A TIME TO SPEAK
Vol. IV:3 (No. 39)
March 2004 - Adar-Nissan 5764
BREACHES OF FAITH
A coterie within Israel's political establishment,
with its prime minister at its head, has concocted a plan it calls Disengagement.
The term is a euphemism for capitulation to terrorism and abandonment of
much of the Land of Israel to the terrorists, through unilateral withdrawal
from Judea, Samaria and Gaza, forced removal of many thousands of Jews, and
destruction of the eminently legal communities they built.
It is a plan that can only be pushed through
by usurpation of dictatorial powers. If that happens, it will burden Israel
not only with loss and danger, but also with multiple breaches of faith.
Breach of faith --
[1] with 4,000 years
of history and heritage
[2] with all who defended
and redeemed the heritage
[3] with the most
fundamental principles of democracy
[4] with staunch friends
* * * * * * *
[1]
History and Heritage
God spoke to [Abraham] . . . ."I give the land wherein
you sojourn to you and your offspring to come, all the land of Canaan, as
an everlasting holding. I will be their God". -- Genesis 17:3,8
"No Jew has the right to yield the rights
of the Jewish People in Israel. No Jews has the authority to do so. No Jewish
body has the authority to do so. Not even the entire Jewish People alive
today as the right to yield any part of Israel" -- David Ben-Gurion
Belief in eventual redemption and return was
never forsaken, and sustained the Children of Israel through every trial
and reversal of fortune, decades of Babylonian Exile and millennia of the
Diaspora, oppression, ghettoes, pogroms, and hellfires.
Now the redemption and the return have at last
been realized. The ancient heritage has been restored and defended. It defies
comprehension that it should now be rejected, torn up and thrown away.
It cannot be claimed that the sacrifice fulfills
some obligation of justice to another party's rights, for its alleged rights
are false and spurious [see Issue 2]. Nor can it be claimed that surrender
is forced by irresistible circumstances and outside pressures. Rather, the
proponents of Disengagement lack the nerve and the energy to counter and
overcome circumstances and outside pressures.
* * * * * * *
[2] The Defenders and the Redeemers
And they shall build the ancient ruins,
Raise up the desolations of old,
And renew the ruined cities,
The desolations of many ages
-- Isaiah 61:4
It is a breach of faith with all, soldiers
and civilians alike, who for more than a century have toiled to restore a
desolate wilderness to its ancient fruitfulness, and who fought, bled and
too often died to defend it against invaders and would-be usurpers.
Out of a population that was 600,000 in 1948,
and has now reached 5,000,000, more than 10,000 men have been killed in
the fight to defend the people and the land when foreign military forces
have attacked to slaughter the people and seize the land. Many more were
wounded, crippled, and bereaved. Terrorism has taken more than 1,000 more
lives and ruined more thousands still.
To abandon some of the country now, and leave
the remnant vulnerable to future disaster is to turn their sacrifices into
futile waste.
The pioneer families who chose to take upon
themselves labor and peril and loss to take part in fulfilling the prophecy
of redemption are now threatened with being torn by brute force from the
roots they planted and seeing all they built destroyed.
The threat comes from a man who once put his
name to these words:
"A General Staff which fights Jewish women
and children, and which cooperates with its worst enemies against part of
its own people, will not be capable of standing up to the real foes, should
it have to."
-- Ariel Sharon, 1995
". . . The settlers will know how to defend
themselves. If the IDF withdraws from the area on government orders, they
will stay on, and they won't be alone. Hundreds, even thousands, of volunteers
will come to their aid, . . . to join in the self
defense." -- Ariel Sharon, 1995.
* * * * * * *
[3] Contempt
for Democracy
In the electoral system of Israel, citizens
vote not for individual candidates but for parties and their platforms.
Sharon is prime minister because so many of them voted for the platform
of the party he heads. At the same time, they massively rejected the platforms
of the pro-appeasement parties that now form the Opposition.
Sharon can only carry out his "disengagement"
by scrapping the platform that brought his party to power, and adopting
the platform of the defeated Opposition. Of the majority of his own party
who reject his plan, he says "They can't tell me what to do" -- an assertion
of dictatorial power that he threatens to back up by using the support of
the defeated and defeatist Opposition to force his will on the country.
