By: Fern Sidman

Speaking before an overflow audience at the Kingsway Jewish Center in Brooklyn on Tuesday evening November 1st, Helen Freedman, the executive director of Americans For A Safe Israel (AFSI) told those gathered at the Zionism Museum and Education Center that, “the current political climate in Israel demands our active concern and our concrete participation. As the government of Israel acquiesces to world pressure and maintains a timorous posture towards the Arabs, as UNESCO sanitizes the Palestinian Authority, we are witnessing an all out assault against the intrepid settler movement.”

Relating devastating incidents that she personally witnessed while leading the bi-annual AFSI Chizuk mission to Israel, Ms. Freedman said, “Just today, we learned that of the announcement that the Ministry of Education in Israel has decided to cut off funding for the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva near Yitzhar in the Shromrom. That should serve as a clarion call to us all about which direction the government is taking in terms of the future of Jewish life in Judea and Samaria.”

Bemoaning the abject “guilt and fear” that the government of Israel projects to the world, she told her audience of a sweeping movement in Israel that tacitly hands over ownership of all religious sites to the Arabs. “In 1993, following the actions taken by Baruch Goldstein, ZT”L, the government divided the Ma’arat HaMachpela in Hevron and the Arabs received the entire Yitzchak Avinu hall to pray in and the Jewish worshippers were relegated to the court yard,” she ruefully observed.

Adding that Arabs she has spoken to in Israel have boastfully declared possession of every Jewish holy site, she said that the UNESCO decision to grant recognition and admittance of the Palestinians into their organization would further embolden their quest of have complete control of all holy sites including the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. With pain in her voice she queried, “When will our shamefully obsequious behavior in the face of our avowed enemies cease?”

She called upon the assemblage to personally involve themselves in the battle to save the residents of Judea and Samaria from possible expulsion and to “be more than armchair activists.” Exhorting those present to show their support for the settlers by writing and calling their elected officials and joining lobbying efforts in Washington, she declared, “AFSI’s objectives are very clear. Our Chizuk mission to Israel is not exclusively limited to providing moral and material support to our brave brothers and sisters in Judea, Samaria and the Golan, but it is also about realizing that it is incumbent upon every single one of us to stand up and speak out for our G-d given rights to Eretz Yisroel even when the slings and arrows of our detractors are pointed in our direction.”

AFSI’s next Chizuk Mission for Israel is scheduled for November 13th.