e-Letter 196: Butt out Jimmy!
Help around the house Tom!
November 16, 2003
The bombing of two synagogues in Istanbul, Turkey,
with the killing of dozens and maiming of hundreds ("Israel,
Turkey begin hunt for bombers," Herb Keinon and News Agencies, The
Jerusalem Post, Nov. 15, 2003) is seen as an obvious campaign against Jews and
as part of international jihad against them. Martin Kramer characterized it
as such 10 years ago ("A
latent prejudice grows virulent, then violent. The Jihad Against the Jews,"
Martin Kramer, Commentary).
How else could one interpret this campaign that bombed one of these very same
synagogues in 1986, bombed twice Argentinean Jewish community centers, a
synagogue in Tunis recently and just today burned a Jewish school in Paris ("Fire
at Jewish school near Paris seen as act of anti-Semitism," The Associated
Press, Haaretz, 15/11/2003)? Examine the chronology of recent attacks against
Jews ("A
chronology of attacks on Jewish targets and Israelis abroad," Reuters,
Haaretz, 15/11/2003). All this while continuing a murderous campaign against
Israelis that in its current form has already lasted more than 3 years and its
totality lasted more than 55.
The Europeans are not helpful in the fight against terrorism. And that is an
understatement. While clearly the Istanbul attack was aimed at Jews, it was
also aimed at a Turkish Muslim government and also at the European member of
NATO and hence at Europe. "For all its high moral and strategic pretensions,
the European strategy amounts to this: lie low. Maybe the bullets will fly
overhead. Maybe the outlaws will not train their guns on us... This would be a
fine strategy for nations without power, influence, or dignity. In fact, it
would be understandable and even acceptable if it did not detract from the
sheriff's ability to hunt down the outlaws. The problem is that Europe is not
just a cowering, innocent bystander, but more like someone who is not only
hiding behind the sheriff, but holding one of the sheriff's hands behind his
back... The longer Europe waits to join the fight in earnest, the more it
risks not only its own security, but what it seems to value more – its
standing as the world's self-appointed moral arbiter. Lying low, at the end of
the day, is not a terribly effective way to maintain one's stake on the high
moral ground." ("The
circle widens," Editorial, The Jerusalem Post, Nov. 15, 2003).
It is rather disheartening to note that sympathy and support for terrorism
receives emotional and intellectual solace from circles that should know
better yet harness pseudo-intellectual arguments, an identification with a
false underdog and a fascination with a culture they know little about ("The
Left's Love Affair With the Palestinians," Paul Hollander,
FrontPageMagazine.com, November 6, 2003): "In all probability, the current
denigration of Israel is part of a similar, broad rejection of all things
Western. Israel in the eyes of leftist radicals (and arguably even in those of
less radical leftists), is identified with everything they abhor in the West:
capitalism, consumerism, individualism, scientific rationalism and other
Western intellectual and philosophical traditions." Against this backdrop,
another Palestinian government and another prime minister to head it who are
"committed to peace" (without Israel that is) hit the news agencies.
Obviously many did not share the euphoria that permeated the Palestinian
media. In fact, Israelis preferred to see action (to dismantle the terror
infra-structure) and the Americans expressed disappointment that the
Palestinian leaders have not committed to taking any real steps to combat
terrorism ("We
want action, not words," Herb Keinon & Lamia Lahoud, The Jerusalem Post,
Nov. 13, 2003). One could of course raise a question: Why would anyone expect
a terrorist to stop being one when he reaps so many dividends from it?
And the dividends are not only power and the pleasure of abuse that comes with
it. It is real money that is estimated to be between $1-$3 billion. Of that,
Arafat is setting aside a reported $100,000 per month ($1.2 million a year) to
his "wife" Suha so she could roam the Paris boutiques and live in a standard
fitting of Imelda Marcos ("Arafat's
Billions," 60 Minutes, CBS, Nov. 9, 2003).
