NATIV Online        

  Vol. 3  /  April 2004                      A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE ARTS      

 

The Truth – Always in Reverse

Yuval Brandstetter

The Orwellian world of 1984 is full of reverse truths. Peace is war, justice is travesty, freedom is servitude, etc. The present discourse of Arab-Israel relations is very similar. Peace is war, terror is always perpetrated by Israel, whereas Arab actions are freedom-fighting. The Jews are the Nazis and the Arabs are the victims. The Jews are Goliath and the Palestinians are the Israelites. Jews are the Romans and Jesus is a Palestinian, Palestinians are the Philistines and the Jews are the interlopers, so that David is Daoud, a famous Palestinian who defeated the Philistine Goliath. In this essay I would like to focus on three contemporary reversals of truth, and where they might lead.

The Fence

The idea of a fence to separate warring factions, a wall, ramparts, fortifications, etc. is as old as civilization. The only man-made feature clearly observed from space, until recently, is the Great Wall of China, a two thousand mile-long structure erected to keep the Mongols out of fertile China. The world is replete with walls and fences erected to keep warring parties apart: the Berlin wall, the Maginot line, the USA-Mexico border, and the Ceuta fence. Israel has put up two major fences, high-tech, heavily manned, full of human ingenuity, to keep the Arab masses from coming across to the holy land, or to keep their emissaries, the Freedom Fighters (genocide carriers, make your own choice of appellation) from creating mayhem along the northern border with Lebanon, and the eastern border along the Jordan River. Recently it has fortified the fence around the Gaza Strip.

Fences and walls throughout the centuries have shown their uselessness in keeping out a determined assailant. The Mongols breached the Great Wall, the Maginot line was circumvented, and the Berlin wall caved in and was dismantled. Even the walls of Jericho fell to the sound of trumpets and shofarot. Millions of Mexicans cross the USA-Mexico fence, and the Ceuta fence is nightly swum around. Things are no different in Israel. The northern fence has shown complete inadequacy, having seen numerous incursions, and thousands of Katyushas, necessitating two all-out assaults to pacify. The success of the eastern border fence is totally dependent on the Jordanian Army partner, which is charged with preventing any pretext for letting the Palestinian masses into eastern Palestine. The Gaza fence has proven itself an excellent concealment behind which the rocket launchers and the sea-going Freedom Fighters can prepare, permeable by a thousand devices which Jewish concern for humanity provides. These necessitates daily operations beyond the fence to nail the organizers of these penetrations.

Moreover, whereas other places such as the USA-Mexico border, the separation by a fence is accepted as legitimate, on both sides of the fence, in the Middle East, the Arab side sees the very idea of a separation line, or a border, as illegitimate. No Arab state has recognized the legitimacy of the Green Line so beloved of the Israel peace-troop. They do legitimize it now as a bargaining chip, a starting point from which one can start slicing. The Green Line was nothing more than a temporary cease-fire agreement, ripe for violation as soon as it was convenient. Constant violations were the flashpoint for the 1967 six-day campaign.

The Islamic view is even more lopsided, delegitimizing the right of Jews to live, far less put up fences. The very idea of a Jewish, former Dhimmi sovereign state is a blasphemy to Islamic eyes, far less the insistence of that blasphemy on creation of borders, which will obstruct the flow of Arabs in Dar-al Islam.

Despite these obvious shortcomings, the Jewish Israeli peace-troop has always clung to the 1949 cease-fire lines, and to the fence along these lines, which will separate Them from Us. The original idea of a security wall was hatched with the intention of isolating the Jewish inhabitants of Judea and Samaria behind a wall, exposing them to Arab terror campaign, and thereby enforcing a Jewish transfer (Ilan Tzi’on, Yedioth Aharonoth, Seven Days supplement, April 8, 2004, pp. 27). In contrast, the Jewish national wing has always seen the enforced separation of Judea and Samaria as unnatural and illegal. When the opportunity presented itself, they created Jewish habitations in those tracts of land with the same zeal which fired the settlers of the kibbutzim and moshavim prior to 1948. The motivation driving those Jewish sects were different, to be sure, but from the Arab Islamic point of view they are all the same, an unholy blasphemy.

We now come to the final convolutions of the fence idea which boggle the mind of any casual observer. The man most identified with the annulment of a physical separation of Judea and Samaria from Zion and Zionism is no other than the present Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. If anyone can be equated with the Lion of Judea, it is Ariel Sharon. A city, the largest Jewish city in Samaria, is named after him. His tendency to use overwhelming power, break any wall, bulldoze through obstructions, is legendary. His public encouragement for the breaching of the 1949 lines and building a strong Jewish presence east of the Green Line is well documented. When his own unity government defense and foreign ministers portrayed the security fence which they co-opted as the silver bullet to cure the wave of suicide-bomber genocide attacks assailing the Jewish state, he responded forcefully in the negative. It was a bad idea; it would lead to geo-political outcomes. Hunkering behind a fence allows the enemy to better prepare our demise, it is expensive, it will do nothing to stop the suicide bombers, the sheer size of the undertaking is beyond the modest abilities of the state, etc.

Then a revelation overcame the man. The fence became the central pillar of a new policy, under the name of “painful concessions”. Has senility overtaken the Old Man?

Not at all. Truth is in the reverse. To find a solution, one must first define the problem. The problem is, according to the humanist peace-troop, demography. There are more Arabs than Jews west of the Jordan, if not now then in a few years. We must separate. The fence will not change that; that is the true truth. It will not change the attitude of Arab Islam towards Israel; that is the reality. Therefore separation is useless; that is the real truth. Pressure is needed to force an Arab emigration. Since the typical means of pressure allowed throughout the world are verboten to Israel, let us take the reverse, the consensual fence, mandated by security concern, and make that a fence of friction.

