The unthinkable is already happening. Within months an independent Arab state will be declared in Judea and Samaria with a road link to Gaza cutting right through Israel's heartland. Its capital will soon be a divided Jerusalem, and, shortly after, the Golan will also be surrendered. Arabs, buoyed by their easy victory over Israel, will then demand a return to the partition lines of 1947. These are the hard facts, and the bitter fruit of the mindless and self-destructive policy of "land for peace."
We have been opposed to this entire specious concept which was always the blueprint for dismemberment of the Jewish State. We opposed it in 1968 when Americans For a Safe Israel was founded, in the wake of the 1973 war, and during the negotiations over the Camp David Accords which gave the entire Sinai to Egypt and promised "autonomy" to the Arab residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. The word "autonomy" implied eventual statehood. It was inescapable.
To say that we were right gives no satisfaction. On the contrary. The future is bleak for Jews all over the world as we return again to the status of a homeless people. This time, however, there are no Cossacks, no Torquemadas, no Fascists, no Nazis, and no Bolsheviks to blame. Samson brought the roof down on his enemies. Like a deranged Samson, we have brought the roof down on our own heads.
There should be a word in English to combine the definitions of arrogance, self-righteousness, and vanity. For the moment, we'll use the word conceit, defined in the dictionary as "an excessively favorable opinion of one's own ability, importance, wit, etc." It is this conceit, this excessively favorable opinion of their importance, ability and intelligence, which seems to drive policy makers in Israel.
We have come to anticipate the perfidy of Israel's "intellectual" elite. In any self-respecting society, that elite would be a lunatic fringe. There is a super-abundance of movies, plays, editorials, novels and art that excoriate every aspect of Jewish life in the Jewish state. Religious Jews, the defense forces, the Land of Israel, a great and ancient history-- the very things that should define the Jewish state--are portrayed in the vilest manner. Slander has become mainstream so that manure is hailed as masterpiece, so long as it demeans, dispirits and vilifies Israel.
Since Oslo, the government, the defense establishment and what used to be considered the political center have been lured into the deliberate destruction of the state. While pompous ministers discuss the pathetic strategies that are emboldening Israel's enemies, the schoolbooks in Israel indoctrinate students against their state. Maps which formerly displayed arrows pointing at Israel's heart showing the massive Arab armies poised to invade in 1948, now have reversed the arrows, showing instead the flight of Arab "refugees." Photos of Arab "refugees" have replaced pictures of an unapologetically Zionist Ben-Gurion. Not a hint, of course, of who kept Arabs in squalid conditions while their oil-rich brothers fattened their larders. Not a word about the Jordanian stewardship of the holy city of Jerusalem during which all Jewish shrines were desecrated in an orgy of fanatic anti-Semitism. No mention of the decades of violent anti-Israel rhetoric emanating from all the Arab states. Not a word about terrorism, or the threats of extermination, or the bloodbaths in nurseries, hospitals, airports, markets or the Munich Olympics. No paragraphs on the closing of the straits of Tiran which led to the 1967 war. There are no pictures of Moshe Dayan and his forces reaching the Western Wall. Only the cruel fate allegedly imposed on the Palestinian Arabs by the Jewish state is described in vivid and emotional terms. Zionist history in Israeli schoolbooks has been replaced by pro-Arab propaganda.
What the Weathermen and other subversive groups tried to do by force and violence in America, Israeli subversives are accomplishing by education in Israel. And, this has happened right under the noses of government ministers and parliamentarians, under Netanyahu's Likud government as well as under the current Barak government.
What can account for such mindlessness? How can seasoned soldiers encourage and arm enemies of the state? How can people who value education permit wholesale libel in schoolbooks? Where are pride and self-esteem? The answer is that Israel's government and its citizens are full of conceit -- an excessively and unfounded opinion of their wisdom, their "goodness" and their strength. In the meantime, primitive thugs are making fools of them.
Fifty-two is an age of vitality, optimism, and energy. Thanks to technical and scientific advances, the fifties have been transformed from over-the-hill days to
[(Continued on p.11)]
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Outpost - 10 - May 2000