CAFI Newsletter #77
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Fri, 5 Apr 2002 18:26:07 -0500
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* CHRISTIAN ACTION FOR ISRAEL NEWSLETTER #77 *
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"ON YOUR WALLS, O JERUSALEM, I HAVE APPOINTED WATCHMEN"
Isaiah 62:6
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Friday, April 5, 2002
IN THIS ISSUE:
1. MISSING: REALISTIC TAKE ON ARAFAT
2. HISTORY ISN'T ON THE PALESTINIANS' SIDE
3. "PEACE" PROPOSALS AND OTHER TACTICAL PLOYS
4. BURNING SYNAGOGUES
5. QUOTES TO NOTE
6. HIGHLIGHT ARTICLES
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1. MISSING: REALISTIC TAKE ON ARAFAT
by Daniel Pipes
Los Angeles Times
April 5, 2002
Thursday, George W. Bush gave one of the oddest
speeches in two centuries of presidential rhetoric.
What made it so very strange was that it contained
two starkly contradictory parts.
For convenience, let's call them Speech A and
Speech B.
In Speech A, Bush lambasted Yasser Arafat for
deploying terror against Israel and informed the
Palestinian leader that his predicament today,
surrounded by Israeli tanks, "is largely of his own
making." By name, the president listed four groups (Al
Aqsa Brigades, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad) and
accused them not just of opposing the peace
process but also of seeking the destruction of Israel.
Bush proceeded to endorse Israeli efforts at
self-protection: "America recognizes Israel's right to
defend itself from terror." He warmly identified himself
as "a committed friend of Israel" and noted his
concern with the country's long-term security.
In sum, Speech A condemns Arafat and backs Israel.
In Speech B, the president drew policy implications
opposite from what might be expected. Rather than
concluding that Arafat's having broken his word and
resorted to terrorism renders him unfit for further
diplomacy, Bush gave him yet another chance by
calling on the Palestinian Authority to stop terrorist
activities.
Yet more implausibly, he appealed to "responsible
Palestinian leaders [to] show the world that they are
truly on the side of peace."
Then, rather than endorse Israeli actions of recent
days to root out the terrorist infrastructure on the
West Bank as steps entirely in accord with the U.S.
war on terrorism, Bush surprisingly called on the
Sharon government to halt its incursions into
Palestinian-controlled areas, begin to withdraw from
cities it recently occupied, cease settlement activity in
occupied territories and help to build a politically and
economically viable Palestinian state.
In sum, Speech B backs Arafat and condemns Israel.
Whence comes this illogic? From two mistakes. One
is to believe that Arafat can change his ways, ignoring
the fact that he entered the terrorism business in
1965 and has never abandoned it. This man is
irredeemable, and any diplomacy premised on his
behaving in a civilized way is doomed to failure.
(Curiously, the U.S. government itself makes no
parallel mistake of negotiating with the Taliban's
Mullah Omar or Iraq's Saddam Hussein.)
Second, the president seems not to understand the
purpose of Palestinian violence against Israel. It is not
directed at winning an Israeli withdrawal from the
West Bank and Gaza. Had the Palestinians wanted
just that, they could have taken it on a silver platter
during negotiations at Camp David in July 2000.
Rather, this violence has a much more ambitious set
of goals: the destruction of the Jewish state itself. To
be sure, when speaking to a Western audience, this
point is downplayed or denied, but one has only briefly
to eavesdrop on Arabic-language television, radio,
mosque sermons, classrooms or cafe discussions to
see the wide consensus for eliminating Israel.
In light of this Arab rejectionism, it sounds a bit
plaintive and irrelevant when the president expresses
a hope that Palestinians will agree to an immediate
cease-fire and an immediate resumption of security
cooperation with Israel.
Bush's decision to send Secretary of State Colin
Powell to the Middle East looks utterly forlorn. Why
should Palestinians agree to a cease-fire when they
are at war and think they are doing well, as all
evidence suggests?
To watch Bush dealing with an increasingly
acrimonious Arab-Israeli theater leaves me with two
impressions: His larger vision-to support Israel
against terrorism-shows a clear understanding of the
situation. But his limited understanding of the issues
leads him to adopt superficial, even
counterproductive policies.
If the U.S. government wants to help tamp down the
current violence, it has one attractive option:
encourage Israel to defeat the forces of terrorism as it
sees fit and remind the Arab states, as the president
has so often done since September, that "you're
either with us or against us in the fight against terror."
That policy has the virtues of moral clarity, of
consistency and of helping to resolve the Arab-Israeli
conflict.
