ON THE VIRGINIA TECH MASSACRE
Ruth King

FROM THE EDITOR
Rael Jean Isaac

THE FRUITS OF DISENGAGEMENT
Roger A. Gerber

LESSONS FROM THE JEWISH LEGION
David Isaac

SHILOH ON THE HILLS OF EPHRAIM
Yisrael Medad

BRITISH JOURNALISTS BOYCOTT ISRAEL
Melanie Phillips

WHOSE RIGHT TO RETURN?
Ruth King

OUTPOST
Editor: Rael Jean Isaac
Editorial Board: Herbert Zweibon, Ruth King

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Ruth King

All Americans are saddened and dumbfounded by the killing spree that snuffed out the lives of so many students and faculty on the halcyon campus of Virginia Tech near the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. We recall similar senseless murderous rampages at Columbine, Oklahoma City, at a rural Amish school.

Terrible as these events are, they could be even more horrifying. Here’s a thought experiment. Suppose the murderers had imbibed their all-consuming hatred from their parents, their religious leaders, their elected officials, their news media? What if their elementary school teachers had taught them Americans were vermin, bacteria, pigs and dogs? What if television stations broadcast documentaries in which six year olds lisped that they wanted to grow up to be like Timothy McVeigh?

Suppose parents took money to send out their children on these murderous rampages? Suppose the mother of one of these murderers declared her only wish was that she had ten more children to give to “the cause?” What if their hometowns named streets after them and they were celebrated as heroes and martyrs? What if dozens of newborns were named after them? What if Stephen Spielberg and Tony Kushner made a movie about these wanton killers and drew moral equivalency between them and their victims? What if these movies were nominated for Oscars?

All this is disgusting and impossible you say. Well folks, it’s what happens under the Palestinian Authority. Precisely such hatred is taught and such mass murder is celebrated by the entire society while international media draw moral equivalence between victim and assassin. Americans are horrified when they see the chilling suicide-video Cho Seung-Hui sent to NBC—actually taking time between his shooting sprees to go to the post office to mail it. But what about the equally chilling videos made by the Arab suicide bombers (which apparently inspired Cho to make his own version) just before their “missions?” These are broadcast to cheering local Arab audiences after a bombing in a café or pizzeria or bus stop or market where Israeli civilians are maimed and murdered. As Steven Zak points out in FrontPage, the monster at Virginia Tech is no more monstrous than the monster who left a bomb packed with bolts, screws and nails in a bag on a table in the crowded cafeteria at the student center of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, leaving nine dead and 85 maimed.

Here in America we feel horror and grief for the victims and rage at the murderers. We do not argue that they have legitimate grievances which must be addressed. Yet when it comes to the Arab monsters our media and politicians are full of “understanding.” The New York Times offers sympathetic portraits of the butchers and their enablers; endlessly describes the “root causes” of their frustration; their “humiliation” when security checks are implemented etc. etc. The suicide bombers and the Israelis who seek to protect the innocent are portrayed as equally culpable. Our pundits, academics and politicians call the handlers and supporters of those who carry out the murders “moderates,” “partners for peace.” Our administration and Congress fund them, arm them and continue to gratify them by demanding concessions on their behalf.

Such is the upside down world of our own State Department, a sad, sad commentary on the double moral standard consistently employed against Israel.

We would not countenance leaders who looked the other way or made excuses for the vicious murderers who preyed upon our children. Why do we expect the leaders of Israel to do so?

(Herbert Zweibon is in Israel.)

From the Editor

Rael Jean Isaac

The Wrong Reasons

In the 1970s, anti-nuclear activists brought the building of new nuclear power plants in this country to a halt. While the conventional media spin is that the accident at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island in 1979 spelled nuclear energy’s doom (although there were no deaths or even injuries), Three Mile Island merely provided the activists with another doomsday scenario with which to whip up the mass hysteria they had been cultivating for a decade. The activists used lawsuits, regulatory blockages, environmental challenges, safety complaints, accusations of paperwork deficiencies, mass demonstrations (all championed by a credulous media) to make the building of nuclear power plants so lengthy and expensive that utilities simply abandoned the effort. The crowning absurdity came in 1989 when the Shoreham Nuclear Plant was abandoned after its completion—at a cost of $6 billion to the consumer— thanks to the cowardly collapse to the anti-nukes by Mario Cuomo, then governor of New York. Meanwhile existing nuclear plants provided (and still provide) inexpensive and dependable energy.
The anti-nuclear activists had a much broader agenda: they saw nuclear as the most vulnerable source of energy in their campaign to eliminate all centralized energy in accord with their anti-capitalist, small-is-beautiful 1960s “Movement” philosophy. (A full description of their modus operandi is provided in “Games Anti-Nukes Play” by this writer in The American Spectator of May 1985).
Now nuclear energy promises to make a comeback. Halted for the wrong reasons, it is being brought back for the wrong reasons, in this case the phony apocalyptic hysteria surrounding alleged man-made global warming (nuclear power produces no emissions of carbon dioxide). Yes, the revival of nuclear power is highly desirable, for it is not only safe and benign, but holds promise of helping to reduce our dependence on Middle East oil. But today’s global warming madness is far more threatening to our economic system than the earlier anti-nuclear craze. If any reader of Outpost has not yet seen the British documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, it can be found on video.google.com. And urge your cable stations to show it (not a single TV station has yet done so).

Believe It or Not
Indispensable UN monitor Anne Bayefsky reports on the most recent “moment extraordinaire” at that body. On April 9 of this year the UN reelected Iran as vice chairman of the UN Disarmament Commission. Bayefsky writes: “Yes, Ripley, the very UN body charged with promoting nuclear nonproliferation installed in a senior position the state that the Security Council recently declared violated its nonproliferation resolutions.” The Iranian vice chairman promptly used his UN platform to rail against “noncompliance with the NPT [nuclear nonproliferation treaty] by the United States” and “the Zionist lobby.”
Compounding the farce, even as the Iranians were broadcasting the forced “confessions” of kidnapped British sailors on their TV screens, Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, the president of the UN Human Rights Council, announced the council was abandoning any consideration of human rights violations by Iran.

