When Ruth Matar of the Women in Green movement called me and asked me to speak at the demonstration to be held opposite the birthday celebrations of the architect of Oslo, I hesitated. What could I do - for good or for bad - near that criminal?



"You don't understand," Ruth told me, "people are coming from all over the world, and from all the Israeli high society, to honor him." In fact, Shimon Peres as a person is not the issue, but the acceptance, approval, legitimization of his path. Those who are celebrating with Peres are still totally enslaved by the chains of Oslo. It cannot be said, after this glittering state party, that the Oslo process is dead.



It is still alive and continuing to demand its pint of blood. Oslo will not cease dictating our path until its architects are punished and leave the public stage in disgrace, just as the contemptible episode of betrayal by the Vichy government could not come to an end without Petain being brought to trial and expelled from French society.



So I came.



Women in Green received permission to demonstrate in the traffic island in the center of Rothschild Boulevard, at a distance the authorities could be sure that the participants would not be exposed to the celebrants or the numerous media representatives in the Cultural Center. About 300 people turned up initially, and when I arrived, it seemed to me that this traffic island was a modern version of Noah's Ark. There had come to this Noah's Ark in Rothschild Boulevard the last sane people that this crazy Flood, which has poured down on us during the decade since the signing of the Oslo Agreement, has not swept away.



The country is cutting back allowances to hungry children, but finds millions of shekels in order to honor the person who started it on the march of death, poverty and disgrace of Oslo. The charred bodies of children are removed one by one from an exploded bus in Jerusalem, a bridegroom gives the wedding ring to his bride in her grave, and the person mainly responsible for 1,200 stories like these (that seem to be only the beginning) celebrates with great splendor and magnificence with the participation of the leadership of the country. Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is appointed to coordinate the occasion. The President of Israel does not miss the opportunity to rub shoulders with the enemies of Israel invited by the criminal, Binyamin Netanyahu finally finds his place under the sun, and Ariel Sharon is incapable of seeing there things that we still see here, in the Noah's Ark of the sane.



Could there be greater craziness than this? I recalled the words of a great and modest man who died some time ago, Lt. Col. Shlomo Baum, who was Sharon's deputy in the legendary 101 unit in the ?50s.



"Shimon Peres," Baum told me, "doesn't care if Israel becomes a heap of ashes, as long as he - Peres - stands on the top of the heap."



"Look," I said to the people in the Noah's Ark on Rothschild Boulevard, "you are the last sane people who have remained. Whom are you shouting at? At Peres?



"From whom do you expect deliverance to come? From Sharon? Bibi? Mofaz? They are all there, celebrating with the architect of Oslo. We are sailing in the Flood of madness and we, whether we like it or not, are the last hope of the State of Israel. There are no demonstrations today, because in its heart the public realizes that there is in fact no-one to demonstrate against. A son shouts at his father, but a prisoner does not shout at his jailer. If he still possesses the strength to live, he makes his own way to freedom.



"If we do not assume responsibility and establish leadership for this country from the Ark of the sane, if we continue to seek solutions amongst those celebrating inside the Cultural Center, we will return here again twenty years after Oslo. The heap of ashes will be much higher, and Peres and his friends will still be celebrating, at the top of the heap."