Israel’s Western Front

 Michael Anbar Ph.D.

Israel faces four fronts. Most homicide terrorists penetrate the eastern front, where the security fence is constructed. Terrorist arms and personal are smuggled from Egypt on the southern front. The Hezbollah is threatening the northern front with hundreds of surface-to-surface Iranian and Syrian missiles. However, the greatest danger to the existence of the State of Israel is from the western front.

Contrary to the hubris of many Israelis, the very existence of the State of Israel depends on the public support for the Jewish state in the United States. The US Administration, irrespective of the party in power, follows American public opinion in the long run. If public opinion in the US turns overwhelmingly against the State of Israel, as it has in Europe at this point in time, the US will not hesitate to impose severe sanctions on the Jewish state, as it did to South Africa not too long ago. This would bring Israel down to its knees and might even lead to its elimination. Without American military equipment Israel could not stand up to an all out Arab military assault, and without American business investments Israeli faltering economy is likely to collapse.

The Arabs understand very well this Israeli weakness and have spent major efforts and monetary resources in a highly effective PR campaign, assisted by intrinsically anti Israel (and anti-American) media, to try and cut this lifeline of the Jewish state.  After the elimination of the state of Israel by a frontal military assault has failed three times in a row, Arab strategists must have concluded that a deadly political PR offensive is more likely to succeed.  Although the Madison Avenue firms that conduct the anti-Israeli campaign in the American media are cleverly hidden, Arab propaganda manifests PR expertise and professionalism. An investigative reporter could have a major scoop exposing this Arab-American enterprise.

Arab anti Israeli terrorism is linked to this PR campaign. That terrorism has two objectives: A. The demoralization of the Israeli population and B. Goading Israelis to retaliate militarily and thus provide ammunition for the Arab PR war, in which the “Palestinian” Arabs are consistently presented as underdogs.  Israel has awakened rather lately to the existence of this vital front and so far has failed to effectively counter this potentially deadly Arab assault.

The corollary of this critical dependence on US public opinion is that the US public must favorably accept any military or political solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Notwithstanding all the floated  “peace plans” including the “Roadmap to Peace,” the solution of the conflict might involve a major violent confrontation between the IDF and the PLO (and its Islamistic terrorist satellites). Such a decisive confrontation might be disapproved by the American public, which has been manipulated for decades by slick Arab propaganda. Any significant Israeli military or political maneuver must, therefore, be sellable to the American public.  Fortunately, unlike some American politicians, the American public is less likely to apply double standards. Once presented with objective facts in readily understandable terms, it is likely to support Israel’s cause, which is in concert with American values.

 Moreover, if Israel was defeated by the Arabs, which would be likely with a decade or two following implementation of the current “Roadmap” or its related “peace plans,” the US will be the next victim of an invigorated Islamistic aggression. By then Europe might become a Muslim satellite, leaving the US, Russia and China as the major adversaries of global Islamism. If Russia and China remain essentially dictatorial and therefore more ruthless, militant Islam may consider the US a softer target, where Islamistic aggression could succeed in eliminating both Western democracy and its techno-economic base.

 In order to survive, Israel must regain the hearts and minds of most segments of American public, in face of Arab propaganda and leftist opposition to any solution to the conflict other than the eventual liquidation of the Jewish state. An aggressive Israeli PR counter-offensive in the US is absolutely necessary to guarantee the existence of the Jewish state. This counter-offensive aimed at American public opinion should, at a minimum, stress the following points: 

• American public must realize that Israel has been the historic homeland of the Jewish people for 3300 years at least, and that Jews continued to live in their homeland for all this period even when conquered by different invaders, including the Arabs. It should be noted that Jews constituted the overwhelming majority among the inhabitants of Jerusalem for the last 200 years, at least.

• The American public must know that the Muslims regard any territory conquered by Arabs as God given to them for perpetuity. Islam mandates the reconquest of any such territory by all means possible, hence their religious objection to Jewish sovereignty over Israel’s ancient homeland. In fact, the Arabs and not the Jews are the unlawful occupiers of the land of Israel. This is why Arab propaganda tries to deny Jewish history, in particular in the Biblical period. For instance, Arafat has declared that the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem is “a Zionist myth.”

• One must explain to the American public that Great Britain never “gave” “Palestine” to the Jews, as is being stated repeatedly in Arab propaganda.  The land of Israel was never a British colony.  The 1917 Balfour declaration is a legally binding document that was endorsed by President Wilson and the American Congress. The Brits received a mandate from Wilson’s League of Nations to help reestablish a politically recognized homeland for the Jewish people in its ancient homeland. That mandate was temporary by definition. It required eventual transfer of the land to the Jewish people.  Consequently, the “establishment” of the State of Israel in 1947 by the UN was just endorsement of the 1917 Anglo-American commitment to the Jewish nation. These little known facts are crucial for realizing the absurdity of the Arab claim that the UN made a “mistake” in 1947 “establishing” the State of Israel.

