To participate in the on-site media reception, to attend the dinner as a representative of the media, to set up interviews with Mr. Feiglin, or for details of Mr. Feiglin's 12-day US tour please contact us at (516) 295-3222.
March 2, 2009...
Manhigut Yehudit – Jewish Leadership – will hold its 7th annual dinner at The Sands of Atlantic Beach on Shushan Purim, 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, March 11, 2009. The dinner is dedicated to the memory of the ten brave IDF soldiers who lost their lives fighting the enemy in the recent war in Gaza. Keynote speaker will be Moshe Feiglin, co-founder and President of Manhigut Yehudit. The event will include a special movie presentation and remarks by Shmuel Sackett, co-founder and Manhigut’s International Director.
An acclaimed speaker – and a man with a vision – Moshe Feiglin is rapidly becoming an influential figure in Israel’s ruling Likud party. He encourages American Jews to be active participants in his straightforward program to transform the State of Israel into an authentic Jewish State. Mr. Feiglin will offer his behind-the-scenes insights into Israeli politics, the latest elections and coalition negotiations, and what they mean to us.
Manhigut Yehudit is building alternative leadership for Israel – leadership based on Jewish concepts and values. Manhigut seeks to remedy the ills of Israeli society with a Jewish approach: to properly educate our children – religious and secular alike – and restore pride in the IDF. Jewish leadership will establish a court system with true representatives of the Jewish people, and populate the Land – “Yisrael HaShleima.”
Manhigut Yehudit is honoring several of its outstanding supporters. The guests of honor will be Zev (Vladimir) and Chaya Sarah (Elina) Lamm of Brooklyn. Joining them as honorees will be: Dr. Paul and Drora Brody of Great Neck – Eretz Yisrael Award, Rachelle Kirschner of Kew Gardens Hills – Eishet Chayil Award, Jeff Cohen and Pam Derby of Hillside, NJ – Young Leadership Award, and Aryeh and Jolene Sonnenberg of Ramat Beit Shemesh, Israel – Lev Yehudi Award.
Dinner guests will be treated to the latest Manhigut production, “Campaign 2008” – a comprehensive and exciting video presentation of the Likud primaries. The movie chronicles Moshe Feiglin’s Knesset campaign, with powerful media clips and footage not previously available to the public.
Advance reservations are required. Free round-trip transportation from Brooklyn. For dinner reservations, visit www.jewishisrael.com or call (516) 295-3222.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
Moral Blindness on Gaza
By Alan M. Dershowitz FrontPageMagazine.com February 04, 2009
Bill Moyers holds himself out to be a moral arbiteur, based in large part on
his commitment to Christian principles. Cardinal Renato Martino is a prince
of the Catholic church and President of the Council for Justice and Peace.
Former President Jimmy Carter preaches peace, based on the teachings of
Jesus. Yet when it comes to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, all three
are morally blind.
In a widely watched television assessment of the recent conflict in Gaza,
here is what Moyers said: "By killing indiscriminately the elderly, kids,
entire families, by destroying schools and hospitals, Israel did exactly
what terrorists do…" (emphasis added) Of course he also included the
obligatory hedge that: "Every nation has the right to defend its people."
Cardinal Martino went even further, making an obscene and historically
ignorant, comparison between Israel's self-defense actions against rockets
fired by Hamas at Israeli children, and the Nazi genocide against the Jews
during the Holocaust. He said that the conditions in Gaza "resembles a big
concentration camp." Concentration camps, of course, were places where Jews were held until they could be processed through the machinery of death, as part of a massive genocidal program that willfully murdered 6 million Jews. Any comparison
between Israel's action in Gaza and those of Nazis during the Holocaust is
not only obscene, it is blatantly anti-Semitic, which is supposed to be a
sin under Vatican law. (It is apparently not, however, a sin for a Catholic
bishop to deny that the Holocaust occurred at all, since Bishop Richard
Williamson of Great Britain was welcomed back into the Catholic church after
claiming that there were no gas chambers and that the Jews are lying when
they say that 6 million of them were killed, when according to that bigot in
robes, a mere 300,000 Jews died during the entire Holocaust. The batty
bishop—who, like the Taliban, opposes higher education for women—also
believes that no airplanes were involved in the 9/11 attack and that the
buildings were blown up by explosives and rockets, presumably set and fired
by the United States and Israel.)
