NATIV Online        

  Vol. 1  /  2003                                A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE ARTS      

     

    From Begin to Sharon:
    A Few Comments on the History of Defeatism

    Arieh Stav

    There is not even one case in history in which defeatism did not exact a cruel price from the defeatist.

    Douglas MacArthur
     

    We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.

    Lord Palmerston, 1848,
    From a speech in the
    British House of Commons
    defending his foreign policy
     

    I am not an anti-Semite, but I would betray British interests if I was to favor six hundred thousand Jews in Palestine over millions of Arabs in the Middle East.

    Ernest Bevin
     

    The fundamental rule coined by Lord Palmerston, British Foreign Secretary and then Prime Minister during the reign of Queen Victoria, and which was affirmed in practice during the term of Ernest Bevin, British Foreign Secretary during the years 1945-1950, is not apparent in Israeli-American relations. These relations were problematic from the establishment of the state. However, it was only in 1978, at Camp David, that a radical change took place, when the White House turned Israel into a doormat, or perhaps a “Middle East Concubine” (as per the title of Prof. Ezra Sohar’s insightful book, A Concubine in the Middle East, Gefen Publishing House, 1999). The United States realized a first-rate diplomatic achievement at Israel’s expense. However, at the same time the American achievement was the most severe strategic failure of the Jewish state, in which the seeds of calamity, which have facilitated the deterioration of the State of Israel to its present condition, were sown. The domino effect was set into motion in Camp David; it has continued through Madrid, Oslo, Cairo and now with the “road map”. At each of these junctures, the Israeli Prime Minister acquiesced to American pressure, served foreign interests and thereby betrayed the fundamental principles of national existence. This article briefly seeks to portray the stages of the American government’s involvement in the various chapters of Israeli defeatism, which has reached an unprecedented nadir in the persona of the present Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. 

    * * *

     Relations between Israel and the United States are based, in the spirit of Lord Palmerston’s statement quoted above, and as opposed to the perception common to many in Israel, on interests and not on moral commitment. They are based on Washington’s perception of the region’s geo-strategic alignment, which, it goes without saying, is not in Israel’s favor.

    Against a Muslim world, which stretches over two continents and 53 countries, among them 21 Arab states, stands the minuscule State of Israel hanging on to a bit of sand on the Mediterranean coast. Against half of the world’s oil reserves, almost limitless capability to purchase weapons, control of first-rate strategic centers and a predetermined majority in the UN, the Zionist entity offers its strategic assets in the form of Jewish suffering in the Holocaust.

    To this extreme asymmetry, unprecedented in hostile relations between countries in modern history, and almost certainly in history in general, another decisive factor must be added: The relations between Israel and its neighbors is a zero-sum game. The Arab aspiration to destroy Israel is absolute, and nothing will alter that fact in the foreseeable future. If we add to that the rising tide of anti-Semitism, unmatched since World War II, then the conspicuous similarity between Israel’s condition and the condition of European Jewry in the 1930s needs no amplification, especially in light of the significant congruence between Nazism and Islam. As a result, if the Jewish state wishes to continue to exist, it is faced with an unenviable choice: Live by the sword or not live at all. Any Israeli acquiescence to Arab dictates (which it calls “compromise”) is another victory whetting the Arab appetite. On the other hand, any defeat of an Arab state strengthens Israel and contributes to its survival in the region.

    This fundamental assumption dictates the attitude of the State Department in Washington towards the Jewish state. A weak Israel will be thrown to the dogs. Israel as a regional power will garner appreciation and strategic cooperation. At the same time, the State Department in Washington, and in most cases the White House, will pay Arabs in Israeli currency. This attitude, which seems to many of us a double standard, is a direct result of the government’s policy, which is committed to the American and not the Israeli interest. The American President, contrary to what many Israelis think, is not the President of the Zionist Federation, but rather the leader of a foreign nation. At the same time, it is worth noting that Israel is quite fortunate that the United States is the superpower and not Britain or France, as they, who yesterday sold out Czechoslovakia, would today sell out Israel for next to nothing.

