by Dror Eydar
During these High Holy
Days we were treated to yet another article poking us in our collective
chests, chiding us that "we have sinned, we have transgressed." Under
the headline "Time for forgiveness" in Yediot Ahronoth, former Director
of the Department for Special Tasks in the State Attorney’s Office Talia
Sasson explains how Yom Kippur connects secular people to their
Judaism; we must ask for forgiveness she writes. The reason we must ask
for forgiveness quickly becomes apparent. Care to gander a guess? Bingo
-- it is because of the "occupation."
Here are the golden
words of the killer of Jewish outposts in the land of our forefathers:
"Forty-six years we have controlled a foreign people. Its lands we have
taken. Its water we have drunk. We have built our homes on Its land and
Its basic rights we have violated. When I think of this I am overcome
with disgrace. Yes. You and I who have come to terms with it, who have
made it happen, who have spoken highly only of our own rights." She adds
that the Israel Defense Forces is immoral due to the occupation and
that our democracy is not really democratic because of, yes, the
"occupation." Truly model atonement.
Twenty years have
passed since the Oslo Accords; 20 years since the euphoria that flooded
our minds thanks to those same old blowhards; since the voice of anyone
who criticized the deal and shed a light on its pitfalls was silenced;
20 years since the throngs clamored after the false Messiah of peace.
Here is a real reason to atone.
After decades in which
we were used as lab rats in Talia Sasson and her friends' diplomatic and
military experiments, the time has come for forgiveness to be asked
from Israel's citizens. Forgiveness must be asked for slandering us
throughout the world; forgiveness from the land of Israel for slandering
it and for not remembering the sins of the spies who "scorned the
desirable land;" forgiveness from the pioneers of our times, the
settlers, who stay close to the good land and cling to it for all of us;
forgiveness for the destruction of Jewish communities.
Mrs. Sasson, ask
forgiveness for the lies that you and your friends still tell: The lands
of which people did we take? From whose water have we drunk? Whose
rights have we violated?
"We have never taken
land away from other nations or confiscated anything that belonged to
other people. On the contrary, we have simply taken back property that
we inherited from our ancestors, land that had been unjustly taken away
from us by our enemies at one time or another. We are now only making
use of this opportunity to recover our ancestral heritage" (I Maccabees
15:33-34). This is what Simon the Maccabee wrote to King Antiochus
almost 2,200 years ago. This simple truth has not changed.
Who are we controlling,
really? Since the Oslo Accords the vast majority of Palestinians is not
under our control and has almost complete autonomy. The Palestinians
have a few parliaments (in Gaza, Ramallah, and even in Jordan), they
have government ministries and receive enormous funds from the world
(much of which is pocketed by their leaders and terrorist groups) and an
independent education system which teaches its children that no such
thing as a state named Israel exists in this area, that the Jews
essentially have no historic or religious connection to this land, that
there were never any Jews in Jerusalem and that a Temple never stood on
the Mount. They have a police and security forces. They of course are
dependent on us and the IDF to protect them from a Hamas takeover, which
Palestinian documents exposed by WikiLeaks and broadcast by Al-Jazeera
prove. There is a problem with border crossings and checkpoints -- but
these are emergency measures for defense against terrorists who seek to
kill us and them. In peace time these checkpoints will be removed.
The irony is that
Sasson began her article by reminiscing about her grandmother who
immigrated in 1920 as a fervent Zionist who helped build a kibbutz in
the Jerusalem foothills. From the perspective of Sasson's dear
Palestinians, her grandmother also took land that did not belong to her
and drank their waters. Here is the distance between the Zionist dream
fulfilled merely three generations ago, and the Talia Sassons of the
world, who have mortgaged their energies, wisdom and sense of justice
for the good of a collective which for 100 years has wanted nothing to
do with us, is not willing to accept us being here or share our land
with us (yes, our land!), and which invests the very fiber of its being
in destroying the Jewish people and their only country.
But in the kingdom of
blindness nothing has changed. The peace is the same peace and the
justice is the same justice -- for the Palestinians. With the force of a
thousand hammers the storm raging around us is pounding at Talia Sasson
and her friends' shuttered windows, yet they refuse to look it in the
eye. All they see is the "occupation." Indeed, their consciousness has
been occupied. The time has come to rescue the captive national
consciousness and return it the fundamental truths of Zionism.
At the end of her article, I read
that Talia Sasson is now the co-chairwoman of the New Israel Fund
International Council, and then I understood. Sasson concludes her
article with a request: "Perhaps we will now think of forgiveness.
Perhaps this time." One can only hope.
Dror Eydar
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5715
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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