Where’s the Bush Doctrine?
As usual, no one says it better than columnist Diana West: “If anyone still paid attention to the mythical Bush doctrine – the part about our enemy being terrorist networks and the governments that support them—it would be time to add another government to the enemy watch list: our own. How else to react to Congress’ rubber stamp on a White House request for tens of millions of dollars for the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Hamas-Fatah coalition government? And so what if the money is earmarked for terrorist Fatah, not terrorist Hamas?…By rights, our support for the PA should put us on our own worst enemies list.”

Ending Terror – Semantically

The Washington Times (April 5) reports that the House Armed Services Committee has banned the phrase “the war on terror.” House Minority Leader Republican John Boehner of Ohio complained: “How do Democrats expect America to fight and win a war they deny is even taking place?” Brian Kennedy, Boehner’s spokesman, called the censorship “a first in the history of speech and debate in Congress.”

The Democratically controlled Congress is following in the footsteps of European Union bureaucrats who, as Diana West points out, have eliminated “Islamic terrorism” (the phrase, not the practice). The EU has compiled a handbook of “non-offensive” terms: sample, instead of “Islamic terrorism” there are “terrorists who abusively invoke Islam.” At least that’s the rumor. West notes that “this handbook of sweet non-offensivenesses is actually classified.”

Olmert and the Fourth Crusade

While Shimon Peres sounds his familiar chant that “there is nothing to learn from history,” Prime Minister Olmert is taking a leaf from it. In The Fourth Crusade, Jonathan Phillips describes how Byzantine Emperor Murtzuphlus, defeated in battle by the Crusaders as he attempted to defend Constantinople, resorted to a “desperate stratagem. In an outrageous misrepresentation of reality he asserted that he had been victorious in the battle.” Olmert has adopted the same “desperate stratagem,” insisting the army’s disgraceful defeat by a Hezbollah militia in Lebanon was in fact a victory.
Murtzuphlus was tripped up. He and his warriors had gone into battle with an enormously revered icon of the Virgin Mary. It was because the public believed that no legitimate ruler taking it into battle could be defeated–and the Crusaders had seized the precious relic--that Murtzuphlus felt he had to pretend victory. For a while it seemed Murtzuphlus would get away with his lie that the icon and the imperial standard had been put away for safekeeping. But then the Crusaders put the imperial standard and the icon at the prow of a galley, rowing the ship up and down along the city walls in the sight of a horrified populace. Olmert’s claim of victory similarly had some early traction but the public now recognizes its emptiness—how else explain Olmert’s 3% approval in a recent poll?

Nationalist or “Nuts”?

Underscoring the mindlessness of even those parties considered “nationalist” in the Israeli framework, David Rotem, a member of the Knesset for Yisrael Beitenu, told Israel Radio that Israel should meet all PA demands for the mass release of prisoners to gain the return of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. This column has repeatedly insisted that unlike a family, which may be prepared to offer all it has for the life of a loved one, a state is obliged to consider the consequences of its actions for all its citizens. And because there is a track record of lopsided prisoner “exchanges” by Israel, there is no doubt what the lethal consequences are. Caroline Glick reports that the Almagor Terror Victims Association has counted 177 Israelis who have been murdered by terrorists released by Israel in crazily-imbalanced prisoner swaps. In releasing more terrorists, Israel will be signing in advance the death sentence of hundreds of its citizens.

Absurd Rules of Engagement

It looks as if the U.S. administration is still waging a PC war. In The Wall Street Journal (April 5), Bing and Owen West offer good news: in Anbar province Sunni sheiks have had enough of Al Qaeda and are cooperating with the United States. But wait. The Wests write: “In response to the 2003 abuses at Abu Ghraib, the U.S. military and the Iraqi government instituted a catch-and-release system that Sweden would find too liberal...most detainees are released within a few months.” The Wests observe that the sheiks find this policy naïve and deadly and are “quick to relate stories of killers who returned to murder those who snitched.”

The policy of arrest-and-release is not confined to Anbar Province. How can “the surge” possibly be effective if captured terrorists are on a merry-go-round to promptly renew their activities?

Roger A. Gerber

Juliette Binoche, the Academy Award winning French actress, has agreed to star in a film entitled “Disengagement” which will explore the human drama surrounding the 2005 expulsion of Jews from their homes in Gaza and northern Samaria and the withdrawal of Israel’s armed forces from Gaza. Apparently the impact of the so-called disengagement plan resonates beyond the borders of Israel, although its ramifications reverberate most deeply within those borders.
In the wake of his overwhelming 2003 election victory over Amram Mitzna, who had proposed that Israel unilaterally withdraw from Gaza, Ariel Sharon thrust his “disengagement” plan upon a surprised Israeli public in 2004. Sharon explained to William Safire: “I discussed this between me and myself and came up with a new initiative.” During the election campaign Sharon had forcefully rejected Mitzna’s proposal stating: “A unilateral withdrawal is not a recipe for peace. It is a recipe for war.” And subsequently, according to Mitzna’s own account, Sharon lectured him “on the strategic importance of Netzarim and the historic importance of Kfar Darom.” After much controversy, Sharon’s plan was forcibly implemented by the IDF and the police in August 2005.
In a televised speech to the nation literally on the eve of the implementation of his plan, Prime Minister Sharon promised: “The disengagement will allow us to look inward. Our national agenda will change. In our economic policy, we will be free to turn to closing social gaps and to waging a real fight on poverty. We will advance education and increase the personal security of every citizen in the country.” Not one of these assertions has been validated by events.

Instead, as its many critics predicted, the plan has been a complete failure. Haaretz’s prominent dovish commentator Yoel Marcus, to whom Sharon had revealed his disengagement plan in a famous interview in February 2004, wrote (November 21, 2006): “Regrettably, it is now becoming clear that the most extreme and pessimistic Jewish settlers are the ones who were right. The Palestinians do not want to recognize Israel or come to terms with its existence.” (In August 2005, on the eve of the expulsions from Gaza, Marcus had written, “When the withdrawal is complete, Israel will be the darling of the world.”) Another prominent supporter of disengagement, Prof. Gerald M. Steinberg of Bar Ilan University, wrote (June 29, 2006): “As an early Israeli supporter of unilateral disengagement, I admit that this plan, like the earlier Oslo ‘peace process,’ has failed.” Former IDF Chief of Staff Gen. Moshe Ya’alon also was blunt: “There is no doubt that the disengagement failed. The failure was to be expected.”

