A TIME TO SPEAK

Vol. III:4 (No. 28)

April 2003 -- II Adar/Nissan 5763

THE EXPRESS ROAD TO DOOM

Let Israel now declare,

Since my youth they have often assailed me,

But they have never overcome me.

                --  Psalm 129:2

Indeed, many nations have assembled against you,

who think "Let our eye obscenely gaze on Zion".

                            -- Micah 4:11

The Arab war to destroy the State of Israel has now been going on for 55 years. It is usually called inaccurately the Arab-Israeli-Conflict, or even more inaccurately the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. For most of these 55 years of relentless Arab hostilities against Israel,, most of the world was unperturbed so long as it was not inconvenienced. In fact, other nations have never had to exert itself or incur risks or costs on Israel's behalf -- a comfortable position from which they take onto themselves the privilege of dictating its fate.

Now the world's chief Guardians of Civilization have ordained that this year and no later there must be a Final Settlement -- a phrase with chilling echoes of the Final Solution. To that end, they promulgate a Roadmap that treats Israel as though it were a conquered enemy. The dictates of the Roadmap are far worse than even the disastrous Oslo Accords, because they impose still more restrictions on Israel, demand still more sacrifices from it, and deprive it of its sovereign right to defend itself or even to speak for itself.

It seems not by chance that its authors are insistent on snatching away from Israel those places where they have deepest and strongest religious, historical and emotional roots, sensing that this loss will break the Jewish heart and crush the Jewish spirit. Thereby, they can look fortward to eliminating the Arab-Israel Conflict by eliminating Israel, or at least reducing it to the status of a helpless and therefore obedient vassal.

All it asks of the PLO "state" is a repetition eat the same words about "recognition" and "end to violence" that it has spoken many times before and never honored and never meant to honor. (The same day the Arafat signed the Oslo Accords in Washington, he made a radio address in Arabic assuring his listeners that it was all a trick and he would surely proceed to the destruction of Israel.)

For acting out this verbal farce, it will be rewarded with the invention of a state where no Arab nation or state ever existed before, or was even imagined until it was concocted as a propaganda ploy after 1967.

* * * * * * *

"Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel."

                                                             -- Official statement of the PLO

Traffic Directors for this Roadmap call themselves the Quartet. Three of them are:

1] The European Union -- on behalf of a continent that has been oppressing, persecuting, robbing and slaughtering Jews for 2,000 years.

The driving force for the European Union and speeding down the roadway is Great Britain, whose bungling perfidy when it held the Mandate over Palestine laid the foundations for the Arab War to Kill Israel, and who not only instigated but led the first assault in 1948.

2] Russia -- homeland of the pale and the pogrom, with an egregious record of brutality to Jews, that under the pseudonym Soviet Union instigated, trained and equipped the Arab forces for the assaults of 1967 and 1973 and for its ongoing war of terror.

3] The United Nations -- the international epicenter of Judeophobia and political and moral depravity, open champion of Arab terrorism, willful conspirator with terrorists.

4] The United States -- that does not belong in this kind of company.

* * * * * * *

In the United States there is an upsurge of efforts by Christians and Jews alike to save Israel from the deathtrap of the Roadmap. The efforts are or will be forwarded by peaceful assembly, by conferences, by dissemination of information, and by such individual acts as writing a letter to a senator or congressman or newspaper.

If these efforts succeed, they will not only save Israel, they will also save the United States from acting against its own best interests.

Past U.S. administrations have given Israel solemn pledges that there will be no imposed solution forced upon it. The Roadmap is the quintessential imposed solution.

1] In 1967, the U.N. Security Council, that had done nothing to forestall the war, took it upon itself to set the terms for the aftermath, producing the much misquoted Resolution 242.

On that Resolution, Ambassador Arthur Goldberg of the United States, as co-sponsor, asserted in a public statement that the terms did not mean an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-war 1967 lines, that were merely the 1949 ceasefire lines and not borders. The author of the Resolution, Lord Caradon of the United Kingdom, made similar avowals.

