I would appreciate you passing the following note along for me to the Labor Party of Australia, as mentioned in the Age news report below.

My daughter Malka Chana was born in Melbourne in November 1985 and murdered in Jerusalem in August 2001. To the best of my knowledge, her violent and ugly death at the hands of Arab “resistance forces” did not merit any protest — or indeed any attention — from you.

Like Kate Edwards (or Kate Irving), she was an Australian energetically in favour of peace. Entirely unlike Ms Edwards-Irving, Malki engaged in meaningful actions which brought good to the world, chiefly by working with teenagers and children suffering from profound disabilities. Ms Irving-Edwards, in contrast to my sweet daughter, chose to make her grand contribution in the one place which, more than any other, outstandingly exemplifies the hypocrisy and shallowness of logic of Israel’s enemies.

Beit Jala is a hamlet on the edge of Jerusalem. It’s the place from which Arafat’s forces have directed deadly fire into the suburbs of Israel’s capital on a daily and nightly basis for eighteen months. There’s no strategic point to it whatever. Their agenda is pure terrorism. The Israeli army is well equipped and professional, but also civilized and restrained. Had Israel chosen to do to Beit Jala what Arafat’s thugs have done to the Park Hotel in Netanya, to the Matza restaurant in Haifa or to the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem — the place where Malki and fifteen other innocents were viciously robbed of the remainder of their lives — it could have solved the problem by making it completely and permanently go away.

But there is no moral equivalence between our side and their side. I don’t know of any actions taken by other governments which compare with Israel’s restraint in the face of the evil emanating from Beit Jala and places like it.

The dangers we face here are real, as my wife and children and I can explain in detail to you, if you’re in any doubt about the issue. Thanks to Arafat, we find ourselves on the battlefront when we’re sitting in our living room, traveling to work, or going out for a coffee. Israelis are entitled to the fullest protection that the government can provide. No “peace” protestor like Kate should ever be allowed to compromise that protection in any way.

I realize the Middle East seems far away to you. But the terrorist evil against which Israel’s citizen army is engaged in these difficult days deserves a healthy degree of respect. The dangers of that evil are real, concrete and international. You may even see them in Australia. If not now, then perhaps in the future.

The foolishness and woolly thinking typified by Ms Edwards-Irving’s presence in suburban Jerusalem, and its political echoes in Australia, bring no credit to her, to her colleagues or to those who confuse right from wrong in the name of partisan politics. With terror on the agenda, you have to pick your side, which is what Kate did.

Thanks,

Arnold Roth

Arnold Roth is Father of Malka Chana, murdered last August by PLO terrorists

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