Battle for the Israeli Right
Bibi announces Likud candidacy
"Sharon abandoned the principles of the Likud," he told the gathering of supporters and members of the press, "and decided to go another way, the way of the left. He is threatening to destroy the party that he built with his own hands. We must defend our home because we have no other."
Prime Minister Sharon's office was quick to respond to Netanyahu's press conference. "Netanyahu continues to spread lies and fantasies and to change history," the message read.
To Netanyahu's claim that he was a successful and strong prime minister, the statement from Sharon's camp replied, "He forgot to mention that he received a strong party [in 1996] and gave back a party with only 19 mandates. It was Sharon who brought it back up to 40 mandates and brought the Likud to power.
"His lies," the message concluded, "bring up bitter memories from the past."
Let battle commence?
A Chamberlain Story
The Ghost of Appeasements Past Haunts Israel as Gaza Pullout Wraps UpAs of this writing, the Israeli army (officially known as the Israel Defense Force, or IDF) is in the final stages of removing the last remaining Jewish settlers and protestors from the settlements that Israel has maintained in the Gaza Strip for the last thirty-eight years. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, once the outspoken champion of Israeli settlements in the territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, now stands accused of treason by his one-time biggest supporters. As the newspapers and TV screens fill up with pictures of Israeli troops in full riot gear scuffling with brick-wielding settlers and carrying them away from the homes that they've lived in for, in some cases, nearly forty years, one has to wonder why Ariel Sharon (and 75% of the Israeli public) thinks that this latest attempt at appeasement, based on the old Land-for-Peace formula, will have any positive results for Israel. All one must do is pick up an accurate history book to see that not only has every attempt in modern history at appeasement of this type, with an enemy of this magnitude of evil, failed, but it seems that these attempts have, in one way or another, involved the Jews. Israel is continually haunted by these ghosts of appeasements past, while their Arab enemies build on each concession in their ultimate goal of driving the Jews into the sea.
The first such attempt occurred in Britain, nearly two decades before British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain delivered his infamous "peace in our time" speech. In October 1917, the Cabinet of Prime Minister David Lloyd George authorized Lord Arthur Balfour, Britain's foreign minister at the time, to issue what is now known as the Balfour Declaration. Signed by Balfour, Chaim Weitzmann (leader of the international Zionist movement), and Emir Faisal ibn-Hussein (leader of the Arab revolt that marginally helped the British take the Middle East from the Turks in World War I), it called for an independent Jewish state that would be established as soon as Jewish immigration and development was sufficient in the barren wilderness of Palestine. The borders of this Jewish state-to-be included all of Israel, all territories later captured in the Six-Day War, all of modern-day Jordan, and even parts of southern Lebanon. This declaration was codified into international law by the League of Nations in the same 1920 act that created the French and British mandates in the Middle East. Simultaneously, Britain and France granted Arab independence in Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. After being granted nearly all of the Middle East, when they had owned nothing for centuries, Lord Balfour could not imagine that the Arabs would "begrudge this small notch of land" earmarked for the Jews.
Lord Balfour's assumption held true for about one year. In 1921, Abdullah, the brother of Faisal ibn-Hussein, who was also the leader of the Hashemite tribe, demanded that Britain give him Transjordan, the area set aside for Israel east of the Jordan River, to be his own kingdom. The Hashemites had just been driven from Mecca and Medina by the House of Saud and Abdullah argued that Britain had reneged on its promises to give him land based on T.E. Lawrence's mostly-fictional account of Abdullah's role in the Arab revolt of World War I. After a costly campaign in Iraq, Britain was weary of becoming involved in further conflicts with the Arabs. This resulted in the British Foreign Office giving nearly 75% of the land mandated to become a Jewish state to Abdullah, a clear violation of the League of Nations mandate upon which British authority in the region was based. This was the beginning of the appeasement idea which would later come to be known as "Land-for-Peace." Unfortunately, this would not be the last time that Jewish land would be given away in hopes of placating an implacable enemy.
