"Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't"
-- Hamlet, Act II, Scene 3

Hamlet's madness was feigned in a stage tragedy. The progressive madness of Israel's governments since 1992 is a real tragedy.

It first manifested itself in adoption of a doctrine contrived by a hostile outside world. It is a doctrine without precedent in history or law, and it applies exclusively to Israel and the Arabs: "To the Repeatedly Defeated Aggressor Belongs the Spoils". Or for short: "Land for Peace".

The irrational rationale of this outlandish doctrine is: The Arab states repeatedly launched wars of destruction against Israel. Israel in the course of defending itself regained the heartland of its historic homeland. This land had never in the history of the world been part of any Arab nation, much less of a "Palestine" that had not yet been invented. Indeed, under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate, it was part of the Jewish National Home, and was alienated only through the treacherous bungling of the British Mandatory Government that thereby created the "Arab-Israel Problem", now abbreviated as "the Palestine Problem". [See Issues 2, 7.  Note: All issues referenced are available on http://www.israel.net/timetospeak/]

"The Land for Peace" twaddle is based on the notion that the defeated aggressors must be bribed to cease aggression, and the victorious victim of the aggression has to pay the bribe in the form of relinquishing its homeland to those who have no kind of rightful claim on it. This program began in 1967 with a vague "agreed and secure borders" and the diplomatic authors of that expression gave assurances they did not mean the ceasefire line of 1949, that had never been a border. [See Issue 23]

Since then, those assurances have been whittled away until it has become the standard demand that Israel itself must be whittled away, until the defeated aggressors have all the spoils, along with the invention of an entirely superfluous 23rd Arab state. [See Special Issue: "Twelve Bad Arguments for a State of Palestine." It is also available at
http://www.Think-Israel.org/berlyn.html/berlyn.12badargs.html/]

No government of Israel has stood firm against this creeping betrayal -- hard as it is indeed for so tiny and vulnerable a country to stand against the great powers. But no government need have adopted this alien program as its own. And surely no government need have perpetrated the folly of the Oslo Accords, that lifted a moribund terrorist gang from the gutter and gave it land, power and the means to kill.

The present incumbent government, under a prime minister who once purported to oppose the Osloids and their deadly doings, has gone on to even more dangerous and self-destructive follies. The PLO-terrorist launching of the Oslo War could have been the chance to undo the lethal errors of the Oslo Accords. Instead, the regime of Ariel Sharon acquiesced to a foreign Quartet Roadmap whose end destination is to turn a strong and sovereign Israel into a shrunken, demeaned, degraded and defenseless vassal of hostile alien overlords. [See Issues 23, 28, 29]

After welcoming defeat by way of the Roadmap, the Sharon regime inflated folly into madness. It promulgated a "Disengagement" that if carried out will endanger the nation and bring ineradicable shame and disgrace the Jewish people. Some who supported Oslo -- though not those who actually instigated it -- might have been naive and thoughtless enough to imagine it might bring benefits. Some of those who reluctantly submitted to the Roadmap may have supposed they had not the power to resist foreign pressure. For the Disengagement there is no rational rationale. It is simply madness. [See Issues 39, 45, 46]

Imagine a plot in which:

• A politician is elevated to Prime Minister because the voters massively prefer his party and its platform to the platform of the main opposition party

• He then junks the platform the voters favored and adopts the opposition's platform that the voters massively rejected.

• He then drives out of his government all those ministers who keep faith with the public that elected them.

• He then brings into the government the defeated opposition party, and makes its widely-despised leader, the unrepentant arch-perpetrator of Oslo, Deputy Prime Minister and de facto Foreign Minister.

This is not the plot of a bitterly satirical fiction. It is the way the Sharon-Peres duo hijacked a nation and its people. This is the political fraud by which the Disengagement is to be inflicted on the nation and its people.

Among Components of Disengagement in Relation to the Enemy:

1] The PLO, still pledged by its charter and declarations to the destruction of Israel, launched and lost the bloody Oslo War. As a reward, it is to be given a victory over the country it could not defeat, enhanced power for terrorism and unimpeded freedom to carry it out.

2] What is no part of Disengagement is a PLO commitment to stop murdering Israelis and stop trying to murder Israel. The PLO did make such commitments in the past and never honored them, nor did any Israeli government expect it to, so there would be little point in repeated a stale charade of reciprocity.