A majority of citizens of Israel voted in favor
of one set of principles and against the contrary ones. The office-holder
entrusted with applying the first and approved set of principles instead
enforces the contrary ones. This egregious breach of faith undermines the
pact of trust between citizen and government that is essential to democracy.
So little does this particular office-holder
care about the essentials of democracy, that he toys with the fate of the
nation without revealing his plans to the people, to the Knesset [National
Assembly] or even his own cabinet. However, he does consult with leaders
of foreign and hostile states, including the nervous King Abdullah of Jordan
and the mischief-making President Mubarrak of Egypt.
In relation to the United States, whose people
are noble friends to Israel, he behaves more like a suppliant vassal than
the elected prime minister of a sovereign state.
From
"Ariel Sharon's Unilateral Surrender," ny David Bedein, FrontPageMagazine.com.,
17 March, 2004:
[. . . . ] Israel is often referred to as the
only democracy in the Middle East. Let us hope and pray that it stays that
way. After all, it is surrounded by hostile dictatorships where totalitarian
rule is the norm and that constantly seek Israel's destruction. [. . . .
] Yet on March 9, 2004, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ignored Israel's
parliamentary system of democracy and behaved like a dictator.
On that day, our news agency learned that the
Israeli Prime Minister had unilaterally informed officials of U.S. intelligence
that he would begin to dismantle the 21 thriving Israeli farming communities
and evict 1200 Israeli families of the Katif district of Gaza as early as
May 1, 2004.
Prior to his Pentagon leak, Sharon held no
cabinet discussion or decision, no Knesset parliamentary discussion or decision
and no Israel National Security Council discussion or decision. He acted alone.
And only last week, a member of the Knesset
revealed yet another secret plan documented by Sharon to brutally evacuate
the Jewish communities of Katif by ordering the cutoff of all their water,
electricity and police or military protection.
[. . . . ] This is not the first time that
Sharon has ignored the decision-making process of Israel's democracy. After
trying an earlier unilateral move on his own, Sharon in May, 2003, was forced
to deal with the Israeli cabinet that ultimately approved the Road Map prepared
by the quartet-- the U.S.,
the UN, the EU and Russia-- all of them foreign powers.
The cabinet added fourteen clear reservations,
designed to protect Israel's absolute autonomy and security, which include
reasonable demands that The Palestine Authority (PA) dismantle all terror
organizations, and that the end of the process will lead to the end of all
claims and end the conflict.
The U.S., however, has ignored Israel's reservations,
and Sharon has followed suit by making it a policy of saying and reiterating
that "Israel accepts the Road Map," as if it does so without any qualms.
[. . . . ] Sharon has therefore formally relinquished
Israel's independence, placing it instead under the thumb of outside powers
and financial interests that may not have Israel's best interests in mind.
[. . . . ] Indeed, the French and British governments,
the European Union and the government of Egypt have all been discussing
the possibility of deploying troops to Gaza to fill the void that would
be created by a pullout of Israeli communities from the area.
The question has been asked: Can Sharon implement
such a radical policy without the approval of the Israeli Government, Knesset
or Israel National Security Council? Remember he is a democratically elected
leader of a robust democracy on par with the United States and Great Britain.
The answer is that he just might be able to
get away with it:
[. . . . ] At this point, that means that Ariel
Sharon challenges Israel's democratic system, for only in a totalitarian
country would we normally witness a regime that would force its citizens
out of land and homes that they have lawfully bought and farmed.
[. . . . ] At a time when the Prime Minister
of a democracy has announced his intention to oppress some of his own citizens,
those citizens need to know that the free world has not forgotten them.
Katif is no different than the Sudetenland of Czechoslavakia at the start
of World War Two that was given away by Neville Chamberlain.
History is repeating itself in the War On Terror."
* * * * * * *
[4] Israel's Friends
Israel's friends abroad include many who are
not Jewish but understand the significance of the Land of Israel and the
place of the Jewish People there, have stood staunchly in defense of both,
their historic rights and their strategic necessities. Often, they do this
in the face of media ignorance, academic delusions and government muddling.
That kind of friendship should be understood and appreciated, not subjected
to another breach of faith.
"Our
American Friends are Disappointed in Us," by cabinet minister Uzi Landau,
HaAretz, March 2004:
The heads of [an American Jewish delegation] who
visited here last week appeared very upset when we met early Wednesday morning.
