The Roots of Israel’s Existential Crisis: Sol Stern Provides the Ammunition we Need To Defend Israel
Israel is under siege, facing what many people believe is the most serious crisis facing it since the day it first existed, over sixty years ago. Today, two op-eds were published that address this issue.
The first is by Bret Stephens, and appears in The Wall Street Journal. It just might be the single most important column he has written. He starts stating the obvious, and then listing precisely what Israel’s predicament is:
It is surrounded on nearly all sides by enemies who are aggressively committed to its destruction. And too many people who call themselves its friends are only ambivalently committed to its security.
No one, in a short article, has accomplished the job of showing how the would-be friends of Israel help its enemies by continually putting the blame for Israel’s troubles on the one democracy in the Middle East that has succeeded, and way beyond its founders’ dreams, and hence is put on perpetual trial. It is Israel’s very existence, and its success, that leads to the hateful attempts of its enemies to try to destroy the Jewish state.
Some, on the Left especially, always blame Israel. They say “if only Netanyahu was not prime minister; if only there were no Russian-born Jews exerting influence on the political scene; if only they lived up to the promise of their Labor Zionist socialist founders; if only they had given the Arabs real reasons to stop hating them,” etc., etc., etc. It’s all Israel’s and Bibi’s fault. As noted here the other day, a former head of the New Israel Fund revealed privately what she never could say publicly to her own community: “The disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic.” Yes, and the remaining Jews would all be dead. This is the true face of the supposedly pro-Israeli Left.
One should heed Stephens’ final paragraph if one really cares about Israel’s survival:
No democracy in the world today lies under a darker shadow of existential dread than Israel. And the events of the past month ought to demonstrate that Israel’s dread is not of shadows only. Israel’s efforts to allay the enmity of its enemies or mollify the scorn of its critics have failed. But is it too much to ask its friends for support — this time, for once, without cavil or reservation?
In a similar fashion, David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, writes that the “strategic challenges” facing Israel continue to exist and are “hardly likely to end tomorrow.” He discounts from the start those he calls the ABJ Jews — “‘Anyone But Jews’ Jews” — who will help anyone except their fellow Jews. He also does not care about those he calls the “IOI crowd,” those who believe “‘If Only Israel’ did this or that, all would be solved,” as if Israel alone is the guilty party that has failed to stop the attacks on the Jewish state.
Harris is more concerned with those who understand there are no easy answers, but who recognize the burden put on Israel — whom they know seeks peace and is not being treated fairly. Like Stephens, he outlines what faces Israel in the present, pointing to the new threats from Iran, Turkey, Syria, Hezbollah, and, of course, Hamas — whose charter he says should rightfully be required reading. He calls it: “Bone-chilling, classic anti-Semitism.”
He may discard talking to the IOI crowd, but he answers them nevertheless. He notes that the Palestinian Authority has “spurned every offer for peace,” not just coming from Netanyahu today, but from left-of-center, right-of-center, and centrist Israeli governments, continually walking away “from the negotiating table” in favor of appeasement of Hamas. Harris, talking to the IOI types, writes the following:
There are those who say they’d get involved if only there were a different government in Jerusalem. They forget one basic fact: the battle is bigger than the government du jour; it’s really about Israel, no matter who is in power.
In 2000, an unprecedented wave of terror against Israel broke out with a left-of-center coalition in power and a sweeping two-state proposal on the table.
In 1996, when the dovish Shimon Peres was prime minister, he was defeated in an election because of a series of Palestinian terrorist attacks.
What to do?
Look at yourself in the mirror and ask whether this battle really is about someone else, or whether it’s also about you.
To understand the roots of the problem, remember that knowledge is power. And no one has gotten to the roots of the crisis better than Sol Stern, in his new Encounter Books Broadside: A Century of Palestinian Rejectionism and Jew Hatred. If you care about Israel and you are among those who want to give ammunition in the form of logic, facts and truth to your doubting friends, you should immediately order this booklet for them either online or in print, and spend the small amount necessary to give it to them as a gift.
What do you give to a man who comes to your house and wants to steal it from you?
Please help me understand how to negotiate with such a thief. Do you give him your silverware, in hopes that is enough?
He takes them and sells them and comes back tomorrow. And tomorrow, you give him your fine china, in hopes that will be enough. But he sells them as well and comes back the next day. You give him your power tools in the garage, but he says he wants your car. You give him your fine linens but he says he wants your bedroom furniture.
Pretty soon, he has all your worldly belongings…but you have not appeased him. He wants you out of “his” house. What do you give him after he has taken everything you have to give.