A poll taken on behalf of Israel Army Radio just a few months after the plan’s implementation found that fully 70% believed that plan did not contribute to peace and a majority said disengagement was “of no practical value” (Jerusalem Post, February 13, 2006). Even Prime Minister Olmert weakly allowed that the Gaza disengagement “proved that maybe a unilateral process has its weaknesses ….”

The parlous consequences of the plan are so extensive and of such depth that only a brief summary can be attempted in this article:

1. A terror base

Gaza has become a base for terror that, with Iranian assistance, threatens much of southern Israel within the Green Line. Maj-Gen. Yoav Galant, currently Head of IDF’s Southern Command, writes that “rocket launchings toward Ashkelon, Sderot and other places are a daily occurrence, averaging 50 to 60 rockets per month….”

The most salient threat is to Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 and the site of Israel’s major desalination plant, a key electric power station generating about 40% of Israel’s electric power, chemical storage facilities and the oil pipeline from Eilat. Ashkelon is located about six miles from the northern border of the Gaza Strip and from the former Israeli villages of Dugit, Elei Sinai and Nisanit, which were established over twenty years ago as a buffer protecting Ashkelon and other towns in the area. It is these former Israeli villages that are now used to train terrorists and to launch rockets upon the populations of Sderot, Ashkelon and other communities.

Even such a strong supporter of the disengagement as the very dovish Ami Ayalon, former naval commander and General Security Services Chief and currently candidate for Labor Party leader in the April primary, wanted to make an exception of them, asserting in May 2005 that “there is no reason at all to evacuate the three northern Gaza communities.”

It was reported on July 5, 2006 that “a buffer zone will be created in the northern part of the Strip in order to prevent Kassam fire;” this is of course precisely the function the three settlements on the northern Gaza border fulfilled prior to their destruction. Labor Knesset member, and currently deputy defense minister, Ephraim Sneh, averred that there is “no escape from prolonged ground presence at the launch sites” — this just ten months after the disengagement. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Some withdrawal! Some disengagement!

2. Increased Likelihood of Gaza War

Alex Fishman, security commentator for the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot, reported on March 14, 2007 that war in Gaza is “beginning to look inevitable” as the result of the incessant rocket and other terror attacks. In March 2007 the Director of Israel’s General Security Services (Shabak) warned the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Kiryat Gat, only 36 miles south of Tel Aviv, is likely to fall within the range of improved rockets developed in, or smuggled into Gaza. Yuval Diskin of Shin Bet forecasts that as many as 200,000 Israelis within a 12 mile range of Gaza will be under the threat of missile fire this year.

Former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon has stated “If we want to go on living, we may have no other choice than to launch an Operation Defensive Shield in Gaza.” Steven Erlanger reported in The New York Times (April 1, 2007) that Diskin and current IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi are worried that the current “calm” is utilized by Hamas “to consolidate its power in Gaza and enhance its military capacities.” “If the Hamas buildup continues, and the rockets and tunnels continue, at the end of the day we will have to do something about it,” Diskin said.

3. Terrorists Have Free Hand to Smuggle Weapons and Train for War

Hamas has established an army of at least 8,000 fighters, some of whom have been trained in Iran. Now that Israel has relinquished the protective Philadelphi Corridor—which it was entitled to retain under the Oslo accords—Hamas is free to equip itself with weaponry manufactured locally and smuggled in through Sinai. (Israel’s former Southern Command chief Gen. Doron Almog had warned Israeli control of the Corridor was essential to insure deterrence, interdiction of weapons, and swift reprisal when required). In addition, Hamas has over 10,000 additional security forces and Fatah has several thousand of its own fighters. Maj-Gen. Galant recently wrote: “The Palestinians in Gaza are well organized in four brigades … each with its own commander. They have battalions, companies and platoons, as well as special forces dealing with sniping, infantry, explosives and anti-tank weapons. All the know-how is brought in from abroad – from Iran, Syria and Hizbullah, and everything is following a plan. This is an organization with leadership, a doctrine, structure, training, weaponry, manpower and a goal – to establish a serious military force in Gaza.” (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, April 19, 2007).

In surrendering the Philadelphi Corridor, Israel basically lost control of the influx of both weapons and terrorists. Both can now pass through the crossing unhindered (Haaretz, February 8, 2006). Diskin has warned that Gaza could become another Lebanon.

Nor are the perilous consequences limited to Gaza; Diskin admits that since the withdrawal from four Jewish towns in northern Samaria the IDF has found it increasingly difficult to control the area and the intelligence arm has had greater difficulty gathering information. “Samaria has become the land of Islamic Jihad following the disengagement,” Diskin stated.

4. Economic Costs

In contrast to the economic dividend that Sharon and his supporters declared would now improve the quality of life in Israel, disengagement has proved extremely costly. Aside from the huge cost of carrying out the disengagement itself, it will cost $400,000,000 to reinforce homes and provide shelters in Sderot and the four other towns close to Gaza. This does not include the cost of reinforcing homes and facilities in and around Ashkelon. The water commissioner has estimated that it will cost billions of dollars to deal with the threat to the desalination plant posed by the raw sewage coming on the coastal current from Gaza.

Then there is the incalculable cost of military measures that have been and will be taken to address the new terror threats and rocket attacks from Gaza. This includes the costs attendant upon the military actions in Gaza following the murder of two Israeli soldiers within the Green Line and the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Finally, there are the huge economic costs stemming from the dislocation of 25 communities, the loss of a large percentage of Israel’s agricultural export earnings, and the continuing costs of caring for thousands of internal Jewish refugees from Gaza.