>From www.danielpipes.org |
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2. HISTORY ISN'T ON THE PALESTINIANS' SIDE
Arafat's strategy is suicidal in more ways than one.
BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON Wall Street Journal April 2, 2002
For all the efforts of our contemporary theorists to
harness and sometimes refashion history, the facts of
the past belong to no one--and won't go away. Those
who conjure it up often discover to their dismay that
they themselves are subject to its brutal laws of truth.
The Palestinians are fast learning of history's ironies
and unintended reminders, as they seek to invoke the
past to convince Americans of the righteousness of
their present plight.
Take the idea of the occupation of Arab lands since
1967, which the Palestinians now cite as a singular
historical grievance that needs immediate rectification
through intervention of the U.S. But sadly occupation
and partition are the bastard children of war; and
history, rightly or wrongly, is not kind to states that
repeatedly attack their neighbors--and lose.
Ask the millions of poor Germans who had their
ancestral lands confiscated by Poland and France--and
their country subsequently partitioned for a half
century. Why do the Russians still occupy portions of
the old Japanese homeland decades after the
surrender? How is it that the British won't give up
Gibraltar long after their successful battles against the
Spanish fleet? And why must the world give far more
attention to Palestine than it does to Tibetans, Irish
and Chechens?
The situation on the West Bank is not only
commonplace in history's harsh calculus, but prevalent
even throughout the Arab world today. Right next door
in Lebanon, Syria controls far more Arab land than does
Israel. And if Palestinians suffer second-class
citizenship under Israeli occupation, they are worse off
in occupied Lebanon where, as helots, they are denied
basic rights to employment, health care and
government services.
Kuwait ethnically cleansed all Palestinians--perhaps a
third of a million--just a decade ago. Well after the
1967 Six Day War, the Jordanians themselves
slaughtered thousands. Before the intifada more
Palestinians sought work in a hated Israel than in a
beloved Egypt. History suggests that there is more
going on in Palestine than the morality of occupation.
The Palestinians have turned to suicide
bombers--terrorists boasting of a new and frightening
tactic that cannot be stopped. But they should recall
the kamikazes off Okinawa that brought death, terror
and damage to the American fleet--before prompting
horrific responses that put an end to them for good
and a lot more besides. In general, the record of
terrorist bombers--whether Irish, Basque or
Palestinian--who seek to reclaim "occupied" lands is not
impressive in winning either material concessions or the
hearts and minds of the world.
Palestinian spokesmen decry asymmetrical casualty
figures, as if history has ever accorded moral capital to
any belligerents that suffered the greater losses in war.
Again, ask imperial Japan or Nazi Germany whether the
ghosts of millions of their dead today carry moral
weight when their governments once sought war
against their neighbors.
Deliberately trying to blow apart civilians will never be
seen as the moral equivalent of noncombatants dying
as a result of the street fighting in the West Bank.
Afghans accidentally killed by errant bombing in
Kandahar are different from those deliberately
incinerated on Sept. 11. Somalis killed in Mogadishu by
American peacekeepers--far more civilians dying there
in two days than in two years on the West Bank--are
not the same as those murdered by thugs in jeeps
trying to steal food from the starving.
Americans learned in Vietnam and Mogadishu that it is
hard to distinguish civilians from soldiers when gunmen
do not always wear uniforms and take potshots from
the windows of homes: They are real killers when alive,
but somehow count as "civilians" when dead. The
problem is not that the Palestinians are losing more
than the Israelis due to their greater victimhood or
morality, but rather that they find themselves losing
very badly to a military far more adept at fighting.
Nor do the Palestinians' cries for justice exist in an
historical vacuum. True, the current Arab-Israeli
war--at least the fourth since 1948--is fought over the
West Bank; but that is only because the theater of
operations has changed somewhat since the Arab world
lost the first three wars to destroy Israel proper. Less
than two years ago, Yasser Arafat was offered almost
all of the West Bank and would now be the
unquestioned strongman of his own tribal fiefdom had
he taken such a generous Israeli offer. His own
scheming and the intifada--not Israeli
extremism--brought back to him his old nemesis, Ariel
Sharon.
Again, the problem for the Palestinians is not that
Americans are ignorant of the historical complexities of
the Middle East, but that we know them only too well.
Palestinian spokesmen give us moralistic lectures about
remaining disinterested as "honest brokers"--even as
they appeal to Arab anti-Semitism and racial solidarity
on grounds of national, religious and ethnic empathy.
