POWERFUL stuff, Michel, beautifully written.   I'm not sure I would have
even read it through pre-Sept 11.  Perhaps a consequence of this attack on
us will be a new appreciation for the struggle that Israel has been thru
with these mind numbingly stupid Muslin terrorists.
BBA
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michel Margosis" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2001 11:02 PM
Subject: An open letter from Israel


> Proudly, from my dear daughter Leah,
> with love,
> Michel
>                                  -----------------------------------------
-
>
>
> An open letter from an Israeli to his neighbors, near and far.
>
> Dear World:
>
>                 It appears that you are just too hard to please. I
> understand that you are upset with us here in Israel. Indeed, it appears
> that you are quite upset, maybe even angry and outraged. As a matter of
> fact, every few months or years, recently, you seem to become upset with
us
> all over again. Today, you are upset because we won't sit down at the
table
> and negotiate (what? Our own demise?) with our neighbors, our intractable,
> uncompromising enemies, even while they continue to attack innocent
> civilians--our children, women, and the elderly. Yesterday it was the
brutal
> 'repression' and 'occupation' of the Palestinians (to whom we gave back
> control over 96 percent of the Arab population); last week, it was our
> security needs in Lebanon; before that, it was the bombing of the nuclear
> reactor in Iraq and the conclusion of the Yom Kippur War in which we
> successfully defended ourselves against the onslaught of massive enemy
> armies on two fronts on the holiest day of the year. In the first few days
> of that sneak attack, when the Egyptians and Syrians were killing three
> thousand Israeli youths, you were silent. It was only when we were at the
> gates of Damascus and the road to Cairo that you got upset again. It
appears
> that, when Jews triumph and, therefore, live, we upset you
extraordinarily.
>
>                 Of course, dear world, long before there was an Israel,
we,
> the Jewish people, upset you. We upset the German people, so that they
> elected Adolph Hitler, mastermind of the "Final Solution of the Jewish
> Problem" and we 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, who willingly
participated
> in his macabre, hideous orgy of brutal genocide.
>
>                 And we go back a long, long way in the history of world
> upset. We upset the Cossacks of Chmielnicki, so that they just had to
> massacre tens of thousands of us in 1648 and 1649; we upset the Crusaders
> who, on their way to liberate the Holy Land, were so distressed at the
Jews
> that they felt compelled to slaughter untold thousands of us in
communities
> all over Europe.  We upset, for centuries, the Roman Catholic Church, to
> whom we gave our Scriptures, so that it just had to define our
relationship
> through persecution, exile, and inquisition. And we upset the archenemy of
> the Roman Church, Martin Luther, who, in his call to burn the synagogues
and
> the Jews within them, showed an admirable Christian loving spirit and
> 'turning the other cheek.'
>
>                 We upset every nation in Western Europe to the point that
> they expelled us, and when they let us back in, because they needed our
> talents, they forced us to live in ghettos, in sub-human conditions and
> readily available for repeated riots and blood letting. It is because we
> became so distressed and grieved over upsetting you, dear world, that we
> decided to leave you, in a manner of speaking, to separate ourselves from
> you and establish a Jewish State. The rationale and justification for our
> new enterprise of building a nation was that by living in close contact
with
> you, as resident-strangers in the various countries that all of you
inhabit,
> we upset you, irritated you, and disturbed you. What better notion, then,
we
> proposed, than to leave you and thus show you that we really love you,
> and--we hoped--have you love us in return.
>
>                 This is how we reached our decision to come home--to the
> same homeland from which we were driven out 1,900 years earlier by a Roman
> world that we also upset. We knew that our ancient land was made a
> wilderness, sparsely inhabited by nomads and poor tenant farmers and made
> home to jackals, wild goats and scorpions. The once fertile valley became
a
> swamp infested by malaria-carrying mosquitoes, the terraced hills were
> neglected and swept barren by wind and rain, and the seacoast was
devastated
> and overtaken by yellow Nile silt-sand. However, we saw the land through
the
> prism of our Book of Books, and resolved to make it once more a "land of
> milk and honey."
>
>                 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 world at large, to PURCHASE our
> land acre by acre (at much inflated rates) from those who held title to
it,
> drain the swamps and defeat the scourge of malaria, drive back the rolling
> sands that the sea brought from the Nile to make the Sharon coastal valley
> fertile once again, we attempted to live alone in our own little land.
> Still, we continue to upset you. You are upset that the 5.5 million of us
> expect, and insist that we have a right, to live here unmolested on our
tiny
> speck of land that was mostly despised desert before we arrived here, when
> your planet has room for over 6 billion people.
