Ariel Center for Policy Research

A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE ARTS

NATIV  ■ Volume Eighteen  ■ No. 3 (104)  ■  May 2005 ■ Iyar 5765 ■ Ariel Center for Policy Research

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Yoram Shifftan and Bernice Lipkin

Ariel Sharon: The Pathology of Self Destruction

Ethnic Cleansing

Elyakim Ha'etzni

Israel - The Existential Threat from Within

Susanne Urban

Preserving the Memory of the Holocaust

Anti-Semitism

Dany Shoham

The Technology of Chemical, Biological and Radiological Warfare as a Force Multiplier in the Future Battlefield and in Acts of Terror

Military

Yuval Ne`eman

The Operative Link Between the US and Israel During the Yom Kippur War (October 6-24, 1973)

Haim Misgav

A Monkey Wrench in the Works - The Supreme Court vs. The Declaration of Independence

Law

James Vineyard

Why Gentile Christian-Zionist Jim Vineyard Loves the Jews!

Israel's Friends

Moshe Sharon

Europe, Beware!

Essay

Inferiority Complex as a National Ethos

Editorial

Christopher Barder on Eurabia by Bat Ye`or Manfred Gerstenfeld on Rising from the Muck: The New Anti-Semitism in Europe by Pierre-Andre Taguieff

Book Reviews

Literature and Art Supplement - Dror Eydar, Editor

Assaf Sheleg on Tzvi Avni "From Then and Now: Israeli Reflections on Jewish Music"

Music

Ronit Dekel on Avner Bar Hama and his exhibition "Situation"

Plastic Art

Chedva Bachrach on Miriam Goodall "Between Proximity and Remoteness"

Essay

Miriam Goodall ■ Sarit Yalov ■ Meron Isaacson

Poetry

Moshe Ophir "Our Forest"

Short Story

Miri Tzachi

Photography

The Next Issue
Instructions for Submitting Articles
Summaries in English

Nativ

Prof. Edward Alexander ■ Dr. Yoram Beck ■ Dr. Aharon Ben-Ami ■ Ephraim Ben-Haim ■ Prof. Yosef Ben-Shlomo ■ Prof. Louis René Beres ■ Prof. Yirmiyahu Branover ■ Dr. David Bukay ■ Dr. Netta Kohn Dor-Shav ■ Prof. Paul Eidelberg ■ Dr. Raya Epstein ■ Naomi Frenkl ■ Dr. Giora Goldberg ■ Prof. Raphael Israeli ■ Shmuel Katz ■ Dr. Mordechai Nisan ■ Aron Pappo ■ Prof. Shlomo Sharan ■ Dr. Martin Sherman ■ Prof. Eliav Shochetman ■ Prof. Ezra Sohar ■ Yoash Tsiddon-Chatto ■ Dr. Laurence Weinbaum ■ Prof. Hillel Weiss

Editorial Board

 

Editor: Arieh Stav Associate Editor: Michael Or Managing Editor: Itta Horol
Publishing Director: Leah Kochanowitz ■ Subscription Manager: Eli Maislish
Production: E. Oren, Ltd.

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SUMMARIES
 


Ariel Sharon: The Pathology Of Self Destruction

Yoram Shifftan and Bernice Lipkin

Ariel Sharon was elected because Israeli voters no longer believed in the promises of the Oslo Accord. They had rejected the idea of giving up territory or making any more unreciprocated concessions to the Arabs. They wanted forceful military action to protect Israel. Sharon promised to be such a leader. Instead, once elected, Sharon promoted a Palestinian state, protected Arab “civilians” complicit in bomb building by exposing Israel soldiers to unnecessary danger, responded minimally to Arab terrorism and completed a slide into chaos by announcing he was uprooting the Jews of Gaza from their homes; this to be followed by dismantling settlements in Samaria and Judea. Rather than uniting a country facing grave dangers, he has succeeding in splitting Israel into indecisive and hostile factions, squabbling among themselves and not focused on dealing effectively with their real problem: the Arabs, whose goal continues to be the destruction of Israel.

Sharon has cited American pressure, the demographic threat, and other arguments, none of which are convincing. Nor is it clear what his real motives are. He acts like a man no long subject to reason, so intent on rushing to his goal, he is willing to destroy anything that gets in his way – whether this is people, his party or Israel as a democracy.

The fundamental illegality of Sharon’s adventurism is that his actions are a violation of the law of trusts, which defines the complete set of beneficiaries for any given trust. In this case, it is the “Jewish People” that is the beneficiary of the “Sacred Trust of Civilization”, which was enacted in perpetuity by the League of Nations, and further upheld by the Charter of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice.

