Israeli soldiers are trained to fight other soldiers in combat. They were utterly unprepared for the malicious confrontation of women and children pouring out against them in verbal and physical assault. Had our soldiers advanced to halt the rioting mob, the international press (allowed into the country due to Israel’s democratic standards) would have photographed Israeli soldiers “brutally mistreating innocent Palestinian women and children.” Yet the press failed to cover the preceding Palestinian provocation and assault when Israeli soldiers sustained injuries. The Israeli restraint increased the fervor of the “intifada,” because they interpreted it as the “coward” Israel retreating in fear before the heroic Palestinian martyrs and their courage. Curses and threats of slaughter filled the air. The presence of such a vast number of international press and their one-sided reporting exerted a powerful influence on the uprising, triggering off new riots even in villages formerly peaceful. More and more of the action appeared to be “staged” as a special “performance” for the press. And the press obliged with a concentration of the events in the territories and comparatively little coverage of the riots. A total imbalance was thus created with the world focusing on and fretting about the “territories.” 

Never have I seen a more powerful example of overt manipulation of public opinion. While enjoying the hospitality of this democratic country, the journalists liberally and reprehensibly crucified it. This they could not do in any of the Arab countries, where press is censored and access to international press is limited and monitored.

Dear friends, with the wool pulled over our eyes that easily, WW III is lurking on the door steps, even the ghastly shadow of another Holocaust. And the U.S. leads in this unbalanced appraisal of the situation, forgetting the plight of her own soldiers who had to fight Vietnamese women and children. Thanks to the world opinion favoring the Palestinians, the “intifada” has gained in strength, momentum, barbarism and savagery, and exposes Israel to the deadly peril of paralysis. 

Another group  that suffers alongside Israel right now is that of the Palestinian urban workers. They are as yet a small segment of Arab society who constitute a class not particularly amenable to militancy against Israel. They lean toward a willingness to accommodate themselves to peaceful co-existence with Israel, benefitting from Israel’s modernity, advanced educational system, democratic freedom and social benefits. In the present uprising (as was also the case with the first intifada) they find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place as it were, being on the “wrong” side which ever way they turn: if they don't cooperate with the demands of the PLO to participate in the riots, to stay away from their place of work in Israel, to resign from any work place with the Civil authorities and to keep their shops closed, they are threatened with the ravaging of their entire property, and with injury or death to themselves and family members. 

Several East-Jerusalem merchants who opened their shops contrary to PLO orders issued over their radio station, lost all they had with their stores burnt to the ground. A prominent Arab leader and restaurant owner, Mohammed Ayed, of the village Kabatiya, was lynched for his cooperation with Israel, and hung naked by his feet atop a high utility pole. During this recent intifada such brutal lynching of “collaborators” became the norm, dragging them afterwards face down through the streets of their town or village to instill fear of even only thinking to live in peace with Israel. 

But if they are eventually getting dragged into the uprising, after they tried to avoid it even by remaining near their place of work, sleeping there sometimes for weeks without returning home, they are liable to get arrested by the Israeli police or soldiers at some point of time, and jailed. Israeli reservists agonize over being sent into the territories and there confronted with one of their Palestinian workers, some of whom have become their friends. It is an all-pervading Israeli every-day paranoia, one of the powerful forces that has split Israel in half about the continuation of occupation in the territories. Compassion for the true plight of those Palestinian workers, Israel's own desperate need for security to assure survival, and the inevitable consequences of PLO hate- and terror-indoctrination of those people, tears at the Israeli heart.

No one, NO ONE who is not himself part of this situation can judge what this is like. Israeli’s high humanitarian standards due to their religious ethics compels them with compassion toward those who innocently suffer in this drama like themselves, while the inescapable need to secure their survival against a vast host of enemies, determined to annihilate them, is equally compelling. Two gigantic forces highly charged with emotion clash, every day --- right in Israeli hearts, compounded to almost unbearable degree by the world's hostile anti-Israel stance. The division this has caused within our own ranks is the most painful of all.

Friends, I could go on and on. Nothing has changed, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, in the final goal of the Arabs. Only their tactics and strategies have changed. Even Anwar Sadat, the man hailed as a “Prince of peace” by the West, never had changed his mind about the ultimate Arab goal concerning Israel. He declared to the Egyptian people in a radio speech on the feast of the birthday of the prophet Mohammed on 25. April 1972: “As I have told you in the past, we must stand up in patience and quiet, the patience of the faithful and the quiet of one sure of himself. We must be patient and quiet, to prepare ourselves.” Then, in October of 1973, he led the advance against Israel on Yom Kippur, his “strategic genius” having conceived of the idea to attack Israel on her most solemn of holy days, when all of the population would be gathered in synagogues, weakened by the total fast, cut off from all information and transportation, since on Yom Kippur even radio and TV are silent and neither buses, trains nor planes move. It was the ONLY victory the Arabs achieved against Israel in that war, due to that particularly vicious aspect of surprise.

It was at the occasion of celebrating with great fanfare THIS only victory against Israel (following the peace-treaty with Israel in the Camp-David accords), at which Sadat was assassinated. Through treachery he sought to destroy Israel, and through treachery he was himself destroyed. 

A careful reading of  Isaiah 30:1-7, and 31:1-3, will reveal, how G-d regards this peace-treaty, and those who made it. First, the U.S. was brought to her knees in the sight of the whole world by an Iranian madman, and then President Carter was not re-elected. Prime Minister Menachem Begin literally stumbled, never to recover his health, and then his political career crashed suddenly like a break in a high wall, bulging out, and about to collapse⁶³, while Sadat was killed. Together, all three perished permanently from the world political scene.

The West, whose culture is built on secular thinking and the quest for instant gratification, cannot fathom the calm fatalism inherent the religious optimism of the Arab Muslims. That optimism justifies the retention of ambitions even though they remain far from realization.

Were Sadat or King Hussein “moderate” because they call for Israel’s elimination in stages and not in one violent thrust? LikewiseJordanian intentions toward Israel have never been appreciated for what they are. Even so mundane a thing as a TV weather chart betrays Jordan's true position: non-recognition of Israel. For Jordan’s boundaries include “Palestine” up to the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea and to Lebanon. There is no Israel on Jordan's map. The West is just simply unable to perceive and appreciate the Arab mentality. This has led to an ever increasing error in  appraising the situation, with Israel slipping into a precarious position⁶⁴.