Ruth S. King is on the executive committee of Americans for a Safe Israel and a member of the editorial board of "Outpost" where she contributes a monthly column.
On December 14, a group of 150 prominent Jewish leaders, attorneys, intellectuals, journalists, and diplomats assembled in New York under the auspices of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. The stated goal was the indictment of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad for inciting genocide.
... To be sure among those gathered were decent people. Among those protesting against Ahmadinejad is Elie Weisel whom I like and respect. Who could forget his speech when he was invited to the White House shortly after it was announced that President Reagan was to visit a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, where members of the SS, the Nazi elite notorious for their murderous anti-Semitism, were buried.
At the ceremony where Weisel was to be honored with a Congressional Medal of Achievement, he invoked the Jewish tradition which commands one "to speak truth to power" and asked the president to cancel his visit to Bitburg with the stirring words "That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS."
Why can’t Jewish leaders speak truth to power? Why, instead of posturing about indicting Iran’s president, can’t they urge President Bush to abandon the "road map" and why don’t they openly denounce those who bend the president’s ear and mind with respect to Israel and its enemies? Why can’t they gather in Hebron, the cradle of the Jewish faith and the locus of the unbroken chain of Jewish survival which our tormentors sought to break? Their place is with the intended victims.
Instead, the convenient whipping boy is Ahmadinejad, while so many of the "Jewish leaders" continue to nurture the hallucination of the "two state solution."
It is their indifference and ignorance and indolence that will certainly speed up the two state solution--the state of war and the state of extinction.