That double standard puzzles America, because by any
such measure we also find affinity in shared values,
and so have almost none with the Palestinians, who,
like the entire Arab world, do not embrace real
democracy, free speech, open media and religious
diversity.
Nor is it good public relations for illegitimate
dictatorships of the Arab League to shake fingers at
democracies in America and Israel on issues of equality
and fairness. The problem is not that the Palestinians
object to the idea of displaying preferences per se, but
that their own biases and prejudices have so little
appeal to Americans.
We are told that the Palestinians have a long memory
of, and reverence for, the past--especially the
injustice of 50 years of lost homelands. But Americans
are not ahistorical. We remember Sept. 11, and the
Palestinians who cheered our dead before being
admonished by a terrified Arafat.
For the past three decades Palestinian terrorists and
their sponsoring brotherhoods have murdered
Americans abroad. Palestinians embraced Saddam
Hussein's cause and clapped as Scuds plunged into Tel
Aviv and blew apart American soldiers in Saudi Arabia.
An entrapped Arafat now calls for American succor, but
a few months ago scoffed that the U.S. was irrelevant
as far as he was concerned. The problem, again, is not
that Americans have forgotten Palestinian acts, but
that we remember them all too well.
The Arab world warns of its martial prowess and deadly
anger--as American flags burn, threats to kill us are
issued, and "the street" shakes its collective fist. But
we Americans remember 1967, when we gave almost
no weapons to the Israelis--but the Russians supplied
lots of sophisticated arms to the Arabs. In the Six Day
War, the state radio networks of Syria, Egypt and
Jordan boasted to the world that their triumphant
militaries were nearing Tel Aviv even as their frightened
elites pondered abandoning Damascus, Cairo and
Amman. And we recall the vaunted Egyptian air force in
1967, the invincible Syrian jets over Lebanon, the
Mother of All Battles--and the Republican Guard that
proved about as fearsome as Xerxes' Immortals at
Thermopylae.
A beleaguered Arafat now wildly works his Rolodex for
support for his autocracy. But history answers cruelly
that strongmen in their bunkers are as impotent as
they are loquacious--and as likely to receive disdain as
pity. Moammar Gadhafi was a different man after the
American air strike proved his military worthless and his
person no longer sacrosanct. The rhetoric of the
Taliban in September promised death; in October they
and their minions went silent. In wars against bombers
and terrorists, the past teaches us that peace comes
first through their defeat--not out of negotiations
among supposedly well-meaning equals.
We all would prefer, and should strive for, peaceful
relations with the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the
Syrians--and all the other 20-something dictatorships,
theocracies, and monarchies of the Middle East--as
well as a state for the Palestinians. But the day is
growing late; our patience is now exhausted; and sadly
an hour of reckoning is nearing for all us all. The
problem is, you see, that we know their history far
better than they do.
Mr. Hanson, a military historian, is author most
recently of "Carnage and Culture" (Doubleday, 2002).
Copyright © 2002 Dow Jones & Company
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3. "PEACE" PROPOSALS AND OTHER TACTICAL PLOYS
Neill Lochery - National Post - April 3, 2002
There are signs the Arab states are using diplomacy
as a cover to prepare for war
Israel is currently under fire on both diplomatic and
military fronts -- a campaign the likes of which it has
not seen for 35 years or more. While much attention
is focussed on military operations in the West Bank,
the real story is the ever-increasing diplomatic
danger to the Jewish state. There are signs the
Arab states are using diplomacy as a cover to
prepare for war.
Last week's Arab summit in Beirut did not, as many
predicted, end in farce, or highlight the deep
divisions in the Arab world. Worryingly for Israel,
whose existence has been secured for nearly 54
years by disunity among the ranks of its neighbours,
the summit produced the first joint Arab peace plan,
as well as a partial rapprochement between Saudi
Arabia/Kuwait and Iraq. Notwithstanding the
nominal peace proposal, the summit actually
signaled increased potential for an Arab-Israeli war.
The degree of Arab unity exhibited in recent wars --
1967 and 1973 -- has been largely absent until last
week in Beirut.
Today, the Arabs are in a confident mood in terms of
dealing with Israel, but are on less secure ground
back home. The two arenas are highly related
because, traditionally, Arab states launch wars
against Israel not for ideological reasons but rather
to deflect attention from growing domestic
problems, usually economic.
At this time, Arab leaders are facing increasing
economic and social difficulties at home. In
particular, there are facing the dilemma of how to
restructure their economies without endangering
their own rule. How does a dictator deal with the
short-term social costs of vitally needed economic
liberalization without alienating large segments of
the population and creating strong anti-regime
forces?
