Dr. Irving Moskowitz
One of the most extraordinary statements ever made by a prominent Israeli has been completely ignored by the American media.
The Israeli daily Ha'aretz, reporting on the recent visit to Washington by Labor Party leader Ehud Barak, quoted Barak as telling leaders of AIPAC: "I travel across [Israel] and look into the eyes of the people who will be killed. They will not be killed due to security interests, but due to blindness, and you share some of the responsibilty for this blindness."
The idea of blaming AIPAC for future Israeli victims of Arab violence is more than grotesque--it is a virtual blood libel.
And it is also terribly ironic, because the last time the Labor Party ruled Israel--from 1992 through 1996-- more Israelis were killed by terrorists than during any other four years in Israel's history. Does Barak believe that Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres "share some of the responsibility" for those deaths...?
Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot. Imagine if Benjamin Netanyahu told leaders of Americans for Peace Now that they would be partly to blame for future Israeli victims of Arab terrorism, since their pro-Arab positions encourage and embolden the Arabs. Wouldn't that be on the front page of the New York Times..?
(Continued from p.8)
peace is around the corner if Netanyahu only makes
sufficient concessions, than face up to the monster for
which they themselves served as Dr. Frankenstein.
More difficult to understand, why does
Netanyahu continue to pursue a process whose fatal flaws he
has repeatedly and eloquently analyzed? As a member
of the opposition, Netanyahu sharply attacked Labor's
policies, declaring, "This government wants peace at
any price and will pay any price for
peace."(Jerusalem Post, September 28, 1995) And a year later, on July 10,
1996, in a speech to the National Press Club in
Washington, now-Prime Minister Netanyahu said, "There is, I believe,
a clear rule of history operating in modern times,
and that is that those governments that pursue peace at
any price pay a very high price indeed and do not get
peace." In that same speech he promised to change the way
the game was being played. He concluded: "We want
to change the conception of the negotiation process.
Somebody said to me that the Arab parties have got used to
a pattern of negotiations that is like collective
bargaining: We bargain; they collect. And this will change, for
the betterment of all of us, for the betterment of peace."
But of course, these have all proven empty promises. A weak man, Netanyahu reverses Theodore Roosevelt's dictum: He talks loudly and carries a flabby stick.
Gamaliel Isaac is an MRI specialist at Laurie Imaging Center in New Jersey.
Americans For a Safe Israel
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Outpost - 12 - September 1998