I was wrong. I admit it. In front of all of you, at this most holy time of our year, I apologize. I was wrong. I was wrong in my criticism of Israel. I was wrong in my near-sightedness and short-sightedness. I was wrong in not seeing the big picture.

That I had plenty of company doesn't make me any less wrong. Every day my e-mail in-box fills with messages from Michael Lerner's Tiklkun community, Jonathan Peled from Friendship Village, Gush Shalom, Peace Now, Arthur Waskow, Rabbis for Human Rights, and others. Here's the tone of most of it, this one from the Jewish Peace Lobby, Gush Shalom:

I think the message is clear by now. Israel wants to keep provoking the Palestinians so they keep their occupation alive in the midst of an American blessing for every Israeli crime against the Palestinians under the excuse of fighting terrorism.

If what Palestinians are doing is terrorism, then Israel has to be blamed for creating it. The occupation is the maker of its and our suffering, therefore occupation has to stop so that both peoples can live in peace. [Gush Shalom, July 23, 2002.]

Nonsense! They are wrong and I was wrong to believe it. That I, a fairly knowledgeable Rabbi had traveled to see the realities of the Middle East first-hand didn't make me any less wrong.

I traveled in Egypt and saw both the crush of humanity and the bubbling exuberance of the people of Cairo. I went to Syria and after shopping at an antiquities store in Damascus was escorted back down to the street by the Arab Muslim shopkeeper while he had his assistant blast Israeli music full volume through the open windows so that his guest, who he knew was a Rabbi because I told him, might feel welcome. I also saw the abject terror in the eyes of a government official there when I asked him a political question, because he was sure that even the conference room in our fancy hotel was bugged by the secret police.

I was in Gaza and the West Bank, a guest of the PLO, escorted in by a machine gun mounted convoy. I saw the unbearable crowding, the poverty and filth, the raw sewage and chemical waste flowing across the cracked streets while hordes of half naked children ran through the toxic muck. I drove past street corners so crowded with young Arab men with no hope and nothing to do but hate, that there was almost no room for a car to pass. I spoke to Arab prisoners whose stories of torture in Israeli prisons haunt me still.

Most of my time in the Middle East, of course, was spent marveling at the modern miracle that is Israel, a barren desert that now truly flows with milk and honey and high-tech research complexes and factories and a booming economy. I saw the Israeli-created drip irrigation that grows baseball-sized strawberries with computers controlling the delivery of tiny amounts of water and fertilizer right to the roots of each plant. I saw what our people built out of the ashes of the holocaust, an amazingly vibrant democracy, the only democracy in the Middle East. I also heard a member of the mayor's staff in Jerusalem speak of Arabs in racist terms that would have made any Southern bigot proud, and saw the religious fanatics who were ready to hurl stones and chairs and even bags of human excrement at fellow Jews who practiced their Judaism differently than they did.

I saw it all and drew conclusions, and I was wrong.

If I, a Rabbi educated to understand the facts and the meaning of what I saw was wrong, what chance is there of anything approaching truth on the part of those who don't know, people like the news commentator Dan Rather? An Israeli named Elliot Mathias writes of his encounter with both Rather and his producer:

I met his CBS producer at a building in Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter that overlooks the Temple Mount where she wished to film from…

As we stood side-by-side taking in the extraordinary view, the producer turned to me and said in a sort of apologetic tone, "You'll have to excuse my ignorance, but what exactly are we looking at?"

My stomach instantly dropped. Maybe she was unsure of a specific building? "No, what is this entire area we are looking at?" "The Temple Mount!!" I wanted to scream. "It's the most important spot in the entire region!" I controlled myself and began my first history lesson to a national news producer. I explained how the Jewish people built a Temple in this spot 3,000 years ago, and how, after its destruction, a second Temple was built in the exact same location.

I explained how Jesus visited this second Jewish Temple, which stood until the Romans ultimately destroyed it in the first century. I explained how the Muslims came to Jerusalem in the mid-seventh century, soon after the creation of their religion, building the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Golden Dome. I explained to her that the Western Wall is the remaining retaining wall of the second Jewish Temple.

As I went through these historic points, the producer was taking furious notes on her yellow writing pad, trying to record the details of this place so integral to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

A few minutes later, Dan Rather arrived… he looked out at the view that was spread before him. "Oh, I've been here before," he said. Then, looking at his producer, he quietly asked, "What is this that we're looking at?"

My stomach plummeted again. Not Dan Rather, too?! The expert on world events who is watched by 30 million nightly viewers can't identify the Temple Mount? I knew American viewers were in big trouble.

