We face our gravest danger in our history as a Jewish state. But our danger is not from our external enemies, who can torment us but who certainly cannot destroy us. No, it is now as it has always been from Achan the troubler of Israel to this day. We face mortal danger, not from outside, but from our own treachery - to our God, to His Law, to ourselves.
At the conclusion of my remarks, I will doubtless face a no-confidence vote, which I will probably lose. I set before you now my understanding of our danger, what I propose to do about it as Prime Minister, and how I will act as a Jew when I am no longer Prime Minister. For I need not be Prime Minister, but I must certainly live and die a Jew.
God promised our father Abraham and his children the land of Israel, everything between the Jordan River and the sea. And so some of us consider it their duty to drive out its inhabitants and possess it by force - and by guile, since we do not dare to declare openly to the world such a genocidal purpose. But what does our God who promised us the land require of us, except to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God? Is our increasingly vile colonial war in the territories in any way compatible with these three duties - our only duties to God and man? Should we spurn Him in these, and then expect His favor?
We are all expert historians when it comes to Arab wickedness, as though it in any way justifies our own. But we clearly see that they will never find rest until they think a little more about their own folly and a little less about ours. Let us take our own good advice today and leave their sins aside, since the Prophets and the Law advise us to consider our ways, not those of other people.
The Law teaches that there is to be one law for us and for the strangers in our midst. Have we obeyed this commandment?
The Law says, "Cursed is the one who perverts the justice due to the stranger." Are we not cursed in this?
The Law says, "Cursed is the one who moves his neighbor's landmark." As we confiscate our neighbor's lands, are we not cursed in this?
The Law says, "Cursed is the one who treats his father and mother with contempt." As we treat our neighbors just the way the anti-semites treated our fathers and mothers in Russia and central Europe, are we not treating our parents and their memory with exceeding contempt? Are we not cursed in this?
The Law commands us to love strangers and not to oppress them, because we were strangers in the land of Mizraim. Have we obeyed? Have we no fear of God, we whom He rescued from the house of slaves, that we ourselves have made the territories a house of slaves for 3 million people, making their bondage heavier year by year as Pharaoh did to us? And even for the same reasons, because like Pharaoh we fear that they will multiply and overcome us by their numbers!
We are outraged that suicide bombers should blow up our Passover celebrations. And indeed it is outrageous. But does it come close to the audacity of tasting the bitter herbs dipped in salt water while in the very act of filling the lives of others with bitterness and tears? Does not God testify against us by Isaiah that He hates such iniquity in the solemn assembly?
Indeed we have spurned our God with exceeding insolence. We read in the Law that we are not to wage war against fruit trees, and so we make a point of waging war against Palestinian fruit trees, flinging them into pits along with the Law of God! Do we have no fear of God at all? To be a Jew, does it mean nothing? Did our fathers and mothers escape from Hitler so that we should come to this land and put Judaism itself to death by our own hands?
We cannot go on like this. When the world looks at Israel it ought to see Jews. Perhaps the world will hate us anyway, perhaps not. But if we're going to be hated, let us be hated for being Jews, for doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God - not for robbery and ethnic cleansing, not for acting like Jurgen Stroop in the Warsaw Ghetto, so devoid of shame as to claim his example openly.
The founders of the Zionist movement sought a Jewish state so that Jews might live in their own nation, no longer at the unreliable mercies of Gentile nations. Theodor Herzl reached this conclusion when he saw that even in France, the most friendly of all nations to the Jews, the mobs could turn on us in a moment. And here in our own state we find ourselves no less at the mercy of a Gentile state, the United States of America, because we cannot bear the burden of our imperial ambition without massive American subsidies. And as our war for settlements increasingly subverts their interests, how safely can we presume on the Americans to support everything we do? What would Herzl answer? To make ourselves utterly beholden to Gentile power to underwrite a colonial war against our neighbors - is this Zionism? Have we not completely repudiated the ideals of the founders of our state?
In view of these things, I say this to the Palestinian people. It is the policy of my government to set you free, because our God commands us to proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants so that we may find freedom. Because the settlements are instruments of oppression, the settlers must come home so that we may be Jews again. We do not do this because we fear you, or as in Lebanon, because we are tired of casualties. We fear God, and we are tired of betraying our Jewishness, of thereby committing genocide against ourselves.
You can influence whether my policy succeeds, whether my people will permit it. You see how foolish we have been in blaming everything on you and asserting our own perfect righteousness. You would be wise to consider that you are no wiser when you do the same. You too have done great evil, and you have paid for these 50 years. When our fathers fled here from Hitler, your leaders bragged that you would throw them into the sea. Have you laid to heart how that must sound to people who have just barely escaped from death camps? And since then, you have treated this as a negotiating point! Just what good has that cunning done you?
We have many details to negotiate. Whether or not we should stop doing injustice is not among them, because our God has already settled that point for us. We hope you will follow, but we cannot afford to wait for you. Today, in order to yield to our God, we yield up the land on which it pleases God that you should live, and we will begin evacuating the settlements as soon as possible, as we did in Sinai. We will not dawdle over the settlements as in the past - not because we are nice people, but because in causing us to spurn God they destroy our security and who we are as Jewish people.
With the leaders you pick, whether we like them or not, we wish to enter as promptly as possible into negotiations concerning mutually beneficial adjustments to the green line and other practical details - we must allay as far as possible the fears of our respective peoples. But we need no longer waste your time and ours negotiating whether or not to depart from injustice and obey our God.
It is not unlikely that I will lose a no-confidence vote, and therefore
be unable to implement this policy. I will have no power as Prime
Minister. So I will have to act as a Jew. I, and any others
in Israel who wish to join me, will place our bodies in the way of injustice.
If the IDF wants to destroy a Palestinian house, I or some other Jew may
be in it. You will have to knock it down over us. If the IDF
wants to assassinate a Palestinian leader, an Israeli Jew may be with him
in his car. If the IDF conducts another pogrom in Ramallah, you will
have to shoot and beat some Israeli Jews, not Palestinians only.
If you want to kill Judaism in Israel, you will have to kill some Jews,
as you killed Yitzhak Rabin, so that what you are really doing becomes
clear. It is good to die for Judaism - for justice, mercy, and humble
faith in our God who saved us out of Egypt and who alone can save us from
our iniquities and all our fears, as David teaches us in the Psalms.