The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) recently passed a resolution "to initiate a process of phased selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel...."



The above resolution was adopted in order to pressure Israel to desist in its ongoing war against terrorism, while totally ignoring the other side of this war of annihilation foisted on Israel's citizens. Such an ugly, one-sided and transparently anti-Israel and anti-Semitic resolution must not go unanswered.



Dear Members of the Presbyterian Church General Assembly (USA):



I read the above resolution you passed with growing trepidation, consternation and concern. I feel so terribly guilty, so justifiably reprimanded. Ever since you passed the resolution to divest from those companies that are doing business with Israel, I spend sleepless nights tossing and turning as nightmares run through my mind. Nightmares that replay the machinegun bullets that killed me and my two little children.



Oh, sorry! I didn't mean to mix the unimportant with the significance of your resolution. Please forgive me and let's get back to the gist of my letter to you.



I can not and I will not attempt to justify Israel's actions in attempting to protect and defend its citizens against the murderous onslaught initiated and carried out by those your resolution seems to ignore. (What am I doing? There I go again on a tangent. Sorry.) If there are any apologies to be extended, the Prime Minister's Office is the address your organization needs to turn to. I'm sure that your reasons for passing the resolution are valid, solid and irrefutable. Let me therefore stay a certain course as I continue here in giving impetus and support to the above resolution.



Dear Assembly Members:



I write to you from the nether world. I've been here now a year or two since that bus bombing in Jerusalem. You remember that one, don't you? I personally don't remember which one exactly. I can't recall whether it was the first, the third or the fifteenth bus that exploded. Or was it the one in Haifa? Or Ariel? You know, there have been so many that even here, in this world where clarity is infinite, the memories of so many explosions and deaths become a huge jumble of horrible pictures, which the mind still refuses to properly register.



But I leave it to you, the righteous judges of what is wrong in the Middle East, to rearrange the pieces (I'm talking pieces of bodies) until the puzzle is complete and the true meaning of these unspeakable murders is clearly understood. Once that is done, the world (to the last member nation), and particularly Jews, will understand that your resolution is not only correct, but designed to balance the injustice inflicted on the poor Palestinians.



But... Enough with this nonsensical gibberish. I really want to get down to the crux and theme of my letter.



As I mentioned, I've been here now quite a while (in fact, my two little boys are also sitting here with me) and the obscenity of my crime is just becoming quite apparent. I agree with you, dear members. I agree with your concept that I, a Jew, should behave differently than every other person whose life is in danger. A moral pedestal has been erected by you just for me and I ought to stay on it as erect as possible. Flinching in the face of the bloody firestorm raging around me is unforgivable. After all, Jews were meant to die. A living Jew is a nuisance, a pebble in the shoe and an obstacle to world peace. If not for the Jew, the world would be better off. Isn't that the anti-Semitic creed and mission?



A living and breathing Jew who has the audacity to return fire with fire is unwarranted. And you are right. Now that almost sixty years have passed by since the Holocaust eradicated millions of pesky Jews, how much longer, pray tell, would the world wait with its grand plans to build another magnificent edifice and monument in memory of Israel and its dead Jews? You have waited long enough.



Dear Assembly Members:



You have done everything in you power over the last twenty centuries (I'm discounting the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans and others; they are passe) to uproot and erase my people. The pogroms, the lynching, the Inquisition, expulsions, concentration camps, torture, murder, the Nazi killing machine and doctrine, the European complicity and Arab exuberance in continuing the unfinished work - all were justified. I poisoned your wells, invented the Black Plague, caused famine and hunger, disease and sickness. It was (and is) I, the Jew, who has brought on every possible past calamity the world has ever suffered.



You did your best to eradicate the sniveling, compliant, frightened, dirty Jew and at times almost succeeded. But, unfortunately (for you), somehow, I seemed to have sauntered away. Beaten and bloodied, yes, but sauntered away nevertheless, to live another day and face your growing wrath. And you seethe and you grind your teeth in anger and consternation that I survived. And you sit down once again at the drawing boards to recalculate, redesign and re-plan the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem. And, again, I apologize for thwarting your grand plans for the ultimate memorial, to be built after my final demise.



Dear Members:



You passed that resolution to punish me for my intransigence. You let your voices be heard that you will punish and exact retribution for my unwillingness to lie down compliantly on the road as your jackboots, once again, pound the pavement in a forward marching rhythm of anti-Semitism. You turn a blind eye and refuse to see my mother, my wife and my daughter slaughtered like cattle by those you forgot to ostracize. You have no problem in stepping over the bodies of my father, brother and my tiny little children, blown away deliberately by those you seem to cast as innocent bystanders to the most heinous crime of annihilation perpetrated by descendants of a pig called the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. You do remember him well, do you not? Yes, he was the standard bearer for all that is ugly in Islam.



But, let me not bore you any longer. For the Presbyterian Church (USA) to equate Israel and its struggle for survival to the South African oppressive regime is reflective of your biased, one-sided and, worst of all, anti-Semitic moral ineptitude. You are as guilty of my children's murder as if you pulled the trigger yourselves. To turn a blind eye to the atrocities the murdering Arabs are relentlessly unleashing against my people is to hand the rope to the hangman. To insist that I desist from legitimate defense and not protect my family members in the same manner as every one of you would if you were in the same precarious and life threatening situation, is ugly, despicable, hypocritical and dangerous to my health. I refuse to go along with your prescription.



The Presbyterian Church of the United States has seen cracks develop in its wall of religious affiliation. Thousands of your members have left in order to reestablish their own religious sanctuaries away from you. Didn't you ever stop think why?



In conclusion: I have no intention of fulfilling your desire. The round basket under my desk is filled to the top with the same type of resolutions. Yours is in fine company, joining the dozens of ludicrous UN resolutions, EU decisions, Arab League declarations and other useful toiletries. As long as hypocrites like those in your church exist, the world of despots, tyrants and totalitarians will continue to flourish as they sip their nourishment from just such asinine resolutions.



I don't need and don't want your museums and monuments. I want to live. And I will live, long, long after the Presbyterian Church (USA) has been taken over by the vermin you defend.



Oh, my. I did stray from my path of apologizing, didn't I? So sorry.