Dr. Eldad's letter to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was written before the surrender of the Sinai.

An Open and Distressed Letter to Menachem Begin
from Hegyonot Yisrael

"I hope that you receive not only echoes of the political opposition and security fears, but also the recurring waves of impassioned amazement, of bitter disappointments, of betrayed loves, of crises of faith in the heart. Although many of those close to you and the veterans of the national movement who cannot find in their political mind any justification for your actions, nevertheless exempt themselves and silence themselves with the short answer:

I rely upon him, nevertheless one cannot but be receptive to the tremor in their voice. These waves are not reported in the media, but a leader such as you has to be receptive to them with the vessels of the heart. Furthermore, I still hope that somewhere in an unoccupied corner of your soul, you are even happy at the opposition that has arisen against you, which is like an amplified resonance of the doubts in your mind and the twinges of your conscience.[...]"

"You are not under compulsion. You are the one who wants to sign the Government of Israel to a new White Paper, without festive attire or disguises for the words: "self-rule" for the Arabs of Eretz Israel means, in the not-so-distant final analysis: a clear White Paper, a new division of western Eretz Israel ! If this is not obvious to you, Menachem Begin, then something has happened to your political judgment, which was one of the keenest in Israel. And there is no need for great ability to reconstruct the devastating political address that you would have delivered, if such a proposal had been raised by the Alignment."

"And also for the benefit of history: would it not have been preferable for the Alignment to raise such a proposal, with your formidable opposition? Was it for this that you were elected? You drove the British out of the land,you drove the Alignment from power, and now will you in effect drive out Zionism and the Jewish people, and possibly settlers as well, from Judea, Samaria, and Sinai?"

"Levi Eshkol established a large state - and Menachem Begin is destroying it, dwarfing it to its previous, not historical, not just, dimensions.[...] Why are you doing this, Menachem Begin, to your people and to yourself? 'What happened?' many good, wise, and loyal ones are asking?[...]"

"Either you are making a most serious, catastrophic mistake, or - or we must rise up, and confess, saying: political Zionism in its entirety erred: there is no importance to principles, to declarations, there is importance to concrete action on the ground, whenever and wherever this is possible. And so, they did much - but we opposed this. We believed in mastery over territories that are not in our hands, and we were thought to be madmen. And now?"

"Now we are doing a deed [maaseh ] of which the practical [Zionists - ha-maasi'im ]' never conceived: to surrender - this is what this is in practice - what we possess. Not to impose sovereignty over the parts of Eretz Israel in our hands, not to settle the parts of Eretz Israel in our hands with masses, to acknowledge the right of a minority over parts of our land in our possession.[...]"

"I am heartbroken, Menachem Begin, and the hearts of many here are broken. If only your physical heart will be strong enough to bear the spiritual, the moral sorrow, and that it and you will have the courage to recoil at the last minute from the abyss.[...]"

 "Son of Ze'ev, reconsider, in this last hour."

"[...] the Hasidic story is well-known. Rabbi Meir of Peremyshlyany said: "They will never whip me in the World to Come for not being Abraham. I was not Abraham. They will whip me for not being Meir." And so, you, Menachem Begin, are not deserving to be whipped for not going forth to realize the Israelite kingdom according to the territory promised to Abraham, or according to the territory of David. Nor do you deserve lashes for not being Ze'ev Jabotinsky. You are not Ze'ev Jabotinsky. But why are you not Menachem Begin? This is the question that is being asked by the surprised and sorrowful many, who have been so deeply wounded."