An Open Letter to MK Avraham Burg

Dear MK Burg:

I read with astonishment and distaste your essay titled “A Failed Israeli Society Collapses While Its Leaders Remain Silent” distributed by the Tikkun organization. It is being used as a testimony of “a major Zionist leader” about the atrociousness of the State of Israel. For bashing your own people you have been promoted by Michael Lerner from a petty partisan politician to “a major Zionist leader.”  Your father, Dr. Yoseph Burg, blessed be his memory, who was my teacher and friend years before Israel’s War of Independence, was a true “major Zionist leader,” but you are not. Your father, whom I admired for his profound knowledge of Judaism and Jewish history, taught me the love of our country and basic Jewish ethics.  Regrettably, your article does not reflect any of these qualities; Yasser Arafat, the sworn enemy of the Jewish people, could have written many of its passages. You can be assured that these very passages will be quoted in the near future by our enemies to undermine the political and moral stance of the State of Israel, justifying the murder of additional hundreds of innocent Jews by Arafat’s terrorist gangs and their allies. Clearly you realize that the very survival of the Jewish nation is now at stake, yet you seem to have chosen to give aid and comfort to the enemies of your own country.

MK Burg, contrary to the truth, an uninformed reader of your essay might conclude that the State of Israel is the guilty party in the Arab Israeli conflict. In your long litany on Israeli callousness and cruelty toward Arabs you did not say a word about their enemies, the Muslims, whose traditional 1400 year-old goal has been the eradication of Jews (see Qur’an 5:82,86).  Your father, who knew history so well, would have told you that the history of Arab Islam started with the murderous eradication of the Jewish tribes in the Arab Peninsula (see Qur’an 33:26).  Plundered Jewish property was the source of Mohammad’s personal wealth (see Qur’an 33:27). No one can objectively document that the Jews in the Arab Peninsula provoked those massacres. The same is true of the 1929 massacres of Jews in Hebron and Jerusalem, and later in 1935-9, years before you were born. 

You must personally remember that the PLO, whose goal, from day one, has been the elimination of the Jewish people from their ancient homeland by the sword, was established in Egypt years before 1967. Moreover, the strategy of anti-Jewish Arab terrorism was implemented years before the PLO was founded. This was long before there were any of the “settlements” or roadblocks you bemoan in your essay.  You complain about the road between Ramot and Gilo that is out of bounds for most Arabs. That road was built to ward off Arab terrorists who were eager to murder as many Jews, men, women, children and infants, as possible, including you if you took the old road. You see, for them you are just a Jew who deserves to be killed like any other Jew, and they would have celebrated your murder in the streets of Ramallah or Jenin not knowing that they killed their own soul brother. What a tragedy would that be, or would it?

And then you propose to reward these murderous historical enemies of your people for their despicable deeds by sharing with them the ancient Jewish capital.

You state, “We could kill a thousand ringleaders and engineers a day and nothing will be solved, because the leaders come up from below from the wells of hatred and anger, from the "infrastructures" of injustice and moral corruption.” True. The injustice and moral corruption of Arab society, which allowed Arafat to make Forbes’ list of the 100 richest men on Earth while the Arab masses are starving, have certainly contributed to the current bloody crisis. However, I am afraid that in your essay you accuse Israeli society as the cause of Arab misery. In any case you, the avowed socialist, do not blame the Arab elitist leadership for the misery of their masses.  What percentage of current leaders of Arab terrorist organizations came up “from below,” i.e., from the oppressed masses?  Rhetoric is cheap and so is incitement, especially when they are based on half-truths. As a well-informed MK you surely know the social background of the terrorist leadership.

The current violence against the Jewish people is rooted in the centuries-old intrinsic hatred of and contempt of Muslims for Jews, whom they consider as subhuman – descendents of pigs and monkeys, as explicitly stated by Mohammad in the Qur’an (see Qur’an 2:65, 5:60, 7:66). It is not contempt of Jews for Arabs, but, vice versa, the hatred of Jews by Arabs whom they name “Jewish dogs” that is at the roots of the conflict. How can an educated Jewish politician, blinded by self-hatred, be so dishonest?

Of all religions, Islam is a political religion wrought with territorial ambitions and a religious supremacy doctrine. Brutally violent conquest is an intrinsic facet of traditional Islam, as is little tolerance for people of other faiths. These are major factors in the perpetuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the main driving force of Hammas, Hesballah and Islamic Jihad movements. Your father would have told you that the suffering of the Arab masses is inconsequential in the eyes of militant Islamic Arab leaders as long as pain and death are inflicted on infidels, Jews in particular.