2] President Lyndon Johnson asserted that it was not for any other nation to dictate or impose the terms of a future settlement.

3] In 1991, the administration of President George H. W. Bush promised Israel in writing:

"In accordance with the United States traditional policy, we do not support the creation of an independent Palestinian state. [. . . .] Moreover, it is not the United States' aim to bring the PLO into the process or to make Israel enter into a dialogue or negotiations with the PLO."

4] When George W. Bush was campaigning for the presidency in 2000, he made the statement: "In recent times, Washington has tried to make Israel conform to its own plans and timetables, but this is not the path to peace."

When he met with Israel's Prime Minister Sharon in 2001, President Bush made the statement to the press: "I told him that our nation will not try to force peace."

5] Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2001 made the statement: "We will propose solutions, we will not impose solutions."

6] National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice during the campaign of 2000 said of then candidate Bush "[He] believes the U.S. cannot force its foreign policy on other states and that it is up to Israel to determine what risks it takes to reach peace."

Now, she curtly declares that the Roadmap is "non-negotiable" and asserts that "Israel does not have a veto".

7] In June 2002, President Bush announced that a Palestinian state is a "long-held vision" of U.S. policy -- hardly consistent with the record of recent past promises to the contrary.

In that same address, he made the state dependent on PLO reforms, adoption of democracy, putting an end to terrorism and incitement against the Jews. These conditions have now been abbreviated to having Yasser Arafat name one of his terrorist colleagues as a prime minister, who in turn appoints himself a cabinet of other terrorist colleagues.

Through this device, an administration reluctant to deal with Arafat directly can deal with him indirectly through his minister. Reform, democracy, an end to terrorism, and so forth, are not deemed necessary after all.

This sequence does not inspire confidence that any future promises or guarantees will last for long.

* * * * * * *

The Palestine-Arabs are fanatically hostile to the United States. To give them a state is to empower an enemy.

1] After the ghastly attacks on the United States and its citizens on September 11, 2001, the PLO and its subjects celebrated with dancing and singing, cheering the terrorists, and distributing candy for the gladsome occasion.

2] The officially appointed imams of mosques in the PA regions preach religious sermons with the endlessly repeated ritual prayer for the destruction of the evil America.

3] During the recent war in Iraq, hundreds of PLO subjects tried to reach Iraq to fight the Americans, and especially to attack them as suicide bombers.

When one suicide bomber succeeded in killing four U.S. Marines, the PLO renamed a street in Jenin in his honor.

4] American military men of Asian background are derided as "Mongols". Condoleeza Rice is rarely mentioned without derogatory remarks about her race.

5] George Bush and Tony Blair have been formally banned from entering PLO-controlled territory.

To respond to this hatred and attempt to do harm with the reward of a state is not a tactic to appease hostility but to reward it and thereby encourage it.  It will be a self-inflicted and massive defeat in the War on Terror, creating an independent state of terror, for terror, and by terror. 

Furthermore, by acting in concert with the Quartet, the United States forfeits its own freedom to make its own policy. According to the Roadmap all rulings and decisions are to be made by the Quartet as assembled in international conferences. These rulings and decisions will without any doubt always be against Israel. Even if the United States wanted to temper that anti-Israel dedication, it would be outvoted three-against-one.

* * * * * * *

                We looked for peace, but no good came;

                for a time of healing, but behold, terror.

                                             -- Jeremiah 8:15

Among the inspirations of the draftsmen of the Roadmap, is that Israel may not judge for itself if the PLO is continuing its offenses against it. Compliance on either side is to be judged by the Quartet or its delegated agents, among them officials of the CIA that trained the PLO terrorists in the tactics they use to murder Jews.

