Interview with Naomi and Asher Ragen pt 3
INTERVIEWER: I wanted to get to your answer about the - and just repeat it, if you don't mind, about the, the idea that they seem to be so terribly upset, when their house is demolished. But not nearly as upset when a child is killed. 15:10:13>>> ASHER RAGEN: When you see the, the way that Palestinians, sometimes, react to house demolitions, as opposed to how they react to when their children are killed. That is sometimes when the Pal - you'll see the mother of a Palestinian suicide bomber, ecstatic, at the thought that her child has now gone to heaven, and he's sent twenty or thirty Jews to hell, as far as she's concerned. She is ecstatic. She's happy. They have a party. And on the other hand, when they wreck her house, it's weeping, and it's a disaster, and it's a human rights abuse. It doesn't make any sense. 15:01:46>>> And, this society, when I look at it, there is something so deeply screwed up in the values that they are teaching themselves. And that's not to say, I'm a history student, so yes I know that there wasn't always like that. It's a new thing. It's a new thing for them. But there is something so screwed up about their values. It makes me want to say, no matter what, we're going to get you. And if your children don't care - if you don't care about the lives of your children, and all you care about are your homes, we'll wreck your homes. And we will keep fighting until we find whatever it takes to make you stop. We're gonna win this war. There's no doubt about that. The question is, what price are you going to pay? And it's going to be a heavy one. 15:02:27>>> And I keep going back to the same theme, of, this is something that I wish the Palestinian people would take care of themselves. But I have no illusions anymore, not after eight years. And if they don't care about their children's lives, then we will find whatever it takes. It's sick. I would hate to grow up in a world like that. I really would. INTERVIEWER: What goes through your head when you hear Yasser Arafat saying, the temple never existed? 15:02:57>>> NAOMI RAGEN: Well, whenever I see Yasser Arafat, I just think of, you know, Yasser Arafatter - he's just getting fatter, and fatter, and lying more and more. I mean, you know, the man has zero credibility. He was always a murderer, that's all he ever did. That was his fame was based on how many people he could kill. He was never a statesman. He was never a leader. He signed documents and he lied. Every single document that he signed absolutely was a lie. He had no intention of keeping any of these things. And, you know, he brings in ships full of weapons, and he's sending his, you know, his own personal - I heard this woman once, she was at Hadassah [PH] Hospital. She was a woman who was attacked in a van, with a bunch of other people. She's a mother of four children. And she was - narrowly missed being killed. And she was paralyzed from the bullets, from the neck down. For the rest of her life. She said, afterwards, the Israeli army caught the people who did it. And, one of the people who did it was Arafat's personal bodyguard. He was part of his Seventeen group, and he was his personal bodyguard. And they had another person, who was filming the shooting to bring it back to Arafat, so he could see that they actually carried out this, this attack. And one of the other people they caught, they asked him, why did you do it? And he said, because they offered me five hundred dollars and I needed the money, so I did it. 15:04:22>>> So, you know, we had this meeting at Hadassah Hospital, Jane Fonda was there, Eve Ensler was there (with The Vagina Monologues) and they were there on a peace mission. And they went over to this woman who spoke, the woman who was paralyzed, who came up to the stage in a wheelchair, and they said to her, we're going to see Arafat, tomorrow. What should we say to him for you? And she said, tell him I want my tape. That's what she said. And that, that is basically the story. And that's Yasser Arafat. He pays five - five people five hundred dollars to paralyze, you know, the mothers of four. What can you say about a man like that? INTERVIEWER: Isn't it ironic that in another part of the world, when somebody kills twenty or thirty people, they're called serial killers, and here they're called freedom fighters? 