"Peace" or Suicide?

The trial balloon floated in the NY Times (the Haaretz of America) of Obama's "Peace Plan" is totally unacceptable.  Why?

1.     It postulates the 1949 Armistice Lines (called the 1967 lines) as the borders, which the armistice agreements absolutely negated.

2.     Jerusalem is to be the capital of both states.

3.     No return of Arab "refugees" to Israel, which they never expected anyway, but no limit to their return to "Palestine".

4.     As an afterthought, unspecified security arrangements.

This is not a plan for peace.  It is a plan for Israeli suicide.  Why?

A.    It would leave 500,000 to 600,000 Jewish Israelis behind the border.  If you want an idea of what they will face, just look at what Christians are facing now in Egypt, Iraq, Pakestan and Syria.

B.    It mentions nothing about a demilitarized "Palestine".  It would put rockets, mortars, Kassams and Grad missiles inches away from Jewish population centers in Jerusalem, Kfar Saba, Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion Airport.  Even if Abu Mazen will not shoot them himself, how would he stop terrorists?  The way they stop them in Gaza?

C.    It would leave the eastern border from the Jordan valley down to Akaba-Eilat open to massive smuggling of weapons into "Palestine", just the way it is happening in Gaza.

D.    As soon as democratic elections are held in "Palestine" Hamas will win them, as they did in Gaza.

E.    How long will it take for the Sovereign State of Palestine to demand that all Israeli soldiers leave its territory?  A day?

F.    How long will it take for Palestine to demand that Israeli military and civilian airplanes stop overflying its airspace? a week?  And then to ask friendly nations to send their airforces to enforce no fly zones?  If someone tries that, what do you think will happen when they meet the Israeli airforce, the best in the world?  (Not as a prediction, but as a history lesson, in the War of Independence the British sent their warplanes to help the Egyptians.  The fledgling Israel airforce shot down 6 Spitfires in one battle, and the British didn't try again.)

G.    How long will it take Palestine to cut off Israel's water supplies?

H.    Would international forces prevent any of the above?  Just look at UNIFIL in Lebanon.  While Hezbollah has amassed 60,000 missiles and emplaced them all over southern Lebanon, UNIFIL hasn't located even one.  But it protests every Israeli overflight to gather intelligence as a violation of sovereign Lebanese airspace.  An international force would not prevent terrorist attacks, but would only make it more difficult for Israel to defend itself.

Thus, if Obama comes up with such a proposal, the answer must be an immediate NO, which the Prime Minister can thereafter explain when he speaks to the joint session of  Congress.  There must be no delay in saying NO, without any ambiguity.

We are told that Israel must come up with concessions to avoid UN recognition of a Palestine State.  The answer to that is that no conceivable Israeli concession or compromise will prevent the UN General Assembly from voting by an overwhelming majority to recognize "Palestine".  So we may as well start from our strongest position and not weaken our opening position in any eventual negotiations. 

Rashi's commentary on the first words of the Bible foresaw just such a contretemps.  He asked:  Since the first positive commandment in the Bible is in the Book of Exodua, why does the Bible start with Genesis?  It is so that when the nations of the world accuse the Jews of stealing the land of others, we can reply,  The earth belongs to the Lord, the Creator.  He gave portions of it to various nations and He gave the Land of Israel to us."

Intransigence Pays

For five years the Hamas kidnappers of Gilad Schalit have stuck to their exorbitant demands for release of 1,000 terrorists or more from Israeli jails in exchange for Gilad Schalit.

                Successive Israeli governments were willing to release the number of terrorists demanded by Hamas but gagged at the demand that they should come back to live in Judea and Samaria where they could resume their terrorist activities and do the most harm to Israel.

                Hamas relied on the Israel public to force the government to give in to their demands.  Just recently they changed their belief that this would ever happen.

                The turning point was probably the press conference of six former heads of the Shabak, Mossad, Intelligence, etc. calling on the Israel government to give in to the Hamas demands, which did not bring their desired result.  At this point Hamas apparently realized they would have to do some rethinking.

                All of this is not my imagination.  Yesterday the number two man in Hamas in Gaza admitted on their television that they would not be able to free all the Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad.  He went on to say that terrorists who came from Israel proper, Judea or Samaria, might have to be left out of this deal.  Why did he say this?  Surprised by the failure of the Israeli government to buckle under to their demand that all terrorists be returned to their places of origin, despite all the Israeli public pressure on the government, they were forced to square the circle if they wanted to reach a deal to release large numbers of terrorists from Israeli prisons.

