A Turning Point?
Herbert Zweibon

From the Editor
Rael Jean Isaac

The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege
Kenneth Levin

Demolition Derby: A Plan For Who Goes First
Jack Engelhard

Memorandum of Conversation between His Majesty Abdul Aziz al Saud, King of Saudi Arabia and President Roosevelt, February 14, 1945, aboard the U.S.S. Quincy.

Bat Ye’or’s Eurabia
Rael Jean Isaac

OSLO REDUX
BAKER REDUX
Ruth King

OUTPOST
Editor: Rael Jean Isaac
Editorial Board: Herbert Zweibon, Ruth King

Outpost is distributed free to
Members of Americans For a Safe Israel
Annual membership: $50.

Americans For a Safe Israel
1623 Third Ave. (at 92nd St.) - Suite 205
New York, NY 10128

Herbert Zweibon

As Yogi Berra would put it, it’s déjà vu all over again. The Oslo “peace process” is on course as if it had never been tried and failed.

The needle of U.S. policy is once again caught in the groove of “territories for peace,” the broken record U.S. administrations have played since Israel’s birth. The result has produced Nobel peace prizes -- not peace. And this is inevitable, for what no U.S. administration has been willing to face, although the evidence mounts as high as Everest, is that the Arabs are not interested in a slice of Israeli territory, but are determined to wipe out the Jewish state.

In the 1950s there was Secretary of State Dulles’s suggestion that Israel give up the Negev on the theory that peace would come once Egypt and Jordan would no longer have a frustrating geographic barrier between them.

Two years after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War of 1967, Secretary of State Rogers advanced the so-called Rogers Plan calling for Israel to withdraw more or less to its prewar armistice lines. In the 1970s there was a new wrinkle as President Carter, in March 1977, called for a Palestinian “homeland” (up to then the so-called “West Bank” was to be returned to Jordan). In 1982 the Reagan Plan once again called for Israel to go back to the old armistice lines. Now Condaleeza Rice joins the long line of Secretaries of State promoting doomed-to-fail plans to bring peace through Israel’s territorial amputation.

And so President Bush gears up -– along with the EU, Russia and the UN, all sworn enemies of Israel -- to implement the “Road Map” for a Palestinian state. As writer P. David Hornik notes, the conservative Bush administration should surely realize “that there is no reason why the inversion of all its principles — not to compromise, deal with, or capitulate to terrorists, fighting evil, distinguishing between attacker and defender -– should produce good results uniquely in the Israeli-Palestinian case.”

Indeed the results are likely to be uniquely terrible. Turning points are rarely recognized when they occur but this is likely to be one. The moral scandal of Israel uprooting Jewish communities and establishing a Palestinian Arab state in the historical homeland of the Jewish people is likely to presage the end of Israel. We have the irony of a President of the United States, supposedly intent on bringing democracy to the Middle East, pursuing policies that will destroy the only democracy that exists there. It may deeply wound that democracy even before a renewed Arab jihad. As the Sharon government, in its efforts to accommodate pressures from the West, pursues its ethically and strategically indefensible actions it is producing internal turmoil and the government’s reaction may well be massive detention of Jews without trial, undermining the state’s democratic foundations.

While Israel is clearly the primary victim, the implications go well beyond Israel. Israeli retreat, the creation of a Palestinian state, the dissolution of internal Israeli cohesion, the snowballing assault on Israel’s existence that all this is bound to produce, represent the triumph of the most evil forces in the world. It is the triumph of the bin Ladens, the al-Zarqawis, the Arafats, those imams who preach hatred each Friday from their mosques, the suicide bombers, Hezbollah, Hamas, those burning with hatred of the West and its civilization, who would, if they could, bring a new Dark Age upon the world.

And the triumph over Israel will energize those forces, not appease them, any more than Czechoslovakia’s abandonment appeased Hitler. For the abandonment of Israel, far from persuading the Moslem world that the Christian world is their friend, tells the Islamists that the West has lost the will to defend its civilization, not merely the Europeans (that they already knew) but the United States.

Rael Jean Isaac

THE OSLO SYNDROME

In this issue, we have assembled excerpts from Kenneth Levin’s excellent new book The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege (published by Smith and Kraus), which weaves together all the strands to explain the terrible suicidal course upon which Israel embarked in 1993 and continues to pursue. A psychiatrist, Levin focuses on the psychological mechanisms that shaped the way Jews responded to hatred and oppression in the centuries of Diaspora living, the extent to which they brought these dysfunctional attitudes with them to Israel and, confronted with relentless Moslem and growing European hostility, reenacted those responses. But the book is much more than a psychological exploration. It is also a history of the Jews and an in depth study of the Oslo years, clearly written, absorbing – and absolutely devastating. This book, like Bat Ye’or’s Eurabia, which can be ordered from AFSI, is essential reading.

TURKEY OVERBOARD

We have warned in these pages that the influence of Ataturk (with his policies of secularization) has steadily eroded in Turkey, which has more and more succumbed to Islamist influences. Up to now this extremely serious development has received little attention in the media; indeed there have been obvious reasons why politicians have been eager to downplay it. European populations have been uneasy in the face of their leaders’ plans (promoted by the U.S.) to incorporate Turkey into the European Union: the prospect of admitting a radical Islamist Turkey (and flooding Europe with potential shahids) could mobilize them.

But now Robert Pollock in The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 16) breaks the silence with a vengeance: U.S.-Turkey relations have collapsed, he writes, “And what a collapse it has been. On a brief visit to Ankara earlier this month with Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith, I found a poisonous atmosphere – one in which just about every politician and media outlet (secular and religious) preaches an extreme combination of America-and-Jew-hatred that voluntarily goes far further than anything found in most of the Arab world’s state-controlled press. If I hesitate to call it Nazi-like, that’s only because Goebbels would probably have rejected much of it as too crude.”

Pollock reports that the intellectual climate in which Eric Edelman, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, is operating “has gone so mad that he actually felt compelled to organize a conference call with scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey to explain that secret U.S. nuclear testing did not cause the recent tsunami.”

In the face of the most incredible media slanders, writes Pollock, “Turkish politicians have been utterly silent. In fact, Turkish parliamentarians themselves have accused the U.S. of ‘genocide’ in Iraq, while Mr. Erdogen (who we once hoped would set an example of democracy for Moslems) was among the few world leaders to question the legitimacy of the Iraqi elections. When confronted, Turkish pols claim they can’t risk going against ‘public opinion.’”

BEYOND SATIRE

IMRA (Independent Media Review and Analysis) sends the following item with the preface “Not a parody.” “About 350 Palestinian gunmen will be incorporated into the Palestinian Authority security forces soon as part of a deal reached between PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and leaders of all the Palestinian factions.” All of these men are on Israel’s list of wanted terrorists, a number of them part of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. According to the PA’s Minister of Agriculture, “the move is designed to protect them against Israeli assassination attempts….They are entitled to join the security forces because of their involvement in the resistance.”

And this is the security force Sharon expects to “protect” Israel from terror and outright warfare in the years ahead?

Meanwhile, in abject appeasement mode, the Israeli government not only is set to release at least 500 terrorists (including, for the first time, those found guilty of murdering Israeli civilians) but, as Carolyn Glick reports, in a separate agreement, is allowing “the terrorists deported from Bethlehem in 2002 – after they took over, desecrated and laid siege to the Church of the Nativity for 39 days – to return to the city and face no charges for their crimes.” The Christians of Bethlehem, writes Glick, are “in a blind panic” for in 2002 members of this group summarily executed more than a dozen Christians, raped Christian girls, took over Christian homes, extorted money from Christians and expropriated Christian lands.

FROM MOSHE DAYAN 1965

“The essence of Israel’s security in this region is deterrence. When we formed the State in 1948-9, we were very weak… Had the Arabs mounted another major invasion, we could have lost. We devised a solution to this problem. It was deterrence. Think about
being lost in a forest and surrounded by hostile animals. If you light a torch, boldly approach them showing no fear – they will retreat. But if you show fear – they will attack and you are lost. We used this principle to save Israel during those early years.”

WARD CHURCHILL

It can come as no surprise that prior to likening the 3000 people murdered at the World Trade Center to “little Eichmanns” Churchill had gone after the Jews. As Edward Alexander reports in the New York Sun (Feb. 8) “Prior to this incident, Mr. Churchill’s scholarly reputation was based mainly on a squalid tract called A Little Matter of Genocide (1997) in which he argued that the murder of European Jews was not a “fixed policy objective of the Nazis.” Churchill complained that Jewish scholars stressed the Holocaust in order to ‘construct a conceptual screen behind which to hide the realities of Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian population.”

The President of Hamilton College, forced to rescind the invitation to Churchill to speak amid a hullabaloo from alumni, provides an explanation on the college’s website: the gist is praise of Churchill’s courage under fire (he offered to come in a flak jacket), sympathy for what he has been forced to endure, and sorrow for the school body, who will not be enriched by exposure to the ideas Mr. Churchill had to offer.

Kenneth Levin

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF OSLO

Editor’s note: As Israel blindly prepares to re-enact the failed Oslo peace process, Kenneth Levin’s new book, of which we offer here brief excerpts, is especially important.)

The determination to hold fast to a particular comprehension of reality no matter what the strength of countervailing evidence, to be impatient with all invoking of such evidence and brook no debate, is virtually a textbook definition of “delusional.” It is not surprising then that many observers responded with a sense of something being psychologically amiss in the avid and unshakable embrace of Oslo by its Israeli and Jewish-American enthusiasts (the latter typically no more open to countervailing evidence or tolerant of challenge than their Israeli counterparts). Thus, I found myself in September, 1993, and increasingly in the months and years that followed, being asked again and again by acquaintances, both Jewish and non-Jewish, variations on questions of the sort: Why are the Israelis doing these insane things? Why are Jews so self-destructive? So suicidal?

Such questions, and the events that prompted them, brought to mind the extensive literature dating back to the first decades of the twentieth century attempting to address what was perceived as a distinctively Jewish self-denying and self-destructive pathology. The literature related this pathology to the particular travails of Diaspora Jewish life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But those difficulties were, at least superficially, very different from the circumstances confronted by a free people in a sovereign Jewish state.

Yet the reactions of Diaspora Jews to the corrosive indictments and assaults they suffered in that earlier period are relevant to the delusions many Israelis have embraced in the face of chronic besiegement. Immigrants to the pre-state Jewish community in Eretz Israel and then to the state brought with them predilections learned in the Diaspora. While they may have foreseen in the prospect of being citizens of a Jewish state a release from the persecutions of life in exile, some also promoted in their new society self-deluding concepts of proper, accommodating Jewish behavior born of the Jewish predicament in Europe. They did so not only as parents but as teachers, journalists, and writers. And many Israelis, confronted with the chronic Arab assault, have reacted in ways reflecting those responses introduced into Israeli culture by Diaspora immigrants.

Clues to the psychology of those who embraced Oslo can be found in the rationales with which they sought to defend their position. Those arguments were very often either delusionally self-deprecating or delusionally grandiose.

Illustrative of the former was the burgeoning of a largely bogus revisionist history of Israel, the so-called New History, beginning particularly in the late nineteen eighties. This rewriting of the history of the state implicitly or explicitly placed the onus on Israel for perpetuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict over the previous half-century: It was Israeli militancy and Israeli occupation of the territories in the face of Arab openness to compromise that initiated and sustained the conflict. Therefore, Israel’s ceding of the territories would end the conflict and bring about a new era of genuine peace.

