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Beilinism - The Eleventh
Plague
David Bukay
The Geneva Agreement is a direct
result of the Oslo Accords, which brought to the Jewish people over
1,300 victims of terror, over 6,000 hurt and handicapped and has
inflicted upon an entire nation a post-trauma syndrome. The Geneva
Agreement has led Israel another big step towards its destruction as a
national entity, and serves as a political putsch for the “Oslo gang”
in its subversiveness against democracy in Israel, by cooperating with
the worst deadly enemy facing the Jewish people since the Nazis.
“Beilinism” achieves all this
with the financial, logistical and organizational assistance of the
countries in the EU and with the support and backing of the Israeli
media, with whom “Beilinism” has established a “mutual admiration
society”.
The Geneva Agreement and
“Beilinism” are a dangerous combination, and should be treated as an
act of national treason in a time of war.
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A Decade
After the Oslo Accords: The PLO’s “People’s War”
Joel Fishman
The purpose of the Declaration of
Principles, which Israel and the PLO signed on the White House Lawn a
decade ago, was to initiate a peace process between the two parties.
Since then, Israel has suffered over 1,129 casualties. One must ask
therefore: If we are supposed to have peace, why are we counting
bodies?
Through a lightheaded “leap of
faith”, Israel’s leaders entered into a peace process with the PLO
making considerable concessions. The PLO, for its part, seized the
opportunity to work for its main political goal, the destruction of
the Jewish state and its replacement with an Arab-Palestinian state.
From 1969 to 1974, the PLO unsuccessfully tried to wage a guerilla war
against Israel but lacked a territorial base. Through the Oslo
Accords, it acquired this precious strategic asset.
Palestinian leaders openly declared their intentions. In an interview
published posthumously in June 2001, the late Faisal Husseini called
the Oslo Agreement a Trojan Horse, declaring that “we are ambushing
the Israelis and cheating them,” and that the “ultimate goal is
[still] the liberation of all historical Palestine from the [Jordan]
River to the [Mediterranean] Sea...” According to Abu Mazen (July
2002), Oslo was “the biggest mistake Israel ever made”. (Quotations
from MEMRI.) Israel’s leaders failed to understand the meaning of such
clear statements.
The Accords have placed Israel at
close quarters with a different kind of war, one that combines
political and military methods over a prolonged time-span. The model
for this type of total conflict is the “People’s War” which originated
in China and in Vietnam. Through the use of political and military
warfare, the PLO is endeavoring to destroy Israel’s ability to defend
itself by ruining the economy, demoralizing the public through terror,
and undermining its social cohesion. Using propaganda, it is attacking
Israel’s legitimacy at home and abroad by portraying it as a criminal
state.
Protracted conflict of this type
is new for Israel which has traditionally preferred to fight
conventional wars quickly and on enemy territory. If Israel wants to
assure its survival, it will have to come to terms with this new
reality. In the light of a decade’s experience any kind of a peaceful
settlement is not a prospect.
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Saudi Arabia –
Between Pragmatism and Radicalism
Shaul Shay
The
status of Saudi Arabia vis-à-vis the issue of Islamic terror is
unique and particularly complex, because on the one hand Saudi Arabia
is an ally of the United States, and it opposes and combats Islamic
terror posing a threat to its regime, while on the other hand it
supports and aids radical Islamic organizations in their activities in
distant arenas.
The
roots of the “Islamic dilemma” of the Saudi regime are to be found in
the historical alliance between Muhammad Ibn Saud, founder of the
Saudi dynasty, and Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahab. The Saudi dynasty won
the religious legitimacy and in exchange promised to cooperate with
the Wahabian dynasty in government and offered legitimacy to the
religious school of thought that it represents.
Saudi Arabia is involved in the export of radicalism and Islamic
terror on several levels:
-
Saudi Arabia is the stronghold and nucleus of influence for the
Wahabian movements that act to export the radical Islamic ideas from
the Wahabian school of thought to Islamic focal points throughout
the Muslim world (Chechnya, the Balkan, Afghanistan, the African
continent, and more).
