27 Greetings by President Herzog to the Conference on Jewish Solidarity with Israel- 20 March 1989

It is my privilege as President of the State of Israel to greet you on behalf of the people of Israel on the occasion- of this Conference on Jewish Solidarity with Israel, convened by the Prime Minister. I have no doubt but that this Conference will join the distinguished line of the many conferences in the annals of our State, marking the continued solidarity of the Jewish people with the Jewish State. Such solidarity has manifested itself on occasions of major historical events, on occasions of sadness and tragedy, on occasions of struggle and effort, on occasions of victory and success, on occasions of uncertainty and soul searching.

In all cases the solidarity expressed by the Jewish people with Israel was without prejudice to basic differences of opinion and outlook on many issues. It invariably marked a simple assertion of the Jewish people at different stages in the history of our resurrection. An assertion that whatever the differences existing within our camp, and they are legitimate, and they are many and they are all too frequent, one truism emerges. This truism towers above all and reflects the fact that the Jewish people is one. It reflects the fact that there are times when we have to close our ranks and join hands in order to ensure that the great historic experience which we have been privileged to be part of in our generation will continue to advance and succeed for the benefit of all Jews throughout the world, and across the ages.

You are not here as supporters of this or that policy, of this or that individual, of this or that political grouping. You are here as loyal Jews conscious of the momentous nature of the age in which we live and of the challenges which continue to face us, and convinced that there are times when we have to stand together while in no way changing our individual opinions or avoiding our inherent difference.

I congratulate those here who, by their participation, manifest their understanding of the nature of the challenge of this hour and the significance of Jewish unity.

As I stand here there flash upon my inward eye some of the scenes of solidarity which I was privileged to witness during my encounters with world Jewery. I was privileged, as were some of you here, to be present in 1951 as Ben-Gurion was received for the first time as Prime Minister of Israel by the Jews of the United States of America and to witness the never to be forgotten scenes in the streets of New York, Boston and elsewhere, as he passed in parade through them when he came to launch the Israel Bond Campaign. It was to be my privilege to be sent, then a Brigade Commander in Zahal, immediately after the Sinai Campaign in 1956 to address mass rallies in the ma or Jewish communities in the United States, and to witness the rapturous ecstatic outpourings of support which Israel evoked.

I shall never forget the scene when, as first Governor of Judea and Samaria, I escorted the leaders of world Jewry to the Kotel after the Six-Day War and saw them overcome by the deepest emotions. Who can forget the scene in this building at the concluding meeting of the Solidarity Conference in 1968 convened by the then Prime Minister Levi Eshkol after the Six Day War? I shall never forget the scene at the arrival of a solidarity group led by Sam Rothberg to Israel, which left the United States that sad night hours after the conclusion of Yom Kippur in 1973, and arrived in Israel on the morrow. What an outpouring of rejoicing and exaltation characterized Menahem Begin's reception in the United States when he came to sign the first peace treaty between Israel and the leading Arab State, Egypt.

Yes, I can go on and on recounting great emotional heartwarming moments marking the solidarity of the Jewish people with Israel and leading up to this evening of solidarity which comes again at a time of stress and strain and also of challenge and opportunity.

As part of the Jewish family, you have been viewing great episodes which combine to form a mosaic impressive in its significance and historic context. The War of Independence, the Magic Carpet from Yemen, the airlift of almost the entire Iraqi Jewish community, the arrival of North African Jewry, the reunion of Jerusalem, the absorption of almost 200,000 Soviet Jews, Entebbe, the rescue and absorption of Ethiopian Jewry. All these and many more are landmarks which are today taken for granted, but combined they signify the greatness Which is implicit in Israel and in the Jewish people. What a magnificent commentary on our people and on our values, which are alas so frequently overlooked.

We have reached new crossroads. We are experiencing a period of unrest in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. We deeply regret the bloodshed on both sides as we strive to maintain law and order. We have had to overcome repeated onslaughts in the past, and I have no doubt that we will overcome the present wave, aimed, like its predecessors, at undermining Israel's existence. A society's strength is tested by its ability to face crises. But we dare not underestimate the feelings expressed in the unrest, nor should we sanguinely expect it simply to fade away. Irrational and self-destroying persistence has tragically marked previous Arab attacks on Israel. Hatred and violence have led only to bereavement and disaster without solving any problem. Understanding has come too late in every case.

My friends, it is so important at times such as these to emphasize that which unites us while in no way ignoring our internal divisions. Surely, above it all must loom the historic fact of Jewish sovereignty and independence for which generations upon generations of Jews would have given their right hand, nay, their very lives, in order to see for but a moment.