3] The new PLO-terror-chief, who differs from his late predecessor only in style and not in substance, will have at his command an expanded security service that will recruit members from all the sundry terrorist groups. This security service will be trained by professionals from the United States and other civilized nations.

4] The PLO will have unimpeded access to weapons. Brave men of the IDF risked and too often lost their lives in finding and sealing the tunnels used to smuggle weapons from Egypt to Gaza. Now there will be no need for tunnels -- Egypt can bring the weapons in quite openly. The PLO is also seeking to acquire heavy weapons from other countries.

5] It will be free to rain missiles on Israeli towns many miles away, and to attack vital water supplies, power stations, fuel depots, roads and highways, and aircraft.

6] The protection of Israeli towns and citizens will be outsourced to Egypt, the leading player in five wars of aggression against Israel. Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1978, as the only way to regain the Sinai and re-open lucrative traffic in the Suez Canal. It has never abided by the spirit of the treaty, and often not by the letter of it. Any terms and conditions in that treaty that hinder this empowerment of Egypt are to be abrogated.

7] There is a cessation of Israeli measures against terrorists and terrorism.

8] The IDF has many times intercepted terrorists attacks before they were carried out, apprehended terrorists on the way to work, and found and uprooted depots of weapons and explosives and factories for producing them. Wherever Sharon means to Disengage, the IDF will no longer be able to carry out these missions.

9] Hundreds of convicted PLO terrorists are being released from Israeli prisons. Hundreds more, perhaps eventually thousands more, are to be released. No heed is given to the statistic that of all the terrorists released in the past, 50 percent have returned to terrorism. Nor is heed given to the betrayal of the victims of their crimes, or of the perils and sacrifices of Israeli soldiers and police who apprehended them.

The released terrorists are, naturally, hailed as conquering heroes. (It is reported that when the first batch was greeted with volleys of celebratory gunfire, three bystanders were accidentally killed.) The message is: Be a terrorist -- if caught you will serve little if any jail time and you will become a national hero.

A religious leader promises recruits to terrorism "Kill a Jew and you will go to Paradise". To this assurance, Madam Dr. Secretary Condoleeza Rice, on behalf of the United States, offers a life-time pension of $100 a month for life to "retired terrorists". So, just kill one Jew and you are eligible for Paradise and an income until you get there. The many Arabs who work hard at honest jobs to feed their families need not apply.

Sharon does deign to explain why this mass release of murderers and would-be murderers is necessary:

"It is of supreme importance to the Palestinians. They say to you openly, we sent these people to carry out [attacks], and we travel around the world and stay in hotels, and they support him [PA leader Mahmoud Abbas] today. He told me simply that it is a major problem."

Translation: Incumbent Terror-Chief Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) admits that he sent these terrorists on their mission, and has both a moral obligation to obtain their freedom and a tactical need for their active support. The Prime Minister of Israel feels obliged to cater to these needs.

Madam Dr. Secretary Condoleeza Rice joins in the demand murderers and would-be murderers of Israelis be released. She simultaneously demands that Abbas find and arrest and punish the killers of three American CIA agents on a mission to Gaza.

Four IDF men are known to have been taken captive by Arab forces: Ron Arad, Zachary Baumel, Zvi Feldman, and Yehuda Katz. For more than 20 years, governments of Israel have been releasing Arab terrorists en masse, without demanding the release of these men or even information on their fates.

10] Such rewards, encouragements, and victories bestowed on terrorist gangs are not deemed detrimental to any other nation's War on Terror. This instance is unique because the betrayed, the endangered, and the slaughtered are Jews, who can be considered -- in Yitzhak Rabin's grotesque phrase -- "victims of peace".

Among the Tactics for Forcing Compliance on the Citizens of Israel:

The resistance to this madness was from the start massive and passionate, and grows ever stronger and more determined. The resistance has been carried out within the limits of lawful democratic practices. To squash it, the Sharon regime must squash the normal democratic rights to express dissent.

1] Dissent is characterized as "incitement". Sharon defines all criticism of Disengagement as "incitement".

2] Minister of Justice Ms Tzippi Livni has founded a special legal agency to try to find ways to prosecute dissenters.