15:05:03>>> NAOMI RAGEN: The whole use of language in the press, and in the media, has become - I think it's like Goebel's, propaganda, double-speak, Orwellian 1984. You know, you have people who are murderers, who are considered freedom fighters. You have, you know, something - someone who is going for oppression, who wants to take away my freedom, he's considered a freedom fighter. Who is he fighting for? What freedom are we talking about? The whole dialogue, here, the whole way that the press is presenting this, is totally false from beginning to end. They have the story wrong. You have peace loving people, you have innocent civilians that are killed by paid - people don't understand this. This is not a kid who comes from the house and he's terribly oppressed, and he's depressed, and he wants to go fight for his freedom. You have people who are planning this, they are being paid, they've spent all day long thinking how to kill civilians. This is all professional. This is not something which is an amateur thing. This is professionals. They have training camps all over the Arab world, to train people in better methods, and better bombs, and better suicide belts. This is all organized. And when you have people that are doing these things, you have to stop using all of this language which is just a false language. INTERVIEWER: Well, what you're saying seem so terribly straight forward and obvious, why, Asher, isn't it possible to convince your fellow students on the campuses of these realities? 15:06:38>>> ASHER RAGEN: I think that we're used to, especially if you go to University, it's very hard to convince people that the story is actually simple . That there is a side that is right, and there is a side that is wrong. People like to listen to a narrative that makes everyone seem equal. In part, because that means you don't have to do anything about it. Because if both sides are equally wrong, it means that I have no responsibility at all to help the side that is right. So, when they're told that, yes, Palestinians do things, but they have no choice, and they're the oppressed side, and the Israelis are evil, this sort of makes up for the fact that the Israelis have a state, and are strong, but they're evil, so I don't have to support them. Or, for the fact that the Israelis have a lot of civilians that are killed, however they deserve it, because of some perceived grievance on the Palestinian side. And it's this willingness of people to buy a simple story. There is a story of a moral equivalence, that means that they don't have to do anything about it, that's at the source of the problem. It's not - once you look at the facts, you realize it's not that complex. The facts are that we have a very extreme terrorist organization on one side, targeting civilians, after having been offered a very generous peace deal, on almost everything they would want, and haven turned it down. And on the other hand, we have a country that is, even today, if you look at opinion polls willing to sign a peace agreement with the same Palestinians, because all they want is peace and quiet. All the Israelis really want, is to be able to walk down the street and not have to worry about a bomber. INTERVIEWER: Is the, is the problem of political correctness on the campus also an issue? 15:08:13>>> ASHER RAGEN: I think the political correctness is a big part of it. Because we do not like - people don't like to say, oh the Palestinians are terrorists. And so we use language that apparently says nothing. We call them freedom fighters, or we call the leader of the Hamas, a spiritual leader. Implying that, in some way he runs yoga sessions, or meditation? What is spiritual about being the leader of a group that has killed more than three hundred civilians? That targets civilians? But political correctness means that you don't call things what they are. It means that you pretend that the terrorist is not really a terrorist, because you don't count on people's intelligence to be able to make distinctions. That is, we're afraid that if we call Muslims terrorists, people will say, oh, all Muslims are terrorists. And clearly the population is intelligent enough to tell the difference between a Muslim who is a terrorist, and a Muslim who is not. INTERVIEWER: You are not only Jewish, you are an Israeli. Does it bother you, [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] does it bother you when you walk on the campuses, to know that a large proportion of ignorant, uneducated, politically uneducated students think of you as a representative of a racist state? Does it bother you, personally? How do you feel about that? 15:09:30>>> ASHER RAGEN: When I walk around campus, and since I wear a yarmulke on my head, it's very clear to anyone who sees me that I am Jewish, and probably most people realize that I'm Israeli. And I know that some people, when they see Israelis, their initial reaction is very negative, sometimes. Oh, you come from a country that does terrible things, and - which is horrible. It really is. Because it creates an atmosphere where I'll be walking around - after I logged onto the internet, read the news and saw that some horrible thing happened; a suicide bomber blew himself up and killed - I remember this specifically - it was after a suicide bomber had killed, on a Saturday night, a Bar Mitzvah . He had killed a mother, he had killed two babies. I was walking around more depressed than I've ever been. 15:10:20>>> And while I was walking around, I knew that people looking at ME and thinking of Israelis were thinking, oh in some way deserved this. How could you possibly think that about these poor children? They deserved it? They did something to bring this on themselves? They're that evil? Israelis are that evil that we don't even deserve to live? And it's a horrible feeling. And maybe I'm overly optimistic when I think that college students are intelligent people. They go to classes. They study. They can grasp this problem. And if anyone wants to, the information is there, and all they have to do is learn a little about it. And those who know something, have to educate their friends. 