Vol. V:4 (No. 52)
April 2005 - II Adar Nissan 5765
EXERCISES
IN FUTILITY
"We learn from
history that we learn nothing from history."
-- George Bernard Shaw
About 3,500 years ago, a pharaoh of Egypt was worried about the state of his realm. Perhaps it was in some danger? If so, it must be because those strange Children of Israel were sojourning there. The Israelites were a peaceable people, tending their flocks and herds, neither doing nor intending harm. But the pharaoh, having frightened himself with an imaginary threat, felt compelled to kill or at least enslave them.
The fundamental misconception and brutal tactics did not do Egypt any good at all. Quite the contrary. Nevertheless, they have been repeated for millennia, taking on the character of an obsessive compulsion neurosis: Cure your own fears or problems by blaming them on those strange Children of Israel.
Over and over again, rulers and would-be rulers, nations, societies, and individuals resort to this technique to fix their public or private unease. It never works, for the simple reason that the Children of Israel are never the real cause of the unease. But the technique, futile and pernicious as it is, never goes out of fashion. It is the nature of obsessive compulsion neurosis that it cannot be cured by the lessons of experience.
Normal human flaws and shortcomings of the Children of Israel do not add up to capital offenses, and are thus inadequate. One manifestation of the disorder is the fabrication of fantasies drawn from the darkest corners of the psyche -- from the medieval Blood Libel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the Jenin Massacre. If those who tout the ferocity of the Children of Israel really believed in it, they would not feel so smugly secure from retaliation by the victims of their slanders. When a cartoonist was asked why he always attacks Israel with never a hint of criticism of the PLO he explained "Jews do not issue fatwas".
A current manifestation of the disorder is a response to unease about the Islamist goal of worldwide supremacy and domination. That goal is flagrantly proclaimed, and massively ignored. It seems so much easier to cling to the delusion that the only problem is the existence of Israel, so if Israel can be made to go away the Islamists will be satisfied and pose no threat to anyone else.
Some actually believe this, bolstering their surety by ignoring all evidence to the contrary. Some aver it without believing it, using it to camouflage their own pre-existing animus against the Children of Israel. Some use it as an outlet for frustration over the decline and decay of their own societies. Be that as it may, this fixation on a false peril diverts attention from real perils.
BRITANNIA
On the Middle East, British governments and policymakers have not guessed right since 1922. The serial failures have not brought any benefits to Britain.
Britain's unconscionable bungling of the Palestine Mandate caused incalculable harm to the Children of Israel, and created the so-called "Question of Palestine" which it still considers itself uniquely qualified to solve. [See especially Issue No. 2]
In 1917, Foreign
Secretary Lord Balfour
pronounced as official policy that "His Majesty's Government looks with
favor on the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, to be open
to close Jewish Settlement". Lord Balfour expressed the hope that since
vast territories were to be bestowed on Arabs, they "would not begrudge
the Jews their little notch".
In 1922, the League of Nations entrusted Great Britain with a temporary mandate over "Palestine" east and west of the Jordan River, with the terms of the Balfour Declaration as the foundation of the Mandate. If Great Britain had carried out the terms of its own Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate in good faith, the world would have been spared the Question of Palestine.
Instead, the
Mandatory Government started out by illegally cutting off 76 percent of the
"Jewish National Home" to invent a client kingdom for its protege
Abdullah the Hashemite. This kingdom had no historic identity or even name so
it was called after a river, and known first as Trans-Jordan and then as
Jordan. All Jews were and still are banned from Jordan.
British governments then progressively banned Jews from more and more
of the remaining territory of Mandate Palestine, territory that had been
mandated for "close Jewish settlement". This was illegal under the
terms of the Mandate. That Israelis now do live in some of that territory is
not illegal, no matter how often or how shrilly British governments and the BBC
denounce it.
By 1939, the Mandatory Government had virtually slammed and bolted the
gate of the Jewish National Home, knowing that this was death sentence on Jews
trapped in or trying to escape from Nazi-ruled Europe. Shiploads of refugees
approaching the shores of the Jewish National Home were turned back or left to
sink. After 1945, survivors of the Holocaust trying to reach the Jewish
National Home were turned back or incarcerated in camps in Cyprus.
Many of the millions who were murdered would otherwise have lived to
redeem and build their Land as an earlier and better Britain had intended.