According to the “Sacred Trust of Civilization”, the trustees of the Mandate (currently the UN and its agencies) are enjoined to facilitate the Jews in their dense settlement of the land of Palestine. The land is not to be transferred out of Jewish control. All residents have civil and humanitarian rights, but only the Jews have political and national status.

The beneficiaries of this particular trust include Jews everywhere, and all future generations of Jews. The contemplated uprooting deprives beneficiaries of the Palestine trust such as future Jewish generations of their rights. The proposed uprooting involves one beneficiary depriving other beneficiaries of their rights. In international law, the Israeli government has no right to give away this land.

Sharon has downplayed the legal aspects of ceding this land to the Arabs. It is quite likely his government knows the settlements are legal – why else has official Israel been forbidden to defend their legality? Israel has muzzled its diplomats and not allowed them to assert in public Jewish national rights. Instead, Israeli spokesmen sound as enthusiastic as their Arab counterparts at the thought of establishing a viable Arab state next to Israel, however much it will damage Israel. Israeli representatives, like Peres, who falsely assert that “Israel even without Judea, Samaria and Gaza is already 78% of Palestine,” do enormous damage to Israel’s image.

The legality of the settlements is the keystone argument for both the settlements in particular and the Jewish state in general. Sharon’s government has not considered that if it allows the abrogation of international law with regard to the settlements, how it will resist the “reasonable arguments” that Israel itself has no right to exist?

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Israel – The Existential Threat from Within

Elyakim Ha`etzni

From the myriad political and military complications engendered by Sharon’s disengagement plan, we have chosen three topics:

The Threat Against the Jewish, Zionist State:

Profound rifts in our national solidarity, which have long existed, developed into an actual rupture with the advent of Sharon’s expulsion and displacement program. This is an existential danger, because in circumstances of such intense polarization, a situation has developed in which one side seeks to undermine the basis of its rival’s physical existence. The inevitable outcome will be the injured party’s sense of spiritual alienation from the State and the obfuscation of the distinction between the government and the State.

Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen’s stated: “The question is raised: Why must the settlements be uprooted? Why can they not continue to exist in the Palestinian State and continue to fulfill the commandment of settling the Holy Land as their fathers and forefathers did for generations?…”

When Jews in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem are forced to again pack their suitcases because here too, as in the Diaspora, the land will be pulled out from under them and their possessions will be confiscated from them at cut-rate prices, the period of bitter disappointment from the country will follow.

The Irreversible Blow to the Jewish People’s Right to the Land of Israel:

There were only two territories in the entire world over which there was no sovereign – Judea, Samaria and Gaza and Southwest Africa. Once Southwest Africa became an independent state called Namibia, the last territory in the world without sovereignty, remains in the heartland of the Land of Israel. It took a character like Ariel Sharon to cause the Israeli Government to sign the “road map” – a document relinquishing Judea, Samaria and Gaza, which establishes, by means of the “justice of the nations”, the right of the Palestinians to sovereignty in the western part of the Land of Israel in place of the Jewish people. Thus, the vacuum is filled, the place in the Land of Israel, which despite the passing of two thousand years has remained vacant for the Jewish people, is delivered to a foreign nation by the landlord himself! This concession will ferment like poison and corrode the foundations of the Green Line state, whose raison d’etre has been appropriated.

The Threat to Our Democratic Life and Our Independence:

In our political and media discourse, the criminal aspect of the expulsion is practically never discussed or surveyed. The spotlight is not directed towards the act but rather to the criticism of the act, which is denounced as a blow to…democracy! In a dictatorship, it is well known; crimes against the regime are at the top of the scale of punishment, while crimes against fellow man or morality are at the bottom. Democracy is not a dictatorship of the majority. The majority cannot human rights, his dignity and his fundamental freedoms, like freedom of movement, freedom of expression, the right to property, freedom of religion and conscience, the prohibition to discriminate against him for reasons of gender, skin color or nationality.

Just as consciousness always lags behind reality, so too the Israeli public has not yet awakened to the new reality created when the Sharon Government signed the “road map”. After Israel returns to the Green Line, in Jerusalem too, and will be downgraded to the status of a protectorate, despite the fact that it will continue to bear the nominal title “state” – will the Jewish people still consider an entity like Bosnia and Kosovo the “beginning of the flowering of our redemption”?

In the summer of 2005, the Jewish people will be given their last opportunity to prevent the decisive step in its country’s taking the path leading to its loss of independence. The country considers the disengagement as Israel’s entry into the implementation stage of the “road map”. Only calling off the disengagement and overthrowing the disengagement government by means of the civil disobedience of the masses, based upon the model, which is spreading among the countries of the former Soviet Union, will be able to prevent that one additional step by Sharon towards the abyss, the step from which there will be no return.