15:10:57>>> It's the greatest injustice in the world, when you hear on the news that somebody has been killed, to sort of nod off and say, oh well he must have done something to deserve it. It's a horrible, horrible thing to do. INTERVIEWER: And you, Naomi, came here many years ago to _____. What happened to the way in which the dream was perceived? It seemed a less complex world, then. You, you were coming (Inaudible), or you were coming - if you weren't you were coming here because you felt you were doing the most noble thing in the world. It had a spirit of elevations. And now, it seems that even among the Israeli population, there is a feeling of where did we go wrong? How did the whole Zionist dream become so discombobulated and, and, and, and become reduced to these types of political fights, and bitterness among people, and division in Israeli society? 15:11:56>>> NAOMI RAGEN: I, I came to Israel over thirty-three years ago. And I came from New York. And I had been brought up in a religious family. And I went to a Hebrew Day School. And I felt that my place was in the religious world. And reading the Bible, and reading Jewish history, and learning about the holocaust, and all those things combined, to make me feel that the only place that I could express myself fully, culturally, in the entire world, was in the land of Israel. Because it was something that I could build that belonged to me. 15:12:37>>> It was an accident, at birth, that I was in America. And I think any place in the world that Jews are born, it's sort of an accident of birth. The only place that Jews can say, I chose to live in my, my homeland, is when a Jew comes to Israel. My husband and I got married in the states, and we'd never been to Israel. WE didn't know what we were going to find here. And we bought a one way ticket, because, we said, we didn't want to be like the spies in the Bible that checked out the land. And if it was good, we would stay, and if it wasn't good, we would come back to America. We came, we said we'd make due with whatever we found here. There was a certain simplicity, years ago, the idea that we were all new immigrants. And what we wanted to do was build something which would be just. Something which would be a continuation of Jewish history. Something that carried on the life of Jews in the land of Israel that started out three thousand years ago, and here we were. We were going to continue that life. We were going to do what the Bible told us to do, which was, leave your father's house and your birthplace, and come to this land. Which is what every religious Jew is obligated to do, according to my religious beliefs. The only place you can really fulfill your religious obligations, is here in the land of Israel. I don't really have a choice. If I want to believe in my religion, and I want to fulfill it completely, I have to do it here. It's going to be good. It's not going to be good. It's going to be dangerous. It's not going to be dangerous. 15:14:12>>> I didn't come here for economic security. I didn't come here because it was, I felt, the land of opportunity, more than the United States of America. I came here because my religion told me that this was the place that I needed to be in order to fulfill my, my religious obligations. INTERVIEWER: I must take you back to the early 70's. The war has been fought. The Six Day War has been fought. It's now 1969, 1968, 1970 - NAOMI RAGEN: [OVERLAP] We came here in 72'. INTERVIEWER: You came here in 72'? NAOMI RAGEN: [OVERLAP] 72'. INTERVIEWER: Okay, I was here that year. You come here, it was before Yom Kippur War. NAOMI RAGEN: 71', sorry. INTERVIEWER: Okay. You come here, it's before Yom Kippur War. Tell me something, did you think that the Israeli government had, at that time, said to the Palestinians who were, then, that radicalized in the same way they are today, you know, something, we had a war with you guys in 1967. We, you know, we beat you. We won the war. But we have no designs to rule over your population. So, we're gonna give it back, with minor security modifications, and you take it. We don't want it. We want to live here, and you live there. Do you think, if we had done that before all the complications of the, of the later wars, looking from hindsight, do you think we had done that, at the time, that they, in their state of mind, at that time, would have been prepared to live with us? 15:15:40>>> NAOMI RAGEN: I think that there is nothing that you can say, which would allow me to believe that the situation that we're in now, would not have come about. There are forces that are at work today, are not forces that are at work because we have real estate that they want. Before The Six Day War, when we didn't have the occupied territories, Israel fought how many wars, five wars? Before the 67' War we fought four wars, and that was before we had any occupied territories. 