Ariel Center for Policy Research (ACPR)

 

 

NATIV

A Journal of Politics and the Arts Volume 14 Number 6 (83) ■  November 2001

Table of Contents

Current Affairs Digest

The Editor and his Guests:  Haj Amin al-Husseini “There is a Definite Similarity Between Islam and Nazism”Meyrav Wurmser – “No More Excuses” ■ David Bukay – “B-2 Bombers Against International Terror” ■  Mordechai Nisan – “Syria – Terror State in the Security Council” ■ Rachel Ehrenfeld – “Bush is Doomed to Fail if He Doesn't Cut Off Financing of Terrorists” ■ Yehuda Cohen – “Israel Towards Constitutional Democracy or Elimination of Democracy” ■  Howard Grief “Jewish Legal Rights and Title to the Land of Israel and Palestine”Christopher Barder – “No True ‘War on Terror’ – No Real Defense of ‘Western Civilization’”

Articles

Exporting the Intifada to Western Democracies

Raphael Israeli

Islam – Terror in the Guise of Religion or Religion of Terror

Meir Abelson

A Democratic but "Racist" Solution to the Palestinian Problem

Paul Eidelberg

Jewish Arab Equality - A Bridge for Co-Existence?

Uri Shtruzman

Sharon, Sabra and Shatila Resurrected and Revisited

Paul Giniewski

A Few Remarks on the Leftist Mafia

Amnon Lord

Nuclear Deterrence Now - To the Attention of a Busy PM (I)

Louis René Beres

The "Afghan Alumni" and the Clash Between Civilizations (II)

Shaul Shay

Russia and the Mideast Vacuum (II)

Ilan Berman

Ideological Debate: The Ariel Center and The Israeli Left - Edited by Yona Hadari (Part IV)

Continuing Discussion on the Question of the Collapse of the Zionist Mainstream

Arieh Stav vs. Moshe Lisak

Book Reviews

On the Suitable and the Available – Haim Misgav on The Greater Israel n Not a Book “To Be Tossed Aside Lightly”Laurence Weinbaum on Encyclopedia of Genocide edited by Israel W. Charny

The Arts ■ Editor: Moshe Shamir

Poetry

Shira Twersky-Kassel n Bracha Rosenfeld n Herzl Hakkak

Fiction

Oded Mizrahi – Isaac’s Fear

Essays and Reviews

Yoseph Oren – Art as a Subject in the Writings of Knaz n
Elhannan Nir – Blood, Faith and Truth

Document

M. Beilinson – The Meaning of Our Struggle n H. Hazzaz – Time of Urgency

 

Selected Summaries

 

Jewish Legal Rights and Title
to the Land of Israel and Palestine

Howard Grief

The Arab terrorist war being waged today against the Jewish people within the heart of the Land of Israel is based upon a gigantic and universal myth that has never been properly refuted. This myth contends that the so-called “Palestinians”, a fictitious Gentile nation that has no recorded annals in world history, are “resisting” the “occupation” of “their land” by the State of Israel and the Jewish people. This pernicious myth re-surfaces in every debate, article and diplomatic initiative on how best to make an unnecessary peace with the transplanted Arabs, intruders into the Jewish National Home, who principally inhabit the regions of Judea, Samaria and Gaza which they falsely claim to be their ancient homeland.

This myth has gained wide acceptance because most people living today know very little about the true international law that developed during and after World War I. Under that law, the Jewish people, and definitely not any Arab entity or nation, were granted exclusive legal rights of sovereignty and title over all of the territory that was governed by the provisions of the Mandate for Palestine to establish the Jewish National Home, which  was synonymously called by the name of Palestine.

Ever since the San Remo Decision of April 25, 1920, Jewish legal rights and title to the entire territory of Palestine have never been legally altered and so those rights still remain intact even today, despite numerous illegal maneuvers over the years, to compromise or scuttle them altogether, first by the British Mandatory Power during the whole Mandate period and much more recently by the government of Israel which conducted the illegal and ill-conceived “Oslo peace process”.

To restore those rights to their fullest extent as originally envisaged under international law, the writer proposes a series of steps that must be taken to end, once and for all, rival Arab claims to the Jewish country, which are based on nothing but falsehoods, fabrications and imaginary rights.

 

back to top


Exporting the Intifada to Western Democracies

Raphael Israeli

Ever since the outburst of the intifada at the end of September 2000, a sustained effort has been made by Arab and Muslim networks worldwide to export it to the Western democracies in America, Europe and Australia. Indeed, on campuses, in the streets of the major western cities, in the media and in mass demonstrations, those groups of Arabs/Muslims have been mounting violent attacks against the Jewish communities in their localities and the policies of Israel towards the Palestinians.