-
Saudi Arabia acts to disseminate radical Islam via charities and
relief organizations that serve radical Islamic organizations and
entities with the full knowledge of the authorities.
-
Saudi Arabia openly aids the Palestinian Islamic terror
organizations, mainly the Hamas, in their struggle against Israel.
Fifteen of the suicide attack perpetrators on September 11, 2001 were
Saudi citizens.
The
Saudi monarchy faces threats posed by the opposition and motivated by
a combination of social, economic, ideological and religious causes.
Over the years, the extravagant and wasteful lifestyle of the Saudi
monarchy, the inequality in the distribution of the country’s
resources and riches, and the “non-Islamic” behavior of the country’s
leadership have generated wide cadres of opposition elements within
Islamic circles that aspire to topple the regime and replace it with a
“real” religious Islamic state in Saudi Arabia.
External factors also pose a threat to the regime, for instance Iran’s
subversion and its attempt to export the Khomeinist revolution to
Saudi Arabia, and Saddam Hussein’s activity against the Saudi regime.
The
threats that the Saudi regime faces on the one hand, and its power
bases which rely on Western support as well as the power brokers close
to the regime on the other hand, force the regime to adopt a cautious
and complicated policy regarding the manner of handling radical Islam
and terror.
In
the course of the “Defense Shield” campaign, confiscated Saudi and
Palestinian documents were found that dealt with the systematic and
ongoing transfer of large amounts of money to the territories by Saudi
institutions and organizations for the purpose of “supporting the
intifada”.
The
Saudi regime takes all of the necessary actions vis-à-vis
entities that constitute a threat to the regime’s stability, including
the execution of terrorists. Nevertheless, at the same time it enables
radical entities from Saudi Arabia to act outside of its boundaries
almost without disruption, thus creating a “modus vivendi” with
these elements.
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The
Orr Commission: High Expectations, Disappointing Delivery
Raphael Israeli
The Orr Commission published its
findings on September 1, 2003, after three years of an enormous work
of compilation of evidence, interviewing hundreds of witnesses,
consulting experts, issuing legal warnings to those likely to be
incriminated, and writing up the two-volume report on the tragic
events of September 2000, which pitted the Israeli Arabs against
institutions of law enforcement in the country. However, the report
was disappointing in the sense that instead of recommending practical
and operational steps to be taken to punish the perpetrators of the
horror, they wasted pages upon pages on examining the trajectory of
rubber coated bullets and on formulating the legal warnings, none of
which was substantiated. They pretended that “discrimination” against
the Arabs was at the root of violence, instead of calling the Arabs to
task for their violence that had no justification. Not only
discrimination had to be examined in neutral and objective terms, and
a yardstick set for its measurement, which was not done, but a false
balance was established between the violent breakers of the law and
the police who tried to contain them. Therefore, all those years of
hard work, and the hopes that were attached to the work of the
commission, were dashed, and no real turning point was chartered for
returning the Arabs in Israel to the track of law-abiding if they want
to live as a minority in a Jewish state.
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The Orr Commission of Inquiry:
The Political Establishment in the Guise of Objectivity
Haim Misgav
Ehud Barak established the Orr
Commission at the tail end of his term in office – for his own
political purposes. The Arab citizens of the State of Israel, which is
characterized in the document declaring its establishment as the
national home of the Jewish people, have been aware for a while that
the cracks in the walls of the Jewish State are gradually expanding –
and therefore hurried to join the struggle of the “Palestinians”,
hoping that the stage in which the Jewish State will collapse is near.
The calamitous “Oslo Process” restored Yasser Arafat, the
arch-terrorist, to the heart of the Land of Israel along with tens of
thousands of armed terrorists, equipped with the Palestinian Charter
advocating the “step-by-step process”. The Arabs residing within the
“Green Line” undoubtedly understood, that their turn to be “liberated”
from the shackles of the Jewish entity, in which they happened to
settle after the War of Independence, was imminent.