15:16:07>>> There was a fundamental feeling, in the Arab world, that they did not want the State of Israel to exist. They didn't want it in 1948, they didn't want it during the Sinai Campaign, they didn't want it in 67', and they don't want it today. I don't think, I don't think there's anything that we could have done, that we tried to do, that didn't work out. There is nothing that you can do when people just refuse to accept your fundamental right to express your culture, your religion, in your homeland. 15:16:38>>> We also have a homeland. We also have a culture. We also have a religion. And this is where it has to take place - in this place. If the Arabs would only understand that, and give us the same respect they give their own religion, and their own culture, we could make peace. But you can't make peace with people who don't respect your fundamental rights. 15:16:55>>> ASHER RAGEN: After 1967, the Israeli government, or parts of it, at least, wanted to use the West Bank and The Gaza Strip as a negotiation to reach a peace deal. The same way that we reached a peace deal with the Egyptians, and gave them back the Sinai - the idea was you could use all these territories, and achieve final, lasting peace with the Arabs. 15:17:14>>> The problem was that in 1968, all the Arab nations met in Chaltun, and convened an Arab Summit, and they agreed there on three no's: no, to negotiations, no to peace, no to recognition of Israel. So that door was slammed very, very quickly. And, I think for most of the last thirty years, the majority of the Israeli public has been more than willing to give up the West Bank and Gaza Strip, for peace. And there just has been nobody on the other side to negotiate with. And it's always been a minority of Israelis who wanted to keep these territories forever. INTERVIEWER: Okay, it seems, then, if it is as you say, that everything has been tried. They tried every single way; force, no force, talking, no talking. Is it possible that this is a situation where it's like you're living permanently with a person whose sick, but they don't die, and they don't get better? Does it seem to you like the answer, then, is that there's no answer? That there's no solutions? And could you please try to answer in such a way that the question will be understood? 15:18:16>>> ASHER RAGEN: At this point, after haven tried a peace deal for eight years, and haven tried massive use of force over the last three years, what I'm a hundred percent convinced of is that there is no short-term solution. Whatever solution comes, it's not going to be here, because we do, or not do one thing over the next two or three years. The problem is fundamental. We are living across from a society that is willing to sacrifice its children, only in order to kill us. It's a society that is not democratic. It's a society that no one can open their mouth in opposition, because they'll get killed. That doesn't leave any room for change. I think that, in the long-term, that is in twenty years, and thirty years, if the Palestinian society and the whole Muslim world changes enough, we'll have a solution. Do I think that's likely to happen? No, I'm not a prophet. It can happen. The Arabs - there is no reason that Arab countries shouldn't be democratic. There is no reason that the Palestinians shouldn't have the same basic human rights, and freedom of speech in a country they create. There is no fundamental reason. They're not incapable of it. They just don't want to do it. INTERVIEWER: Given this reality, do you think that maybe this problem ought to be treated the same way as big city deals with it's crime rate? In other word, you can't eliminate it, but you can certainly reduce it, or control it. 15:19:32>>> NAOMI RAGEN: I'd like to say something about my peace plan, that no one has asked me what MY peace plan is, but I have my own peace plan. My peace plan starts with point number one, and that is -that we have to make it clear that anybody that has illegal weapons, of any kind, has three days to turn them in, otherwise they're gonna be jailed or deported. And we give people three days to do this, and then we do a house-to-house search, all over the West Bank and Gaza, every place that we can, to collect these weapons. And anybody found with a weapon, has to be deported from the country. It has to be fundamental that this, this, relationship between us and our neighbors is not going to be solved with violence. And the first thing we have to eliminate is all these weapons. All the weapons that are, that are - have been distributed, and have been smuggled into the country. That's number one. Once you eliminate the weapons, I think that there has to be a complete ban on any kind of incitement to violence. You have to - any, any radio station, any television station and mosque, any social authority that incites people to kill, and to be martyred, has