Shortly after World War II, Britain's own failed attempt at appeasement, the international sympathy generated by the discovery of Hitler's death camps led to a serious UN effort (one of the few in their history) to re-establish the Jewish homeland along the 25% of the old League of Nations mandate that remained intact. However, the objections of Arab member states caused the UN to further whittle away about half of this land in a region where Arabs already controlled 98% of the land. This second attempt at appeasement failed spectacularly when Israel, in an area about 10% of its original mandated size, declared independence. The surrounding Arab countries, still unwilling to accept a Jewish state, no matter how small, invaded immediately, intending to drive the Jews into the sea. Fortunately, for Israel, the fledgling state was able to drive back her invaders and expand the nation to more defensible, albeit still tiny, borders.
Now, one would think, having observed first-hand and defeated the effects of appeasement of their Arab neighbors, that Israel would never again be willing to try such a failed measure. However, through widespread international acceptance of Arab revisionist history, Israel would later succumb to the pressure of naively attempting to appease an enemy that seeks to destroy her in hopes that their latest concession would change their minds.
On August 20, 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands in a public display that marked the mutual acceptance of the Norwegian-brokered Declaration of Principles, commonly referred to as the
The Oslo Accords. Based on the repeatedly failed Land-for-Peace formula, Israel granted Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, the terrorist group that had been murdering Israeli civilians and attacking Israeli troops for the last quarter-century, governmental control over all Arab population centers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which would be the first step to a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Jericho. In exchange for recognizing these terrorists as the legitimate representatives of the "Palestinian" people and allowing them to control the land that they had been fighting over for the last 25 years, the PLO officially recognized Israel's right to exist, renounced terrorism, and (officially) abandoned its goal of Israel's destruction. On paper, it looked like appeasement of Israel's enemies had, for the first time ever, succeeded. However, like all previous attempts at appeasement, the Oslo Accords were doomed to failure.
The first few years after the signings at Oslo saw the rise of a new Arab terrorist group known as
Hamas. This terrorist group, which has repeatedly denounced the Oslo agreements and openly calls for Israel's destruction, killed dozens of Israeli civilians in suicide bombings throughout Israel proper from 1994 through 2000, at the same time that Israel was gradually withdrawing and reducing its presence in the West Bank. Yet, despite this and evidence that Arafat's Palestinian Authority (the Oslo-established descendant of the PLO) was allowing these actions to occur, it seemed that the Oslo Accords might yet have a chance to bring a lasting peace. Amazingly, in the July 2000 Camp David negotiations between Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, Israel offered the Palestinian Authority nearly everything that they had been fighting for all those years. The terms of the proposed agreement called for a Palestinian state comprising all of the Gaza Strip and 97% of the West Bank, excluding largest Jewish settlement in the region, which contiguously bordered Jerusalem. In exchange for the remaining settlement, the new state of Palestine would receive the same amount of Israeli territory. Arafat had been offered everything that his organization claimed to want. The only problem was that this agreement would leave Israel without any pressing security concerns, a condition that the Arab goal to remove Israel from the face of the Earth could not endure. Arafat introduced one last demand, one which would kill any democratic, non-apartheid Jewish state: the right of former Arab residents of Israel and millions of their descendants to return to the cities that they evacuated during the Arab invasion of 1948. The Palestinians knew that such a condition, if accepted, would mean national suicide for Israel. It's obvious that this is exactly what they wanted. Barak, as expected, refused this unacceptable demand and the Camp David Peace Talks, the best chance that the Arabs had of establishing yet another Arab state in Jewish land, found its way into the historical dustbin of failed Middle East peace attempts.