An essential aspect of Christian teaching, and especially of Catholic
teaching, is the important principle that distinguishes between
intentionally killing an innocent person, and unintentionally killing an
innocent person in the process of legitimately trying to prevent harm to
one's self or others. This concept, known as the principle of double effect,
is central to Catholic theology. It traces its roots to Thomas Aquinas and
has had enormous influence on moral thinking not only within the Catholic
Church, but throughout Christianity and indeed in the secular world as well.
Understanding and complying with this principle may literally mean the
difference between eternal damnation and eternal salvation. That's how
important it is.
Except, apparently, when it comes to the Jewish state of Israel. Then
suddenly moral blindness makes it impossible for church authorities to see, understand or apply this principle. Cardinal Martino is not the first church leader to try to create moral equivalence between the actions of Hamas in willfully and proudly trying to kill as many Jewish children, women and other civilians as possible, and the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces
in trying to stop them from killing Jewish children, while inadvertently
killing some Palestinian civilians who are used as human shields by Hamas.
The Pope himself has been guilty of invoking such moral equivalence between
these very different actions. Indeed it is fair to say that the Vatican's
entire approach to the Israel-Hamas conflict has been to suggest a false
moral equivalence.
Church leaders know better. They understand precisely what they are doing.
They are making utilitarian, pragmatic and very anti-Catholic cynical
judgments calculated to bolster the influence of The Church in the Middle
East. It might be understandable for secular nations to act in so amoral, if
not immoral, a manner, but it is entirely unacceptable for the Catholic
church, which eschews utilitarianism and preaches moral consistency and
absolutism to act in so cynical a way.
This is especially troubling, because the church tends to forget its own
teachings primarily when it deals with the Jewish people and the Jewish
state. Its long history of discrimination and bigotry against Jews, slaughtering entire Jewish communities on the way to the Crusades, murdering entire Jewish communities during the inquisitions, fomenting pogroms, and signing a pact with Hitler during the Holocaust—should make it even more concerned about applying a double standard of morality to the Jewish state. But that's exactly what it does. And then it complains when critics point to this obvious double standard.
This abuse of great Christian teaching is not limited to the Catholic
church.
Bill Moyers and Jimmy Carter both hold themselves out as exemplary
Protestants, whose morality drives from the teachings of Jesus. Yet they too
create false moral equivalence between willful murder, and self-defense that
sometimes results in accidental killings because Hamas deliberately uses
human shields in order to make it impossible for Israel to defend its own
civilians without occasionally killing Palestinian civilians. How else could
one read Moyers statement that what Israel did "was exactly what terrorists do." Exactly? Well not exactly! Not even close. As different as anything could be based on principles that Moyers' espouses in other contexts. Listen to a leading military expert—retired British Colonel Richard Kemp, who concluded, based on his extensive experience, that there has been "no time
in the history of warfare when an Army has made more efforts to reduce
civilian casualties…than [the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza]." Is that
"exactly what terrorists do," Mr. Moyers?
Jimmy Carter is even worse. He doesn't even see moral equivalence. He blames everything on Israel. Jimmy Carter should look in the mirror more often and he will see that he himself bears much of the blame for the death and destruction that he deplores. In his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, he says it would have been "suicidal" for Yasser Arafat to accept the
generous offer made by Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak at Camp David in Taba.
Remember that that offer included independent statehood for the Palestinian
people on all of the Gaza and 97% of the West Bank, an end to all Jewish
settlements, no checkpoints, a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem and a
$35 billion refugee reparation package.
Think for a moment of what Carter is saying when he warns that any
Palestinian leader who might accept such an offer would be assassinated.
What is he saying about the Palestinian people? That they will never accept
peace without violence? That they will always kill their leaders who make
peace with Israel, as the Muslim brotherhood murdered Anwar Sadat of Egypt,
and as Muslim extremists killed the first King Abdullah of Jordan. Whether
he advised Yassir Arafat before the fact to reject the Camp David offer,
which the evidence strongly suggests, or whether he is merely making that
suggestions to future Palestinian leaders, he has clearly become a barrier
to peace. If he in fact told Arafat to reject the offer, then he is an
important contributing cause to the current crisis.
The sad reality is that religious doctrines are as easily manipulated by
cynical churchmen as anything Thomas Bentham ever proposed in the name of
utilitarianism.
