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NATIV Online |
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Vol. 2 / 2004 A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE ARTS |
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An imaginary scenario: The Americans allow Sharon to drop a one-ton bomb on the entire top brass of Hamas, killing them all and leaving Hamas with no leadership. Let’s say we’ve also conquered the Muqata`a and expelled Arafat and his entire Oslo bunch back to Tunisia. Now what? Does this lead to the vision of Eretz Yisrael Hashleima (Whole Land of Israel)? Is there at all in official Israel, with the Likud at its helm, such a political option? Let’s try to understand what the Americans were thinking when they allowed us to drop a small bomb on Sheikh Yassin, and what they will be thinking when they finally allow us to expel Arafat. The answer was stated by Condoleeza Rice in two words: “Nation building”. She explained: We struck the Serbs, enabling us to build the Bosnian nation; we beat the Taliban and built the Afghan nation; and we will now build Palestine. In the meantime she has also managed to smite Saddam Hussein, enabling her to busy herself with building the Iraqi nation. But the Palestinian thing is missing something. After all, to build the Bosnian nation, NATO defeated the Serbs. And against the Taliban and Saddam, the US army stepped in. To build a pro-American Palestinian state here, terrorism must be smashed – and somebody has to do it. After all, if George Bush knew that the choices were between a Saddam-like Palestinian terror-state or nothing at all, he would certainly give up on his Palestinian vision. Bush is well aware that in the real world – unlike the hallucinations of Peres’ peace sect – the use of force precedes political “solutions”. So who’s supposed to use the necessary force in the Holy Land to uproot terrorism from amidst the Palestinians to make them safe for the American vision? Unlike the Europeans, Bush is serious about terrorism – and in fact sees eye-to-eye on this issue with Sharon. For this reason, he needs a strong army to fight and smash Arab terror – not only in Iraq or Afghanistan, but here too. It’s not for naught that dismantling the terror infrastructure is the first station on Bush’s Road Map. But he’s certainly not going to send his own boys out to die in the kasbah of Shechem (Nablus) and the alleys of Gaza – certainly not when body-bags are coming in from Iraq and Bush’s re-election is doubtful. In other words, it’s up to the IDF to clean out the area and thereby pave the way for the Palestinian state. It won’t be the first time that Gentiles used Jews to undo Jews. But our blind Israeli leaders imagine that they’re fighting only on behalf of our security, without seeing that at the same time they’re serving another purpose, namely proceeding along the Road Map from the dismantling of terror, to dismantling settlements, to general elections, to the international conference designated to declare a Palestinian state with temporary borders on Jan. 1, 2004, which will immediately be accepted into the United Nations. This entire vision, which for every Zionist Jew loyal to his nation and land is a nightmare, depends on the IDF first eliminating terror. Small wonder that now even many leftists realize that this depends on the disappearance of Arafat. They realize that only one last step is required from the Zionist state, to fulfil its historic task of building the Palestinian nation and the Palestinian state. This process began when Zionism triggered off the reaction within the Arab mixed-masses living here with no national identity, that they, too, are a people. It is then that they conceived the brilliant gimmick of adopting the name of the land that was destined to be the Jewish national home – “Palestine”. Then, in 1967, the Zionist army came and freed them from Jordanian rule – under which they never would have received independence. If this is not enough, Israel then spent the next several decades building them up: giving them universities and colleges, teaching them trades and administration and also building networks of roads, water, electricity and health-care, and as a result, raising life expectancy and lowering children mortality. Under Jordanian rule, masses of them had left. Under Israeli rule, hundreds of thousands came back to the jobs created by the Jews. Good ol’ anti-Semitism caused all these facts to be virtually unknown in world public opinion. And finally, for full measure, the Zionist state equipped them with arms, ammunition, military training and much money. Then, to drive out the Jews, who had outlived their usefulness, the Palestinians made use of the snake called terror. But they could not free themselves from the stranglehold of this snake without the help of the Jewish army. So it came to pass, that the last favor required from the Zionist state in the service of nascent Palestine is fighting Palestinian terror. Our saving grace is the fact that the Arabs, though a smart people, can’t control their instinct for terrorism even for a few months, during which the Road Map would have done all the work for them. The Americans, on the other hand, as in other places, didn’t think things through. If they had, they would have allowed Sharon to drop the one-ton bomb on Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and to expel Arafat, thereby employing the IDF in the fulfilment of the Bush vision instead of that of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Amos . It is not my intention to recommend to the IDF not to fight. I wish rather to warn of the trap that is intrinsic in the very words “war on terror”. This term implies that we do not have a war with the Palestinian people, even though they are those who make use of this weapon against us. The notion of fighting a virtual concept like “terror” is calculated to distract the mind from the real essence of this war: The 120-year old blood-soaked struggle between the Jews and the Arabs for this land. The virtual war against “terror” was not invented without reason. Since Oslo, Israel officially has no enemy, at most it has – “the other party”. Israel is not at war but in a “conflict”. Consequently, “victory” is not its war-aim. The Defense Minister and Chief of Staff tell the soldiers that they are fighting to bring “the other side” to the negotiating table, after having renounced “terror”. They are not fighting to win the war. Not so the Arabs. They are clearly at war, and we are the enemy. They also have a burning desire for victory, and their victory is our destruction. Facing this, the Israeli establishment does not offer its people, who are compelled on a daily basis, to confront the full wrath of Arab hatred, bellicosity and lust for blood, any vision or ideal. At the end of the dark tunnel which is the War of Terror, nothing awaits us. Sharon and Peres, together, see no other destination for Israel except the Road Map, whose target is a Palestinian state in Western Eretz Israel. And this leads us to the depth of the tragedy, for the more we succeed in our war against Palestinian terror – which is indispensable for our survival – the sooner we reach its final outcome – namely, the delivery of the heart of our country into the hands of our enemy. Those who are horrified by this deed of historical dimensions – the People of Israel betraying the Promised Land, a promise which embodies the only justification for our existence here – do not need further arguments. But even those who do not understand such “sentimental” language should think at least one step ahead. What will life be like with an independent Palestinian neighbor at the doorstep of every town in Israel. Do they sincerely believe that behind the armor of sovereignty, terror will not prevail? And that the Palestinian state will not arm and conclude treaties with Israel’s enemies? And that they won’t fill their state to the hilt with “refugees”, and march them towards the 1947 boundaries to make good on “the Right of Return”? The Road Map might grant us half a year without casualties, but its supporters don’t ask themselves: How many victims will this cost us in the future, when the Palestinian terror has the backing of a state? Have they forgotten the ceasefire on the Suez Canal in 1973, and our forbearance, tired from the war of attrition, when Egypt advanced its anti-aircraft missiles, thereby preparing the ground for the Yom Kippur attack? We spared a few losses in the immediate present but paid with almost 3,000 dead a few months later! And what about the Jibril-deal, by which we extricated a handful of soldiers in return for 1,100 terrorists, and created the trigger for the Palestinian wars which have cost us already thousands of losses? Peres in Oslo and on the White House lawn, and Sharon in his speeches in Latrun and in Aqaba, have placed us in a bind. We have no choice but to continue fighting against the Palestinian enemy and to kill its leaders, but we also have no choice but to ensure that our war be on behalf of the Land of Israel, and not for “Palestine”. We must therefore define clear national goals for our war. We dare not lead to a situation in which historians will write that the State of Palestine was established in the Land of Israel on the bodies of our dead. We must break through an opening in the tunnel – for Jewish sovereignty. |