    Thus, the one and only alternative facing Israel is to look honestly at reality and to act in accordance with its national interest as determined by the geo-strategic alignment in which it exists, even if doing so requires the absence of a fundamental agreement with the administration in Washington. Let me emphasize: With the administration, and not necessarily with the pro-Israeli American public, as it is manifest in its authentic representatives, i.e. the two houses of Congress. This is in conspicuous contrast to the anti-Semitic component that constitutes a permanent factor in the European attitude towards Israel. The fact is, that when Israel stood up for its interests and categorically rejected the administartion’s pressure – at times that rejection was accompanied by clearly unparliamentary expressions – nothing happened. The sky did not fall in, on the contrary, Israel’s courageous stand won the sincere appreciation of both the Israeli and American publics.

    That was the case when Golda Meir rejected the “Johnson Peace Plan”; that was the case when President Carter dared to utter an idea, which could have been interpreted as support for an independent Palestinian entity west of the Jordan. Yitzhak Rabin responded to the President’s statement with a categorical “NO!”, while angrily muttering that “with all due respect, the President doesn’t understand the issue”; that was the case when Menachem Begin absolutely rejected the administration’s opposition to the attack on the nuclear reactor in Iraq, and added, as was his wont, an "historiosophical" musing that the Jewish people will exist forever even after no one will remember who the American nation was.

    It is reasonable to assume that Israel’s resolute refusal to serve the American interests, as manifest in the three above examples, aroused unease in the White House. However, in practice, nothing happened, and not only did the sky not fall in, as mentioned above, but rather it was specifically in the aftermath of the Six Day War, which broke out due to a blatant violation of the American commitment to Israel, that the Jewish state was transformed from a political burden, whose Prime Ministers were not invited to the White House, into a strategic ally.

    Camp David – Mother of all Evil

    Acquiescence to the American President, while relinquishing national interests of supreme significance, began, as mentioned above, in Camp David. Exploiting Israel’s victory in the Yom Kippur War in order to expel the Soviets from Cairo and to enlist the Egyptians, the key country in the Arab world, into the “Western” camp, was, from the perspective of the United States, a natural course of action during the Cold War. However, this was attainable only through payment in Israeli currency, i.e. expulsion of Israel from Sinai. This time, in contrast to the harsh and brutal precedent of 1956, it was done with the incentive of a “peace agreement” with Egypt. Israel surrendered, conceded and delivered Sinai to the enemy and was rewarded with a peace derived from a piece of paper, which was nothing more than a predictable strategic fraud, as Sadat himself took the trouble to explain again and again.

    The strategic failure of Camp David functioned on six levels, each one of which caused the collapse of a valuable component of Israel’s national power, robbed it of first-rate power multipliers and in synergy generated a confluence of factors undermining the very existential purpose of a sovereign state:

    1. Renunciation of the principle of punishment of the aggressor;

    2. Preclusion of the status of regional power;

    3. Creation of a precedent for “land for peace”;

    4. Legitimization of the establishment of a Palestinian state;

    5. Rupture of the national consensus;

    6. Delusion of peace with Egypt.

    A. Renunciation of the Principle of Punishment of the Aggressor

    Not only was it Israel’s right to maintain control of the Sinai Desert, it was its obligation according to international law, relying on the principle of justice designed to punish the agressor: Nullum crimen sine poena, i.e. No crime goes unpunished. If the allies acted in accordance with that principle towards Germany after WWII, without Germany threatening them with genocide, all the more so it should be applicable in Israel’s case with Egypt, which has openly and declaratively voiced its intention to destroy Israel. Is anyone capable of imagining the “return” (another Orwellian phrase from the language laundry of political correctness in Israel) to defeated Germany of Silesia, Pomerania, East Prussia, Sudetenland and Alsace-Lorraine? Would Germany have dared to raise a demand of that sort? And did not Germany, after decades of occupation, became a proper democracy, in absolute contrast to the Egyptian despotism, which was and remains Israel’s most dangerous enemy, then as now.