You give him a leftist lawyer and a NYTimes publicist. If they can’t bankrupt you any further at least they can slander you. Murder by libel. Annihilation by moral nihilism. Annihilism. It’s good to be a leftist. You don’t need a brain or a soul. Just access to the NYTimes editorial page. Where you will find neither.
“What do you give to a man who comes to your house and wants to steal it from you?”
This is almost word for word what I’ve heard from a Palestinian spokesman. Obviously, closed minds think alike.
And empty minds, not at all.
You simply through the thief away.
Unfortunately, we let the Arab thieves stay
Golda Meir said it better than anyone else ‘Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us(Jews)’ Since the Arabs willingly push their kids to be homicide bombers, there is no hope for peace.
And the root cause of THAT phenomenon is Islam. No, not radical Islam. Not extremist Islam. Not “Islamism.” I’m talking about plain old garden-variety mainstream Islam.
Our stupid fear of being seen as against a “religion” has caused us to wimp out to the extent that we can’t even name our enemy.
Islam died in 1948 (religion). Mohommedism arose (CULT). When the MEDINA, Quran was no longer the Quran to read along with the Torah/Bible, the MEKKAH became the quran to read, without reading the Torah/Bible. Thus no more balance to the angry blood (NUTS.
Hogwash. Islam was birthed in blood, has bathed in it for 13 centuries, and has always preferred the blood of Jews.
First, Palestinian rejectionism has nothing to do with a so called ” two state solution ” because they have had a state of their own since 1946. They laugh behind western backs because the gullible westerners accept the real big lie – and worse participate in its promulgation- that the muslims of Palestine have no state at all. Therefor by continuously rejecting they loose nothing and gain the opportunity to dismantle the Jewish state.
Secondly, Many Jews themselves have accepted an even bigger lie- that they are powerless in the face of the worlds aggression. In fact at no time since Moses have Jews wielded as much power as we do today. Jews have been persecuted, burned and tortured for over a thousand years. Just seventy years ago, the enlightened europeans were stuffing their mattresses with our hair and washing their bodies with soap processed from the remains of our children. Now we have the power to destroy those who wish our demise. We can defend Jewish life with more power than we have ever had in our own hands. Our enemies will pay the price.
Third, today, in WSJ interview, former Vice President Dick Cheney , stated he sent a letter to the head of the Israel Air Force thanking him for taking out the Osirak nuclear reactor. He states quite clearly the enormous benefit a strong israel played in safeguarding the United States.
http://online.wsj.com/video/cheney-time-to-rein-in-iran/1D8607F7-FD46-428E-B12B-60887E168C36.html
Israel faces great challenges. Support for Israel is important not only for Israel but for every American citizen that values his or her own freedom. It is also important to support Israel because ultimately we will all face the Judge of Judges and we will have to answer for our own actions. Support for Israel is simply the right moral decision.
Our greatest enemies may, in fact, be our high IQ Jewish intellectuals and financiers who spend their energy and funds to work against us. In my estimation, it can be explained by an expansion of the Stockholm Syndrome: “I will identify with my persecutors in order that they acknowledge, accept and approve of me.” I will write a full article on this topic. In the meantime, I am beginning to read “A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad” by Robert Wistrich”, published in 2010 (about 940 pages plus Notes.
Friend i stand with you on every word you spoke, I am a B.A. Christian, and would be willing to go to Israel, and fight this GOOD fight…Truer words you have never put to pen….The Judge of Judges will be in this battle, and woe is every one that raises his evil hand against His Planting…..If obomo decides to do his evil, and agree to this PLO nation, He will suffer the worst of what YHWH has planned for the enemies of righteousness, and the evil against HIS beloved Israel…..I am 63, and a VN Vet….is there anything that i can do for Israel…
Jimi Belton, a Zionist Christian, and there is millions of us…Shalom
Almighty G-d, Please Bless Jimi Belton and all he holds dear. May his children blossom and may he live in health to see his great grand-childrens children marry. Keep him safe and and protect him and his loved ones in all the days to come.
May You have Mercy in Judgement and see the goodness of his soul.
http://www.vfi-usa.org/
Plenty of hot coffee and cold eggs. And the eternal gratitude of Israel.
http://www.vfi-usa.org/Programs/Index.php
Like Stephens, he outlines what faces Israel in the present, pointing to the new threats from Iran, Turkey, Syria, Hezbollah, and, of course, Hamas and Obama — whose charter and unexamined history he says should rightfully be required reading.
Barack Obama (pretend-Christian and) the son of a Muslim, is not a great friend of Israel. Quelle surprise!
