Until the very last Jew

By Moshe Feiglin

3 Tevet 5770
Dec. 20 '09

Translated from the Ma'ariv NRG website.

"It is important to understand," I said to television interviewer Dan Margalit, "I am just the canary in the coal mine. More politicians will be receiving this letter." That television interview took place close to two years ago. I was reminded of it last week when Tzippy Livni had a close brush with arrest in England. I had the dubious distinction of being the first Israeli politician since Menachem Begin to be classified as a persona non grata by her majesty's government. The only other Israelis to receive this classification have been IDF officers whose war against Arab terror has turned them into war criminals in British eyes.

I had the privilege to be inducted into this exclusive club because of an article that I had written years ago. The article included a sentence that read "The Arab is not the son of the desert, but rather, its father." Interestingly, this sentence was penned by none other than the first British Commissioner of Sinai, Sir Claude Jarvis, in 1938 in his book, The Desert Yesterday and Today. In other words, my entry to Britain was forbidden because I quoted an important British official. No matter. What is clear is that the British, who allow terror chiefs to enter England and lecture as they please, have bowed before the Islamic offensive that has conquered their land - and they do not like people who remind them to whom they have surrendered.

As Divine Providence would have it, Israel's Foreign Minister at the time that I was barred from England was Tzippy Livni. Livni was no longer a member of the Likud and had completely abandoned the ideology of her patriotic parents, but it would still have been reasonable to expect that an official letter such as the one I, an Israeli citizen, received from the British government would draw some sort of response from the Foreign Ministry.

There is no dearth of professors and politicians in England who attack Israel as a matter of course. Livni could have announced to her majesty's government that if it would continue to interfere with the freedom of expression of Israel's citizens, Israel would also bar a long list of publicists and professors from entering its own gates. At the time I didn't ask Livni to fight my cause. But if she had done her job, she wouldn't have to fight her own cause today. Now Livni finds herself - perish the thought - in the same boat as Moshe Feiglin.

It is important to understand the mechanism that is now exploding in the faces of Israel's current leaders. There are Holocaust survivors from Germany who until this very day blame the Oustjuden - the Eastern Jews (from Poland) for the fact that they were sent to the death camps. An echo of this approach is still alive and well in Israel. "When I see the ultra-Orthodox Jews, I understand the Nazis," said Israel prize winner Yigal Tumarkin, a German Jew. Tumarkin is not alone. There are more than a few pundits, authors, artists, media personalities, academicians and judges who display the same line of thinking.

In other words, our "enlightened" countrymen find it hard to understand that the new anti-Semitic onslaught is also directed at them. After all, they have removed the Jewish hump from their backs and clearly, the enlightened professors of Cambridge are not referring to them, but rather to those Jews who insist on clinging to their old, primitive identity.

In one of his articles, leftist journalist Yair Lapid admitted that the Expulsion had nothing to do with peace or security. "It was necessary to teach them a lesson," Lapid explained. In other words, it was necessary to strike those Jews who insist on retaining their identity and who are responsible for the fact that I am still singled out as a Jew.

The war of the British against Feiglin seemed perfectly reasonable to Tzippy Livni. She is even on their side. In her wildest dreams she did not think that in less than two years, she would be the next in line.

"It is actually quite amusing," I explained to Dan Margalit, "because I didn't even request entry into England, and I have no reason to do so." But for Israel's current leaders this is an existential issue. Can you imagine Peres, Netanyahu, Barak or Livni stuck in the Holy Land? They have done their utmost to flee their true identity and to estrange themselves from their brothers. But the more they try, the more their Jewishness closes in on them - against their will.

Clearly, Livni and the others will not reach the correct conclusion. On the contrary. The more pressure that they will personally have to bear - the more that they will blame their Jewish brothers - and the crueler and more radical they will become. For the privilege of acceptance into the family of nations, they will be willing to fight - until the very last Jew.