Even the United States has been excessively lenient in judging PLO compliance with its obligations under the Oslo Accords. Under U.S. law, the administration must give regular reports to Congress on that compliance, on the basis of which Congress will decide whether or not to continue to send the PLO large chunks of U.S. taxpayers' money.

But successive administrations have withheld information from Congress, by declaring it classified. When Congress votes to restrict PLO funding or PLO activities in the United States, the President can by law "waive" the restrictions. That is what happens regularly, and President Bush has within recent days once again "waived" the need for PLO compliance.

The other members of the Quartet, in contrast, require nothing at all of the PLO. The EU does not even mind that it uses its lavish donations to pay for terrorism and for training children to be jihad-killers.

* * * * * * *

There have been many critiques written of the Roadmap, and more come out each day. Only a few are quoted here.

An American perspective is given in "Road Map, Road Kill," by Jonathan S. Tobin, Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, 2 April 2003:

The signs of an impending sellout are all too obvious. Statements coming out of Washington confirm the fears of many that the nightmare scenario envisioned by many friends of Israel in this country is about to become reality.

It goes something like this:

After American forces finish off Saddam Hussein’s regime and begin their attempt to transform Iraq into the first moderate Arab democracy, the State Department will swing into action to revive the 'peace process' between Israel and the Palestinians.

The American need to soothe the wounded pride of the Arab world and repair damage to our relations with Europe and the United Nations will lead to a revived focus on the Middle East 'peace process,' a phrase that can be loosely translated as the system by which the Jews are made to make concessions that endanger them in exchange for further Arab threats to Israel’s existence.

The so-called 'road map' put forward by the Diplomatic Quartet of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia will then be presented to both the Palestinian Authority and to Israel.

This scheme makes tangible demands for Israel to make concessions on its security, such as loosening the Israel Defense Force’s grip on the territories and granting the terror-infested P.A. more power and control. Israel will freeze all building of any kind in Jewish communities there, setting the stage for further withdrawals.

The Palestinians will then be asked to increase their rather intangible efforts to halt terrorism and to make progress toward 'reform' of their kleptocracy. This will lead to the setting of a date for the declaration of a Palestinian state with full sovereignty.

In the nightmare, the United States will lean heavily on Israel to pull back its forces and prepare to completely surrender strategic lands where hundreds of thousands of Jews live. Diplomatic strong-arm tactics to make the Israelis see that resistance is futile will follow. At the same time, in the same way that the Oslo accords were enforced before they went up in a cloud of Palestinian explosions, the monitoring of Palestinian “progress” will be a lot more lenient.

Grading the Palestinians on a curve that would be the envy of any failing high school student, the same intelligence assets that will hold the Israelis up to scorn for every carport constructed in Efrat, wholesale Palestinian violations of the peace will be ignored.

Despite Yasser Arafat’s continuing control of the terror and crime syndicate that we laughingly call the representative body of the Palestinian people, the ascendancy of Mahmoud Abbas — aka 'Abu Mazen the Holocaust denier' — to the position of P.A. prime minister will enable the United States to pretend that democracy, peace and goodness reigns in Ramallah.

The next step will be to force Israel to accept a virtual rerun of the same failed peace proposal that Ehud Barak offered to Arafat in July of 2000: half of Jerusalem, and all of Judea and Samaria in exchange for peace. If the Israeli government refuses, then the United States will employ all of its post-Iraq war victory prestige to force it to its knees. With the willing assistance of left-wing American Jews, Ariel Sharon, who won the last two Israeli elections in landslides, will be forced out in favor of someone who will do Washington’s bidding.

After that, a truncated Israel will be forced to cope with further Palestinian incursions and terror, not to mention a possible intifada from Arabs in the Galilee. In response to Israeli complaints that the road map has led to disaster, America will tell the Israelis to stop whining and make more concessions.

Are you frightened yet?

