Professors for a Strong Israel

Paid advertisement - 12 March 2002


The following advertisement has been endorsed by the executive board of Professors for a Strong Israel.

MANIFESTO

While the nation is at war with its enemies, its foundations are being shaken from within. Once more, we recall the principles of Zionism:
  1. This war is not against "terrorism." Terrorism is only one weapon in the hands of the enemy, wielded in his war to uproot us from our country. This is the war for the Land of Israel, another stage in the unfinished War of Independence, against an enemy who has never accepted our presence here - not In Jerusalem or in Tel Aviv, not in the Jezreel Valley or in the Katif area.
  2. The Land of Israel is not subject to negotiation and it is not for sale. The Jewish people did not return to their country in order to establish in it a state for a foreign nation. The Jewish people did not sacrifice more than 20,000 sons and daughters - among them more than 600 since the Oslo agreement - in order to sign away, for the first time in its existence, the heartland of Israel, the historic core of our homeland, the land where our kings ruled and our prophets spoke.
  3. The Jewish towns in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza are not a security burden on the state, but quite the contrary: They secure for the Jewish people the heart of the country and protect the rest of the state's population. We salute the residents of Yesha and note with pride the burden they carry and their noble restraint. We reject the prospect of destruction of their towns and transfer of their populations as a crime against the nation and against humanity. Any Jewish authority that attempts to inflict such a disaster will return the nation to to the baseless hatred that brought about the destruction of the Second Temple.
  4. We call for the establishment of a Zionist-Jewish-National front to oppose any proposal for the establishment of an Arab state - no matter how small or how demilitarized - in the western portion of the Land of Israel. Not only will a terrorist state on the threshold of Israel's cities present a constant threat to her existence; it will constitute a spiritual collapse. Recognition by a government of Israel, in an international document, that the heart of the Land of Israel is the property of a foreign people would be a cultural earthquake that will go down in history as treason against Zionism, a disaster that generations will mourn.
We are confident that the nation of Israel will return to its roots and its identity. It will recognize who its enemies are and will defeat them; it will restate loudly and fearlessly its historic right to its country; and it will realize this right.