En Rivkah? O, almagtige Here-God, Adonai Tzva’ot, sy het vir my kosbaarder geword as my lewe. U het haar vir my kosbaarder laat word, weet ek. Beskerm haar, o Here-God, beskerm haar. Moenie dat sy bang wees nie. Moenie dat ek bang wees nie. Moenie dat ek glo ek sal haar ook verloor nie. Nie vir haar nie. Gryp haar in u hand vas, God van Israel!
Die volgende oggend slaap hy later as gewoonlik en kom eers ná tien in die woonkamer aan waar Ruwth vasgenael voor die televisiestel sit. Hy kan nie dadelik agterkom wat aangaan nie, want dis op ’n Hebreeuse kanaal, maar die nou reeds bekende tonele kom hom tegemoet en hy hoef die taal nie te verstaan nie. Die algehele verwoesting van ’n restaurant. Stoele en tafels onderstebo, repe van die plafon wat uit die dak hang, oral bloed. Die Ortodokses in hul wit plastiekpakke, groen onderbaadjies met Hebreeuse woorde daarop geskrywe, swart kippot, geelbleek, geskokte gesigte, besig om die onnoembare in plastieksakke bymekaar te maak. Slagoffers wat in ambulanse gelaai word, verwese omstanders. Loeiende sirenes. Soldate en veiligheidspersoneel.
“Sh’ma, Yisra’el, Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad …” prewel hy sonder dat hy dit agterkom.
Maar Ruwth het hom gehoor. Sy staan op en slaan haar arm om sy skouers. “Selfmoordbom gisteraand in ’n restaurant in Haifa – vyftien dood, baie kritiek. In Efrat is ses ander afgemaai en heelwat beseer.”
Hy skud sy kop en het moeite om die gesig van die jong Joodse man wat met hom op die stadsmuur gepraat het voor die gees te roep. Aan sy koninkryk sal daar geen einde wees nie, het hy gesê.
“Dit het nou bekend geword dat daar in Maart 2002 alleen meer as honderd en twintig Israeli’s in selfmoordbomaanslae gesterf het en meer as duisend is beseer. Sommige se toestand is nog kritiek,” dreun die stem van die nuusleser op die televisieskerm.
Hulle sit nog en drink tee toe die aankondiging kom: Sharon het Arafat as vyand verklaar en hy gaan terroristeneste rondom Jerusalem opruim. Operation Defensive Shield noem hy dit. Marc kyk geskok na die bejaarde eerste minister se lykbleek, vermoeide gesig op die skerm. “Israel is op ’n kruispad,” sê hy in sy swaar stem, “ons veg vir niks minder as ons tuiste nie. Dit is nie ’n oorlog van ons keuse nie, maar een wat op ons afgedwing is. En ons sal hom wen.”
Ruwth huil. “Ek het geweet hy gaan dit doen. Daar kan nie langer uitgestel word nie. Ná die seder-slagting het ek geweet hy gaan dit doen. Nou sal die wêreld ons nog meer haat, want Israel sal weer die aggressor wees en die Palestyne die onskuldiges wie se grond ons beset. El Gibbor, wees ons genadig!”
Marc tel die Jerusalem Post op wat langs haar stoel op die grond lê, en sy oog val op die artikel van Charles Krauthammer wat sy besig was om te lees.
Arafat’s harvest of hate
September 11 awakened the Americans to the anti-American vitriol in the state-controlled media of such apparently friendly states as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. We are just beginning to understand how a daily diet of hatred fed through schools and the media – a hatred quietly incubating for years – found its most perfect expression in the slaughter of September 11.
We have failed, however, to see how a similar campaign of hate has laid the groundwork for the orgy of murdersuicide the Palestinians are now engaged in. A mother appears on videotape proudly sending her eighteen-year old to his death just so he can kill as many Jews as possible. This is unprecedented. Before the Oslo peace accords of 1993 suicide bombing was a practice almost unheard of amongst Palestinians.