"Explain why your government is surrendering to terror," one of them demanded
of me, adding "there has never been such sympathy for Israel on Capitol
Hill and understanding of its needs. There has not been any pressure by
the administration on Israel. [. . . . ] Someone on your side failed big
when it comes to understanding the administration and Congress in Washington...You
missed a rare opportunity to leverage the centers of support in post-9/11
America."
[. . . . ] Israel's sworn friends are embarrassed,
confused and find it difficult to deal with what they understand to be the
country's feebleness. For years I have maintained close contact with senators,
congressmen, administration officials and leading journalists (some of whom
were student colleagues of mine at MIT in Boston), and with Jewish community
leaders and leaders from the Christian camp - all Israel supporters and
sympathizers. We discuss problems, the past and the future.
In recent months, I have been hearing a single,
worrisome message: For decades, Israel was for them the Six Day War, the
Entebbe rescue, and the attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor - examples of
the war on terror and standing up to pressure. Now it has become a paradigm
of surrender to terror and pressure. The erosion in its credibility is deep
and continuous, especially among our sworn allies. It is impossible to understand
you, they tell me. After three years of blood-soaked terror to declare concessions
without anything tangible in return? To give in to the megalomaniacal demands
of Nasrallah, freeing masses of terrorists for one Elhanan Tennenbaum and
the corpses of three soldiers? To promote a unilateral withdrawal, which
really means rewarding the terror groups, without any political or security
compensation?
Up until recently, those senators and representatives
would have laid down on the fence for us, fought for whatever we defined
as a red line. 'We fought,' they say 'and you surrendered. You don't have
any more red lines.' Now they doubt our determination, our commitment to
the war on terror, and they doubt the strategic judgment of the country's
leaders. [. . . . ] In times of need, when administrations in Washington
wanted to apply pressure on us, they struggled on our behalf. Often they
succeeded. And now they are disappointed with us.
Our friends in America add that the officials conducting
contacts with the American administration are novices who do not understand
the system. They neglected the power bases friendly to Israel. They go to
an America where the slogan is undying war against terror and speak of the
fatigue of the Israeli public; the need to concede. Instead of forcefully
demanding what Israel deserves, they knuckle under to Palestinian demands.
Instead of speaking of Israeli justice, they present Israel as inferior
- morally, politically and strategically. They want to be liked and win
the opposite result. They speak good English, but don't understand American
language.
'Never,' say these friends, 'has an Israeli government been so efficient at pulling the rug out from under the feet of its sworn supporters and strengthening its opponents in the U.S."
* * * * * * *
The Disengagement is another lap down the road
to ruin, in a race begun more than ten years ago with secret, and at the
time illegal, negotiations with the PLO that produced the Oslo Accords, foisted
on a people who never gave it majority consent.
Shimon Peres, current Leader of the Opposition,
was the progenitor of these Accords and indulgent godfather of the terrorist
Palestine Authority. To this day, three-and-a-half years into the Oslo War
that he caused, he still has not noticed any flaws in the Accords. The problem
is merely that Israel has not yet given away enough of its land, security,
history and heritage. Sharon now uses Peres as his representative in foreign
countries, where he wanders ever prattling his doctrine of more and faster
surrender.
The lethal consequences of Oslo did not lead
to a reversal of course. The terrorist PLO was left in control of the heartland
of the Land of Israel, carrying out slaughters and massacres within Israel
with no serious impediment. Successive Israeli governments have made pinprick
responses to the massacres of its people -- futile pretenses of action against
a few terror chiefs quickly replaced and a few weapons factories quickly
replaced.
In all these years there has been no recognition
much less resolve that Oslo bred a monster, and those who bred it have the
duty to put an end to it.
The perpetration of Oslo and of the failure to undo it was followed by a disgraceful rout from the security zone in Lebanon. This strip was held not in any attempt to claim Lebanese territory but only to prevent attacks on Israel by the terrorists entrenched north of the zone. When an Israeli government succumbed to harassment from within, by groups sponsored by the European Union, it left the civilian residents of northern Israel to live under the shadow of 12,000 missiles aimed at them by Hezbollah, dedicated to death and destruction. This flight encouraged the belief that Israel runs away from terrorists, which encouraged terrorists to strike harder on all sides.