Many Israelis were drawn in by the new historians’ claims that, despite the Palestinian Arabs’ rejection of the UN partition plan in 1947 and despite the subsequent invasion of Israel by five Arab armies, Israel was actually the villain in the story. They took to heart assertions that the Arab terror of the 1950s really was not so onerous and Israeli counteractions were too heavy-handed. But even someone unable to analyze the new historians’ specific claims and discern the lies in them should have been able to see the overarching lie in their authors’ assessments of the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict. There was abundant evidence of Arab intent available to any Israeli, evidence in the form of anti-Jewish rhetoric and policy reflecting an Arab perception that the only just outcome would be Israel’s dissolution. It still, therefore, required a major exercise in self-deception to perceive Arab intentions as “moderate,” as having always been “moderate,” and as consistent with genuine peace were only Israel to change its ways and be forthcoming enough in its concessions.

At the same time, delusional grandiosity was also apparent, as in arguments that Arab quiescence could be won by Israel’s proffering benefits to Arab partners in economic, environmental, medical, and other endeavors. According to this thinking, the lure of economic gains would drive the Arabs to enter into peace agreements and would assure Arab adherence to those agreements – if only Israel were sufficiently forthcoming. Such arguments ignore, of course, the relative inconsequentiality of the economic strength of Israel, however impressive for a country of six million, and the relative insignificance of opportunities potentially provided by cooperation with Israel, in the context of the vast Arab world of over a quarter billion souls.
They ignore the obvious consideration that hostility to Israel may have a utility in the domestic and inter-Arab politics of Arab governments that far outweighs in those governments’ calculations the benefits any rapprochement with Israel might provide. They ignore the fact that the fundamentalist threat to so-called moderate regimes is another reason for those regimes to keep Israel at arm’s length. They ignore the example of Egypt, which has reneged on virtually all of the numerous accords touching on economic cooperation that were part of the 1978 Camp David treaty.

Both the self-deprecating and the grandiose distortions of reality have a common source: A wish to believe Israel to be in control of profoundly stressful circumstances over which it, unfortunately, has no real control.

CLINGING TO OSLO

What, in fact, followed on the initial Oslo accords was essentially what the doubters anticipated.The end of terrorist acts against Israel was particularly touted by Rabin and his colleagues as one of the major benefits that would accrue to Israel as a result of the Oslo process. Arafat and his allies had foresworn in the 1993 accord their own engagement in terror and were now committed to acting against others responsible for attacks on Israel, particularly the Islamic fundamentalist groups. Moreover, Rabin emphasized that negotiations could not proceed in an atmosphere of violence, and a cessation of violence would be a test of the Oslo process and a condition for its continuation. An end to incitement to violence was similarly characterized as a key test of the Palestinian Authority’s compliance with its obligations under the accords and so of the viability of the Oslo process.

But anti-Israel rhetoric and incitement by Arafat and his associates did not end. Indeed, on the evening of September 13, 1993, just hours after his signing of the Declaration of Principles and his handshake with Rabin on the White House lawn, Arafat, in a broadcast on Jordanian state television, assured his followers and the Arab world generally that the events of the day, rather than representing a shift in policy, were simply steps in the first stage of his 1974 Plan of Phases for Israel’s destruction. In the ensuing months, allusions to the plan were a staple of Arafat’s speeches to Arab audiences.

Arafat also at times stated his agenda even more explicitly, referring to areas within Israel that the Palestinians would ultimately possess. In a speech in 1995, he declared, “Be blessed, O Gaza, and celebrate, for your sons are returning after a long celebration. O Lod, O Haifa, O Jerusalem, you are returning, you are returning.” In a speech broadcast in November, 1995, Arafat assured his audience, “The struggle will continue until all of Palestine is liberated.”

The Israeli government’s response to this and other incitement by Arafat and his associates was muted. Most often, the incitement was entirely ignored. Israeli media, both government-controlled and independent likewise tended to ignore it. This was no doubt in part because the incitement was embarrassing and called into question government policy and the new-found faith in Arafat. But in addition to this, there seemed to be an assumption among many in government circles, and among those in the media sympathetic to government policies, that the incitement did not really matter, that the assurances of peaceful intent that Arafat and his lieutenants were conveying to Israeli officials were more important than the incendiary messages they were giving to their own people.

Many construed the Palestinians’ receptiveness to incitement as a consequence of their not yet experiencing the full benefits of peace, and they saw the solution to Palestinian hostility in more rapid implementation of Israeli concessions. Indeed, if the step-wise nature of the Oslo process and of Israeli withdrawals was presented to the Israeli public by the government as a mechanism for testing Arafat’s, and the Palestinians’, intentions and trustworthiness, some in the government, particularly those Laborites around Yossi Beilin and ministers drawn from the Meretz Party, appear to have seen no need for testing. They unequivocally trusted both Arafat and the Palestinians to give Israel full peace for full withdrawal, would have preferred to institute territorial concessions much more rapidly, and saw utility in gradual withdrawal only as a device for acclimating the Israeli public to the new realities the government was creating.

In addition to the persistence of incitement, acts of terror likewise continued apace. If Arafat offered any condemnation at all, it was lukewarm and couched in statements that such attacks were against Palestinian interests. Even these pinched declarations were typically pried from him only after bombings that killed large numbers of Israelis and only when international attention was turned to Arafat’s response. Moreover, such statements invariably avoided condemning Hamas and Islamic Jihad-–the perpetrators of the bombings—by name. On the contrary, Arafat at times praised the terror groups, their leaders and their operatives.

Not surprisingly, Arafat did nothing to disarm Hamas and Islamic Jihad or dismantle their infrastructures. While he did occasionally arrest members of these organizations and murderers of Israelis, detainees were often soon released or given furloughs. This pattern quickly became known as “revolving door” imprisonment, and some such “prisoners” were even recruited into the Palestinian police.

In the fifteen months between Arafat’s arrival in Gaza and the signing of the next accord, Oslo II, the initial Israeli government stance, that terror and the peace process were incompatible and that continuation of the former would mean termination of the latter, was effectively abandoned. Indeed, the government even cast Arafat and his Palestinian Authority as an ally against the terrorism despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. For example, in August 1995, addressing the issue of recent terrorism, Rabin declared: “This is a war against the enemies of Israel and the enemies of peace. It is a war which we are waging today, to some extent, together with the Palestinian Authority, whose enemies they are also.”

The primary target of the terrorists, the government argued, was the peace process itself; it was not Jews or Israelis per se they sought to kill, but the “peace.” So the proper Israeli response would be to accelerate the process and the pace of concessions and thereby frustrate the terrorists. For some in the government, this line of argument, and the protection of Arafat, were no doubt motivated by a desire to cast its Oslo gamble in a positive light despite the terror and Arafat’s recalcitrance. But many in the coalition sincerely believed this rhetoric.

Of course, as was entirely obvious to numerous observers, this Israeli response essentially rewarded the Palestinians for terror. The more terror, the more the government urged a speeding up of the “peace process,” whose most tangible elements were Israeli withdrawals and other concessions. Not surprisingly, the terror did not diminish and Arafat continued on his course of tolerance toward and tacit, and at times explicit, cooperation with the terrorism’s perpetrators.

ARAFAT MOVES TOWARD OPEN WARFARE

After the outbreak of violence in September 2000, and the unraveling of the Oslo Accords, various senior officials in military intelligence and other Israeli intelligence services argued that they had informed the government of Arafat’s noncompliance with Oslo’s security provisions and of his continued commitment to a belligerent agenda but that government leaders chose to ignore the warnings. But the reality appears to have been more complicated. While the various branches of Israeli intelligence were providing the government with evidence of Palestinian malfeasance and commitment to terror and ultimate confrontation, the leaders of the intelligence community were submitting contorted and hedged interpretations of the evidence that sought to reconcile it with the possibility of Arafat still being a genuine “peace” partner. It may well be that this reflected in part the intelligence leadership’s simply providing the political echelon with what it knew the latter wanted to hear – a not uncommon phenomenon even though a dereliction of duty. But it seems that also at work here was an embrace by the intelligence community of the Oslo zeitgeist that blinded it to the full import of its own data.

The Israeli government’s ignoring or downplaying of Arafat’s repeated calls for Holy War and his other exercises in incitement, and the government’s continually responding to terror not as a violation of Oslo commitments but as a reason to hasten forward into additional “agreements,” were accompanied by other government failures as well. There were additional examples of the Rabin administration refusing to allow Palestinian flouting of the first Oslo accords to halt or even slow more than briefly the parade of more concessions and more “peace” ceremonies.

Arafat quickly established armed forces substantially exceeding those allowed under the Gaza-Jericho accord, and his agents lost no time in organizing smuggling operations to bring into the territories weapons banned by the agreement. All this occurred with the full knowledge of Israel but with no impact on Israel’s eagerness to pursue accommodation. The Palestinian’s failure to extradite murderers of Israelis again caused barely a ripple.

Despite Oslo commitments protecting Palestinians who had cooperated with Israeli intelligence prior to the agreements, Arafat’s forces immediately embarked on a series of “collaborator” murders that killed dozens. This too elicited hardly a murmur of protest from the Rabin administration. In addition, the Oslo accords included arrangements for cooperation between PA and Israeli security services, and Israel repeatedly passed on to the PA information about terrorist activities; but this very often led not to any significant moves by the PA against the terrorists but rather to the PA using the information to track down possible Palestinian sources of the Israeli intelligence and to attack them, once more with little Israeli reaction. But it should hardly be surprising that Israel was virtually silent about the murder of so-called Palestinian collaborators when it was so supine in its responses to the murder of Israelis.

While not all the steps taken by Arafat to impose his dictatorial control entailed violations of Oslo, some did; and insofar as the Israeli government acquiesced to those violations, its stance represented not simply passivity in the face of Arafat’s course but virtual collusion in it.

Arafat’s assumption of control in the territories has been best described by Daniel Polisar, who at the time headed Peace Watch, the only Israeli group accredited by the PA to be an observer of its 1996 elections. Polisar documents “the rise of a regime characterized by a massive police force whose specialty was intimidation of political opponents; an executive branch in which Arafat alone made all major decisions and in which the civil service was reduced to a corrupt patronage machine; the institutionalized absence of the rule of law, and a judiciary that lacked any independence; and the intimidation of the media and human rights organizations, to the point that it became virtually impossible to transmit any message other than one personally approved by Arafat.”

Arafat and his PA associates diverted a large percentage of the PA budget, much of it consisting of foreign contributions, to personal accounts and private use. A comptroller’s report on PA finances for 1996 stated that $325 million out of a budget of $800 million had disappeared, either to “waste” or embezzlement by PA officials. In a protocol ancillary to the Oslo accords, Israel had agreed to reimburse the PA for taxes collected on imported goods destined for areas under Palestinian governance. Arafat insisted that the taxes be placed in accounts personally controlled by him, and Israel agreed to this. The transfers, until interrupted upon Arafat’s launching of his terror war in September 2000, amounted to about $2.5 billion.

The Palestinians had developed, under Israeli administration, the freest press in the Arab world: Arafat established PA-controlled newspapers to overwhelm the independent papers, and he ultimately intimidated and crushed the latter. A number of human rights groups had flourished in the territories during Israel’s control. Either out of “nationalist” sentiment or because of Arafat’s pressure, all retreated from high-profile human rights monitoring. The few individuals who refused to bend and chose to criticize PA practices were threatened, arrested, and accused of being Zionist agents. Not only was the Israeli government silent, but the Israeli Left in general was mute.

The major targets of the government’s animus were those Jews who saw the self-delusion and terrible dangers in the Oslo path and voiced their opposition to it. All challengers were now attacked as “enemies of peace,” often as the Jewish equivalent of those Arab “enemies of peace” who were perpetrating the terrorist attacks against Israel. It was perhaps not surprising that the government and its supporters were not prepared to respond seriously to the critiques of Oslo put forward by its opponents, that it limited its reaction almost exclusively to smears and name-calling. But its doing so was another mark of its eagerness to put aside all measured consideration in its embrace of the faith that sufficient concessions would inexorably yield a durable peace.

