In 1982, the late Rabbi Meir Kahane wrote in The New York Times, ?There is one sublime reason why we should not give up a centimeter of land: it belongs to us! … the land belongs to us because the G-d of Israel, Creator and Titleholder of all lands, gave it to us.?
Rabbi Kahane went on to explain that there is no such thing as the ?Palestinian people.? He wrote, ?They are Arabs, part of the Arab nation, possessors of 21 lands. Let them live in peace in any or all of them. But there are no 'Palestinians.?
?The Roman emperor Hadrian, who, after the Jewish revolt against the Romans, angrily erased the name of the state, Judea, invented the name ?Palestine? after the Philistines. In every normal case, an existing people gives its name to a land. The Franks named their land France and the Angles, England, and the Germanics, Germany. Only in this ludicrous case does a Roman invent a name, give it to a land, and the arriving Arab trespassers become ?Palestinians.??
Commenting on how many Arabs have been killed in the conflagration between the Arabs and the Jews, Kahane wrote, ?I wonder how many mourned and protested the killing of German civilians during the World War II bombings of Berlin, Hamburg, and Dresden…?
Kahane?s article dealt with guilt. ?Guilt is a powerful weapon,? he wrote, ?Jews have a difficult time coping with it. A people that has been most debased as losers for 2,000 years finds it difficult to cope with victory… It begins to believe its enemies? slanders. It loses its self-respect and longs for the love of a hating world. It is important that those who have retained their self-esteem and sense of Jewish survival speak out against the disease of guilt and moral insecurity.?
Kahane pointed out that the Arabs are not killing Jews because of land. He wrote, ?Arabs are determined to kill Jews. … And what did they (the Arabs) wish in 1947 when they rejected the 'Palestine? state offered them by the United Nations and went to war, killing fully one percent of the population? And what did they wish in the riots of 1936-38 when there was no country called Israel and they murdered 500 Jews? And in 1929, when no 'Zionist occupation troops? were in Hebron, why did the Palestinians rise up to murder 67 Jews in one day? And why the pogroms in Jerusalem and Jaffa in 1920 and 1921??
Kahane?s voice from the grave reminds us that appeasement has never worked for Jews. When will Rabin and Peres understand this?
