[(Continued from p.9)]
"illegal settlements") were built, some for security purposes, and others for historical and emotional reasons on mainly state-owned land.Judea and Samaria were liberated, not stolen or occupied, from Jordan. Since 1967, 261 new Arab settlements have been built in Judea and Samaria. According to international law, all of these are illegal, as no sovereignty was ever recognized over these territories; yet no one calls for their removal. Why is it that no one talks about those Arab settlements as obstacles to peace especially when they are bases for carrying out terrorism, and their inhabitants are constantly taught virulent hatred toward the Jewish people and the West?
The Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are a litmus test of Arab intentions. Why cannot Jews live in their historic homeland if there really is peace? After all, there are 1.2 million Arabs living as citizens of Israel, in the one Jewish country in the world, while there are only a handful of Jews living in most of the 22 Arab countries. In fact, in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, not only is it illegal for Jews to be citizens, they are not even allowed to reside there. Instead of Israel being the "apartheid state" in the region, it is the Arab world that is racist and religiously exclusive.
Rachel Neuwirth is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist who served in the Israeli air force.
I many times thought peace had come
When peace was far away.
As wrecked men deem they sight the land
When far at sea they stay.
And struggle slacker, but to prove,
As hopelessly as I,
That many the fictitious shores
Before the harbor lie.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Peace, as Midge Decter once stated at an AFSI conference, is a dirty word. It is a powerful sedative for those sick and tired of conflict, for those who live in fear, for those who want a quick fix to irreconcilable differences and hatreds, for those who avoid tough choices. At its worst, the word is an aphrodisiac for barbarians whose blood lust is excited when their enemies let down their guard.
"Peace in our time" has been the message of appeasers and brutal cynics alike. Chamberlain soothed England into slumber while Hitler was on the march in Eastern Europe. Stalin left the Yalta "peace" talks and subjugated all of Eastern Europe.
The peace treaty that ended the Vietnam conflict led to a Communist invasion of South Vietnam and the flight of hundreds of thousands of "boat people."
A peace treaty signed by Iraq and Iran in 1976 ended in 1979 when Iraq attacked Iran, precipitating a war with hundreds of thousands of casualties.
The delusion of peace has driven Israel into concessions, treaties, accords and surrenders -- all of which have brought death, destruction and terrorism to Israel's citizens. The word is invoked by Jew-baiting anti-Semites throughout the world who demand Israel commit suicide; it is the code word in the United Nations whose founding principles were inspired by Isaiah's irenic vision of the lion and lamb, but whose principals are more akin to rodents and scavengers.
Peace between Israel and the Arabs? Forget it and settle for arrangements that make Israel's enemies behave themselves. I have absolute faith that Israel will never use absolute power to impinge on the civil rights of civil people.
Survival, even under less than perfect conditions, is preferable to being shipwrecked on the "fictitious shores" that "before the harbor lie."
I vow here and now never to say or write the word Palestinian, unless it precedes either the word Jew or Arab. We begin to lose our rights when we lose our legitimate vocabulary and identity. The misuse of this word has had serious consequences. The most egregious is the blurring of Israel's historical and religious rights to Palestine -- that land comprising both sides of the Jordan River. The second has been the obscuring of the fact that Jordan is Arab Palestine, created in 1922 as an Arab entity within Palestine. The third has been the legitimation of the falsehood that Palestinian Arabs are homeless or that Judea and Samaria are occupied territory.
Ben-Gurion's passport pre-1948 read Palestinian; the Jerusalem Post was then the Palestine Post; the Israel Symphony was the Palestine Symphony, to take only a few examples.
Changing the vocabulary is not that hard where there is a will. St. Petersburg became Leningrad and then reverted to its former name. Burma is now Myanmar. Southern Rhodesia is Zimbabwe. Ceylon is now Kuala Lumpur. Here in America we now refer to Native-Americans rather than Indians. After abandoning the use of the word Negro, we said Black and subsequently African-American. Even Sean Combs who became Puff Daddy Combs is now respectfully called P.Diddy.
Israel is Jewish Palestine and Jordan is Arab Palestine, and that's a fact.
[(Continued on p.11)]
Outpost - 10 - February 2004