to be outside the law, and these people have to be jailed. The television stations have to be shut down, the radio stations have to be shut down. All the incitements of violence has to stop. 15:21:00>>> Once you have the weapons finished, once you take away the incitement to violence, you have to have, I would say, a cooling off period in which Israel is in charge of the security in the West Bank and Gaza. And once you have an educational system, in place, to reeducate the population to the importance of peace, the importance of democracy, you take away the threat to their lives, of expressing their desire for democracy and peace, you can then sit down with the local population and say what kind of a - where do you want to live? What kind of country do you want to have? Perhaps all of the Palestinians that are in The West Bank, want to be part of Jordan. 15:21:40>>> Jordan is 99% Palestinian. People don't realize this, but the, the mandate, the British Mandate that was given - The League of Nations gave Britain a mandate to create the State of Israel - to create the Jewish State. The British, at a certain point, took three quarters of this land that was supposed to be turned over into a Jewish State, and took King Abdula [PH] - where was he, from Iran or Iraq? He was Saudi Arabian. No, I think he was from actually Saudi Arabia. Okay. And they made him a King. [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] 15:22:22>>> The British were given a mandate, to take this land that had been turned over from the Ottoman Empire, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and they were supposed to turn this into a homeland for the Jewish people. Instead of doing that, they took three-quarters of the land, and they brought in King Abdula from Saudi Arabia, and they made him the king of a new country, which was called Trans Jordan. And this country is 99% Palestinian. Not only is it 99% Palestinian, but it has a law of return. The way we have a law of return for any Jew who wants to live in the Jewish country, the land of Israel, THEY have a law of return that any Palestinian that wants too live in the land of the Palestinians, which is Jordan, can live there. 15:23:04>>> So the Palestinians, in order to express their religion, and in order to express their culture, they have a country. It's called Jordan. And if the West Bank wants to join up with Jordan, I think that would probably be the most stable - any kind of political statement that you want to make, instead of having a tiny country, which has no natural resources, and which is going to be sandwiched in Jordan, in between Israel, and has no viable way of, of really existing, that would be a much more viable solution. INTERVIEWER: Well I will only say, and I'm not injecting myself into the discussion, but as you know, the Confederation Plan was suggested and rejected by a vote for Jordanians and Palestinians. So would that work, it would be wonderful - if it could work, and if they could accept it. There is a story told, and it may, or may not be _____, about how all the different nationalities of the world came to Boston, in their city, their temporary city, and decided they were going to have a conference and stay locked up in a place until they could establish peace. And this was, of all the nations that had problems, (Inaudible) Sri Lanka, the Catholics and Protestants from Ireland, and of course the Palestinians and the Israelis. And at the end of eleven days, in this UN type situation, everybody had come to an agreement except for one group. And you know who that group is. Why is that so? Why is this conflict so intractable with (Inaudible). 15:24:52>>> ASHER RAGEN: There's a joke that people tell, about the Middle East. And it's a story about - start that again. Okay. There's a joke that people tell about the Middle East. A dog once got to a riverbed, and wanted to cross the river. And next to him, came a scorpion. Now the dog could swim, and the scorpion couldn't. So the scorpion said to the dog, why don't you give me a lift. And the dog said, but if I give you a lift, you can sting me and then I'll drown. So the scorpion said, idiot, if I sting you, we'll both drown, so you have nothing to worry about. So the dog said, okay that makes sense. And the scorpion got on his back, and they waded into the water, and about halfway through the dog feels this sting on his back. So he says to the scorpion, but you said you wouldn't do that. You said we would both drown. And so the scorpion said to him, welcome to the Middle East. 15:25:32>>> For some reason we haven't been able to solve this problem, because the assumption has always been that each side, all it wants to do, is reach some sort of normal existence. But the problem is that, and we've seen this very clearly in negotiation with the Palestinians - they're interested in a lot more than just a normal, day-to-day existence. And their objectives go beyond just reaching an agreement. They want everything or nothing. They turned down a deal giving them 98% of The West Bank, because they wanted 100% of it. It's an unwillingness to compromise, which, I think has roots in a certain type of undemocratic culture, where compromise is seen as weakness. And until they get over that, we're never gonna solve this. Because, if you're not willing to compromise, and they show they've shown that they're not willing, you can't reach - 15:26:25>>> NAOMI RAGEN: [INTERRUPTING] I think it's worse than that. I think it's worse than that. I think there is a fundamental lack of desire for peace. It's not a value. If you want victory, and you're not interested in peace, then, then all I can offer you is my life so you can have a victory. You know, they just don't want peace. INTERVIEWER: Do you think the value is more? Or (Inaudible)? 