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Preserving the Memory of the Holocaust

Susanne Urban

This article focuses on the unique character of the new and modernized Yad Vashem website <www.yadvashem.org>.

The collection of names and online documentation offer substantial material, for both professional and individual research, which can now be easily accessed. The educational impact should be underlined, as many projects can be proposed and realized through the pages of testimony.

A unique character of the site is that one can find the known and (amazingly) modernized segments, as well as presentations of recent events. Yad Vashem has put an idea and a concept behind this website – as well as a message to the people, Jews and non-Jews alike. An excellent educational tool, the site is an impressive weapon against Holocaust denial.

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Chemical, Biological and Radiological Warfare Technologies
As Power Multipliers in the Battlefield of the Future and Terrorist Acts

Dany Shoham

The technological advancements, which characterize the last decade, have far-reaching ramifications regarding weapons in general and regarding power multipliers for the battlefield of the future in particular. Therefore, they will drastically influence the nature of the battlefield of the future. As a result, the combatant, in the classical sense will lose his value almost completely. At the same time, inevitably, the range of these ramifications is beyond, far beyond the battlefield itself and extends over patently multi-faceted horizons: Security, economic, logistic, demographic, ecological and more. It covers an incalculable range of scenarios. The distance between the technological reality and science fiction is gradually disappearing, in these contexts.

One of the most severe consequences of this situation is the increasing difficulty in updating international conventions, aimed to prevent the development, storage and employment of unconventional weapons at a pace, which will keep up with the emergent technological developments and for all intents and purposes nip them in the bud. Daydreams; in the best-case scenario, the charters will be updated effectively in real time, but for the most part there will be no compliance; in the worst case, the experts involved in shaping the charters will be unable to update them as necessary, whether due to objective exigencies or due to inclinations stemming from the zeitgeist and from man’s irrepressible scientific-technological curiosity (especially as concerns tools of destruction). Thus, for example, the initiated destruction of the notorious smallpox virus, which (at least) Russia and the United States have in their possession, has been postponed several times – consensually – under the pretext that they should be maintained for scientific purposes, when the world population is becoming more and more susceptible to that virus due to its loss of immunity. This is the case regarding human cloning as well, which continues in one form or another, although it possesses an incalculably calamitous potential.

It seems that the greatest degree of freedom – as far as the assortment of options constituting the technological infrastructure for the development of the weapons discussed in this study is concerned – is that extant in the fields of molecular biology and genetic engineering. Presumably, a combination of possibilities, both quantitative and qualitative is inherent, unparalleled, with the exception, perhaps, of the fields of information warfare and nano-technology. It constitutes, therefore, an action whose borders, both technological and moral, are unclear both in terms of the battlefield of the future and in terms of the future of mankind in general (from a colossal vantage point). Potentially, in its ultimate form it is liable to manifest itself, among other ways, in biological intelligence, which will actually be implanted into robotic weapons systems (bio-information and neuro-technology). Ultimately, ultra-hybrid warfare will probably constitute an integrated synthesis of these battlefield technologies into a holistic entity. The pure time dimension is liable to prematurely erode as well, as a direct result of this.

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The Operative Link Between The US and Israel During
the Yom Kippur War (October 6-24, 1973)

Yuval Ne`eman

This article is an adaptation of a lecture, which took place in August 1996 in The Center for National Security Negotiations.

The Center for National Security Negotiations (CNSN) is an institute whose role is to advise the State Department on matters of national security – especially on matters of disarmament during the Cold War era. When that ended, it was decided in Washington to conduct a series of conferences in order to draw conclusions – one meeting for each of the episodes perceived as a series of nuclear crises during the Cold War. In that context, the third session [August 1996] was devoted to the Yom Kippur War and the “great alarm” in which the American nuclear alignment was placed at its highest level of alert during all of the years of the Cold War.

As one who was responsible on the Israeli side for the strategic military-operational ties with the United States, I was invited to the session and asked to open the deliberations with a survey that would include the background of the war and its primary developments.

The security philosophy, which was in effect in Israel between the years 1948-1967, requires a pre-emptive strike. The problem of the “narrow waist” – two large land masses (the Galil and the Negev) attached by a 16 kilometer-wide corridor extended along the coast, was generally construed as threat that the country could be dissected without any special effort.