Since they have joined forces with local anti-Semites, those violent groups have turned the campaign into a thoroughly anti-Jewish – under the guise of anti-Zionism – onslaught on everything Jewish, Israeli or Zionist. Synagogues were torched, cemeteries desecrated, Jewish day schools damaged, Jewish worshippers and students assaulted, and obscene threats were voiced either in demonstrations or in posters, telephone calls and internet sites.

This upheaval, which is no doubt orchestrated from the outside, has introduced an element of uncertainty and fear to the lives of established Jewish communities throughout the western democracies. Moreover, due to the increasing numbers of Arab/Muslim immigrants, legal and illegal, into those countries who give them asylum, and their tendency to concentrate in certain areas where they can impact on patterns of voting, local politicians tend to behave permissively with them and look the other way, while the influence of the Jewish communities is being visibly diminished.

 

back to top


Islam – Terror in the Guise of Religion or Religion of Terror

Meir Abelson

Islam sprang from pre-Islamic tribal society, and borrowed extensively from Judaism and Christianity. Its intentions were enunciated by Muhammad when he declared that, as the “final revealed word of God”, Islam eclipsed all other religions, and aspired to conquer the world in the name of Allah. This basic intention remains to this day.

The world according to Islam is divided into two parts: Dar-Al-Islam – the Abode of Islam, in which Islam is in full religious-political control and Dar-Al-Harb – the Abode of War - the rest of the world still unsubdued by Islam.

Islam – which means “submission” – is destined to achieve its aim by jihad – holy war –which requires non-Muslims to convert to Islam willingly through persuasion, or unwillingly through fighting. Jewish and Christian communities conquered by Muslims are termed dhimmis – “tolerated” in their homeland from which they are dispossessed, and subjected to restrictions.

Muhammad’s sweeping victories 1,400 years ago convinced the Muslims that Allah guaranteed their success, and that their civilization was superior to any other. Defeat and domination by the “infidel” West since the 19th century caused psychological disorders which have today reached pathological proportions. No less theologically obscene was the creation of the State of Israel – a dhimmi State – at the heart of the Abode of Islam, and its subsequent repulse of Arab aggression in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973. The creation of myths intended to further the jihad against Western civilization and its “outpost” Israel included, inter alia, the existence of a separate Palestinian people and the responsibility of Israel for the refugee problem, all of which have been exposed as fabrications by various Arab leaders, by British and UN officials and by refugees themselves. 

By changing its appearance to suit the surroundings, Islam has penetrated worldwide. The threat to the West, which has been monitored for some fifty years, has only become palpable with the terrorist attacks on the soil of the United States.

 

back to top


A Democratic but "Racist" Solution to the Palestinian Problem

Paul Eidelberg

The author employs the principles of classical or normative democracy to negate the claim that the Palestinian Arabs are entitled to independent statehood. That claim is based, without logical consistency, on the principles of contemporary or normless democracy, now steeped in moral and cultural relativism. Because the author can also employ the principles of contemporary democracy to negate Palestinian statehood, he will be all the more vehemently accused of “racism” by contemporary democrats, to say nothing of Arabs who are anything but democrats. Undeterred by this canard, the author, consistent with his rejection of Palestinian statehood, rejects the related notion of “separation” as a solution to the Palestinian problem – the notion of those who lack the courage and wisdom to deal effectively with the cruel hatred of Arabs toward Jews and their implacable commitment to Israel’s destruction. The author concludes with the only realistic solution to the problem, one that conforms to both democratic and Jewish principles.

 

back to top


Jewish Arab Equality - A Bridge for Co-Existence?

Uri Shtruzman

The notion of equality is imprinted in our hearts since the beginning of Jewish history. All the factions of the Zionist movement adopted equality as an educational cornerstone. However, equality is an aspiration rather than an image of our existence. History illustrates the futility of trying to compel equality through force (the Soviet Union) or ideals (the Kibbutz movement). Equality can only be achieved within the boundaries of groups that form naturally (“same essential categories” as cited by Prof. Chaim Perelman of Brussels University).

While Arabs are entitled to full equality in civic and cultural matters, this is not the case where nationalistic matters are concerned. The evident inequality existing between Jews and Arabs in Israel is a manifestation of their belonging to two different “essential categories”, divided along nationalistic lines. Jews aspire to build the Jewish state in Israel, while the Arabs voted against it in 1947 (and physically fought for its destruction). Israeli Arabs nationalistically share the dreams and aspirations of their Palestinian brothers – and partake in the Palestinian struggle to destroy Israel, using violence and politics as  weapons.

