Breaking News: Netanyahu's speech to Hamas

2021 Update: see here

Breaking news: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu just made the following speech in front of the Knesset:

To Ismail Haniya, and the leaders and operatives of Hamas:

We, the people of Israel, owe you a huge debt of gratitude.  You have succeeded where we have failed.  Because never before, in the history of the modern State of Israel, has the Jewish people been so united, like one person with one heart.  You stole three of our most precious children, and slaughtered them in cold blood.  But before we could discover the horrible truth, we had 18 days of pain and anxiety while we searched for them, during which our nation united as never before, in prayer, in hopes, in mutual support.

And now, as you continue to launch deadly missiles indiscriminately, intended to maim and murder as many civilians as possible, while you take cowardly refuge behind your own civilians - you continue to inspire us to hold strongly onto our newly discovered unity.  Whatever disputes we Jews may have with each other, we now know that we have one common goal: we will defeat you.

But we are offering you now one last chance.  Within 24 hours, all rocket fire - and I mean all rocket fire - will cease.  Completely.  Forever.

I give you formal notice that our tanks are massed at the Gaza border, with artillery and air support at the ready.  We have already dropped leaflets over the northern parts of the Gaza strip, warning civilians of our impending arrival, and that they should evacuate southward, forthwith.  If you fail to meet our ultimatum, we are coming in, and, with God's help, this time we will not leave.  Every centimeter of land that we conquer will be annexed to Israel, so that there will never be another attack launched at our civilians from there.

Even so, we will continue to keep the door open to allow you to surrender gracefully.  The moment you announce that you are laying down arms, we will halt our advance, and there we will draw our new borders.  If you continue to attack our citizens, we will continue to roll southwards, driving you out of territory that you will never again contaminate with your evil presence.

It pains me deeply that your civilians will be made homeless.  But we did not choose this war; you did.  And if our choice is between allowing our citizens to be targeted mercilessly by your genocidal savagery, versus turning your civilians into refugees, I regret that we must choose the latter.  If only you loved your people as much as you hate ours, this war would never have happened.

To the rest of the world: Israel has tired of your ceaseless chidings that we should "show restraint".  When you have your entire population under constant missile fire from an implacable enemy whose stated goal is the of murder every man, woman and child in your land, then you may come and talk to us about "restraint".  Until then, we respectfully suggest that you keep your double standards to yourselves.  This time, Hamas has gone too far, and we will do whatever we have to in order to protect our population.

Hamas, once again, I thank you for bringing our people together with such clarity of mind and unity of purpose.  The people of Israel do not fear the long road ahead.  Am Yisrael Chai.


... and then I awoke, and it was all a dream...

Gush Katif - Time to say sorry

It's been a long time since I blogged anything, and I hope this posting with be worth your while.

Allow me to share something personal with you.  Ever since the destruction of Gush Katif in 2005, I have been harboring a deep pain.  The images of Jews being forcibly dragged out of their homes - homes that they had lived in for 3 generations - is seared into my memory.  The knowledge that this trauma was inflicted by other Jews makes the thought almost too painful to bear.  And if this is what I feel - I who was safe and snug in my little home in Beit Shemesh - I cannot even begin to imagine what kind of pain is still in the hearts of the innocent people who were themselves expelled, betrayed and hung out to dry by their own nation.

Six years later, we have seen how the "Disengagement" plan, conceived in iniquity, legalized by duplicity, and executed with cold indifference, has backfired on us all.  I confess I don't know what the official statistics are, but given the fact that we are now absorbing continual rocket attacks from the ruins of Gush Katif, and that our standing in world opinion is far, far worse than it was prior to the expulsion, it's hard to believe that there is more than a tiny core of delusional, hard-core post-Zionists who still think it was a good idea.

OK, so now we've learned it was a bad idea, pragmatically speaking.  But frankly, that's not enough.  We screwed up - badly - and the people of Gush Katif paid the biggest price. And all we have done for them done to date by way of acknowledgement, effectively, has just been to say, "Oops...  Um... well, that didn't work out so well...  So sorry about that - and... um...  good luck with the rest of your lives!"  And we've merrily trotted off and started looking for fresh new ways to appease world opinion and try satisfy an enemy who will be happy with nothing less than our complete destruction.

Here's Repentance 101: Yom Kippur does not atone for sins between man and man, until the transgressor apologizes to the person he wronged and appeases him.  In these 6 years, we have done nothing of the sort for the Jews of Gush Katif.  If we have not achieved their forgiveness, how can we expect that Hashem will forgive us?  If we want G-d to forgive us for this terrible injustice that we perpetrated on our fellow Jews, and if we want to be able to pray for Him to relate to us with mercy - we had better be prepared to do teshuva for the cruelty we perpetrated on our brethren.

To this end, I have prepared the text of a collective, national apology.  Every one of us, to some extent, is responsible for what happened, as I have attempted to express in the text, and every Jew with a heart, anywhere in the world, should sign on, to say sorry.  I want 1 million signatures on this apology, and I believe this is attainable.

So, I ask you, please:

1. Sign the petition here.  (Non-Hebrew speakers, please see the annotated screen shot here for what you need to fill in and click!)
2. Spread the word.  Use Facebook, Twitter, your own blog, email, SMS, whatever.  For this to be a meaningful exercise, every Jew in the world, Right or Left, religious or not, needs to be able to say sorry to someone they wronged. 

Thank you for your help!  And in the merit of our national contrition, and hopefully the forgiveness of those we have wronged, may Hashem show mercy and forgiveness to us, and bring our final Redemption.

bit.ly/sorrygk