And it is not as though they had no grievances before 1993. On the contrary. The advent of suicide bombing coincides precisely with the era of Israeli conciliation and peacemaking; recognition of the PLO, repeated concessions of territory, establishment of the Palestinian Authority, acceptance of an armed Palestinian police – all culminating in the unprecedented offer of an independent Palestinian state with its capitol in a shared Jerusalem. It is precisely in the context of the most accommodating, most conciliatory, most dovish Israeli policy in history that the suicide bombings took hold.
Where did they come from? During the last eight years – the years of the Oslo “peace process” – Palestinian Authority Chairman, Yasser Arafat, had complete control of all organs of Palestinian education and propaganda. It takes unspeakable hatred for people to send their children to commit Columbine-like murder-suicide. Arafat taught it. His television, his newspapers, his clerics have inculcated an anti-Semitism unmatched in virulence since Nazi Germany.
When US peace negotiator Dennis Ross stepped down last year, he acknowledged, to his credit, that a major error of diplomacy in the Clinton years was turning a diplomatic blind eye to the poisonous incitement in Palestinian media. Just as Osama bin Laden spent the nineties indoctrinating and infiltrating in preparation for murder, Arafat raised an entire generation schooled in hatred of the “Judeo-Nazis”. This indoctrination goes far beyond expunging Israel literally from Palestinian maps. It goes far beyond denying, indeed ridiculing, the Holocaust, as a Jewish fantasy. It consists of the rawest incitement to murder, as in the sermon by Arafat-appointed and Arafat-funded Ahmad Abu Halabiya broadcast live on official Palestinian Authority early in the Intifada. The subject is “the Jews”. (Note: not the Israelis, but the Jews.)
“They must be butchered and killed as Allah the Almighty said: ‘Fight them: Allah will torture them at your hands’ … Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them.”
The rationale offered for such murderousness is Jewish villainy as taught not just in Palestine, but throughout the Arab world. On March 10, for example, an article in the official Saudi newspaper al-Riyadh, described in rich detail how the Jews ritually slaughter Christian and Muslim children to use their blood in their holiday foods. With almost comic pseudo-scholarship, it explained that for one holiday (Purim) the Jew must kill an adolescent, but for Passover the victim must be ten years or younger.
When the article achieved wide notoriety in translation, the editor apologized under pressure. He said he was out of town when the article appeared. An odd excuse, given the fact that this elaborate blood libel ran as a two-part series.
A precondition for peace is to prepare our children for peace. Egypt’s Anwar Sadat did that after signing his peace treaty with Israel. The Israeli’s did that after signing Oslo. They changed their textbooks and altered their civic culture to recognize and accept the Palestinians. On the 50th anniversary of Israel’s Independence, for example, Israel Television aired an epic multipart historical documentary that offered a view of the Palestinians that was deeply sympathetic and understanding.
While Israeli leaders, both political and intellectual, were preparing their people for peace, Arafat was preparing his people for war – the war he unleashed two months after rejecting Israel’s Camp David peace offer of July 2000 – with an unrelenting campaign of anti-Semitic vilification carried out by every organ of his media. And how he has succeeded! When Arafat’s state-controlled media glorify a “martyrdom operation”, it is not just a commendation of the murderer, it is a vindication of their own pedagogy. We now see its fruits in the streets of Jerusalem where the blood from the latest suicide bombing graces the third floor of surrounding buildings.
Toe hy van die koerant af opkyk, ontmoet hul oë. “Waarom?” vorm sy mond die woord geluidloos.
“Dis nie ’n politieke stryd nie, Marc, dit gaan nie eens om landgebied nie. Dis ’n stryd in die hemele tussen duisternis en lig. Tussen Islam en hulle wat die Naam van die Lewende God verteenwoordig. Dis ’n stryd tussen die koninkryk van die Duisternis en die Koninkryk van HaMashiach.”
Marc aarsel ’n oomblik voordat hy praat: “Daar het gisteroggend iets … vreemds met my gebeur …”
“Wat dan?” vra sy dadelik gevoelig vir die intonasie in sy stem.
Hy weet onmiddellik dat hy dit nie in woorde sal kan omsit nie. Maar hy kan nou ook nie stilbly nie.
Ná ’n paar oomblikke begin hy onbeholpe: “Nadat jy my afgelaai het, is ek teen die muur uit na waar ’n mens ’n uitsig oor die Joodse buurt het. Dit