Neither were the Israelis impressed with the
promise of new talks about another so-called cease-fire ("Hamas
talks of new 'hudna,'" Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, Nov. 14,
2003). After all, Israelis and Americans have learned a hard lesson from
believing those who have no intentions of keeping their word (at least as is
understood internationally). And for good reason. Here there is talk about
"negotiations" and no lesser a figure than the old/new Arafat security advisor
is sounding voices calling to intensify the resistance to American
"occupation" in Iraq ("Rajoub
to Arabs: Resist US in Iraq," Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, Nov.
10, 2003).
Yet, he extols the relations with Russia (there is
a reason to be concerned about Russia then), does not endorse the Geneva
Initiative and is far less excited about it than Jimmy Carter and Thomas
Friedman ("the national source of authority for the Palestinian people is the
PLO that has the sole right to conduct negotiations"), maintains that the
extremist Palestinian terrorists groups like Hamas are "part of the
Palestinian people, and they are part of the national liberation movement.
They are active and important cells in the Palestinian political and social
fabric" (and the West expects this security chief to dismantle the terror
infrastructure?) but he is against killing civilians (interesting since
clearly the PA is in favor of and is doing so) and of course blames Sharon and
thus will be a welcome company for coffee with the Tom.
Given Rajoub's preference for pure democratic ideals and his loathing of
fascism (except of course when it is perpetrated by Palestinians as then it
becomes a holy duty) he may have a hard time understanding why Canada has done
the right thing by adding 3 Palestinian groups (Palestine Liberation Front,
the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the PFLP-General
Command) to its list of 34 outlawed organizations ("Ottawa
outlaws 3 Palestinian groups," Tom Godfrey, Toronto Sun, November 14,
2003).
Currently much attention is being given to the
insurgency in Iraq against American and coalition forces because of the high
frequency with which they occur. Yet the ongoing threat from terrorist groups
and terror-sponsoring states is not going unnoticed. The threat from Pakistan
is noted in India and the axis with Saudi-Arabia is alarming to both Israel
and the US. The fact that China is playing a role in the background is very
discouraging ("Axis
of evidence: The Beijing-Islamabad-Riyadh nuclear nexus poses new challenges,"
G. Parthasarathy, The Indian Express, November 14, 2003). And Lybia's
intentions to acquire nuclear capability is by no means adding any sense of
comfort to Middle East watchers.
Iran has already threatened that it will use its
nuclear power (when it acquires it - still in the same breath denying it
aims at developing it) against Israel and last week it added a diplomatic
statement that the existence of Israel is against the national interest of
Iran ("Existence
of Israel contrary to Iranian interests," IranMania.com, November 10,
2003).
This week a letter to the editor of the Atlanta
paper was titled "Butt
out, Jimmy" (Atlanta, Journal Constitution, November 15, 2003). It was
not about the Middle East. The reader lamented (former President) Carter's
intervention in an administrative scandal brewing at the University of
Georgia. But, it should have been. Carter's failed presidency and the bad
advice he got on the Middle East from "experts" who caused damage to US policy
(re Iran fiasco) as well as to Israel (re Palestinians) is lingering to date.
He now supports an "alternative" in the form of a "peace agreement" to be
signed between insignificant parties (whom he calls "influential") in defiance
of democratic principles and against the interest of Israel and the US
administration ("Peace
plan that's a duet sounds like a real winner," Jimmy Carter, The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, 11/10/03).
Carter is still stuck in the old notion of "land for peace" a formula that
died with Oslo and has no diplomatic value or hope in the 21st century (other
than for those who want to destroy Israel) and regrettably he sees terrorist
and victim as equal. The only statement Carter has not yet made is that the US
should negotiate peace with Osama Bin Laden.
Just imagine that Carter would have been president today and Tom Friedman as
his national security advisor. The paper will tolerate anything printed on it
but those who read it do not. Friedman's latest pseudo-intellectual exercise
is to suggest that Saudi-Arabia and Israel have mutual interests. While not
totally out of line, as enemies have collaborated before against a worse enemy
(as is the case of the Allies and the Soviets against the Nazis - who after
the war became even more bitter enemies), he shows an offensive
misunderstanding by calling a democratically elected government in Israel "The
House of Sharon" (Sharon has not succeeded any family member and one of his
sons is an elected member of parliament - hardly a dynasty) equating it to
the "House of Saud" (a corrupt royal dynasty).
