Michael Anbar, Ph.D.
In any conflict, whether a minor dispute between neighbors or a global war, it is quite important not to let the adversary define the underlying issues or causes of the conflict. Such definitions can often become tactical distractions. Offensive diversionary tactics pressure the defender to respond to those claims (which are often frivolous or irrelevant to the real issue at hand), rather than resolve the issue or issues that truly constitute the discord.
For example, after the 9/11 atrocity, the enemy, in this case Bin Laden, came up with a long list of grievances against the USA, prominent among them was the US support of Israel, as the “causes” that made him plan and execute that vicious attack in New York City (which followed his attacks on SS Cole in Aden and the destruction of the US embassies in East Africa). Likewise, the Palestinian Arabs are using the establishment of Jewish villages and towns in the area east of the 1948 cease-fire line as a major justification for the vicious campaign of terror orchestrated by their leadership.
Closer analysis of history reveals, however, that those claims of Bin Laden and of Arafat are tactical fabrications. Bin Laden did hardly mention the Arab-Israeli conflict prior to 9/11, and Arafat started his terror campaign aimed at eliminating the Jewish state in 1962, years before the Israeli army crossed the 1948 cease-fire line in 1967 in response to a second all-out Arab attack aimed at Israel’s eradication, before there were any Jewish villages or towns east of that line. One must realize that irrespective of the changing diversionary tactics of the Arabs, their strategic goal is eradication of the Jewish state.
Inside many Western democracies there are power-hungry politicians who look for issues to rally supporters, in order to augment their political power. These political manipulators do not care for the veracity of the issues they advocate or for the national or international implications of their political drives. Borrowing contrived diversionary claims from antagonists of their nation or its culture, they become ardent standard bearers for notorious foes. National and cultural aggressors often count on unscrupulous or naïve “sympathizers” to demoralize and disrupt the social fabric of their opponents, weaken their defenses and thus enhance their eventual demise. It is noteworthy that these tactics work solely for despotic aggressors attacking tolerant democratic societies. Only democratic societies have a free press that can be manipulated and a legislature and electorate that can be influenced by the press.
For instance, following Arab deceitful propaganda, Norwegian socialists have advocated boycott of Israeli goods, which are now marked with a yellow mark – presumably to associate Israeli food products with the notorious yellow Star of David Jews had to wear in antisemitic Europe. To be anti-Jewish seems to be acceptable in socialist Norway. Looking at things from a historical perspective, we know that during WWII, infamous Vidkun Quisling made sure that the Germans exterminated all Norwegian Jews. Thus contemporary Norwegian socialists follow in the footsteps of Quisling, who emulated German National Socialistic (Nazi) ideology. Forgetting that the Muslim offensive is against Western culture with Israel being an outpost under vicious attack, those socialists were happy to adopt the Arab anti-Israeli diversion tactics, presumably for their own political gain. They spearheaded the recent antisemitic movement that resulted in burning down of synagogues and desecration of Jewish cemeteries all over Europe. Contrary to the best interests of their own society, by falling for the diversion tactics of the Arabs on the Israeli front, those Norwegian socialists play into the hands of the Muslim militants whose goal is to initiate a world-wide religious-cultural war.
This strategy seems to work effectively for the Arabs also inside the democratic State of Israel. The issues of “an end to occupation” and “evacuation of settlements” are appropriate examples. While the real issue has been and still is the very existence of Jewish sovereignty over the ancient Jewish homeland, those fabricated diversionary issues get lots of attention and internal debate in Israeli society, as well as among American Jews. The “occupation” i.e., capture of territory occupied by the Jordanian and Egyptian armies in 1948, has not been an issue before 1967, yet the PLO was created in Egypt years before that time with a declared intent to eradicate the Jewish state. Following the 1967 war Jewish villages, which were destroyed by the Egyptians and Jordanians in 1948, were rebuilt. These include Atarot and Be’er Yaakov -- north of Jerusalem, the four villages in the Etzion block and the suburb of Gilo -- south of the capital, Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip, and obviously, the Jewish quarters in Jerusalem and Hebron, which were destroyed in 1929 and again in 1948. Additional Jewish villages and towns were established in strategic and/or historical sites on vacant land in the recaptured areas following the 1967 war, when the Arab alliance, led by Egypt, attempted again to eradicate the State of Israel. It is noteworthy that the 200,000 Jews who live now east of the 1948 cease-fire line and in the Gaza Strip constitute a small minority in the population of recaptured areas. The Arab claim that those Jewish “settlers” endanger the integrity of “Arab territory” is another diversionary tactic, since all of the Land of Israel has been claimed as “occupied” Arab land.
Once another, new Arab state will be established in the West Bank and Gaza to govern the mostly Arab population in those areas, why should Jewish inhabitants of towns and villages in those areas be prevented from remaining there as citizens of that Arab state, if they wish, just like the more than one million Arabs who live today within the pre-1967 boundaries as citizens of the state of Israel? The rationale that calls for the evacuation of Jewish villages on the West Bank in the “disputed territories” must also call for evacuation of Arab villages and towns in the Galilee and on the Carmel ridge.
If it is claimed that the new Arab state must be “Juden-rein”, why should the State of Israel tolerate any Arabs within its boundaries? The fact is that 10 out of 120 members of the Israeli Knesset are Arabs. How ironic is the Arab claim that the Israelis are “racists” (another diversionary Arab tactic that has gotten lately lots of attention in the Leftist media) while the Arabs who demand the evacuation of all Jewish villages in the territory claimed as their own (a demand supported by some Israeli leftists), are presumed not to be racists, by the same socialist politicians in Israel and Europe. (See the essay of Gila Svirsky, IsraelInsider, July 15, 2002). Those leftists also fail to recognize the intrinsic difference between the 1979 evacuation of Yamit in the Sinai Peninsula, established on internationally recognized Egyptian territory, temporarily occupied by the Israeli army in 1967, and Jewish villages and towns in Judea and Samaria, which do not have to be evacuated under any circumstances. These were established on territory temporarily occupied by the Jordanian army in 1948 but recaptured by Israel in 1967.
The Arabs do not miss any opportunity to damage Israel’s image, while concealing their agenda to destroy the Jewish state. The outcry about Israel’s intent to move family members of suicide bombers from one part of the captured territories to another is another example of the effectiveness of the Arab strategy of diversionary propaganda warfare. Close family members of the murderers (people who endorse and benefit financially from the deeds of their murderous relatives) who may be relocated (not imprisoned or flogged) are considered victims by many socialist politicians and journalists, who ignore, at the same time, the brutally murdered and maimed innocent Israelis. Some Israeli leftists and compassionate American Jews seem to agree with that distorted view.
UN’s Kofe Anan and the Danish Foreign Minister, Per Stig Moller, fell for that Arab diversionary tactic. They have castigated Israeli Government’s intent to relocate people associated with terrorists as “collective punishment,” prohibited by international law. However, indiscriminate murder of innocent civilians, orchestrated by known Arab political leaders is not denounced by the same world leaders as a violation of international law or “a crime against humanity.” Truth is bound by facts but hypocrisy has no limits.