The last remnants of that faint hope from Oslo disappeared in September 2000 when the Palestinians, under the pretext of outrage over a visit by then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount (a site holy to both Muslims and Jews), launched a second insurrection against Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza. Hundreds of Israelis civilians died as suicide bombers attacked civilian centers on an almost-daily basis. However, this time, it was not just Hamas or other groups doing the killing, groups that Arafat could conceivably claim were outside of his control. Most of the deadly attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians were now coming from the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a group directly linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction. The Arabs had proven, once again, that peace with Israel was not on their agenda. To deal with this new emergency, the Israeli electorate removed the dovish Ehud Barak as prime minister and replaced him with Ariel Sharon, viewed as someone who had the will to decisively deal with the terrorism that he had been fighting as a soldier and politician for the last sixty years.
Now, it seems that these ghosts of appeasements past haunt Ariel Sharon. Hamas, and most of the Arab world, rightfully regard this as a huge victory for their terrorist campaign. They have publicly stated that attacks on Israelis will continue until "all of Palestine is liberated" (translation: until Israel is destroyed). Sharon has claimed that this evacuation of Gaza will be first step towards peace. In reality, it will only lead to more attacks on southern Israeli towns. He claims that Israeli lives will be saved. In reality, more Israelis will die as energized Arab militants seek to finish the job that resulted in the Gaza withdrawal. One would hope that Ariel Sharon would learn from past attempts at appeasement, as Ebenezer Scrooge did from the ghosts of Christmases past. Now it appears that he will add his own ghost to the list as Israelis suffer for the idea that they can appease an enemy who seeks the annihilation of their race.
Daniel Pipes on the Gush Katif surrender: "A Democracy killing itself"
Daniel Pipes was one of only a handful of scholars who recognized the danger of militant Islam and of the so-called peace accords negotiated in Oslo from their very beginning. His track record on these matters is far above that of most others - in fact, only Bernard Lewis and Norman Podhoretz come close.
Which means that
this piece is a must-read. He shall be proven right again, I fear.
He finishes on an especially chilling note:
Israel's mistakes are not unique for a democracy - French appeasement of Germany in the 1930s or American incrementalism in Vietnam come to mind - but none other jeopardized the very existence of a people.
Bibi, we need you...
More on Netanyahu
In this piece in National Review,
Joel C. Rosenberg feels that Netanyahu was right to resign and that the Gaza withdrawal is an act of surrender by Israel:
In the end, it is far from clear that Netanyahu has helped himself
politically. Indeed, many in Israel believe he may have just scuttled his
political career by alienating so many powerful political and financial
interests who support Sharon and his plan. Which made his move all the more surprising to those who know how much he would like to be prime minister once again.
But regardless of his timing, his decision to oppose Ariel Sharon on this vital national-security issue was correct. Indeed, the one who should be stepping down from government service is not Netanyahu or Sharansky but Ariel Sharon himself.
Sharon has served Israeli national security well in the past, but that is no longer the case. Today, he is signaling surrender to those he has spent his life fighting. Perhaps worse, he is badly dividing his country just at the moment a far larger strategic threat is emerging: a nuclearized Iran.
However, David Frum disagrees:
[Netanyahu] timed his resignation not to make a difference, and torpedo the plan, but to make the maximum splash – and to best position himself to try again for Israel’s prime ministership. This is the second time he has attempted this trick. In the 1990s for example he won office by opposing Oslo – and then in office continued to follow the Oslo policy. Only he did it in the worst possible way: never daring to withdraw from Oslo but instead carrying the policy out so haltingly and grudgingly as to earn Israel all the blame for Oslo’s failure – without any of the putative benefits of actual escape from Oslo.
Bibi, we love you
In another
brilliant piece, Caroline B. Glick makes it clear that Bibi is one of a kind, and one of us.
Netanyahu's willingness to risk his political career rather than share ministerial responsibility for a policy that will wreak strategic disaster on Israel shows a strength of character and a moral backbone that are rare in politics generally and in Israeli politics specifically.
And so it is. Makes me proud to have something in common with him, even if it's only our
favorite watch brand.
It should be noted, however, that I really believe that he, too, should wear his on the
right, as he is so obviously right-minded.