We tend to take our independence for granted. After all, many even in this group have never known a world without an independent Israel. But to those of us who have lived through these historic years, it is impossible to take our independence for granted.

In my period of office it has been my privilege to make State and Official visits to many countries. As I stand and receive the full honors due to a visiting Head of State, as I hear the strains of Hatikva and see our flag proudly fluttering in the breeze, and from a distance see the Jewish welcoming delegations failing to restrain their emotions and tears, it is always the same. I cannot take our independence for granted. Only those who have been witness to the reactions to these expressions of our sovereign independence can fully appreciate what the State of Israel represents in its centrality to the Jewish world.

Our society, a free and democratic one, is engaged in an open debate as to its approach to the problem of peace. The society facing us and all those around us are not free to conduct such an open debate. The Palestinians are not free even to debate publicly the issues facing them, because if they openly express an independent opinion they will become targets for assassination. After all, a mere suggestion of a cease-fire for Christmas evoked three months ago a public threat by Arafat to fill the proposer's chest with ten bullets.

When evaluating our problem you must look the facts in the face. All in Israel want peace. None wish to rule another people, but there are differences of opinion as to how to achieve the peace. I visit a different town, village, kibbutz, immigrant township, industry, border area or military unit every week. Thousands ,of citizens, Jews, Arabs and Druze, visit our home every month. I sense the pulse of our people. All want peace and security. All want Israel to be strong and to live in peace. True, they don't all agree on how to achieve this.

The problem is -exercising not only Jews but Arabs as well. Last Wednesday, I received at their request 80 young people, the student councils of four Arab schools in Nazareth, two Moslem and two Christian, for what proved to be a fascinating dialogue on the prospects for peace. Here they were, as I reminded them, citizens of the only country in the Middle East in which they can meet freely with their Head of State and not only discuss, but debate with him. They engaged in an open discussion and debate on the situation in the territories, on their problems and on the prospects for peace. I could sense their yearning for peace which would free them from the inner conflicts which exercise them today.

You will hear during this Conference the various approaches to the problem we face, which all of us know is not a simple one. You will be free in the course of the many hours allotted to discussion to express your views. But, as one who in almost six years in office has made it a point to meet regularly with responsible and leading Palestinians, I must assure you that there is no easy facile solution. The Palestinian leadership has in the past been characterized' by its ability never to fail to miss an opportunity. The question now facing us with all its grim implications is whether or not this approach has in fact changed or not.

There is no way but peace. There is no solution but through open, free, bilateral negotiations. But this requires the emergence of a fearless, sober Palestinian leadership which will not look back in anger but forward with good will, which will abandon negation of Israel's right to exist, will abandon the path of violence and vile terror and will enter into negotiations without preconditions. Very many Palestinians with whom, as I have noted, I meet regularly, know the truth and understand the problem, but they live in fear of assassination if they speak out publicly. It is only the Palestinians themselves who can save themselves from their dilemma.

When this happens, I am convinced that, just as when President Sadat offered his hand in peace, so the Palestinians will find Israel ready to meet them in a joint effort to bring peace to our country.

I emphasize again that on the various aspects of this issue there is no consensus in Israel. It is the subject of a major political debate. I am not for a moment suggesting that Israel does not face fateful decisions. I am only too aware of the agonizing reappraisals taking place today both in our free society, and amongst the Palestinians who live with us in Israel and in the territories.

My friends, it is easy to discuss our problems at a distance, and write articles in "The New York Times" and offer solutions. It is, to say the least, less easy for those who together with their children will have to bear the consequences should they err. For you it is at best an emotional issue. For us it is a matter of existence. There is an outbreak of civil unrest in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. The choice facing us today is unfortunately not between on the one hand maintaining law and order as any self-respecting society must do, or on the other hand sitting down with the inhabitants of the territories to negotiate an arrangement. The choice is between maintaining law and order, or allowing the situation to deteriorate into a new edition of Beirut or Teheran. That is the cruel choice which faces us today. True, there is criticism at times of Israel's handling of the maintenance of law and order, and nowhere more pointedly than in Israel, in the Knesset or in the media. However, I have yet to see other countries facing similar situations without the use of force. What more effective methods should we use? Those used by our neighbors including, for instance, the killing of 30,000 in the Syrian town of Hama, or during the riots in the inner cities of Britain, or in Northern Ireland, or in the streets of Western Europe, or those that were used in Watts or Detroit or Kent State?