And to top this he calls the Israeli settlers "Wahhabi"
("A
Saudi-Israeli Deal," Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, November 13,
2003). This is as if suggesting that Churchill is no less of a Nazi than
Hitler. It would be more appropriate to equate Friedman to
Joseph
Goebbels as a vicious
anti-Semite
propagandist. After all, he is the one who said "A lie frequently
repeated will gradually gain acceptance." Friedman's repeating opinions as
facts is as bad. One does not need to be sympathetic to Israel and to the
settlers to abhor the position taken by Friedman.
And he penned another one ("Wanted:
Fanatical Moderates," Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, November 16,
2003; The Atlanta Journal Constitution titled it: "Israelis have little right
to carp about peace ‘deal'" which is alarming given the 11 anti-Israeli
articles and editorials the paper had printed in the last months)
parroting Carter's support of the "Geneva Initiative" blaming the Israeli
government for not being moderate enough and for crying foul when its own
wrongdoing "was exposed." Not a word about 3 years of terror, not a word about
Palestinians not keeping their own commitment but he finds fault with the
Sharon government. He confesses that he gets mad "when my wife tells me I'm
not helping around the house ....There is nothing more enraging than someone
exposing your faults — and being right." Well, his pseudo-intellectual faults
have been exposed and so it is about time he help around his own house and not
deal with what he so egregiously calls the "House of Sharon." Water will stick
to a duck's back before this happens.
One could only remain baffled that as at times
Friedman criticizes the Arab world but he and Carter somehow see the solution
for its problems by weakening Israel or blaming Israel. Perhaps they should
read Arab columns emanating from Kuwait that place the blame directly where it
should be and Israel is not even mentioned by them ("Editor
of the Kuwaiti Daily Al-Siyassa: The New Iraq Will Be 'the Beacon of Freedom,
Democracy, and Respect to Human Rights in the Middle East,'" MEMRI,
Special Dispatch - Iraq/ Reform Project, November 10, 2003, No. 606).
According to one Kuwaiti source, 'The Middle East is dominated by wilting and
exhausted regimes.'
A measure of sanity to counteract such dangerous nonsense is offered by Victor
David Hanson ("The
Truth Will Set Us Free: What this war is not about," National Review,
November 07, 2003) who is highly critical of those who purposefully
misunderstand the nature of the current threat not only on Israel but on
civilization itself. He agrees that the war is not against Islam but he
points out the obvious that it is Islamic radicals who are perpetrating it. He
argues that the war against terrorism cannot be half-hearted. It is either to
be fought to win or we have lost it. A half fight is a waste of effort: "All
the peace marches, New York Times editorials, or near-slander from Democratic
presidential contenders cannot change that reality, and so the decision really
is either to cease and desist or to wage war and finish the conflict. Anything
in between is madness." He argues that while Al-Qaida is comprised of crazies
but from those who pose serious dangers no less than those posed by Hitler:
"...we can still lose this war — unless we remember September 11, acknowledge
the awful nature of our enemies, and always, always accept the truth that
civilization itself hangs in the balance."
Hanson is correct about truth but part of the
problem lies not merely in people refusing to see it but in the desire to win
a popularity contest; in the need to be liked by others. The problem is that
being liked is not always tantamount to doing the right thing. Movie actors
may be bad yet popular, or may be good and popular. They need to attract
audiences irrespective of their quality as actors. Countries which are
threatened might be helped by being popular but if the mere fact of their
existence or their edge over others is what makes them being disliked and
targets for hostilities then being liked is a misplaced objective ("To
Hell With Sympathy: The goodwill America earned on 9/11 was illusory. Get over
it," Charles Krauthammer, Time, Monday, Nov. 17, 2003).
"Sympathy is fine. But if we ‘squander' it when we
go to war to avenge our dead and prevent the next crop of dead, then to hell
with sympathy. The fact is that the world hates us for our wealth, our
success, our power. They hate us into incoherence. The Europeans...disdain us
for our excessive religiosity (manifest, they imagine, by evolution being
expelled from schools while prayer is ushered back in)--while the Arab world
despises us as purveyors of secularism. We cannot win for losing. We are
widely reviled as enemies of Islam... The search for logic in
anti-Americanism is fruitless. It is in the air the world breathes. Its roots
are envy and self-loathing — by peoples who, yearning for modernity but having
failed at it, find their one satisfaction in despising modernity's great
exemplar." This applies equally well to the US and to Israel.
