[(Continued from p.5)]
in-house.The Sharon capitulation does not require that the PLO turn over to Israel the mortars and missiles it is holding illegally and in violation of past agreements. Rather the deal says the PLO will collect all illegal mortars and weapons. And since all the illegal weapons were being used by the PLO itself, this is yet a new level of Orwellianism. The mortars will be used the next time the PLO wants to win some more concessions. PLO schools will continue to be Nazi indoctrination centers. PLO scout troops will continue to train suicide bombers.
Sharon has agreed to release all imprisoned Palestinians who were "not directly involved in terror." And since the PLO and the U.S. insist that mere tossing of firebombs and rocks or mere stabbing is not terror, all these useful citizens will be released.
The PLO will continue to insist that it is incapable of locating the Hamas and Jihad leadership, in contrast with the CNN and BBC camera crews who have no such problem.
Sharon will reopen all the access roads to Israel to make it easier for West Bank and Gazan terrorists to plant bombs, and after each bomb the U.S. will assure Israel that Arafat is really trying his best. Arafat will issue some sort of duplicitous statement about how violence is unpleasant, while tapping his finger to the side of his nose and winking. The incitement will continue, Holocaust denial, Hitler worship and all. The U.S. will decide when the PLO is in violation of the agreement, not Israel, as Sharon has relinquished yet another bit of Israeli sovereignty.
The PLO will insist it is incapable of locating the Hamas leadership, while CNN and BBC camera crews have no such problem.
Israel will resume paying monetary tribute to the PLO. And the Oslo formula of land-in-exchange-for-a-few-weeks-relative-quiet-before-the-next-atrocity will continue, with Ariel Sharon at the helm.
Of course, there are some who include De Gaulle and Nixon in the category of the Unchurchills, people who also led their people in a 180 degree turn of public opinion. De Gaulle abandoned Algeria and Nixon parleyed with China and signed off on detente. But De Gaulle did not try to turn Paris over to the Germans nor agree to a unilateral ceasefire in which the Germans butchered French children. And Nixon did not import tens of thousands of terrorists into the suburbs of U.S. cities and then provide them with free assault weapons and antitank missiles.
Israel has produced three "Napoleons," Rabin, Barak, and Sharon, elected because it was believed mistakenly that they were security hawks. Each of the three generals, as prime minister, turned out to be a cowardly bungler, of the sort that only poets could describe with justice.
The most fascinating aspect of the new Azmi Bishara Affair is the connection with the New Israel Fund.
Azmi Bishara is a Knesset Member from one of the Arab Fascist parties in Israel. Bishara has a long history of calling for Israel to be annihilated and for supporting escalated terrorist activity against Jews. Bishara has also been paying regular homage to Syria and its Hizbullah surrogate forces. Unlike Oswald Mosley, leader of the fascists in Britain during the 1940s, he has never been prosecuted for treason. Mosley spent the war in prison, put there by Churchill. (Of course, Israel has been ruled by a series of Chamberlains.)
Bishara was in Syria for the one-year anniversary of the death of Hafez al-Asad. Sitting fang-to-fang with the head of Hizbollah and with Ahmed Jibril, Bishara gave a speech calling for all Arabs to unite to eliminate Israel.
Now you may recall that three years back the New Israel Fund treated Bishara (who, when Rabin died, denounced him as a "mass murderer") as a mascot. The New Israel Fund is a leftist Tikkunesque fund in the US that raises money for politically correct causes in Israel. It funds gay groups, religious "pluralism" groups, but its main contribution is to funnel money into the countless tiny Marxist or communist-front "peace" groups, which would not exist without the New Israel Fund, things like the Women in Black and "Bat Shalom," and so on. The "New Israel" that the New Israel Fund seeks to fund is in fact Palestine.
Three years ago, the New Israel Fund manipulated the Smithsonian Institute into letting it organize festivities to mark Israel's 50th year, and who do you think the NIF decided should represent Israel? None other than Azmi Bishara.
Of course, Bishara is as representative of Israel as is the New Israel Fund of U.S. Jewry. The New Israel Fund in fact planned to invite several others to stage one of those familiar Jewish-Arab unity events in which Jewish leftists join Arab fascists in calling for Israel to be destroyed.
At the time, Americans For a Safe Israel alerted Congressmen, and the Smithsonian--once it discovered what the New Israel Fund actually was--cancelled the taxpayer-funded jihad. The groupies of the New Israel Fund then cried "McCarthyism" and suppression.
Meanwhile, the Attorney General in Israel says he will look into Bishara's speech, but rest assured: In post-survival Israel, Arab fascists are never prosecuted for calling for violence or for treason.
Of course, the Attorney General is looking--as usual--under the wrong streetlight. He should be instead prosecuting those Israeli officials who let Bishara go to Syria in the first place, and--even more so--the greater fools who let him come back in.
Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa.
Outpost - 6 - June-July 2001