At the same time, the British were building up the very sparse Arab population west of the Jordan River through mass immigration of Arabs from other countries. Those migrant Arabs had no connection with Palestine, but their offspring now claim that they are the most ancient and only true possessors of the Land where the Children of Israel are alien intruders. This fraud is fervently embraced and promoted by British parliamentarians, clergy, academics, journalists, students, entertainers and assorted others.
It was Britain's duty to protect the Jews under their governance: But .
. .
[a] When the Jewish community
of Hebron, that had been there since biblical times, was attacked by Arabs and
many were murdered, the British responded by ejecting all Jews from Hebron.
Jewish return to Hebron after 1967 is denounced as a crime.
[b] British soldiers stood by
and did nothing when Arab terrorists ambushed a medical convey of the Hadassah
Hospital in Jerusalem and massacred doctors, nurses, and patients.
[c] In the last days of the
Mandate, the British government gave military and strategic advantages to
invading Arab forces and tried to deprive the Jews of the means of defense. The
Jordan Legion that besieged and bombarded Jerusalem was commanded by British
officers.
All of this may have given personal satisfaction to such avowedly Judeophobic British officeholders as Neville Chamberlain, Anthony Eden, and Ernest Bevan. It may have been amusing for the British personnel on the spot. It did not win any military or economic or political benefits or Arab affection for Great Britain.
This realm once produced parliamentary democracy and the doctrine of civic rights, created much of the world's greatest literature, and stood alone and valiant against the Armada and then Napoleon and then Hitler. Since the late seventeenth century, Jews have lived there in liberty and security, and with gradual admission into public life.
But now its culture is debased, crime is rampart and seemingly uncontrollable, the police and the courts are ineffectual, education is failing, health care is in crisis, massive immigration of peoples hostile to British traditions and institutions is splitting society, and the pettyfogging regulations of the European Union are eroding independence and personal liberty. The greater the unease within British society the greater the Judeophobia, both indigenous and imported, with verbal and violent attacks on British Jews tolerated and excused.
At this pass, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced his "personal priority", and it is one irrelevant to Britain's wellbeing: That is: to impose his favored solution to what he calls "the single most pressing political challenge in our world today". This he foolishly fancies to be the Question of Palestine that he means to answer with a Two-State Solution/Roadmap that would -- as many of his constituents crave -- deprive Israel of its sovereignty and viability.
Rather than learning from the blunders of his predecessors at Downing Street, he is intent on compounding them. Britain is in the throes of an obsession with "Palestinians", but that cause is actually peripheral to the real challenge and hazard to Britain: Islamism's worldwide ambitions of dominance. No amount of pandering on "Palestine" will diminish that hazard.
EUROPA
The nations of Europe have submerged themselves in the European Union that has submerged itself into Eurabia [See Issue No. 48]. As the dhimmi section in that pact, it must echo and facilitate the Arab fixation on demonizing the Jew and seeking the destruction of Israel.
Europe invented Judeophobia and had a virtual monopoly on it until the rise of Islam. It is one of the few remnants of its society to which it still clings, even as it gives up its independence, stultifies itself with EU bureaucracy, lets its traditions, culture and religion be whittled away, fills its cities with hostile immigrants, and commits demographic suicide via plummeting birthrates. The jettison of their own faith and identity leaves a gap into which they stuff a Palestine fetish that provides a retroactive justification for Europe's millennia of crimes against the Children of Israel.
Europe
has come close to freeing itself of Jews. It cannot abide that Jews should be
free of Europe, and presumes to dictate the fate of those Jews who are now
sovereign and flourishing in their own Land, far surpassing Europe in every
worthwhile endeavor. [See Issue No. 44] So a dying Europe bares its decaying
fangs at Israel in spite masked as diplomacy.
That
diplomacy is personified in its foreign policy chief Javier Solana, quoted in
"Arafat Lives", by Ephraim Karsh, Commentary Magazine, March
2005:
"'The best tribute to President Arafat’s memory will be to intensify our efforts to establish a peaceful and viable state of Palestine,' declared the European Union’s foreign-policy chief, Javier Solana. At the same time, Solana unveiled a new plan to facilitate the so-called road map drafted in 2003 by the EU, the U.S., Russia, and the UN -- but in 'a less incremental manner': that is, by deleting the proviso conditioning progress toward the creation of a Palestinian state on a cessation of violence and terrorism."