At the same time, the government sought to conceal from the public anti-Israel incitement by Palestinian officials and clerics and in Palestinian media and schools as well as evidence of Arafat’s tolerance of and cooperation with Islamic fundamentalist and other groups perpetrating anti-Israel terrorism. In effect, government leaders saw themselves not as the public’s servants but as paternal guiding figures, as philosopher kings, who could legitimately withhold information from a too benighted and emotional public in the interest of cultivating accommodation with Arafat and his associates and achieving “peace.”

Both state and independent media followed the government in this as well. Indeed, so little was [Palestinian behavior] covered in the Israeli media that citizens’ groups emerged to do the job: to monitor, for example, official Palestinian media, statements by Arafat and other Palestinian leaders, Palestinian school texts, and sermons by Arafat-appointed mullahs, and to inform the Israeli public and the wider world of their venomous anti-Israel, anti-peace and often anti-Semitic and annihilationist content.

"PEACE THROUGH ABANDONING ZIONISM"

[There was] synergy between the exertions of the nation’s cultural elites and those of the political leadership, the former providing guidance to the latter and influencing the government in its undertaking of reforms of national institutions, perhaps most notably the national education system. These reforms were primarily aimed at making the state and its institutions less Jewish and less Zionist, weaning the public away from Zionist perspectives and Zionist verities and rendering it more accepting of radical concessions as its leaders pursued their delusions of peace.

The penetration of the anti-Zionist and post-Zionist perspectives so common among Israel’s cultural and academic elites into national policy extended even to the military. Asa Kasher, professor of philosophy at the University of Tel Aviv, went beyond the harsh critiques of the state offered by many of his colleagues to criticize the very existence of Israel. Yet such views did not preclude his being selected by Ehud Barak, then chief of staff of the IDF, to chair a committee to develop a new code of ethics for the Israeli military. The “values” and basic principles” laid out in the code are generic universalist ones that might apply to any military. An IDF soldier’s loyalty is to be to the state, its citizens and the principles of democracy. Nowhere is there any reference to the Jewish state, the Jewish people, or the land of Israel. As Yoram Hazony notes, the extensive missions undertaken by the IDF to rescue European Jews and to help persecuted Russian Jews escape the Soviet Union – as well as other missions on behalf of Diaspora Jews in distress – would be inconsistent with The Spirit of the IDF. For they were not undertaken in defense of the state, its citizens or democracy but rather out of loyalties and a sense of obligation and responsibility not to Kasher’s taste. Despite its radical redefinition of the proper role of the IDF and its soldiers, The Spirit of the IDF was adopted by the defense establishment in 1994 virtually without protest or dissent.

The history of militant advocacy of “universalism” and antipathy to so-called “Jewish particularism” is suggestive of the connection of such sentiments to the siege. Jewish anti-Zionism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was fueled by fears that Jewish nationalism would fan anti-Jewish sentiment in surrounding societies in the Diaspora and instigate a rolling back of de jure gains by Jews toward civil equality in the West. Insistence on “Jewish” being comprehended as representing exclusively a religious identity and vocation with an exclusively universalist message and meaning, was likewise inspired by the wish to placate anti-Jewish sentiment.

But to insist that Jews alone, who have, in fact, pledged themselves in their faith for millennia to precepts entailing moral, ethical obligations both to their own people and to all of humanity, be proscribed the right of independent national life in the name of a universalist agenda is anti-Jewish bias and reflects the contorting of oneself to accommodate anti-Jewish indictments. Casting such a universalist agenda in moral terms, as representing some higher, more liberal, more humane sensibility, and refusing to acknowledge the underlying fear of anti-Jewish sentiment, largely reflects a cultivating of intellectual dishonesty and self-delusion in the service of that fear.

Shortly after the start of the Oslo process the writer David Grossman declared that to see the process to its fruition in peace Israelis must concede to the Arabs not only geographic territories but territories of the soul. They must surrender their belief that it is of overriding importance for the Jewish people to have the military capacity to defend itself in its own land, the belief that the Holocaust was further evidence of the necessity of this, and the belief that the willingness of Israelis to sacrifice for the defense of the country, and to want it to take an active role in that defense, is a virtue. They must also give up the belief that the creation of Israel represents a national return for the Jews from a long and too often horrifyingly painful exile. They must even yield their belief in the value of Jewish peoplehood.

In this statement about the need for such concessions of the soul in the service of the Oslo process, Grossman takes steps toward setting aside the lie that his and others’ advocacy of these concessions really represents some single-minded striving for “universalist” and “democratic” ideals. But the statement still, of course, perpetuates another lie, the delusion—based on exhaustion with the siege and a desperate and overwhelming desire for its end—that the right self-abnegations by Israel, the right mix of territorial and spiritual retreat, can win Israel the peace it desires no matter how much the objective evidence of words and deeds by the other side indicates otherwise.

Kenneth Levin is a psychiatrist. His essay Jews, Israelis and the Psyche of the Abused appeared in the December 1996 and January 1997 issues of Outpost.

Memorandum of Conversation between His Majesty Abdul Aziz al Saud, King of Saudi Arabia and President Roosevelt, February 14, 1945, aboard the U.S.S. Quincy.

Editor's note: AFSI member David Kirk first discovered this memorandum when he went through the Peter Bergson papers in Yale University library. He has confirmed its authenticity: the document is in the FDR library, President’s Map Room Papers, Naval Aid’s Files, Crimea Conference A/16. Saudi Arabia’s attitude toward Jews comes as no surprise to anyone; Roosevelt’s coldness to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust – resettle them in Poland! -- and apparent total lack of sympathy for Jewish claims to a homeland in Palestine may come as a surprise to some. It would appear to be fortunate indeed that Harry Truman, not Roosevelt, was President when Ben Gurion declared the birth of Israel and sought international recognition.)

I. The President asked his Majesty for his advice regarding the problem of Jewish refugees driven from their homes in Europe. His Majesty replied that in his opinion the Jews should return to live in the lands from which they were driven. The Jews whose homes were completely destroyed and who have no chance of livelihood in their homelands should be given living space in the Axis countries which oppressed them. The President remarked that Poland might be considered a case in point. The Germans appear to have killed three million Polish Jews, by which count there should be space in Poland for the resettlement of many homeless Jews.

His Majesty then expounded the case of the Arabs and their legitimate rights in their lands and stated that the Arabs and the Jews could never cooperate, neither in Palestine, nor in any other country. His Majesty called attention to the increasing threat to the existence of the Arabs and the crisis which has resulted from continued Jewish immigration and the purchase of land by the Jews. His Majesty further stated that the Arabs would choose to die rather than yield their lands to the Jews.

His Majesty stated that the hope of the Arabs is based upon the word of honor of the Allies and upon the well-known love of justice of the United States, and upon the expectation that the United States will support them.

The President replied that he wished to assure His Majesty that he would do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs and would make no move hostile to the Arab people. He reminded His Majesty that it is impossible to prevent speeches and resolutions in Congress or in the press which may be made on any subject. His reassurance concerned his own future policy as Chief Executive of the United States Government.

His Majesty thanked the President for his statement and mentioned the proposal to send an Arab mission to America and England to expound the case of the Arabs and Palestine. The President stated that he thought this was a very good idea because he thought many people in America and England are misinformed. His Majesty said that such a mission to inform the people was useful, but more important to him was what the President had just told him concerning his own policy toward the Arab people

II. His Majesty stated that the problem of Syria and the Lebanon was of deep concern to him and he asked what would be the attitude of the United States Government in the event that France should continue to press intolerable demands upon Syria and the Lebanon. The President replied that the French Government had given him in writing their guarantee of the independence of Syria and the Lebanon and that he could at any time write to the French Government to insist that they honor their word. In the event that the French should thwart the independence of Syria and the Lebanon, the United States Government would give to Syria and the Lebanon all possible support short of the use of force.

III. The President spoke of his great interest in farming, stating that he himself was a farmer. He emphasized the need for developing water resources, to increase the land under cultivation as well as to turn the wheels which do the country’s work. He expressed special interest in irrigation, tree planting and water power which he hoped would be developed after the war in many countries, including the Arab lands. Stating that he liked Arabs, he reminded His Majesty that to increase land under cultivation would decrease the desert and provide living for a larger population of Arabs. His Majesty thanked the President for promoting agriculture so vigorously, but said that he himself could not engage with any enthusiasm in the development of his country’s agriculture and public works if this properity would be inherited by the Jews.

Memorandum of Conversation between His Majesty Abdul Aziz al Saud, King of Saudi Arabia and President Roosevelt, February 14, 1945, aboard the U.S.S. Quincy.

Editor's note: AFSI member David Kirk first discovered this memorandum when he went through the Peter Bergson papers in Yale University library. He has confirmed its authenticity: the document is in the FDR library, President’s Map Room Papers, Naval Aid’s Files, Crimea Conference A/16. Saudi Arabia’s attitude toward Jews comes as no surprise to anyone; Roosevelt’s coldness to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust – resettle them in Poland! -- and apparent total lack of sympathy for Jewish claims to a homeland in Palestine may come as a surprise to some. It would appear to be fortunate indeed that Harry Truman, not Roosevelt, was President when Ben Gurion declared the birth of Israel and sought international recognition.)

I.
The President asked his Majesty for his advice regarding the problem of Jewish refugees driven from their homes in Europe. His Majesty replied that in his opinion the Jews should return to live in the lands from which they were driven. The Jews whose homes were completely destroyed and who have no chance of livelihood in their homelands should be given living space in the Axis countries which oppressed them. The President remarked that Poland might be considered a case in point. The Germans appear to have killed three million Polish Jews, by which count there should be space in Poland for the resettlement of many homeless Jews.
His Majesty then expounded the case of the Arabs and their legitimate rights in their lands and stated that the Arabs and the Jews could never cooperate, neither in Palestine, nor in any other country. His Majesty called attention to the increasing threat to the existence of the Arabs and the crisis which has resulted from continued Jewish immigration and the purchase of land by the Jews. His Majesty further stated that the Arabs would choose to die rather than yield their lands to the Jews.
His Majesty stated that the hope of the Arabs is based upon the word of honor of the Allies and upon the well-known love of justice of the United States, and upon the expectation that the United States will support them.
The President replied that he wished to assure His Majesty that he would do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs and would make no move hostile to the Arab people. He reminded His Majesty that it is impossible to prevent speeches and resolutions in Congress or in the press which may be made on any subject. His reassurance concerned his own future policy as Chief Executive of the United States Government.
His Majesty thanked the President for his statement and mentioned the proposal to send an Arab mission to America and England to expound the case of the Arabs and Palestine. The President stated that he thought this was a very good idea because he thought many people in America and England are misinformed. His Majesty said that such a mission to inform the people was useful, but more important to him was what the President had just told him concerning his own policy toward the Arab people
II.
His Majesty stated that the problem of Syria and the Lebanon was of deep concern to him and he asked what would be the attitude of the United States Government in the event that France should continue to press intolerable demands upon Syria and the Lebanon. The President replied that the French Government had given him in writing their guarantee of the independence of Syria and the Lebanon and that he could at any time write to the French Government to insist that they honor their word. In the event that the French should thwart the independence of Syria and the Lebanon, the United States Government would give to Syria and the Lebanon all possible support short of the use of force.
III.
The President spoke of his great interest in farming, stating that he himself was a farmer. He emphasized the need for developing water resources, to increase the land under cultivation as well as to turn the wheels which do the country’s work. He expressed special interest in irrigation, tree planting and water power which he hoped would be developed after the war in many countries, including the Arab lands. Stating that he liked Arabs, he reminded His Majesty that to increase land under cultivation would decrease the desert and provide living for a larger population of Arabs. His Majesty thanked the President for promoting agriculture so vigorously, but said that he himself could not engage with any enthusiasm in the development of his country’s agriculture and public works if this properity would be inherited by the Jews.

