What's left of Israel's good name, will not survive this government.

Day by day, public officials disgrace themselves and their country, doing their high-decibel best to prove the contentions of Israel's worst enemies. Fascism? Start with a look at the past year's legislative agenda. Ethnic cleansing? Count the Palestinians stripped of their residency rights, a quarter million in all. Apartheid? Look under: Compensation for five illegal settler houses. Or under: Occupation forever. Zionism is Racism? The very public statements of two legislators in Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud – both of them entrusted with fostering Israel's image here and abroad – terming African refugees and migrants as a whole, a "cancer" and a "plague."

So stridently racist have the comments of some legislators become, that in Australia, Betar, the right-wing youth movement that is blood of the blood of the Likud, have taken the extraordinary step of writing an open letter in protest.

They direct their letter to Likud MK Danny Danon, who not only chairs the Knesset Aliyah, Immigrant Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee as well as the World Likud organization, but was in younger days, chairman of World Betar.

“Recently we have seen a number of attacks on African migrants living in Israel” the open letter begins. “Regardless of their status in the country, these attacks have come as a shock and an embarrassment to us as Jews. However, your words in regard to the “national plague” (that is commonly referred to as African migrants) have greatly upset us as Betarim.”

Citing the writings of the founder of Betar and of the pre-state political party that would eventually evolve into the Likud, the letter states that when Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote “in the beginning, God created men,” he was referring “to mankind as a whole, to our shared origins and our shared humanity.”

“These people fleeing conflict from Africa, who have chosen Israel because they know it is a moral and free country, are just as human as us. In fact, in their present state, they are unmistakably similar to us as Jews. We have always been refugees; our ancestors have been refugees since the destruction of the first Temple up to our grandparents, who fled a climax of persecution around the world.”

The letter holds up as a role model the first Likud prime minister, Menachem Begin, who, soon after his election in 1977, authorized citizenship for scores of Vietnamese boat people saved by Israeli sailors and brought to Israel. Begin compared their plight to that of Jewish refugees seeking haven during the Holocaust.

“Israel desperately needs to develop policy to deal with this crisis and to deal with it humanely. We reiterate that we are not seeking to dictate policy from outside of Israel. However, as Jews and Betarim we do expect for the political establishment in Israel to act decently and to approach this issue humanely, without prejudice and to acknowledge the responsibilities that Israel has towards refugees as a signatory to both the UN Refugee Convention (1951) and Protocol (1967).”

The closing paragraph is one that Israel should study and take to heart, if only for its tone, one of outrage and shock.

“To deport people to persecution and danger is not the act of a Jewish State. Jews have been persecuted for thousands of years and their state should not be one that has a hand in leading others to suffer the same fate.”

The letter ends with a line all of us should take to heart, if we want to see anything survive of the good remaining in this country. It is taken from Jabotinsky’s lyrics for the anthem of the Betar movement:

“Ki Sheket Hu Refesh” - Because Silence Is A Mire.

With thanks to Didi Remez, Ittay Flescher and Sol Salbe