    It goes without saying that abandonment of the moral justification for retention, by giving Sinai to the aggressor, necessarily had to act as a boomerang, and indeed ever since, Israel has been perceived as the assailant in the Middle East. Based on the same principle, the Syrians demand (and the Israelis again evince agreement, evidenced by the willingness of Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu and Barak to acquiesce to the Syrian demand) the transfer of the Golan Heights to Damascus.

    Furthermore, it is only right to mention that the day will come when the Arabs will demand (with European support), based on the Sinai precedent, the expulsion of Israel from the territories “occupied” in the War of Independence.

    B. Preclusion of the Status of Regional Power

    Israel in Sinai, controlling the Red Sea straits, sitting on the Suez Canal, producing oil and uranium, free of the curse of the crowding in the tiny Land of Israel between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, would have achieved regional power status, and accordingly appropriate treatment by the international community. It should be remembered that the rout of the Egyptians in the Six Day War was a highly significant, some say decisive, stage in the fall of the Soviet Empire, and especially in the Soviet Union’s attempt, by means of Egypt and Syria, to gain a foothold in the Middle East, with all of its vital geo-strategic areas.

    With the Six Day War, Israel ceased to be a provisory state, which constituted a political liability and became a strategic asset, to use State Department parlance. This was dramatically manifest in the state’s leap forward as far as strategic cooperation (which for some reason, and not coincidentally, is called “American military aid”) between the two countries. Several memoranda regarding cooperation were signed, the most significant of them designating Israel’s status with the status of a non-NATO major ally. However, predictably, both the military aid and the cooperation memoranda hit a snag a short time after the evacuation of Sinai in the early 1980s. The real value of the aid decreased by at least 50%, and only the paper remains from the memoranda (which never became binding agreements between allies).

    C. Creation of a Precedent for “Land for Peace”

    Settlement in Eretz Israel is a decisive value in the Zionist ethos, providing a moral foundation for Israel’s return to its land. Thus, expulsion of the Jew from his home and destruction of the settlement by a Jewish army are not only a moral disgrace from the perspective of natural justice, but a blatant betrayal of the Zionist rationale.

    It goes without saying that the Sinai precedent immediately became an Arab demand for the expulsion of Jews from the Golan Heights, Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem. When the time comes, it will constitute the basis for the Arab demand to return to the partition borders, i.e. from the territories “occupied” during the War of Independence and, from the standpoint of international law, not only is there no difference between them and the territories “occupied” in 1967, on the contrary, there is an explicit and unequivocal UN resolution, albeit General Assembly and non-binding, Resolution 181 clearly establishing the partition borders. In contrast, Resolution 242, being a Securty Council resolution, is binding in international law, provides Israel with “secure borders” including those pertaining to Judea and Samaria and the Golan Heights.

    D. Legitimization of the Establishment of a Palestinian State

    In order to justify the withdrawal and the destruction of the Sinai settlements, Menachem Begin claimed, “as opposed to Judea and Samaria, which are the cradle of the Hebrew nation, Sinai is not the Land of Israel”. That being the case, he ostensibly sought to strengthen the settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, however at the same time he signed a document calling for recognition of “the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people”. As the reference is to granting legitimacy to the national aspirations of a group of people, it is clear that the one and only conclusion arising from this characterization is the laying of the groundwork for the principle of the establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria, which are the “cradle of the Jewish nation”. Parenthetically, it is notable that Menachen Begin’s legal adviser in Camp David, Aharon Barak wrote in the Hebrew version of the agreement: “The legitimate rights of the Arabs in Eretz Israel”, however that deception for internal consumption was worthless, as the agreement explicitly establishes that the English version signed by the parties was binding.