Bill Moyers ended a letter to the New York Times in which he defended his
moral equivalency statement by saying that to be indifferent to suffering is
"to be as blind as Sampson in Gaza." No, Mr. Moyers, to be indifferent to
the crucial difference between what terrorists do, namely try to kill as
many civilians as possible from behind human shields, and what democracies
such as Israel and the United States do, namely try to stop terrorists from
killing with the minimum possible injury to civilians, is truly to be
"eyeless in Gaza."
________________________________________
Alan M. Dershowitz is a Professor of Law at Harvard. His most recent book
The Case Against Israel's Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who
Stand In The Way of Peace is being published by Wiley at the end of this
month.
Bill Moyers holds himself out to be a moral arbiteur, based in large part on
his commitment to Christian principles. Cardinal Renato Martino is a prince
of the Catholic church and President of the Council for Justice and Peace.
Former President Jimmy Carter preaches peace, based on the teachings of
Jesus. Yet when it comes to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, all three
are morally blind.
In a widely watched television assessment of the recent conflict in Gaza,
here is what Moyers said: "By killing indiscriminately the elderly, kids,
entire families, by destroying schools and hospitals, Israel did exactly
what terrorists do…" (emphasis added) Of course he also included the
obligatory hedge that: "Every nation has the right to defend its people."
Cardinal Martino went even further, making an obscene and historically
ignorant, comparison between Israel's self-defense actions against rockets
fired by Hamas at Israeli children, and the Nazi genocide against the Jews
during the Holocaust. He said that the conditions in Gaza "resembles a big
concentration camp." Concentration camps, of course, were places where Jews were held until they could be processed through the machinery of death, as part of a massive genocidal program that willfully murdered 6 million Jews. Any comparison
between Israel's action in Gaza and those of Nazis during the Holocaust is
not only obscene, it is blatantly anti-Semitic, which is supposed to be a
sin under Vatican law. (It is apparently not, however, a sin for a Catholic
bishop to deny that the Holocaust occurred at all, since Bishop Richard
Williamson of Great Britain was welcomed back into the Catholic church after
claiming that there were no gas chambers and that the Jews are lying when
they say that 6 million of them were killed, when according to that bigot in
robes, a mere 300,000 Jews died during the entire Holocaust. The batty
bishop—who, like the Taliban, opposes higher education for women—also
believes that no airplanes were involved in the 9/11 attack and that the
buildings were blown up by explosives and rockets, presumably set and fired
by the United States and Israel.)
An essential aspect of Christian teaching, and especially of Catholic
teaching, is the important principle that distinguishes between
intentionally killing an innocent person, and unintentionally killing an
innocent person in the process of legitimately trying to prevent harm to
one's self or others. This concept, known as the principle of double effect,
is central to Catholic theology. It traces its roots to Thomas Aquinas and
has had enormous influence on moral thinking not only within the Catholic
Church, but throughout Christianity and indeed in the secular world as well.
Understanding and complying with this principle may literally mean the
difference between eternal damnation and eternal salvation. That's how
important it is.
Except, apparently, when it comes to the Jewish state of Israel. Then
suddenly moral blindness makes it impossible for church authorities to see, understand or apply this principle. Cardinal Martino is not the first church leader to try to create moral equivalence between the actions of Hamas in willfully and proudly trying to kill as many Jewish children, women and other civilians as possible, and the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces
in trying to stop them from killing Jewish children, while inadvertently
killing some Palestinian civilians who are used as human shields by Hamas.
The Pope himself has been guilty of invoking such moral equivalence between
these very different actions. Indeed it is fair to say that the Vatican's
entire approach to the Israel-Hamas conflict has been to suggest a false
moral equivalence.
Church leaders know better. They understand precisely what they are doing.
They are making utilitarian, pragmatic and very anti-Catholic cynical
judgments calculated to bolster the influence of The Church in the Middle
East. It might be understandable for secular nations to act in so amoral, if
not immoral, a manner, but it is entirely unacceptable for the Catholic
church, which eschews utilitarianism and preaches moral consistency and
absolutism to act in so cynical a way.
This is especially troubling, because the church tends to forget its own
teachings primarily when it deals with the Jewish people and the Jewish
state. Its long history of discrimination and bigotry against Jews, slaughtering entire Jewish communities on the way to the Crusades, murdering entire Jewish communities during the inquisitions, fomenting pogroms, and signing a pact with Hitler during the Holocaust—should make it even more concerned about applying a double standard of morality to the Jewish state. But that's exactly what it does. And then it complains when critics point to this obvious double standard.
