NATIV Online        

  Vol. 2  /  2004                        A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE ARTS      

The ability of the common politician simultaneously to say one thing and its converse is famous. However the inexhaustible ability of the Israeli Prime Minister to deceive his nation, his voters, his party and himself regarding issues, which go to the very essence of his country’s existence, is a quality unique to the people residing in Zion.

It was Menahem Begin who vowed, orally and in print, with characteristic pathos, that: “If I am asked to sign an agreement transferring the Sinai Desert to the disciple of that oppressor…I, Menahem Begin, will never sign such an agreement, which, for all intents and purposes, is a war treaty”. Only a few months later, he most certainly signed. As a bonus in gratitude to Jimmy Carter “who is as great as Jabotinsky”, he took the opportunity to establish ex nihilo the “Palestinian people”, possessor of “legitimate rights”, and destroyed the Sinai settlements.

The failures of his successors, Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu and Barak are too numerous to mention, and the patient reader is invited to peruse a recounting of their exploits in the various issues of Nativ.

Nevertheless, when they face the trial of history, and they will face trial, they can claim extenuating circumstances:

• Begin, in his characteristic style of the head of the Catrielivka Community Council, will contend in his defense that first of all: The fear of the American boss overwhelmed him, and, second, the calculated risk in relinquishing Sinai was a sacrifice required for the opportunity to make peace with the largest of the Arab countries.

• Shamir will claim in his defense, that even though he shirked his duty as prime minister during the SCUD nights of the winter of 1991, and further entangled his people with the folly in Madrid – the forbearer of Oslo, at least he did not lie publicly and fundamentally was and remains a decent person. That is no mean feat in comparison to his professional colleagues.

• Rabin will claim that he fell into a trap set for him by the leftists in his party led by Peres, “that indefatigable underminer” and Beilin “his poodle”, and that they led him astray; and that in any case, whatever may be, fate settled the score with him on that November 5.

• Shimon Peres will claim that before he changed his stripes, he sought and discovered a “New Middle East”. Even though his book by the same name is more fanciful than the delusions of Baron Munchhausen, he was in the throes of euphoria at the time, and euphoria, as we know, is a clinical condition, and therefore he will seek to be exonerated on the basis of the temporary insanity defense.

• Barak will claim that the fire sale of the Land of Israel in Camp David was merely a trap, which he set for Arafat, and the proof is in the pudding.

• Netanyahu will keep silent or, alternatively, will go on and on about the fact that he has nothing to say.

But how will Ariel Sharon respond when confronted with that column in the Jerusalem Post, which is the essence of his spiritual world and his strategic-political philosophy, which he wrote and spoke about on a daily basis ever since. It is a set philosophy, in which the man unequivocally asserts that “Concessions in the ‘territories’, even if only partial ones, are a surefire formula for national suicide” and continues to assert that “The establishment of a Palestinian state will lead to the liquidation of Israel in one strike or through an extended, painful demise.”

And lo and behold, he is still talking and the other Sharon appears speaking of the tidings of the Palestinian state, the withdrawal from sections of Judea and Samaria and the beginning of the destruction of the settlements. The reader, who has maintained his sanity, and has not yet collapsed under the tidal wave of Orwellian language from the school of the local peace mongers, no doubt understands that the same Sharon, who just yesterday cautioned and warned of the threat of the destruction of the Third Temple and a new holocaust, is the same Sharon who today is explicitly declaring that he is about to wreak destruction on his country.

Well, what is the difference? As opposed to his predecessors, Sharon was fortunate enough to see that everything that he warned against in the aforementioned column and others like it came true. Fourteen hundred fatalities, thousands of casualties, an economy on the brink of disaster, an unprecedented political nadir, waves of anti-Semitism laying the groundwork for national destruction, the Prime Minister of a democratic country required to stand trial for crimes against humanity... All these and others are a consequence of a campaign of defeatism at whose foundation lie a betrayal of Zionism and auto anti-Semitism from the school of the extreme Left. Thus, the conclusions, which he reaches, are to flee Judea and Samaria and to establish a Palestinian state. Two disasters, against which he warned, are now being completely realized.

It would be an insult to the intelligence of the average reader, and especially to a Nativ reader, to outline a long list of facts indicating that Israel’s condition has deteriorated in every area, with no exception, ever since Sharon wrote what he wrote. Thus, the question is: How can an Israeli Prime Minister sell out his entire spiritual world, his integrity and his faith, to deceive repeatedly the general public and especially his voters, his party and, first and foremost, himself, and to go on as if nothing happened?

A.S.