Jack Engelhard

I have a plan. I was about to say I have a dream, but as we all know, this is a nightmare; so, how to get out? Well then, here is my plan.

We will get to that in a few paragraphs -- and no fair speeding ahead, as I intend to get paid by the minute. Read slowly.

Let us agree, for argument's sake, that the expulsion of Jews from Gaza and elsewhere is for the greater good (the Sharon Disengagement Plan).

Let us agree that this entire process has set brother against brother. This is no argument; it is fact. In Israel, it is Left against Right, and even Right against Right. It gets worse.

In America, for instance, Jews of the Right are not on speaking terms with Jews of the Left. I know this personally. We ask, what makes Tel Aviv kosher and Gush Katif treyf? Conservative American Jews are split outside as well; "outside" being those of the national camp in Israel who, for whatever reason, have switched and given their nod of approval to Ariel Sharon. We are mad at them, too.

Oh it's a mess!

So, what's my plan? Okay. Resolved, that a leader leads by example; and further resolved, that Sharon is a leader. After all, he is the prime minister of Israel. What's more, he once heroically led men into battle and within the ranks, it is known that a leader of men goes first.

As noted, the expulsion controversy has caused a rift so wide that there is murmuring of ethnic cleansing, and talk of Altalena and civil war.

How can one man put us all together again?

One man can do it, and that man is Ariel Sharon. For the prime minister who speaks of "painful concessions", well, here's one, and it is painful and it is personal.

What Ariel Sharon has to do is uproot himself. Yes, lead by example. I do not mean that he should quit as prime minister. I mean that he should pack his bags and bring the bulldozers into his own home and farm. Let Demolition Derby commence right there, at the doorstep of the prime minister. If he agrees to this and proceeds, who can complain?

Even right-wingers here and there will have to gulp and choose silence. Left-wingers, what's your complaint about this egalitarian proposal? There will be no talk of ethnic cleansing of Jews, for Sharon will have cleansed himself and shown how it's done. He will have demonstrated that if uprooting is necessary, he stands in front of the line, as a leader must, if he is true to his convictions.

No, this is no joke and I am not kidding. I am very serious. So serious that, if it is open to ridicule, I am willing to take full responsibility and call it the Engelhard Plan.

If Sharon takes this bold step of disengaging himself foremost, imagine the headlines - "Sharon Shows The Way.

He will have snatched honor from disgrace and preserved the remains of his legacy, that he is master of all his people, not just dictator of some.

Imagine the pictures. Sharon's home in the process of being demolished, as he and his goods are carted off by U-Haul to some relocation center. To complete the picture, the heavy lifting will be done by Rent-A-Terrorist, as taken from the ranks of those just being released from prison at Sharon's signature. Further proof that this prime minister practices what he preaches about goodwill gestures in addition to painful concessions.

Scenes such as that will render us mute and win us all back.

Who, then, would dare to dissent from Sharon's plan? You won't hear a word of complaint from me, nor from the rest of us, most likely. We will be obliged to concede that, roundabout, Sharon acted upon the words of Hillel: Do not do unto your neighbor what is hateful to you.

People will be awestruck in admiration that Sharon has chosen to be first among equals, first among the outgoing settlers.

Just the other day, Sharon said something like, "I used to be one of them." So, here is his chance to be one of them again, and in a big way, a heroic way, for he also referred to the doomed-to-be-evicted "settlers" as heroic. Well, imagine the heroism credited to him if he became the first to pack his bags, dismantle and go.

But this is not the end of the Engelhard Plan. Actually, it is the beginning, for the rest must follow. These would be the ministers of the Cabinet who voted with Sharon, and these would be the ministers of the Knesset who voted with Sharon, and these would be the judges who endorsed the plan with Sharon, and these would be members of the Israeli media who readily embraced disengagement for others and not for themselves.

All of them must pack up or shut up.
Is there any reason why this should not be so? Do tell.

Jack Engelhard’s novel The Days of the Bitter End is being prepared for movie production. He is currently working on a book on the media, The Uriah Deadline.

Rael Jean Isaac

Bat Ye’or’s Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis is that rare and astonishing book which describes immensely important developments that somehow had gone unnoticed — even though they shape the fate of all of us. What Bat Ye’or uncovers is, as Daniel Pipes has noted, “a nearly secret history of Europe.”

The story begins in the early 1960s when President Charles de Gaulle, returned to the leadership of France after many years in the political desert, resolved to restore France’s grandeur (a notion with which he was obsessed) by creating a counterweight to American power. He set out to do this with a double-pronged strategy: creating a unified Europe based on an alliance with Germany and reorienting French policy (which had been supportive of Israel – it was French-built mirage jets that destroyed Egypt’s air force in the 1967 war) toward the Arab world. De Gaulle had been forced to relinquish Algeria but he would turn this setback to French gloire into an opportunity to expand French influence to the entire Arab world. A unified Europe under French leadership commanding the energy resources upon which the developed world depended – in de Gaulle’s grand scheme this Euro-Arab geostrategic bloc could be a force to rival and challenge the United States on the world stage.

European unification has, of course, been carefully chronicled, the story known to all who care to follow it. But it is the details of the second aspect of de Gaulle’s strategy, the effort to achieve close rapprochement with the Arab world, that have gone largely unremarked. And while European unification has proceeded in good part as de Gaulle hoped, the ties with the Arab world, as Bat Ye’or shows, have scarcely developed as de Gaulle, with his fixation on the superiority of French culture, could have imagined. For what has happened is that Europe has become an instrument of Arab policy. The countries of the European Union, France in the lead, impelled by a mixture of ambition for power, greed and, increasingly, fear of Arab terror have become satellites of the Arabs, obedient to their will, in effect, dhimmis.

Bat Ye’or chronicles the series of conferences and institutions which European leaders established to promote Arab-European concord, the most important of which, the Euro-Arab Dialogue, conceived by the French, began in 1973. It is true that many of the resulting agreements, signed by the leaders of European and Arab governments, contain verbiage about mutual respect for religious freedom, human rights, equality of women, etc. But these are totally ignored by the Arabs while the Europeans submissively fulfill their side of the bargain. The most crucial demand on Europe is that it join the Arabs in their war on Israel and the EU slavishly follows the Arab political line on Israel. But more than this, writes Bat Ye’or, the EU has become the strategic center of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel propaganda with the result that “the war against Israel is now fought throughout European institutions, in universities and schools, the media, in trade agreements, among NGOs, by churches and even in the streets where Jews have to hide their identity.”

The bargain also requires that Europeans accept a host of Arab economic, political, cultural and religious demands. Arab countries are to be the continued privileged source of mass immigration into Europe (without the immigrants adapting to European mores). Huge payments must be made to Arab causes (the EU has provided billions to the Palestinian Authority, for example, and France still refuses to label Hezbollah a terrorist organization, enabling it to raise vast sums in Europe for its terrorist activities). In addition money collected from European taxpayers, says Bat Ye’or, “is generously distributed to Arab dictatorships as a modern ‘poll tax’ to buy Europe’s security.” School curriculums propagate what Bat Ye’or calls “the Andalusian myth” of a supposed vastly superior Islamic culture forming the basis of European civilization. In November 2003, French premier Jacques Chirac dutifully declared that “Europe’s roots are as much Muslim as Christian.”

The most breathtaking demand of Europe’s Arab “partners” is for the redefinition of Christianity. Bat Ye’or calls this the “cult of Palestinianism” but the phrase does not convey the depth of what is involved here. For in a sense this is worse than the old dhimmitude. Traditionally Christians in Arab countries may have been subservient but in pre-modern times at least they kept the sense of who they were, what their religious beliefs were and the origins of those beliefs. Now the Arabs demand that Christianity itself be Islamized, its roots in Judaism cut off and denied. The historical Jesus is no longer a Jew, but an Arab Palestinian. The suffering of Palestinians continues the suffering of the Palestinian Jesus and this holy synthesis, writes Bat Ye’or, literally sanctifies the Palestinian Arab cause.. The mission of Palestinian Liberation Theology is to liberate the world by unveiling Israel’s diabolic character and cement through Palestinianism a worldwide Muslim-Christian alliance. It becomes a divine mission to remove Israel from Arab Palestine, thus upholding the honor and truthfulness of both Christianity and Islam. The Gospels are to be attached to the Koran through adopting the Muslim interpretation of Jesus as a Muslim prophet (along with Abraham, Moses and other Biblical figures) and the Moslem belief that Islam is the first religion common to the whole of humanity. As Bat Ye’or notes: “It may seem of no consequence to a post-religious Europe whether Jesus was a Muslim prophet who preached Islam or a Jew inspired by the Bible, but on this question depends the core of Christian belief – as well as the fundamental values of the Judeo-Christian civilization, and their survival.”

Bat Ye’or observes that an aging, confused and timorous Europe vainly hopes to guarantee its own security through tribute, support to terrorist states and groups and anti-Zionism – in other words, dhimmitude, which is based on peaceful surrender, subjection, tribute and praise. She records a telling symbol of creeping dhimmitude: the first page of the report establishing the aims of the recently established Anna Lindh Foundation (named after the venomously anti-Israel Swedish Foreign Minister murdered in 2003 and designed to advance European-Arab relations) is adorned with a thirteenth century map of the Mediterranean, unusual in that it is turned upside down, with the Arab Islamic world at top in the north sitting above Europe.

French pride was the foundation of Eurabia. What it produced can only serve to corroborate the validity of the Christian view that pride is the worst of the deadly sins – with the most deadly consequences.

Please note: "Eurabia" is available from Americans for A Safe Israel
$20.00 includes postage and shipping.

Ruth King

When Prime Minister Rabin gave his hand to Arafat in the infamous handshake on the White House lawn in 1993, Americans for a Safe Israel was alone among organizations to denounce the entire event. The only public figure that joined us (writing in Commentary) was Norman Podhoretz. To be sure there were expressions of skepticism -- including calls for PLO "compliance." But many organizations which ostensibly supported Israel’s territorial and historical rights refused to lend their names to a Zionist Conference assembled by AFSI to remind participants of those rights and to denounce Oslo. The late Emil Fackenheim came from Israel as did the courageous “refusenick” Ida Nudel and Yoram Hazony, then director of the Shalem Center.

A decade later those who rose to applaud Arafat on the White House lawn tripped over themselves to criticize him. Those who hailed Oslo as a “new beginning” now saw it as a failed process. Moreover, the terrible events of September 11, 2001 seemed to focus many minds on the international Islamist assault on the West. The Arab war against Israel was understood to be a part of the great Jihad. This was especially so when stunned Americans saw the exultation and celebration throughout the Arab world -- especially marked in the Palestinian Arab street -- when our skyscrapers and the Pentagon were attacked.

For a very brief period Israel paused in its hitherto demoralizing pattern of concessions to terror. To be sure, the UN and the Europeans paid their customary tribute to Islam with unrelenting hectoring of Israel. Even Tony Blair, staunch in his support of American initiatives, took time out from the Afghanistan War to reiterate his belief that nothing could be solved without a reconciliation of the Israel/Arab problem……on Arab terms, naturally.