The producer read the notes on her yellow pad, filling Mr. Rather in on all the details of the place in front of them. During the film shoot, Rather held this same yellow pad of paper in his hand, reading from it on the air. So much for in-depth research and media accuracy. [4/28/02]

We must see the big picture. In addition to knowledge, a wider perspective is desperately needed. For example, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we need to know that there are no Palestinians. That's right, none. They don't exist. There are certainly people who have been displaced from their homes, displaced from land their families owned for generations. But Palestinians? There are none. Some of you may remember the ideas of Arab-American journalist Joseph Farrah that I shared with you a few months ago. They bear repeating:

Isn't it interesting that prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, there was no serious movement for a Palestinian homeland?

In the Six-Day War, Israel captured Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. But they didn't capture these territories from Yasser Arafat. They captured them from Jordan's King Hussein. I can't help but wonder why all these Palestinians suddenly discovered their national identity after Israel won the war.

The truth is that Palestine is no more real than Never-Never Land. The first time the name was used was in 70 A.D. when the Romans committed genocide against the Jews, smashed the Temple and declared the land of Israel would be no more. From then on, the Romans promised, it would be known as Palestine.

Palestine has never existed -- before or since -- as an autonomous entity. It was ruled alternately by Rome, by Islamic and Christian crusaders, by the Ottoman Empire and, briefly, by the British after World War I. The British agreed to restore at least part of the land to the Jewish people as their homeland.

There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians, … Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc.

The Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of 1 percent of the landmass. But that's too much for the Arabs. They want it all… No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough.

What about Islam's holy sites? There are none in Jerusalem.

In fact, the Koran says nothing about Jerusalem. It mentions Mecca hundreds of times. It mentions Medina countless times. It never mentions Jerusalem. With good reason. There is no historical evidence to suggest Mohammad ever visited Jerusalem. [Joseph Farrah, WorldNetDaily, April 25, 2002.]

There would be no so-called Palestinians at all if they did not play a crucial role in Middle Eastern politics. While Israel absorbed the approximately 630,000 Jews who fled Arab countries in 1948, why didn't the Arab countries absorb their own people who fled Israel in just about the same number? Why haven't they done so in the more than fifty years since? Because the Arab governments were, and most still are, the most repressive, elitist regimes on the face of the earth. Rather than have an influx of rabble-rousers stir up the resentments of a downtrodden populace, the Israeli-Arab refugees were kept out. It didn't take a political genius to realize that demonizing Israel was a perfect outlet for the seething hatred and unrest that might have otherwise been directed by the Arab masses against their real enemies: their own rulers. That's why there are Palestinians.

Has Israel made mistakes, committed horrific acts? Of course. Are any of these excusable? Not for a second. They are wrong, by any standard. But to make this the issue, as I must admit I have done, is equally wrong. It is too short-sighted. The big picture, sad to say, is far more sinister. There is simply no equivalence whatsoever between the mistakes Israel has made, and there are many, and Arab terrorism that sends children out to die while murdering as many innocent civilians as possible. By a strange twist of irony we can thank Osama bin Laden for teaching us that. In the words once again of Elliot Mathias:

The world today is being shaped into two conflicting civilizations. This has… become most evident since September 11. One civilization, led by Judeo-Christian ethics, values life with the utmost sanctity. Individual rights and freedoms, equality of the sexes, and peace amongst nations are pillars upon which this half of the world stands.

The other civilization holds very different ideals: the glorification of death and war, totalitarian control of the masses, and oppression of women. The latter civilization sees the former as a direct threat to its way of life and is willing to sacrifice its own children to destroy the other.

This clash of civilizations is being fought on many fronts, including the battlefield. But for most of us non-soldier-types, the war is being fought in the recesses of our own conscience. [Mathias, Op. cit.]

We are at war. I would not be surprised if years from now historians write of the World Trade center attack as the first major salvo of World War III, as Thomas Friedman of the NY Times has already done. Because make no mistake. This is a global conflict. God willing, neither we nor our children or grandchildren will have to fight with guns and bombs. But for us to defeat those who would destroy us, we must at least be willing to fight in the recesses of our consciences. Peace will come riding on the highest ideals of humanity of which we are capable, or it will not come at all:

[Michael Freund wrote in The Jerusalem Post of May 1, 2002] An Israeli friend of mine recently returned from a month of reserve duty… Early in the operation… my friend and his colleagues were ordered to take over a Palestinian home. That is standard military procedure, and there is really nothing surprising about it per se. But what was surprising was what my friend told me next: the regulations that he and his fellow soldiers had to follow during the time they spent in the Palestinian house.

