Making "deals" with terrorists?

I was upset but not at all surprised, shortly before the war, when I heard that people from the newspaper HaAretz had been in contact with Hamas, which offered a 50-year hudna (mistranslated as "cease-fire" but more appropriately rendered as "hoodwink") in exchange for Israeli withdrawl to the 1947 U.N. Partition lines. The paper was in favor of the proposal! (I did not see this in print, I was told by friends. Unfortunately, I could not find any articles about it on their English site.)

But I was much more upset, a few weeks ago, when I learned that some Rabbis, both Haredi and non-Haredi, ALSO want to talk hudna!

And the reason?

"The Islamic world has deep concerns about the penetration of liberal, secular values and lifestyles into the Middle East. A major factor in the conflict between radical Islam and the Western world is Islam's opposition to secular lifestyle and ideology.

"The haredi community understands their sensitivities and mentality and feels threatened by the same phenomena. The haredi community could play a key role in dialogue between the West and Islam because we live in two worlds, one deeply religious and the other liberal and pluralistic. We understand that the secular mind is different from the religious mind."

We frummies are just like the Islamic terrorists, so we can communicate! That's what it says.

The sad truth is that in some cases it is true. Fanaticism in the Hareidi AND the religous Zionist world is increasing; one recent example is the calls from a small (hopefully) minority of frum people for actual bloodshed if the Jerusalem gay pride parade is allowed to happen. The "hate and kill" attitude that I have recently spoken of is a more general example, and the hating and blaming of non-religous Jews for all our problems. We also know of the large amount of hate and animosity between different types of frum Jews; haredi vs religious Zionist, Kahane vs non-Kahane, Chassid vs Mitnaged, one Chassidic sect vs another.

These Rabbis apparantly feel that anything that would stop Jews from dying NOW is a good thing (the desire for peace at any cost will IY"H be the subject of my next posting.) What they don't realize is that, however long the hudna period is, when it is over even MORE Jews will die. Maybe they are among those who are so convinced that Mashiach will be here any day that they figure he will come before the hudna ends. If so, no matter how much we are obligted to anticipate the coming of Mashiach, the rule "we do not rely on miracles" still applies.

As I have mentioned previously, the only way to truly end the violence for ever is to win the battle in the Heavenly court. Meanwhile, our Army has to continue it's flanking action to protect us from the physical enemies. During this season of T'shuva especially, we should be concentrating on ending all the hatreds and animosities mentioned above; that is the only answer.