>
> You claim that we oppress the Palestinians, impede their natural wish to
be
> a nation among the nations, and that really upsets you. You are deeply
> angered over the fact that we do not give up the lands we took in the war
of
> 1967, which, to you, are clearly the obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
> Washington is upset and Moscow is upset. London is upset as is Paris,
Rome,
> Oslo and even Brussels. Naturally, the Arabs are upset--the despotic
rulers
> of Syria and Iraq, the more civilized autocrats of Jordan and the Gulf
> Emirates and the Egyptian moderates are upset, too, it seems, and counsel
> war.
>
>                 Well, dear world, consider the reaction of a Jew from
> Israel. In 1920, 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 hundreds of Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Safed and Hebron. Dear
> world, why did these Arabs--the Palestinians--massacre hundreds of Jews in
> those years? Could it have been because of their anger over Israeli
> occupation of their land? And why were 510 Jewish men, women and children
> slaughtered in Arab riots between 1936 and 1939? Would you suggest that it
> was because of Arab sensitivity to roadblocks at border crossings? And
when
> you, world, proposed a United Nations Partition Plan in 1947 that would
have
> created a Palestinian State alongside a tiny Israel, and the Arabs
promised
> a blood bath and went to war, and killed 6,000 Jews, out of a population
of
> 600,000; was that infraction of international law caused by their extreme
> reaction to Jewish expansionism? And, by the way, dear world, why did we
not
> hear your cry of protest over Jewish victims in all those events?
>
>                 The 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 them for their state, refused to make
> peace and attempted to drive the Jewish State into the sea. The same
twisted
> faces, the same hate, the same cry of "itbakhun-al-yahud" "Slaughter the
> Jews!" that we hear and see today, were seen and heard then. The same
blood
> thirsty mob who lynched two innocent young reservists in Ramallah last
year,
> proudly waving the blood-soaked hands and arms that committed the atrocity
> to the frenzied crowd--and mutilated the bodies of dead martyrs in the
Hills
> of Hebron in 1948. They are the same people who refused Israel the right
to
> be born in 1948, and today dream of, and scheme, and design, and connive,
> and plan for Israel's destruction. What they failed to do yesterday, they
> fantasize of doing today and envision doing tomorrow--but we are told that
> we must not "repress" them.  They must be given a chance to manifest their
> destiny.
>
>                 Dear world, you stood by and did nothing when millions of
> our people died in the Holocaust and you stood by and did nothing in 1948
> when seven Arab states launched a war that the Arab League proudly
> proclaimed would rival the Mongol invasion and massacres. You stood by and
> did nothing in 1967 (in spite of ironclad guarantees given to Israel by
> Great Britain, the Europeans, and the U.S. in 1956-57), as Gamal Abdul
> Nasser, president of Egypt and leader of the Arab world, wildly cheered by
> wild mobs in every Arab capital in the world, vowed to drive the Jews into
> the sea.
>
>                 A few weeks ago my neighbor's two daughters, aged fifteen
> and sixteen, were blown to pieces by a misguided, brainwashed young man
who
> was promised an eternity in an X-rated paradise by wicked religious
> teachers, and my American cousin was killed a few days later by another
> misguided youth who disrupted lunchtime business at Sbarro Pizzeria in
> Jerusalem's down town. Where was world outrage then? Where was the UN with
> its resolutions to condemn the perpetrators of violence? Who stood up and
> pointed a finger and shouted 'racists' at these perpetrators and those who
> trained and guided them? There was no sound, no fury, not even a whimper.
> Your repeated silence spoke volumes, to be sure.
>
>                 And you would stand by and do nothing, again, tomorrow--if
> Israel were facing extinction--as it is, each and every day. Only we will
> not allow it. Since we know that the Palestinians daily dream of our
demise,
> we will do everything in our power to remain alive in our own land. If
that
> aggravates and annoys you, dear world, I sincerely regret it. I am sure
that
> you think you would be much better off if we could just disappear,
evaporate
> like a puff of smoke. Just try to see it from our viewpoint: think how
many
> times in the past you have disappointed us. We have given you so much
love,
> so much progress, so much wisdom, so much blessing. We gave you our ideals
> and our faith, our God and our teaching of mercy and salvation.
>
>                 Above all, we have taught you the meaning of hope and of
> human dignity. We don't know why you are so short sighted that you don't
> know from where your blessings come. We suggest that you go back to the
> sources. Read the Book. Your Book, which was our Book first. Love God--and
> love your neighbors as yourself.
>
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