Withdrawal from the Golan Heights will
bring upon Israel an array of catastrophes that are discussed in the
present article and in other articles that appear in this and the next
issue. However, even the strategic blow associated with the ceding of a
crucial territorial asset such as the Golan, the loss of the water sources
in the north, the economic crisis that will result from Israel’s having to
invest tens of billions of dollars, and so forth, are distinct from the
moral corruption entailed in the ethnic cleansing of Jews by Jews. In
expelling the residents of the Golan the Jewish state will accept
willingly, not by force, the Nazi principle of Judenrein.
The Golan was not "conquered" in 1967. The
Golan, an ancient tract of Hebrew land, to which Israel has an
incomparably greater right than Syria, was liberated in a defensive war of
which there has been none more justified in history. In time-honored
fashion going back to the beginnings of Zionism, the Jews reclaimed a
ruined stretch of land, captured an arid waste of tanks and cannons that
had served the Syrians as a launching point for the destruction of Israel
three times in twenty-five years; and there they built houses, planted
trees, and raised their children. Therefore, Israel’s historical, legal,
and moral right to the Golan is absolute insofar as those values can ever
be absolute. This is a right that goes to the roots of the purpose of
human existence in a just society.
The destruction of the Jewish community on
the Golan is not only a cruel mockery of the foundations of historical
justice and international law, not only a clear violation of Israeli law,
but a diametrical inversion of morality and an adoption of the tenets of
Judenrein, this time in Arab guise. An Israeli government that
plays a part in this crime of ethnic cleansing, of expulsion and
banishment –
notions that in the Jewish context
represent the ultimate horror in the history of all peoples
– will be judged by history; yet
the punishment incurred by Israel itself will be unbearably harsh.
It may be that the loss of a strategic
asset can be compensated for by technological means; that a water shortage
can be surmounted by towing icebergs from the North Pole (which is, in
fact, a solution being considered today in Israel) or importing water from
Turkey; and an economic crisis can always be coped with. But willful
adoption of the tenets of Judenrein is a fatal blow to the national
ethos, and there is no compensation for loss of the raison d'état.
Jan Masaryk, the son of Tomas Masaryk, summed this up well in the wake of
the Munich Treaty, as despair descended over Czechoslovakia with the
severance of the Sudetenland: “If the soul has atrophied, more thousands
of tanks and fighter planes will not help.”
All Israeli prime ministers since 1977
have worked energetically (sometimes inexhaustibly) to undermine the
foundations of the national existence. They have done so by deliberate
misleading of the voting public (as in the case of the late Rabin); by
complete repudiation of the principles of Zionist belief (see also Begin
and Netanyahu); by means of an out-of-control utopian compulsion à la
Shimon Peres; or by pathetic, baseless personal presumption in the manner
of Ehud Barak. (It should be noted that Yitzhak Shamir, though he was
caught in the snare of the Madrid Conference, was blessed with enough
personal honesty not to fall into the semantic recklessness of calling
this catastrophe a “peace process”.)
In this sense, then, Ehud Barak is
continuing the process that began at Camp David.
Menachem Begin sold the Sinai and thus
destroyed once and for all Israel’s chance to have a regional power
status. The precedent of withdrawal from every “grain of sacred Arab land”
was established, and thus also the precedent of the uprooting of Jews from
their homes. By means of Israel, Egypt won generous military aid from
Washington and was able to upgrade its army with American equipment.
Cairo’s preparations for war with the “Zionist enemy” are thoroughly
blatant –
in the military sphere, in the
delegitimization of Israel in every international forum, in a campaign of
venomous anti-Semitism reflecting the Nazi precedent though on an
incomparably greater scale.
With the Oslo agreement Yitzhak Rabin
established the infrastructure of a Palestinian state
– that is, he placed the legitimacy
of the state of Israel acutely in question. This is said in the spirit of
his own assertion: “ . . . a Palestinian state will rise on the ruins of
the state of Israel” (see Yitzhak Rabin, Record of Service, Ma’ariv
Publishers, 1978, p. 583). The Palestinian Covenant, which has never been
repealed, invalidates the national existence of the Jews in the Land of
Israel; the Phased Plan of 1974 gives the Palestinian state the status of
a springboard to the destruction of Israel by the Arab states; the Fateh
Constitution, under Arafat’s authority in 1998 (!), being the constitution
of the Palestinian state that will be set up this year, reiterates that
the goal of the Arab world is the destruction of the Zionist entity.
Like Egypt, the Palestinian Authority is
conducting a virulent anti-Semitic campaign and is building up its army.
Immediately upon the establishment of the Palestinian state, it will
declare mandatory conscription and thereby soon create a standing army of
150,000 soldiers – close to
the standing army of the IDF
– and this on the outskirts of Gush
Dan.
And now Ehud Barak stands up and sells the
Golan Heights. The evacuation of the Golan will constitute a precedent of
the evacuation of sovereign Israeli territory and will necessitate the
annulment of the Golan Law. Since all of the sovereign territories of
Israel beyond the “partition borders” are “occupied territories,” since
what the Israelis call the “War of Independence” is considered by the
international community, let alone the Arab world, a war of conquest no
different from the Six Day War, the annulment of the Golan Law will
constitute a precedent for demands for the revocation of sovereignty over
the territories conquered in 1948 –
and the contraction of Israel to
the partition borders. Arafat and Mubarak have been conducting extensive
diplomatic activity in this regard for about a year. The pressure to
return to the partition borders will be combined with pressure to
implement UN Resolution 194 on the 1948 refugees’ right of return to their
homes.