3] Attorney General Menahem Mazuz has pointed out that under present law, a person cannot be convicted of "incitement" unless there is evidence that it can lead to violence. Therefore, a new law is needed to remove that requirement and make non-violent "incitement" a crime.

4] In case a practitioner of dissent does not do anything that could grounds for indictment or conviction, the government has the option of "administrative detention". This device is based on a law passed by the British Mandatory Government in the years before Israel was an independent state. It permits authorities to incarcerate a person at its own whim, without charge or trial.

5] The Prison Authority is planning construction of hundreds more jail cells for "inciters" and "resisters". This suggests that the cells vacated by the release of hundreds of PLO terrorists are not expected to suffice.

6] Some remarks by holders of high office expose the intellectual quality on their side of the debate. The remarks may seem ludicrous and farcical, but they are part of a script for tragedy. For example:

a] Moshe Katzav, who holds the ceremonial non-political post of President of Israel, suggests that "sometimes it is necessary to use undemocratic means to save democracy"

b] Meir Shitreet, former Minister of Justice and present Minister of Transport, is shocked at the "incitement" of citizens who intimidate Members of the Knesset with the threat "I Will Not Vote For You".

c] Sharon agrees that such intimidation is an offense against democracy, because a politician who does not please the voters "is threatened with loss of his livelihood and future".

d] A government functionary adds to the charge that dissenters misuse the ballot-box the additional charge that they equip themselves with cell-phones, faxes, and e-mail lines.

e] Minister of Internal Security Gideon Ezra complains that a woman who wrote a letter to an official telling him he was making a mistake "should not be walking free in the street".

f] Minister of Education Ms Limor Livnat, who once opposed Oslo but has now grasped the beauties of Disengagement, brought a grave charge against a rival faction within her Likud Party: "They are trying to use democratic means to get elected!"

g] An official spokesperson blamed dissenters for the PLO bombing of a night club in Tel-Aviv, that killed five people and wounded scores. The terrorists were not detected and apprehended because the police were too busy monitoring peaceful protest meetings.

7] There is no inhibition against out-and-out lies, as when Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told foreign visitors that the border with Lebanon has been quiet since the Israeli rout from the Lebanese security zone, and will be a model for the future border with Gaza. The truth is that the Lebanese border has been a site of shelling, damage, civilian deaths and the kidnapping and murder of Israeli soldiers. Which may indeed make it a model if there is a future border with Gaza.

8] No argument, debate, or free expression of opinion is tolerated.

a] Before Sharon presented the Disengagement proposal for required cabinet approval, he fired several ministers who would have voted against it. Only by this device did he get the majority he needed from the cowed remnant of the cabinet.

b] Both IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon and Intelligence Director Avi Dichter were ousted from their posts because they warned of the disastrous consequences of Disengagement. There will be a disastrous consequence indeed if only obedient yes-men are permitted to hold these vital posts.

c] There was something of a purge of IDF officers who are "religious" and therefore emotionally attached to the Land of Israel. These officers are dedicated and capable. Driving them out of military service weakens the IDF -- on which the survival of the nation depends -- to promote a reckless political adventure. Indeed, the misuse of the IDF to enforce a hated political scheme is a cruelty to these young men and women that can do grave damage to their morale that will in turn gravely weaken the nation.

Among the most ominous dirty tricks of the Disengagers is the campaign to subdue and discredit the opposition with false allegations that they are a danger to society and the state. In this campaign, they have the enthusiastic cooperation of leftist newspaper and broadcasters

1] These media blare out warnings of plans for violence and even murder. Security authorities have found no evidence of any such plans. The media loudly report threats against members of Knesset. The chief of security at the Knesset reports that there have been no such threats.

2] There has indeed been a stream of threatening letters to officials, that elicited considerable hysteria. The security services tracked them all to a single source -- one aged woman survivor of the Holocaust who has been writing such letters for the past 14 years.

3] The media may create an incident just in order to report it. For example, a news reporter told a youth to yell at Minister of Finance Binyamin Netanyahu "You're a bunny!" This incident of bad manners was presented as dangerous incitement. (In view of how often and easily Netanyahu switches his convictions "You're a chameleon" might be more apropos.) On the same occasion Netanyahu complained that some dissenter slashed a tire of his car, but his chauffeur diagnosed the damage as a common flat tire.

