Translation of an Old – But Timely – Article by Yigal Amir’s Wife

There Are No Words

There is an old saw to the effect that behind every great man, there is a great woman. In the case of the greatest living Jewish hero, this cliché happens to be true. The hero’s act of self-sacrifice requires inhuman courage, but only for a moment. Once the trigger is pulled, the bullet leaves the barrel and all possible fates narrow down to a single point, from which emerges only one possible, precarious thread. The prison doors clang shut, the silence descends and there is nothing further but the four walls of the cell. Cling to honor like a man or grovel like a beaten cur before the insectoid nonentities who hold you hostage, the walls of your prison will not fall unless they are dismantled by the forces the that you, the hero, have unleashed. There remains nothing but the waiting.

But for the hero’s beloved it is quite a different thing. Every day she is assailed with demands to abandon him to his fate, demands to renounce him, demands to join the mindless mob of accusers who bay for the hero’s blood, who fall into fits at the mere mention of his name, foaming at the mouth and spraying saliva like men possessed. It takes a very different, much greater courage to stand alone against the world in the name of simple, pure love, to refuse the blandishments and the threats, to ignore the ridicule, the scorn, the misguided pity, the whispers and rumors and snide remarks passed behind one’s back. It takes a superhuman courage to fight the entire apparatus of the state solely in order to be allowed to bear the hero’s child. It takes a greater courage still to raise this child amid the sneers and the jeers of the subhuman swine who hold the hero hostage, amplified a thousand times by the amen chorus of the mindless media zombies who ape every grimace and oink of said swine and think themselves the better for it. In a way, Larissa Amir’s sacrifice is greater even than the sacrifice made by her husband. One can only hope that she lives to receive the honor and adulation that is her due for it.

The Israeli media has done its best to paint this woman as some kind of loon, a dumb prison groupie or a mindless fanatic. With the power of the camera and the might of the broadcast media, these people have succeeded in convincing the majority of the addled Jews trapped under Israeli rule that Larissa Amir is precisely what they describe her to be. And in the process of so doing, they have come to believe their own propaganda. So convinced they had become that the slander they peddle is actually the truth, that for the occasion of the just past anniversary of Yigal’s heroic deed, the Israeli propagandists at Walla approached Larissa with the request to write something for them to publish. They were even dumb enough to publish it.

To the eternal shame of Jewish organs like Arutz Sheva and Makor Rishon, they DID NOT have the courage to re-publish what Larissa wrote, much less translate it into English for the benefit of their audience in the diaspora. Yet, like Michael Ben-Horin’s pamphlet that speaks the truth about the supreme self-sacrifice made by Doctor Baruch Goldstein (z”l), Larissa’s letter must be preserved and disseminated, not only because it neatly skewers the decades of lies and delusions, but also in the name of history and basic human decency. Therefore, this website has arranged for an English translation. Read it, and judge yourself, without the skewed lens of the Israeli distorters and liars, who and what this woman is, who and what her husband is, and who, ultimately, will stand acquitted by history.

Words, Words, But There Are No Words

By

Larissa Amir

15 years.

I start to write, but the words do not come. It is as if they are stuck inside the keyboard. Finally they appear, words like the dead leaves that fall from the trees in autumn. For 15 years already, at the same time every fall, words begin to resemble dead leaves – lifeless, meaningless.

Clichés, slogans, curses.

“He murdered democracy”.

“He murdered peace”.

“He murdered the whole nation”.

Once upon a time, there was a nation that spoke of peace. There were speeches. There was pomp and ceremony. There were honors, medals and prizes. There were many great, beautiful words. As it is said: “They say: ‘Peace, peace!’, but there is no peace”. Because peace did not come. Explosions came instead of peace. They came into the buses, into the markets, into the cafes. There came shootings on the roads. Entire families disappeared from life, as if they had never existed. But the speeches did not stop. Because no one wanted to ask: what happened to the peace? Maybe it got lost? Who gave it wrong directions? Who deceived us all?

In our country after every mishap there is a commission of inquiry. When the Versailles wedding hall collapsed in Jerusalem and 23 people were killed, those found guilty of negligence and responsibility for the catastrophe were sentenced to prison. Fair enough, is it not? After all, life and death are not child’s play, regardless whether the lives at stake belong to high officials or to ordinary people.

Who was found responsible when the Oslo accords collapsed? Since the famous handshake on the White House lawn, around 1500 of our fellow citizens have died in terrorist attacks — men, women, children. Such are the consequences of misjudgment or self-deception or, as they have started to hint nowadays, political blindness. Of course, there was terror before the Oslo Accords, also. But everyone remembers what was the scope of the terror back then, and how everything changed immediately after the accord was signed. Who investigated this? Who is responsible? Who has paid the price?

But then, who needs an inquiry when the sole defendant is found and condemned before the fact? His name, of course, is Yigal Amir. He is the one who destroyed the dreams of an entire nation with a single wave of his hand, and ever since the entire nation cannot undo the damage he wrought.

It is not enough that he pays a greater price then those who sent the suicide bombers and shot on the roads. He must be removed from sight. He must be silenced. For fifteen years he has been held in solitary confinement, gagged by means of legal justifications invented on the spot, and bureaucratic procedures made up out of whole cloth. Who believes that even the hypothetical possibility of asking him a few questions (and not even on a live broadcast) is a threat to national security? Or is it that those who hold power simply do not wish to permit him to explain his actions? What if he confesses that he had no intention of killing peace, or democracy, or the entire nation? What if he says that this desperate, extreme act was, in his opinion, the last chance to escape the slippery slope of the insane reality brought about by the Oslo Accords, the last opportunity to escape an even greater bloodshed? What will they do then with the meaningless clichés that have been piling up on the ground for 15 years like heaps of autumn leaves? What if this leads to a real, serious and deep discussion? What if it becomes possible to actually analyze what really happened back then? What led a law-abiding young man, a soldier of the Golani Brigade, a successful law student and a good friend to commit an act that turned him into “the disgusting and repugnant murderer”, as is the custom to label him around these parts? Who should answer these questions? And who is ready to answer them?

Because there are no words.

From Virtual Judah, here.

מי המציא ‘מבחן אמצעים’ בחלוקת דמי רווחה? יוסף הצדיק

בראשית פרק מ”ז י”ב:

ויכלכל יוסף את אביו ואת אחיו ואת כל בית אביו לחם לפי הטף.

רש”י:

לפי הטף, לפי הצריך לכל בני ביתם.

גור אריה שם:

[ט] לפי הצריך (לטף) [לכל בני ביתם]. פירוש שאין “לפי הטף” משמע מעט, שהיה מדקדק שלא ליתן יותר רק לפי הטף, שאין הכתוב מגיד לך איך היה מדקדק עמהם, אלא פירוש “לפי הטף” כמו הצריך. והוסיף ‘לכל בני ביתו’ לומר כי אין כוונת הכתוב רוצה לומר שדווקא הטף היה מפרנס אותם ולא בני ביתו, שאם כן מה יעשו בני ביתו, אלא “הטף” הוא כל בני ביתו, ונקראים הטף בני ביתו, שעיקר בני בית הם הטף – שמגדלים אותם בבית.

לא אכחיד שהט”ז והחזקוני ועוד פירשו בע”א.

(והספורנו כתב שלא הרבה להם יוסף יותר מהצורך ע”פ הגמ’ בזמן שהצבור שרוי בצער אל יאמר אדם אלך אני אוכל ואשתה ושלום עליך נפשי.)