Fundamentally Freund

The Hidden Cost of Israel's Restraint

Over the past few months, Israel has deliberately refrained from using overwhelming force to stop the ongoing Palestinian rocket attacks against Jewish towns and cities in the Negev.

The result has been daily barrages against Israeli communities, which continued even after the start of yesterday's precarious cease-fire.

But there is a hidden cost to Israel's inexplicable restraint, as some newly published research now reveals.

A study conducted by Tel Hai College has found that at least one-third (!!) of the children in the Negev town of Sderot suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

According to Prof. Moli Lahad, who oversaw the study, at least one parent of each of these children likely also suffers from PTSD. "These grave figures stem from the fact that the parents' basic security in their ability to protect their children has been completely shaken," Lahad said. "About a third of the population - adults and children­- suffers from acute anxiety, meaning that any occurrence is immediately interpreted as a threat and people spend their entire lives 'on alert.'"

According to the experts, PTSD in children can lead to a range of effects, from sleep disturbances to greater impulsiveness and aggressiveness to anxiety disorders and even to depression.

Oddly enough, one of the reasons that Israel has not gone in to Gaza in full force has been the fear of how this might affect Palestinian civilians.

But as the Tel Hai research demonstrates, Israel's leadership has failed to take into account how its policy might impact Israeli civilians.

And since a government's primary responsibility is to protect its own people, it is time for our leaders to wake up and take notice. Because by failing to stop Palestinian terror, they are directly harming the future not only of our children, but of the country itself.

The Return of a Lost Tribe to Zion

This past Monday evening, I had the privilege of accompanying 51 new immigrants from the Bnei Menashe of India - descendants of a lost tribe of Israel - on the flight home from Bombay to Tel Aviv.

This very special event was a long time in coming - for the past 3 1/2 years, since Israel's Interior Ministry shut down the Bnei Menashe aliyah in the summer of 2003, I have waged a long and protracted struggle to reverse the decision and restart the aliyah.

Thank G-d, that has now finally come to pass - and by the middle of next week, we will have brought over 218 Bnei Menashe Jews to Israel.

Below is an article I wrote on the plane ride over here, describing some of my thoughts and feelings regarding this very special miracle.

May we merit to witness many more such miracles in the days ahead.

An Eyewitness Account:

An aliya voyage across the millennia from India

By Michael Freund

EN ROUTE TO ISRAEL: For Arbi Khiangte, Monday evening's regularly scheduled El Al flight out of Bombay was far more than just an eight-hour long trek across the ocean.

Born and raised in the northeastern Indian state of Mizoram, which straddles Burma and Bangladesh, the striking 21-year-old is a member of the Bnei Menashe, a group that traces its ancestry back to a lost tribe of Israel.

Since childhood, Khiangte has dreamed of moving to the land of her ancestors, the Land of Israel.

With a bright and infectious smile beaming with optimism, she told me of her strong desire to take part in building the country.

"I want to be a nurse," she said. "I want to help Israel, to heal the people there. I hope that I will succeed."

Now, after years of waiting, Khiangte will at last have a chance to do so. Together with 50 other members of her community, she made aliya this week as part of the first batch of 218 Bnei Menashe immigrants set to arrive here in the coming week.

As chairman of Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based organization responsible for assisting the Bnei Menashe both in India and in Israel, I was blessed to accompany Khiangte and the rest of the group on their voyage home to the Jewish state.

And while flying El Al is always an experience, this particular trip was something truly special.

The excitement in the air was palpable, despite the late hour and the obvious exhaustion that everyone clearly felt. The immigrants had left their hotel near the seashore at 4:30 p.m. in order to allow enough time for their bus to crawl its way through Bombay's daunting rush-hour traffic.

More than two hours later, they arrived at the airport, where they had to make their way through security, check-in and passport control before boarding the flight at around 11:00 p.m.

It had been a long and tiring afternoon, but that didn't stop Gavriel Joram, an energetic 14 year old, from joking around with some of his fellow Bnei Menashe, lightening the mood for all those present.