4] A spate of nasty and threatening stickers supposedly the work of an inciting dissident were actually stuck up by an agent of the police force. This is a chilling reminder of the days when the government had its security services perpetrated acts of counterfeit incitement against itself. It was the government's agent provocateur Avishai Raviv who carried out a campaign of threats and incitement against Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The purpose was to blame Raviv's repugnant stunts on the "nationalist" and "religious" opponents of Oslo, and so turn public opinion against them.

This worked so well that when Rabin was assassinated the Osloids could put false blame on the entirely innocent "nationalists" and "religious", and for a time turn the rest of the nation against them. The actual circumstances of the crime have never been the subject of a full official investigation.

The Disengagers of today, like the Osloids of yesterday, have shown themselves frighteningly free of conscience or prudence in the methods by which they advance their madness.

The inventors and would-be enforcers of Disengagement simultaneously weaken Israel and strengthen those bent on annihilating it. They divide the country when it most needs unity. They subvert democracy and liberty. The undermine the IDF and the police and the security services. What various motives drive them is the topic of Part II.

In the meantime, a diagnosis and a prescription from a venerable source -- the hero Moshe Dayan called "the greatest Jewish warrior since Bar-Kokhba." From IsraelNationalNews, 23 February 2005:

"Meir Har-Tzion - whom the late Moshe Dayan referred to as the bravest Jewish warrior of his generation - has publicly called for IDF soldiers to refuse orders to uproot the Jews of Gush Katif. The soldiers who refuse ... must be willing to go to jail for insubordination.

"Har-Tzion referred to the government's Disengagement Plan as a 'Holocaust'" and said, 'If a Palestinian State arises here, that will be the beginning of the end for the State of Israel.'

"A founding member alongside Ariel Sharon of the legendary counter-terrorism unit known as Unit 101 in the 1950s, Har-Tzion had harsh words for his erstwhile comrade-in-arms: 'Sharon's gone nuts. The great fighter has run away; he is simply a dangerous man.'"

Those closest to Sharon, such as his consigliore Dov Weisglass and his deputy Ehud Olmert, sometimes admit that Disengagement from Gaza and northern Samaria is only a first step, to be followed by Disengagement from virtually all of biblical Judea and Samaria. So if Disengagement goes through, it will bring more and even worse disasters in its wake.

Whether Disengagement is inflicted on Israel or whether Israel saves itself from this scheme may determine which prophecy comes true:

For the sound of wailing
Is heard from Zion.
How we are despoiled!
How greatly we are shamed
Ah, we must leave our land,
Abandon our dwellings!
-- Jeremiah 9:18

  or

I will restore my people Israel.
They shall rebuild ruined cities and inhabit them.
They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine.
They shall till gardens and eat their fruits.
And I will plant them upon their soil,
Nevermore to the uprooted
From the soil I have given them
Said the Lord your God.
-- Amos 9:14

Hamlet's madness was feigned in a stage tragedy. The progressive madness of Israel's governments is a real tragedy.

There were mistakes and misjudgments enough before 1992, but policies since then have gone far beyond normal human fallibility. The progressively disastrous consequences of these policies were never unexpected or unforeseen. On the contrary, there were logical analyses, cogent objections, and passionate pleas aplenty. The policymakers had one all-purpose response: Ignore the content of the arguments and vilify those who presented them.

The folly of the Oslo Accords progressed to shameful submission to the arrogant alien Roadmap [see Issues 39, 45, 46] to the madness of Disengagement. [See Issues No. 45, 46, 49, 50] The method for forcing them on the nation progressed from deceit, intimidation, and bribery to the present governmental violation of the most basic principles of liberty, democracy and decency. [See Issues 49, 50].

What can be the reason for such drastic and dangerous doings?

1] Might Israel benefit from exchange of concessions, commitments, or obligations?
The Oslo Accords came with a piece of paper in which the PLO committed itself to future peaceable conduct. No person with any sense believed that promise. Disengagement is a free gift to the PLO.

The terrorists know this is a victory for them, and perceive it as proof that Israel is weak and fearful. This inspires them to the open contempt of announcing their intentions: Get as much as they can out of Israel, and then resume mass terror attacks to get still more.

