Dear Mr. Prime Minister,
I'm a Jewish physician, a general surgeon from the ?settlement? of Hadera, a place severely attacked by terrorists during the last few years. I live on its main street, which has several times been stained by Jewish blood since the ill-fated Oslo agreements.
Some years ago, you gave a wonderful speech in our city. After that, I came to the podium where you stood to shake your hand. I told you how I was moved to shake the hand of an Israeli hero. A hero who built the famous "101 force", which had operated to destroy Gaza's terrorism more than 40 years ago. A hero who had crossed the Suez Canal to subdue the Egyptian army, which had attacked us in the Yom Kippur war of 1973, saving our country from the prospect of complete destruction.
Nevertheless, on May 25th, 2003, you took a disgraceful and cowardly decision. When you adopted President Bush's Road Map, you accepted a plan that will erode the State of Israel step-by-step, slice-by-slice (like a salami), while building a Palestinian country that will, ultimately, be built upon our own ruins.
I confess that I don't have your refined intellectual capability to analyze the strategic situation of Israel. I am a ?primitive? thinker, one who sees the reality of the Middle East through simple eyes and straightforward thoughts, even after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
In 1986, when the first Intifada began and Palestinians threw stones against Israeli soldiers, I noticed that, instead of opening fire against these mobs, to disable them, our fighters hid themselves inside armored cars. At that time, I told all my intellectual friends from the Left wing in Israel that, according to my primitive thoughts, we'll see, in the future, Israeli Arabs throwing stones against us (civilians) on the road that passes through the Arab villages of Wadi Ara, near Hadera. Of course, they laughed at me: "Are you nuts? "Our" Arabs will throw stones against us? Not a chance! They have learned democracy. They will never join the Palestinian Arabs. They know they have a lot to lose.
It took 14 years until it actually happened. My Leftist intellectual friends were astonished: How could my primitive prophecy have proven superior to their cultivated and dispassionate analyses?
In 1993, Yitzhak Rabin brought to us Yasser Arafat - the third biggest genocidal slaughterer of Jews in the 20th Century (after Hitler and Stalin). Once again, I told my Leftist intellectual friends that years of Jewish slaughter would occur as a result. Needless to say, once again my primitive prophecy came true. Three years ago, when Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered Israel's army to run away from Lebanon, fearing Hizbullah, my primitive brain brought forth a primitive idea: that Palestinians will learn from this event a great lesson. They will learn that violence against Israel is worthwhile. Once again, my unsophisticated ideas became reality and in several years of a cruel and new Intifada, hundreds of Israelis have been blown to death and torn to shreds in malls, buses, restaurants, etc. Whole families have simply disappeared in these unspeakable genocidal crimes.
And now, my dear Prime Minister, hero of Israel, you surrender Israel to more terrorism. And you do this at a time when "our" Arabs are learning an important lesson from their Palestinian brothers. You justify your decision by saying that "We can't dominate millions of Arabs", but this is exactly what Rabin said when he ordered the IDF to get out of the Gaza strip ten years ago. At that time, I had another primitive prophecy, maintaining that if we do not dominate Gaza, Gaza will dominate us. Once again, our Leftists, jubilant over our exit from Gaza, didn't listen to me, and those few who did listen did not accept my primitive idea.
They began to understand my primitive prophecies only when they watched on TV as a police-woman held in her arms a baby dressed up as a clown (it was Purim - the Jewish carnival) on the street, in front of a mall in the center of Tel Aviv. The baby was severely injured, her Purim clothes drenched by her own blood. Moments before, a Palestinian suicide bomber had exploded himself, murdering and wounding many people. The police-woman was looking for an ambulance. The baby's mother had been killed. Suddenly, my Leftist friends understood what I meant when I said: ?If we don't dominate Gaza, Gaza will dominate us.? Needless to say, many more women and children have been murdered in Tel Aviv in subsequent attacks from Gaza's Palestinian Arab ?freedom fighters.?
As an aside, I have many primitive questions in my mind: If we can't ?dominate? millions of Palestinian Arabs, how will we ?dominate? 1.5 million Arabs of "our own"? If we can't dominate the Arabs of Baka-el-Sharkyia (eastern Baka) why should we dominate the Arabs of Baka-el-Garbyia (western Baka), which is the same city, with the same Arab families, only divided by the "Green Line Frontier" of 1948? Are there Arabs that we should dominate and Arabs that we should not? Will we now have to relinquish (for the same reasons) Wadi Ara, the Galilee and other integral parts of our country where a substantial Arab population also lives? What will we do when "our" Arabs learn from their Palestinian brothers on the other side of the Green Line the Road Map lesson that terror-violence is worthwhile? What if our Arabs get weapons, money and incitement from their Palestinian brothers and from the soon-to-be founded Palestinian state? What will we do then?