5. Incentives to Terrorists

There is ample evidence that the Palestinians perceive the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as a victory for terrorism and it is likely that the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections is attributable in large part to the disengagement. Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki reported that “more than three quarters of the Palestinians view the pullout as a victory for the armed struggle.” (cnsnews.com, June 28, 2005)

The Palestinians also regard the IDF withdrawal as a precedent for compelling future Israeli withdrawals. Hamas-controlled television has recently broadcast numerous times—as often as seven a day—a statement by the late Sheikh Yassin linking the retreat from Netzarim to the imagined future retreat from Tel Aviv, concluding: “Tel Aviv is gone. They are defeated, they have no words left.”

On the first anniversary of the IDF total withdrawal from Gaza, Yoel Marcus wrote: “Netanyahu was right when he said that quitting Lebanon and Gaza without agreements would be interpreted by the Palestinians as a victory for them and a sign of our weakness. That Hamas and Hezbollah have grown stronger after our departure is not accidental.” (September 12, 2006). In The New York Times Steven Erlanger quotes a senior American official: “If Hamas believes that Israel can’t deal with casualties, and that it won the war for Gaza, why shouldn’t it transfer resistance to the West Bank?” (May 26, 2005). In the words of former Defense Minister Moshe Arens, “Palestinian terrorism has been rewarded and encouraged, and Israel will have to suffer the consequences.”

6. Morale in Israel Undermined

Prior to disengagement, in a speech to the Israel Policy Forum (June 9, 2005), then Vice Premier Ehud Olmert promised that disengagement would “bring more security, greater safety, more prosperity, and a lot of joy” for Middle East peoples. In fact, said Olmert, “everything depends on the success of this disengagement.”

On the contrary, says Ya’alon, disengagement vitiated all of Israel’s achievements in fighting terror during the campaign of 2003. As he put it, with the implementation of the disengagement “everything went haywire.” (Haaretz, July 6, 2006). The daily rocket attacks on Sderot and the Ashkelon area have killed and maimed several Israelis, caused trauma to the populace and led some residents to abandon their homes. Israelis have come to realize, especially after last summer’s Lebanon war, that their leadership is incompetent; one poll found Prime Minister Olmert had the support of only 3% of the populace.

Dan Schueftan of the University of Haifa, author of a 1999 book (in Hebrew) entitled Disengagement, widely regarded as the major intellectual influence on the formulation of Sharon’s plan, admitted in an astonishing interview in The Jerusalem Post (April 5, 2007) that disengagement “has nothing whatsoever to do with peace” and concessions and withdrawals by Israel only arouse more hostility and increase the likelihood of terrorism. He avers that the strengthening of Israeli society was the principal purpose of disengagement.

Far from achieving this, in the judgment of Daniel Pipes, disengagement has “divided Israel in ways that may poison the body politic for decades.” Former Foreign Minister Moshe Arens called the forcible expulsion of Jewish citizens from their homes, businesses and even cemeteries “an act of barbarism that would not be countenanced anywhere else in the Western world.” (Haaretz, August 2, 2005).

Moreover disengagement did not really even disengage Israel from Gaza. As Nadav Haetzni wrote presciently: "Whatever happens, there will be no disengagement. The implementation of Sharon's plan will booby-trap Israel: the more power is left in its hands--at border crossings, in the security 'envelope'--we'll be perceived as responsible for everything in the Gaza Strip. The more power we relinquish, the more dangerous the freedom of action granted to the terror state that will arise. … Real disengagement from the Palestinians won't take place, but emergent disengagement among the various components of Israeli society will definitely be achieved." (Maariv, August 15, 2005).

7. Perilous Precedents For Future Negotiations

Israel withdrew its forces from every inch of Gaza all the way to the Green Line, and destroyed every one of its settlements, thus, as was noted earlier, setting a dangerous precedent for future negotiations over Judea and Samaria. In addition, as Gen. Ya’alon points out, the precedent of destroying settlements with nothing in return will likely haunt Israel. Despite Israel’s past insistence on demilitarization and border control, the Gaza disengagement was implemented with no provision for demilitarization of the Gaza Strip. Not only was there no quid pro quo for the withdrawal and the expulsions, but Israel did not even obtain formal international recognition that it had fully ended its occupation of Gaza and was relieved of any further responsibility in respect of the Strip.

8. Diminished Training of IDF Affected Performance in Lebanon War

Maj. Gen Yiftah Ron-Tal attributed the decline in the IDF capabilities in Lebanon to the inordinate amount of time spent training for the disengagement instead of training for warfare against Israel’s enemies. It should be noted that about 50,000 soldiers and police were mobilized for dealing with the expulsion of Jews from Gaza compared to about 30,000 soldiers at the peak of the Hezbollah war in Lebanon.

9. Gaza Disengagement Prompted Hezbollah War

The then Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee,Tzachi Hanegbi, who as a cabinet minister in the Sharon government voted in support of disengagement, now believes that it “neither contributed to the security of Israel nor to peace.” Hanegbi says that the expulsion of Jews from Gaza was interpreted as weakness “and this weakness prompted attacks in Gaza and along the northern border.” (ynet news, October 5, 2006).

10. Diminution of Democracy in Israel

A serious adverse consequence of disengagement was the stifling of dissent and the attenuation of democratic norms. The level of suppression by the Sharon government, including outright suppression of the right to assembly and to hold demonstrations, led Natan Sharansky, in Sharon’s presence, to remark at a cabinet meeting that “It is frightening to see how an entire public of law-abiding citizens who oppose the disengagement are being de-legitimized.”

When he was advised that polls of the Likud showed he would win, Sharon had arranged for, and pledged to abide by, a vote of the Likud party membership on his disengagement plan. However, when the vote went against Sharon by a 3-2 margin, he repudiated his pledge. Despite the deep national divisions, he rejected the suggestion that a national referendum be held, even though Uri Dan, his long time supporter and confidant, wrote that “only a referendum will restore to Sharon the moral-political legitimacy needed to execute the plan.” Moshe Arens stated that the disengagement would be “inconceivable in any democratic society in this day and age”. Even Yoel Marcus, when he was still an enthusiastic supporter of “disengagement”, wrote that the government’s procedures engendered “this gnawing feeling of disgust inside me”.