    E. Rupture of the National Consensus

    The integration of all of the aforementioned factors into a moral blow, critically compromised the existential rationale of the Jewish state, which had begun slowly to consolidate during the first two decades and reached its apex in the Six Day War. The Jewish people, lacking the historical experience of a thorough country, if it seeks to survive, requires national unity and confidence in the justness of its cause and a willingness to sacrifice more than any nation in modern history. The integration of a military victory, which freed Israel from the danger of annihilation and the transformation of that victory into a diplomatic defeat, generated the defeatism deeply anchored in the consciousness of the Jewish individual. From that point on, “peace” as a virtual ideal became paramount. The Orwellian concept “land for peace” permeated from marginal left-wing groups to movements like “Peace Now”, and from there to the left-wing parties in the Knesset. Soon the Labor Party itself etched that slogan on its banner. As of today, the slogan, land for peace, a surefire formula for destruction, is Ariel Sharon’s declared policy, i.e. the policy of the majority of the Israeli public. As a result, one who assesses the conceptual platform of the radical Left, as manifest in “Gush Shalom” (Peace Bloc), i.e. a fifth column and extension of the PLO whose role is to splinter Israel from within, will find conceptual identity between it and Ariel Sharon. Both advocate one land for two peoples, both consider the “occupation” as the root of the tragedy, etc.

    F. Delusion of Peace with Egypt

    “Egypt is Israel’s most dangerous enemy.” This statement uttered by Matan Vilnai in his role as Deputy Chief of the General Staff, is exceptional in public discourse in the Jewish state. Not only that, Prime Ministers repeatedly and regularly beseech the Egyptian dictator in one of his palaces asking him to mediate for peace. Ariel Sharon outdid them all when he responded to a Newsweek reporter that he does not “identify even the slightest Egyptian threat against Israel”. This after heaping praise upon the Egyptian ruler.

    Egypt is openly and declaratively preparing for war against Israel. Egypt is the one and only country in the entire Semitic domain completely free of any potential strategic threat, and nevertheless, that country, one of the poorest in the world, allocates one quarter of its national product to armaments. Egypt maintains 450,000 men in uniform and a similar number in paramilitary corps and units. Cairo is the world center of anti-Semitism. Deligitimization of the Jewish state on the one hand and the Nazi-style dehumanization of the Jewish person, however, on a much larger scale then in the Nazi period on the other, are designed to prepare the Arab public for the war of persecution in which the liquidation of the Jew will be a moral imperative. With the exception of a direct military attack, Egypt has violated most of the articles of the peace agreements, and their spirit. Cairo recalled its ambassador, and for years now, the Egyptian ambassador has not been accredited in Israel. That is a diplomatic step which generally precedes acts of hostility. In every international forum, Egypt directs the hostility and delegitimization of Israel. The pogrom against Israel in the UN conference in Durban, South Africa, was planned in detail in Cairo two weeks earlier.

    The PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) is an Egyptian initiative; Arafat is a Cairo-born Egyptian. The Palestinian Charter and the “Phased Plan”, which openly calls for the establishment of a sovereign entity in the Land of Israel and a springboard for the destruction of the Jewish state, is an Egyptian project from A to Z. What is characterized as “Palestinian terrorism” is nothing more than an Egyptian war of attrition by proxy. At the next stage, as Sadat repeatedly noted, an Arab attack will stem from the territory of the Palestinian state, i.e. from the outskirts of Greater Tel Aviv.

    Operation Desert Storm and the Madrid Conference

    On the eve of the operation, in order to get the Arab countries to join the coalition against Iraq, the United States had to pay in Israeli currency. The Secretary of State at the time, James Baker III, conducted a round of meetings with the then Arab rulers and made them a series of promises, which included, among other things, American pressure on Israel on three planes: The Golan Heights, Jerusalem and the creation of a Palestinian state. Similarly, Baker promised to stage an international conference on the topic of the “Arab-Israeli conflict”. These two steps were designed to neutralize Israel in case it was attacked by Iraq. From a strategic perspective, Israel endured three severe blows:

    1. Escalation of the ballistic missile threat;

    2. Loss of nuclear deterrence;

    3. An international conference and the re-establishment of the principle of “land for peace”.

    Escalation of the Ballistic Missile Threat

    In the winter of 1990, Israel absorbed, in a war in which it was not directly involved, a barrage of 39 ballistic missiles upon its cities with no response. That is almost certainly the one and only instance in history in which a country not involved in a war was willing to absorb a military strike against its citizens by a third party, without retaliating harshly against the enemy, despite the fact that it possessed the wherewithal to punish the aggressor. Not even one of the members of the coalition, which attacked Iraq, was threatened by Saddam Hussein. However, the Jewish state, the only one that he openly threatened to destroy, and which was in fact attacked by him, restrained itself from fighting back.