• Another little known fact is that the creation of Jordan in 1922 on the lion’s share of the mandated Jewish territory was an arbitrary illegal British concession to the Arabs. This concession has encouraged the Arabs to terrorize the Jews in Israel by brutal massacres (e.g. in 1929 and 1935-39), and then to disregard in 1948 the UN resolution, trying to dislodge the Jews from their homeland by brutal military force. The 1967 and 1973 Arab military assaults followed the same Arab political and military objectives.

• American public must be told that never was there a “Palestinian” nation before 1967. That “nation” it was “created” de-novo by the Arab league as a political tool to dislodge and eliminate the Jewish state.  Following the Six Days war, on September 1, 1967, there was the Khartoum summit meeting of the leaders of the eight Arab counties involved who declared “No peace, No recognition and No negotiations,” i.e., the State of Israel must be destroyed by any means possible.  The PLO, “representing” the “Palestinian Nation,” has been just one of these means.  Arab propaganda has been another, not less effective tool. It is noteworthy that Jordan and/or Egypt created no independent “Palestinian” Arab country for the alleged “Palestinian nation” when they occupied the “disputed territories” between 1948 and 1967.

• The American public must be made aware that the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) was created in Egypt in 1964 (before the 1967 war, when all the “disputed territories” were under Arab rule, with the declared purpose to “liberate” “Palestine”, i.e., eliminate the sovereign State of Israel. The Fatah (“Conquest,” in Arabic) terrorist organization, established before 1964, was modeled after the Muslim terrorists in Algeria who drove out the French from North Africa following a similar nationalistic Islamistic ideology. However, the American public must realize the difference -- the Algerian Frenchmen were colonialists who returned to France, their homeland, while the Jews in Israel have lived and must continue to live in their own one and only ancient homeland.

• It has been little known that Israel has been a haven to 800,000 Jews expelled by Arab regimes all over the Middle East and North Africa (this much for propagandized Arab hospitality and tolerance!). Those Jewish refugees outnumber by a factor of ten the number of European Holocaust survivors who settled in Israel. Still Arab propaganda, parroted by leftist university professors and journalists, talks of the Israelis as European colonialists who settled in Israel after the Holocaust.

• It is most important for the American public to know that Islamists all over the Arab world are educating children to become murderers of Jews and Christians. Arafat and his ilk are pioneers and frontrunners in this despicable enterprise. This is far more than abuse of children – it is the worse possible legacy any terrorist organization can leave.

• The American public must be made aware that tolerating the PLO regime in the “disputed territories” is worse than tolerating the Baatist regime in Iraq.  Tens of thousand of young hateful fanatic murderers are potentially more dangerous for the Western world than Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.  These potential terrorists, indoctrinated from childhood, might be the people who will wield such weapons as super-suicide bombers.  Little time is left before those youngsters, who have been taught little more than hatred and terrorist techniques, will hatch and be activated by the PLO, Hammas or Al Queda in the streets of Tel Aviv, New York or Chicago.  This factor alone, carefully documented for years, should have been sufficient to justify the immediate removal of the PLO from power.

• One might then wonder at the restraint of the Israeli government facing this unprecedented threat to its citizens and to Western civilization. This restraint is due to the heavy pressure of the American Administration on the Israeli government. Lately, the US Administration even tries to hamper Israeli passive defense measures (the security fence). This unwarranted pressure may be the result of the current ambivalence of the American public that has been bombarded for years by Arab propaganda regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. If the Administration were confident in having the public firmly behind it in handling Islamistic threats, including the mass production of potential murderers by the PA, it might have reacted very differently.

• Most importantly, the American public must realize that Yasser Arafat is a devout Islamistic terrorist like Osama bin Laden, repeatedly calling for a Jihad against the Jewish state.  At the same time he is as corrupt as Sadam Hussein stealing more than a billion Dollars from his people and stashing them in his personal bank accounts. He is also just as ruthless in intimidating potential political opponents as well as his close associates (e.g., Abu Mazen and Abu Alla).  Still the US Administration has dissuaded the Israelis from going after Arafat.  At the same time, however, the same administration has not hesitated to go after Osama and Sadam. The Administration seems not confident in the backing of the American public regarding the Palestinian issue. This explains the double standard applied to threats against American versus Israeli national interests. 

• Last but not least, the American public must recognize that Israel is the only genuine democracy in the Middle East with full freedom of the press and equal rights of all its citizens, irrespective of creed, faith, gender or sexual orientation.  The Arab citizens of Israel enjoy a higher standard of living than in any Arab or Islamic country, including the major oil producers. This much for the Arab “Apartheid” propaganda.

These objective arguments must be brought to the attention of the American public to counter Arab propaganda, making Americans understand Israel’s predicament as a nation that faces genocide by militant Islam. It cannot be over-emphasized that this understanding has existential ramifications for the Jewish people that has been targeted as the first prey of militant Islamism in its attempt to destroy Western civilization.

November 26, 2003