11. The Continuing Degradation of the Internal Jewish Refugees from Gaza

On the eve on the expulsions, in his televised address to the nation, Prime Minister Sharon promised the Jewish residents who were about to be expelled from their homes: “…we shall not abandon you and after the evacuation we will do everything to rebuild your lives and communities anew.” Yet, as of the end of 2006, a study by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor revealed that only 56.8% of the Gaza expellees were employed (in contrast to 80% prior to disengagement). The average monthly salary among the expellees decreased sharply from $2,093 prior to disengagement to $1,281 in 2006, a drop of 39%.

In addition to a decrease in their standard of living, the expellees are faced with living in transitory housing accommodations, exacerbated family tensions leading to a rise in divorce and other familial difficulties and temporary schooling for their children. In no sense can it be said that adequate preparations were made by the government to help those expelled from their homes in the transition to a normal life.

This is even more outrageous when one considers that both Labor and Likud governments over the years encouraged Israelis to build communities in Gaza with the understanding that they would remain in place on a permanent basis.

12. Weakening of Position vis a vis the United States

The disengagement plan met with an unenthusiastic reception in Washington and it took several trips for the Sharon government to convince the Bush administration to support it. In its aftermath, the diminution of Israel’s deterrent capability, combined with the weakening of Israeli society, and the facilitating of a new terrorist safe haven in Gaza all detract from Israel’s reliability as an ally. Further, the fact that Israel on its own volition forcibly expelled its citizens en masse from their homes and businesses in 25 communities, with no quid pro quo of any kind, only increases the pressure upon Israel to do likewise in the future. Sharon’s statements that President Bush’s pledges to him constitute the quid pro quo reveal a lack of understanding of the American system of government, and recall President Eisenhower’s pledge to keep open the Straits of Tiran–a pledge which was dishonored a decade later when Egypt threatened to bar passage of Israeli ships prior to the Six Day War.

One must conclude that disengagement was a complete failure on every level (a “disaster” Nobel Laureate Prof. Robert Aumann told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee) and that Israel’s re-engagement with Gaza to defend itself will cost many lives. “What we had,” states Lt. Gen Moshe Ya’alon, “was disengagement from reality and disengagement from the truth. The entire process created a false hope that was not based on strategy or facts.” The precedent, established by Sharon’s disengagement plan, that an area relinquished to the control of the Palestinians should be forcibly cleared of every Jewish inhabitant (Prime Minister Sharon designated Gaza as "a region where Jews will not be living in any future agreement") runs counter to every moral and legal norm, not to mention common sense.

As Natan Sharansky has pointed out, if we cannot conceive of Jews living under Palestinian rule in an area relinquished by Israel, then that terrain should not be relinquished at all. Thus, in every respect, disengagement profoundly disfigured the moral landscape and damaged even further the prospect for reaching any kind of modus vivendi between Israel and its neighbors.

Roger A. Gerber’s most recent article in Outpost was “Israel’s Election Results” in May 2006.

David Isaac

From The Story of the Jewish Legion, pp. 181-2

"For the Balfour Declaration we have to thank Herzl and Rothschild and Pinsker and Moses Hess; still more, the Bilu and those who followed them, the colonists, workers and teachers, from Ruchama in the south to Metullah in the north. Not to mention that which, more than anything else, helped to establish our claim: the Book which is holy to them as to us. Perhaps nine whole steps toward the goal, perhaps ninety-nine, were made before the war, and only the final step during the war. But that final step was a great one...I say with the deep and cold conviction of an observer--speaking only of the short war-period: half the Balfour Declaration belongs to the Legion.
For the world is not an irresponsible organism; Balfour Declarations are not given to individuals. They can be given only to Movements. And how could the Zionist Movement express itself in those war years? It was broken and paralyzed, and was, by its nature, completely outside the narrow horizons of a warring world with its war governments. Only one manifestation of the Zionist will was able to break through on to this horizon, to show that Zionism was alive and prepared for sacrifice; to compel ministers, ambassadors and--most important of all--journalists, to treat the striving of the Jewish people for its country as a matter of urgent reality, as something which could not be postponed, which had to be given an immediate yes or no--and that was the Legion Movement."

Vladimir Jabotinsky’s book The Story of the Jewish Legion (Bernard Ackerman, 1945) is an inspiring tale of the great Revisionist leader’s struggle to create a Jewish fighting force in World War I to help liberate Palestine from the Turks and strengthen the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel.

The Jewish Legion was officially established in August, 1917 and had a major influence on the passage of the Balfour Declaration three months later. It’s worth remembering the story during the month marking the fifty-ninth anniversary of Israel’s independence.

It’s easy to draw parallels between the story of the Jewish Legion and the troubles, mostly self-inflicted, facing Israel today. Of no surprise to Outpost readers, the main opposition to the Jewish Legion came from the Jews.

As Col. John Henry Patterson, the Legion’s non-Jewish commander, relates in the book’s introduction, “The British officials were well aware of the widespread opposition to the Legion idea in Jewry itself, all the way from the Zionist headquarters to the poor Jewish masses of Whitechapel and the rich Jewish notables in the city.”

Indeed, Patterson writes that the London War Office was favorable to the idea of a Jewish Legion. The gallantry of the Zion Mule Corps in Gallipoli had become legendary. Were it not for the interference of the “Old Men of Zion,” a Jewish Army of 100,000 would have been formed, he says.

The idea for a Jewish Legion first came to Jabotinsky in the fifth month of the war when he was visiting Bordeaux as a Russian correspondent. He read a poster announcing Turkey’s entrance to the war on the side of the Central Powers. He writes: “I must confess: until that morning, in Bordeaux as everywhere else, I had been a mere observer, without any particular reasons for wishing full triumph to one side and crushing disaster to the other. My desire at this time was stalemate, and peace as soon as possible. Turkey’s move transformed me in one short morning into a fanatical believer in war until victory; Turkey’s move made this war ‘my war.’”

Jabotinsky believed even earlier that if Turkey and England were ever to go to war, the Jews should form a regiment to help conquer Palestine. He claims this idea would occur to any normal person. “I claim the title of a fully normal person. In Jewish colloquial parlance this title is sometimes translated by the expression goyisher kop; if it is true – so much the worse for us.” Jabotinsky would often say that he had a goyisher kop, that he thought like a gentile.

