... American Muslim groups that have been invited to the White House, and with which some Jewish establishment groups have dealings, are intensifying their anti-Israel boycott activity. A recent letter to Nasdaq Stock Market executives, urging them "to reject any requests to consider opening a sister market in Jerusalem," was signed by the American Muslim Council, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations...
...The National Association of Arab Americans, for its part, has urged the Clinton administration to "normalize relations between Libya and the United States"...
...Those who criticized Hillary Clinton for failing to condemn Suha Arafat's anti-Israel blood libel were guilty of "incitement," "hysteria," and a "rhetorical frenzy," according to James Zogby of the Arab-American Institute, writing in the Jordan Times...
...The American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) were one of the co-sponsors of a recent U.S. speaking tour by representatives of the Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolitions, who said that Israel is comparable to Nazi Germany because it occasionally dismantles illegally-built Arab homes...
...James Wall, editor of the liberal Protestant journal Christian Century, asserted in two recent articles that Israel has a secret "master plan" of "functional apartheid" in which the Palestinian Arabs will be confined to "segregated enclaves" and South African-style "bantustans," so that Israel can rule over them "like the U.S. in Vietnam and the whites of South Africa". Wall also led an Israel-bashing delegation to Jerusalem, sponsored by the extremist American Committee on Jerusalem...
[(Continued from p.8)]
dangerous from their viewpoint.However, if deterrence does not work, Israel must deploy for the possibility of preventive war, and in contrast to the past, Israel must clearly define the strategic/diplomatic/political goals of the war.
2. The European Union
The political-diplomatic cost to Israel's relations with the member states of the European Union might be heavy and even involve economic sanctions. However, a combination of determination on the one hand, and a comprehensive information campaign on the other, might soften European hostility. This will work chiefly if the European Union internalizes the fact that Israel has enduring principles of national defense that it will not violate even at the cost of a general war. Israel must make it clear that we have learned our lessons from the example of Czechoslovakia and the Munich Agreement, and there is no chance that Israel will commit suicide on the altar of European appeasement. On the contrary, just as Czechoslovakia's power vis-a-vis the Nazi threat was the keystone of peace in Europe in the late 1930s, so now Israel's power facing the Islamic threat is in the paramount interest of the Western world.
3. Relations with the United States
The diplomatic-political cost to relations with the United States might be lower than generally believed. Israel has many allies in both houses of Congress, in the military establishment, among Christian fundamentalists, and the broad public. The fact is that whenever Israel made clear that there was a clash of interests between it and Washington, and stood resolutely for its position, it was able to hold its ground. Three examples are the application of Israeli law and administration to the Golan Heights; the Jerusalem Law; and the destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor.
4. The Internal Israeli Arena
The public in Israel is obliged to pay the price of both peace and war. Hence, without overall support from the public for a decisive political enterprise, it will not be possible to stop the dangerous downhill slide on the slope of the "peace process."
The average Israeli is now in the midst of self-deception that undermines the nation's instinct for survival. This is the result of continuous brainwashing, media distraction, cynical exploitation of accumulated war-weariness, and economic abundance that emasculates willpower. To restore the Israeli public to rationality, a systematic, comprehensive information campaign is necessary, both on the level of the elites and of the mass media.
The question is not what can be done, but whether there is enough of a survival instinct left in Israel to abandon the "peace process" and pay the heavy price of shattering expectations.
This is the conclusion of the pamphlet Yitzhak Rabin: "...Palestine will Rise Upon the Ruins of the State of Israel" from which excerpts were published in the January Outpost.
February 2000 - 9 - Outpost