Over the years, Arab leaders have developed a
two-pronged strategy for survival. They ensure that
their own constituency -- or tribe -- receives a
disproportionate size of the economic cake. They
also ensure that the armed services are well paid
and that the future economic well being of senior
officers is linked to the regime. If the first strategy
shows signs of cracking, they resort to Plan B, the
anti-Zionist card.
The late President Assad of Syria understood these
methods very well and he appears to have passed
them on to his son. Syria has, to date, not made
peace with Israel because such a peace agreement
would remove the vital anti-Zionist ingredient in the
domestic legitimacy of the Ba'ath Party. For each
hardline speech delivered by Assad, Jr., read
"trouble brewing at home." The formula is this
simple, and this dangerous.
Amidst all the prophesying and subsequent
commentary about the summit, one fact is clear: The
Arabs no longer fear Israel, or rather its military
might. The Israeli military, for its part, is highly
divided over how to rebuild its deterrents in the
wake of the exit from Lebanon, which was perceived
in the Arab world as its first major military victory
over Israel. Put succinctly, for the Arabs the risk
factor in playing the anti-Israeli card is far less today
than in the past. Arab leaders sleep easily in their
beds safe in the knowledge that in times of high
tension Israel will not launch a surprise pre-emptive
strike against their countries.
In the short-term, in order to reduce Arab
confidence Israel needs to adopt a much more
robust regional military strategy than merely
isolating Yasser Arafat in Ramallah and raiding
Palestinian cities. A sensible starting point would be
Iran -- in the form of an attack on its increasingly
dangerous nuclear program. Next, Israel needs to
make it clear to Iraq that it will respond to any
attacks by Saddam Hussein, and not repeat the
mistake it made during the Persian Gulf War of not
retaliating to Scud missile barrages.
Another pressing case will be Syria, and here there
are a growing number of people in Israel who
believe that it should give Damascus a bloody nose.
Israel, they argue, has chased the negotiations too
hard. Bring the Ba'ath regime to the point of
collapse through war and then offer it settlement
terms. Such a mechanism sounds crude and
dangerous to regional stability, but reflects
increasing Israeli frustrations over the status quo
with Syria.
The Zionist Revisionist ideologue Ze'ev Jabotinsky
argued that the Arabs would not accept Israel until
they realized they could not destroy it. This point
has not yet been reached, and in recent years, Arab
confidence in their ability to achieve this goal has
actually increased. As a result, any offer of peace
terms is nothing but a tactical ploy or smokescreen
for something much more sinister. The Arab goal
remains to destroy Israel and establish an Arab
state in all the land West of the River Jordan. It is
time for Israel to provide the Arabs with a timely
reminder that such thought is pure fantasy. The trick
is for Israel to do this without causing a major
regional war, or damaging its good relations with
the Bush Administration.
Neill Lochery is director of the Centre for Israeli Studies at
University College in London.
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4. BURNING SYNAGOGUES
Europe winks at anti-Semitism. Haven't we been
here before?
Thursday, April 4, 2002 12:01 a.m.
No one moralizes better than the French, but where
are they when you really need them? French
political leaders have been busy denouncing Israel
for defending itself against suicide bombers, but
perhaps they should save some of that Gallic moral
temper for the worst outbreak of anti-Semitism in
Europe in 60 years.
France is home to 600,000 Jews, Europe's largest
Jewish community, and in recent days many of
them have been under assault. Synagogues have
been set aflame in Strasbourg, Lyon and in
Brussels, Belgium. One in Marseilles was burnt to
the ground on Easter Sunday, and Molotov
cocktails were tossed at another on Tuesday. A
pavilion at a Jewish cemetery in Alsace was
destroyed this week, while a flammable liquid was
thrown at a synagogue in the same town. A fracas
broke out at Orly airport in Paris Tuesday between
pro- and anti-Israeli demonstrators.
French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin responded to
this by saying on radio that it is "extremely difficult"
to guarantee security at all places where Jews
gather. That's certainly how Jews in Tel Aviv now
feel.
Mr. Jospin also kept his moral outrage in check by
adding that the best antidote to the violence is
"reflection by citizens, understanding that passions
that flare up in the Middle East must not flare up
here." Reflection does wonders for people who are
reflective, to be sure, so perhaps Monsieur Jospin
will reflect on the impact of his own political
leadership on such religious animus.
