From the Editor
POST-ELECTION
INCITEMENT
For the past four years, Labor and Meretz proponents have accused Likud supporters of "incitement," a term which has become the mainstay of what George Orwell referred to as "smear and parrot phrases" hurled at opponents of the Oslo process. The left in Israel
suffers from the common mental mechanism known as "projecting" -- attributing to the presumed enemies characteristics which are profoundly its own. With the change of government, it is instructive to look back at the reaction of the left to Likud's first rise to power in 1977.
The novelist A.B. Yehoshua, a year before the 1977 Israeli elections, wrote that Gush Emunim should be allowed to settle as much as possible beyond the 'Green Line', "so when the longed for peace comes, and we are liberated from the territories, we will also be rid of them."
In 1977, after Likud's victory, Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, the guru of Ahdut Ha'avoda said, "The country won't take this lying down." Shulamit Aloni told Labor leaders that any democracy that produced such elections was flawed and would lead to a reign of fascism. Shimon Peres remarked that Labor could not join a National Unity government
"because we are Labor and they are rightwing." Amoz Oz called upon the "sane" to arm themselves against the evil plots of the new "tribal" regime. If the Likud was to silence "defeatist" and "morale destroyers," he said, "We will have to react as a fighting worker's movement in the streets."
Unfortunately, little has changed, and now,after the Labor-Meretz debacle, Shulamit Aloni, Israel's former Minister of Education and Communications, has made an appeal to foreign powers to intervene to pressure her (?) country to continue the retreat.
The Egyptian weekly, Al-Ahram, reports Aloni's words: "Israel is the only country left in the world that insists on remaining a colonial state -- one that has usurped the land and rights of another people and continues to subject them to oppression...The existence of the State of Israel will be jeopardized
by Netanyahu's policies...The quicker we give the Golan Heights back to Syria, the sooner our political and moral losses in Israel will be alleviated...The only remaining hope is that world powers will bring pressure to bear on Netanyahu and that he will feel the sting
of economic pressures...[U.S.] President Clinton should use strong persuasive measures on Netanyahu and encourage him to continue the peace process on the basis of the 'land for peace' formula."
While we strongly oppose the administrative detention of Jews, it would make more sense to ban Shulamit Aloni from entering Tel Aviv, and its more extreme environs, such as Ramat Aviv and Givatayim, than to prevent Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh from entering Shechem.
|
FAREWELL
FROM THE EDITOR
I wish to thank the many dedicated and wonderful people I have met and had the privilege to work with at AFSI. Because of you, I felt part of a select company. A special thanks to AFSI's most determined chapter chairmen, Morris Berkower, Bunny Horowitz, Steve Jacobs, Ira Kahn, Helene Klein, Jack Lauber, and Inez Weissman. Thanks to
Ruth King, George Rubin, Bill Mehlman, Ellen Singer, Ron Kravitz, Manny Epstein, Alex Rose, Marvin Maurer, Mitchell Finkel, Jack Greenberg, Bernard Shapiro from the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies, and Richard Hellman from the Christians' Israel Public Action Campaign.
Thanks also to the volunteers in the national office, Oscar Reinhold, Janice Wijnen, Eva Costabel, Charlotte Wahle, Maury Lipson and Barbara Roth. And, of course, a very special thanks to AFSI Chairman Herbert Zweibon. I will miss you all very much.
I hope that Outpost, over the last two years of my editorship, has helped cheer up the more depressed members of AFSI during this dark, bleak and painful period of Jewish history. Or if it did not cheer them up, perhaps it at least helped clarify for them the reasons they were depressed.
--David Isaac
|
|
Outpost
is published by
Americans for A Safe Israel
147 East 76 St. - New York, NY 10021
tel (212) 628-9400 / fax (212) 988-4065
Editor: David Isaac
Editorial Board: Ruth King, George Rubin, Herbert Zweibon. Outpost is distributed free of charge to members of Americans for A Safe Israel. Annual membership: $50.
|
|
|