However, in America and Israel, there were louder and more articulate criticisms of the entire Oslo process. Arafat was isolated in his Ramallah compound even as suicide bombing and rockets continued on an almost daily basis. Anti-Semitism escalated throughout Europe, frightening local and other Jews dispersed throughout the world in America, South America, as well as those residing in Israel. The imperative for a strong Israel loomed larger than at any time since the 1960s, particularly as anti-Semitism surged throughout Europe, frightening not only Jews in the countries affected but Jews in the rest of the world. Christian Zionists were apprehensive and energized in their support.

And then? Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the most vocal and unrelenting critic of Oslo, declared the “disengagement” from Gaza, ineluctably to be followed by more retreats, more abandonment of Judea and Samaria, more flooding the streets with jailed terrorists, more appeasement and more surrender. He can get away with it because, as an outraged Sarah Honig wrote in The Jerusalem Post, Israelis have "distanced themselves from their own cause, aren't emotionally involved with Jewish and Zionist interests, don't love, don't hate, don't deeply care."

Meanwhile, in the United States, the heat was turned up as Arafat was replaced by a terrorist without the stubble and head scarf. The media gushed with descriptions of a grandfatherly Abu Mazen. I would not know since my grandfathers never attained his age. They were victims of the Holocaust which Abu Mazen denied ever happened. And now all those who finally said, albeit a decade too late, that Oslo was a tragic error, had to mentally retool and find a new policy.

And what they did they come up with? Why, Oslo again. Another highly photographed handshake of an Israeli Prime Minister with a terrorist, and more strategic surrender in exchange for a Hudna (truce). They can learn about Moslem "truces" from Hugh Fitzgerald, or Robert Spencer or Andrew Bostom or Ibn Warraq or Bat Ye’or. Or, after listening to Abbas declare that war is over, they might turn to Muir's Life of Mahomet, p. 173: “His reason for the toleration of his Meccan opponents was present weakness only. Patience for awhile was inculcated by God on Mahomet but the future breathed of revenge and victory.”

Ruth King

On February 13th, 2005, James Baker was interviewed on ABC by George Stephanopolous who asked if Prime Minister Begin had been right to destroy Iraq's nuclear reactor. Remember that Baker was then Ronald Reagan's Chief of Staff and his reaction had been apoplectic (his wrath no doubt increased by the animus he felt for Israel even as a youth at Princeton University where his senior thesis argued that the U.S. should not have recognized Israel at its birth). Baker replied that Israel was right and the American administration was wrong. Of course Baker went on to promote more anti-Israel policies as Secretary of State in the first Bush administration.
Baker's confession that he was wrong should remind us that Israel must do unpopular things, despite short term consequences. History will remember Begin far more kindly for taking out the Osirak reactor than for Camp David, which will one day be seen for the folly it was, setting Israel on the path of "territory for nothing" on which it is still tragically embarked.

Editor: Rael Jean Isaac
Editorial Board: Herbert Zweibon, Ruth King

Americans For a Safe Israel
1623 Third Ave. (at 92nd St.) - Suite 205
New York, NY 10128
tel (212) 828-2424 / fax (212) 828-1717
E-mail: afsi @rcn.com * web site: http://www.afsi.org

Lifting the Demographic Fog
Herbert Zweibon

From the Editor
Rael Jean Isaac

A Time to Resist, Soberly
P. David Hornik

The Greatest Obstacle to Peace
Nidra Poller

“Reforming” Islam
Hugh Fitzgerald

What happened to Ariel Sharon?
Moshe Dann

On Barren Ground
Mark Silverberg

The Kassam Rockets
Ruth King

Sharon and History
Ruth King

Herbert Zweibon

The case against Israel holding on to Judea, Samaria and Gaza is often put in demographic terms. Many believe Sharon’s policy of territorial retreat from Gaza and northern Samaria is partially based on projections by Israeli demographers that Jews will soon be only 40-45% of the population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

A recent study shows this dire prognosis is false. The study was presented by a team of American and Israeli researchers at the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation in Washington and can be read in full at www.aei.org. It shows that the 2004 Palestinian Arab population was closer to 2.4 million than to the 3.8 million reported by Palestinian Authority officials and uncritically echoed by Israeli experts. The 1.4 million gap results chiefly from the fact that the PA numbers are based on Palestine Bureau of Statistics (PBS) 1997 projections, not on actual population counts. The PBS assumed immigration from abroad of 1.5% a year and an annual internal growth rate of 4-5%. But these expectations have not been met.

In fact – small wonder given the PA’s dreadful governance and hence the deteriorating economic situation in the area under its control – there has been a steady net emigration each year since 1994. (Arab emigration would be much larger if Israel encouraged, rather than impeded, Arabs within the state who desire to leave.)

More significant, the Arab birthrate has fallen. Yoram Ettinger, head of the Israeli team, notes: “The research is based chiefly on Arab sources other than the PA’s Bureau of Statistics, such as the PA Ministry of Health….The unanimous conclusion of all these sources is that there has been a very dramatic drop in the Arab birthrate in Judea and Samaria.” Part of the reason, says Ettinger, is that the population has become less rural and more urban and poor. Also women are getting married 2-3 years later.

Outright deceptions account for significant over-counting. Jerusalem’s 230,000 Arabs are counted twice, both as part of the Palestinian Authority and by Israel as part of her own population. The PBS statistics also include 200,000 Palestinian Arabs who live abroad (those living abroad for over a year are 13 percent of those counted in 1997 and form part of the base on which population growth is projected, despite the fact they don’t live in the territories.) And the PA keeps 150,000 Arabs who have moved to Green Line Israel on its rolls, so they too are counted twice.

Haifa professor Arnon Sofer, a geographer who has previously used the PA figures, has reacted angrily. While he says he is willing to acknowledge that the PA lies, and there are 400,000 fewer Arabs in Gaza and 400,000 fewer in Judea and Samaria, he insists that’s “still a lot (of Arabs).” (If there are 400,000 fewer Arabs in Gaza than the PA claims, one has to wonder how many non-existent Arab “refugees” are in that number, blindly paid for by the U.S. taxpayer.) But the 800,000 fewer Arabs -- that Sofer himself concedes -- are not an insignificant number.

Sofer also disputes that the birthrate has fallen as much as the Israeli team says. But Dr. Michael Wise, one of the U.S. team members, an expert in mathematical modeling techniques, says that similar birthrate drops have been found in Egypt, Jordan and Iran. Dr. Wise points out that Jewish growth rates are the highest among the Western democracies, and only a small fraction below the Arab growth rate in Judea and Samaria.

In short the Jewish population west of the Jordan River, far from dramatically declining as a proportion of the whole, has remained stable. The true bombshell is that the demographic ticking time bomb is a myth. The real lesson to be drawn is that Israel can survive demographically even with defensible orders – and it may not be able to survive militarily without them.

Herbert Zeibon is the National Chairman of Americans for a Safe Israel.

Rael Jean Isaac
 
JIHAD IN NEW JERSEY

Daniel Pipes gives some background reinforcing the likelihood that the Armanious family massacre was motivated by Islamic radicalism. His information comes from Robert Spencer of jihadwatch who spoke to a close friend of the murdered father.

This friend reports that the family had sought to convert several Moslems to Christianity but these converts were practicing taqiyya, or religious deception. The Coptic community believes that it is likely these converts murdered the family. It sees the murder as a warning to Copts that the first amendment and American law enforcement will not protect them.

Spencer believes the fate of the Armanious family is akin to Theo van Gogh’s murder in Holland, an indication that Moslems in the United States do not unanimously accept American pluralism.

PA HATE SPEECH IS BACK

After a lull of a few weeks, the PA is back promoting hatred. In a Jan. 5 speech broadcast on PA TV stations Prime Minister Abbas twice referred to Israel as the "Zionist enemy." (Abbas, often described in the West as a leader "uncompromised by terror," was one of the chief architects of the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes -- no less an authority than Mohammed Daoud Oudeh, the coordinator of the attack, has said that Abu Mazen/Abbas provided the funds and instructions to carry it out.)

The Friday sermons, broadcast by PA TV, are again as venomous as ever. Sample from Sheik Ibrahim Madiras' Friday sermon of Dec. 31: "No to the return to the 1967 borders. We are interested in returning to our genuine borders...We are interested in returning to the 1936 borders, to the revolution...and we are interested in returning to 1929 borders...[when] a group of our grandfathers and fathers became Martyrs for Allah in the Al-Buraq revolution, as they were defending the Al-Aqsa mosque from the Hagana gangs, Allah curse them and curse those who supported them." And here is the Sheik on Jan. 7: "Oh Muslims. The Jews are Jews. Their character and custom are corruption and destruction of this land. We keep warning you: the Jews are a cancer that spreads inside the body of the Islamic and Arab nation."

TSUNAMI AID

Israel has taken great pride in its generosity toward the victims of the tsunami, most of them, of course, Moslem. As far as the half million dollars it has sent to Indonesia, Israel should have saved its money -- and its dignity. Indonesia has long treated Israel as an enemy: it maintains no diplomatic relations with Israel and does not even allow El Al planes to fly over its territory, let alone land in the country. The "reward" Israel is reaping for its generosity is more hatred and abuse. An Indonesian government minister even denies the country has received aid from Israel (he says aid from individual Jews is acceptable, but aid from Israel "will not happen"). Moslem "intellectuals" have already begun to accuse "global Zionism" of pretending to provide aid and instead abducting children orphaned by the tsunami. For example, MEMRI's TV Project reports that Yemeni "professor" Al-'Ajai announced that "Zionist companies" are "abducting these children, while exploiting the circumstances of these painful events, and trading in them. Many studies have proven that a large percent of the slave market belongs to the forces of global Zionism, whose octopus tentacles spread evil throughout the world."

DOD VS. SY HERSH

The Department of Defense, which usually submits silently to Seymour Hersh's junk journalism in the New Yorker (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith are regular Hersh targets) has come out swinging this time against a Hersh piece "The Coming Wars" in the New Yorker of January 24. Hersh (who confidently predicted war with Iran by summer on CNN's Lou Dobbs program of Jan. 17) claims super secret commando units are preparing the way by monitoring Iran's nuclear sites. The sources are the usual collection of anonymous characters, a former intelligence officer here, a former consultant there, a recently retired official, you name it, and what Hersh produces, as Michael Ledeen explicates so well (in "The Hersh File" on NationalReview.com of Jan. 25) is his usual incoherent output. The DOD declared of this article what is true of almost everything Hersh writes: "Mr. Hersh's article is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed."

While even CBS has now cleaned house, the New Yorker persists in publishing this meretricious stuff and journalism continues to shower its awards on Hersh (in 2004 the National Magazine Award).

While we don't hold our breath, we have our own touchstone for evidence of improvement in media standards: it's when Hersh is relegated to the supermarket tabloids (Two Year Old Gives Birth to 90 Year Old Woman) where he belongs.

ADOPTING A SETTLEMENT

We have a request from Israel that synagogues in North America "adopt" a settlement in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, most especially (but not only) those under immediate threat of evacuation. It will be an important encouragement to the beleaguered communities, and helpful in making both the Israeli and American government understand that these people are not isolated and alone, but that Jews abroad support their right to live freely in the Land of Israel. Any synagogue or other organization wishing to join in such an effort should contact AFSI and we can put them in touch with the Gaza or Yesha Council or with any individual community with which they might wish to link.

ON POST ZIONISM

Edited by Shlomo Sharan, Israel and the Post-Zionists: A Nation at Risk brings together a frightening series of essays that focus on the collapse of much of Israel's intellectual "elite" into self-hatred and yes, anti-Semitism. Edward Alexander's essay "Israeli Intellectuals and Israeli Politics" is alone worth the price. The book is available through http://www.sussex-academic.co.uk.

