Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem

Hi,

My friend, Sheila Raviv, is married to Zvi, the right hand to the mayor of Jerusalem. She has a unique perspective on world's events, and her weekly journal is a reflection of that. This week, though, she has asked to distribute her mailing. We can all get the true picture from her writing.

Israel can never win the war of words with the Palestinians. The press and the world love the underdog, a position we lost after 1967, and when we hear our opponents in the debate lie we become frustrated and lose our cool. Last night we watched Nightline with Ted Koppel. We heard the beautifully worded, perfectly orchestrated words of Saib Arikat and Hannan Ashrawi, we heard the children from the Seeds of Peace movement, we heard Arab Member of Knesset, Azmi B'shara and we saw the frustration of the Israelis which made their responses seem loud, angry and arrogant.

Minister Sneh tried to answer the accusations of IDF violence with facts, but it was made to seem petty and childish. The Minister told the truth. They ARE willing to sacrifice children in the cause. Arafat himself has made a speech in which he compares himself to Saladdin who sacrificed 70,000 martyrs for the sake of Jerusalem, and that he too was willing to sacrifice in the name of "justice". Dr Sneh did not manage to tell the millions of people listening to the "debate" that the CIA was invited by Israel to come undercover, with Israeli undercover agents, into the territories, into the areas of violence, to see the truth. They found that the Palestinians were shooting their Kalashnikovs wildly from the cover of high walls, many times killing their own people. They found that the riots within Israel were started by the Tamzin, the Palestinian undercover movement that entered Israel at least a week before the violence erupted....at least a week before Ariel Sharon went to the Temple Mount, in order to begin incitement toward the conflagration. He did not manage to tell the world that "Chairman " Arafat has released all of his Hamas terrorists from prison, including the top bomb-making experts. Their targets are not only here in Israel.

Ehud Olmert, when he heard the ludicrous accusations made against his country, his city and his integrity, tried to answer quietly and then resorted to shouting above the never-ending volley of word-fire. It was unwise and unbecoming. His frustration should never have been allowed to spill over. In his possession he had the United Nations evacuation document, the one in which he had proof that this whole conflagration was known to the UN in August of this year. His frustration made him lose touch with the constant referral to the Temple Mount by its Islamic name. His frustration at the rewriting of the history of the Jewish people that allows the world to believe that Islam was here before Judaism made him lose his grip on the argument. His frustration at being told that he was not the Mayor of Jerusalem because Jerusalem doesn't exist, it is the Palestinian town of Al Quts, stolen from the Palestinian people. Jordan, apparently, didn't exist! The orchestrated barrage of accusations, in one voice, of Ashrawi and Arikat, took him off balance. My friend Sheila, a wonderful journalist, tried to warn him not to go on the programme, he should have listened to her. We have heard about the unbelievable bias of the American press through our friend Arlene and my daughter Rachel. Rachel has taken to watching the BBC reports rather than the American ones. They are sweet by comparison, at least they present facts.

The Temple Mount is not the only place to have changed name recently. Do you remember Josephs Tomb? It is now a mosque. Do you remember the Rabbi that was killed, shot throughout his body, because he wanted to protect the tomb, alone? Well, the members of the funeral procession were stoned and shot at yesterday. I hope our Christian friends who receive this missive are not duped into believing that the Palestinians are just anti Jewish and the only land they want is Israel. We are just the hors d'oeuvres Christianity is the main course. Islam requires that we all become believers.....of Islam of course.

I have said little about the Arab member of Knesset that sat on the Palestinian side of the argument yesterday. Azmi B'shara said very little. He knows that the complaints of Israeli Arabs have already been addressed. He knows that even in their former conditions they were better off than their neighbours. They live in a democracy. Had a member of Arafats cabinet sat in a television debate on the Israeli side, his body would have been found by his family the next day, always assuming his family were not in the car with him when it got blown to pieces. There are some towns where the living conditions must be improved, but it is in mixed Arab and Jewish towns such as Jaffa, Haifa and Nazereth. Those towns, where Arabs and Jews live in the old cities, the services are limited by the antiquity of the surroundings, sometimes from crusader times and earlier. Changing those services to modern ones is a very expensive process, but it must be carried out. Strangely enough, it is in Jerusalem that the Mayor has insisted upon improvements to the services in the Arab neighborhoods. That same Mayor of Jerusalem that they denied his existence! The Arab villages and towns have been forgotten. The fact that the municipalities in these areas, as in rural areas around the world, do not raise sufficient taxes to allow an improvement of the services is no longer an excuse. They must be improved and will be, and the money will have to come from central government. In stark contrast one sees villages and neighborhoods like Abu Ghosh and Beit Safafa, where the Arab Israelis have chosen to live in peace and prosperity with us, things are very different. Also in Beit Hanina. Beautiful homes, wide roads, plush schools, booming businesses...........

We, Israel, need you more now than ever. We need you to write to any paper, President, Prime Minister, Member of Parliament or Senate, that you can think of. Get all your friends to write too. We cannot afford to wait for the world to come to its senses and see the truth. Lobby anyone you can. I don't know if you realise how close we are to losing the war of words and lives. The last few weeks have proven Goebbels theory that if you tell a lie loud enough, long enough and convincingly enough, the press, and the people will believe it. Don't allow the world to be fooled. Demand a fair hearing, demand the truth. Please send this letter to whomsoever of your friends that you feel can do something. Thank you all for your love and concern, we really, really appreciate it. We are physically well, emotionally strong but tired of the verbal and written bombardment.

Shabbat Shalom, pray for Jerusalem, pray for Israel, pray for us all.

Sheila