Erev Yom Kippur
October 5, 2003
Yesterday, at about 2:15 in the
afternoon, a twenty-nine year old female lawyer walked into the Maxim
restaurant in Haifa with about ten kilo of explosives strapped onto her body.
When she detonated herself, nineteen people were killed and over 60 injured.
Among those murdered were five members of the Zar-aviv family from Kibbutz
Yagur – Grandmother Bruria, aged 59, her son and his wife, Bezalel and Keren,
and their two children, four year old son Liron and his fourteen month old
sister Maya.
Also wiped out were four members of
the Almog family, from Tel Aviv: Father Ze’ev, a senior ranking officer in the
IDF, his wife Ruti, their son Moshe, and grandson Tomer.
Together with six others, they were
annihilated because they were Jews, eating lunch on a Saturday afternoon in a
jointly owned Jewish-Arab restaurant, two days before Yom Kippur. Amongst the
dead were also four Arabs.
This morning, trying to eat
breakfast while listening to the news, difficult to do, feeling hungry and
nauseas at the same time, former labor defense minister, Binyamin Fuad ben
Eliezer was interviewed. Hearing him, I felt even worse. His initial statement
was correct, that being that Israel must change its approach to the problem. He
continued by saying that we would never reach a situation whereby all Arab
[terrorist] organizations (Tanzim, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the PA) would
agree to a full ceasefire. I can also agree with that. But, then our paths
differ. Fuad’s conclusion is that we have no choice but to enter into immediate
negotiations, despite the continued pogroms against our citizens. And of
course, we must finish the ‘magic fence’, as fast as possible.
Fuad is right, we must change our
approach, fast. However, his conclusions are far off the mark. Following Fuad,
Kol Yisrael spoke with Minister Benny Elon. He hit the nail on the head. Israel
must destroy the palestinian authority. Fences and are useless, terrorists will
always find ways around them. Expulsion of Arafat will almost undoubtedly not
help and most probably cause Israel harm. The only way to deal with terror is
to uproot it at its source, and that source is, today, the PA. This band of
thugs and murderers has received world-wide recognition as the legitimate leadership
of a future ‘palestinian state’ (G-d forbid). They have achieved this by
spilling gallons of Jewish blood – over 1,100 Jews have been murdered since
Oslo was signed, and some 880 in the past 3 years. The PA, along with its top
leadership, must be erased from the map.
This is one side of the coin. Yet,
there is another side too.
Several weeks ago long-time Hebron
resident and activist Noam Federman was again apprehended. He was not walking
down the street, he was not in the middle of trying to kill Arabs, he was not
even at home. Rather, he was arrested while presenting an appeal to the Israeli
Supreme Court.
Federman was arrested over a year
ago, based on the testimony of one person, tying him to the “Bat-Ayin” group,
accused and convicted of attempting to blow up Arabs in East Jerusalem. There
is no evidence that Federman had anything to do with those three men, excepting
the account of one of them, (who also named tens of others, none of whom were
arrested.) For over a year Federman has been detained, held in house arrest.
(See below-“The Israeli Twilight Zone”-July 22, 2002). Since then Noam Federman
has been fighting an uphill battle to be released. (Recently the date of his trial was set for sometime
NEXT JUNE!!!)
Federman, a brilliant legal expert
with a law degree, came very close to convincing the court that the house
arrest detention order, initiated by the Shabak, the Israeli intelligence
organization, was illegal, circumventing the judicial system. So, rather than
take any chances, the Shabak issued a six month administrative detention order,
signed by Defense Minister Shaul Mufaz, arrested him in the middle of his court
case, and threw him behind bars in the worst possible conditions. A Supreme
Court justice reviewed the detention order and upheld it. However, the details
of the ‘evidence’ given to him by the Shabak was “secret” thereby preventing
Federman or his lawyer from being able to present any kind of defense.
Federman is being held in total
isolation is a high-security prison, in a very small cell, and is not receiving
certified kosher food. In other words, he is being treated as if he were a mass
murderer. This, without having been indicted, stood trial, convicted and
sentenced. (It should also be noted that the Shabak is answerable only to the
Prime Minister.)
Not only right-wing Jews are
appalled by the Federman case. Writing in an Israeli daily on September 30,
left wing Meretz MK Zahava Galon stated: “Noam Federman should be put on trial
or released. Circumventing the law rather than upholding it points to hysteria
and bewilderment and does not achieve its purpose.”
It is totally incomprehensible how
Israel can, on the one hand, sit and talk to murderers like Muhammad Dahlan,
Abu-This and Abu-That, actually allowing them into Jerusalem, while on the
other hand abusing innocent civilians (based on the theory that people are
innocent until PROVEN guilty), denying them basic human rights and acceptable
judicial recourse.
It makes no difference whether one
agrees or disagrees with Noam Federman’s politics. He deserves the identical
civil rights of any other Israeli. And those civil rights are being grossly
denied him, causing him and his family indescribable suffering. Noam Federman
is not a murderous Arab terrorist - he
is an Israeli Jew!
Tonight begins the holiest day of
the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. The essence of Yom Kippur, the Day of
Atonement, is, in Hebrew, Tshuva, which literally means repentance. But the
root of Tshuva is l’shuv – meaning, to return. On Yom Kippur we attempt to
return to our real selves, ourselves without transgression, have asked for and
having been granted forgiveness by the L-rd. This allows us to begin the New
Year afresh, instilled with purity and a new outlook on life.
What better a way could the Israeli
government express its sorrow at its own sins committed over the past year by:
1) waging comprehensive war on the Arabs who are killing innocent men, women
and children, trying to wipe us out and expel us from our land – a war leading
to the full and total destruction of the PA; and 2) by letting Noam Federman go
home.
FREE FEDERMAN!!!
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