The Arab terrorist who murdered him had slipped through from the "West Bank" when Israel removed roadblocks and checkpoints meant to catch him in a concession to international pressure.
This young man was one of only 1,500 Jewish civilians slaughtered in the endless trail of blood which came in the wake of Israeli concessions from the Oslo accords. All the terrorists who carried out the attacks came into Israel by avoiding the very checkpoints Mr. Batah so hates.
I went to this young man's parents' home to offer my condolences. They lived in a dingy little apartment on Jaffa Street. I mumbled a few words of condolences to his elderly parents, then quickly left. I really did not know what to say.
I am so terribly sorry this man's "sister" had to stand outside at an Israeli checkpoint in the sun. The young man at work will not have the luxury of suffering at an Israeli checkpoint. He's dead, along with all of his hopes and dreams.
We are tired of the endless Arab incitement against us. It saddens me that even The Valley Reporter has become a vehicle for anti-Israel propaganda. Isn't that a little out of your paper's purview? And if you must deal with the Middle East, shouldn't your paper defend the victims of terror instead of its supporters?
As Iran's Achmadinejab works feverishly to prepare the atomic bomb to "wipe Israel off the map," all we hear about in the media is how downtrodden the poor "Palestinians" are. Let me be clear. Israel will not allow the Muslims to carry out a second Holocaust. We will no longer put our fate in others' hands and wait for an indifferent world to save us. We will defend ourselves with all means necessary -- even if the world continues to condemn us. We will no longer go like sheep to the slaughter.
By the way, Israel is currently the only country in the Middle East to have a democratically elected Arab minister -- Minister of Science Raleb Majadele. He recently called for dismantling Israel as a Jewish state. Another Arab member of the Israeli parliament, Azami Bishara, was recently caught handing classified Israeli security documents to the Hizbullah. I have no idea why Israel grants special rights to those who publicly call for its destruction.
But in principal I agree with the author of the letter that Arabs should have equal rights to Jews in Israel. Why must Israeli Jews serve three years in the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli Arabs are exempt? Why do most Israeli Arabs not pay property taxes? Why must my taxes pay for their infrastructure?
Perhaps your readers have heard of an author called Mark Twain. He visited the land of Israel in 1867 and describes what he saw there in his book The Innocents Abroad: "A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. We reached Tabor safely.... We never saw a human being on the whole journey." This description is matched by those of dozens of other visitors to the land over a century ago. So much for the "ancient" Palestinian "people."
The Arab world can invent any kind of "indigenous people" they want. We will not give in to Arab colonization. The Arabs will just have to make do with the 22 countries they already have (greater than the size of the U.S.) because we are not going to let them steal from us the world's only Jewish state (smaller than the state of Vermont).
After 2,000 years of living and being treated as strangers in other people's lands, God is calling his children home. "If your exiled ones will be at the edge of the heavens, from there God will gather you and from there will God take you. God will bring you to the land that your forefathers inherited and you will inherit it and God will benefit you and multiply you more than your forefathers" -- (Deuteronomy 30:4-5). As the world witnesses the fulfillment of this millennium-old prophecy, Jews can do no less than reclaim their birthright.
Yehezkel Laing is from Jersualem and lives in Waitsfield.
