Benny Begin's open letter to Benjamin Netanyahu

http://simplyjews.blogspot.com/ Benny Begin, one of the very few politicians I respect, with an extraordinary message for Bibi. Apologies for bugs in translation, if encountered.

Written by a Likud member Benny Begin.
Without flaming, out of appreciation and clear vision.
(Published by Ynet)

My acquaintance with Bibi, I call him Bibi, is long-standing. I first met him 43 years ago, after his brother Yoni’s death in Entebbe. Yoni was my classmate at Rehavia Gymnasium in Jerusalem. A few years earlier, immediately after the Yom Kippur War, I interviewed him as commander of the Golan Heights Armored Battalion. It was the only journalistic interview Yoni had ever given.

In 1976, Bibi asked to speak to me and presented his vision for the war on terror. He was 27 years old and already brilliant at the time. He has developed an international counter-terrorism project and recruited people from all over the world to assist. The project exposed him both in Israel and in the US. Later, the late Moshe Arens chose him to serve as his deputy at the Washington Embassy. At the time, I served as the embassy spokesperson and couldn’t help but admire his personal and policy capabilities.

Once again, we worked together in the First Gulf War – he in political PR and I in the military, and later in the Madrid Conference and beyond. Of course, I also followed him during my years in the Knesset, and occasionally we even talked and exchanged opinions.

I value and respect him even today, so I refuse to join the chorus that now rolled him in the tar in the outskirts of the city. But last Thursday I listened to the things he said on television – true, with great excitement, a stir of emotion and lack of sense – and realized that he could go no further.

It’s over, Bibi.

The Israeli prime minister cannot burn the house on its residents. No, you can’t. Only yesterday and maybe tomorrow you will send Air Force pilots or other IDF fighters to protect this home. A home is not just land, roads, buildings. The home is the set of values ​​and norms we all share.

You, the Prime Minister of Israel, have to respect our democracy, which has been serving you for 13 years. This democracy rests on the foundations of law and order and morality. Without them, it would not be democracy and will collapse. So many countries have already seen it. It might happen to us too. The distance is short.

No, this is not a “coup” and it is not an attempt to oust illegally a prime minister. The law keeping and enforcement system has come to a wise and measured conclusion that the Israeli prime minister should be prosecuted. Even now my hands are shaking at the sound of those words. This system may be faulty. But once a decision has been made, after many hesitations and varied considerations, including the timing, the way is now open to you to fight for your innocence. Not through the microphone and booth, which you so well use, but in court. There and only there.

I wish you got out of the indictments. It’s hard for me to watch another convicted prime minister go to jail, but the decision is not mine or yours, and at this moment no longer public. Only the justice system, which you have complimented at the beginning of your speech, then roasted it on fire. The court will hear you, Bibi, with an open heart and soul. Go there, cope, and if there was nothing, there would be nothing.

To be on the safe side, follows the original in Hebrew.

http://simplyjews.blogspot.com/