Jabotinsky visited Max Nordau in Spain and ran his idea by him. Nordau’s reaction demonstrates that he understood Jews all too well. “The old sage replied to my question with a profound saying: it wasn’t until much later that I came to realize how profound it was,” Jabotinsky writes. “He shook his wise head and said, ‘This, my young friend, is logic; but logic is a Greek art, and Jews can’t stand it. The Jew learns not by way of reason but from catastrophes. He won’t buy an umbrella merely because he sees clouds in the sky; he waits until he is drenched and catches pneumonia – then he makes up his mind.’”

The motivations of Jabotinsky’s opponents varied. The assimilationists didn’t want England’s Jews to stand out as Jews. They feared this would affect their own status as Englishmen. The Zionist organizations wanted the Jews to remain neutral, worried what fighting for England might mean for the already-imperiled Jewish community of Turkish-ruled Palestine.

The masses in the Jewish center of Whitechapel, many of them recent Russian immigrants, were simply indifferent. Jabotinsky describes them as “a separate isle inside England.” Young, well-fed Jewish men went to movies, theatres and cafes as England’s youth died in trenches. This created a growing resentment among the English. “Not only was it impossible to make them realize the true situation; it was impossible even to trouble their placidity,” Jabotinsky wrote.

This indifference strikes a chord for those who watched Israelis sunning themselves on the beaches in Tel Aviv as their fellow Jews were ousted from their homes in Gaza. At least the Polish or Russian Jews in England could say, “Why should we do anything? We are not true Englishmen.” One wonders what excuse Tel Aviv’s sun worshippers have.

It was the threat that Britain might turn them over for conscription by the Russian Army that finally shook these Jews from their indifference. A choice between serving in a Jewish Legion to liberate Palestine or in the Russian army was an easy one to make.

The Jewish Legion went on to serve gallantly and play an important role in the conquest of Palestine. Jabotinsky went with them as a Lieutenant. One who did not go with them was Joseph Trumpeldor, though he helped to create the Legion. His one arm and his foreign status were the excuses given by Britain’s bureaucrats. Next to Jabotinsky he’s the most admirable man in The Story of the Jewish Legion.

The Russian officer who would later perish at Tel-Hai was already famous for his courage. Jabotinsky describes him warmly. “In Hebrew his favorite expression was en davar (never mind); and they say it was with these words on his lips that he died, five years later, at Tel-Hai. There was a complete philosophy contained in this en davar; do not exaggerate; do not see danger where none exists; do not regard a man who does his duty as a hero – for history is long, the Jewish people everlasting, and truth is sacred, but everything else, trouble and care and pain and death, en davar.

Col. Patterson, too, is a noble character. A famous lion hunter who hunted with Theodore Roosevelt, his favorite toast was, “Here’s to troubles,” for without them the world wouldn’t progress. Reading the book one can't help wishing there were more like these men today.

Jabotinsky himself comes across as a modest man. He doesn’t dwell on the troubles his political enemies caused him. His straightforward observations remain true today. ”You cannot believe in anything in the world, if you admit even once that perhaps your opponents are right, and not you. This is not the way to do things. There is but one truth in the world, and it is all yours. If you are not sure of it, stay at home; but if you are sure, don’t look back, and it will be your way.”

Virtually everything Israel’s governments have done since Oslo has been the antithesis of the principle set out above. Every new concession is another admission of wrong. Israel’s strategy, if one can call it that, is a continuing stream of mea culpas. But were he alive today, this wouldn’t discourage Jabotinsky from pressing onward. He would likely say, emulating Trumpeldor, “En davar.”

(The English version of “The Story of the Jewish Legion” is wonderfully translated from the Yiddish by Shmuel Katz -- a translation he made in his teenage years. David Isaac is a writer living in Los Angeles.)

Yisrael Medad

For me, there is no more potent verse than Joshua 18:3: “How long will you be slack to go in to possess the land, which the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you?” It reverberates, today, in the hill country of Ephraim, Samaria and Judea, the spine of the Jewish heartland

After a few years of participating in the settlement movement Gush Emunim (including participating in its first settlement attempt at the Sebastia train station and volunteering in its English-language information department), my wife and I arrived in Shiloh on September 1, 1981. Our three daughters arrived the day before so as to be there for the opening of school. Our two-month old son came with us, having no choice in the matter. We were slack no longer.

As I tell the many visitors to my home and community, I am doing what I consider it normal for any Jew to do, just as any Frenchman or Englishman would do: to reside where his forefathers dwelled, his kings ruled, his prophets spoke and his priests served. My windows offer a 3,000 year-old unobstructed Jewish view. Looking east to the hills over the lower Jordan valley, there is not a “demographic problem” to be seen.

Shiloh was Israel’s first capital, where the Holy Tabernacle was set up. (Joshua 18:1) It was at Shiloh that Joshua divided the land into tribal portions and it was to Shiloh Elkanah made his pilgrimages. Hannah prayed here for a son and here her child Samuel grew up. Achiyah the Shiloni prophesied here. Jews lived in the hills of Judea and Samaria as shepherds and tribal chieftains as well as princes and religious leaders. We were conquered and forcibly dispersed and returned. We were again exiled but we returned over hundreds of centuries under the most difficult of political, religious and economic conditions. We insisted that as a people, an ethnic-religious community, we possessed a homeland, a territory that was by definition Jewish land as well as the land of, and for, the Jews. It was the land of Shiloh, of Hebron, Bethel and Jerusalem.

With my wife and children I have been living for more than a quarter of a century in a community whose destruction a former president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, specifically demanded. Prime Minister Begin famously admonished Carter by pointing out the numerous locations in the United States named Shiloh he found in a geographical dictionary, where Jews are not prohibited from living. “How can I not allow Jews to live in the original Shiloh?” he said.

Our population at Shiloh has modestly but steadily increased. The construction of homes has never halted. Schools, the Yeshivah, religious institutions such as synagogues and mikvaot and industrial parks have been built. Agriculture flourishes. The brand-new olive press of Meshek Aviyah is producing some 7% of Israel’s olive oil. You can purchase wine, very good wine, grown in Shiloh’s fields and honey, too.

