Editor's note: The following is a reply by Alan E. Kligerman, CEO of AkPharma, Pleasantville, to an email he received from "Americans for Peace Now" concerning right-wing terrorists targeting the "Peace Now" organization in Israel. Recently, a Peace Now activist, Zeev Sternhell, was injured by a bomb outside his home. A flyer found near the bomb site read: "A prize of 1.1 million shekels is offered to anyone who kills a member of Peace Now. The State of Israel has turned into our enemy. The time has come to establish a Halachic state in Judea and Samaria! It is time for the Kingdom of Judea!" (To read more about the incident go to: http://capwiz.com/peacenow/utr/1/ODQBJGCCPW/FTJBJGCEF Z/2430977916).

Kligerman's letter:

This unfortunate development was really just a matter of time, once Arik Sharon in effect legitimized the Settlers' territorial intransigence by encouraging their numerical move into the Palestinian territories, increasing their population from approximately 17,000 to between 200,000 and 300,000. Now that they have hit this critical mass, only seismic events can make changes. The thought that when push came to shove that the Settlers taking up arms against the State would be an unthinkable act is a long gone fairy tale. The Settlers clearly have no hesitation in destabilizing the State of Israel and they are fully prepared to commence a revolution against their own government; it is Masada all over again. I remember all too well, about 10 years back, when walking through some disputed household areas on the edge of Jerusalem with [founder of Americans for Peace Now] Mark Rosenblum, and seeing two Settlers sitting in a makeshift bunker, then seeing the Settlers raise their hands and cock their fingers toward us and figuratively pull the trigger on us with their thumbs. The Settlers and the Palestinian/Arab suicide bombers are of one piece with each other in their absolutism, and the majority of the victims are the workaday Israelis and Palestinians.

An inadequate response by the Israeli government at this point will set the Settler response mechanism into fully cured and crystallized concrete and we will be dealing with, in effect, a /de facto /second government in Israel, with a civil war all but inevitable. This twoheaded chimaera will not survive in any form we would want to recognize. Alan E. Kligerman