Next came the outsiders' "roadmap" [see Issues
23, 28], in which Israel's fate is to be dictated by a Quartet that includes
the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia. Sharon obediently forced
acquiescence on his cabinet. Some members insisted on the addition of 14
points to give a façade of protection for Israel. The content of the 14 points
were never revealed, and they have never been heard of since. They would
not in any case have undone the basic damage; that Israel was relinquishing
sovereign control over itself.
Now comes the latest notion: leave most of
Judea and Samaria and all of Gaza (and before long the Golan Heights) to
various enemy groups united in lust to kill Jews and achieve the openly-proclaimed
goal of obliterating Israel. In the meantime, Israelis will for a time hold
a remnant of their Land, cowering behind a barbed-wire fence.
* * * * * * *
"Evacuating the settlements will give
a tailwind to terrorism. Everything that the Palestinians see as a crack
in our ability to stand strong, distances the end of terrorism."
"It will take more than a division to
repair the damage caused by withdrawing from a single settlement under fire."
-- General Moshe Ya'alon, Chief of Staff, Israel Defense Forces
"The evacuation is dangerous, and the
retreat will give the Palestinians a sense of victory and encouragement
for terrorism."
-- Avi Dichter, Head, General Security Service
"Talk in Israel of the possibility of
a unilateral retreat encourages the terrorist organizations to commit more
attacks." - Gadi Shamni,
Commander of the Gaza Division
"The Sharon plan is understood by the
Palestinians as a victory for terrorism. It will [prove] the effectiveness
of terrorism in the view of Islamist elements."
-- Aharon Ze'evi Farkash, Head, Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Branch
Among
the many analyses of the grotesque character of the Surrender-as-Disengagement
plan is "From Madrid to the Gaza Strip" by Evelyn Gordon, Jerusalem Post,
15 March 2004:
If I were a Spaniard, one of the people I would
be angriest with right now is Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Responsibility
for last week's terror attack in Madrid obviously lies with the perpetrators.
But short of the terrorists themselves, no one has done as much to encourage
terrorism in recent months as Sharon has. Prior to Sharon's announcement
of his unilateral withdrawal plan in December, terrorism had been racking
up an impressive list of failures worldwide. The September 11, 2001 attacks
in America, far from causing the US to flee the Middle East, resulted in
the toppling of both the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's
regime in Iraq [. . . .]
Even in Israel, terrorism appeared to have
proven a failure for the Palestinians. After three years of terrorist warfare
the Palestinians seemed further than ever from their declared dream of statehood.
The Palestinian Authority had essentially collapsed, its leader was being
boycotted by the US administration, the Israeli army was operating at will
in Palestinian territory, and most Israelis were far less willing to agree
to sweeping territorial concessions than they had been three years earlier.
But then Sharon announced that Israel would
unilaterally withdraw from all of Gaza and part of the West Bank, without
demanding anything of the Palestinians in exchange. Not surprisingly, this
was universally interpreted as a resounding victory for terror -- and therefore
created a strong incentive for more terror.
Muhammad Deif, the Hamas terrorist who has
topped Israel's wanted list for years, declared last week that "Hamas actions
are what made Ariel Sharon decide on a retreat from Gaza. In the past he
promised security and said that Netzarim was like Tel Aviv, and now he is
ready to leave Gaza unconditionally. "God willing, we will see victory and
the liberation of our lands with our own eyes." (It is worth recalling here
that to Hamas, "our lands" include all of Israel, not just the West Bank
and Gaza.)
[. . . . ] Finally, the Bush administration
has also joined the chorus. According to a Haaretz report, the three American
envoys who discussed the plan with Sharon last weekend said that Washington's
chief concern was that the withdrawal could be perceived as a victory for
terrorism. President Bush, they said, has laid down a policy of defeating
terror, not surrendering to it, and this rule applies in Gaza no less than
in the rest of the world.
[. . . .] Nevertheless, even the EU never suggested
a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza under fire. Nor was there any pressure
for such a move from either the US or the Israeli public. Indeed, it was
only a year ago that Israelis elected Sharon in a landslide on a promise
not to withdraw under fire, while handing Labor, which ran on a platform
of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, the worst defeat in its history.