Regretfully, reading your article one may conclude that, like Yasser Arafat, you do not see the indiscriminate murder of innocent Jews as immoral while considering the necessity of Arabs to wait at checkpoints, in order to intercept Arab mass murderers, as flagrant Israeli immoral behavior.  However, Arafat says this as part of his psychological attack on your people. What is your motive?

You dwell on the immorality of illegal campaign contributions. Your father would have told you that breaking the law and moral behavior are not one and the same. In the forties, many Israelis were law-breakers by collecting and hiding weapons for self-defense. This illegal act was the moral thing to do in those days. Even if PM Sharon violated the letter of the Israeli law of political campaign funding, done also by the leadership of your Labor party, the alleged illegal funding of his 1999 election campaign does not make him, or Ehud Barak and other leaders of the Labor Party immoral people as you imply. Besides, did you, yourself never accept any gift or favor throughout your political career? As you may remember, people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

 There is no evidence whatsoever that Sharon used campaign contributions for his personal benefit.  Semi-legal and illegal campaign contributions are today also common in American democracy, the greatest democracy on Earth.  Only Arafat has the luxury of appointing his political opponents and so guarantee a decisive electoral victory. Arafat does not need, therefore, any campaign contributions, probably making him a truly moral politician in your eyes.

Where are we going from here? The long-term demographic problem that you pointed out will not be resolved even if one accepted your suggested “separation of the two peoples”.   A critical analysis of the policy of the Arabs in the last 100 years shows that there will be no end to Arab territorial demands.  What is so special about the armistice line of the 1948 war?  Arabs do live on both sides of this line. Your suggested strategy of ethnic separation would later yield the Galilee to the Arabs, followed by Jaffa, Haifa and the rest of Jerusalem. Where would you draw the line?  Why cannot Jews live peacefully in a territory with an Arab majority just as Arabs live within a Jewish majority?

Following your arguments, based on the necessity of maximal ethnic separation, leads eventually to a Jewish state limited to the northern neighborhoods of Tel Aviv, which would then be overrun in a final assault of victorious murderous Arabs. The Islamists could then celebrate their successful elimination of the hated Jews and their Western culture from the Middle East.

Following your ideology, avoiding any “injustice and moral corruption,” Jews should repeatedly give in to Arafat’s “salami” strategy (originated by Mahmoud Abbas) until the last Israeli Jew is slaughtered by an Arab Jihadist.

I would like to try and understand your bizarre stance. You have been a prominent leader in the Labor Party who has lost decisively a major internal political race. Lately, your party lost its leadership position in Israeli politics and is now in complete disarray. So your writing may be explained as the proverbial sour grapes rhetoric of a poor loser.  However, I think that there is more to it. As a shrewd political tactician you may be looking into the future. You may be addressing the future Israeli Arab constituents of the Labor Party rather than the Jewish ones. You know very well that Israeli Arabs strongly influence Israeli politics long before they become a majority, against which you warn in your article.

It is no secret that PM Barak would not have been elected without the Israeli Arab vote. Furthermore, a careful analysis of the recent loss of Amram Mitzna to Ariel Sharon shows that Labor’s loss among Jewish voters was significantly greater than among Arabs. Like President Chirac whose pro-Arab policies are dictated by French Arab voters, so seem to be yours. 

However, you understandably abhor the idea of an Arab majority in Israel’s electorate, as this would obviate the support of Arabs for your party. All this may explain the tenor of your article. Your suggested pacifistic and “morally correct” policy will inevitably lead to the eventual liquidation of the only Jewish state. Is this your message to the current Arab political supporters of the Labor Party, who will gladly welcome it?

There is an intrinsic difference between statesmen, who have a perspective of centuries, and politicians whose time horizon is limited to the next elections. The fickle, shortsighted ideology of politicians is shaped by the most vocal among their constituents. I am sorry to see that you belong to the latter category. 

Did you consider the potential long-term consequences of your published essay? Unlike you, Ariel Sharon, with all his faults, has attributes of a statesman who thinks strategically with a long-term vision, feeling the heavy responsibility of a national leader in time of crisis.

Sincerely,

Michael Anbar, PhD

Amherst, NY