2] Might the people of Israel be safer after Disengagement?
They will be in vastly greater danger. The terrorists will have unimpeded access to and unrestricted use of massive weaponry, rockets, and missiles. They will feel free to use them whenever and wherever they fancy.

Former IDF Chief-of-Staff and current Minister of Defense Shaul Mofaz has announced that the terrorists in Gaza acquired missiles that can bring down civilian airliners. This has not dampened his own ardor for proceeding with Disengagement.

3]Might Disengagement win the gracious consent of the Bush-Rice Administration for the Children of Israel to live in the Land of Israel?
Sharon's bluster that he won U.S. "assurances" of consent are a sham.

Official statements from Washington and the U.S. embassy in Tel-Aviv deny that there will be any such grace. These denials are credible. Indeed, demands for Israel's flight from its own Land now go even beyond those of the Roadmap. A newly revealed requirement is that the envisioned PLO state be "contiguous", and that is geographically impossible without chopping Israel itself into disconnected segments.

4]Will Israel be free of the burden of Gaza?
After Disengagement Israel will still be liable for supplying water, utilities, transportation, and other services. It will most likely be under pressure from the Bush-Rice Administration to contribute to the Gaza economy as well.

5]Might it be in Israel's interest to make sacrifices in order to shore up Mahmoud Abbas as a "partner in peace"?
When the notion of Disengagement was first sprung on the people of Israel more than a year ago, the excuse was in essence: "We have no partner for an agreement, so we have to do something unilaterally." This nonsense has been altered to fit the change of regime in the PLO. The revised excuse is the fancied need to be nice to the new Chief Terrorist.

Mahmoud Abbas (a/k/a Abu Mazen) has for decades been one of the highest-ranking figures in the PLO. He earned a doctorate degree from a Soviet university for a thesis that denies the Holocaust ever happened, or maybe there was just a mini-Holocaust that was no big deal.

His career has been dedicated to the destruction of Israel. That destruction is still his goal, and any interim policy is a means to that end.

He is now recruiting recruited or is attempting to recruit the most hard-line terror gangs into his "security services".

6]Is Disengagement from (meaning abandonment of) parts of the Land of Israel necessary to maintain demographic balance?

The standard demographic figures for the various populations within the Land of Israel were incorrect and misleading. Recent more stringent studies show very different figures and proportions. Old arguments based on faulty figures are now obsolete. No policies or decisions should be made on the basis of obsolete data.

7]Might the sacrifices of Disengagement "improve Israel's standing in the world" and bring a respite from foreign pressures and condemnations?
Disengagement will be correctly seen as weakness and loss of will, and therefore encourage more pressure. Europe is already assuring Israel that this is only a first step, that must be followed by more and more retreat.

If Israel casts away its heritage and its rights, its honor, dignity, and self-respect, it cannot thereby temper the malevolence of its enemies. It can only hurt itself and betray its true friends; the Christians and Jews who believe in its heritage and have always stood by it.

Disengageniks do not make a case that passes basic tests of evidence, experience and common sense. Why, then, are they determined to do this thing, even at the cost of tearing apart society and nation? And how much confidence should be placed in the character and judgment of those in the fforefront of disengagement?

1] Ariel Sharon:
A flamboyant military career brought him fame, but not unanimous respect of fellow officers. After switching to politics, he hopped from party to party and ministry to ministry. Over several decades, his outstanding achievement was to push his own agenda by deceiving and ruining Prime Minister Menahem Begin.

He finally became prime minister because a clumsy electoral system left voters no other way to free the country from the calamitous Ehud Barak. Throught his tenure in this office, he has failed to protect Israel and Israelis. He never made any serious effective response to the PLO's Oslo War that has taken thousands of lives and ruined thousands more. Indeed, his policies have served to strengthen and embolden the enemy. While he refrains from victory over the enemy, he imposes his will on the country he is supposed to lead, by ruthless punishments of critics and shameless bribery of sycophants.

Sharon and his sons Gilad and Omri have kept the office of the Attorney General busy with their convoluted affairs.

Omri Sharon has been indicted for improprieties and illegalities in raising money for his father's political campaign.

Gilad Sharon has been investigated on his part in a potentially very lucrative real estate deal on a island of Greece. The patch of real estate in question could not be sold without the approval of particular clergyman of the Greek Orthodox Church. Ariel Sharon can Israel's consent to the appointment of the clergyman as Greek Orthodox Patriarch for Israel and the Territories, despite his fierce Judeophobia and close ties to Arafat and the PLO.