Those, among others, were the
reasons that Ehud Barak was unable to reach an agreement with Yasser
Arafat, despite the fact that he offered him all of Judea, Samaria and
Gaza so that he may establish a “Palestinian State” there. Yasser
Arafat wants much, much more. He wants all of Western Israel – in
order to repatriate millions of “refugees” there.
Unfortunately, Yasser Arafat has
many supporters within the Jewish community. The “Oslo Gang”, which
has a clear post-Zionist agenda, does everything in its power to
diminish the strength of the State of Israel to the point where it
will no longer be able to oppose the demands to transform it into a
“multi-cultural” state – a new term in the lexicon of the
post-Zionists from the “Oslo Adherents” school – on the way to total
acquiescence.
The Orr Commission, with its
disgraceful composition, was ultimately unable to reach any
conclusions other than those, which it reached. Justice Aharon Barak,
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who at the time was a dominant
member of the Kahan Commission, which recommended the dismissal of
Ariel Sharon from his position as Defense Minister – and by doing so
established the first signpost on the road to Oslo – apparently wanted
to reach those conclusions.
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Is There
International Cooperation in the War on Terror?
Zalman Shoval
As modern terrorism transcends
borders, the existence of international cooperation in the struggle
against it is imperative. However, that is not the reality.
The terrorism threatening the
world today is unique not only in terms of its methods but also in
terms of its objectives. The declared objective of Islamic terrorism
is not to fix the world or to advance social solutions – its objective
is to destroy and demolish. In its most extreme manifestation, it is
interested in obliterating all Western values.
The war against terrorism and the
wars and struggles against Nazism are identical, as the extreme
ideologies of Islam and the Arab world have already caused, and are
liable to continue to cause, results no less severe than those caused
by Hitlerism and Stalinism.
Until the 11th of
September, and at times even thereafter, there were official American
spokesmen, especially in the State Department, who in their desire to
distinguish between “their” war against terrorism and Palestinian
terrorism characterized the latter as belonging in some kind of “gray
area”, not exactly “real” terrorism. This distinction did not last
very long, primarily due to the clear, unequivocal statements of
President Bush Jr., that there is no such thing as “good terrorism”
and “bad terrorism”. The Europeans, on the other hand, articulate
contempt and hostility towards the ostensible “simplicity” of the
Americans in general and of President Bush in particular, as those who
view everything in hues of black and white. It must be emphasized that
despite the sincere empathy, which the Europeans demonstrated towards
the Americans after the bombing of the Twin Towers, as soon as
Washington began speaking about broader strategic targets in the war
against terrorism, beyond the objective of al-Qaeda and Bin-Laden –
most European governments, and public opinion there to an even greater
extent, recoiled from and opposed the American course of action.
In the view of the American
administration, the war in Iraq constituted a central stage in the war
against terrorism – and in practical, as opposed to propaganda, terms
– from its perspective, it made no difference whether or not any
connection existed between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, as the swift
and crushing victory over Saddam Hussein was designed to signal to the
other countries operating or supporting terrorism, that Bush’s
America, as opposed to Clinton’s America, is not a “paper tiger”, and
that it is serious and determined to take action against them as well,
if they do not change their ways. Only the future will prove whether
or not the strategy of “so that they may see and fear” will be
effective. One can only hope that there will not be a historic waste
of an opportunity, as 2003, in the wake of the Iraq campaign, could
have been the year of the turning point in the war against terrorism.
For years, Israel and American
experts on terrorism have pointed to the activity of people and
elements in the service of Palestinian terrorist organizations in
America – both in the financial realm and in other areas – however,
beyond possible political considerations, the legal situation in the
United States and the protection of human rights provided by the
American constitution, prevented the authorities from taking effective
action. From that perspective, it was only after the Twin Towers
incident that a change took place and effective laws were legislated,
an office of Home Security was established, and the assets of various
Islamic “charity organizations” were frozen, organizations, which
channeled funds to terrorist organizations throughout the world. Much
has been said and written about the deep financial involvement of
Saudi elements in financing al-Qaeda and other terrorist
organizations, and it is not for naught that the American, European
and Asian authorities are expending every effort to decipher the
secrecy surrounding the clandestine ways in which funds from various
sources flow to the terrorist organizations.
