President Bush, Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem, Not Its Division

President George W. Bush
The White House
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. President:

Next week, you will journey to the Holy Land, Eretz Yisrael. The prophet Isaiah, in words that I am sure are familiar to you, said "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem." Yet we know that in recent years the most sincere, well-intended efforts to bring peace to Jerusalem and Israel have not produced peace, but only more war and bloodshed.

The Oslo Accords allowed Yassir Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, previously stranded and politically isolated in Tunesia, after their expulsion from Lebanon and their disastrous support for Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Kuwait, to enter and establish a corrupt, terrorism-promoting regime in Gaza, Yehuda and Shomron.

The Israeli disengagement from Gaza not only deprived thousands of people of their homes, farms and businesses; it ultimately led to the takeover of Gaza by the Islamo-Fascist Hamas, which has not lifted a finger to improve the disastrous economic downslide of Gaza under its misrule, but has spent millions of dollars transforming Gaza into a terrorist fortress and sactuary. In the past year, Palestinian terrorists have launched over 1200 rockets and over 2000 mortar shells at Israeli civilian targets from within "Hamasistan."

Now some, including Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (an architect of the Gaza debacle and the disastrous Israeli war against Hezbollah in Lebanon) and your own Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, would have you believe that the price for peace includes the division of Jerusalem and the creation of a Palestinian State in Yehuda and Shomron. Recent history proves that such hopes spring from folly and vanity, nothing more, and will only lead to more deadly conflict. Those Jews and Christians who oppose such a policy often are called religious fanatics, but it is the proponents of disastrous concessions to the Palestinian Authority who are trapped by an irrational policy based only on an empty faith in false promises. An empty faith, because the so-called "peace camp" puts its faith in man rather than God.

Mr. President, I plea to you because you are a God-fearing, Christian man, who reads and understands the Bible. The Land of Israel, Zion and Jerusalem are the eternal inheritance of the Jewish people. Please do not pressure or encourage the government of Israel to give more territory in the Land of Israel to Palestinian terrorists, or to divide Jerusalem. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, not its division and destruction.

Respectfully,
Ralph B. Kostant