2] Shimon Peres:
He has now added Vice Prime Minister to the other titles he has held in the course of a long and progressively malevolent political career. [See Issue No. 49] He has made Disengagement possible by bringing his defeated Labor Party into Sharon's government, and thereby outweighing the opposition from the winning Likud Party.

However, Labor adherence to the Sharon government is dependent on it ceding more and more land to the PLO, and dispossessing more and more Jews from their communities. That is, it uses Sharon to carry out its own platform that the voters massively rejected.

Peres long ago chose his side in what he defines as a contest between "the Israelis" and "the Jews". By "Israelis" he means the enlightened secular-socialist Osloids. By "the Jews" he means the unenlightened who incorrigibly cling to ancestral tradition.

There are off-and-on investigations of his murky financial via the European-funded Peres Center for Peace, and his business interests in a PLO regime that he himself established via Oslo.

3] Dov Weissglass:
He has been Sharon's consigliore, attorney, government bureau chief, and government office bureau chief, and regular personal emissary to the Bush-Rice Administration.

His fellow arch-Disengagenik and Minister of Defense Shaul Mofaz recently insisted on giving the PLO control of Jericho. Chief of Staff General Moshe Ya'alon had strongly opposed the dangerous loss of control over Jericho. Mofaz over-ruled him, and very shortly thereafter deprived Ya'alon of his post.

Jericho -- one of the most ancient cities in the world -- is the site of a very profitable gambling casino belonging to the PLO and its partners and associates. Among the later is Dov Weissglass.

From "The Jericho Casino", Makor Rishon, 25 Febuary, 2005:

[. . . .] According to a source close to the Palestinian Authority, Ya'alon's fierce opposition to relinquishing IDF security control over Jericho at this time and Mofaz' and apparently Sharon's displeasure with Yaalon's warnings, may also lead directly to the doors of the Jericho Casino and back to some senior offices in Israel.

The source noted that Ya'alon and other senior security figures have expressed concern in the past that Jericho's casino profits --that have been estimated at more than one million dollars per day even after the start of the Al Aksa terror war in 2000 -- had also been used as a prime funding source for Palestinian terror activity against Israel. [. . . .]

Reportedly, figures from Israel's underworld work along with their Arab counterparts [and] the Israeli underworld and their Palestinian counterparts are cooperating in the Jericho Casino racket.

[. . . .] West Bank strongman Jibril Rajoub and former senior Arafat financial advisor Mohammed Rashid, who is known to control Arafat's several billion dollar portfolio, top the list of Palestinians believed to have among the heaviest financial interests in the casino. [. . . .] It is also well known in Israel that MK Omri Sharon, the Prime Minister's son and closest confidante, and Former Sharon Bureau Chief Dov Weissglass have been long time associates of Rashid. The younger Sharon and Weissglass were reportedly Rashid's guests at his swank Tel Aviv Apartment on the night of Sharon's election victory in February 2001 according to Israeli journalists Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff in their 2004 book, The Seventh War.

An Israeli source with close ties both to the Palestinian Authority and Jordan noted this week that some Israelis and Europeans may also be interested in reopening the Jericho casino as soon as possible. A very senior Israeli security source said this week that he and others in the IDF remember 'with a cynical smile' the repeated approaches Weissglass made to the IDF and security establishment after the closing of the Jericho Casino in 2001 to convince them to reopen the casino. 'It was well known to us that Dov Weissglass had personal interests in the Jericho Casino,' the senior security source added this week. The source added that he does not understand Mofaz's role in the matter.

Of equal interest is the fact that Weissglass is still actively associated with his law firm Weissglass-Almagor that until recently was the law firm of record representing the Jericho Casino and other interests of the Palestinian Authority, facts that were reported in Makor Rishon and as recently as September 2004 by investigative journalist David Bedein in the American Magazine Frontpage.com. According to Bedein, the law firm Weissglass-Almagor is today listed as representing the interests of Casino investor and European financier Martin Shlaff whose alleged financial contributions to Prime Minister Sharon's 1999 and 2001 campaigns are under criminal investigation. [. . . .]