    The government’s betrayal of its nation was explained to the public at the time as responding to the American demand not to respond in the case of an Iraqi provocation designed to splinter the coalition against it. Even if that far-fetched rationale had some logic from an American perspective, the price which Israel paid for it, and which could have easily been anticipated, was deadly in two senses. Israel’s deterrent capability against the Arab enemy was compromised, and there are those who claim, terminally. The Israeli silence of the lambs and the mass flight from the city centers led to a dramatic shift in Israel’s enemies’ strategic perception, which was manifest in the unprecedented subsequent escalation in their equipping themselves with inexpensive, simple and accessible ballistic missiles. If in the late 1980s, the number of missiles with the range to reach Greater Tel Aviv totaled a few dozen, today the number according to CIA data, is 64 SCUD B and C launchers in Syria and Egypt alone. As, according to the manufacturer’s instructions, and the Soviet doctrine, each launcher is equipped with 15 missiles, the ballistic missile potential of the two countries reaches 960 missiles. According to conservative estimates, one third of them are equipped with weapons of mass destruction.

     Loss of the Nuclear Deterrent

    Israel’s nuclear deterrrent doctrine rested upon nuclear hegemony in the Middle East. The crux of the doctrine establishes that in the case of an existential threat, Israel has the ability to land a nuclear strike on the enemy. The enemy is aware of this and therefore will refrain from threatening Israel with an all out war. Since the doctrine was never put to the test, as during the Six Day War the Arabs openly declared their intention to destroy Israel but Israel won using conventional means, it is difficult to speculate as to what would have happened had Israel not achieved this conventional victory, which spared it the need to implement the nuclear doctrine.

    In any case, even if we assume that Israel still enjoys nuclear hegemony, it does not have a deterrent capability in the case of an existential threat. That is because Israel’s nuclear potential is counterbalanced by the enemy’s weapons of mass destruction, what Saddam at the time correctly characterized as “a poor man’s atom bomb”. In light of its minuscule area and the fact that Israel in its entirety is no more than one soft target (Greater Tel Aviv), the Shamir Government’s strategic failure in 1990 has brought Israel to the threshold of existential danger.

    The political price for the strategic failure was exacted in its entirety at the Madrid Conference. The American-European initiative to drag Israel to the fowler’s snare of the international conference, came, as usual, in the wake of an attempt to appease the Arab world at Israel’s expense. Shamir’s willingness to accept the American diktat, and Netanyahu’s to race to the conference as if possessed by a demon, constituted the crossing of the Rubicon for Israeli policy, which determines that participation in “international conferences” should be avoided at all costs, as they are nothing more than summary courts martial in which Israel is the accused defendant. Predictably, the Arabs in Madrid, led by Egypt, exploited the opportunity presented to them to take two steps – both inevitable disasters for Israel:

    1. Granting international legitimacy to the PLO by introducing it (albeit through the back door, in the framework of the Jordanian delegation) into the conference plenum;
       

    2. Transforming the slogan “land for peace” of the Camp David school from an abstract principle into a political impetus.

    Integration of these two componenets would serve as a guiding light for the Oslo negotiators towards the establishment of a Palestinian state and driving Israel to the pre-1967 borders.

    Oslo – the Radical Left Takes the Reins

    Only two years passed, and predictably, the Oslo monster emerged from the womb of the Madrid Conference. If the principles of the grand strategy to restore Israel to the “Auschwitz borders” were established in Madrid, in Oslo, the details were discussed. This time, the entire enterprise, from start to finish, was an Israeli product, with no American involvement. It seems that the radical Left decided not to allow the democratically chosen government to undermine the foundations of national existence on their own, and energetically joined, as usual, the act of destruction. The signing on the White House lawn was also Rabin’s initiative, someone who assumed that Clinton’s imprimatur would be likely to ease the disgrace of the handshake with Arafat.

