PrintAugust 13, 2007
Is Candy Time Near?
These must be great times for those among the Muslims and Arabs who would like to drive Israel into the sea - in other words, most of those two groups.
Israel seems to be headed in that direction, and in the drivers' seats are not the successors to Yasser Arafat or even Iran's Ahmadinejad, but rather Ehud Olmert and Shimon Peres, the prime minister and president, respectively, of Israel.
Is there anyone within reach of the emergency brake?
Nothing like getting someone to do your dirty work for you, and in the current crop of Israelis running the country (into the ground), the Arabs have it in spades.
With each pronouncement and concession by Israeli officials, the situation gets more surreal as the leaders of the Jewish state seemingly compete with one another to determine which one will be at the top (or bottom) of history's heap as the worst leader of a nation.
Look out, Neville Chamberlain, the Israelis are riding to your rescue.
At this pace, there will be nothing left to negotiate about if and when President Bush's call for an international peace conference (er, meeting) comes to fruition. The Israelis will have nothing left to offer. They are acting like a floundering business liquidating its holdings.
"Clearance sale. Going out of business after 59 years. No offer will be turned down. Everything must go, including the fixtures. No offer, no matter how unreasonable, will be rejected."
Israeli leaders are talking about giving up all of the historically Jewish territories of Judea and Samaria (known to anti-Israel propagandists and their unwitting followers as "the West Bank") or, as per vice premier Haim Ramon, at least 70 percent of those lands. Those lands today are home to upwards of 300,000 Israelis, all of whom would be rendered homeless under any give-away.
The Palestinian Authority already has administrative control over all of the areas where the Palestinian-Arabs live.
Israeli leaders even may be willing to part with parts of Jerusalem, Israel's capital and the focal point of Judaism for thousands of years, after previous administrations thoroughly rejected Arab demands for control over some sections of the city. Jerusalem has always had a Jewish presence and has been predominately Jewish for at least the last 150 years.
The Golan Heights, which Israel captured after driving back the attacking Syrian army in 1967, is also fully on the table, according to published reports. The area is home to Jewish and Druze communities, wineries and resorts built by the Israelis. Prior to '67, the Syrians used that area to shoot at Israeli farmers and to stage terrorist attacks.
In 2005 Israel gave up the Gaza Strip, which it similarly captured from Egypt, forcing 8,000 Jews out of their homes, businesses, synagogues, and yes, cemeteries, lest they not anger the Palestinian-Arabs who demand their areas be Judenrein. The area is now the terrorist haven of the Middle East and a launching pad for rockets aimed at Israel.
Land is not the only concessions the Israelis have already made.
More than 250 Palestinian-Arabs dedicated to murdering Jews were let out of Israeli prisons last month, while another 200-plus terrorists received the gift of immunity in an Israeli gesture to bolster the shrewd and well-dressed Palestinian-Arab president Mahmoud Abbas.
Israelis have allowed Abbas' thousands of armed troops - who are guided by a constitution calling for Israel's destruction -- to receive an additional 3,000 assault rifles, hundreds of thousands of bullets and countless bullet-proof vests courtesy of the Americans and Jordanians, plus training in the use of those weapons.
The Olmert government handed Abbas hundreds of millions of dollars allegedly for infrastructure, but it is clear what the funds will purchase (see above).
The latest (at least as I write) fiasco: Olmert has agreed to allow some 40 Iraqis who claim to be of Palestinian-Arab descent or who allege that they were forced to "flee" Israel in 1948 to come into Israel to live, setting a dangerous precedent. This could open the door to hundreds of thousands and potentially millions of Arabs falsely labeled as "refugees" living for generations in a host of Arab nations to likewise "return" to "their homes."
Also this week, the Israel Defense Forces carried out orders to forcibly remove two Jewish families from their legally purchased homes in Hebron (where the Patriarch Abraham purchased land to bury his wife) and then raze the houses plus a synagogue.
Somewhere in Hell (or lower), Arafat is grinning.
I've been suggesting for some time to acquaintances that the Israelis have already pressed the "self-destruct" button. We just don't know what the timer has been set for.
It pains me to say these things, let alone put them in writing. After all, I am a committed Zionist who spends seemingly unlimited hours and boundless energy trying to promote Israel and its right to live in peace - but not peace at any price.
A nation reduced to a size where it has no chance of defending itself from hundreds of millions of hostile neighbors will not have peace - or life - for very long.
A nation that, in the name of peace, hands those sworn to destroy it the means to murder its citizens can only be deemed suicidally naive, not enabling its existence to continue.
And, a nation that is willing to allow a proposed enemy nation to cut a swath through its territory, relinquishing its own contiguity so that this new nation can instead have contiguity, is surely lacking in self-respect to survive and meet tougher challenges.
This comes on the heels of seven years of incessant and deadly missile bombardment on its sovereign territory by Palestinian-Arabs with just a token response, continuing attempts by Palestinian-Arabs to carry out homicide bombings in Jewish population centers, and indications within some Arab-Israeli enclaves that a fifth-column is about to bloom and join the fight.
They are aided and abetted by Israelis from "Peace Now" activists to Cabinet members trying to undermine the Jewish character and sanctity of Israel.
All of this under the watchful eyes - and blessings - of Prime Minister Olmert.
Crazy Eddie, meet Crazy Ehud.
Is there not some Israeli leader willing to say "No" or "Enough"? Isn't there anyone left who remembers the lessons of peace through strength? Has the whole of the nation (except for a handful of stalwarts) just given up?
It looks that way from afar and from the daily Israeli press accounts. The media has fooled the Israeli public for quite some time now, lying and providing cover for a string of corrupt and inept Israeli leaders who have seemingly sold out their nation for personal gain, while trumpeting the promise that peace is at hand. After all, they declare: Abbas is a "moderate."
If these dangerous moves by Israeli leaders which shrink and weaken an already vulnerable country continue unchecked, it will not be long before moms throughout the Muslim and Arab worlds break out the candy, and they will have the Israelis, themselves, to thank.
Steve Feldman is executive director of the Greater Philadelphia District of the Zionist Organization of America and host of the weekly "The ZOA Middle East Report" radio show.