Shiloh’s facilities include health and dental clinics, an occupational therapy facility and emergency medical vehicles. We have a grocery store and a vegetable vendor, a library, three industrial areas, several clothing stores, a gift shop, and a cemetery. There’s also a pool and an outdoor sports complex including tennis, handball, basketball, and soccer as well as an indoor sports center. Does this sound like a town near you?

When Jews returned to Shiloh 29 years ago, circumstances demanded they assume the identity of an archeological excavation team. Official recognition of the community came only a year later. Archeology remains central to Shiloh. Digs by a Danish group in the 1920s and 30s unearthed Greek, Byzantine and early Islamic artifacts and two basilicas. Another dig from 1981 to 1984 found Late Bronze pottery associated with the period of the Judges. I have seen arrowheads, spear heads, pagan figurate and gold jewelry come out of the soil as well as World War I shell fragments. After all, on the hill-line above the Arab village of Sinjil, the British troops held positions for three months opposite the Turkish-German troops below. Ze’ev Jabotinsky was there, occasionally raiding the enemy defenses.

This last summer the magnificent mosaic floor of a third church was uncovered with many geometric designs as well as illustrations of fauna and flora. An inscription, dated to the late 4th century, was revealed which reads “Blessings to Seilun [Shiloh] and its Inhabitants.” This reminder from 1700 years ago of the sacredness of our land and the theological significance of our presence comes at a very important moment. At Shiloh, we have found and preserved Muslim and Christian sites. And now, because of our presence, Jewish artifacts are also preserved.

While the past is important for the modern-day residents of Shiloh, the future is even more critical. Despite all the calumny, the media bias, our own government’s treatment of Shiloh as a ‘whipping-boy’ to serve its political needs, Shiloh continues to flourish. Although we have lost seven residents to terror (a five-month old infant, Yehuda Shoham, four teenagers and a mother of seven children) and although we are far from, and on the wrong side of the security barrier, young couples, immigrants and others continue to arrive. The outpost communities surrounding Shiloh are also growing. Quite simply, there are still proud Jews in Israel, committed to Zionism.

My living in Shiloh is not a foreign, intrusive act. I am not some transient opportunistic “settler.” I am back where I belong. I am no more an “occupier,” and less a “colonizer” than the Arab in Jaffa or Um El-Fahm. While the term “settlement” is used by the international media as a term of opprobrium, for us “settling” is the most natural thing for a Jew to do: to reside where his forefathers dwelled. Does nobody recall that the Mandate awarded to Great Britain in 1922 by the League of Nations recognized the Jewish right to “close settlement” on the land?

We at Shiloh violate neither international law nor justice. We do not practice ethnic cleansing --although that has been the Arab practice from Tel Chai in 1920 to Kfar Etzion in 1948. We have founded our communities almost exclusively on unused and unpopulated hilltops. Arab terrorists and their supporters justify killing our children and women simply because we live here.

“Disengagement,” “realignment” or any other fanciful euphemism for banning Jews from the historic heartland of their patrimony will not bring peace. Fourteen years after the elaborate show on the White House lawn launching the Oslo Accords, most Israelis recognize the peace process was a terrible mistake. In practice it has led only to rampant murdering of civilians, mostly children, constant incitement to violence and hatred, the destruction of Jewish holy places — the destruction of the Temple Mount antiquities, the razing of Joseph’s Tomb, the torching of the Jericho synagogue. All these reveal the true intentions of the Arab leadership, should it gain full control of the “territories.”

A few months after my family and I moved to Shiloh, I witnessed a scene that no foreign news media has captured but which reflects the problems of land issues here. The government decided that a portion of land adjacent to Shiloh was needed for security purposes. In such cases the military government’s legal procedure required that the mukhtars of nearby Arab villages be notified so that anyone claiming private ownership rights could come forward. On the day and at the appointed hour, several Arabs stepped out, as requested, onto the area. They were then asked to stand on what each claimed as his private plot. Within minutes, a fight broke out between two villagers who insisted that each was the owner of a particularly fertile section. A minute later they were throwing stones at each other. With the claimants lacking any documents, tax receipts or maps to support their claim, the land was declared “state land” and assigned to its new use. All we could do was to stand amazed, experiencing yet another snippet of Middle East reality.

Shiloh of the Bible is rich in spiritual and national memories. Today, we fashion new memories, which we expect to be recalled for generations to come. In 1978, there was but one community here, started when eight families arrived at Shiloh for a “dig.” Today, the view from my hilltop residence takes in Eli, Maalaeh Levona, Shvut Rachel, Givat Achiyah, Givat Harel, Givat Haroeh, Esh Kodesh, Adei-Ad and Keidah with a new start planned for Kol-Tziyon. Over 1,000 families are home, proud of our past, living our present and working to assure our future.

On the staff of the Menachem Begin Center, Yisrael Medad blogs at www.myrightword.blogspot.com

Melanie Phillips

Those who might have doubted that the British media is institutionally incapable of reporting the truth about Israel might note the remarkable vote by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) to boycott Israel. Admittedly, the vote was ludicrously small and at 66 to 54 only narrowly carried. Nevertheless, carried it was, and as the Guardian’s report shows, the terms in which it was framed demonstrate that when it comes to Israel British journalists are now in the business of propaganda, lies, libels and smears.

“This ADM [annual delegate meeting] calls for a boycott of Israeli goods similar to those boycotts in the struggles against apartheid South Africa led by trade unions and the TUC [Trades Union Congress] to demand sanctions be imposed on Israel by the British government and the United Nations…”

The vote on this motion was taken after it was split from a larger motion that condemned the “savage, pre-planned attack on Lebanon by Israel” last year. This motion was carried by a large majority and also condemned the “slaughter of civilians by Israeli troops in Gaza and the IDF’s [Israeli Defense Forces] continued attacks inside Lebanon following the defeat of its army by Hezbollah.” The motion called for the end of Israeli aggression in Gaza and other occupied territories.

