Self-Incrimination

On March 31, 1995, when Yitzhak Rabin was Israel's Prime Minister and Shimon Peres held the post of Foreign Minister, an article appeared in the Jerusalem Post entitled "The Enemy Within". I quote the last four paragraphs, which began as follows:

"When I told the Knesset this week, 'This government is against everything that is Jewish,' several leftists were riled. But for me, the Jewish cause transcends everything. Israel is the Jewish state; Jerusalem is Jewish, and exclusively Jewish; Hebron is forever Jewish.

"Anyone who aided Arafat in the Lebanon war is anti-Jewish. Those on whose head lies the blood of the 134 Israeli citizens murdered since the Oslo Agreement are anti-Jewish. And those for whom Jericho is the 'tomb of Rahab the harlot' (as Shulamit Aloni put it) and the Cave of the Patriarchs the burial place of an Arab sheik are against everything Jewish.

"Anyone planning to hand over Beit El and Shiloh is against Jews and Judaism. Those who gave official status to non-Jews on the Temple Mount are anti-Jewish. Whoever proposes granting Israeli funds to the PLO - whose leaders transfer the money to their own bank accounts or use it for anti-Israel purposes, including incitement of Israel's Arab citizens - is anti-Jewish. "Anyone emotionally closer to the PLO assassins than to the settlers in Hebron, who warmly shake hands steeped in Jewish blood but turns in disgust from shaking a Jewish hand holding a prayer book in the Machpela Cave is against everything Jewish. Inciters against Jews, indifferent to their blood being spilled, are anti-Jewish."

The letter concludes: "Ergo Mr. [Yossi] Sarid and his friends are anti-Jewish, and I am a Jew."

The author of this letter is none other than Israel's current Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon! The letter implicitly denounces the late Yitzhak Rabin, who was both prime minister and defense minister in March 1995, as being anti-Jewish. The letter implicitly denounces Shimon Peres as anti-Jewish, for he was not only the architect of Oslo, but he, above all, aided Arafat in the Lebanese War.

In any event, almost everything in his March 1995 article which is denominated anti-Jewish applies ten-fold to its author, Ariel Sharon. Shakespeare has Hamlet say "conscience [meaning knowledge] doth make cowards of us all." What knowledge does Mr. Sharon now have as Israel's Prime Minister that he did not have in March 1995, when he was in the opposition? What knowledge has he obtained as Israel's prime minister that transformed him from being a Jew to being anti-Jewish?

Whatever the answer may be, this prime minister must now be regarded, according to his own testimony, as "The Enemy Within."

If a private citizen were to describe "The Enemy Within" in the words of Ariel Sharon, he would almost certainly be accused of "incitement." Fear of being charged with incitement has silenced the moral outrage which should be leveled against Israel s prime minister and his colleagues in the government. Sharon could denounce Yossi Sarid, and, by implication, Rabin and Peres, because he enjoyed parliamentary immunity. It required no great courage for him to write the "The Enemy Within."

The article was obviously written to arouse public opinion against the Rabin government and Oslo. But public opinion in this country has no efficacy between elections, since members of the Knesset and those who become cabinet ministers are not individually accountable to the voters in multi-district or regional elections. They don't have to compete against a rival candidate who could expose their failings, to say nothing of their anti-Jewish treachery.

Even though Mr. Sharon - judging from his own words - is no less anti-Jewish than those he denounced in March 1995, he has managed to anesthetize the pundits and the public far more effectively than his predecessors. This makes him all the more dangerous.