit treated "fairly." Does anyone with a modicum of sense believe that the Arab considers this to be "fair?" Especially when - thanks to the Jewish lemmings of our time - he is convinced that time is on his side and that his staying power will far exceed that of the Jews who have a spiritual fifth column of self-hating, guilt-ridden Jews in their midst.

Peace? There is, to be sure, one peace plan that would be acceptable to the Arabs and if the Jews would agree to it, there is GUARANTEED to be peace between them and the "Palestinians." That plan is to give up the State of Israel, the Jewish State. Do we hear protests, even from the lamentable liberals? We should hope so, for none but the most demented of lemmings would agree to THAT. But that being so, KNOW THAT THERE WILL BE NO PEACE. Unless, of course, the Jew returns to his Father in Heaven.

But that may be even more impossible than the thought of giving up Israel. In the meantime, for those who see Israel's existence at the center of their own, let there be no collapse before the blizzard of world sleet and the bitter cold hatred and pressure. The bitter cold grips a man and lulls him, in his terrible weariness, to seek rest, just a little rest. To pause and lie down and sleep - just for a moment. That moment is death. The warmth that creeps over him is the beginning of the most terrible cold of them all, the cold of death. Similarly, those who grow weary of the bitter cold, the ongoing struggle against the Arabs, can easily fall victim to the siren sound of those who raise the warm flag of "peace." Soothing and seductive proposals of a false "peace," the terribly false warmth that lulls the weary Jew - weary of war - to rest, for just a moment from the cold of hatred and battle. To rest and accept compromise and give up land for peace and to trust the Arab. It is such a warm moment. It is the moment that leads to death. It is the false warmth that leads to the cold reality of the destruction of Israel.

We are weary? We have been fighting the Arabs for 50 years? Nonsense! We have been fighting an entire world for more than 3,000 years and if our ancestors had been as weary and guilt-ridden and confused as so many of our time, where would we be today? We may, indeed, have to fight for another 50 years - or 500! We may, indeed, have to be a garrison state confronting vicious and cruel Arabs who seek our destruction. What of it? Do we therefore surrender to illusion and delusion? Do we therefore walk away from our state? Far, far better to have a state and an army and power that we must be prepared to use and guarantee Jewish survival, than to return to the state of conditions of the Exile that led to the Holocaust. Far better a garrison state than an emasculated state of destruction. All the Jews who have died in 50 years in Israel barely equal the number who perished in one day in the death camps. THAT is a far more warming thought than the warm death of "compromise" and giving up land. Better a Jewish state that the world despises than an Auschwitz that it loves. Of course, none of it has to be. However, it WILL be unless we choose that one path which will give us instant redemption and freedom from all this unnecessary tragedy: TSHUVA, penitence, a return to G-d and His commandments. How sad that this seems to be the one thing that the Jews simply refuse to consider.