At this benchmark, Israel has reason to be proud of its achievements. A tiny, economically primitive, beleaguered and embattled community in 1948, Israel has welcomed and absorbed millions of Jews from the most varied of cultural backgrounds. A wasteland a hundred years ago, Israel once again fulfills the Biblical promise of a land flowing with milk and honey. And it is firmly in the modern age, with a first world-caliber labor force and a cutting edge technology sector. Unlike all its neighbors, it has fashioned a genuine democracy with extraordinary freedom -- given the state of war Arabs have forced upon it -- of speech, press and assembly.
This year has also brought good news from the achievements of others. As Steven Plaut points out, one of the most viciously anti-Jewish powers on earth was annihilated in a few weeks without Israel lifting a finger. And implausible as it may sound, Jews have never known such an era of security as the last 55 years. Around 21,500 Israelis have died in battle or attacks by Arabs since 1947, nearly half of them in the War of Independence. Since the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, says Plaut, there was probably never an era of two generations in which so few Jews were killed by anti-Semites.
And yet of course the dangers to Israel (and diaspora Jews) grow. If the Road Map should be implemented, it will be -- as this issue of Outpost helps to clarify -- Israel's death map. Despite this, to quote Plaut, "Israel has not yet emerged from the era of the Oslo death wish and national self-destruction. It has not yet shown it is prepared to fight for its survival at long last, against not only Arab Nazism but also Oslo appeasement and leftist delusions."
The conventional wisdom that hindsight is 20/20, with the assumption that it would have been impossible to forsee the results of an action or policy in advance, is often misapplied. In many cases the results are obvious in advance. Take the Munich agreement. Churchill was not a lone voice. In France, Foreign Minister Paul Boncour (in the outgoing cabinet) warned Edouard Daladier, the new Prime Minister: "If, after Austria, we let Czechoslovakia fall, it will be Poland's turn tomorrow. Can we have that? If not, do you not think that we should be in a weaker position to defend Poland, once there is no Czechoslovakia any more, nor the Czechoslovak army, nor the Bohemian plateau, that military position that is so strongly fortified today and where the fate of Europe has already been at stake three times?"
When Israel embarked on the folly of Oslo, both Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu warned of the catastrophes that would flow from it. In the U.S. there were fewer voices of reason but we at AFSI certainly spelled out what was to come. It does not require someone with prophetic talents to recognize the current Road Map as a death trap for Israel and its "vision" of a Palestinian state, to be established in a few months, eager to exist in peaceful amity with Israel, as mad utopian claptrap.
Barry Shaw, a reformed left-winger who came to Israel from England over twenty years ago, has come up with a solution for providing Palestinian Arabs with a homeland.
"Let's give them France! It's far bigger than Israel. It can comfortably receive all those hundreds of millions of refugees they claim they have. It has better, more arable land than the rocky, barren West Bank or Gaza. The Palestinians would be joining millions of their fellow-religionists. The Arabs already control the French government and influence their policy. Furthermore, the French won't even fight to retain their land. They have already declared and proven that nothing is worth fighting for, not even their own country!
"This is a wonderful solution for everyone. They won't be under Israeli occupation and, hopefully, it will put distance between us and their suicide bombers. There will be considerably more voters for Chirac, so he should approve this plan. After all, he has lost Iraq.
"Finally, I have a name for this new nation combining France and Palestine -- it's FRANCENSTINE!!"
It's hard to credit, but the Labor Party has reinstalled the greatest fool the Jewish people has ever produced in its history or literature (wise men of Chelm, move over) as party leader. True to form, Peres is off and running. He is "slightly worried" by the Road Map because of its "slow" timetable. "In my opinion it's a mistake to
Outpost - 2 - June 2003