If Israel goes down, so does the Middle East. Subs armed with nuclear weapons. Bye, bye Iran, Syria, Egypt, Libya.
The Arabs have a saying: After Saturday will come Sunday. It’s not silly. It means that when they’re done with the Jews they’ll turn to Christians.
You seem to believe, Ron, that after so much time and so much negotiation and so much chatter, there still exists some group in the world undecided about who is right and who is wrong in some imagined intellectual debate between Jews and Muslims.
No such group exists and there is no true debate. People either side with the Jews or they side with the Muslims. Their rationale in either case is entirely beside the point.
Pat Buchanan does not make logical and historical arguments for the Arabs and against the Jews because he objectively believes the Arabs are right and the Jews are wrong. Pat Buchanan is an open and unabashed Jew hater because his father and his mother and his priest were Jew haters and he grew up listening to radio broadcasts by Fathers Coughlin and Freeny. Logic and history have nothing to do with Buchanan’s opinion and all the reason in the world will not persuade him to change it.
Likewise the State Department and its perfidious friends across the pond in the British Foreign Office. They are Jew haters by upbringing and Arabists by tradition, inclination and the fact that most are bought and paid for by the oil rich Arabs.
(The payoffs to our diplomats and politicians by the Sheik Yamanis and Al Turkis is barely hidden and carries no shame or taint of treason. The Fat Sheiks pose no military threat to us. Where’s the harm in an American foreign service officer or politician picking up a few greasy dinar from our “Arab allies” in the Middle East? Don’t they support the “peace process?”)
As for the Journalists, it is no accident that the most consistently and vocally hostile to the Jewish state and Judaism among them are Jewish. You and I Ron, along with every other Jew with his head screwed on right knows that the reasons for their perverse views lie in the realm of careerism and psychiatry rather than reason, history or politics.
The wildly successful Tom Friedmans and Roger Cohens are career Jew-baiters. By poking their coreligionists in the eye, they fill the mailbags at the NYT and the WaPO justifying their six and seven figure salaries to their editors and publishers. Every outbreak of violence in the Middle East gains them another inch up the greasy pole. Either would welcome another Holocaust if only he could cover it for the loyal readers back home.
Then there are the Jewish sickos, never before in Jewish history so numerous and so brazen. The twisted Jewish lefties embedded in the rotten core of every University, every book publisher’s, every political and cultural institution in the nation.
Long story short, Ron, rational persuasion is no antidote to anti-Semitism. Your friends are wasting ink and paper. As long as the enemies of the Jews are confident that they can speak and act freely without fear, they will continue to do so. When you and your learned and thoughtful friends fully appreciate this,the single effective and permanent response to anti-Semites will become manifestly simple and clear.
It has nothing to do with words or intellectual persuasion.
Well said.
100% correct. Visceral hatred owes nothing to logic and therefore logic cannot influence it. Peace is an illusion and Israel must always stay stronger than its would-be annihilators.
Israel’s Blockade of Gaza Violates International Law, Says UN Panel
The latest UN report on Gaza blockade disputes Palmer Report, claims its findings were politically motivated
by John Glaser, September 13, 2011
| Print This | Share This | Antiwar Forum
Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip violates international law, according to a panel of human rights experts reporting to the United Nations on Tuesday.
The finding disputes a conclusion reached by the UN Palmer Report on the Israeli raid of the May 2010 Gaza aid flotilla, which killed 19 activists aboard. That separate report concluded that Israel’s use of force was excessive and unreasonable, but that the blockade was legal.
The conclusions of the new report actually coincide with an earlier fact-finding mission from last September, as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross, which both claimed the blockade is illegal. It has subjected Gazans to collective punishment in “flagrant contravention of international human rights and humanitarian law,” they said.
“In pronouncing itself on the legality of the naval blockade, the Palmer Report does not recognise the naval blockade as an integral part of Israel’s closure policy towards Gaza which has a disproportionate impact on the human rights of civilians,” they said in a joint statement.
Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories and one of the five experts who issued Tuesday’s statement, said the Palmer report “was aimed at political reconciliation between Israel and Turkey” and that “it is unfortunate that in the report politics should trump the law.”
According to another of the UN special rapporteurs, about one third of Gaza’s arable land and 85 percent of its fishing waters are totally or partially inaccessible due to Israeli military measures, while at least two-thirds of Gazan households lack reliable access to food as a result of the blockade.
The high-tension bid for Palestinian statehood, set to be voted upon by the UN this month, would be likely to make such conclusions much more official, leaving Israel susceptible to sanctions or even prosecutions for international crimes, which is reportedly a major basis for Israeli objection to Palestinian statehood.