The unilateral withdrawal was entirely Sharon's
idea -- and by adopting it, he proved decisively that terrorism does eventually
pay if the terrorists just keep up the pressure long enough. That message
has now been reinforced by the Spanish election victory, but it is Sharon
who holds the copyright. And the result can only be to encourage more terror,
both in Israel and abroad."
* * * * * * *
Gaza First was an early slogan of the Osloids,
but in fact it was not to be the first retreat from Gaza. The strip was
seized by Egypt in 1948, and used as a base both for terrorist incursions
into Israel and for Egyptian military attacks. Israel tried to free itself
from this; menace by driving the Egyptians out in 1956. But it could not
withstand the bullying of then Secretary of State John Foster Dulles --
a man compromised by Nazi connections -- and turned it back to Egypt.
Egypt turned it back to a base for terrorism
and military attacks, until it launched another war in 1967 and was again
driven out. The hard and costly experience with Gaza under enemy control
did not deter the Osloids from turning it over to the PLO. Thereby, they
turned it again into a terrorist base -- one from which mortars and shells
fall on Israeli cities even beyond the sacrosanct Green Line. Also as a result,
many Israeli soldiers have been killed or wounded in efforts to curb the
terrorism; efforts governments keep limited in scope and thereby render ineffectual.
Views on Gaza are examined by Herbert
Zweibon, Americans for a Safe Israel Bulletin 165, March 2004:
Sharon
knows the immense strategic importance of Gaza, as do America's foremost
military experts. On June 19, 1967, one week after Israel's stunning triumph
in the Six Day War, then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara sent a
memorandum to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, requesting "the views of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, without regard to political factors, on the minimum territory
in addition to that held on 4 June 1967, [which] Israel might be justified
in retaining in order to permit a more effective defense against possible
conventional Arab attack and terrorist raids."
Ten
days later, the Joint Chiefs responded with an analysis of each of the areas
Israel had won in the war, which, they emphasized, was "based solely on
military considerations from the Israeli point of view." They recommended
that for Israel to have "a militarily defensible border," it should keep
all of the Golan Heights, most of Judea and Samaria, and some parts of the
Sinai.. Regarding the Gaza Strip, the Joint Chiefs stated: "By occupying
the Gaza Strip, Israel would trade approximately 45 miles of hostile border
for eight. Configured as it is, the strip serves as a salient for introduction
of Arab subversion and terrorism, and its retention would be to Israel's
military advantage."
The
Joint Chiefs never retracted the report, and what they wrote then is as
valid today as it was in 1967. The only thing that has changed is the political
atmosphere. [. . . .] The international community, particularly its vocal
leftwing elites, inverted the true nature of the conflict. It was no longer
a huge Arab world against a tiny Israel, but now a poor, oppressed, weak
challenger (the Palestinian Arabs) against a powerful, relentless juggernaut
(Israel).
Within
Israel itself the myth that the "occupation" is the heart of the problem
gradually made inroads. The Israeli left, internalizing the world's accusations
and deeply alienated from the Jewish heritage that the territories symbolize,
soon accepted the Arab argument and worked feverishly, through the media
and academia, to demonize the "settlers" in order to justify their mass expulsion.
Gaza became their easiest target. [. . . .]
What
Gaza does have is unique strategic value. Israel dare not voluntarily surrender
what would be a crucial beachhead for a future Arab invasion. Just recall
what the Allies in World War II sacrificed to gain the beachhead at Anzio
-- six weeks of intense fighting, 30,000 dead or wounded.
Moreover,
an Israeli retreat would give Hamas what the retreat from southern Lebanon
gave Hezbollah -- a huge boost of morale, a psychological as well as strategic
victory of inestimable value. Israel would again be "turned into a doormat,"
in the words of Arieh Stav, director of the Ariel Center for Policy Research.
And if Israel is perceived as a doormat, it will be treated as a doormat--with
catastrophic results.
* * * * * * *
If the Disengagement is imposed on Israel:
-- It
will lose its dignity and honor, and the resolution and strength of character
that have thus far sustained it.
-- It will put its future
in desperate jeopardy, morally as well as physically.
-- It can never again
be seen as a trustworthy ally or a true democracy.
-- It will lose the regard of the friends that
had remained true to it.
-- It will lower itself to the level of the
nations that bow down.
END