Two essential conclusions are presented in this article:

  1. The conflict of national interests between Jews and Arabs in Israel necessitates the denial of their right to vote in the Knesset on certain key issues (perhaps, allowing them to express such conflicting aspirations in the Palestinian parliament);
     

  2. Democracies recognize the need for corrective discrimination in order to promote equality. Therefore, Israel being a Jewish state, and a minority among Arab states that strive for its destruction – the Supreme Court must recognize the corrective discrimination rights of Jews in Israel on such issues as “the right of return” and the right to settle in Jewish-only communities.

 

back to top


Sharon, Sabra and Shatila Resurrected and Revisited

Paul Giniewski

The February 2, 2001 elections in Israel triggered a tidal wave of Sharon-bashing which has not receded since. The media harmoniously blended the ill-famed Jewish state and its new Prime Minister. The Sabra and Shatila litany is resurrected daily, and is featured foremost and paramount.

An American Jewish magazine evoked Sharon’s “previous acts of terror during his years in the army”. A leading French daily hoped “he presently dreams more of peace than of new butcheries”.

To what aim? To defame and delegitimize the Jewish state is a precondition for producing the indifference and the consent of public opinion for its destruction.

What really happened at Sabra and Shatila, where Christian/Lebanese Phalangists massacred Palestinians in cold blood? The report of the Kahane Commission of Inquiry, the most reliable, historical collection of findings on the deed – not blurred by ignorance, not inflated by propoganda and passion – established the truth.

The lies and fabrications by Israel’s enemies should be refuted without relenting. As an Arab proverb says: “The slanderer’s mouth is more dangerous than the muzzle of the gun.”

 

back to top


A Few Remarks on the Leftist Mafia

Amnon Lord

The apparent failure of the Oslo accords is first and foremost the failure of the Israeli intellectuals. This solution, based on an orientation towards the PLO, represented a radical break from traditional Israeli policy and is the brainchild of  Israeli thinkers. In the disaster they brought upon the Israelis they are not different from their fellow intellectuals in the west who undermined democracy in their native countries while identifying wholeheartedly with the cruelest despots. A foremost expert on the Stalinist terror, Robert Conquest, called the aftermath of the totalitarian regimes “mindslaughter”. Most Israeli intellectuals are considered to be Leftist, and rightly so. For two generations there were very strong political movements which were heavily Stalinist, such as “Mapam”, “Ahdut Ha’avoda” and of course the Communist Party. Many people in Israel were educated in a Marxist environment. In the same way that their parents could identify with aspects of Stalinist policies, while he led fierce anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist campaigns, so their radical sons see in the terrorist PLO a liberation movement. What is called post-Zionism has deep roots in the old socialist Zionism, and it feeds on the feelings of self-negation among many Israeli “Sabras”. The basic trend is denial of Jewish identity. On the whole, because of the centralized structure of Israeli society the intellectuals could filter their views easily through to the mindset of the other elite sectors such as the media, the military and the political elites, thus causing almost overnight the collapse of long-standing principles, especially in strategic matters.

 

back to top


Nuclear Deterrence Now - To the Attention of a Busy PM (I)

Louis René Beres

During the past year, the ACPR has expertly examined problems of Israeli deterrence. Aharon Levran’s “The Decline of Israeli Deterrence” (ACPR policy paper no. 113) is an especially important and informed assessment. The article below by Professor Louis René Beres – cast in the form of a Memorandum to the Prime Minister – looks more specifically at the conditions and limitations of Israeli nuclear deterrence. Based upon the assumption that Israel’s survival depends entirely upon self reliance, this memorandum urges PM Sharon immediately to strengthen the country’s nuclear deterrence posture, and to take critical steps to ensure that a failure of Israeli nuclear deterrence will not bring about nuclear warfare. These steps will require: (1) a multifaceted nuclear strategy involving deterrence, preemption and warfighting capabilities; and (2) a corollary conventional strategy that can function in spite of serious security weaknesses created by the Oslo “peace process”.

Israel needs a strong nuclear deterrent – and the complex conditions of such a deterrent are identified and evaluated carefully in the Memorandum – but it cannot rely upon this one base of national security any more than it can rely only upon conventional deterrence. Israel’s survival now requires complementary nuclear and conventional forces, and the continuing and associated availability of certain preemption options. Taken together, these multiple bases of national security could endow Israel with at least tolerable measures of safety.

Specific issues addressed in the Beres Memorandum are: convincing prospective attackers that Israel maintains both the willingness and the capacity to retaliate in certain situations with nuclear weapons; the risks and benefits to Israel of intentionally detectable measures to reduce Israeli nuclear force vulnerabilities; the associated risks and benefits to Israel of active and passive defenses; the precise nature of Israeli nuclear weapons; the issue of disclosure vs. “deliberate ambiguity” (the “Bomb in the Basement”); the types and openness of nuclear targeting doctrine; the problem of enemy irrationality for Israeli nuclear deterrence; the interrelatedness of Israeli conventional and nuclear deterrence; and (should Israeli nuclear deterrence fail), the expected consequences of regional nuclear war. Finally, the Beres Memorandum imaginatively considers different scenarios of how a nuclear attack upon Israel might take place and the particular place for a “Samson Option”.