This abuse of great Christian teaching is not limited to the Catholic
church.
Bill Moyers and Jimmy Carter both hold themselves out as exemplary
Protestants, whose morality drives from the teachings of Jesus. Yet they too
create false moral equivalence between willful murder, and self-defense that
sometimes results in accidental killings because Hamas deliberately uses
human shields in order to make it impossible for Israel to defend its own
civilians without occasionally killing Palestinian civilians. How else could
one read Moyers statement that what Israel did "was exactly what terrorists do." Exactly? Well not exactly! Not even close. As different as anything could be based on principles that Moyers' espouses in other contexts. Listen to a leading military expert—retired British Colonel Richard Kemp, who concluded, based on his extensive experience, that there has been "no time
in the history of warfare when an Army has made more efforts to reduce
civilian casualties…than [the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza]." Is that
"exactly what terrorists do," Mr. Moyers?
Jimmy Carter is even worse. He doesn't even see moral equivalence. He blames everything on Israel. Jimmy Carter should look in the mirror more often and he will see that he himself bears much of the blame for the death and destruction that he deplores. In his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, he says it would have been "suicidal" for Yasser Arafat to accept the
generous offer made by Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak at Camp David in Taba.
Remember that that offer included independent statehood for the Palestinian
people on all of the Gaza and 97% of the West Bank, an end to all Jewish
settlements, no checkpoints, a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem and a
$35 billion refugee reparation package.
Think for a moment of what Carter is saying when he warns that any
Palestinian leader who might accept such an offer would be assassinated.
What is he saying about the Palestinian people? That they will never accept
peace without violence? That they will always kill their leaders who make
peace with Israel, as the Muslim brotherhood murdered Anwar Sadat of Egypt,
and as Muslim extremists killed the first King Abdullah of Jordan. Whether
he advised Yassir Arafat before the fact to reject the Camp David offer,
which the evidence strongly suggests, or whether he is merely making that
suggestions to future Palestinian leaders, he has clearly become a barrier
to peace. If he in fact told Arafat to reject the offer, then he is an
important contributing cause to the current crisis.
The sad reality is that religious doctrines are as easily manipulated by
cynical churchmen as anything Thomas Bentham ever proposed in the name of
utilitarianism.
Bill Moyers ended a letter to the New York Times in which he defended his
moral equivalency statement by saying that to be indifferent to suffering is
"to be as blind as Sampson in Gaza." No, Mr. Moyers, to be indifferent to
the crucial difference between what terrorists do, namely try to kill as
many civilians as possible from behind human shields, and what democracies
such as Israel and the United States do, namely try to stop terrorists from
killing with the minimum possible injury to civilians, is truly to be
"eyeless in Gaza."
________________________________________
Alan M. Dershowitz is a Professor of Law at Harvard. His most recent book
The Case Against Israel's Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who
Stand In The Way of Peace is being published by Wiley at the end of this
month.
The Day Netanyahu Used Murder To Become Prime Minister
by Barry Chamish
I asked you not to vote. But only a third agreed.
So here is what is being connived for you wasting your time:
The "nationalist" camp won 65 seats, while the "moderate" camp won 55 seats, including 11 Arab parties. The Jews swamped the "peace" camp. But that camp had one party that got the most votes, Kadima, and the nation's president, Shimon "the Pieman" Peres, comes from Kadima. So, although the nationalist leader Binyamin Netanyahu could put together a government in a matter of days, the "moderate" leader Tzipi Livni will get the first shot at government-building by Peres. It's going to take a pile of bribery and blackmail but she's going to cobble together a coalition including Yisrael Beitenu, Shas, Labor, and get ready, if the fight becomes deadly enough, even their true ideological partner, the Likud.
Sounds bizarre, the loser becomes the winner? It's nothing. I was on court, front and center, for the rigging of the 1996 Israeli elections by Netanyahu. Now follow closely, I rarely have the opportunity to be nostalgic.
On April 3, 1997, I was supposed to lecture at Hebrew University on Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin, organized by my still formidable friend, Brian Bunn. As it turned out, the Labor Party led by Knesset member Eitan Cabel, and the secret service, Shabak, organized a violent rally against me that turned me into front page news. The intent was to humiliate me, the result was to start my new career as a political crimes writer. Not that I'm thanking them. They didn't mean to and it's an insecure life. Not that there aren't rewards, like you reading this.