My dear Prime Minister, in contrast to what you said, we are not conquerors. Judea, Samaria and Gaza (known in Hebrew by the abbreviation of Yesha) are not ?occupied territories.? In the Six-Day War we just returned to lands that were ours by history and by authoritative international decision. The Arabs, not the Jews, were the true ?occupiers.? The League of Nations gave us these lands at the 1920 San Remo Conference and their decision was ratified at the creation of the United Nations Organization (Article 80, Chapter 12, The Charter of the United Nations). No other decisions concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict (e.g., the decision on division of the land, S.C. Resolutions 242, 338, etc.), endorsed the current erroneous presumption that the territories are ?occupied? by Israel.
Now, my dear Prime Minister, if the "Road Map dream" endorsed by both Mr. Bush and yourself will be implemented, my primitive mind says that the Arabs will learn that the more violence they apply to us, the more they will get. As a result, we'll see mega-attacks like the one that struck the USA on September 11, 2001. They will likely bring down an El Al jumbo after its lift-off from Ben-Gurion Airport, onto Tel Aviv. Thousands will die, burned and crushed beyond recognition. The Road Map's Palestinian state will have its own airport and seaport. A Palestinian plane, full of bombs and fuel, will lift off from Gaza and act like a kamikaze in the center of Ashkelon, Ashdod or perhaps even the nuclear center of Nahal Sorek. Ships filled with weapons of mass destruction and Katyusha long-range rockets (like those Hizbullah have in Lebanon) will arrive at their port. As a result, mega-attacks could happen almost daily.
My dear Prime Minister, I know my prophecies are much too primitive to be compared to your intelligence analyses, but because all of them became reality in the past, I'm afraid they'll become a reality again when a Palestinian state emerges from the Bush Road Map.
So, to end my letter to you, I have one more primitive question: How many more Jews (including women and children) will have to be slaughtered in Israel to convince you that Bush's Road Map will drive us only to hell?
--------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Rosenblatt is a surgeon from Hadera, Israel.
I'm a Jewish physician, a general surgeon from the ?settlement? of Hadera, a place severely attacked by terrorists during the last few years. I live on its main street, which has several times been stained by Jewish blood since the ill-fated Oslo agreements.
Some years ago, you gave a wonderful speech in our city. After that, I came to the podium where you stood to shake your hand. I told you how I was moved to shake the hand of an Israeli hero. A hero who built the famous "101 force", which had operated to destroy Gaza's terrorism more than 40 years ago. A hero who had crossed the Suez Canal to subdue the Egyptian army, which had attacked us in the Yom Kippur war of 1973, saving our country from the prospect of complete destruction.
Nevertheless, on May 25th, 2003, you took a disgraceful and cowardly decision. When you adopted President Bush's Road Map, you accepted a plan that will erode the State of Israel step-by-step, slice-by-slice (like a salami), while building a Palestinian country that will, ultimately, be built upon our own ruins.
I confess that I don't have your refined intellectual capability to analyze the strategic situation of Israel. I am a ?primitive? thinker, one who sees the reality of the Middle East through simple eyes and straightforward thoughts, even after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
In 1986, when the first Intifada began and Palestinians threw stones against Israeli soldiers, I noticed that, instead of opening fire against these mobs, to disable them, our fighters hid themselves inside armored cars. At that time, I told all my intellectual friends from the Left wing in Israel that, according to my primitive thoughts, we'll see, in the future, Israeli Arabs throwing stones against us (civilians) on the road that passes through the Arab villages of Wadi Ara, near Hadera. Of course, they laughed at me: "Are you nuts? "Our" Arabs will throw stones against us? Not a chance! They have learned democracy. They will never join the Palestinian Arabs. They know they have a lot to lose.
It took 14 years until it actually happened. My Leftist intellectual friends were astonished: How could my primitive prophecy have proven superior to their cultivated and dispassionate analyses?
