DID SHIMON PERES KNOW--AND WHAT ABOUT US? Hillel Fendel writes in Arutz Sheva:

In fact, Peres himself, in a book he wrote in 1978 (Tomorrow is Now, Keter Publishers, Jerusalem; page 232), accurately outlined the dangers of a Palestinian state:

"The establishment of such a [Palestinian] state means the inflow of combat-ready Palestinian forces (more than 25,800 men under arms) into Judea and Samaria; this force, together with the local youth, will double itself in a short time. It will not be short of weapons or other [military] equipment, and in a short space of time, an infrastructure for waging war will be set up in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. Israel will have problems in preserving day-to-day security, which may drive the country into war, or undermine the morale of its citizens. In time of war, the frontiers of the Palestinian state will constitute an excellent staging point for mobile forces to mount attacks on infrastructure installations vital for Israel's existence, to impede the freedom of action of the Israeli air-force in the skies over Israel, and to cause bloodshed among the population in areas adjacent to the frontier-line."

So what happened? Why has Peres gone along with this today?

Last year, I wrote a post quoting an idea from Rabbi Yisroel Reisman that the underlying principal of Secular Zionism is yei'ush, despair. He said that politicians such as Shimon Peres do not advocate the policies they do because they are stupid, but rather because of the sense of despair that is part of what Zionism is and where it historically comes from. After all, Theodore Herzl's Zionism originated as a reaction to Anti-Semitism, to a threat to Jews, seeing the only hope for Jewish survival in the creation of a Jewish State.

A friend of mine mentioned an idea that he heard that one of the underlying forces behind the surrender of territory that we are seeing is itself a subconscious reaction against Judaism and the frum Jews in society. It is as if to strike back against religious Jews and what they say is holy and special and intrinsic to Israel--and then b'shitah to give it away in the interests of peace in the real world.

I don't know what the reason is, but I lean towards the idea of yei'ush as the cause. As Jews, we do not seem to have handled the idea of holiness, of kedusha, too well. We tend to surrender it, without a fight.

• Hebrew--Lashon HaKodesh--was to a large degree abandoned in favor of Yiddish, leaving it to Eliezer ben Yehudah, an irreligious Jew, to create modern Hebrew today.
  
  
• Chumash we abandoned to the Bible Critics.
  
  
• Nach has been abandoned to Christians, who seem to be more familiar with it than we are.
  
  
• The Temple Mount...you know the story.
  
  
• And the land itself--Eretz HaKodesh--is given away at the slightest excuse.

Jonathan Rosenblum wrote in an essay about Torah Extremism and its Opposite:

Indeed Goldwater’s defense of extremism was preceded by the Chazon Ish. In Igros Chazon Ish (III, 61), the Chazon Ish identifies extremism as deriving from the quest for perfection, and writes that without extremism perfection is impossible. Those who are forever proclaiming their disdain for extremism, he writes, "will inevitably find themselves consorting with counterfeiters [of Torah] and the feeble-minded."

We seem as a group to lack the inner-strength to insist on what is ours historically, legally, and Biblically. Muslims are not alone in having religious claims, but if we as Jews do not repeatedly, consistently and confidently express our right to what is ours--and take a stand--then we will surely lose it all. We will continue to find ourselves with the US dictating feeble-minded ideas requiring that Israel unilaterally make concession after concession to a known terrorist group led by a weak, ineffectual and corrupt leader.

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