The Omri Sharon indictment is part of the ongoing investigation into his connection to various illegal funding sources including Martin Shlaff, reportedly a source of illegal campaign contributions to Sharon. . . . . Austrian financier Martin Shlaff is also well known as a major investor in the Jericho Casino, together with Sharon longtime friend Cyril Kern. [. . . .]

It is not yet certain whether Dov Weissglass will have an interest in a second PLO gambling casino to be opened in Gaza after Disengagement.

These men have in effect hijacked Israel. And the outside world imagines Israel in their ugly image.

The mainstream news media in Israel are generally vigorous and inquisitive. Even a hint of scandal about prominent and powerful personages would ordinarily have them licking their lips. Not this time. They busily crank out exaggerated or invented warnings about the nefarious intent of those who oppose Disengagement. The questionable doings of the Chief Disengageniks are not newsworthy.

On the revelations about Sharon & Sons, investigative reporter Shimon Cohen assembled a mass of material. He reports: "I gave it to senior reporters and investigative reporters on Channels One and Two, and to [newspapers] Ha'aretz and Maariv, but no one chose to take up the gauntlet and to deal with the grave findings."

From "Sharon Family Scandals Buried in Favor of Pullout", IsraelNationalNews.com, 22 February 2005:

Top political, media personalities admit: Public silence on criminal suspicions against Sharon and family stems from media's support for his plan. MK Hendel: This was Sharon's strategy all along.

Eitan Haber, a former top aide to Yitzchak Rabin and a writer for [newspaper] Yediot Acharonot, put it poetically: 'Our products ? values and norms ? are drowning in the sea, and the left-wing is singing praises.' [. . . .]

'If not for the fact that he was promoting the disengagement plan, said at least one [Labor Party] MK, 'a public outcry would have arisen regarding the accusations against Sharon in the Greek Island and campaign funding scandals.'

[. . . .] Speaking with Army Radio today, Eitan Haber said that the media's silence vis-a-vis Sharon stems only because of the disengagement plan. 'The left, and not only the left, is as silent as sheep because it's convenient for it that he's carrying out his political plan.'

Even more surprising was when this viewpoint was reiterated by Channel Ten TV's Moti Kirschenbaum, the former head of the Israel Broadcasting Authority who is considered to hold extreme left-wing views. 'There's no doubt,' he told Army Radio on the same program, 'that the media are dealing with the Sharon family with uncharacteristic tenderness because of their [the media's] empathy towards his diplomatic plans.'

[. . . .] Kirschenbaum hinted that the press is planning to deal with the suspicions against Sharon after the withdrawal from Gaza and northern Shomron.

Media dereliction of duty and partisan motives are admitted by a senior newsman. From "Top Journalist Confesses: Media Pushed Disengagement", IsraelNationalNews.com, 11 March 2005:

Respected Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea admits that most of the Israeli media has acted more like the 'guard dog' of the disengagement plan than that of democracy.

Writing in the most recent edition of the monthly media publication The Seventh Eye, Barnea stated that Israeli journalists made a mistake that must now be acknowledged.

'There is no argument that the tone in the Israeli media is pro-disengagement,' Barnea wrote. 'Were the media just supportive, or also enlisted [in its favor]?' He added that had the Prime Minister presented a program to strengthen Jewish communities instead of dismantling them, the media would have treated him 'with cruelty'.

Barnea noted that only certain newspapers have published articles against the Prime Minister. He noted that the 'right-wing' media, mainly the B'Sheva and Makor Rishon weeklies and the daily HaTzofeh, correctly have emphasized that Sharon promised he would accept the results of last year's Likud party referendum on whether to accept the disengagement plan. [. . . .]

Israel's media treated Sharon with 'kid gloves' although he acted pretentiously, Barnea confessed. 'We were the guard dog of disengagement more than we were the guard dog of democracy. Our duty is to report, expose, criticize, educate and influence.' The media's conscription in the disengagement program was 'a mistake' and the media should admit it now and not later, Barnea concluded."

Thus much of the mass media choose not to learn and report the news, but to misreport or unreport it. They choose not to inform the public, but to mislead it. This is not merely bad journalism, it is a perversion of journalism.