Why does Europe ponder a "best tribute to President Arafat's memory". Perhaps it deems its bestowal of a Nobel Peace Prize an inadequate tribute to the mass-murderer terrorist.
Scholars of European history may if they like examine the 2,000-year-long record of persecution of Jews, slanders and libels, extortions, exclusions, expulsions, ghettoes, pogroms, and massacres and in search of evidence that Europe was any the better off for them or ever likely to be..
* * * * * * * * * * * *
AMERICA
In Great Britain, a candidate for election flaunts unfriendly intentions toward Israel as a way to win votes. In the United States, any candidate who harbored such intent would more likely hide it for fear of losing votes. This is symbolic of the difference between the state of the Old World and the state of the New World.
A nation whose own character was rooted in the Bible has a unique affinity with both Ancient and Modern Israel. America can feel comfortable with such an affinity because as a nation it still has self-confidence and self-respect.
There are some pockets of Judeophobia among small but influential cliques. One of these cliques subsumes academics and intelligentsia who malign Israel, driven in part by a need to set themselves apart from mere popular opinion.
A less conspicuous but more powerful clique has financial and business interests in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. Many of them are members of an international investment partnership called the Carlyle Group. This clique is often interconnected with State Department desk-holders and diplomats who expect to be beneficiaries of bounty from Saudi Arabia. [See Issue No. 25]
Secretaries of State drawn from members or employees of this clique tend to be ostentatiously harsh on Israel, among them John Foster Dulles of the Eisenhower Administration, James Baker III of the George H.W. Bush Administration, and Condoleeza Rice of the George W. Bush Administration.
An example of how this clique works can be found in U.S. policy toward Israel during the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower. He yielded control of foreign policy to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, a Judeophobe with well-known past connections to Nazi Germany.
In the prelude to the Sinai Campaign of 1956-57, Dulles devised and Eisenhower executed a policy contemptuous of Israel's peril and apprehensions. In the aftermath of the Sinai Campaign, the United States became the protector of Egypt's warmongering dictator Gamal Abdul Nasser. The President had to go on national television to explain to the citizens of the United States why he would impose callous and potentially lethal sanctions against Israel should it stand in the way of the Dulles policy.
This policy enabled Egypt to use the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip as bases for terrorism against Israelis and eventual military assault on Israel. It also enabled Egypt to carry on its illegal blockade of the Suez Canal, not only against Israeli merchant but also against ships of neutral nations that carried a cargo to or from Israel.
Egypt thereafter pursued an anti-American policy and went into alliance with the Soviet Union. Nothing came of Dulles's attempt to use actions against Israel to lure Iraq into a proposed anti-Soviet pact.
In later years, Eisenhower understood how wrong and futile the Dulles policies had been, and regretted that he had gone along with them. Eisenhower belatedly admitted a mistake, but anti-Israel elements in the U.S. establishment today extol the mistake as something to be emulated and ignore the regrets.
This instance of recognizing an error in judgment did not set a trend. Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk and other champions of the Oslo Disaster defend and try to resume their meddling. Failed and futile policies are still pursued by the State Department and/or the White House.
Empty mantras are compulsively reiterated, and ill-considered measures are compulsively repeated:
[1] Bloody acts of PLO terrorism are followed by pleas that "all parties exercise maximum restraint". Sometimes this is abbreviated to merely calling on Israel to "exercise restraint" when its people are slaughtered. The spokesmen who recite these lines do not back up the plea by citing an instance when "restraint" inhibited terrorism.
[2] Another plea is that the PLO "do more to stop terrorism". Since it is the PLO itself that is perpetrating the terrorism, this formula is fatuous as well as futile.
[3] Of the course of decades, plans have been hatched to solve the crisis of the moment or even, more ambitiously, to impose a full-scale settlement. One emissary after another has been dispatched to deal with the parties concerned. Each mission produces a new set of increasingly ill-considered terms that are never carried out. Each mission also is greeted with an upsurge of terrorism, and innocent people die in these exercises in futility.
[4] For the past dozen years, the U.S. taxpayers have been required to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the PLO, and $2,000,000,000, a year to Egypt. Madam Doctor Secretary Rice would like to add pensions for retired terrorists.
