A Nation of .......

Submitted by John (Canada), Jan 27, 2006 at 10:04

A former short wave radio enthusiast, and a gentile, I remember tuning to Kol Israel on a March day in 1994. I had just heard the story of Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli doctor, and reservist who had entered a Muslim prayer room at the Tomb of the Patriarchs and massacred 29 unarmed worshippers with his Armalite rifle.

Kol Israel at that time had two broadcasts daily in English aimed at North America. On the day of the massacre I was stunned to hear the broadcast begin, not with Kol Israel's normal theme music, but a somber funerary durge. As the report of Goldsteins attack was given it was clear that not only was the content wriiten to express revulsion that such a horrible act was committed by an Israeli Jew, but the readers and commentators shaky voices were palpable with the embarrassment, humiliation, and betrayal of princilple they felt.

I remembered that broadcast regularly when attacks are carried out by Muslim terrorists against Israeli, or Western targets. Especially when those attacks are followed by enraptured, joyful demonstations in the streets of the Palestinian territories. A theme that recurrs in my mind is, "Israel is a people that had a murderer, Palestine is a people of murderers". The free election of Hamas yesterday took that thought from a mental paper thought, and chiselled it deeply in stone.

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