The morning after the riot, I received a phone call from Yaacov Mor. He introduced himself as, "The economist for the Minister of Welfare And Social Affairs, Eli Yishai." Today Yishai is the leader of the Shas Party. Mor continued, "But I previously worked for the Shabak. What I want to know is what you have that made the Shabak try to bury you."
So I invited Mor to my home to see my evidence. Back then I had some 80 documents, not the 2500 I ended up with, but they were devastating in proving Yigal Amir did not shoot Rabin. I had the police ballistics results showing that Rabin was shot at point blank, something Amir could not have physically done, and I had the hospital reports declaring that Rabin was shot 3 times, and once from the front, neither of which Amir was responsible for.
Yaacov was a naturally sympathetic fellow, and without hesitation I handed him my evidence collection, which he read in silence over the next half hour. When he finished, he put his right index finger vertically over his lips and used his left hand to guide me outside. When we reached the street, he said, "I'm not talking in your house. You have to be thoroughly bugged. Do you know those documents are authentic?"
I said I did.
"Then why didn't you get a job in Nepal or have an 'accident?' Do you know how high up this murder had to go?"
I answered that I did know how high up it had to go.
"I'll tell my Minister what I saw and I'm sure he'll contact you."
The next morning Eli Yishai's secretary called me. "Minister Yishai would like to have your documents and in return, will give you the most important story of the Rabin assassination. Do you agree?"
Indeed I did. In fact, I would have given the documents anyway, that's how much I still believed in the inherent honesty of the political system. That would change for good in the next two days.
Bright and chipper, Yaacov picked me up for the cheery ride to building Kirya 3, opposite the Knesset, and home to Eli Yishai's office. I made a little error, giving my documents to the secretary before I closed the deal. She guided me into a small office, closed the door, and I heard a vigorous conversation in the hall outside. Finally, the Shas Spokesman, Yisrael Sudri, then 24 or so, and today I believe he holds the same job, came in, shut the door behind him and sat down.
"The Minister could not attend the meeting," he announced, "But he wants you to know that he backs every claim I will make."
A bit of a comedown but I accepted the arrangement, like I really had a choice.
"It's about the 1996 elections...Netanyahu didn't win. Peres won by 3% just like all the polls had it. But the Likud had documents, and we think you've collected some of them. We're sure of it, actually. In February of '96, the leaders of the Likud met the leaders of Labor for a frank discussion of the elections. The Likud presented the documents, then someone, we think Netanyahu, held a few in his hand and said, 'If you bring up the name of Yitzhak Rabin even once in your campaign, we'll release these to the media." Netanyahu lifted another bundle of documents and said, 'If Peres wins our tv debate, we'll release these." Finally, he takes all the documents and says, "And if Peres wins the elections, we'll release them all."
"Now, I don't have to remind you that Rabin's name was not mentioned once in Labor's campaign and that Peres looked like a scary monster on the tv debate. But how could the election results be faked? We are going to leave you the name and phone number of a Tel Aviv law school PhD candidate. His thesis is on the '96 elections. He'll tell you."
I arranged to meet the PhD lawyer-to-be at a very empty and remote Tel Aviv restaurant. We sat in the remotest table and he made his voice inaudible at a range of five meters, in fact he almost whispered the whole meeting. It turns out, it didn't help.
"This Labor-Likud partnership destroyed over 160,000 votes for Peres, and replaced them with spoiled ballots."
Back to the present. That's almost 5% of the vote spoiled. In the 2000 elections, there was a highly publicized campaign to deliberately spoil votes as a protest, and 'only' 61,000 were spoiled.
"Think back to the election night. Peres is declared the winner by all the polls but refused to address and thank his crowd in Tel Aviv. But at midnight, a smiling Netanyahu addressed a half empty rally in Jerusalem promising them that by morning he will be Prime Minister. Then at 2 AM, the revolution in vote change appears out of nowhere. By the morning, Netanyahu wins. He knew the results were fixed."
I added an obvious thought. "So the Likud's documents proved Peres murdered Rabin?"
He gazed at the table and answered, "Is there another possibility?"
The lawyer-to-be added, "I trust you. I have strong proof that the vote destruction was organized by Interior Minister Chaim Ramon. Contact me tomorrow and we'll meet again to see my thesis."
The next day, he called me. "I got a phone call. We can't meet." I asked, "Do you mean today?" He replied, "I mean ever." He banged down for good and I don't recall his name.