Last week a poll of Europeans found that some 60%
view Israel as posing the greatest threat to peace. Then The British
Conservative party has elected its first Jewish leader and some argued that
this is proof that Europe is not as anti-Semitic as the poll suggests. But a
writer who closely follows these matters in Britain strongly disagrees ("The
chosen person," Melanie Phillips, Jewish World Review, Nov. 10,
2003): "The idea that British Jews are not really 'one of us' is deeply
rooted in British society. Even though prejudice based on Jewish identity went
underground after the Holocaust, the successful dehumanization of Israel by
the media has legitimized the revival of the ancient canard of world Jewish
power and other familiar tropes of Jew-hatred. British Jews, who have always
trodden an existential tightrope, nevertheless believed until very recently
that they were as British as anyone else. Now, they find themselves in the
hideous position of being forced to denounce their own or bite their tongues
as the price of social acceptance."
And indeed, a week after the US News and World
report came out with a cover story on anti-Semitism, Time magazine has
discovered the issue as well ("An
Old Evil Raises Its Weary Head: Sixty years after the Holocaust, Europe still
wrestles with anti-Semitism," Josef Joffe, Time, November 17, 2003). Yet,
it concludes that while anti-Semitism is troubling it is not as bad as its
classical version used to be. It asks: "Is anti-Semitism on a roll in Germany,
60 years after Auschwitz?" And its response? "No." Yet a careful reading of
the article points out that classical anti-Semitism has undergone sublimation:
"To hate Jews is not permissible in polite society, but to loathe Israel, and
especially its Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, carries no such stigma." Given
the short time Sharon has been in office articles such as Carter's and
Friedman's only help promote propaganda against Israel and hence against
Jews. If in doubt, examine the Palestinian cartoon that depicts Israel and
Judaism is "strangling
the world" (Itamar Marcus, Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin, November 9,
2003).
The onslaught of antisemitism in Europe and the
Arab/Islamic world is reminiscent of darker ages in modern and medieval
history when Jews had to fight against existential threats be it religious
persecution and physical annihilation. A recent paper on those who seek to
destroy the modern State of Israel finds itself in the awkward position that
55 years after the establishment of the Jewish State it still struggles to
justify what for all other nations is taken for granted: its very right to
exist. The paper ("An Answer to
the New Anti-Zionists: the Rights of the Jewish People to a Sovereign State in
Their Historic Homeland," Dore Gold and Jeff Helmreich,
Jerusalem Viewpoints, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, No. 507 21,
November 2003). The paper examines the history, the law, and the facts
surrounding Israel's existence as a Jewish state and then makes the case for
Israel. While on one hand concluding that "The anti-Semitic threat,
unfortunately, is alive and well," it also suggests that the existence of
Israel is essential for the survival of the Jewish people and is also seen as
a source of contribution to world society in the 21st century.
Clearly, the mere fact that Israel's existence is
questioned rather than being taken for granted is a problem in itself and
makes it future less promising. After all, no Arab state is under any threat
of questioning its "right to exist" and for that matter neither is France,
Germany, Lybia, or Syria. Some regimes may be in danger of needing a
Saddam-like treatment but their people have nothing to worry about their
future. Germany and Japan are the best proof of that. Therefore, the
solution is not in working towards achieving peace but achieving peace is the
solution and it will not happen until terrorism is vanquished.
In other words, no permanent arrangements, no
border settlements, no dispute resolution will be ever possible unless the
destroyers (by force or by rhetoric) are made clear that if their existence
relies on negating the other's right to exist it is unacceptable ("Existential
Questions: Destroying Israel is not a legitimate Mideast option," Saul
Singer, National Review, November 10, 2003). Perhaps the only way to change
this faulty equation forever is to make absolutely clear to those who aim to
destroy by force or by word that by questioning and threatening someone else's
right to exist there will be immediate consequences for their very own
existence.
ฉ Robbie Friedmann,
Ph.D.
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