The good news is that none of this has happened yet. The bad news is that given the pressure being exerted on this country by its British ally, it just might.  [. . . . ] Talk from British Prime Minister Tony Blair as well as Secretary of State Colin Powell and his coterie of appeasement-minded diplomats make the nightmare all too real.

But is postwar catastrophe for Israel certain? The answer, despite the prophets of doom, is No.

Why not?

First, don’t assume that everybody in the administration is an idiot. Many at the National Security Council and the Department of Defense have been paying attention to the ties that have been clearly demonstrated between the Palestinians and Iraq. Syria’s intervention in the war on behalf of the Iraqis and intention to use Hezbollah to destabilize any peace effort elsewhere is also undermining the 'peace processors.'

This administration is committed to changing the Arab world, not just appeasing it as its predecessors of both parties did. Blair’s hopes notwithstanding, Palestinian treachery and terror will win them no friends even in the postwar push for peace.

[. . . . ]Second, don’t underestimate the stupidity of the Palestinians. They could have had everything they could have asked for on a silver platter three years ago and rejected it because they wanted even more — all of Israel. Despite the noises about Abu Mazen’s "moderation," he and the other killers in Ramallah haven’t changed their stripes. It is more likely that they will embarrass any administration that emulates the efforts of Bill Clinton to accommodate them than it is likely that they will go along.

Third, don’t underestimate the will of the Israelis. [ . . . . ]

Finally, don’t underestimate the support for Israel among the American people. Bush got a taste of that last spring. He and his political guru Karl Rove haven’t forgotten the full court press of Christian Evangelicals to lay off Israel at the height of Arafat’s terror war. Nor will he willingly antagonize them or an energized American Jewish community that is more open to supporting him in 2004.

Victory in Iraq may bring peril for Israel. But those who assume the worst aren’t necessarily right. Though it looks like the Quartet juggernaut may turn the Israelis into road kill, a lot can happen to derail that collision before it happens.

A number of analysts of the Roadmap and its consequences find the word "disaster"

the readily apt designation.

"A Map to National Disaster", by Uzi Landau, former Israeli Minister of Internal Security now in charge of strategic relations with the United States,  Ha'aretz, 8 April 2003:

If the Quartet's road map is accepted, Yasser Arafat will win the greatest victory of his life. Despite the blatant violation of all his commitments in the Oslo agreements and his responsibility for the murder of more than 1,000 Israelis - nearly 800 of them during the last two years of terror - he has not been punished. On the contrary, he is holding on to the far-reaching concessions granted him at Oslo and in addition will get what even Yossi Beilin and Shimon Peres refused to give him: the establishment of a state, 'independent, viable, sovereign with maximum territorial contiguity,' in principle, and without negotiation. That state is the main goal of the map, resulting from a childish belief on the part of the Quartet that the mere creation of the state will guarantee peace.

At the same time there's no mention in the map of any of the conditions noted by the government as essential for our existential security: demilitarization; our complete control of the air space; a ban on the authority to sign international agreements, for example.

As far as we are concerned, there are two inviolate conditions: public recognition of Israel's right to exist, including an end to the incitement educating toward our destruction in the Palestinian school system and inculcating peace as a value from an early age, and Palestinian relinquishment of their demand for the refugees to return to Israel.

These demands, without which there is no chance for peace, do not appear as a condition. Moreover, the Saudi Arabian initiative, which the map says has 'ongoing importance,' speaks of solving the refugee problem through UN Resolution 194, which includes the 'right of return,' as its centerpiece.

Borders: Those who believed Israel would be able to maintain control over areas of decisive strategic importance for our defense, find the map speaks about 'ending the occupation that began in 1967,' in other words, a return to what Abba Eban called 'the Auschwitz borders.'