No is does NOT!
All it says ia that Israel has used excessive force.
Your words, sir or madam, are a blatant lie!
Israel doesn’t need moral support or guarantees. Rather it needs support to create secure borders.
After WWII, Germans were removed from many areas where they had been trouble before the war. Israel exists because the locals were on the wrong side in two wars, and since they do not accept the peace from either, a similar solution might work.
Please spare me the stuff about Arab rage. Raging does no good when you can’t back it up, and believe me they can’t. Islamophobia is a joke because hatred implies fear and envy: disdain is a far better description of the situation.
It boils down to this: If the Palestinians lay down their arms, there would be no more war. If the Israelis lay down their arms, their would be no more Israel.
This massive propaganda crusade against Israel is part and parcel of the politically correct, left liberal,progressive ideology.
And which group votes almost totally for left liberal progressives?? American jewish voters.
American jewish voters have never seen a left wing liberal politician they did not like. These progressive liberals dominate academia, the media, the ACLU, Hollywood, and of course, the party of the american jewish voter, the democratic party.
The result of this suicidal voting mind-set will be the destruction of Israel. It is bad enough that Israel is surrounded by Arab nations who want to see Israel exterminated. But now, Turkey is in the mix, and they have by far, the most powerful military in the region.
The chickens are coming home to roost – brought to you by the anti-semitic liberal progressives scattered about the most influential organizations in the USA – and supported by the democratic party; the party that need not even bother appealing to jewish american voters because they have their vote in the bag.
The progressive democrats and their followers will do to the Israel what they have done to inner city black americans over the last 50 years; but that is another storhy.
Friend, do not despair, Israel will not be lost, Wait until YHWH puts the hook into the Russian Army and yanks them to the Great Battle of all times, and something like 4/5ths. of their army will be destroyed…..Have faith, as Messiah, will return to fight the armies of the world that have assembled against Israel…This is His promise to the world, It is Written…there is a Great Humbling coming to the very Jews that seem to hate Israel….I an very excited about all this because Messiah promised that this would happen, and what would be the end result….Dear Jewish hearts, Oh that you could only see What YHWH has temporily hidden from HIS Chosen ones….Jimi….The Christian Zionist
Let me brief some historical facts.
Arabs so called “refuges” came to Palestine after Jews start to cultivate the land in 1880. They came because there was plenty of work at that time.
Before that time the country was deserted with few Arabs and Jews for hundreds of years.
In his book “The Innocents Abroad” Mark Twain wrote in 1869 about what he find in the holy land.
CHAPTER XLIX
We never saw a human being on the whole route, much less lawless hordes of Bedouins. Tabor stands solitary and alone, a giant sentinel above the Plain of Esdraelon.
CHAPTER XLVII
We traversed some miles of desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds–a silent, mournful expanse, wherein we saw only three persons—Arabs
CHAPTER LII
There was hardly a tree or a shrub any where. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.
It got a big push after the WW1 when the British built Haifa Port and the gas pipe line from Iraq to Haifa.
In 1932, 30000 Arabs enter Palestine in one month from Syria – Horn.
Most of the Arab population in 1948 lived in Palestine for few years.
In 1956 Ahmed Shukari, proclaimed from the podium of the U.N., as the Arab League’s ambassador there, that “such a creature as Palestine does not exist at all. This land is nothing but the southern portion of Greater Syria…”
In 1977 Zahir Muhsein, the leader of the al-Sa’iqa Organization, revealed the truth in an interview to the Dutch newspaper Trouw:
“The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity.
There is no evidence that connect Palestine to Arabs in any document. But there is Balfour declaration adopted by League of Nations since 1923
“establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. e.g.Not for Arabs what so ever.
“Present at the first war against Israel waged by invading Arab armies, Stone reported the Arab exodus as not being caused by Israeli aggression — as he later would argue — but by Palestinians running away to avoid the fighting.”
Research done by the Israeli historian Benny Morris shows that while some Palestinians did flee the fighting there were also expulsions. Does that make Morris part of the ABJ crowd? The IOI crowd? A self-hating Jew?
Yes, I’ve read Morris’s questionable assertion that Ben-Gurion should have finished the job of expulsion and stabilized the nation. I’ve also read the attacks on Morris from the right (Karsh), left (Pappe) and looney left (Finkelstein). But Morris demonstrates that facing the historical truth is not incompatible with defending Israel.
Yes, there were some expulsions but only because Arab villages were used by Shukeiri’s forces in Safed, for example, that created a fifth column and in the fighting the villagers were “forced” to flee.
