[Peace-discuss] An Open Letter To The World

[Wendy Edwards]

It looks like the letter was actually written by Meir Kahane:

http://www.jdl.org/israel/dear_world.shtml

Wendy

On Sat, Aug 05, 2006 at 07:05:49PM -0500, Lisa Chason wrote:
> I rec'd the following on July 13, via a Jewish friend, before all the
> escalating madness in Lebanon. I didn't share it then but I keep thinking
> about it and want others to see this example of the traumatized and twisted
> vitriol that exists there
> 
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> For Your Information
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> 
> AN OPEN LETTER TO THE WORLD
> 
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> 
> Dear World, I understand that you are upset by us, here in Israel. 
> 
> Indeed, it appears that you are quite upset, even angry. (Outraged?) 
> 
> Indeed, every few years you seem to become upset by us. Today, it is the
> "brutal repression of the Palestinians"; yesterday it was Lebanon; before
> that it was the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Baghdad and the Yom Kippur
> War and the Sinai campaign. It appears that Jews who triumph and who,
> therefore, live, upset you most extraordinarily. 
> 
> Of course, dear world, long before there was an Israel, we - the Jewish
> people - upset you. 
> 
> We upset a German people who elected Hitler and upset an Austrian people who
> cheered his entry into Vienna and we upset a whole slew of Slavic nations -
> Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Hungarians and Romanians.
> And we go back a long, long way in the history of world upset. 
> 
> We upset the Cossacks of Chmielnicki who massacred tens of thousands of us
> in 1648-49; we upset the Crusaders who, on their way to liberate the Holy
> Land, were so upset at Jews that they slaughtered untold numbers of us. 
> 
> For centuries, we upset a Roman Catholic Church that did its best to define
> our relationship through inquisitions, and we upset the arch-enemy of the
> church, Martin Luther, who, in his call to burn the synagogues and the Jews
> within them, showed an admirable Christian ecumenical spirit. 
> 
> And it is because we became so upset over upsetting you, dear world, that we
> decided to leave you - in a manner of speaking - and establish a Jewish
> state. The reasoning was that living in close contact with you, as
> resident-strangers in the various countries that comprise you, we upset you,
> irritate you and disturb you. What better notion, then, than to leave you
> (and thus love you)- and have you love us and so, we decided to come home -
> home to the same land we were driven out 1,900 years earlier by a Roman
> world that, apparently, we also upset. 
> 
> Alas, dear world, it appears that you are hard to please. 
> 
> Having left you and your pogroms and inquisitions and crusades and
> holocausts, having taken our leave of the general world to live alone in our
> own little state, we continue to upset you. You are upset that we repress
> the poor Palestinians. You are deeply angered over the fact that we do not
> give up the lands of 1967, which are clearly the obstacle to peace in the
> Middle East 
> 
> Moscow is upset and Washington is upset. The "radical" Arabs are upset and
> the gentle Egyptian moderates are upset. 
> 
> Well, dear world, consider the reaction of a normal Jew from Israel. 
> 
> In 1920 and 1921 and 1929, there were no territories of 1967 to impede peace
> between Jews and Arabs. Indeed, there was no Jewish State to upset anybody
> Nevertheless, the same oppressed and repressed Palestinians slaughtered tens
> of Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Safed and Hebron.Indeed, 67 Jews were
> slaughtered one day in Hebron in 1929. 
> 
> Dear world, why did the Arabs - the Palestinians - massacre 67 Jews in one
> day in 1929? Could it have been their anger over Israeli aggression in 1967?
> And why were 510 Jewish men, women and children slaughtered in Arab riots
> between 1936-39? Was it because Arabs were upset over 1967? 
> 
> And when you, dear world, proposed a UN Partition Plan in 1947 that would
> have created a "Palestinian State" alongside a tiny Israel and the Arabs
> cried "no" and went to war and killed 6,000 Jews - was that "upset" caused
> by the aggression of 1967? And, by the way, dear world, why did we not hear
> your cry of "upset" then? 
> 
> The poor Palestinians who today kill Jews with explosives and firebombs and
> stones are part of the same people who - when they had all the  territories
> they now demand be given to them for their state -attempted to drive the
> Jewish state into the sea. The same twisted faces, the same hate, the same
> cry of "itbach-al-yahud" (Massacre the Jew!) that we hear and see today,
> were seen and heard then. The same people, the same  dream - destroy Israel.
> What they failed to do yesterday, they dream of today, but we should not
> "repress" them. 
> 
> Dear world, you stood by during the holocaust and you stood by in 1948 as
> seven states launched a war that the Arab League proudly compared to the
> Mongol massacres. 
> 
> You stood by in 1967 as Nasser, wildly cheered by wild mobs in every Arab
> capital in the world, vowed to drive the Jews into the sea. And you would
> stand by tomorrow if Israel were facing extinction. 
> 
> And since we know that the Arabs-Palestinians dream daily of that
> extinction, we will do everything possible to remain alive in our own land.
> If that bothers you, dear world, well - think of how many times in the past
> you bothered us. 
>   
> 
> In any event, dear world, if you are bothered by us, here is one Jew in
> Israel who could not care less. 
> 
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> 

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