Internationalization of the conflict : In the first year of the previous, unity government, Israel was careful not to use all that was necessary to defeat the terrorist organizations in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, it did not topple the Palestinian Authority and did not expel Arafat. The price: hundreds of killed, thousands of wounded, and a rapid deterioration to a deep and unprecedented economic depression that we are now desperately trying to end. We did so to prevent the internationalization of the conflict by the entry of foreign observers and international conferences, that would, in effect, take out of our hands the sovereignty over management of the conflict and harm our ability to defend ourselves effectively.

That's exactly what the road map does. Internationalization under Quartet orchestration: It convenes two international conferences meant to establish the Palestinian state and lead to a permanent agreement, accompany the process, establish a supervisory mechanism for the implementation, judge the disputes between the PA and Israel, set a 'realistic timetable' for progress and become involved in the negotiations 'when necessary.'

Jerusalem: The road map gives the Palestinians a political status equal to ours and determines that the decisions in the negotiations over the city's status will be with regard to 'the political and religious interest of both sides.' In other words, the division of Jerusalem. To remove any doubt about the Quartet's intentions, the road map emphasizes, 'the government of Israel will reopen Palestinian institutions closed in East Jerusalem.' And of course that includes the notorious Orient House.

A prize for terror: Without any condition for an end to terror first, Israel is ordered to immediately dismantle all the outposts and freeze all settlement activity, including natural growth - another bonus the Palestinians didn't even get at Oslo.

The road map is a huge prize for terror. In its wake the Palestinians will not only achieve their strategic goals, but will reach a clear conclusion: terror pays. They will get all the concessions we shower on them, organize themselves with money they get from the world and us, rebuild their terror units and attack us at the moment convenient for them. Our experience from the Oslo agreement teaches us that for us, the map bodes a future in which terror is much, much worse.

It's possible to understand why the European members of the Quartet initiated the road map. They are the ones who cynically attack President Bush, who is fighting the free world's war against Saddam Hussein; and during the years, with the same cynicism, they turned a blind eye to terrible Palestinian terror and held us responsible for it. They support the Palestinians and Arafat, Saddam's ally, and demand we concede unceasingly to terror.

Will the Americans accept the European positions? Is it possible the U.S. -which regards terror as the greatest danger to Western civilization, and is led by Bush, who declared war on terror without concessions of negotiations until it is totally eradicated like in Afghanistan and Iraq - will adopt a map saturated with far-reaching concessions that will only encourage terror?

The road map does not express the 'Bush vision' as expressed last June. It is not a recipe for peace, but for national disaster. Accepting it will lead to terror and war under far more difficult conditions that we've ever known. [ . . . . ]

"Road Map to Disaster", Jerusalem Institute for Western Defense, April 2003:

Since the so-called 'road map' for PLO-Israel peace provides for a Palestinian state, it is by its very nature a reward for PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorism and will be regarded as such throughout the Arab world.

Three anti-Israeli factors are engaged in its formulation. The European Community is motivated partly by the anti-Semitism raging there with an intensity unknown since the 1930s, partly by fear of Arab terrorism, and partly by the desire to score off the United States in the Middle East. Russia is anxious to assure itself the maximum possible share of Iraqi oil after the Saddam Hussein regime is displaced. It has signed very favorable agreements with Iraq in this matter and does not want a successor Government to disown them or the United States to press it to do so.

The United Nations and its present Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, have an interest in satisfying the bloc of Moslem and African states dominating the UN General Assembly. It is doubtful whether Mr. Annan will take into consideration that many of the non-Moslem or partly Moslem African states act largely out of fear of Moslem violence and that UN support of Moslem claims will encourage them to continue to do so.

[. . . . ] The US State Department has been anti-Israeli since Israel was born (indeed, had President Truman heeded its advice, Israel would not have been born at all). And Moslem oil remains a powerful factor with Republican administrations no less than Democratic ones.

Given the proved probability that any PLO Government - whether allied with Hamas or not - will renege on all treaty obligations of interest to Israel at the first convenient opportunity, a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River must constitute a permanent and serious threat to Israel's existence once the immediate effects of the Arab defeat in Iraq have evaporated.