Israel, of course, is not an apartheid state. That is a baseless and libelous smear. The Lebanon war was not a pre-planned attack. That is a libelous misrepresentation of comments made by Prime Minister Olmert to the effect that Israel had planned for the eventuality of such a war if it was attacked by Hezbollah — which it was. To call its military actions in Lebanon pre-planned is like saying the Battle of Britain was pre-planned. Apparently, though, for the NUJ (and those enemies of Israel from whom this smear originated) the only acceptable position for Israel is for it not to have any plans at all to defend itself against the truly pre-planned aggression by the Arab and Muslim states that want it destroyed.

But it’s when it comes to Gaza that the NUJ’s departure from reality to the irrational terrain of Planet Hatred becomes most apparent. For incredibly, it appears not to realize that Israel is no longer occupying Gaza. It withdrew in 2005, with members of the NUJ actually reporting that seismic event. There is no “slaughter of civilians” in Gaza by Israeli troops. The slaughter that is going on in Gaza — including the recent murder of small Palestinian children by Palestinian gunmen as part of the vicious intra-Palestinian gang warfare that is going on — is by Palestinians on Palestinians. Not to mention the rockets being fired into Israel almost daily from Gaza, and the tunneling and huge military build-up going on there in preparation for a redoubled—and definitely “pre-planned”— assault yet again upon Israel.

Even more remarkably, given the deeply distressing (although unconfirmed) report that the kidnapped BBC correspondent in Gaza Alan Johnston has been murdered by Palestinians, the NUJ did not see fit even to discuss the fate of their colleague at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. It is a truly remarkable state of affairs when a collective body of journalists display total indifference to the kidnap and possible murder of one of their own, because he is the victim of terrorists they support on ideological grounds, and instead decide to take punitive action against the nation that is the principal and enduring victim of those terrorists, which they defame simply because it defends itself against them.

By this disgusting action, the NUJ has revealed the vicious face of British journalism. It is no longer in the noble business of telling truth to power. It is now the instrument of those who use brute power to suppress the truth and snuff out justice, life and liberty. And despite the tiny size of the vote, it is likely to be the harbinger of a redoubled effort to isolate Israel and prepare the ground for its annihilation. The attempt at an academic boycott two years ago may have been aborted, but there are moves afoot for an economic boycott of Israel involving the broader trade union movement. Of course, it is astounding that British trade unionists should seek to ostracize the one country in the Middle East where trade unions — along with academics — enjoy freedom of association and expression, while uttering not a peep against those regimes which really do suppress trade unions and intellectual inquiry. But this is now the madness of Britain.

Melanie Phillips Diary: www.melaniephillips.com/diary

Ruth King

On Independence Day Arabs and Israeli leftists plan a parallel parade demanding the Right of Return. I am not a betting person but I would wager that Israel’s inept government, anxious to rescue the illusory “peace process” will not even stop at the right to return. For those who say Israel would never compromise on this issue, I offer the examples of indivisible Jerusalem and a “two state” solution, the first of which was held sacred and the second was once anathema. Now the first is negotiable and the second accepted as a matter of course.

Of whose right of return do they speak? Is it the right of imprisoned terrorists to return to killing and carnage in the cafes, markets, and bus stops and streets of Israel?

Is it the right of Arabs whose grandparents once lived in Jaffa and who have spent three generations in “refugee” camps nursing hatred for the Jews rather than for their Arab coreligionists who have trapped them in squalor and statelessness? Are the “Palestinian” Arabs of Dearborn, Michigan, Jordan, Yemen and Kuwait, whose mosques preach jihad against Jews and Christians alike on the return list?

Will Hizbollah adherents be invited to dwell among the pigs and apes and bacteria (which is how they describe Jews in sermons and schools)?

It is suicide for Israel to contemplate the return of a single Arab to Israel, let alone the hugely inflated number of 4.3 million “refugees” the UN and Arab League have conjured up. There is only one right of return to discuss with Israel’s adversaries as well as those international meddlers whose maps and plans and processes would force Israel to accept its own demise.

The Jews of Israel have a right to return to Hodesh Yaron, from which they were forcibly evacuated in 2005; to Homesh from which they were routed during the Gaza “disengagement;” to Amona from which they were evicted in 2006; to Nahalei Tal, forcibly evacuated in 2002; to Mitzpe Karamim, forcibly evacuated by Barak.

Israel should claim the right of return to Jericho, one of the oldest Jewish cities in the world, best known for the victory of Joshua over the Canaanites.

Jews have a right to return to Shehem (Nablus) where within hours of the Jewish evacuation in 2002 a Palestinian Arab mob entered the Tomb of Joseph and systematically turned furniture, books, the Yeshiva into a heap of burning rubble, while the Arab police stood by idly in violation of all agreements. Joseph's Tomb has been the site of pilgrimage and prayer since time immemorial.

Joshua (24:32) states: "The bones of Joseph which the Children of Israel brought up from Egypt were buried in Shechem in the portion of the field that had been purchased by Jacob."

Jews have a right to return to all of Hebron, the cradle of Jewish religion, whose division Netanyahu weakly acceded to at Wye. Jews have a right to return to Gush Katif in Gaza. They have a right to rebuild their greenhouses, plundered and destroyed by the Arabs to whom they were handed over as a result of misguided generosity on the part of wealthy U.S. Jews.

Jews have a right to return to Bethlehem to pray at Rachel’s tomb, the third holiest site for Jews, to guard it and keep it safe from desecration.

If you want to get serious about the right of return, how about the right of Jordan’s Kinglet to return to Saudi Arabia from whence the Hashemites came. His pretty bride should have a right to return to Kuwait where she was born and from which her family was evicted after the first Gulf War.

But wait. What about the right of Jews to return to Iraq or Poland or Hungary or to Arab countries to claim the properties and estates they left behind in those cozy corners of the Diaspora?

Each time Israel concedes part of its patrimony, the Arabs respond with war. It is more important then ever for Jews to exercise their own right of return to all the areas that have been given over to Arab jihadist jurisdiction.

But, again, I wager that Israel’s government will seek some “accommodations” for returning Arabs. Remember, Prime Minister Barak’s rejected peace offers actually included the “right to return” for a “limited” number of “refugees.”

I have a better idea. Why do the citizens of Israel not insist on Prime Minister Olmert’s right to return forthwith to his civil life of petty fraud and chicanery?