I almost feel sorry for Ehud Barak. Israel's most highly decorated general -- a man whose bravery and daring are unchallenged -- is being bounced around like a yo-yo by Arafat, Assad, and Albright. And the people who were so euphoric about the defeat of Bibi have obtained a political clone. Like his predecessor, Barak's modus operandi is to promise, back track, promise, threaten, apologize and surrender. A general is supposed to see strategy as the game of chess. Barak is playing a game of bluster and duck.
In the most pathetic development of all, Mubarak has been invited to "arbitrate" between Arafat and Barak. The proverbial fox has been let into the chicken coop. Mubarak, let us never forget, presides over a government-controlled press more violently anti-Semitic than those of all the other confrontation states. The cartoons, editorials and commentaries of the Egyptian press are
The cartoons, editorials and commentaries of the Egyptian press are more redolent of Nazi journals than anything since World War II.
What sane leader would ask for the intervention of an unfriendly and hostile third person? And what Zionist would accept intervention from any other sovereignty when it comes to decisions that affect the survival of Israel? Why are Israel's legislators and citizens so complicit in policies which are totally contrary to their interest? The last is particularly puzzling when one considers that Israel lives among enemies: not a single inch of Israel is bordered by a truly friendly nation and there is no margin for mistakes.
Those so-called supporters of Israel who urge the Jewish nation to take unacceptable risks should take a long hard look at America's pusillanimous response to the crisis between Taiwan and mainland China. Taiwan's democratically elected and very popular president recently balked at reunification with the despotic regime in Beijing. This elicited the crudest threats from Beijing's gangster regime, complete with saber rattling, insults and ultimatums. Guess whose side the Clinton administration took?
The State Department apparatchiks managed to sputter inanities about our "one China" policy, hinting that a takeover of Taiwan and its subjugation by the mainland is really just part of our "long standing" regional agreement.
Taiwan is a staunch ally, a democracy, and a thriving and progressive state. Mainland China is an oppressive and regressive dictatorship. Furthermore, Taiwan's leaders have explicitly repudiated the irredentist claims of the Chang Kai-Shek regime. Fortunately, Congress still manages to appreciate the difference between both Chinas, but given the fact that none of our presidential candidates for election in the year 2000 has taken any stand, Taiwan's citizens may well have sleepless nights.
One might ask what will happen when the Arabs declare a "One Palestine" policy, after Israel has isolated and weakened itself. It gives further pause to recall that the Taiwan lobby was once a mighty political juggernaut. No President or legislator ever took them on and the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was known as "Formosa's senator." When this formidable lobby began to dabble in rightwing causes that were not pertinent to its interests, it ran out of steam and less than two decades later was rendered impotent when Nixon went to China and Carter not long after removed the embassy from Taiwan's capital to Beijing.
The "Jewish Lobby" in America has squandered its formerly considerable clout on peripheral leftwing causes, from the ERA, to abortion rights, to goofy environmentalism, to more goofy pacifism. It, too. has run out of steam when it is most needed to defend Israel.
Taiwan is an island state with a population that is committed to its self-interest. Israel is an island of another sort, facing a solid sea of implacable enemies who need only cross a street to attack. Furthermore, neither its citizens nor its supporters abroad even contemplate their self-interest. It behooves them to observe the simmering crisis between Taipei and Beijing and our nation's shameful response.
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Outpost - 10 - July-August 1999