With the conclusion of the Cold
War, a genuine dilemma existed – it was not clear from which
direction, if at all, the next threat to the United States and the
free world was imminent. Would it be from the “backward countries”,
due to their instability, or from Russia, the Ukraine, et al., which
possess enormous stockpiles of missiles and nuclear weapons? Perhaps
from China, which is gradually growing stronger, or perhaps from
Islamic fundamentalism – despite the fact that some American experts
refuse to treat it as a tangible threat? As a result, in the absence
of clear instructions, none of the branches of the American security
forces mobilized in order to appropriately deal with any of the
aforementioned threats, including terrorism. However, when that
happened, they recovered quickly.
In summary, it may be said that
the obvious natural conclusion is that in the era of global terrorism,
the war against it must be global. The problem is that unfortunately,
in practice it is not always possible, whether for operational reasons
or from various, obvious and less obvious, political considerations of
the relevant countries. And therefore, in this period as well, which
was supposed to be marked by the complete mobilization of all
civilized countries together for the purpose of an all-out war against
terrorism and by maximal international cooperation – each country
individually, including Israel, must maintain its independent
operational capability against the terrorist bodies threatening it,
even if doing so is liable at times to complicate its diplomatic
relations.
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Aircraft Carriers: The Most Effective Diplomacy
Ran Ichay
The Mediterranean Sea always was a
central field of the Israeli-Arab battle. As a
geographically-diplomatically isolated country, Israel does not have any
means but the sea for maintaining vital contacts with its allies. It was
through the sea, that the Hebrew community in pre-independent Israel was
able to bring two main and extremely needed resources: people and arms.
This urgent need to use the sea as
a central line for supplies to Israel in turbulent times, came up again
25 years later, during the Yom Kippur war, when members of the IDF,
severely at risk, received arms and equipment from the US.
The above mentioned must be
considered along side the well-known fact that Arab armies prepare
themselves for future war by studying deeply Israel’s advantages and
examining methods to overcome them – and thus, leave the Israeli side
surprised and unprepared.
In addition, the non-conventional
threat from Iran, far away from Israeli borders and on the edge of
Israeli fighter aircraft’s range leads to a conclusion, that Israel must
increase its ability to act also in places outside the normal range of
its ships and fighters.
The most simple solution might be
that Israel will have one or even two small aircraft carriers, less then
20,000 tons each – in order to sail its strike power to areas that are
outside its normal range. It is not always possible to bring the enemy
to the right corner, where your full advantage is clear. In this case,
you have to do the opposite: to bring the right corner to the enemy. The
aircraft carriers will also be able to react, in the first few hours of
the war, when Israel’s land air bases and reserve forces will be heavily
attacked by the enemy – missiles and fighter-bombers from the ships will
be the initial reaction of the IDF.
This
reform in the Israeli seaborne capacity – will turn the sea forces from
a small force into a real navy.
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Is
the Level of Israel’s High-Ranking Officers Deteriorating?
Aharon Yaffe
Recently we have heard some clear
voices complaining about the descending level of the Israeli
high-ranking officers coming from all corners of society.
• Have the areas of interests
of the officers become narrower?
• Has their level of military
and theoretical strategic thinking really derogated?
This article will try to address
some of the questions, problems and aspects related to the above
concerns and their consequences. In this article, we do not relate to
the technical-professional level of the commanders and their ability to
maintain and control the modern tactical weapons, rather we deal with
the continuing lack of high-ranking officers who demonstrate leadership
characteristics: broad and abstract thinking, as well as an ideology and
charisma which characterized the military leaders of vision which we
often saw in the first IDF Generals.