Previously, in a somewhat more serious frame of mind, Gavriel had shared with me his hopes and dreams for the future.

"I want to be a soldier, and to defend the country," he told me, the earnestness in his voice moving me deeply.

"I love Israel," he said, without a hint of the cynicism or sarcasm to which we in the West have become so accustomed.

What compelling proof for the power of the Jewish spirit, I thought to myself.

After all, the Bnei Menashe trace their ancestry back to Menashe, one of the 10 tribes of Israel exiled by the Assyrians some 27 centuries ago.

Despite wandering in exile for so long, they managed to preserve a strong sense of pride and Jewish identity, keeping Shabbat, following the laws of family purity, circumcising newborn males on the eighth day and passing down across the generations a deeply held belief that they would one day go home again to Zion.

And now, here they are, doing just that.

Of the 218 Bnei Menashe that are making aliya, the youngest immigrant is an infant born just two weeks ago, while the oldest is 84-year-old Sara Haunhar, whose lifelong dream has always been "to set foot on G-d's Holy Land before I die."

Waiting for her at Ben-Gurion Airport was her grandson, who arrived here several years ago. Dressed in the green fatigues of the IDF, he proudly serves in an intelligence unit, bolstering the security of his fellow Jews.

It might sound somewhat silly, or even naive, but I truly believe that the Bnei Menashe aliya is a miracle of immense historical and even biblical significance.

Just as the prophets foretold so long ago, the lost tribes of Israel are being brought back from the Exile.

In the past decade, we succeeded in bringing nearly 1,000 Bnei Menashe to Israel under an arrangement with the Interior Ministry, whereby 100 Bnei Menashe were allowed to come here each year as tourists. They would study for conversion, and usually within a year of their arrival, they would pass the test and be accepted as Jews.

But all that came to an end in the summer of 2003, after we brought a group of 71 Bnei Menashe to Israel. The newly-appointed interior minister at the time, Avraham Poraz of the Shinui Party, decided to shut down the Bnei Menashe aliya once and for all, putting it into the equivalent of a bureaucratic deep-freeze.

As a result, thanks to the whims of one man, the 7,000 Bnei Menashe still in India suddenly found themselves with no hope of joining their loved ones in the Jewish state.

In the wake of that decision, I approached Israel's Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and asked him to consider issuing a ruling regarding the halachic status of the Bnei Menashe, just as the Rabbinate has done regarding other Diaspora communities in the past.

The chief rabbi readily agreed, and in March 2005, after studying the issue, he formally recognized the Bnei Menashe as "descendants of Israel," confirming their claim to Jewish ancestry. Then, in September 2005, he sent a rabbinical court to India, which formally converted the 218 Bnei Menashe who are now moving here this week.

This is the largest group of Bnei Menashe ever to come here at one time, and it is the first group to arrive in three and a half years. More importantly, however, it marks the first time that the Bnei Menashe are coming here as Jews, recognized as such by all concerned.

And so, the moment they stepped off the plane at Ben-Gurion airport yesterday, they became Israeli citizens in every respect, part and parcel of Israeli society.

Every once in a while, there are moments in life when you feel like you are not just witnessing history, but actually playing a part in helping to shape it. The flight out of Bombay was just such a moment.

And as I accompanied Arbi Khiangte and her fellow Bnei Menashe on their long journey home, I couldn't help but feel that we were witnesses to something far more significant than perhaps any of us might realize.

Because as much as we might think that we are helping the Bnei Menashe, it is the reverse that is true. It is they who strengthen us - with their faith, with their commitment and with their undying love for Zion.

At one point, when I asked Arbi Khiangte why she thinks it is so important to move to Israel, tears welled up in her eyes.

"The Holy One, Blessed be He, commanded us to live there," she says. "It is a mitzva, and it is one that my ancestors have been waiting for so long to fulfill. I am happy that we are now finally going to do so."

And so, I might add, are we.