A PROPHECY

Israel's great nationalist poet Uri Zvi Greenberg was famous for his prescience. He foresaw the Holocaust, writing of the murder of millions of Jews in Europe in 1922. He even foresaw specific horrors that would indeed take place: in his poem "Holy of Holies" he described the murder of his mother -- he would say that he simply recorded what he saw in a dream with his mind's eye. In his book Free Jerusalem (Devora Publishers, 2003), Zev Golan reports on the dream that, by his own account, led Greenberg to write "I'll Tell It to a Child", which had an enormous influence in bringing young people, including Menachem Begin, to the Jewish underground. “I dreamt one night...I saw the Temple Mount, above it an eagle, and around it circles and circles of Jews, and from the Mount a slope inclined straight to the sea. On either side were lines of soldiers from all the world's armies. In the dream I felt that the Divine Presence, Shechinat Israel, was leaving the Mount.”

As we watch the folly of Israel's leaders, we are forced to wonder if Greenberg will again prove to be a painful prophet.

JIHAD ON CAMPUS

Some campuses have already gone beyond mere anti-Israel and anti-Jewish demonstrations. Joe Kaufman (FrontpageMagazine.com of Jan. 21) describes the way Florida Atlantic University has become a center of Islamic radicalism with professors tied to Hamas and invited lecturers including neo-Nazis and others who have been convicted of raising money for Islamic terror organizations.

P.David Hornick

The years 2001-2003 were the worst in Israel's history. Other periods -- the Independence War, the three weeks of the Yom Kippur War -- took a higher toll in lives. What set aside 2001-2003, though, was that despite a relentless terror assault against Israeli civilians and soldiers, Israel essentially did not fight back, even though it had a Likud prime minister with a reputation as a hawk and an army that was capable of defeating the terror at any time. Even after the Park Hotel massacre in March 2002, the military was given only a somewhat freer hand.
In trying to figure out what was happening, I conjectured that the blame lay mainly with the U.S. government for refusing to give Israel the diplomatic support it would have needed to fight the terror seriously. Bush, I reasoned, had probably told Sharon not to count on the U.S. preventing a UN reaction of sending "peacekeepers" to "protect the Palestinians," and Sharon had probably concluded that this would ultimately be even more harmful to Israel's security than the terror war itself. No doubt, it was emotionally easier to view it that way -- though, as someone who grew up in America and is still affectionately attached to it, not easy.

Recent statements, though, by two people who were Israeli cabinet ministers at that time (and still are) suggest that the reality was worse.

Natan Sharansky was, in those years, deputy prime minister and minister of housing and construction. In his recent book The Case for Democracy (with Ron Dermer, Public Affairs, 2004), he recounts: "Sharon cobbled together a national unity government and made Shimon Peres his foreign minister. Almost immediately, it became clear that there would be constant tension in the government. The sea change in Israeli public opinion . . . was not reflected inside Israel's parliament, and this was especially true inside Israel's Labor party. Most of the leading Labor ministers did not change their pro-Oslo views. They remained convinced that Arafat and the PA were the only alternatives and that nothing should be done to weaken them. Rather than meet the escalation of Palestinian terror with a firm response, they counseled restraint. According to the logic of their approach, the Palestinian terror attacks coupled with Israel's muted response was gaining Israel the sympathy of the world, and this sympathy could be used to pressure Arafat into taking action against the terror organizations. A strong response, it was thought, would create international sympathy for the Palestinians and put no diplomatic pressure on Arafat to crack down on terror.

And Silvan Shalom, who was deputy prime minister and finance minister in that government, related in a December 22 interview with the Jerusalem Post: "I said more than once that we would never be able to reach an agreement with Arafat, and I called for his expulsion more than three years ago. . . . I also always said it is easier for me as the deputy prime minister to call for Arafat's expulsion than for the prime minister to do it. I understand that. . . . But I think that if we would have done it three years ago, we would have saved hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian lives, even thousands. No mourning, no widows and orphans."

The implications of these two statements are grim. Both Sharansky and Shalom were high-ranking ministers in that government, and they both believe much more could have been done to protect us from the onslaught. Instead, it was hypothetical fears about world reactions -- especially strong among a group of ministers who did not represent the people's will -- that led to "restraint" -- in other words, letting us be butchered.

So it's with a feeling of bitter irony that I view the civil disobedience campaign that is now finally starting to take shape in Israel. That is, I view the campaign both as entirely justified and as too little, too late, and too restricted. Justified, because the government has no mandate for "disengagement"; instead, Sharon's dictatorial tactics are making a mockery of what's still proudly trumpeted as Israeli democracy. Too little, too late, and too restricted because disengagement-without-a-mandate is only the latest in a string of outrages that Israeli governments have perpetrated in the Oslo era.

It looks now as if not only the Rabin-Peres Oslo government during 1993-1996, and the Barak Oslo government during fall-winter 2000-01, essentially allowed Israelis to be slaughtered in deference to diplomatic concerns, but that the Sharon Likud-Labor "unity" government of 2001-2003 did the same thing. And we know that the whole blood-strewn "process" would have been stopped in its tracks with the Oslo II vote in the Knesset in October 1995, except that Labor bought the votes of two conscienceless monsters (one of them now facing charges for massive drug smuggling). We know, too, that Barak pulled a trick of resigning in December 2000 so as to prevent Knesset elections that undoubtedly would have resulted in a right-wing government that would have been much more likely to fight the terror instead of submit to it. And we also know that, after hundreds more funerals, we were finally allowed to elect such a government in 2003; that it did fight terror much more effectively on the whole; and that Sharon has now destroyed it in the name of the same Oslo approach of unilateral concessions while striving to bring the Osloites back.

In other words, an accumulation of outrages of which the specific disengagement from Gaza and northern Samaria is only the latest installment. And it continues; here are some examples:

The government informs us that Egypt will soon be handling our security concerns in Gaza. At the same time, it turns out that in return for releasing an innocent Israeli citizen who was judicially kidnapped in Egypt and held there in horrendous conditions for eight years, President Mubarak needs the release by Israel of over 150 convicted offenders, many of them terrorists, to show our appreciation. This in addition to the release of six Egyptian infiltrators who were caught while planning large-scale terror attacks, and who, upon returning to Egypt, were greeted with smiles and honors by their government. Never fear -- after the IDF leaves Gaza, 750 Egyptian border policemen will be guarding the Philadelphi Route for us, and Egypt will be "training Palestinian security personnel."

The newly emerging "unity" government creates a plethora of ministerial posts to stroke the egos of the various hacks who will constitute it, continuing a tradition started by Barak in 1999 when he used legal sleight of hand to expand the cabinet from the mandated 18 ministers to 24. Here, one might say, they're only stealing our tax money instead of letting us be killed. But economics and security are closely linked in Israel. At a time of deep cuts both in welfare payments and the defense budget, there's always enough money for useless ministers without portfolios and deputy ministers with fancy offices, staffs, and cars. And if this isn't enough, another Basic Law is altered to create a special, entirely redundant deputy-prime-ministerial post for -- none other than Shimon Peres, who got the Oslo nightmare rolling and still thinks it's a great thing.

Convicted and jailed mass murderer Marwan Barghouti was not only allowed to run for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority until he himself bowed out of the race, but to continue playing a lively, influential role in Palestinian politics from his prison cell. Just last December 28, Barghouti was visited by Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan and told him that "Israel's decision to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank is a victory for the Palestinian resistance." Other recent visitors to this honored figure include Member of Knesset Taleb a-Sanaa and PA minister Kadura Fares. This while Barghouti's murder victims can only be visited in their graves.

Government by trial balloon: In the latest "trial balloon" episode, Minister Ehud Olmert announces that the Gaza/northern-Samaria disengagement is just the start of a larger withdrawal process that will leave Israel as a huddled, indefensible ghetto surrounded by deadly enemies. Sharon immediately denies Olmert's words. Yet when, a few months ago, Sharon's personal aide Dov Weisglass proclaimed that the Gaza/northern-Samaria disengagement would be final and was aimed at keeping the rest of the land under Israel's control, Sharon similarly issued a flat-out denial. Sharon here exposes himself as a liar, since it cannot be that both Olmert and Weisglass are wrong. Instead of a government that respects a population that is enduring a terror war, and speaks openly and honestly to us, we get a government of trial balloons, lies, and trickery.

What can be concluded from all this?

A nonviolent civil-disobedience campaign against disengagement is, to repeat, completely justified. If a majority of Israelis believe disengagement constitutes pikuach nefesh (saving lives) and is in our interest, then the government has a right to implement it. But we don't know if a majority of Israelis believe that; all we have are polls that say so. In other democracies, referendums are held on much less weighty issues than the life-and-death issue of disengagement; we, however, aren't granted a referendum, only polls. Nevertheless, a civil-disobedience campaign focused on settlement evacuation runs the risk of distorting what is at stake: even if there had never been a single Israeli settlement in Gaza or northern Samaria, evacuating these areas now, handing them over carte blanche to jihadi terror, would to the exact same degree be a suicidal step that leaves other parts of Israel indefensible and signals, once again, that relentless terror is "the way to go" and always leads Israel to cave eventually.

Nevertheless, it is natural for the settlers and their supporters, who have initiated the civil-disobedience campaign, to focus on the issue of evacuating settlements. Which leads to the question: where are the rest of the people -- that is, the majority that is not leftist -- and where have they been amid these ongoing outrages? This question perplexes many people, including supporters of Israel abroad; I can only suggest some possible answers:

1. The Israeli population is a uniquely traumatized and bewildered population. In addition to the battering of violence and hatred, it seems to have internalized the lessons that votes are meaningless, leaders do not mean what they say in any case, and activism is not only useless but often counterproductive, bringing the opposite results to what one intended. Remaining active and assertive in such a situation requires special strength; the settler community, being fired by a religious ideology, has the strength, while the rest of the non-leftist population does not, or not enough of it.

2. The Rabin assassination seems to have had a special traumatizing effect. Before it, I used to go to anti-Oslo rallies and see many people who, like me, lacked head covering. Since the Rabin assassination, the religious Right has been -- until recently -- much quieter too, but head-coverings have been predominant at the demonstrations that were held. I can't account for the depth of the Rabin-assassination effect on the population, especially since it happened nine years ago and since then far more Israelis have died as a result of government policy; but, apparently, it is there.

3. "Sharon knows things we don't know; he knows what he's doing." The belief in Sharon as a sort of security genius has been an important factor, from 2001 to the present, in inducing passivity in the population. People felt that, in 2001 and especially 2003, they had at last elected someone who knew how to deal with the situation, and could sit back and let him work his wonders. I too was afflicted with this malady; I only got over it totally in 2004. The question of why Sharon has turned into an Oslo-style leftist who ignores security realities in pursuing a blind capitulationist strategy is less important than the fact that he has indeed become one. Among people who are neither leftists nor firm opponents of disengagement, the psychological resistance is still potent -- "It doesn't make sense, but he must know what he's doing." Hopefully intelligence chief Avi Dichter's warnings about the dire security consequences of disengagement can help chip away at the syndrome.

Much of the damage wrought by our feckless, spineless leaders of the Oslo era cannot be undone; the dead cannot be brought back. The only hope of widening the civil-disobedience campaign beyond the settler community and making it more effective, is to reduce the emphasis on settlements and increase the emphasis on security while trying to remind people what horrors their trust and passivity have already enabled. The focus should be on the security implications of: abandoning territory in the midst of a war against a fanatic enemy; rewarding hostile, dangerous, anti-Semitic Egypt with power and prestige it has done nothing to deserve; leaving Sderot, Ashkelon, and the surrounding area -- and future areas in further disengagements -- defenseless against missiles and infiltrations; letting Gaza become an importer and incubator of ever-more-advanced weaponry including WMD; strengthening Iran's already-strong position in the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan; very likely necessitating a reinvasion of Gaza and a larger, more costly war; further legitimizing total Israeli retreat as a "solution" to security situations and giving huge encouragement to our enemies; and so on.