But I told his story to audiences whenever I felt it was appropriate. The usual reaction was, "So why didn't Netanyahu use the documents to get rid of Peres and Labor for good?" The answer is Labor and Peres have enough information on Netanyahu to have made this a one election deal. That'll do until and if the whole story is ever told by someone who was there.
Then, in Bet Shemesh in 2001, I told the story to a crowd of over 80 and one response hit the jackpot. The man added, "I was an election poll supervisor and when the polls closed, we took votes for Peres out of the boxes and burnt them out back. We replaced them with spoiled votes and resealed the boxes. I never understood who allowed this to happen, but I didn't want Peres elected so I played ball."
As for story back-up, my Bet Shemesh organizer was David Morris. Another 80 people heard the truth about this man's polling station at the lecture. As for Sudri, I chose to expose him after he appeared at Peres' 80th birthday bash. I was protesting outside when he appeared. I told him, "How could you celebrate Peres? I know what you told me?" He
walked by, then turned around and shouted, "You're ruining the country."
So when I suggest that voting props up a political system run by murderers and their aiders and abetters, recall that as Shimon Peres gives Tzipi Livni the nod to form a coalition including Eli Yishai's Shas Party. But if Netanyahu is somehow given the first shot, recall that he still holds the big cards on Peres.
Watch me at:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E9A044AE24067CBA&playnext=1
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3557853190547322236
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7088685722391870150&q=chamish&total=58&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBt-LxzXllA
I asked you not to vote. But only a third agreed.
So here is what is being connived for you wasting your time:
The "nationalist" camp won 65 seats, while the "moderate" camp won 55 seats, including 11 Arab parties. The Jews swamped the "peace" camp. But that camp had one party that got the most votes, Kadima, and the nation's president, Shimon "the Pieman" Peres, comes from Kadima. So, although the nationalist leader Binyamin Netanyahu could put together a government in a matter of days, the "moderate" leader Tzipi Livni will get the first shot at government-building by Peres. It's going to take a pile of bribery and blackmail but she's going to cobble together a coalition including Yisrael Beitenu, Shas, Labor, and get ready, if the fight becomes deadly enough, even their true ideological partner, the Likud.
Sounds bizarre, the loser becomes the winner? It's nothing. I was on court, front and center, for the rigging of the 1996 Israeli elections by Netanyahu. Now follow closely, I rarely have the opportunity to be nostalgic.
On April 3, 1997, I was supposed to lecture at Hebrew University on Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin, organized by my still formidable friend, Brian Bunn. As it turned out, the Labor Party led by Knesset member Eitan Cabel, and the secret service, Shabak, organized a violent rally against me that turned me into front page news. The intent was to humiliate me, the result was to start my new career as a political crimes writer. Not that I'm thanking them. They didn't mean to and it's an insecure life. Not that there aren't rewards, like you reading this.
The morning after the riot, I received a phone call from Yaacov Mor. He introduced himself as, "The economist for the Minister of Welfare And Social Affairs, Eli Yishai." Today Yishai is the leader of the Shas Party. Mor continued, "But I previously worked for the Shabak. What I want to know is what you have that made the Shabak try to bury you."
So I invited Mor to my home to see my evidence. Back then I had some 80 documents, not the 2500 I ended up with, but they were devastating in proving Yigal Amir did not shoot Rabin. I had the police ballistics results showing that Rabin was shot at point blank, something Amir could not have physically done, and I had the hospital reports declaring that Rabin was shot 3 times, and once from the front, neither of which Amir was responsible for.
Yaacov was a naturally sympathetic fellow, and without hesitation I handed him my evidence collection, which he read in silence over the next half hour. When he finished, he put his right index finger vertically over his lips and used his left hand to guide me outside. When we reached the street, he said, "I'm not talking in your house. You have to be thoroughly bugged. Do you know those documents are authentic?"
I said I did.
"Then why didn't you get a job in Nepal or have an 'accident?' Do you know how high up this murder had to go?"
I answered that I did know how high up it had to go.
"I'll tell my Minister what I saw and I'm sure he'll contact you."
The next morning Eli Yishai's secretary called me. "Minister Yishai would like to have your documents and in return, will give you the most important story of the Rabin assassination. Do you agree?"
Indeed I did. In fact, I would have given the documents anyway, that's how much I still believed in the inherent honesty of the political system. That would change for good in the next two days.