The Israeli security philosophy does not include- emphatically – any reliance upon nuclear deterrence. While preparing for this session, one of my colleagues drew my attention to a paragraph in Seymour Hersh’s book, The Samson Option. In chapter 17, an October 8, 1973 meeting between four ministers in the office of the then Prime Minister, Golda Meir is described. According to Hersh’s source (a friend of Mrs. Meir’s military aide), three decisions were taken there: A counterattack on the Egyptian front; deployment of the nuclear arsenal in the case of failure (of the counterattack? It in fact failed), and a message to Washington regarding both the desperate situation and the decision to deploy “that nuclear arsenal”. At the same time, the United States would be asked to supply weapons and ammunition.

I would like to emphasize that during that meeting of the war cabinet as well as during the meeting, which took place the next day, no decision was taken to “deploy the nuclear arsenal”.

The coordinated Egyptian-Syrian offensive began on October 6. 1973 at 2PM. The Syrian attacking force, about 1,400 tanks, penetrated through the northern and central sectors of the Golan Heights on their way to the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River bridges to its north. The Hermon outpost was liberated by Israeli forces on the 22nd of the month by means of a deep outflanking maneuver (as per my unsolicited advice).

On the southern front, the Egyptian army succeeded on October 6-7, to cross the Suez Canal on a broad front (the second army in the northern sector and the third army in the southern sector, and to establish a 16-24 kilometer bridgehead into Israeli territory. The Egyptian advancement succeeded only due to the effectiveness of the thick belt of anti-aircraft missiles deployed to a depth of 32 kilometers along the entire west bank of the Suez Canal and prevented all penetration of Israeli aircraft to an altitude of 50,000 feet.

On the 20th of the month, the United States and the Soviet Union issued ultimatums to both sides that they must abide by a cease-fire as of the 22nd of the month. However, combat continued until the 24th of the month until Israeli units completely surrounded the Egyptian Third Army. Meanwhile, Israeli units moved to 101 kilometers from Cairo and very little remained from the powerful belt of missiles, which had provided Egypt with its initial advantage.

I participated in all of the meetings of the cabinet and the General Staff. Once or twice a day (and occasionally even more often), I would prepare a report summarizing the status of the war effort.

Over the course of several days, I viewed the development of the American administration’s qualms. The issue was clear: Clear assistance to Israel in its difficult hour would be greeted with great reservation by the Arab kings who continued to take a pro-western line even after Nasser led the military dictatorships into the Soviet camp.

The United States did not have any tanks available, but different arrangements were made and M-60 tanks were provided by sea two months after the war and restored Israel’s might to pre-war levels. Meanwhile, a huge C-5 cargo plane took off from Germany with one heavy tank in its hold. I invited representatives of the world media to be present when the plane landed and witness the impressive sight of a tank rolling out of the plane’s cargo hold. After the reporters left, the tank was reloaded onto the plane and was flown back to Germany.

The “commercial of the C-5 with tank” played a significant role on October 22, when Sadat announced that he agrees to the cease fire.

The dramatic change in the development of the war between the 17th and the 19th of October was viewed in Moscow as a tragedy. The Warsaw Pact forces in Hungary, Poland and East Germany were placed on alert and were ordered to prepare to fly to the Canal region. Brezhnev’s letter, which was delivered by Ambassador Dobrynin on the 24th of the month, was characterized by Senator Henry Jackson as “rude and threatening”.

In the wake of that, on October 24, the United States National Security Council issued an order placing the Strategic Air Command and the National Guard Air Force’s anti-aircraft squadrons, which fly F-106 fighter jets on alert. In addition, the alert order included the American rapid deployment forces: The 82nd Airborne and the marine units stationed in the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea.

It seems that this American reaction did indeed curtail the Soviet demands and their brinksmanship.

In summary, the mechanism of cooperation between the superpower – The United States and the small country – Israel in times of war has proven itself. There is no doubt that the establishment of more profound strategic relations can prevent mistakes in assessment and implementation as well as enhancing successes in realizing the country’s strategic objectives.

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A Monkey Wrench In The Works –
The Supreme Court vs. the Declaration of
Independence

Haim Misgav

The declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel was anchored constitutionally in the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom. Ever since, it was determined, basic human rights must be founded upon recognition of the worth of man, the sanctity of his life and upon his existence as a free man, and all these must be fulfilled in the spirit of the principles appearing in the Jewish state’s Declaration of Independence.

One need not be a distinguished legal scholar in order to understand that this document grants clear preference to Jews. The Jewish state is supposed to be the national home of the Jewish people – exclusively. Its gates will be opened wide before Jews alone. The borders of the Jewish state were not determined in the Declaration of Independence nor were the borders of the Land of Israel, as all that mattered to the founders of the State of Israel was to emphasize that the Land of Israel was from time immemorial the homeland of the Jewish people in which its spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped and in which it created national and universal cultural assets and bequeathed the eternal Book of Books to the entire world.