    If the signing at Camp David was the mother of all evils, the Oslo Accords were the watershed in Israel-United States relations. From that point on, things went topsy-turvy and Israeli Prime Ministers began undermining their nation’s interests – in opposition to American public opinion as manifest in the two houses of Congress. Thus, Zionism, which for a while already felt extraneous and betrayed in the Knesset building in Jerusalem, transferred its headquarters to Capitol Hill in Washington, where it was received with applause and with a far-reaching political program, which would once and for all remove the threat of transferring Jerusalem to the enemies of the Jewish people.

    In June 1995, Congress introduced a legislative initiative marking the 3,000th anniversary of Jerusalem, to transfer the embassy to be the “eternal capital of the Jewish people”, as stated in the bill, which won an unprecedented majority in the two houses of Congress. However, the legislation, which might undermine  the Oslo Accords, was torpedoed by Yitzhak Rabin in cooperation with President Clinton, with the Israeli ambassador in Washington as the facilitator of the national disgrace. Two years later, this time on June 12, 1997, marking the 30th anniversary of the liberation and unification of Jerusalem, Congress overrode the President’s veto (for the first and only time since World War II on a matter of foreign policy!) and passed the Jerusalem Law. This time, it was Binyamin Netanyahu’s turn to clear the law of its substance. The American embassy did not move to Jerusalem and many members of Congress, offended and disgusted, abandoned the initiative. It was only natural that Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel after Netanyahu, would propose openly and explicitly to cede Jerusalem, i.e. Zion, i.e. the City of David, i.e the raison d'être of Jewish nationalism.

     September 11, 2001 and How to Close the Historic Window of Opportunity

    A historic window of opportunity was opened before Israel on September 11, 2001. Three thousand innocent people paid with their lives, so that the American superpower would understand the significance of the jihad, upon which Muslim barbarism is based. For the first time, the American public understood that the horrific pictures of the thousands of victims of the collapsing towers in Manhattan was a daily routine in Israel. Israel was now perceived as the forward outpost of Western civilization confronting Muslim Nazism. Thus it was obvious that in the war declared by the United States upon Arab terrorism, Israel would constitute a model by crushing the head of the snake of terrorism known as the PLO.

    The tragedy in Manhattan provided Israel with  persuasion capabilities superior to any available in the past, as in any comparison with events here – the tragedy in Manhattan assumes marginal proportions. Relative to the size of the American population, 1,200 Jewish victims are the equivalent of 26 Twin Towers. Furthermore, in contrast to the isolated incident in the United States, Arab terrorism is a daily reality ongoing for years, and therefore it cannot be explained as a one-time outburst of madness, which overcame a Muslim fundamentalist, one bin Laden.

     Any attempt to draw a comparison between bin Laden and his organization and Arafat and the PLO is patently ridiculous. Bin Laden has not vowed to annihilate America, he does not brandish a map of the United States from New York to Los Angeles on his organization’s flag and he does not demand to transform Washington into its capital. Therefore, there is no question whether or not Israel has the right to liquidate the “Palestine Liberation Organization”, the spearhead of the Arab world in its declared intention to destroy the Jewish state. The liquidation of the most murderous, criminal gang in the world since Nazism is not a right but an obligation, both national and moral.

    George Bush Jr.’s double standard in his attempt to impose upon Israel a move, which can be characterized as a national catastrophe, is a continuation of the policy of George Bush Sr., only on a much more serious level, as it stands in direct proportion to the defeatism of the present Israeli government.

    The fact that the President of the United States publicly declares a worldwide struggle against terrorism, and at the same time demands that Israel, the primary victim of that terrorism, acquiesce to precisely that same terrorism – beyond its constituting a moral disgrace, is testimony to the contempt in which the American government holds Israel, in the knowledge that there is no need for pressure anymore, as the Jews themselves will wipe the spit off their faces and still declare it a bountiful rain.

    And indeed, that was the case. While 380 members of the House and 87 members of the Senate signed a manifesto opposing their President’s “road map”, considering it an existential threat to Israel, Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of the Jewish state came along and warmly welcomed the “President’s courageous initiative”, publicly declared his support for the establishment of a Palestinian state, established the “occupation” as the basis for the “Arab-Israeli conflict” and imposed upon his government, to sign a document liable, Heaven forbid, to seal the fate of the Zionist experiment.

