86	The Story of the Jewish Defense League

bcoward. He, himself, begins to lose the last shred of his bconfidence and his self-respect. He guarantees that the next btime he will run away again and the time after that and after bthat. So much self-hate that we find among our Jewish youth barises from their contempt of what they consider to be their bown and the general Jewish weakness.

b“It is not enough to merely speak of the Holocaust. In- bdeed, to emphasize the Holocaust alone and the slaughter of bJews continuously, adds to the image of the Jew as a weak, bdefenseless being, adds to the contempt that the Jew has for bhimself and his people and creates the self-hatred that is the bphenomenon of Jewish youth today.

bAnd so Barzel, Iron, is a principal ingredient of the Jewish bDefense League’s ideology, in creating a physically strong, a bfearless and a courageous Jew who fights back. We are bchanging an image, an image born of two thousand years in bthe Galut, an image that must be buried because it has bburied us. We train ourselves for the defense of Jewish lives band Jewish rights. We learn how to fight physically for it is bbetter to know how and not have to, than have to and not bknow how.

b“The lessons of Jabotinsky, the lessons of the Jewish bunderground in Palestine, the lessons of the Jewish parti- bsans in Eastern Europe, the lessons of the State of Israel, are blessons that arise from Barzel. When the Jew in Israel re- btaliates with his planes and with his commandos, there is bnothing un-Jewish about this. On the contrary, there is the brealization that when one deals with Esau, he must use the bweapons of Esau. ‘The hands are the hands of Esau, and the bvoice is the voice of Jacob.’ This is a proper concept. bNevertheless, our father Jacob understood that there are btimes when he must adopt the philosophy and practices of bEsau. And so we find that our rabbis tell us that in preparing bto meet Esau, our father Jacob prepared himself in three bways—with prayer, with gifts, and preparation for war. And bour rabbis tell us further: ‘If one comes to slay you, slay him bfirst.’

b“Barzel is, indeed, a Jewish concept. It always has been band it always will be so long as we live in a world where the b