Moreover, its creation will be a signal to Moslem terrorists the world over that terrorism still pays and the US war with it is half-hearted at best. It is not possible to buy Moslem favor with concessions. They are and will continue to be regarded as weakness. This applies to Israel as well as to the Quartet, but Europe will not be immune to the consequences.

Natan Sharansky, many years a prisoner of conscience in the Soviet gulag and now a minister in the government of Israel, points out the perversities of the Roadmap. "A road map that leads straight back to Oslo," The Jerusalem Post, 27 October 2002:

This week Israelis got to look at the "Road Map to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli Palestinian Conflict" that was formulated by the diplomatic Quartet (US, EU, UN and Russia). Even a cursory reading of this road map shows that the only place to which it will lead is straight back to Oslo.  

When I heard President Bush's speech on June 24, I thought that Oslo's flawed approach to peacemaking would be buried once and for all and that a genuine hope for peace was kindled. The president spoke then about the inextricable link between democracy and peace. [. . . . ]

But unfortunately, the "road map" unveiled this week is a far cry from the vision of peace Bush articulated four months ago. For what he did is place the hope for peace squarely on the shoulders of the Palestinian people. The Quartet's road map, in other words, has returned to the illusion of peace with dictators. 

[During the Oslo process] any measure that was deemed to weaken Arafat was to be conspicuously avoided for fear of undermining our 'peace partner'. This logic created a climate in which the pressure to preserve the 'momentum' of the peace process and to adhere to fixed timetables had a far more powerful hold on world public opinion than did the need for Arafat and the PA to fulfill their commitments.

Arafat and the PA quickly realized that merely by paying lip service to peace in the outside world, they could build a terrorist autonomy inside Palestinian-controlled territory with nary a protest.  

For nearly a decade, the international community failed to force Arafat and the PA to confront terror. The Palestinian regime was free to mobilize all the means at its disposal to incite the Palestinians against Israel in order to divert attention from their own corrupt and repressive rule. Even though some tried to point out the dangers, the momentum of peacemaking proved too difficult to overcome. By the time the Oslo illusion collapsed, Arafat and the PA had succeeded in creating a climate in which Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and Tanzim could all compete with each other to see who could kill more Israelis. 

[. . . . ] The road map unveiled this week is bound to yield the same results. [. . . .] Instead, this road map will only result in a new illusion whereby a new Palestinian dictatorship will be called upon to protect Israel's security and advance the cause of peace. Judging from this map, the Quartet believes that a Palestinian society poisoned for the last decade to hate Israel and Jews will be ready to freely choose a new leadership in a matter of months and be ready to peaceably join the community of nations in less than a year.   

Once again, we are told, all that is needed to make peace a reality is resumed security cooperation, some money, and a little good will. [. . . .]  

But the Quartet's road map [of] rigid timetables, confidence building measures, and new Palestinian strongmen will bring us no closer to peace today than they did for the last decade.  [. . . .]

* * * * * * *

It is I who say of Jerusalem, "It shall be inhabited",

And of the towns of Judah, "They shall be rebuilt",

And I shall restore their ruined places.

-- Isaiah 44:26

Excerpt from A Time to Speak on "Twelve Bad Arguments for a State of Palestine":

Giving up Judea-Samaria means that Jews would be cut off from the cities and sites that are the heart of their historic homeland. Israel could not prevent Arabs from destroying ancient Jewish sites and relics. There would be no chance to make new discoveries that shed new light on the history of Israel and its people.

Some who are made aware of all these circumstances nevertheless say: "It is useless to oppose a State of Palestine -- it is inevitable". Such passive submission, such moral indolence, is tacit consent to an act inimical to the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. It is a limp surrender of both the past and the future.

For 2000 years, the Jewish people did not despair of restoration to their Land. When the restoration has at last come, those who toss it away betray both their ancestors and their descendants.

END