At the same time, it is important to remember that the rights of the Jewish people to the land of Israel were also recognized in international documents; both in the November 2, 1917 Balfour Declaration and in the League of Nations Mandate, granted to the British. Thus, universal legitimacy was granted to the historic connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel and to the Jewish people’s right to reestablish its national home.

Unfortunately, the Jewish people themselves, or at least large segments of it, once again fail to believe in the vision of the founders of the Jewish state. Led by phony elites, which are manifest in the central governmental institutions, the Supreme Court, the State Attorney’s office, at the upper echelon of elected officials or at central junctions of the media and the cultural world, decisions are made, which, for all intents and purposes, deny the very right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.

Thus the Supreme Court decisions validate the baseless thesis that the territories conquered in the Six-Day War are subject to the early nineteenth century Hague Regulations and the Geneva Convention because those territories are occupied by the State of Israel in a “belligerent occupation”. Those decisions, adopted with the agreement of the Office of the State Attorney, first and foremost suffer, obviously, from moral flaws as they ignore the fact that there is no difference, legal or otherwise, between the territories conquered in 1948 during the war of Independence and those conquered 19 years later.

The Arabs have not relinquished one or the other – however, ironically, they receive legal support for their claims from the Supreme Court of the Jewish state.

It is unfortunate that many Jews do not believe in their ability to sustain the national home of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. The legal system and all of its subsidiaries has mobilized, not for the first time, in support of the Prime Minister’s delusional course of action. The Attorney General has already initiated “special” courts for the settlers in the true Bolshevik tradition. Blatantly anti-democratic actions are being undertaken in every corner of our public life. The Prime Minister’s office acts as if it owns the country. Cronies are appointed to the most prominent positions. Anyone who doesn’t fall into line – is dismissed in shame.

If what is happening now is not stopped – and it is hard to envision any public force able to stop what is happening – the fate of the State of Israel will be bitter indeed. The vision of its prophets and founders is liable to collapse all at once.

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Why Gentile Christian-Zionist Jim Vineyard Loves the Jews!

James Vineyard

The Holy Bible, which the Jews received, transcribed, preserved, and then passed on to we gentiles, declares in Genesis 12:3, “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” Then in Genesis 27:29, “Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.” And then in Numbers 24:9, “He couched, he lay down as a lion, and as a great lion: who shall stir him up? Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee.”

My wife became a Christian before I did. I was hardheaded and wicked and wanted to continue to live in sin. But, over 40 years ago I called on the name of the lord exactly as folks are told to do in Joel 2:32, “And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered: for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the lord shall call.” My wife purchased me the Holy Bible. I began to read. Very soon afterward I found the above mentioned scriptures, and they became my convictions for all my actions relative to the Jews. And, the First Commandment is that “I love the Lord my God will all my heart, all my soul and all my strength,” and the second, “My neighbor as myself”. Therefore, for over 40 years now I have tried to love the Jews with all my heart and be there in any way i can when Jews have a need.

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Europe, Beware!

Moshe Sharon

In the past, the Muslims regarded Europe as the “Land of War”, and the object of Jihad. But Christian Europe then was a tough enemy that, recovering from early defeats, it reacquired Spain and established itself during the Crusades in the Holy Land for two centuries. This success of the infidels and setback for the Muslims was since repeated many times and culminated with the establishment of Israel which is particularly regarded a reverse of history involving the loss of Islamic land and the rule of dhimmis over Muslims.

While drumming hatred against Israel modern Muslim activists detected that post-WW2 Europe shows signs of old age frailty, and vulnerability, and already a few decades ago formed the ideological and practical frameworks of the neo-jihad for its conquest. Instead of developing counter measures, the Europeans are actually supporting and collaborating with this jihad. The European Union weakened the national identity, and the sense of national pride, while enabling the infiltration of Western Europe by millions of Muslims most of whom are fully pledged to their Muslim identity. Regarding Europe as their own they feel masters rather than guests, using the European liberal laws and exploiting the European leftist “Useful Fools”.

The European bankruptcy was demonstrated in the 1983 Hamburg Symposium that humbly acknowledged “the importance of the Islamic contribution to the creation of European civilization”, advocating departure from the Judeo-Christian heritage.

This pathetic attempt to drive modern Europe away, from its cultural and moral sources, encourages Muslim propaganda that represents the foundation of Israel as a sin committed by the Europeans. Europe eagerly agrees. Instead of guarding against Islam Europe rediscovered the reasons for the problems of the world: the Jews, and their state. If this trend continues Europe could become Islamic in less than half a century.

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