MK Candidate Dr. Ben Ari: Follow King David's Advice on Gaza - by Gil Ronen

Rabbi Dr. Michael Ben-Ari, the Number Four man on the National Union's Knesset list, thinks the leaders of Israel should follow King David's advice from the Eighteenth Psalm regarding Gaza:

"I will chase my enemies and catch up to them and I shall not return until I annihilate them."

"This should be the slogan of every leader and IDF commander," he said. "The enemy must know that whoever raises his hand on Israel, we will teach him a lesson and annihilate him as well as all his helpers and supporters, and only thus will we take out their will to fire missiles at us."

However, he is under no illusions that the present government will do so.
Ben-Ari, a proud disciple of former Knesset Member Rabbi Meir Kahane, supports the troops fighting in Gaza but says the operation is "like giving aspirin to a patient who is in serious condition."

"It is a sedative but it does not address the root of the problem," he said Friday. "Everyone knows this and that is why they were so hesitant to begin this operation. That is why I believe that sooner or later we will return to Gaza and Gush Katif," he added.

'It will end with a ceasefire'

"The conflict will be decided on the political level," Ben-Ari predicted. "In the end, the Arabs' pleas for a ceasefire will be heeded before we break the enemy's will to fight, just like our humiliating defeat in the Second Lebanon War and Resolution 1701."

"There will probably be an agreement on some kind of ceasefire but the enemy will never agree to lose their ability to rearm. Their entire existence depends on their ability to keep on hurting us," he said. "Their motivation is to one day be able to chase us out and return to Ramle and Lod."

"The operation is beginning to teach the public that the statement 'it's either us or them' [which was used by Rabbi Kahane – ed.] is not an election slogan but is a very existential one."

International solution?
The solution to the Gaza problem, said Ben-Ari, should be an international one.
"The international community needs to find the Arab population in Gaza a spacious area somewhere in which they can live and where they will have something to lose," he explained. As things are, the enemy in Gaza "is dreaming of the nice houses in Ashkelon and Ashdod as it lives in the impossibly crowded and run-down streets of Gaza."
We need to understand that "a few bombs or diplomatic talks or 'lulls' will only make the problem worse, not solve it," he explained.
The enemy within
If Rabbi Kahane were alive today, he said, "he would remind us that after the Holocaust we vowed never again to let Jews live in fear. He would say – 'A Jew who lives in fear is a great chilul Hashem' [desecration of G-d's Name – ed]."
Ben-Ari is also gravely worried about "the internal enemy" – the Arabs with Israeli citizenship. "The enemy is waking up and getting stronger and the danger will only become greater unless we have leadership that is not afraid of the Supreme Court, of the United Nations and of the deranged people in the Left, but is only committed to the survival of the Jewish people."

"When the enemy raises signs saying 'death to the Jews' in Sakhnin, it brings the catastrophe nearer," he warned. "It reminds me of the Jews' disregard of all the signs that preceded the Holocaust."

Ben Ari also blasted "those who deride the 'hilltop youth' and the outposts'" – in an apparent reference to recent comments by the Jewish Home leadership. "The people who say this will unintentionally cause the enemy to sit in those hilltops, and Hadera, Kfar Saba and the Azrieli Towers will be the next targets for Grad missiles," he warned.