The situation requires both passionate involvement and cool heads. A civil-disobedience campaign that spirals into violence and chaos will make the anti-disengagement cause look fanatical and do more harm than good.

P. David Hornik is a freelance writer living in Jerusalem. This article appeared on israelinsider.com

Nidra Poller

The greatest obstacle to peace? The peace process, of course. It's something worse than processed cheese, but it doesn't seem to bother the altermondialistes, ecolo-purists, and fins gastronomes.

Arafat was Allah's gift to peace. But when he died, for some mysterious reason all those who were claiming that he was the Key and the Door and the Road and the Way to peace suddenly discovered that great hopes were dawning.

Yes, we know why. It's because Mahmoud Abbas shaves. And the same people who spit on advertising wouldn't be expected to give Gillette the credit for this tsunami of peace hope. No, it's not the razor, it's a je ne sais quoi of Abbas that somehow soothes our souls and makes our eyes shine like Christmas bulbs.

Here's a guy you can peace process with. He doesn't snarl, he smiles like a sweet grandfather as he's carried around on the shoulders of an arch-terrorist serial Jew-killer. He makes extravagant election promises about flying the Palestinian flag from the minarets of Jerusalem (existing, and to come...like in movie contracts), burying Arafat in Jerusalem, ending the occupation (of West Jerusalem, of course, but it's that famous French non dit), fulfilling the dreams of Arafat, and fulfilling the goals of Hamas. He can talk about dismantling the Jewish state by stages; the world's press takes things one at a time.

A state, a state, a state in Gaza and the West Bank, Reuters just repeated it for the 8 millionth time, that's what the Palestinians want, what Hamas wants, what the Qur'an wants, what Allah wants. And since there are no borders to the West Bank and Gaza on Palestinian maps, Reuters can be trusted. All they want is a state.

A state of war. But as long as they only say it to each other, and never in English, why worry?

What's wrong with the peace process is that Israel hasn't caught on. Israel keeps trying to deal with facts on the ground. They want a state in Gaza? OK, we'll pull out of Gaza. And too bad for a bunch of cranks who want to live there because they don't understand peace processes. And, as all the world can see, the Palestinians are thrilled.

You're pulling out of Gaza? Oh how thrilling, how did you know, it's exactly what I wanted. I'm just so excited, I'm bursting with Kassams. How many Jews can I kill before you pull out of Gaza to prove to you how much I love you and to encourage you to pull out of the West Bank and Tel Aviv and all those other territories you've been occupying since Methusaleh.

The peace processing world looks on, frowns, points a finger at Israel and says "Hey there, you better stop attacking these Palestinians if you want to show you're serious about peace." Revisionists revise history and the Peace Processors are revising the road map. Suddenly if you want to get from point X to point Y, you should begin at point Y. (Come to think of it, why didn't I think of that?) You want a Palestinian state? The road map says that's Y and to get there you must start at X, namely stop killing Jews, You improve the road map. There is no X. You begin with a Palestinian state at Y. Check out your favorite media this week and you’ll see how many talking mouths are going that way for 2005.

Because the pundits are logical. If you give them a state (that's what they want) they'll stop killing Jews. It's logical. You have to be some kind of Zionist extremist or ultra talmudist to think otherwise.

The problem with the peace process is that Israel is always trying to create facts on the ground. Why can't we do like Abbas? We announce to the world the glad tidings: we are pulling out of Gaza. We have decided that being in Gaza is counter-productive. In exchange, the world should give us a free pass to respectability, and repeal all UN resolutions. (All of them? Why not just the ones that are anti-Israel? Oh yeah, I see what you mean. Why make an exception for the other two?)

And then we just sit tight in Gaza, mow our lawns and putter around in our greenhouses and let the years go by. If a Reuters journalist happens to come by, we send out a spokesperson to declaim: we are going to pull out of Gaza. for the sake of peace, for the sake of the process, for the sake of the peace process. In fact, the person might add, we realize that it was a mistake to ever go into Gaza. But what can you do, that was thousands of years ago…

Abbas says he won't touch a hair on the rifle of a single Palestinian terrorist? Great! Neither will we. We proclaim that we have decided to stop killing Jew-Killers. No no no, it's not lowdown word play. We aren't going to eliminate them, liquidate them, target them or any such thing. We are going to peace process them.

You see what I mean? Public opinion is not asking for miracles. Public opinion doesn't expect Abbas to end homicide bombings, rocket launchings, tunnel diggings and assorted atrocities, they just want to hear him say that it would be nice if those things could finally achieve their goals and be phased out. So… that rickety little fence we stretched out between Israelis and their designated killers is not a Wall of Shame, an Apartheid Wall, a Barrier to Peaceful Justice, it's just a line of thought, and in fact, to our minds, it doesn't even exist. Of course we'll pull it down the first thing tomorrow morning as a sign of good faith, but in the meantime people shouldn't get hung up on it. What matters is good intentions, Abbas intends to demilitarize the jihad and we intend to pull down the fence…

Nidra Poller is a novelist and journalist who lives in France.

Hugh Fitzgerald

When such contemporary would-be “reformers within Islam” as Canadian Irshad Manji are given attention, the admiring interviewer does not bother to raise the awkward question – just how does one “reform” a religion when all of its canonical texts, Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira, are immutable.

In the modern history of Islam, the heyday of supposed “reformers” was the period 1900-1930. This corresponded to the revelation, to the most advanced people in the Muslim world, of the weakness of Islamic societies, and the understanding that their political and economic and intellectual and social failures were attributable to the tenets of Islam itself, and the attitudes they engendered. But there is no such recognition today. Islam is cushioned from its failures by the accident of geology that provides oil wealth to some, by the solicitousness with which Infidel countries hasten to supply foreign aid, including military aid, to others, and by the attitude of extreme deference toward Muslim sensibilities that, if continued, will have catastrophic consequences for the Infidels themselves, and for those who, within Islam, would like to create the conditions where Muslims themselves will have to do something about Islam, whether to interpret away its literalism, or to constrain its practice in the manner of Atatürk.

In Islam, no Infidel state, whatever its dimensions, can be permitted, for that would violate the essence of Islam. Islam, said Mohammad, is “to dominate and not to be dominated.” No land once part of dar al-Islam can ever fall under Infidel control again. The land on which Israel now sits, and other lands, including the Balkans, much of south-central Europe, much of Russia, most of India, and of course Spain, were once all part of dar al-Islam, and must be returned to it. But Israel, an Infidel sovereign state run by the despised Jews, and sitting smack in the middle of dar al-Islam, is particularly disturbing.

If the Islamic basis for Arab opposition to Israel were understood, then much that confuses commentators would become clear. It is irrelevant what Israel’s borders are; if it exists, it remains an affront, an outrage, a catastrophe, the greatest injustice in the history of the world (as Arab spokesmen routinely say).

The very phrase a “final peace settlement” rings hollow to anyone familiar with the tenets of Islam. For there can never be a “final peace settlement” between Moslems and non-Moslems. The model for treaties is the agreement made between Muhammad and the Meccans in 628 A.D., the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya. It was supposed to be a “truce” treaty that would last 10 years. It lasted scarcely 18 months, when Muhammad, feeling that his forces had grown sufficiently, breached the agreement on a pretext, and attacked the Meccans. As Majid Khaddui notes in War and Peace in Islam, this Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya became the model, and the basis, for all future “treaties” with Infidel peoples and polities.

Public discussions about Arab-Israeli negotiations and assorted peace-processes never devote attention to the long and grim history of agreements and treaties between Israel and the Arab states. The Arabs were not interested in any agreements with that Infidel state for, despite the Israeli victory in 1949, they thought they could, within a reasonable period, go in for the kill. And so there were no "peace treaties" but, at Arab insistence, only agreements that did not recognize any final borders, just armistice lines. Despite the fact that those agreements included a cessation of hostile acts, more than 19,000 separate acts of terrorism against Israel took place between 1949 and 1956, from Egyptian-held territory alone. The Sinai Campaign of 1956 was launched to end that terrorism; Israel won the entire Sinai. In the mid-1950s, the heyday of John Foster Dulles, Islam was seen not as a threat to the West, but only a much-touted “bulwark” against Communism. At the same time, it was believed that certain Arab Muslim states had to be bribed to keep from falling into the Communist camp. Both beliefs, though contradictory, led to American pressure on Israel to withdraw, for some flimsy guarantees, from the Sinai.

When he was President of Egypt, Nasser broke every commitment he made to President Eisenhower about freedom of shipping in the Straits of Tiran, about allowing Israeli ships to pass through the Suez Canal, about terrorist attacks launched from Egypt. That the Israelis continue to be surprised that the agreements they make with Muslim Arabs are eventually breached by the Arab side, testifies to their own remarkable insouciance, in failing to investigate what the law of war and peace in Islam expresses in such crystalline fashion.

And today Israel prepares to make "peace" based on some “road map, ” in order, it is hoped, to arrive at something called a “two-state solution.” This time there is a more plausible, milder-mannered "Palestinian" leader than the late Arafat. Yet the doctrines of Islam remain, and those doctrines will continue to fashion the deepest impulses and beliefs of Muslims. Whatever Arafat or Abbas or anyone else claims or feigns, and whatever any war-weary Israeli hopes, or whatever any useful Western tools or fools Muslims may exploit believe, no real and durable peace can be made with any Infidel sovereign state. It is the duty of Muslims, mandated by Islam and the example of Muhammad, to renew conflict, whatever agreement has been signed, as soon as the Muslim side is stronger. This means that deterrence, and only deterrence, can keep the peace. The doctrine of necessity, or darura – i.e., the fact of an Infidel enemy possessing, or seeming to possess, overwhelming power, is the only thing that Arab leaders, or at least those reluctant to make war, can use as an excuse not to do so. This is why, if one were genuinely interested in preserving peace between Israel and the Arabs, one would be looking at every possible way to strengthen the perception of Israel as impregnable – and to do nothing which, to Muslims looking at a map, might make them gain a different impression.

Hugh Fitzgerald is a frequent contributor to Outpost. This is excerpted from a much longer article Islam for Infidels that can be read on www.Jihadwatch.org.

Moshe Dann

What lies behind Ariel Sharon's sharp about-face? Are his plans to leave Gaza and parts of Judea and Samaria an admission of defeat? A betrayal? The next stage of "Post-Zionism"? All three? No one seems to know.

Since becoming Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon has reversed the pro-settlement policy upon which he was elected. He now endorses the idea of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza and announces that Israel is an "occupying" power. He is set to implement his plan for unilateral retreat and is building a controversial fence/barrier along the 1949 armistice lines (with some variations) that will become the de facto (although unlikely de jure) border of Israel.

Reputed to be a brilliant military tactician, Sharon has often failed as a strategist. His current policy appears to be another failed strategy, launched without critical thinking, embracing what he long -- rightly -- opposed. Neither he nor his advisors have offered any serious answers to challenging questions. No press conferences. No explanations.

One commonly accepted rationale is that Sharon wants to trade all of Gaza and most of Judea and Samaria in order to secure American agreement for keeping three major settlements blocs. Another is that Sharon believes the IDF cannot retaliate with full force against terrorism as long as Israel is seen as an "occupying" power, condemned by the world for violating "international law" and "Palestinian human rights." Once we are no longer "occupiers" it's one state against another and we can do what we want with international approval. If Sharon is operating under either of these assumptions, he is deluding himself.

