An Israeli government working against the interests of the Jewish People?

A colleague who researches anti-Semitism has recently objected to those who describe current Israeli government policies as reminiscent of anti-Semitic regimes of the past. The goal in writing about these issues is to inform, alert, and arouse to action those who care about Israel. It is most certainly not my intention to provoke those who at heart do understand the matters that are of such critical concern.

Thus, I will reframe the discussion here. Then perhaps the matters at hand will be more readily understood. The picture, in any event, is not a pretty one. It is, in fact, sufficiently distressing so as to defy belief. But what I will say here is so. I invite queries and further investigation.

Please consider the following ways in which the government of Israel has behaved or intends to behave, all of which put Jewish lives at risk:

1. In spite of the fact that the PLO has fired 6,000 mortars into Gush Katif and the Negev, no major operation to stop these attacks has been conducted. A government interested in protecting its population would do so.

2. In fact, while the government is fully cognizant of the fact that there are areas of Israel where the PLO has issued death sentences for Jews, it fails to react to this.

3. What is more, for political reasons, the government releases from prison Arabs who have been convicted of attempted murder and first degree murder to be freed from prison. This has been done despite the fact that hundreds of convicts previously freed resumed murder activity after their release.

4. In a particularly bewildering and perverse decision, the government has allowed the Palestinian Authority curriculum — which runs the first school system since the Third Reich to inculcate war specifically against Jews — to be integrated into the Israeli Arab school and even provides funds for that curriculum.

5. The government additionally lends to the Palestinian Authority public air waves that the P.A. uses for its TV and radio to convey an anti-Semitic invective — endorsing the cold blooded murder of Jews.

6. As part of the so-called “disengagement” the government is preparing to provide high ground strategic locations to the PLO in Samaria — locations that overlook all of the coastal plain of Israel — even though the PLO remains at war with the state of Israel and there is evidence of increased stockpiling of weapons.

7. The government, in line with that same “disengagement,” is also preparing to permit development of a sea port and airport for the PLO, even though it remains at war with the state of Israel.

8. Coordination with the P.A. for the “disengagement” is being handled from the Palestinian side by Muhammad Dahlan. Israeli Minister of Defense has sat with him. Yet Dahlan, in years past, was clearly identified as being responsible for coordinating terrorist attacks, including a bombing of a school bus.

9. In addition to all of this, there is another factor at play that certainly smacks of an “anti-Jewish” tone, even if that is not what the government specifically and deliberately intended. Because both the residents of Gush Katif and the dissenters to the “disengagement” are primarily religious Jews, religious Jews have been demonized by their government. They are represented as working against the best interests of Israel — as being a violent threat to Israel, and their rights have been curtailed. The tone of the government and the actions of the government in this regard have been deplorable.

10. The government has wantonly cancelled fundamental private property rights of home owners and farm owners, and decided that Jews in certain locations will simply not benefit from basic human rights and civil liberties.

11. The government has decided to train its army to evict its own citizens.

12. The government has established special squads to blow up synagogues andYeshivas.

13. The government has ordered mass arrests of demonstrators, hundreds of whom are under 14, and kept them in prison as “ideological criminals,” while not applying the same standards to those who organize the same kind of protests for other causes.

14. The government ordered the arrest of 320 bus drivers to stop them from driving demonstrators en route to a prayer vigil against government policy.

15. The government has made rules that people wearing kippot cannot attend a public event where the Prime Minister is speaking.

The government of Ariel Sharon is anti-Semitic.

However, this government has (for whatever perverse or distorted reasons) taken actions and formulated policies that are not in the best interests of the Jewish population of Israel — that work quite clearly AGAINST Jews.

Acting in the best interests of the Jews of Israel is precisely what the government should be doing.

Something is seriously amiss. So seriously that we should all be screaming about it.