This critical lack of leadership
seriously affects the state of the nation. The IDF high-ranking officers
who served in the nation’s first years formed the main political leader
reservoir and laid the foundation to many of its basic pillars.
Israel will miss this reservoir in
the future.
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The Scarlet Letter: Israel as Myth and Reality
Ilana Gomel
The article argues that the
current wave of anti-Israeli paranoia in the West constitutes neither
an outbreak of visceral anti-Semitism nor a legitimate response to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rather, it stems from the need to
present an overarching “explanation” of history. Western anti-Semitism
is not an ethnic prejudice but a philosophy of history that uses the
Jews as a metaphor for the underlying causes of historical events. The
meanings attached to this metaphor are multiple and often
contradictory. But what matters is that Israel can never be seen
simply as a country, or the Jews simply as a people. Because of the
long tradition of metaphysical speculations intertwined with
references to the Jewish “enigma”, the Jews, and now Israel, are
always read as a sign of some deeper historical processes and not
merely in terms of their own actions. The article compares Israel to
the heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 19th-century novel The Scarlet Letter,
forced to wear a sign imbued with multiple
meanings by her community. Israeli culture has lost its ability to
cope with the metaphorical dimension of Jewish experience. Thus, it is
incapable of understanding the complex ways in which Israel is being
engaged in the contemporary debate over globalization and American
hegemony.
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These are the High Holy Days and for the first
time in 87 years the voice of Emil Fackenheim is stilled. Emil
died on September 19, 2003. I remember his voice as a teenager 35
years ago, when Emil Fackenheim’s words were the reason hundreds
of people went to a Reform synagogue in Toronto, Canada on days
like Yom Kippur. For Emil Fackenheim had two spiritual, wrenching,
messages in the midst of the contradictions of a Diaspora
community, that was upwardly mobile and constantly trying to fit
in. As in many such communities throughout North America, the
local rabbis often struggled to cast the results of anti-Semitism
as our failing to empathize sufficiently with the enemies of the
Jewish people.
Fackenheim told us the Holocaust
had philosophical significance, not only for Judaism, but for all
humankind, and that the existence of Israel mattered not only for Jews,
but for world history. Radical evil could not, and had not been,
overcome by philosophical or religious thought. The death of six million
people, including one million children, whose crime was existence, was
an event unique in human history before and after the Holocaust. It
challenged all religions and all future understanding of life beyond the
state of nature. What thought cannot master, the reality of survival
might. The continuation and renewal of the Jewish people in the land of
Israel was a testament to a remaining potential for good and for peace.
Fackenheim was a modern man who,
not only understood the secular Jew, but also sought to include
secularism in Jewish history. He was an ethical man who had deep
connections with the non-Jewish community, and who appealed to their
religious depths to confront the past in order to move forward together.
He was an egalitarian who accepted and nurtured the aspirations of women
and minorities throughout his long career.
After being interned in the
Sachenhausen concentration camp in Nazi Germany, he made his way to
Canada in 1940 and eventually to a professorship in philosophy at the
University of Toronto, where he taught until 1984. Emil married a
non-Jew, a deeply spiritual woman who converted to Judaism in her own
time and place, upon their making aliya to Israel 20 years ago.
Together he and Rose raised their four children, one having sadly been
born with severe autism, as Jews. Rose, who was much younger than
Emil, regularly sat in the front row of his many talks, taking
responsibility for the recording of his words for posterity. Emil
himself spoke from a few pages of scribbled notes. Many in the audience
were grateful that she would be there to help encourage his longevity.
It was Rose, however, who developed early Alzheimer’s Disease, and Emil
raised their still young family alone. He lived to see two sons serve in
the Israeli army, his children marry and have children of their own,
leaving behind Michael, Suzy, David, Yossi and five grandchildren,
Daniella, Benjy, Dan, Adam and Gideon.