To begin with, they had to roll up the numerous carpets on the floors of the residence and neatly stack them in a corner to avoid damaging or dirtying them. The troops were strictly forbidden to use the electricity or gas in the house, since the costs involved would inevitably have fallen on the Palestinian owner's shoulders at the end of the month, something the army did not deem fair to the man or his family.

Each night, the soldiers slept on the cold and uncomfortable floor, even though the house had a large number of beds. When I asked my friend why, he said, "because it would not have been right. Those beds belong to the family that lives there, not to us".

At the end of the mission, when it was time for the troops to withdraw, they went about one last "maneuver" before leaving the house. They put aside their guns and picked up their mops, thoroughly cleaning the premises, returning the carpets to their original location, and tidying up as much as they could.

Now, we have all heard of armies around the world employing carpet-bombing to flush out the enemy. But have you ever heard of an army that engages in carpet cleaning?

Yet that is precisely what the Israeli Army does, demonstrating once again just how unique we are as a people. For, unlike our foes, our soldiers do not lose sight of their own humanity, nor do they trample on that of others.

Israel has nothing to be ashamed of, and we should not allow the world's indignation to undermine our confidence in the justness of our cause. Our consciences, like that Palestinian house… are clean. We are not only fighting a moral war - we are fighting it morally, too. And that, in the end, is what will help to ensure us of victory.

And we must fight that war, too. If you don't know much about Israel and the Middle East, learn. There is no excuse for ignorance. Do as much as you can to help. There is no excuse for indifference. Buy Israeli products. When you hear of an Israeli fair, go and spend. Give as much as you can to the Israel Emergency Fund here in Rockland that is funding counseling centers to treat Israeli youngsters whose psyches have also been scarred by this terrible conflict. Give generously to our local UJC campaign to strengthen the Jewish community here at home. Invest in Israel Bonds. In addition to helping Israel, they're safer and pay more than some of the junk we've been buying on Wall Street. Vote with your feet and make sure you're physically present at our Jewish community's Hanukah Fair at the JCC-Y on November 17. Do as much as you can. To do nothing is immoral.

The last word here I'd like to give to an Israeli woman I've never met. I know nothing about her other than her name: Roz:

I am not the least afraid to go any place, by bus or to a mall. I didn't change or stop doing anything I used to do before this mess began! Don't misunderstand me, there is a war going on, it's not pleasant, but lets face it. WE HAVE NEVER BEEN BETTER! It's only TV and media that make people think it's the end of the world coming.

Only 60 years ago they were leading Jews to their death like sheep to the slaughter!

No country, no army. 55 years ago seven Arab countries declared war on the small Jewish State, only a few hours old! We were then 650,000 Jews against the rest of the Arab world! No IDF, no mighty air force, just tough people with nowhere to go.

The country the UN "gave us" was 65% desert. The country started from scratch! 35 years ago we fought the three strongest armies in the Middle East, and wiped them out in six days. We fought against different coalitions of Arab countries, with modern armies, and masses of Russian soviet weapons, and still won!

We have today a country, and an army, and a strong air force, and a hi-tech economy, exporting millions. Intel, Microsoft, IBM develop their stuff here, our doctors win world prizes for medical developments, we made the desert flourish, selling oranges and vegetables to the world.

Israel has sent its own satellites into space, three satellites all together! We sit proudly with the US (250 million people), Russia (200 million people), China (1.1 billion), the Europeans -- France-England-Germany (350 million), as the only countries in the world to shoot something into space!

No matter what part of human history you try to think of, for us, the Jewish people, our situation has never been better! So let's lift our heads high, and remember: any nation or culture that tried to mess around with us was destroyed to the ground -- while we kept going!

So, sorry for not worrying, bitching, crying, or being scared. Things are going O.K. here. They surely can go better, but still, don't fall for the media junk. They won't tell you that there are festivals going on, people keep on living, going out, seeing friends. Yes, our morale is low, so what? It's only because we weep for our dead while they enjoy the blood (and this is the same reason why, we will win, after all).

You can forward this e-mail (if you choose) to the whole of the Jewish community in the United States, and the world. They are part of our strength and it might help some of them to keep their head up high. Tell them there is nothing to worry about. Tell them to think BIG and to see the whole picture.

Roz

Please, don't make the same mistake I did. See the big picture. See that we are on the right side, the good side. And God help anyone who lines up against us!