How can you, the man who so clearly and justifiably defined the war against the terrorists who struck at America as a war waged against Evil, dare ask Israel to retreat from its own front lines in that very same battle? More accurately, Mr. President, you are asking that the Arabs be allowed to return the front lines of that battle to Israeli schools, hotels, restaurants and public buses. What you are asking the citizens of our country to do, Mr. President, is lie down and agree to be slaughtered.

Mr. President, you are asking that Israel abandon all it has accomplished in our common war and allow the flood of terrorists, currently on the run, to return to their bases of operation. Consider the sheer quantities of arms and explosives captured by IDF forces during this past week, as well as the numbers of terrorists killed or captured by Israeli soldiers. Mr. President, do you really want to allow the PLO terrorists the time and space to regroup and recreate their terrorist infrastructure? A continuation of the PLO-led terrorist campaign against Israelis will most assuredly follow an IDF withdrawal from the terrorist havens that the American-backed Oslo accords created. However, as you most certainly know, the next stage of the terrorist onslaught against the world will be the use of chemical or biological agents, yet you want us, in Israel, to volunteer to be the guinea pigs. Do you really want to be responsible for facilitating the attempted murder of the 6 million Jews of Israel? Do not pretend that it will end with us, however, Mr. President. It will not.

Mr. President, how can you call upon Israel to trust its citizenry to the good will of the people responsible for the Passover Massacre? You know as well as every other citizen of the free world that Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority stands behind every act of terrorism committed against Jews, either financially, morally or logistically. The documents captured in Ramallah provide the proof for that assertion, as if any were needed after 18 months of non-stop terrorism, much of it by Arafat’s own Fatah organization and the rest with his nodding agreement. Mr. President, you ordered American troops to fly thousands of miles from home in order to eliminate an entire regime, because it harbored al-Qaeda terrorists. How can you morally expect Israel to do less, in its own defense, to a regime that not only harbors terrorists, but is a perpetrator of terrorism itself and is located next to its major populations centers? Is American blood redder than Israeli blood, Mr. President?

What could possess you, Mr. President, to raise even a shadow of a doubt as to the necessity of Israel controlling the areas made into vipers’ nests by previous administrations? Is it the need to appease those Arab states sitting on barrels of oil in the Gulf, despite their dependence on the West for their own security? Is Arabian oil that much more precious to you than Jewish children, Mr. President?

We expect every American Jew and every American non-Jew with a consistent moral vision to send you a copy of this letter, Mr. President. We call upon them to send it to you, to US Vice-President Dick Cheney, to US Secretary of State Colin Powell and to their Senators and Representatives. In this way, perhaps, you will regain that moral clarity that you so ably displayed when it came time to launch Operation Enduring Freedom, or, as it was much more appropriately dubbed initially, Infinite Justice.