Today, in the Middle East and around the world, a two-front war is being fought between Israel and the Palestinians. One front is located on the West Bank and Gaza. The other is less visible but no less crucial for the survival of the Jewish State---the propaganda war that is waged continuously in the counsel of nations and the world media. It is on this second front that the Palestinians seem to be winning.

The Palestinians claim that the land is theirs, and that we stole it from them. They claim that Jerusalem is their holy capital; and that we have no claim whatsoever. And they are willing to lay down their lives to regain their homeland.

What are we to answer them? How are we to face this implacable foe?

Surely, it is correct to point out, as some Jewish commentators have been doing, that the Palestinian claims are largely fictitious. The very existence of a Palestinian people is something made up since 1967. The stories of expulsions in 1948 are grossly exaggerated. Every Israeli initiative to negotiate a fair and peaceful settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict since that time has been rejected by the Arab states. Jerusalem is never even mentioned in the Koran; has never once in history ever been the capital of any Arab country; and Moslems pray five times a day with their faces to Mecca and their backs to Jerusalem. This is just the briefest refutation of the catalog of lies that make up the fabric of Palestinian claims, but we are limited in space.

But these refutations are not enough. There is something else, more fundamental; something that every Jew must know. Indeed, we are supposed to review it every year when we begin reading the Torah again from "In the beginning..." For there we find in the classic commentary of Rashi a brief preface to the Torah which reads as if it were written especially for us in the midst of this terrible crisis.

Rashi poses the question: Why does the Torah begin with the account of Creation? After all, the Torah is primarily a book of laws. It should have begun with the law-giving chapters which appear much later, in the narrative of the Exodus. Rashi answers that it was necessary to begin with the Creation so that if the nations should ever come and accuse us of stealing the land of Israel from them, we will know to answer, "that the earth belongs to G-d; He created it and He gave it to whom He saw fit, and then He took it away from them and gave it to us."

Many ask the question: What good will it do to quote from the Bible? Are we to think that if only Yasser Arafat would see the Rashi he would be transformed overnight into a sincere partner for peace?

Of course not. The answer is that Rashi is speaking primarily to us. It is for us to know that the earth is the Lord's and that He gives any portion of it to whomever He wishes. It is for us to know that our relationship to the land of Israel is validated by a divine promise to Abraham that the land would belong to him and his descendants. It is for us to remember that Jerusalem has always been our holiest place, mentioned countless times in the Torah, to which we have turned in prayer every day of two thousand years of exile.

None of this is to say that we have a mandate to do whatever we wish in the Jewish homeland. Rather, it is meant to serve as a point of reference. Before we can know how to deal with those who make war on us, we have to first know that it is in fact the Jewish homeland.

If we do not know and believe in our right to exist and to live in the land of Israel, we have no hope of surviving. Tanks and helicopter gunships will not suffice. We have to learn the lesson of the first Rashi. Only when we know who we truly are, may the rest of the world know it, too. Only when we begin to be true to ourselves and our heritage, will the lies being told about us cease to be heard.