                They did not want to be seen to give in to the Israel demand that terrorists not be returned to Judea and Samaria.  Therefore they will probably decide to limit the list of terrorists they demand to those who lived in Gaza.  They are already preparing the public opinion of their terrorists in Israeli jails for this change.

                What can we learn from this?  Those who insist that the Prime Minister be "courageous" enough to surrender to all the terrorists' demands, because that is the only way to secure Gilad's release, are wrong.  It is possible for Israel to stick to a principled position and achieve its goals.

                Don't expect any Israeli left-wingers to "get" this, but obviously the Hamas leadership "got" it.

What Else Is New?

 A few days ago I viewed the “CAMERA” expose of a flagrantly slanted BBC feature about Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.  The worst part was that when specific complaints were made to the Commission which is supposed to oversee the accuracy of BBC programming, they rejected all of them and unreservedly defended the program.

            So what else is new?

            The BBC is totally anti-Israel and anti-semitic.  So to varying degrees are CNN and the other networks.  We can try to correct them, but we shouldn't hold our breath.  Did you know that the NY Times refused to print Goldstone's op ed, before he offered it to the Washington Post?  So, are you going to cancel your subscription to the Times?  I don't suggest that, just that you take what you read there with a very large grain of salt.

            It is an error to place AIPAC and J Street on the same level.  J Street's support, financial and otherwise, comes from virulently anti-Israel sources.  The fact that there is a veneer of what Lenin called "useful idiots" on its board doesn't alter that.  There have always been Jews who hated Israel, other Jews and probably themselves. We have them in Israel too.  My son Dani just asked for my help in transcribing a tirade of a young, far, far left Israeli who said he would not be restricted in his resistance efforts (code word for terror) by the opinions of antiquated Israeli leftists and progressives.

            There is a French saying: Plus ca change, plus c'est le meme chose.  (The more things change, the more they are the same.) Before and during WW II, the overwhelming majority of countries of the world fell into two categories, those who wanted the Jews dead, and those who didn't want any Jewish refugees in their back yards.  This included Roosevelt's U.S.  For 60 years from 1945, anti-semitism was in bad repute, but now it has made a full recovery.

            So, should we shrivel up and die?  Of course not. G-d forbid we should ever again rely on the tender mercies of the countries of the world, including the U.S.  Golda Meir was once urged by an American President to take risks for peace, and if anything went wrong, the US would rush to Israel's aid.  She answered, "Mr. President, by the time you get there, we may not be there."  We must rely on our own strength.  If the Arabs ever get the chance to do it, they will massacre every last Jewish man, woman, child and baby.  Peace treaties won't matter.  I don't say every Arab will want to do this, but the history of the Arab world in general and the Palestinian Arabs in particular, for the past 100 years or more, shows that the extremists always manage to terrorize the moderates into submission.

            Is the Jewish People worse off now than in the 1930's and 40's.  No, we are better off.  So be optimistic, we will overcome.  In the words of the WW II song, "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, and we'll all be free."

Tell The Truth — Make Up Something

Last week I heard Abu Mazen on Israel radio.  He was speaking in English to a delegation of left wing retired IDF officers visiting him in Ramallah, and was trying to make an impression as a peace-seeker.

Two things he said caught my attention.

1.      “You went to the General Assembly in 1947, so why shouldn’t we go now?”

2.      “How can I ignore Five Million Palestinian refugees who were driven out of Israel in 1948?”

I didn’t hear any of those present protesting these distortions.  Let’s examine them.

1.      In 1947 it wasn’t Israel (which didn’t exist) or Jews who went to the General Assembly.  It was Britain which wanted to abandon its mandate for Palestine and dump the problem in the lap of the UN. The General Assembly voted for partition of Palestine into two states, Jewish and Arab.  The Jews accepted this and established Israel.  The Arabs went to war to prevent it and lost the war.  Jordan annexed the Arab areas and kept them until the Six Day War in 1967.  During all that time no Arab leader demanded a Palestinian State. 

2.      In 1948-9, hundreds of thousands of Arabs, at most, fled the territory of Israel, not five million.  But what do 4 ½ million people matter when you are trying to make a propaganda point?

 For Arabs, truth is whatever they think will help their cause at any given moment.  If tomorrow or next week they think the opposite will help their cause, then that will become their truth.  Their motto could be, “Tell the truth—make up something”.

Call me politically incorrect, but these are the inconvenient facts.