Let's stipulate that it should be possible to criticize
Israel without being tarred as anti-Semitic, just as
any European or American Jew should be able to
praise the Jewish state without being accused of
dual loyalty. To make either charge admits to
having run out of ideas.
But opinion in Europe, especially official opinion, is
now so one-sided against Israel that it's bound to
have some public consequences. After Israel
launched an attack late last week to isolate Yasser
Arafat, without harming him, European governments
rose in unison with condemnations. The European
Union, which took years to respond to ethnic
cleansing in Bosnia, had no trouble finding unity on
its pro-Arafat call for an Israeli withdrawal from
Ramallah. The speaker of the Greek parliament
accused Israel of "genocide" against the
Palestinians.
French President Jacques Chirac said that "any
attack on [Arafat's] ability to act, or on his person,
would be extremely serious." Does Mr. Arafat's
ability to act include dispatching suicide bombers?
As usual, Monsieur le President was outdone in
verve by his foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, who
said Israel was trying to "asphyxiate Arafat."
All of this contrasts with the temperate reactions
to the previous week's suicide bombings. And all of
this from the same French government that
declined to recall its ambassador to Britain when he
created a ruckus last December by referring to
Israel as "that s----- little country." Ambassador
Daniel Bernard added, "Why should the world be in
danger of World War III because of those people?"
Political leaders set a moral tone, as the French like
to remind George W. Bush, and it's hard to believe
all of this doesn't feed into latent anti-Semitic
sentiment. Especially given Europe's terrible history,
one would think its leadership would be careful
before declaring that Jews are responsible for
everything terrible in the Mideast.
Amid the latest violence and campaigning for
re-election, Mr. Chirac did visit a synagogue in Le
Havre. "These acts are unimaginable, unpardonable
and unspeakable and should be pursued and
condemned as such," he said. Perhaps he's realized
that the French don't have standing to criticize
Jews abroad if they can't protect them at home.
Copyright © 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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5. QUOTES TO NOTE
"They are not martyrs, they are murderers"
George W. Bush
-------------------------------------------------------
"Erase this whole [Ramallah headquarters]
complex... including everyone inside. The only
things the whole Arafat gang is sensitive to are
their bank accounts, their rule, and their lives.
As long as we don't threaten those three
parameters, we have no chance of stopping
terrorism."
Avigdor Lieberman, former infrastructure minister
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6. HIGHLIGHT ARTICLES
APPEASING ARAB HATE PUTS THE LIE TO "NEVER AGAIN"
The official position of Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister,
speaking from his beach in Barbados, is that Israel's
response to the Passover massacre is "disproportionate."
Mr. Graham did not specify what would be proportionate.
But presumably, if he were Prime Minister of Israel, he'd
respond by fishing some girl out of her Home Ec class at
Tel Aviv High, loading her blouse with Semtex, and
pointing her in the direction of the nearest Ramallah
pizzeria to blow the legs off Palestinian grannies. Alas,
I fear even this proportionate, measured, reasonable
response would be unlikely to win Israel any sympathy
in the chancelleries of the west.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/apr02/never.html
BANISH ARAFAT NOW
What to do with Arafat? Isolating Arafat is no answer,
because the isolation must end at some point. Killing
Arafat is no answer, because that will make him a martyr.
The important thing is to make him irrelevant by
expelling him. Let us not hear any more ridiculous talk
about Arafat's being the only man who can make peace.
Can? He had 8 1/2 years to make peace. He has no
intention of making peace. He was offered his peace,
his Palestine, in July 2000 by Israel and then by the
president of the United States. Like the Palestinian
leadership of 1947, also offered their own state
side-by-side with Israel, Arafat rejected the offer
and started a war.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/apr02/banish.html
LET'S PRETEND THERE IS A PALESTINIAN STATE
Generations of Palestinian hostility and the
destruction that follows will in fact grow more
powerful if granted statehood. The cancer of Israel
will have metastasized. It will now have a life and
a sovereignty of its own. We must stop pretending that
a Palestinian State will bring peace to the Middle
East. It will surely prove to be more deadly than
any present horror that is occurring in Israel today.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/apr02/pretend.html
WAR AND THEN A WALL
Today's war began 18 months ago when Yasser Arafat
-- a Goebbels echoed by gullible news media -- said the
violence he orchestrated was a spontaneous conflagration
of popular indignation about Sharon visiting a holy site
in Israel's capital, Jerusalem's Temple Mount. Now the
war may have become the first half of the only currently
feasible formula for Israel's self-defense -- a short
war, followed by a high wall.
http://christianactionforisrael.org/isreport/apr02/war_wall.html
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