15:26:45>>> NAOMI RAGEN: I think war is glory. I think that when you look at Arab - the Arab culture, the whole idea of, of victory and of concurring, this is part of the Koran. This is something which, which is very important to the Arab culture; the idea of Arab pride, and Arab victory. And that is what they want here. They want victory. They want glory. They're not interested in the sewage system. They want victory and glory. [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] 15:27:51>>> ASHER RAGEN: I just want to - I want to add one thought. Cause I know that, when you talking about politics in the Middle East, it's so depressing. We've talked about a terrorist attack. And we've talked about how there never will be peace in this region. I just want to add one thought, is that I love being Israeli. I love living here. Even though I live in Boston, right now, and I got to Harvard, and Harvard is gorgeous, I wouldn't dream of actually settling in America. And if to use a stock market metaphor, I wouldn't necessarily buy shares in any peace process, a Middle East peace process that someone tries to sell me. I would definitely buy shares in the State of Israel. Because no matter how things turn out, I think this is a great place, and it's going to continue to be a great place. INTERVIEWER: Why? 15:28:35>>> ASHER RAGEN: Because we're gonna make it that way. I mean, every time - it's funny, a lot of people, a lot of Zionists get a thrill out of driving down to the dessert and seeing - you know, the kibbutzim are flourishing because they're growing tomatoes. I get my patriotic kick out of driving down the highways in Tel Aviv and seeing the modern buildings. And laughing, when I remember the story about how in 1908 when they built the city, the people who bought the land were considered crazy. Because no city could possibly be built on the sand in Tel Aviv. 15:29:03>>> So, if you take a little perspective, somehow we do get through things. It's not always rational. It doesn't always make sense. And this country shouldn't have been here for many reasons. And the Arabs should have won, one of the seven wars that they had. But somehow we get through it, and things get better. And I loved growing up here. And ten years ago, we didn't have terrorist attacks. Ten years ago, two, three people were killed a year and not four hundred. And there's no reason we shouldn't be able to go back to that situation, and even better. So, don't write Israel off so quickly. And if you haven't come for a visit, pay us a visit. [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] 15:30:10>>> ASHER RAGEN: I think you can give a really positive example of how the America-Jewish community managed to influence events in a positive way. It's - in the last summer, there was a big demonstration of Jewish organizations in Washington D.C. I think more than a hundred thousand Jews came in support of the State of Israel. And that happened just about when the American administration - where Bush was going to come out with a Middle East policy. 15:30:33>>> Now, that means one of two things; either you pressure Israel to sign the deal, make confessions, move troops back, and allow the Palestinians to have more autonomy which translates immediately into stronger terrorist organizations and more terrorist attacks, or, you pressure the Palestinians to crack down on terrorism. And, unfortunately the reason that the decision will go in one or another direction, is not always because you think that's the way the world should be. It's politics. And politics means that if the American Jewish community shows support for Israel, and shows that they will not accept an American president who sells Israel down the river because it's trying to please the Saudi Arabians. Then the American president will make other decisions. 