Listening carefully to Professor
Fackenheim required sitting in the front row. His heavy German accent
remained with him all his life. Beyond this superficial impediment
however, he was one of the 20th century’s greatest orators. One could
not hear a pin drop, in otherwise restless crowds, though his subject
matter was Rosenzweig and Hegel. He would infuse each lecture with a
central theme, spell it out at the beginning, weave a complex story
drawn from the leading philosophical figures and Jewish teachings over
thousands of years, and conclude with a reminder bearing out his opening
remarks. Every lecture at the University, every sermon at the synagogue,
was a work of art. Everyone who heard him sought to be a better person,
to understand more, to reach deeper.
For Emil Fackenheim, however,
Israel was not a theory, but a calling. He left behind a comfortable
life in Canada to move his family to Israel in the 1980s when he was
already an older man. It is a serious failing that Israel was not as
welcoming as it should have been. Promises of positions disappeared,
invitations to speak at appropriate moments were not forthcoming. His
Hebrew language skills did not enable him to deliver the masterpieces of
which he was capable in another language. Undeterred, he continued to
travel the world when he could, contributing to dialogue and learning in
other places. He kept writing. He read prodigiously throughout his life
in a multiplicity of languages.
Emil’s fate during his later years
is a lesson for all those seeking to synthesize liberalism and reality,
humanism and Judaism. For Emil, philosophy was not an abstraction. It
was intimately connected to politics writ large, and everyday events. He
felt the march of history most acutely in Israel, where the threat of
extermination of a remnant population was, and is, a constant presence.
Emil’s philosophical message had a political application and he did not
hesitate to lay its meaning bare by a letter to the editor or a question
from the audience to a panel of pundits.
The result was ad hominem
criticism and disconnection from some of liberal Judaism’s
self-flagellating and obsequious authorities. The label of “right-wing”
was an easy excuse not to confront the deeper message of his inquiries
and concerns. Yet his very understanding, humility, openness and
compassion for Jew and non-Jew alike made him a liberal in every sense
of the word, but for the characteristic of inner shame. Emil Fackenheim
lived and breathed the words of Pirke Avot, “If I am not for
myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if
not now, when?”
Emil’s historical and religious
insight led him to Jerusalem where he lived for almost two decades, and
where he died. He never flinched from the insistence of the centrality
of Jerusalem for Judaism, its essential importance for the vitality of
the State of Israel, and the reality of a unified Jerusalem as the only
assurance of Jewish self-determination and preservation. In 2002 he
spoke at my daughter’s bat mitzvah, held outdoors overlooking the old
city’s Tower of David, only a few days after a horrible bombing by
Palestinian terrorists at the Hebrew University. To the sounds of
occasional sirens in the streets, Rabbi Fackenheim said: “It is a
crisis-age for Jews, but it gets clearer all the time that it is also
for all humanity, for world history... Our crisis age began with a
physical attack on our people which shatters us still, and now an attack
on the state Jews needed to survive physically, and the return to
Jerusalem which they needed to survive in spirit.” His message of an
inescapable link between the necessity of Jewish survival, and the
survival of civilization itself and its triumph over evil, was one of
inclusion and of tolerance.
In his final week, Emil spoke to a
close associate about what might be remembered of his work. She
suggested people would remember his having penned a 614th
commandment, one more than the Torah’s 613 commandments. He wrote in
1967 that Jews have an obligation not to give Hitler a posthumous
victory. We have a moral duty to remain Jewish in a post-Holocaust
world, despite the natural disinclination to penetrate and to fathom the
horrors of the past, and despite the strength required to face the
atrocities suffered by Israelis today. Emil responded to his associate’s
speculation, “I hope so.” Amen.
Anne Bayefsky is
a Professor
of Political Science at York University, Toronto, Canada, Adjunct
Professor at Columbia University Law School, New York. She was a
student of Professor Fackenheim in the Department of Philosophy at
the University of Toronto in the 1970s and a considers herself
enormously fortunate to have been a friend ever since.
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