     Conclusion

    The picture of Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands with the arch-murderer whose hands are sullied with the blood of the victims of the members of the Prime Minister’s nation on the White House lawn was, at the time, testimony to the depths to which the Jewish person is capable of descending. However, in Rabin’s case it is possible (albeit with great difficulty, and perhaps due to the desire not to desecrate the memory of the dead) to remove some of the blame from his shoulders with the assertion that he was misled by a band of radical left- wingers led by that inveterate plotter, Shimon Peres. And perhaps he believed deep in his heart that some goodwill on the part of Israel will manage to ease somewhat the Arab enmity.

    But Sharon? “Our corpses are scattered” as the poet wrote, and indeed “the line is very long”, and numbers more than 1,200 fatalities and thousands of wounded, those who were roasted alive in the hellfire, those ripped to shreds on buses, which became death traps, those sitting around the holiday table, babies who were targets of snipers, loving couples who went walking in the grove whose limbs were shredded by their tormentors, elderly people who sat to rest on a bench only to be struck down by the axe of a marauder. As if from the great darkness, Arab sadism emerged, a descendant of that barbaric religion, which sanctifies death, which brainwashes tender children and prepares them for acts of mass murder in exchange for the pleasures of Paradise.

    In Rabin’s favor it can be said, that he did not assume the office of Prime Minister anticipating the most cruel campaign of horror to afflict the Jewish people since the Holocaust. However, all of this was an open book before Ariel Sharon. Thus the picture of the man, standing in Aqaba and shaking the hands of the Holocaust-denying arch-terrorist, one of the founders of the terrorist organization avowed to annihilate Israel and the man responsible for countless acts of terrorism, among them the massacre of the atheletes in Munich…is not that enough? This picture is many times harsher and crueler than the scene ten years earlier on the White House lawn.

    However, one coming to settle accounts with the Prime Minister is doing only half the work. Prime Ministers in democratic regimes are accurate reflections of their nations in the sense that “every dog deserves his fleas”. Ariel Sharon, precisely because of the sweeping majority which elected him to his second term, is the accurate and genuine face, for better or for worse, of his people.

    For better, in the heroic era of the young country fighting for its life, Sharon was a symbol of the most honorable Jewish struggle. The descendants of Hitler of yesteryear turned against the survivors in order to finish the work of the Nazi oppressor. Sharon was the symbol of Jewish heroism - with resourcefulness, wisdom and sacrifice.

    And for worse. Today Sharon is the symbol of the malady of Jewish defeatism borne out of existential distress. Everything wretched, despicable, shabby, all the curses of the Diaspora, resurfaces in these shallow waters. The broken Jew again emerges from the shtibel, from the shtetl, from the ghetto, he elbows his way a bit and ultimately takes his place at the head of the table of the community council known as the Israeli government. Now, having taken possession of that chair, he will sell his soul and his country, will disavow his religion and prostitute himself, but will bite and claw in order to hang on to his seat in the Knesset, all the more so in the Cabinet.

    At Camp David, Menahem Begin lost his nerve, betrayed everything in which he believed, ceded Sinai to Egypt and destroyed the settlements. For the first time in the history of Zionism, Jews were expelled from their homes by Jews. The ethos of the Hebrew nation returning to its land was buried by the Israel Defense Force’s bulldozers. Sharon’s evil spirit hovered, like a threatening cloud, both behind the strategic failure and the destruction of the settlements. Every sane nation with a vestige of a survival instinct would place this person on the defendant’s bench, judge him, ostracize him and expel him from their midst. After all, Chamberlain’s name was etched in eternal infamy as the symbol of diplomatic defeatism for much less. At the same time, it goes without saying that any comparison with Chamberlain is an affront to the memory of the British statesman. Chamberlain erred, reconsidered, repented, and on September 3, 1939 declared war on Germany and died of heartbreak in 1940.

    So it is done in a proper nation. Not in the Jewish state. Not only was the man not cast into the garbage bin of history, he was allowed to take control of a party, totally drain it of its little remaining ideological substance in order to transform it into a collection of debris and thereby get elected to the office of Prime Minister.