A recent article about the Israeli Consul-General in New York that appeared in the Jerusalem Post, headlined "Most American Jews Support Realignment", brings to mind the veracity of the following humorous anecdote.



At a support group designed to strengthen the relationship between parents and married children, participants were asked to relate situations that caused friction and how they reacted to them. After each member had voiced their mostly negative experiences and complaints, one woman rose to address the group.



"As a mother and mother-in-law, I can inform you that the solution to maintaining a good relationship with married children is simply to keep your mouth shut - and your pocketbook open."



This, in effect, was the message to American Jewry from Israel's Consul-General in New York, Arye Mekel. The Jerusalem Post's Gal Beckerman summarized his interview with Mr. Mekel last week as follows: "American Jews largely support Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's realignment plan, and those who don't will be told to keep quiet so that the global Jewish community can maintain a united front."



Furthermore:
Mekel said he had been spreading this message to many American Jewish groups lately and that to a large extent, the response had been positive. Even the Orthodox Union, which could offer the greatest American opposition to the plan, had agreed not to broadcast its disagreement to the greater Jewish community, he said.
There you have it. This directive by the Consul-General in New York, the official spokesman of the government of Israel, is aimed at silencing any legitimate opposition by the American Jewish community to Ehud Olmert's dangerous new Disengagement - known as the Convergence or Realignment Plan - even after the disaster in Gush Katif. The Olmert plan will further reward Arab terrorism by uprooting many more thousands of Jewish residents from their homes in Judea and Samaria, the heart of our G-d-given Jewish homeland in Eretz Yisrael.



Of course, this outrageous attempt to stifle dissent presumably does not preclude American Jews from continuing to send their humongous financial support to Israel. In other words (as the above parable illustrates) to maintain good relations with the government of Israel, American Jews should "keep their mouths shut and their pocketbooks open."



Superseding this outrageous act of unmitigated chutzpah by Consul-General Mekel is the reaction, or rather lack of same, by Jewish organizations in America, such as the Orthodox Union. Their agreement to Mekel's demand not to broadcast their opposition to Olmert's plan to the greater Jewish community reminds one of the darkest days during the Holocaust, when some influential American Jewish organizations, espousing the silence of the Jewish lambs, ignored the desperate pleas of their doomed European brethren.



In the final analysis, the question of whether or not American Jews support Olmert's evil plan to remove Jewish residents from their homes in the Jewish State is not relevant. The truly important question is whether the Jews in the Diaspora are willing, 'for the sake of peace', to give up their homes and emigrate now - to Israel.