In Deuteronomy chapter 20 appears the Torah commandment regarding the "faint of heart". The faint of heart are to be released from national service in times of war lest their cowardice affect all of the other Israelites. They are prohibited from service even if they themselves desire to serve.

It is according to this mitzvah or commandment that Ehud Barak must immediately resign from office.

There is a famous country-western song, "I was country before country was cool." I am reminded of this every time yet another erstwhile Jewish leftist is "reborn" as a sane post-Oslo Jew. Of course some of us were anti-Oslo even back before being anti-Oslo was cool and "in". Someone called me yesterday and told me that the only people he knew in Israel who had been anti-Oslo from the very start and had insisted consistently throughout the past seven years that Oslo would end in a bloodbath and disaster were his father, me and Ehud Yaari (TV news expert on Arab affairs).

This is not to say that the entire Lobotomized Left has seen the light. While the press is suddenly full of journalists who suddenly discovered that the Palestinians are savages and that Arafat does not want peace, there are also still plenty of Red journalists in Israel insisting that all the violence is because the Jews are so racist and cussedly mean and evil to the po’ Arabs, and that the Jews are too obstinately inflexible with the PLO.

Interestingly, the latter include a group who are suddenly using the terms "pogrom" and "pogromchik". These include Sylvia Keshet, Haim Negbi and Moshe Hanegbi, among the most extremist Leftists in Israeli journalism. No, they do not use it in relationship to the Arab nazis. Indeed they have absolutely no interest in or comments on two weeks of nonstop Arab atrocities. Nothing to say about mutilated reservists, lynched Rabbis, firebombed babies, destroyed synagogues, maimed and murdered Jews. They use the terms ONLY as referring to those incidents in which bands of Jewish rowdies and toughs roughed up some Arabs. The Jews who even torched an abandoned mosque in Tiberias and killed two Nazareth Arabs in a street brawl. THESE are suddenly "pogromchiks" carrying out "pogroms" in the "minds" of these people.

Did you catch the BBC news showing an Israeli undercover agent catching a Palestinian rock thrower and doing "Noogy-Noogy" to the urchin’s head, all the while the BBC bimbette is saying "Just look at this Israeli police brutality."?

Ironically, after seven years of nonstop depression I suddenly find I am one of the few people on the streets of Israel NOT in shock and not depressed. Everyone around me is shocked and depressed because they are so surprised by the denouement of the "peace process". From the start I was absolutely certain it would produce a bloodbath and war, so I have absolutely no need to adjust psychologically to anything. I had no expectations to disappoint. I had no delusions at all. I’ll have a Diet Coke please.

Now there is actually something noteworthy about those brawls and the roughing up of Arabs by the Jewish rowdies the evening after Yom Kippur. The same "pogroms" that have Sylvia Keshet and her ilk in tears. For the entire week before that, Israeli Arabs had been out pogroming, stoning Jews, throwing rocks and Molotovs, screaming "Maascre the Jews", blocking roads. And then all of a sudden, the day AFTER the Jewish rowdies counterattacked and bashed some Arab faces, as if by magic, the violence by Arabs within the Green Line vanished. No intifada in Haifa, Acre, Jaffa, Nazareth. Not a creature was stirring not even a lemming.

Of course Israel is the only country in the Middle East with an intifada of Arab savages and it is also the only country in the Middle East that does not brutally suppress Arabs. Think there just might be some connection between those two facts? Think this might cast a slight shadow on the theory that the pogroms were caused by Jews being "mean" to the po’ ole Arabs?

Of course that still leaves the mystery of Umm al-Fahm. That is the Arab town in which the fundamentalist Islamist-fascist movement of Israeli Arabs is headquartered. And COWABUNGA, the violence THERE also vanished instantaneously. How come? Think maybe it had something to do with the fact that a few hours before hand, Rubi Rivlin, a Likud leader and contender for cabinet slot if Likud joins a national unity government with the Left, said he has reached the conclusion that transferring Umm al-Fahm to the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority might be a good idea. Wouldn’t that be a delight, to send this town of Sudeten fascists to enjoy rule by Arafat and West Bank standards of living?

I have always found one of the most atrocious things of recent years to be the brutal hijacking of the "Ethics of the Prophets" by Jewish leftists. The assimilationist "Political Liberalism as Judaism" form of pseudo-Judaism that dominates the American Jewish community has always rationalized its paganism by claims that it was just "applying the ethics of the Prophets of Israel" to things ranging from affirmative action to preserving the public school monopoly to income redistribution to radical environmentalism. In Israel, the Lobotomized Left jumped on the same bandwagon, with Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin and Avraham Burg daily conjuring up the "Ethics of the Prophets" as the basis for pursuing Oslo suicide.

Now the one thing that is common to all of these people is that they have apparently never bothered to read the Prophets. Suffice it to say that even a cursory glance through the Books of the Prophets will show that:

1. The major theme in EVERY book of the Prophets is battling against paganism, and so these cannot be used to justify the promoting the forms of paganism practiced by Jewish leftists, including Oslo and political correctness.

2. There is virtually no discussion in the Prophets at all about "social justice" issues like income distribution, wage levels (well, other than the fact that you are not supposed to withhold that which has been earned) or racial relations.

3. While there are a handful of references to the matter of poor people, widows, orphans, and foreigners/converts, it is in most cases with respect to their protection in legal proceedings.

4. There are virtually no references to income redistribution in the Bible beyond allowing poor people to help themselves to food from fields. The ONLY form of Biblically-mandated income redistribution financed through taxation is the support of the priests and their Levite assistants.

