MORE FOR FATHER'S DAY
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ters Yitzhak Shamir and Benjamin
Netanyahu.
This time the Likud, which
returned to power in March 2001
through Sharon, as well as the other
parties of the right, know the price
of leaving the government, Cohen
said — "the infiltration of the left."
There remains one group that is
not likely to back down, however.
With their dream of settlement out-
posts spreading through the West
Bank vanishing with a flick of
Sharon's pen, settlement leaders are
fighting back, hitting Israelis where
it hurts most — their Holocaust
solar plexus.
A poll released Sunday by the daily
Yediot Achronot showed that 56 per-
cent of Israelis support the road map
as a way of restarting peace talks —
even though they're pessimistic about
where the talks will lead. Settlement
activist and former legislator Elyakim
Haetzni minced no words in an
interview on Israel Radio, comparing
Israelis who support the road map to
Jews who "willingly boarded those
trains" to concentration camps,
believing everything the Germans
told them."
"The Jews are a people which is
very dangerous to itself. It is a people
that has brought holocausts down on
itself throughout the course of its
history," he said.
The use of such Holocaust imagery
shows how threatened the right feels
by the plan — and by the fact that
Sharon, considered the patron of the
settlement movement, had agreed to
it.
"This time it's different," explained
David Wilder, a leader of Hebron's
Jewish community. "At Camp David,
we had a prime minister [Ehud
Barak] who was working on his own.
He was a loner, operating without
any government backing.
"Here it is a governmental deci-
sion, here we have a group of 24
ministers making a decision that is
binding, accepting a Palestinian state
and all of its implications."
Wilder believes that settler leaders
will bond together like never before
to launch fierce demonstrations
against the plan. The concessions of
the road map, coming after nearly
800 Israelis have been killed in the
Palestinian intifida (uprising),
indeed are analogous to the
Holocaust, he says.
So furious are the settlers with
Sharon that they have begun to
describe him as an apikoros. The
term refers to apostates who, shortly

-

Lost in America:
A journey with My Father

Israel insight

THE ISSUE

By Sherwin B. Nuland. A memoir
about ties between a father and son.

Although disagreements exist
among the nations involved in
pushing forward the latest Middle
East peace plan, known as the road
map — particularly in regard to
whether Israel must take risks prior
to Palestinian "performance" in
fighting terror — recent polling of
American public opinion provides
those endorsing the "performance
before risk-taking model" with sig-
nificant support.

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BEHIND THE ISSUE

Silk Star
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Polls taken earlier this year by
Gallup and other polling organiza-
tions found that more than two-
thirds of Americans think Israel
should insist on an end to terrorism
before making concessions to the
Palestinians. In addition, the polls
found that 64 percent of Americans
have a favorable impression of Israel,
with 85 percent endorsing closer ties
between the U.S. and Israel.
— Allan Gale, Jewish Community
Council of Metropolitan Detroit

He has lots of ties... but does he
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before the fall of the biblical Second
Temple, accepted and glorified the
dominant non-Jewish culture —
even though the Romans wished for
the Jews' destruction.
Settlers fear a civil holocaust that
could rip the fabric of Israeli society
to shreds — especially if a final
peace agreement calls for dismantling
the settlements in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip, which are now home to
more than 200,000 Jews.

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Shoah Rhetoric

Still, the idea of unifying Israelis
around the flag of settlement out-
posts — especially wielding the
charged rhetoric of the Holocaust —
could further polarize the public.
Despite the passage of almost 60
years, "Israelis are still not immune
to references to the Holocaust," said
Dr. Danny Brom, director of the
Israel Center for the Treatment of
Psychotrauma.
"It serves to express and create
fear" by projecting the image of
"how horrible things can get if you
don't follow a certain political opin-
ion," he said.
"But Israeli politicians have
learned their lessons," Cohen added.
"They'll scream and shout, but at the
end of the day, they remember who's
the boss here."

le

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