Column: October 16 : You Dreamin'?

I had a dream just prior to this past Passover holiday. In the dream President Bush spoke to me. It was a pleasant and relaxed atmosphere but there was a sense of urgency. I was sitting in a large comfortable chair and he was standing in front of me, some three or four feet away. I felt that we were in his home in Crawford.

He looked down at me seriously and intensely, as if trying to impress upon me his sincerity and the import of what he was about to say. He then said something close to this:

" I want you to know that I am a true friend of the Jewish people and that I am deeply committed in loyalty and friendship to Israel."

Now, there are different kinds of dreams. Generally, they are of the imagination -- which is usually mixed and confused -- and so the message. However, it also happens that sometimes a dream is true, delivering a clear and true message from above.

This dream had the feel of the latter but knowing that a true dream is a rare thing I paid little attention to it and certainly never thought I would write about it. Even now, I only succumbed to the idea when I felt I must. Here is the reason why.

On that Pesach holiday I was at a friend's home for a shabbat meal and we were sitting around the table -- he, his wife, his young children, another guest, and myself. Normally I try to avoid politics at festive meals when I am unfamiliar with the precise nature of the political ideas of all present. But it was only a dream, and an interesting one at that, so not knowing exactly why I was doing what my better judgment told me not to, I told them my dream -- which until that point I had told not a soul.

Well, about the last thing that I would ever have expected happened.

My host looked at me calmly and asked curiously, "When did you have that dream?"

I answered him; "A couple of weeks ago, I don't remember exactly ... Why?"

"Because I had the same dream at about the same time," he said to me.

We were all amazed by this. I told him that I had not told anyone of my dream until that point and he concurred that he had not spoken of his dream either. If until that time I had only the vague sense that this was perhaps a true dream, at that point I was much more likely to believe so -- as was he. The odds against this being a chance happening seemed astronomical -- beyond the realm of chance and securely within the realm of divine providence.

Still, I never thought to write about this, even though I am writing from the mystical city of Tzfat. It just seems that to ask people to believe this story which enters so deeply into the political realm is asking too much -- never mind the suggestion that the dream might be a true one. However, over the last couple of months I have had three or four more dreams where I am visiting with President Bush in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. So, as I watched the first debates and felt that Bush was speaking from his heart to the American people -- and as I cringed at the slick and mendacious flip flopping of John Kerry -- and realized that I wanted to write about the contrast of their character and that of Cheney and Edwards as well, I succumbed to the thought of writing this. In truth, I had no choice. Everything else seemed like a lie.

Of course, I winced when President Bush mentioned the "peace process" and a "Palestinian" state even as he spoke of the WOT. That is a double standard that is unacceptable and mistaken -- cruelly so, as we were reminded so brutally by the bombings in Sinai -- but, I ask myself, would Kerry be better?

Would it be better to have Kerry force Israel to meet a "global test" -- a test administrated by the UN and Jacques Chirac? How long would it be before Arafat was resurrected from the isolation that Bush has placed him in? How long until standing triumphantly on the White House lawn with Kerry, Arafat would be waving yet a another new and secret "peace initiative" that was hatched in Oslo or some such place with some Israeli "peacemaker"? How long till Arafat raised the victory sign in Washington with Chirac and Carter and Annan kvelling in the "sensitive" glow of the moment -- confident that the "metaphor" of terrorism was no longer a global threat but a mere "nuisance?"

No, President Bush may be wrong about a "Palestinian" state and the "peace process" -- and dreams are hard to decipher -- but I'll take him any day over Kerry; for the future of Israel, America and the world. The alternative looks like a true nightmare.