5. If anything, the few places in which the Prophets speak of income issues are where they call upon Jews in passing to redress hardship. There is nowhere any hint that income or wealth inequality are in and of themselves bad or wrong. There is nowhere any instruction to Jews to grant charity or money to impoverished non-Jews (although this is also not prohibited). At most, any "income assistance" mandated is in the form of looking out for impoverished Jews and "garim" being hosted by Jews.

6. Not only do the Prophets never call on Jews to share the Land of Israel "for peace" with non-Jews, but such sharing, other than as hosts for "garim", is downright prohibited.

Now you would never know any of this if you perused the web sites of the Reform synagogue, the Reconstructionist Deconstructionists, Meimad (the Israeli analogue to Tikkun), nor the Tikkun pothead sites. In all of these the Ethics of the Prophets are a nonstop series of calls to recycle, stop school vouchers, hand over half of Jerusalem to the PLO fascists, raise taxes to redistribute income, and to prevent any welfare reform or "workfare". Not to mention homosexual marriages.

But since we are on the subject, and since all these leftist pagans insist they want nothing other than for us all to fulfill the "Ethics of the Prophets", I would here like to propose that they join all of us at this stage in Jewish history and immediately adopt this segment of the Ethics of the Prophets:

"Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near, let them come up; Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong." -- Joel, Chapter 4, 9-10.

Come all you Sapersteins, Waskows, Schindlers, Wiesels, Burgs, Malchiors, come join us and apply the Ethics of the Prophets. There is a time for war and a time for peace and NOW is the time for war.

In all the ranting about how the Sudeten Arabs are rioting because they are so mistreated and discriminated against, one rarely hears any of the ranters proffering any evidence of such "mistreatment" or "discrimination". In the few cases where they DO try to come up with something, besides discrimination in the form of allowing Arabs NOT to be conscripted for the military, they point to things like the "gaps" in health rates and infant mortality.

Arabs in Israel have lower life expectancies than Jews. In addition, or rather the CAUSE of the former, is the fact that Arabs have higher infant mortality rates than Jews.

Discrimination, scream all the self-righteous ones. You see? OF COURSE the Arabs are legitimately angry. Of course they have the RIGHT to riot and murder and pogrom and scream "Death to the Jews". What else would you expect from people so mistreated that they have higher infant mortality rates. Proves they can’t get decent health care, right? Racism with a capital "R".

Well, all except for some itsy-bitsy teenie-weenie facts. The REASON Arabs have lower life expectancies than Jews in Israel is entirely because they have higher infant mortality rates. The reason they have higher infant mortality rates has nothing to do with access to medical care and has everything to do with the fact that they have higher incidence of low-weight babies. The reason they have higher incidence of low-weight babies is because low-weight babies are born with by far the highest frequency to very young (teenage) mothers. The Arabs have far more teenage mothers than Jews, and so far more low-weight babies, because they marry at a younger age.

SO the "discrimination" being pointed to by the self-righteous moral posturers is in fact nothing more than the health consequences from Arabs choosing to marry at a young age and has not the slightest thing to do with discrimination.

And so one could deconstruct all of the other pieces of "evidence" of discrimination against Israeli Arabs.

Not that this really matters of course. Even if Israel’s Arabs WERE victims of harsh discrimination as per the allegations of the Left, why would that constitute the slightest justification for violence or the smallest reason not to shoot them down when they behave violently?

We keep hearing all this whining about Israel using rubber-covered bullets, and the do-gooders bleat about how these can injure and even kill. Of course the same do-gooders also ignore the fact that rocks can injure and kill and have done so when thrown by Arabs pogromchiks. Oh and then there is the little detail that the pogromchiks also shoot rifles and throw Molotovs.

But I have a compromise suggestion. Israeli troops will only use live ammunition against violent pogromchiks. They will reserve the plastic bullets for when the Arabs throw plastic rocks.

Barak has just announced that he will reward Arafat for having ordered two weeks of atrocities by flying to Sharmal-Sheikh to shake Arafat’s blood-drenched paw, all to keep the Borgia President from Pennsylvania Avenue happy. Might even agree to an "International Fact-Finding Commission," as if there are any unknown facts to uncover. There maybe he will again clown it up with Arafat over who walks in the room first. Have some male bonding. Punch each other on the shoulder.

Translation of parts of Meir Uziel’s weekend column in Maariv (my translation):

Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount is not what provoked the pogroms. The surrender by the Israeli military in Lebanon caused the pogroms. There are times when atrocities break out not because of uncontrollable rage but because of uncontrollable temptation.

Hebrew mater, your son will be sent out in the near future for joint patrols with the PLO police. These will be lovely days, days of comradeship, coffee, and salad, with joking. Your son will show his Palestinian comrades his home photos and shots of his Mom. Hebrew mater. The rest is a matter of chance. Destiny. But there is consolation: when they fire a clip into your son he will go quickly without realizing what hit him.

THEY are still hanging on to the delusion. THEY believed economic interests would turn them into gentlemen. Arafat just struck gas off Gaza? They believe in "human contact". Arafat giggling it up at the Barak residence. At the same time he is issuing orders to open fire. What more did you need to get you to stop asking the idiotic question, "But why NOT abandon Joseph’s Tomb?"

The right question to ask is, "When do we start building NEW Israeli strongholds and positions like Joseph’s Tomb?" It is precisely now that we can see how important is Joseph’s Tomb and similar places. They are our mine canary. Like miners who carry a canary down the shafts with them to see when there are poisonous fumes present. If these strategic canaries are not left in peace, there is no "peace process". Ironically, it is the supporters of Oslo who should be insisting that Joseph’s Tomb, Netsarim and other canaries be left in place to prove the "peace process" is working.

Copyright © 2000 by Steven Plaut.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission