A Man Who Loves His Homeland

Another name people call us is 'extremist.' Jews, Zionists, what has happened to us? If a Jew says that Eretz Yisrael belongs to the Jewish people by right, not only to the Jews who live in Eretz Yisrael, but to all sons of the Jewish people – is that extremism? Is that not what Herzl said, and Nordau, and Jabotinsky, and Ben Gurion, and Ussishkin? When our fathers prayed for rain, where did they pray that it should fall? Not in the countries where they lived, but here, in this country, in Eretz Yisrael. A man who loves his homeland, who says it is his country, his ancestral heritage, and who wants it to be the heritage of his children – is he an extremist? I call that being moderate.

But there are extremists in Israel, and they compete among themselves to be the one who wants to make the greatest concessions. One is prepared to give up the whole of the Sinai peninsula, and the next to throw in 'six lousy kilometres' on the Golan Heights. The next one is prepared to add Judea, and Samaria as well, and the Old City of Jerusalem, or to talk about international arrangements for all of Jerusalem, or to negotiate with Arafat's messengers. Those are the extremists: extremists in the surrender of the mind, in the willingness to surrender that leads, God forbid, to Munich.

There can be no Munich in the Middle East. This little nation and other free nations will make a stand against totalitarian aggression and the base oil blackmail which seeks to destroy great nations, humiliate them to the point of oppression and even ruin their lives. We can give an example of civic courage to other free peoples and make them realise their and our common interests.