To begin with, Israel is not an "occupying" power, ruling Palestinian Arabs; that ended a decade ago. The Palestinian Authority controls nearly all Palestinian Arab towns and villages. When the IDF enters PA areas to arrest terrorists and stop terrorist attacks in-process, it is in order to save lives. It's called self-defense.

Three years ago, when Palestinian terrorism was rampant throughout Israel, Prime Ministers Barak and then Sharon exercised "restraint." In retaliation for terrorist attacks, empty buildings in areas under Palestinian Authority control were blown up. However, the massacre of guests at Netanya's Park Hotel on the eve of Passover in 2002 was a turning point. Sharon then assumed that he had American (and to some extent European) approval to strike back. Despite warnings from the Israeli Left ("the peace camp") that there was no military solution to terror, the IDF proved that there was.

But "Operation Defensive Shield," battles in UNRWA "refugee camps" like Jenin – reputed to be the "terrorist capital of the world" – and assassinations of high-profile terrorist leaders, though successful, were cut short because of pressure from America, Europe and the UN. Israel was condemned; the IDF was withdrawn; terrorists struck again.

Since 2000, failure to deal decisively with terrorism because of a perceived need to pacify foreign interests has led to the murder of one thousand five hundred Israelis; ten thousand have been seriously wounded. Families have been destroyed; the nation traumatized.

Recently, once again, Palestinian Arab terrorism has been significantly reduced because of forceful action by the IDF and Israel's security services. But now that Israeli buses and cafés are no longer being blown up on a regular basis, pressure is again building for Israel to make strategically harmful compromises.

According to military and intelligence experts, once Israel withdraws and evacuates Jewish communities, the Gaza Strip will turn into a major center of terrorism. Terrorist organizations like Hizbullah are already at work in Gaza and the West Bank. Sderot, within the old Green Line, has already declared a citywide "Day of Mourning," seeking to force the government to act more forcefully against the nonstop Kassam rocket attacks from Gaza that have already made life intolerable there. Without Israeli control over borders, air and sea ports, troops and weapons will flow in to terrorists. Major population centers in Israel and vital installations will be at risk. A defense industries expert is quoted in the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot on the fact that Arabs in Gaza have already smuggled in 20-kilometer range Egyptian rockets which will put Ashkelon's power plant, Prime Minister Sharon's Shikmim Farm and possibly even Kiryat Gat within range.

If Sharon's plan for withdrawal is extended to Judea and Samaria, all of Israel will be vulnerable. Since it is unlikely that a Palestinian government would openly condone terrorist attacks (and may even officially condemn them), it would be difficult for Israel to launch a retaliatory action, let alone a pre-emptive one. Attacking a sovereign Palestinian state with treaties of mutual defense could trigger a full-scale regional conflict that could involve WMD. (According to intelligence reports at least some of Iraq's WMD are hidden in Syria.)

Arguing that Israel's only option is to engage a more powerful Palestinian terrorist state is like offering your opponent in a duel a machine gun, instead of a pistol, because you are a better shot.

It is in Israel's security and strategic interest to defend itself against Palestinian Arab terrorism and to protest incitement. Will offering a mini-state and sovereignty to terrorists, even those who are democratically elected," bring peace? The Left thinks it will. But even in the unlikely event that there were to be a temporary short-term reduction in terrorism, another much larger problem is on the horizon: Iran.

Perhaps it is Iran that is the key to Sharon's thinking? With Israel in Iran's nuclear bombsights (assisted by Egypt and other Arab countries), perhaps he asks himself “Can Israel go it alone?”

Does Sharon believe that by leaving Gaza and most of Judea and Samaria Israel will gain time in the nuclear race to destroy us, and perhaps even head off that nightmare? Is Sharon willing to risk removing the Jewish presence in Judea, Samaria and Gaza in return for not being isolated and abandoned? Sharon may think he's buying time, but more important, he is giving Arab terrorists a larger and more secure base from which to attack.

Sacrificing some Jews and Jewish property is like cutting out someone's intestines so that a tape worm will have less to eat. Amputating limbs to save the body, as the Left metaphorically envisions, works only so long as there are more limbs to sacrifice. Is Israeli reliance on America, Europe, or NATO to protect us in reduced boundaries realistic? Or, will it bring us closer to doomsday, a simultaneous missile attack from terrorist bases in the Palestinian state and surrounding Arab countries, assisted by anyone else who wants part of the action?

The great tragedy of Israeli leaders, especially those with which we are "blessed" today, is that they are unable to speak about the place of Israel in Jewish history and Jewish destiny, the reasons why "settlements" are not peripheral but essential.

The question is not whether Israel can go it alone; we have no choice. The question is on what basis do we act and in whom do we trust? The struggle for Gush Katif and the other communities may yet awaken a consciousness of who we are and what we are doing here in Israel in the first place.

And perhaps in trying to understand Ariel Sharon we will also understand more of ourselves.

Moshe Dann is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem.

Mark Silverberg

Palestinian elections notwithstanding, it is important for Western leaders to consider whether a democratic Palestinian society can be harvested from ground that has been sown with hatred, prejudice, murder and the belief that the promise of the afterlife holds greater fortune than any earthly treasure. Is it conceivable that a society bent on the destruction of a neighboring state both for religious and political reasons can somehow search its inner soul and find the foundation for a new tomorrow?

The creation of a democratic Palestinian state depends not only upon an established set of rules enacted by duly elected representatives, but on intangible and complex bonds of individual responsibility and trust. While there has been considerable debate in recent years about nation building, the truth is that democracies are not things that you just "build."

Like liberty, democracy cannot be laid down like Astroturf. It is not a commodity that the US can export or donate. Rather, democracies are about consensual government, an independent judiciary, obedience to the rule of law, a free press and minority rights, and they require a very different set of beliefs from those required for survival under tyrants, dictators and despots.

Democracy is also more than just voting and elections (despite what you may hear). The existence of these processes (or even any subsequent constitution produced as a result of them) do not ipso facto mean that a cultural shift has suddenly occurred in the Palestinian mindset. Remember that the constitution of the former Soviet Union was among the most democratic ever written, but that did not stop the purges, the NKVD assassinations, the Doctors' Plot, the banishments to Siberia or the slaughter of millions of Russians by a paranoid megalomaniac.

In real life (as opposed to textbooks on civics), democracy is an acquired taste that Palestinian Arabs (at least to date) have shown little if any inclination to acquire. Palestinian Arab society has produced a political, religious, educational, and popular culture that is virulently anti-Semitic, anti-American and anti-Western; that is unrelenting in its efforts to destroy Israel, and that has indoctrinated a significant portion of its society into believing that murdering Jews is an act of faith condoned by Allah.

To have any real hope of working, Palestinian Arab democracy must evolve from within its own culture and that will not be a simple thing. For the West, it took eight hundred years of feudalism, the Renaissance, a series of religious wars, and an Industrial Revolution to establish what we call "Democracy." It didn't just "happen."

Part of their problem is that they lack a Washington, a Madison or a Marshall as a guide. That is, they lack a universally revered democratic hero as a role model. They lack a consensus builder who understands that democratic society is comprised of many autonomous groups and associations; one who can convince others that common ground must be found for the common good of the people; and they lack a genius of constitutional law who can so persuasively interpret a constitution that the prestige of his court (and of law itself) ensures national compliance.

Which leads to the role of religion in Palestinian politics. Like Christianity, Islam is a universal faith that envisions the ultimate transformation of the world in its image. But unlike Christianity, Islam has yet to consider the option of religious pluralism. Democracy cannot exist in an environment without true political parties, but Islam condemns the dividing of the Muslim ummah (community) into such parties and groups. Unless the Islamic elements in Palestinian political culture are resolved, a democratic Palestine will remain a pipe dream.

Having said that, what realistic benchmarks can be set? In Palestinian society, true democracy will come only with an end to religious and political terrorism; when Palestinians detoxify their society with messages that actively promote peace and economic progress; when they can freely question the reasons for the failure of their government to raise the living standards of its citizens; when Palestinians are free to discuss the benefits of economic liberalization, privatization and development; when they institute broad educational reforms; when they are prepared to systematically eradicate government corruption; when they eliminate the culture of martyrdom as expressed through their posters, videos, TV programs and in their schools, mosques, stores, marketplaces and editorials; and when they can discuss issues relating to open access to information, professional organizations, trade unions, fair laws and the judiciary without fear of being executed by Palestinian death squads.

In the meantime, neither the Bush nor the Blair administrations do Israel (or their own countries) any service by suggesting that the death of Yasser Arafat has somehow changed or diminished this medieval mindset. Abu Mazen has already made it clear (in Arabic) that he is not opposed to the use of violence, only such violence as interferes with the strategy of forcing Israel to create a Palestinian state.

The Palestinians will have to fundamentally change their world-view not because it is politically ineffective but because it is morally wrong. As Itamar Marcus of Palestine Media Watch wrote recently: "The day we start seeing educational and religious messages promoting peace on Palestinian Authority TV is the day we'll know a peace process has begun."

Given how far we are from that day, when President Bush stated: "I am convinced that, during this term, I will manage to bring peace," I could not help but wonder what the steady stream of would-be Palestinian "martyrs" were thinking as he spoke.

Mark Silverberg is the executive director of the Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Ruth King

In September 1982 during the Lebanon War, while Beirut was under Israeli control, Christian Phalangist troops entered the Sabra and Shatilla camps and killed between 470 (Lebanese figures) and 800 (Israeli numbers) Palestinian Arabs combatants, and roughly 45 civilians. The bloody episode, perpetrated by Arabs, occasioned a media assault against Israel with the International Red Cross bruiting the number of deaths as high as 3500.

The Kahan Commission, established by Israel to investigate Israel’s role, released its findings on February 8th, 1983, faulting General Ariel Sharon for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge occasioned by the assassination of Maronite President-elect Bashir Gemayel.

The irony should not be lost. Arabs murdered Arabs and Israel convened a commission of inquiry which blamed an Israeli general. Years later it was established that the assaults, known in Arabic as “the night of the long knives,” was silent, so no gunshots could be heard. Nonetheless, Sharon was removed from his post as Defense Minister.

On February 21, 1983 in an article on the Kahane Commission’s findings, Time magazine stated “Sharon discussed revenge with the Gemayel family after the assassination of Bashir Gemayel.” This brief sentence, buried in the article's thousands of words, led Ariel Sharon to bring a libel suit against Time. The suit ended with each side claiming victory. Although Time was exonerated from acting maliciously, the magazine was scolded by Judge Abraham Sofaer for acting irresponsibly.

At the time, asked why he bothered with a suit over a few words, Sharon's response to a small group of supporters (I was present as was AFSI Chairman Herbert Zweibon) was that he could not live with a footnote in history that would allege he collaborated in any way in such a bloody episode.

Sharon was dismissed, but in the view of real friends of Israel, not discredited. In his subsequent public life, he was principled, denouncing Oslo, supporting Jewish rights in all of Palestine, defending Israeli sovereignty over a united Jerusalem, notably the Temple Mount, and rejecting territorial concessions. He inspired all of us in the Diaspora who support a safe Israel.

As Prime Minister, he has betrayed each of his earlier previous commitments. He has become General Huff and Puff, blowing out stout talk, then collapsing into preemptive surrender. His statements about Abbas are actually silly. “No I won’t deal with him” quickly followed by “I have to deal with him” and “maybe I’ll deal with him” to “I’ll show him” ….it's like a hide and seek game between children. In fact, General Huff and Puff is negotiating with himself, telling Abbas and all Israel’s enemies that no one will dictate to him: he’ll retreat and concede and surrender without so much as consulting them.

This is the footnote to his biography that will stick. Far worse than anything Time could have done. Maybe Sharon will sue Outpost.