The PLO invests its allowance in salaries for terrorists (sometimes in the guise of "security services"), education in a curriculum of hatred, and assorted forms of graft. [See Issue No. 12] Its clergy preaches sermons cursing and damning America, and its news media are similarly venomous. Burning the American flag is a popular sport. Mass murder of Americans is celebrated by singing, dancing and passing out candy.
The government of Egypt subverts American policy and sanctions vicious anti-American propaganda.
The subjects of the PLO and Egyptian regimes get little or no benefit from this American generosity. Thus the American people are made to subsidize those who hate them and wish them harm, while no humanitarian purpose is served.
[5] A cherished misconception is that all will be well if all parties to a dispute become democracies. But democracy means only that a population can choose its own government. It will not necessarily choose a nice government.
In the specific case of "a democratic Palestine", the mere act of casting a ballot cannot eradicate generations of indoctrination in hate and violence and aspirations to martyrdom. [See Issues Nos. 32, 33] In elections already held within PLO-land, campaigns feature rival claims of which party killed the most Jews in the past and can be trusted to kill the most in the future.
[6] A similar misconception is that a debased society can be quickly redeemed by removal of a bad leader. This does not work when corruption and violence are embedded in the society. It has certainly not worked in PLO-land since Arafat has been replaced by the wicked but wily Abbas.
In a hostile world the United States has been Israel's best and sometimes only friend. Yet even a friend can make mistakes, and those mistakes can do more harm than an enemy can achieve.
The United States has always stood firm on Israel's right to exist and has even helped it with resources and equipment to defend itself against repeated Arab wars of genocidal intent. Yet it has always backs a United Nations ceasefire demand that restrains Israel from a victory that would dampen the Arab belief in eventual success. The aggressors are thus left free to launch one war after another.
When the United States joins the rest of the world in forcing Israel to relinquish whatever the Arabs lost through aggression it makes that aggression virtually risk-free. That is not the way to discourage it.
In past years these were some basic principles of U.S. policy that have now been recklessly scrapped.
[1] Israel must not be forced to return to the ragged and indefensible cease-fire lines of the period 1949-1967. That is: The lines aptly described by Israeli diplomat Abba Eban as "Auschwitz lines", that the Arabs themselves wiped out by their aggressions. Even Great Britain and France once agreed to this principle. [See Issue No. 23]
A study by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior military to whom the United States itself entrusts its security demonstrates that those lines that retreat to those lines would deprive Israel of territory indispensable to its defense.
The revised policy of the incumbent Bush-Rice Administrations reverses this principle by demanding just such a retreat. Indeed, it goes even further by demanding that the shrunken Israel be bisected to grant its proposed PLO-state "contiguity". And even this remnant of Israel would be under the control of a Quartet of foreign and largely hostile overlords. [See Issues Nos. 23, 28]
[2] Previous presidents, including the unfriendly George H. W. Bush, stood firmly against the notion of a Palestinian state. The incumbent Bush-Rice Administration, pledged to what George W. Bush calls "the good cause of the Palestinian people", is infatuated with a vision of a Two-State Solution. \
This makes sense only if one believes that:
[a] Israel, with 8,000-10,000 square miles, is too big and must to be cut down
[b] The Arab world, with 6,145,389 square miles is too small and must be enlarged
[c] The 22 states given to the Arabs are not enough, and there must be 23 of them -- and 2 of those within the boundaries of Mandate Palestine-Jewish National Home.
[d] It is necessary for the commander of the War on Terror to be godfather to a terrorist state dedicated to the destruction of Israel
[e] This will placate and satisfy an international Islamist movement that aspires to world domination.
Madam Doctor Secretary Rice has recently proclaimed that "there can be no peace without a Palestinian state". She errs by a mere three letters. A realistic assessment is "There can be no peace with a Palestinian state". [See Twelve Bad Arguments for a State of Palestine]
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Since 1948 there has been no shift at all in the Arab position. That position is: The Arabs will never accept the existence of Israel or co-exist with it. Israel must die. [See Issue No. 5] There have been changes in tactics and in styles of propaganda but not the most minute shift in the ultimate goal.
It is both Israel and the United States that have yielded, with one concession and compromise after another. No concession or compromise is ever met with a concession or compromise by the Arabs. On the contrary, each retreat from principle or from land is taken as proof that intransigence works.
Until now, both Israel and the United States have made errors in judgment that have been costly in life and strength. If, in disregard of all experience, a Two-State Solution is enforced, the consequences will be even worse and bloodier.
END