Yes, Morris outlines in detail the abuses by the Jewish military against Arabs in villages in what had then become the state of Israel (See “The Palestinian Refugee Question–Revisited”. What Morris doesn’t, and didn’t do, is put the whole matter in context, outlining how the masses of Arabs followed their leaders, stampeding out of the country in fear that the victorious Israelis would do to them what victorious Arabs would have done to the remaining Jews, namely, to murder, torture, pillage and rape (see the Hebron Massacre in 1929). Morris did not care to note how Jewish officials sought to encourage Arabs to remain in such places as Haifa but to no avail. Morris wrote nothing about how the various Arab states encouraged Arabs to flee temporarily but to return, triumphant, with new land and property from the dispossessed Jews. Benny Morris is simply a poor historian. You can view the objections to Morris the historian by Efraim Karsh published not so long ago in Pajamas Media and the pitiful response by Morris. Also, read the comments.
Here is the ammunition to defend Israel:
http://www.af.mil/information/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=108
For the Reader’s edification, if not already aware of this site, go to isracampus.org.il for a compendium of the writings and deeds of anti-Israeli professors and academics within the country of Israel itself. It is quite a serious site and, for an Israeli Jew such as myself, extremely shameful and maddening as well given that our taxes support these high-level morons, over-moralistic and self-satisfied comfort seekers.
Kahane was right- and for it, he was libeled then killed.
Both the title of Sol Stern’s noble effort, “A Century of Palestinian Rejectionism and Jew Hatred,”
and the paragraph cited by Ron from Stern’s interview in today’s Frontpagemag.com,
“My broadside shows how the Palestinian campaign for statehood is based on a historical big lie. The lie is
that the Palestinian people were dispossessed by the new state of Israel in 1948 and that the current Israeli
government is still preventing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. I show that from the
beginning of the conflict almost a century ago it was the Jews who were willing to compromise, to accept the
so called “two state” solution, while the Palestinian leadership refused to even consider a sovereign Jewish
state in the Muslim Middle East. Moreover, this rejection, which was backed by violence at every turn, was
driven by Islamic doctrines of Jew hatred,”
both display one fundamental, fatal flaw in thinking, talking, and acting in defense of Israel: the assumption that a “Palestinian people” exists. That assumption itself is a Big Lie, and by constant repetition, over many long years, as with other Big Lies, has resulted in its widespread, deeply held acceptance as fact, and lies at the roots of Israel’s existential crisis today. Moshe Meged @ 8 has aptly quoted an excerpt from Zahir Muhsein’s revealing statement testifying to the lie (a fuller statement may be found on the home page of Think-Israel.org).
Founded on a genocidal aim against Israel, this nationality or identity as a people has not only credibility, but appeal and fervent support across much of this sick world right now. The UN General Assembly is poised to vote it right into existence as a member nation even as Durban III is meeting to declare Israel unworthy of her very own existence as a Jewish state. At such a time it is hardly appropriate, to say the least, for Israel’s defenders to confirm their genocidal enemy’s spurious, bloodthirsty claim to legitimacy.
I would add that in the long run there is much to be said for david levavi’s argument @ 6 that rational debate is no antidote to anti-Semitism. But if that time perhaps has not yet fully arrived, and some debate is needed to remove lingering doubts from still weak or wavering Jewish minds, if based on surrender to a Big Lie, it is doomed to fail.
Finally, with regard to those anti-Semitic “Jewish sickos, never before in Jewish history so numerous and so brazen,” while argument is clearly useless, condemnation, long and loud, is not.
Correction: Moshe Meged @ 11
The about to be declared Palestinian state will be the only one in history that has no actual borders. And when, as is inevitable, the pre-1967 lines are considered the basis for this misbegotten state, it might be worthwhile to recall a little history.
The Arabs rejected the partition in 1947; had they done so the sum total of Arabs displaced would have been: none. An armistice was signed at Rhodes in 1949 and from then on the Arabs maintained unanimously that the lines were not recognized borders, never would be recognized borders, and they would never recognize any borders at all for any Zionist entity.
They were not shy about stoutly insisting that these were cease-fire lines only, points at which for the moment they had agreed to stop fighting. But the lines would be crossed when it was time to wipe out the Zionist entity.
Something happened in 1967 and at that point the pre-1967 borders became holy, sacrosanct, and Israel would only be allowed to exist (if at all) within them.
Bringing this up will be bootless, of course, because when it comes to the Arabs and Palestinians specifically, there is never a consequence for poor choices. They can launch as many wars as they want and no one ever suggests, in contradistinction to everyone else in the world, that they may have to pay a penalty for losing.