Monday, March 14, 2011
The Purim Clown, 1997
http://www.jefi.org/9.2.03/html/btz/comm32.html
The Purim Clown
by Steven E. Plaut
March 24th, 1997
Shani Rosen-Winter is a baby girl, six months old. For Purim she was
dressed as a clown by her mother, Anat Rosen-Winter, an attorney. For
Purim Mrs. Rosen-Winter took her baby daughter to the Apropos cafe in
the fashionable cafe district of Tel Aviv a block away from Dizengoff
Street.
Baby Shani then became the living epitome of the Oslo peace process
and the new Middle East. When the bomb went off, her mother was
mortally wounded and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Anat Rosen-Winter, together with two other women, Dr. Michal Meidan
Avrahami, a medical doctor, and Yael Gilad, a social worker, were
killed. Dr. Michal Meidan Avrahami was 16 weeks pregnant. They will be
added to Beilingrad, that cemetery of victims of peace named after
Yossi Beilin, godfather of Oslo.
For you see, once upon a time there was a foolish idea. Yossi Beilin,
head of the far-left fringe of the Labor Party advocated it secretly.
But he assured the Party and everyone else that if the Palestinians
engaged in terror, launched suicide bombings and violence, then the
idea would be abandoned and discarded. The Palestinians engaged in
terror, launched suicide bombings, and violence. Beilin promoted his
idea and opened secret negotiations in Oslo anyway.
When the late Prime Minister Rabin was brought aboard the Oslo
bandwagon, he reassured Israel. He was a hawk and general, after all.
If the Palestinians engage in terror and suicide bombings and
violence, they will lose the great historical opportunity presented by
Oslo, he will call off the negotiations at once and take back
everything offered by Israel. The Palestinians engaged in terror,
suicide bombings and violence. Rabin pursued Oslo anyway.
After Rabin was killed, Prime Minister Shimon Peres accelerated the
Oslo process. As he considered turning over the cities in Judea and
Samaria to the Palestinians, he assured everyone that if the
Palestinian terror, suicide bombings and violence did not stop at
once, Oslo would be halted and the Palestinians would lose their great
historic opportunity forever. The terror, bombings and violence
continued. Peres continued to make concessions and pulled Israel out
of the West Bank cities.
Peres got trounced in the elections for his hypocrisy. Netanyahu got
elected. He promised to continue Oslo, but only if the Palestinians
behave themselves with a complete absence of terror, bombings and
violence. He threatened ominously, any resumption of terror and
bombings would end Oslo forever, the PLO would be stripped of
everything it had received. Israel would return to its pre-Oslo
policies.
On March 21, 1997, the same day the press carried reports that
Netanyahu would agree to accept a Palestinian state as long as the PLO
agreed to allow Israel to keep Jerusalem, the day after Arafat urged
Palestinians to renew the violence and intifada and warfare until
Israel had fully relinquished Jerusalem, the Palestinian campaign of
suicide bombings was renewed.
As a result, in one moment Baby Shani became the epitome of the Oslo
peace process. She was herself seriously, though not mortally, wounded
in the bomb blast. She was grabbed by 18-year old Shabtai Labanda, who
handed her off to a police woman, while he rushed to apply a
tourniquet to another bomb victim whose arm had been blown off. The TV
image that will be most remembered, not only of the bombing on March
21st, but of Oslo in general, will be that of this police woman
running back and forth frantically with Baby Shani in her arms trying
in desperation to find the baby's mother. The mother was dead.
Israel cemented up the house of the suicide bomber, who will NOT be
buried in a pigskin, in contrast with the technique used by Britain to
suppress Islamic terror in Malaysia and the Philippines after World
War II. Israel used to blow up houses of terrorists, but the Israeli
Left complained this was cruel and unusual, so now the doors of their
homes just get cemented up. Then three hours after the cameras are
gone, the family of the dead terrorist can move back in.
The suicide bomber who murdered Baby Shani's mother, Yael Gilad, as
well as Dr. Michal Meidan Avrahami and her unborn child had been
arrested three weeks earlier for illegal sojourn within Israel. Before
that he had got himself fired from his job at a cafe in a suburb of
Tel Aviv for sexually harassing a Jewish waitress. But in post-Oslo
Israel, the government has a policy of seeking to release as many
Palestinian criminals as possible to keep the PLO happy. So the
terrorist in question was released. Why seek to put terrorists on the
street? For the same reason the Israeli government has a policy of
sanctioning the theft by Palestinians and the PLO of 34,000 cars a
year from Israel, a third of the number purchased each year by
Israelis, as "reparations" to the Palestinians, while Israeli police
have been ordered not to stop the theft.
Since the victims of the bombing are three women, with most of the
wounded also women,one might expect the far-Left Israel Women's
Network, the main feminist militant group led by Prof. Alice Shalvi,
to speak up. The only thing they have to say about all this is that
Israel must not build any housing in Jerusalem and must return to its
1949 borders. You know, those borders once described by Labor Party
leader Abba Eban as "Auschwitz Borders."
Members of the PLO leadership praised the bombing as a great act for
peace. The PLO says the Jews are to blame for building housing in
Jerusalem. The Foreign Minister of Egypt says that Baby Shani is
motherless because "Israeli policies necessitate responses that are
dangerous to the peace process." (H'aaretz March 23, 1997)
The Israeli Labor Party continues its role as chief apologist and PR
agent for Palestinian terror. When Arafat ordered a pogrom last fall
in which 15 Israelis were murdered, the Labor Party said it was all
the Likud's fault, because the Likud had agreed to allow Jews to walk
through a 2200-year old Hasomonean water tunnel blocks away from the
Al-Aqsa Mosque. Now the Labor Party is again saying that the Likud is
to blame for Shani's Mom getting murdered, since the government has
decided to let Jews build houses in Jerusalem on land they purchased
and own.
U.S. President Bill Clinton is continuing his election campaign on
behalf of Shimon Peres even though Peres lost the election. Before the
election, Clinton flew all the way to Sharm Al-Sheikh to help Peres
get elected. Now he is pressuring the Israeli government (Ha'aretz
March 23, 1997) to bring Peres and the Labor Party in to a national
unity government, presumably to make it more likely that Israel
redeploy out of Jerusalem and back to its Auschwitz Borders.
Ha'aretz also reports that the US State Department flippantly
dismissed Israeli reports that Arafat had given a "green light" to
renewed terror and bombings. It does not fit in with Madge Albright'
all-bright view of the peace process.
And what of Baby Shani? Who will grow up without a mother? Fear not,
she will be growing up into a Brave New Middle East, a post- Oslo
post-Zionist world of "peace" and Beilingrad.
2. The Political Lessons of Purim:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/883
See also
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/6087
3. The politically correct scroll of Esther:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/2104
4. Judaism and Warfare: http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/37872