The results are obvious. The fence is an ecological and visual monstrosity. Cities are encased in concrete, communities sundered from roads and schools, life is strictly controlled through gates and roadblocks. Fields are torn up, trees are uprooted, houses felled. Instead of separation – daily confrontation with shootouts. Access to the Israeli services – blocked. Life was miserable before, now it is even more miserable. Every attempt to breach the fence, any explosive discovered on a child – an excuse to enhance the friction.

This is only the beginning, since only 20% of the projected length has been erected. This is what you asked for, and you shall get it. Don’t like it? Move elsewhere. Sharon’s aims are being achieved through the use of the peace-troop demands.

The reversal of truth is the truth. Some truths are better left unsaid.

Disengagement

 Recently, mainly in order to ward off the multiplicity of peace plans, and peace initiatives, all designed to prepare Israel for the Final Solution, Sharon has come up with disengagement.

On the surface, the notion appears attractive, taken directly out of the peace-troop vocabulary. We are here, they are there. The peace-troop seems to suffer from selective amnesia. “There” used to be under Jordanian and Egyptian and Syrian rule, which did nothing to curtail the daily fedayeen genocidal attacks on the Jews. The PLO was formed “there”, prior to 1967. Still, if we could amicably separate, go our different ways, act like Abraham, we could share this land; that is the peace-troop reasoning. A New Middle East where respect for the individual and the other community prevails.

But here is not exactly us, is it? United Jerusalem is 32% Arab, the Galilee is 50 % non-Jews, the Negev is 30% Bedouins, with the highest fertility rate in the world, and on the periphery of the Jewish demographic core of the coastal region there lurk a million Arabs in Taibe, Baka, the Irron Valley, Gisr-a-zarka, Fureidis, etc. Disengagement is apparently but a catch word.

The truth is in the reverse. Disengagement does not really mean seamless separation. It really means further friction. The first phase of the disengagement is a pullout from Gaza. Does anyone seriously think that when Gaza becomes Judenrein, the Arabs will be content? Not on your life! Gaza, strangled against the sea and the Philadelphia Road Corridor on the southern border, will explode with warfare activity. Once it is mildly sovereign, free from the daily activity of the IDF inside this territory, the production of rockets and launchers and explosives and Shahids will increase exponentially. This will drive their cohorts in Judea and Samaria to do the same, so as not to be outdone. The Philadelphia Corridor will be attacked like never before, causing an outcry for abandonment. The Prime Minister will cave in. Gaza will then be open to Sinai. The IDF will maintain a constant pressure on the sources of warfare, using all means. Militants from Judea and Samaria, instead of incarceration in Israeli prisons will be remitted to the care of the combined PLO-Hamas entity forming in Gaza. They will foment further confrontations and warfare, and will force the IDF to escalate the war. Need we say more?

A number of Jewish habitations in Samaria may be abandoned to the PLO as a sop to the American pressure. Does anyone truly think they will be taken over by peaceful farmers? How many times has Israel withdrawn from Arab-populated cities in Judea and Samaria, only to retake them due to security concerns a few weeks later? Genocidal ideation knows no vacuum. In fact, such withdrawals will encourage the more lethal elements to ply their trade, necessitating a forceful IDF response, inclusive of house razing, uprooting of greenery harboring the militants, and all other means to signal the local population to emigrate. Because the truth is, terror is not the problem, demography is the problem, and the solution can only be found by applying reverse truth.

In the spirit of reverse truth, it behooves the Nationalist Right of Israel to oppose the Prime Ministers plans as vigorously as they can, hoping they fail, and thereby win.

Jerusalem “Israeli” Arabs in Iraq

The notion of reverse truth is, as previously stated, too mind-boggling for most. Sharon, the most perspicacious leader-politician Israel has ever had, has a complete grasp of it. Others, such as MK Dr. Yuval Steinitz, do not. The case in point is the two Arabs who happen to possess Israeli documentation due to their United Jerusalem residence.

Caught in Iraq by some Mujahiddin group, they were accused of being Israeli spies, sent by Mossad. The question immediately asked by the Israeli peace-troop media is: Will Israel treat them with the same concern shown for a “true” Israeli, a former colonel turned drug-dealer, for whose freedom Israel paid dearly in various concessions?

The true response, spoken confidently by MK Steinitz, with a total disregard for the principle of reverse truth, was that Israel is not concerned with the fate of some Arabs who happened to carry Israeli documentation, now held up by their Arab brethren.

At face value this is an incredibly crass and unjust utterance which should paint the proclaimer in the worst possible colors. It portrays the government and the parliament of Israel as racist, philistine, and down-right insensitive to the plight of human beings, just because they are not Jewish. In a world where perception is reality, the perception of such attitude is stunningly ugly. Would Dr. Steinitz like a senator from the United States to say that the fate of a Jewish American journalist caught and murdered in Pakistan is of no concern to the USA because he is not a Protestant?

Moreover, this public attitude leaves the Palestinian Authority at the apex of the moral high ground. They are concerned with Arabs, though they carry Israeli documentation, thereby garnering media sympathy.

Further, the detainees, and their families, strenuously denounced all and any connection with Mossad, or anything Israeli. Therefore, if MK Yuval Steinitz is truly unconcerned with their fate, he should state the reverse. He should outdo all others with public concern for their fate, affirm the allegiance of the State of Israel to all its citizens, of all colors and creeds, and thereby actually extricate himself and the parliament he speaks for from a sticky situation, letting the chips fall where they may.

This is the Middle East; the reverse truth is the truth.