Bright and chipper, Yaacov picked me up for the cheery ride to building Kirya 3, opposite the Knesset, and home to Eli Yishai's office. I made a little error, giving my documents to the secretary before I closed the deal. She guided me into a small office, closed the door, and I heard a vigorous conversation in the hall outside. Finally, the Shas Spokesman, Yisrael Sudri, then 24 or so, and today I believe he holds the same job, came in, shut the door behind him and sat down.
"The Minister could not attend the meeting," he announced, "But he wants you to know that he backs every claim I will make."
A bit of a comedown but I accepted the arrangement, like I really had a choice.
"It's about the 1996 elections...Netanyahu didn't win. Peres won by 3% just like all the polls had it. But the Likud had documents, and we think you've collected some of them. We're sure of it, actually. In February of '96, the leaders of the Likud met the leaders of Labor for a frank discussion of the elections. The Likud presented the documents, then someone, we think Netanyahu, held a few in his hand and said, 'If you bring up the name of Yitzhak Rabin even once in your campaign, we'll release these to the media." Netanyahu lifted another bundle of documents and said, 'If Peres wins our tv debate, we'll release these." Finally, he takes all the documents and says, "And if Peres wins the elections, we'll release them all."
"Now, I don't have to remind you that Rabin's name was not mentioned once in Labor's campaign and that Peres looked like a scary monster on the tv debate. But how could the election results be faked? We are going to leave you the name and phone number of a Tel Aviv law school PhD candidate. His thesis is on the '96 elections. He'll tell you."
I arranged to meet the PhD lawyer-to-be at a very empty and remote Tel Aviv restaurant. We sat in the remotest table and he made his voice inaudible at a range of five meters, in fact he almost whispered the whole meeting. It turns out, it didn't help.
"This Labor-Likud partnership destroyed over 160,000 votes for Peres, and replaced them with spoiled ballots."
Back to the present. That's almost 5% of the vote spoiled. In the 2000 elections, there was a highly publicized campaign to deliberately spoil votes as a protest, and 'only' 61,000 were spoiled.
"Think back to the election night. Peres is declared the winner by all the polls but refused to address and thank his crowd in Tel Aviv. But at midnight, a smiling Netanyahu addressed a half empty rally in Jerusalem promising them that by morning he will be Prime Minister. Then at 2 AM, the revolution in vote change appears out of nowhere. By the morning, Netanyahu wins. He knew the results were fixed."
I added an obvious thought. "So the Likud's documents proved Peres murdered Rabin?"
He gazed at the table and answered, "Is there another possibility?"
The lawyer-to-be added, "I trust you. I have strong proof that the vote destruction was organized by Interior Minister Chaim Ramon. Contact me tomorrow and we'll meet again to see my thesis."
The next day, he called me. "I got a phone call. We can't meet." I asked, "Do you mean today?" He replied, "I mean ever." He banged down for good and I don't recall his name.
But I told his story to audiences whenever I felt it was appropriate. The usual reaction was, "So why didn't Netanyahu use the documents to get rid of Peres and Labor for good?" The answer is Labor and Peres have enough information on Netanyahu to have made this a one election deal. That'll do until and if the whole story is ever told by someone who was there.
Then, in Bet Shemesh in 2001, I told the story to a crowd of over 80 and one response hit the jackpot. The man added, "I was an election poll supervisor and when the polls closed, we took votes for Peres out of the boxes and burnt them out back. We replaced them with spoiled votes and resealed the boxes. I never understood who allowed this to happen, but I didn't want Peres elected so I played ball."
As for story back-up, my Bet Shemesh organizer was David Morris. Another 80 people heard the truth about this man's polling station at the lecture. As for Sudri, I chose to expose him after he appeared at Peres' 80th birthday bash. I was protesting outside when he appeared. I told him, "How could you celebrate Peres? I know what you told me?" He
walked by, then turned around and shouted, "You're ruining the country."
So when I suggest that voting props up a political system run by murderers and their aiders and abetters, recall that as Shimon Peres gives Tzipi Livni the nod to form a coalition including Eli Yishai's Shas Party. But if Netanyahu is somehow given the first shot, recall that he still holds the big cards on Peres.
Watch me at:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E9A044AE24067CBA&playnext=1
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3557853190547322236
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7088685722391870150&q=chamish&total=58&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBt-LxzXllA
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