In 1993, Yitzhak Rabin brought to us Yasser Arafat - the third biggest genocidal slaughterer of Jews in the 20th Century (after Hitler and Stalin). Once again, I told my Leftist intellectual friends that years of Jewish slaughter would occur as a result. Needless to say, once again my primitive prophecy came true. Three years ago, when Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered Israel's army to run away from Lebanon, fearing Hizbullah, my primitive brain brought forth a primitive idea: that Palestinians will learn from this event a great lesson. They will learn that violence against Israel is worthwhile. Once again, my unsophisticated ideas became reality and in several years of a cruel and new Intifada, hundreds of Israelis have been blown to death and torn to shreds in malls, buses, restaurants, etc. Whole families have simply disappeared in these unspeakable genocidal crimes.
And now, my dear Prime Minister, hero of Israel, you surrender Israel to more terrorism. And you do this at a time when "our" Arabs are learning an important lesson from their Palestinian brothers. You justify your decision by saying that "We can't dominate millions of Arabs", but this is exactly what Rabin said when he ordered the IDF to get out of the Gaza strip ten years ago. At that time, I had another primitive prophecy, maintaining that if we do not dominate Gaza, Gaza will dominate us. Once again, our Leftists, jubilant over our exit from Gaza, didn't listen to me, and those few who did listen did not accept my primitive idea.
They began to understand my primitive prophecies only when they watched on TV as a police-woman held in her arms a baby dressed up as a clown (it was Purim - the Jewish carnival) on the street, in front of a mall in the center of Tel Aviv. The baby was severely injured, her Purim clothes drenched by her own blood. Moments before, a Palestinian suicide bomber had exploded himself, murdering and wounding many people. The police-woman was looking for an ambulance. The baby's mother had been killed. Suddenly, my Leftist friends understood what I meant when I said: ?If we don't dominate Gaza, Gaza will dominate us.? Needless to say, many more women and children have been murdered in Tel Aviv in subsequent attacks from Gaza's Palestinian Arab ?freedom fighters.?
As an aside, I have many primitive questions in my mind: If we can't ?dominate? millions of Palestinian Arabs, how will we ?dominate? 1.5 million Arabs of "our own"? If we can't dominate the Arabs of Baka-el-Sharkyia (eastern Baka) why should we dominate the Arabs of Baka-el-Garbyia (western Baka), which is the same city, with the same Arab families, only divided by the "Green Line Frontier" of 1948? Are there Arabs that we should dominate and Arabs that we should not? Will we now have to relinquish (for the same reasons) Wadi Ara, the Galilee and other integral parts of our country where a substantial Arab population also lives? What will we do when "our" Arabs learn from their Palestinian brothers on the other side of the Green Line the Road Map lesson that terror-violence is worthwhile? What if our Arabs get weapons, money and incitement from their Palestinian brothers and from the soon-to-be founded Palestinian state? What will we do then?
My dear Prime Minister, in contrast to what you said, we are not conquerors. Judea, Samaria and Gaza (known in Hebrew by the abbreviation of Yesha) are not ?occupied territories.? In the Six-Day War we just returned to lands that were ours by history and by authoritative international decision. The Arabs, not the Jews, were the true ?occupiers.? The League of Nations gave us these lands at the 1920 San Remo Conference and their decision was ratified at the creation of the United Nations Organization (Article 80, Chapter 12, The Charter of the United Nations). No other decisions concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict (e.g., the decision on division of the land, S.C. Resolutions 242, 338, etc.), endorsed the current erroneous presumption that the territories are ?occupied? by Israel.
Now, my dear Prime Minister, if the "Road Map dream" endorsed by both Mr. Bush and yourself will be implemented, my primitive mind says that the Arabs will learn that the more violence they apply to us, the more they will get. As a result, we'll see mega-attacks like the one that struck the USA on September 11, 2001. They will likely bring down an El Al jumbo after its lift-off from Ben-Gurion Airport, onto Tel Aviv. Thousands will die, burned and crushed beyond recognition. The Road Map's Palestinian state will have its own airport and seaport. A Palestinian plane, full of bombs and fuel, will lift off from Gaza and act like a kamikaze in the center of Ashkelon, Ashdod or perhaps even the nuclear center of Nahal Sorek. Ships filled with weapons of mass destruction and Katyusha long-range rockets (like those Hizbullah have in Lebanon) will arrive at their port. As a result, mega-attacks could happen almost daily.
My dear Prime Minister, I know my prophecies are much too primitive to be compared to your intelligence analyses, but because all of them became reality in the past, I'm afraid they'll become a reality again when a Palestinian state emerges from the Bush Road Map.
So, to end my letter to you, I have one more primitive question: How many more Jews (including women and children) will have to be slaughtered in Israel to convince you that Bush's Road Map will drive us only to hell?
--------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Rosenblatt is a surgeon from Hadera, Israel.