We are a free society facing a dilemma. There are those who accept at face value Arafat's declarations in Algiers and Geneva. There are those who reject them out of hand. There are those who insist that only the facts on the ground and not his words matter. The incontrovertible fact facing our people is that acts of terror mounted by constituents of the PLO continue unabated. Over 20 terrorists have been stopped in their tracks along our northern border in recent weeks on their way to mount indiscriminate attacks on villagers, men, women, and children, in the Galilee. Last week two terrorists sent by the Arafat's own Fatah organization were caught on the Sinai border. Three days ago two terrorists killed a soldier in the Arava on the Jordan border. They were later apprehended by the Jordanians. We see on all sides the alarming rise of Islamic Fundamentalism, We see signs of fearful capitulation to this extreme philosophy in much of Western society. Who would have dreamt that in the free society of the greatest democracy in the world, books would be removed from bookstores because of Islamic fundamentalist terrorist threats? Those selfsame western guardians of free speech, who are capitulating to the threats of terror or are tamely acquiescing in it, are in the vanguard of those who deprecate Israel's doubts and hesitations as to whether or not a terrorist leopard changes its spots. We are witness to a growth of fundamentalism in our own society, as witness the recent municipal elections in Israel, not to mention the developments in the Gaza Strip. Is it not understandable that Israeli society is torn by doubts and hesitations, and that there is no small degree of skepticism coupled with a legitimate debate in our society on the PLO's real intentions, and on the dangers of Islamic Fundamentalism?

My friends, only a few weeks ago I represented Israel in Tokyo at the largest gathering in history of heads of state at the funeral of Emperor Hirohito of Japan. I talked to numerous leaders of the world who had met Arafat of late. They may not have agreed with Israel's declared policy, but most of those I talked to, confirmed to me their impression that he does not control part of the organization, in the name of which he purports to speak and issue commitments. Small wonder that our society facing agonizing decisions is exercised by doubts, by hesitations, by fears as well as by hopes.

But our problem is not that we are at war; our problem is that no war, no confrontations, no disturbances anywhere in the world enjoy the media coverage we get. On any given day, a child throwing a stone in Nablus is almost assured of greater worldwide publicity than any mass killing or atrocity perpetrated by either side in the recent Gulf War, where the killed and injured were estimated to number millions, or in any of the 25 wars being currently waged in the world today.

Or take another example. But a month ago the Department of State in Washington published a report on Human Rights. As far as the section on Israel is concerned, I do not propose at this moment to go into the pros and cons. The issue is a very complex one and in our free and open society is publicly debated in the media, in the Knesset and, indeed, in every major discussion on current events in the territories.

Some of the allegations are serious and must, if substantiated, give cause for very grave concern. I have no doubt that there are cases which warrant corrective treatment which our military authorities invariably deal with. But, my friends, I have the report. It comprises 1600 pages. Of these, 26 pages are devoted to Israel and the territories administered by Israel. A large part of the report is devoted to a routine review and analysis of legal and prison procedures obtaining in Israel, a standard review which is common to reports on all other countries. At the same time the report recounts the most hair-raising stories of horror, torture, murder and lack of human rights, which characterize societies in a very high percentage of the countries in the world today.

I am not in any way saying that the terrifying sub-human standard of human rights in other countries justifies any deviation by Israel from the moral standards that our Jewish tradition adopted by our Jewish State dictate to us. But I ask you in all sincerity - does it not beg a question when out of 1600 pages, the 26 pages on Israel were blown up into the major story on this issue in all the major media in the United States and in some other countries, to the exclusion in most cases of all that was written on the other 1574 pages, reporting on the other 170 countries in the world?

My friends,

Surveying the world Jewish condition from the perspective of Jerusalem, I am concerned. The issues of Jewish identity, of Jewish education, of aliya, have lost none of their urgency, none of their importance. They remain basic to Jewish life.

But I am concerned that in the present difficult times Jewish leadership is allowing our enemies to dictate the form and even the content of the Jewish agenda. I am concerned that some of our people are being manipulated by our enemies. For we are witness to the latest acts in a worldwide play, choreographed by our enemies, staged for the twentieth-century media, with a cast of stone-throwing children, and a ready, willing audience sitting in front of television screens in almost every household in the Western world.

But there should not be any doubt in the minds of any responsible Jewish leader, that the latest disturbances and the public debate surrounding them are not only an argument or a battle about land, or about rights, or about peace. For very many, all too many, of our antagonists the debate is about the right of the Jewish people to have its own State.