15:31:22>>> And those decisions, and the decision that he made in the Middle East policy that Bush adopted was very much in favor of Israel. He supported Israel's right to fight terrorism. He cracked - he wants to crack down on the Palestinian Authority, and force them to fight terrorism. And that has everything to do with the fact that people raise their voice and said, enough is enough. And we support Israel. And the more that happens, the safer Israel is going to be. And you know, on the other side of that equation is, of course, if people just go about their own business and decide this has nothing to do with them, they shouldn't be surprised if, in five or ten years, they find out that Israel's security is that much worse. And it doesn't take that much to demonstrate. You really don't have to do a lot. So, considering the good you could do just by writing a letter to a Congressman, or demonstrating, or being vocal in your support of Israel, in some ways it is unforgivable not to do that. [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] 15:32:08>>> NAOMI RAGEN: Well, if we talk about one of the reasons that I would never consider leaving Israel. I mean, I have to, I have to give you a particular story that came about recently. I mean, it's been going on all year. It's actually been going on - since the, the recent violence began, and I've been here for many years. But I, I never really appreciated the kind of people that I live amongst. And the last two years has - you know, the last stop, line of defense in Israel is - against terrorism - is just really the individual. 15:32:46>>> And you know, we've had so many instances where a bus driver will hold the hands of a suicide bomber and let everybody get off the bus, risking his own life. And a person who is guarding the entrance to a restaurant will bodily prevent a suicide bomber from coming in, in fact, embracing him and saying - there was a case in the supermarket where - a woman came in with a suicide belt and he said, if you blow yourself up, then we blow up together, but you're not coming in here to kill anybody else. And there was recently a case where terrorists walked into a Yeshiva [PH], in a place called Atniel, when the boys were sitting down to begin their Sabbath meal, and there were four boys in the kitchen who - it was their turn to prepare the food. And the terrorists walked into the kitchen and started shooting. 15:33:44>>> And the - the immediate reaction I had when I heard this story was that, for all the boys in the kitchen, you know, on the other side of the door were hundreds of boys waiting for their dinner. And only a door separated the terrorists from that dining room. And you would think that the boys who were in the kitchen would have tried to get out. Because I was in a terrorist attack. And that is human nature. You want to save your own skin. And instead, there was one boy, his name was Norm Apter [PH], he went to the door, under fire, and instead of running out and opening up the door, he locked it. And he threw away the key so that the terrorist should not be able to get through to hurt his friend. And I hear a story like that and I think to myself, of all the other stories in Israel - of Israelis risking their lives to save people they don't know - strangers - people on a bus, people in a restaurant. And here he was, a nineteen-year-old kid, who had the presence of mind and the bravery to lock that door, and lock himself in with, with terrorists full of grenades and sub-machine guns. 15:34:52>>> And I think to myself, these are the kind of people I live amongst. These are my people. And I don't think you'd find any place but in the land of Israel, and among the Jewish people, that kind of heroism and that kind of bravery. And it makes me proud, and it makes me grateful that I'm here and that I raised my children here. And that these are the values that we've given our children. I see what the Palestinians have taught their children, and I see what we've taught our children. And I'm proud that I'm on this side, I'm not on their side. INTERVIEWER: Maybe part of the reason, then, that we can't resolve this conflict is because, in terms of ____ values and outlook, (Inaudible). 15:35:33>>> NAOMI RAGEN: I think that there is - if there ever was a case of right and wrong, and light and darkness, we're dealing with it right now. When you talk about terrorism against innocent people. If you don't understand that terrorism is wrong, and that it's a crime against humanity, then there is nothing that anyone can do to convince you. But the people of the world should know, that maybe Israel is the one that's suffering, now, from terrorism. 15:35:56>>> But the minute we give this moral equivalency, and we say, yes, but -then terrorist movements all over the world will take this as a, a green light and say, okay, that means that these methods are, are acceptable to the world- that I can now, in order to achieve my political end, start blowing up Americans, Indonesians, Pakistani's, French, British. I can do this because this is no longer a crime against humanity, and it's no longer something I will be held accountable for. And people should understand, we're in the forefront. But they're not after us. They're after anything which smells of human freedom, and the rights of man. And there's only one side to be on in this conflict, and if you're not on the Israeli side, then you're against, you're against human values and you're against morality. [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] ,[END OF INTERVIEW]