Welcome home, Arbi, and may your arrival pave the way for the rest of the Bnei Menashe to follow.

From "Blood Libel" to "Land Libel"

For a continent that prides itself on the glory and depth of its civilization over the centuries, Europe sure has a lot of work still to do when it comes to its treatment of the Jewish people.

For hundreds of years, European attitudes toward the Jews were essentially shaped by a spiteful and malicious lie.

And in that sense, at least, very little seems to have changed.

For while they once charged us with the “blood libel”, saying that we illicitly used other people’s blood, various European leaders now falsely tar us instead with “land libel”, asserting that we have taken other people’s territory.

And just as they once blamed the Jews for all sorts of catastrophes, such as the Black Death, they now seek to lay various world crises at our doorstep, too.

Take, for example, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's address the other day at a banquet in London, where he outlined his view of how to resolve the crisis in the Middle East.

In an astonishing display of delusion masquerading as analysis, Blair essentially sought to convince his audience that the "core" of all the region's troubles - and yes, even those of Iraq - are somehow connected with the Jewish state.

"A major part of the answer to Iraq lies not in Iraq itself but outside it, in the whole of the region," Blair said, adding that it is necessary to adopt what he terms a "whole Middle East" strategy.

And then, after suggesting that the current focus on Syria and Iran is misplaced, Blair added the clincher: "On the contrary, we should start with Israel/Palestine. That is the core."

The core?

What on earth is he talking about?

To suggest that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is somehow connected with the Baathist insurgency in Iraq, or with Syria's desire to strangle Lebanon, or Morocco's occupation of Western Sahara, or Sudan's acts of murder in Darfur, or any of the myriad other intra-Arab conflicts in the region, is not only intellectually vacuous, it is downright silly.

Worse yet, it is a cheap and transparent attempt to mollify the Arab states by parroting their party line of "don’t blame us for our region's troubles, blame the Jews".

In promoting this hogwash, Blair is deflecting attention from the real, underlying cause of the region's ills, namely, the Arab world's lack of freedom, democracy, tolerance and mutual respect.

While courting the Arabs may prove useful to Mr. Blair as he plans for his retirement next year, we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that it will make the Middle East a safer or more peaceful place.

Instead, it is just one more sorry example of just how Europe's underlying approach toward the Jew has yet to really change.

You Don't Make Peace with Your Enemies

Just the other day, Yossi Beilin was at it again.

In an interview on Israel Radio, the dovish head of the Yahad/Meretz faction in the Knesset spoke about the need to start negotiations with Syria in an effort to reach a peace deal with the Dictator from Damascus, Bashar al-Assad.

It doesn't seem to matter one whit to Mr. Beilin that Assad is a ruthless tyrant who has been busy aiding Hizbullah in Lebanon, the insurgents in Iraq, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. Assad's hands may be full of blood, but Beilin just can't wait to shake them anyway.

Nor, it seems, does Syria's beating of the war drums seem to dissuade him. Just yesterday, Syria's Information Minister echoed remarks made by Assad in recent months, threatening that if Israel did not hand over the Golan Heights, Damascus might resort to "other means, which struggling people have used at various points in history, beginning with legitimate resistance".

Similarly, Israel's military intelligence now reportedly believes that Syria and Hizbullah are planning to launch another round of conflict with the Jewish state next summer.

It just goes to show how wrong the left has been in asserting that, "you can only make peace with your enemies." This may be a good sales slogan, but it is intellectually vacuous. The fact of the matter is that you don't make peace with your enemies – you make it with your former enemies. And this is not just an issue of semantics. When someone is out to get you, you can't fool yourself into thinking that smiling at him a couple of times will change his mind.

What Beilin and his comrades on the left fail to understand is that Syria is gearing up for war – verbally, psychologically and militarily. All the evidence points in that direction, and wishful thinking on Israel's part won't make it go away. Hence, Beilin's call for peace talks with a nation that is preparing to strike at Israel is as naïve as it is dangerous.