The battleground this time is not the Sinai, or the Golan Heights - the battleground is the media, the strategic objective is world public opinion - and the first skirmish is with the Jewish communities overseas. We are familiar with the images of Israel's wars, the soldiers, the tanks, the desert, the hills. But the topography of this battlefield is much more subtle, and therefore much more difficult to deal with. The real battleground this time is not Hebron, Kalkilya, Nablus or Gaza: the battlefield is the minds and ultimately the hearts of the Jewish people. In this situation, there is a clear task and a clear responsibility for Jewish leadership worldwide. And that is to rally our people in a solid, unmistakably clear offensive that will clearly and loudly delineate right and wrong; that will shift the focus back to the real issue in the Middle East away from the back streets of otherwise anonymous Arab villages, where the moral tyranny of the television cameras turns every ugly, squalid incident into the viewing fodder of millions. In this cynical process incidents which occur for instance on an average on any given day in two or three towns or villages in Judea and Samaria are highlighted across the world while the normal daily life in the remaining 150 Arab towns and villages is ignored.

It is time to counterattack; to take back the initiative from our enemies and their sympathizers around the world, and to fight this war on our terms, in territory of our choosing; to regain the offensive.

I state again: the issue at stake is war or peace. Do the Palestinians want to make peace with the Jewish State, or do they want to make war? And if, as many of them assert, they want peace, why are so many following a path of violence, terrorism, and war? That is the central issue, the issue which every Jewish spokesman everywhere in the world must insist be the first question asked on every programme and in every dialogue that deals with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

At a very basic level, if Jews will not show their solidarity with Israel, how can we expect anyone else to? Debating Israel's situation and policies is perfectly understandable but thinking and questioning which is natural and legitimate ought not to affect support that derives in essence from the deep springs of our ancient and modern history. Let us never forget the lessons of the past!

Obviously, and you will doubtless make this point, this emphasizes and presupposes certain responsibilities on the part of the Government and people of Israel in their relation to world Jewry.

The changing conditions of the world in which we live, particularly the power of communications which we are apparently only just beginning to understand, demand a new adjustment on the part of our Jewish community structures and, particularly of our Jewish community leadership. But whatever the conditions, whatever the circumstances, there is a universal first requirement of leadership. That requirement is ideological conviction. The great Hebrew poet Nathan Alterman, who accompanied and interpreted the revival of Israel in his majestic verse, once wrote on what I believe is a dominant issue today facing the Jews of Israel and, indeed, World Jewry, an issue which we all must fact up to. I believe that in his immortal poem he encapsulated the main problem facing this conference and indeed, our people today. I quoted it in the Knesset on the occasion of the inauguration ceremony of my second term as President last May. These are his words, in loose translation:

"...Then Satan said: How can I subdue him? For he has the courage and the ability, The weapons, the resourcefulness and the wisdom. And he said: I will not weaken him, Nor curb nor bridle him, Nor inspire fear in him, Nor soften him as in days of yore, I Will do only this: I will dull his mind And he will forget that his is the just cause."

This is the main issue facing us today. Our belief in ourselves and in the justice of our cause.

In conclusion, my friends,

We must not let our minds and attention be restricted to this particular moment. We are heirs to thousands of years of history and to great ideas and emotions generated during those centuries. Israel is not just a small spot on the map, contested by two nationalisms. Israel is the land that owes its identity to our ancestors whose ideals and whose great Book of Books set it apart from all other lands and gave it a spiritual role of enormous significance in the history of the human race.

Jews, no matter how scattered, have never forgotten this land and never ceased to return to it. In so doing we have given it new life, just as it has given us new life. We have fled to it from oppression but, above all, we have come to it to reweave the tapestry of our collective national existence - to revive the great language of prophet and psalmist, to live once more - and now with a modern accent - on the hills and in the valleys remembered and loved through the ages. Jerusalem and Carmel, Kinneret and Jordan are not simple place names - they are charged with feeling and profoundest associations.

Coming together here, the remnant of our people that survived pogroms and discrimination and then the greatest mass murder of history, during this last century of settlement discovered new energy and new talents in themselves. We have been able to help others with that compound of science and ingenuity and devotion which has produced modern miracles here. We have met our ancestors again and reknitting the history of this land. There is self-knowledge and self-assertion here out of which national strength and creativity grow.

For the Jewish people and Jewish history there is no substitute for Israel. We have created it in blood and sweat and tears - and prayer and memory and thought. We will make every endeavor to live in understanding and practical coexistence with our neighbors, and to advance the peace process, but the concept of the centrality of Israel for the Jewish people must remain paramount.

Let us go forth from this Conference fortified in our faith and belief, and in the justice of our cause, and united in our resolve to sustain and strengthen it.