Herbert Zweibon

In this issue, we print the speech Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, gave in Herzliyah, Israel in which he made two crucial points. He said: "Please don't commit national suicide. It is very hard for your friends to support you if you make a conscious decision to destroy yourselves." And he reminded Israel that if it gave up its patrimony, it would be taken by Moslems as a sign that Allah is greater than the God of the Christians and Jews.
Friends of Israel have an obligation to reinforce Pat Robertson’s message, to tell Israel not to take actions which lead to tragedy for the Jewish people. Even if the Israeli leadership, for reasons of outside or internal pressures, decides to imperil its survival by creating a Palestinian state, it is the duty of the friends of Israel to do all they can to dissuade the leadership.
In that conviction we are cooperating with Christian friends of Israel in a referendum campaign aimed at evangelical churchgoers nationwide. A ballot is being distributed to thousands of evangelical and apostolic churches to enable Bible-believing Christians to record their feelings. This is what the ballot says:
"The U.S. government, together with Russia, Europe and the United Nations, is pursuing a policy that will form a Palestinian state within the Israeli territories of Gaza, Judea and Samaria. This policy will require the expulsion of thousands of Jews from their homes. This referendum seeks to assess your support for (Yes) or opposition to (No) a Palestinian state in the land of Israel.
Do you support the creation of a PLO state in the Land of Israel? Yes ___ No____.”
We will be presenting the results to President Bush and to each member of Congress. It is our hope that the results of this referendum will make it clear to President Bush that the constituency most akin to his own moral and political views unequivocally rejects any attempt to enshrine Islamic terrorism in the Land of Israel. Within the Bible-believing community, 4 million people stayed home in the last election. In a close election, which this promises to be, the President cannot afford a repeat—or even greater absenteeism. The President could help to inspire his supporters, many of them unhappy about his inability to advance more strongly a conservative social agenda, with a principled stand here. Certainly there is nothing to inspire anyone in the administration’s current policy of haggling over “outposts” and “caravans” in Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria and sending high-level government representatives to complain that its count does not correspond to Israeli tallies.
We hope the results of this referendum will also serve as a wake-up call to American Jewish organizations to cease dancing attendance on the mainline churches who are Israel’s foes. With all the focus on the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s decision to divest from companies investing in Israel, virtually no attention was paid to another resolution passed in the same church assembly-–namely, the disavowal of Christian Zionism as a legitimate theological stance.
Even if the President confines himself to strategic considerations, it is hard to see how a PLO state will advance what he euphemistically calls “the war on terror” (in fact, the war against Islamic jihad). The collapse of the Palestinian Authority into chaos is now apparent. “A democratic Palestine?” Can the president continue to say that phrase any longer with a straight face? The Commission looking into 9/11 has concluded that the government was guilty of significant failures, even given the limited information available to it. In this case all the data is in: clearly a Palestinian state will be a failed state, a breeding ground of terror and instability, not just for Israel but for its neighbors and for the Western democracies, above all our own.
To that ballot question “Do you support a PLO state in the Land of Israel?” our President, on all grounds, should be answering a resounding “No!”