Interlocking cliques embedded in government, the judiciary, academia, the arts, and the media, have been following their own agenda since the establishment of the State. [See Issue No. 38] The agenda is to liberate themselves from what former Minister of Education Amnon Rubenstein calls "archaic Jewish values". They define as enemies those who cling to those values and try to live by them, and thereby do not fit into a "modern" or "normal" society unencumbered by faith or time-tested tradition or out-of-date standards of personal conduct.

A current government official considers it cause for alarm that more and more IDF officers are observant Jews, though admitting that they are good soldiers. A writer for the far-left newspaper Ha'Aretz castigates opponents of Disengagement for "putting Jewish attachment to the land of Israel before the interests of the nation" -- as if there could ever have been a nation without Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel.

These cliques know that the Oslo Accords, the Roadmap, and the Disengagement cannot bring peace or security to Israel, but they do serve a purpose: To break the Jewish heart and crush the Jewish spirit. The cliques are unwittingly abetted by the uninformed, the indifferent, and simultaneously supported and exploited from abroad.

For more than a decade, incumbent governments and the cliques that pull their strings have been promoting this agenda, regardless of any political platforms or promises to the contrary. They have lurched from one blunder to another, despite the obvious dangers and disastrous consequences.

1] They betray the past by trying to throw away the heartland of Israel; biblical Judea and Samaria, Bethlehem, Hebron and Shechem [Nablus]. They even play fast and loose with Jerusalem.

The Jewish people were sustained through 2,000 years of oppression and torment in exile by the memory of these places, and the belief that they would one day redeem them. The redemption came -- some would believe miraculously. No transient officeholder has a right to toss it away.

On Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Muslims are permitted regular mass prayer services. A Jew is subject to arrest and punishment if someone thinks he looks as though he is saying a silent prayer. The reason for this discrimination is admittedly fear of offending the Muslim Waqf, that Israel inexplicably gave control over the most sacred site of the Jewish people.

The Waqf deliberately and relentlessly obliterates all relics and traces of Jews and Christians on Temple Mount. Supine Israeli authorities do not interfere with destruction of artifacts, perhaps even texts, that might yield new knowledge of Jewish and Christian history but have been lost forever.

If control of Judea and Samaria is yielded, there can be no more searches and discoveries there. If anything Jewish or Christian is found by chance, it will also be destroyed.

2]They betray the present by refusing to make any genuine defense of the people of Israel. The Osloids gave the PLO the power and the means to murder. No government since has taken the power away from it.

A massacre in a restaurant or on a passenger-bus is avenged on an empty building. The most drastic response to a rain of terror is an operation that lasts for a few days, and then ends leaving a terrorist regime intact to carry on the terror. For this, the lives of valiant young soldiers are squandered.

In recent days, with terrorists bombarding Israeli targets with shells, the government has ordered the IDF to take no action at all.

3] They betray the future by deliberately incurring one avoidable calamity after another, from the madness of Oslo to the spineless submission to the Roadmap, to the Disengagement that if it proceeds will wreck the nation body and soul.

If Disengagement really goes through, more than 8,000 Israelis will be dragged from the houses, farms, greenhouses, schools, and synagogues they built. The disposal of this private property has yet to be determined.

Some argue to destroy everything, rather than see it taken over by a triumphant PLO.

Some consider selling the property, perhaps taking up the offer of purchase form a billionaire in the Gulf States.

Some want to give everything to the PLO as a gesture of good will.

But Israel will not have to make a decision. Madam Doctor Secretary Condoleeza Rice has spoken. She has ordered Israel to give everything to the PLO as a gift. General Mofaz has responded "Yes, Ma'am".

 
Patricia Berlyn is a writer and editor who is a native of New York, N.Y. and now resides in Israel.

Part I of this article is from "A Time To Speak -- Messages About Israel", Vol. V:II (No. 50), February 2005 - Heshvan/Kislev 5765; Part II is from Vol. V:III (No. 51), March 2005

"A Time To Speak" appears once a month, and each issue is on a theme that relates to Israel and the Middle East past and present, including history, background, current events, analysis and comment. All issues appear on its website:
http://www.israel.net/timetospeak. A complimentary subscription to the e-mail edition is available by request to: speak@actcom.co.il.

_________________________End of Story___________________________

HOME

Mar-Apr.2005 Featured Stories

March 2005 blog-eds

Background Information

News On The Web

Archives