From the Editor

Generals Against Winning Wars

If anyone thought the Israeli high command had escaped Chelm (in which its politicians clearly reside), they should now be disabused. The Israeli daily Ha'aretz reports that the strategy of senior officers in the General Staff and Air Force for a possible future war is to "avoid taking too much." Israel's strategic thinkers fear "too great a victory in the next war" because it will lead Israel's neighbors to "endeavor to erase the shame of defeat." In what is billed as "a sophisticated approach"(!), Israel's generals opine that "it is best that we win," but that "the victory not be overwhelming as in the Six Day War, so that we do not suffer from it for so many years."

The next stage of "sophistication" will presumably involve a strategy that says "it is best that we lose" but not by too much, so that the Arabs will feel really good about themselves.

As Israel gives up crucial defensive territory, forfeits deterrent power and destroys the morale of its citizens, its generals, were they anchored in the real world, would be deeply anxious over the state's ability to survive a new war. Their fear of "winning too much" puts them squarely up there in the delusional world of Shimon Peres and the New Middle East.

Tikkun on Said

An editorial in the November-December issue of Michael Lerner's Tikkun complains that exposing Edward Said's false description of himself as a "refugee" is "as obscene as the attempts by various Holocaust revisionists to argue that many of the Jewish refugees were not really victims of the Holocaust but merely self-interestedly escaping a war zone." As Steven Plaut notes, Lerner "is apparently incapable of distinguishing between truth (that there was a Holocaust) and falsehood (the claim that Said was a refugee)." Meanwhile, as Jews outdo Arabs in his defense, Said himself has quietly excised his "trauma" as a supposed refugee from "Palestine." (In fact, he grew up in Egypt and occasionally visited relatives in Jerusalem.) A review of his autobiography Out of Place in Columbia Magazine (Said is professor of English at Columbia) notes: "What is most startling about Out of Place is how little attention Said devotes, relatively speaking, to the Palestinian component of his Middle Eastern childhood...Said's early memories of Palestine itself are, as he confesses, 'curiously unremarkable.'"

The End of the Tragedy?

"It's the end of the tragedy. It's the return of the boys home and the end of bleeding in Lebanon." So said Ehud Barak in March. As noted elsewhere in this issue, by April Barak was realizing that the end of the tragedy in Lebanon in all probability marks the beginning of the tragedy in northern Israel, as Hizbullah uses the territory in Lebanon which Israel abandons as a launching pad for renewing attacks on towns like Kiryat Shemonah (such attacks being the very reason Israel invaded Lebanon over a decade ago). Barak was of course counting on an agreement with Syria over the Golan, part of which would entail Syria's undertaking to halt Hizbullah attacks. But Assad may be making his own calculations: If Hizbullah attacks, which killed a relatively small number of Israeli soldiers, sent Israel scurrying from southern Lebanon and helped induce its government to offer up the Golan, why should not far more disruptive Hizbullah attacks on northern Israel induce the Israeli government to give in to all Syrian demands, a few of which are now still resisted? Why not indeed?

Egyptians Study Zionism

A new Egyptian "encyclopedia" on Jewish history and politics was the subject of a seminar at Cairo University. Israeli embassy officials who tried to attend were turned away (see our new column "The Peace Dividend" which replaces the traditional "Spotlight on

(Continued on p.9)

Outpost               - 2 -               April 2000