Professor Louis René Beres is the author of some of the earliest published writings on Israeli nuclear deterrence. This Memorandum looks soberly and in considerable detail at today’s urgent strategic challenges to Israel. Taken as a whole, the Memorandum points toward a comprehensive and coherent nuclear “master plan” from which specific policy options might be suitably extrapolated.

 

back to top


The "Afghan Alumni" and the Clash Between Civilizations (II)

Shaul Shay

In recent years, some scholars have spoken of a clash of civilizations between Islam and modern secular (or Judeo-Christian) democratic values and culture, or between Islamic civilization and the West.

Professor Samuel P. Huntington, in his article “The Clash of Civilizations” and later in his book of the same name, argues that the root of global conflict at the turn of the century is neither ideological nor economic, but primarily cultural.

Huntington singles out Islamic civilization as the most militant cultural form, and emphasizes the inherent conflict between it and Western and other civilizations.

Although Huntington’s premise can be brought into question, as shown by John Esposito (“Political Islam and the West”, JFQ, Spring 2000), the Muslim world today is torn by a deep internal conflict over the essence and purpose of Islamic society. The outcome of this internal conflict has dictated, and continues to dictate, the nature of the ties between Muslim civilization and Western and other civilizations.

Islamic fundamentalism is funneled through dozens of Islamist organizations that operate throughout the Muslim world. In addition, there are three states – Iran, Afghanistan, and the Sudan – whose fundamentalist Islamic regimes provide spiritual and material succor to the radical Islamic movements. These states work independently and through the radical Islamic movements to export the Islamic revolution to the entire Muslim world, and spearhead the struggle against foreign – particularly Western – civilizations.

In this article we shall be focusing on a recent phenomenon which clearly exemplifies Huntington’s theory of the “clash of civilizations” – that of the “Afghan mujahideen” – the spearhead of radical Islam’s struggle against heretical cultures. Despite their name, the “Afghan terrorists” are not affiliated with a specific movement or state, but see themselves as the representatives of Islam’s relentless struggle against secular Muslim regimes and heretical cultures.

Osama bin Laden is one of the outstanding “products” of the Afghan war, and his organization “Al-Qa’idah” is one of the main expressions of the “Afghan” phenomenon. Bin Laden views his struggle as part of the conflict between Islamic and other civilizations, particularly “the Jewish-Crusader civilization”, as he calls it.

As a cultural struggle, the world-wide Afghan struggle is being waged on three fronts: within Muslim countries (to reinstate the rule of shari`ah law); in countries with Muslim minorities, situated on “fault lines” with other cultures (the Balkans, the Caucasus, Kashmir, etc.); and, internationally, in the struggle against Western, particularly US, civilization, which is perceived by the fundamentalists as the source of all evil, and the primary threat to Islam.

It looks as if the clash of civilizations as perceived by Huntington, at one extreme, and Osama bin Laden, at the other, is with us to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.

 

back to top


Russia and the Mideast Vacuum (II)

Ilan Berman

Practically unnoticed, Russia has regained its status as a major power in the Middle East. Over the past several years, Moscow has expanded its sphere of influence beyond its “near abroad” and into the Gulf and Levant. There, it has worked to alter the regional balance of power and fill the vacuum left by American diplomacy.

Russia’s regional policy is both multifaceted and ambitious. Through its relationship with Tehran, Moscow has furthered the Islamic Republic’s quest for weapons of mass destruction and complicated the West’s access to Caspian basin energy. Through its efforts to undermine the international sanctions regime against Baghdad and supplant the United States as chief broker of the Middle East peace process, Russia has attained growing control of regional diplomacy. And through arms sales and proliferation, the Kremlin has reestablished ties with a host of traditional client states, tilting them conclusively back into its orbit. Now, Russia stands poised to become the preeminent power in the Gulf, much to the detriment of both the United States and its regional allies, Turkey and Israel.

In this article, “Russia and the Mideast Vacuum”, the author explores the tools with which the Kremlin has sought to achieve regional dominance, control over Caspian and Gulf energy, and the creation of an anti-Western coalition aimed at ousting American influence from the region.

 

back to top

 

Ariel Center for Policy Research / NATIV

POB 99, Shaarei Tikva 44810, Israel

URLs: www.acpr.org.il, http://nativ.cc

Email: ariel.center@gmail.com

Tel: +972-3-906-3920  Fax: +972-3-906-3905