(The "lose-lose" situation. Whether "giving it away" or "taking it", -what's the difference for the Jewish State? Nothing!
Hang-in there Israel!
MM)
"Piece Now" Falls Apart
December 05, 2006
by Daryl Temkin, Ph.D.
The organization, Peace Now, which is sarcastically renamed, "Piece Now", has been devoted and beholden to the wishful concept of "land for peace". They have a firm belief that if Israel would only give away every parcel of land that has a possible Arab claim, the Arabs would become so satisfied that they would stop sending missiles and suicide bombers to destroy Israeli citizens and property.
Peace Now is committed to the idea that Arabs only want Israeli land up to the 1949 borders and have no concern about all the pre-1948 towns and villages where some 700,000 Arabs once resided. Giving land for peace means Israel gives a tangible item, namely land, and the Arabs give an intangible promise or even a signed piece of paper which asserts the deterrence of their citizens from killing Jews and participating in further terrorist acts. At the drop of a hat, the "promise" can be broken by one or many terrorists, an intifada revolt, or even a military attack. And if a breach should happen, once Israel has given away the land, the only way to recover the land, which to Israel spells "security", is by a major war.That type of war would include an untold number of deaths as well as an avalanche of worldwide anti-Israel condemnation. (So what's new? M.)
Even though there is no balance of security in the Land for Peace equation, and Israel is only left holding the short end of the stick, this equation became so popular among law makers and intellectuals that even the average person began to chant the mantra"Land for Peace". In 1956, after conquering the sizable land mass, the Sinai Dessert Peninsula, Israel gave that land back to Egypt. In return, Israel received a "peace" which somewhat lasted until June of 1967 when once again Israel was required, for its future security, to retake the Sinai Peninsula.
Five years later, Egypt's1973 surprise attack to destroy Israel was not successful in part because the Sinai land mass protected Israel's citizens from an immediate invasion. Then in 1978, the famous Begin-Sadat handshake representing Israel's quest for peace resulted in Israel's again giving Egypt the Sinai Peninsula .Today, without this protective buffer, the world sees Egypt smuggling a steady stream of weapons to Gaza and now there are over 5,000 Egyptian troops stationed on Israel's southern border. Due to their receipt of America's multi-billion dollar generous foreign aid, Egypt has upgraded its militaryto such an extent that it has been recognized as oneof the best if not the strongest Arab armies. The Egyptian army still is focused on a victorious attack upon Israel and has been able to use Gaza, the recent"land for peace" dream, as their weapons stockpile.
Furthermore, the recently established 5,000 Egyptian soldiers stationed on the Gaza border has been justified to the world as being there to prevent Egyptian weapon smuggling and tunneling into Gaza. Strange that truck size weapons are still able to be driven right into Gaza! One would think that this is a comedy for the mindless.
Israel offering the Sinai Peninsula for peace and more recently Gaza-for-peace has been one of the great overriding mistakes in Israel's diplomatic history. Its land return or land for peace diplomacy has always meant an empowerment to its enemies' ultimate goal, and has never and will likely never mean a peace agreement to be respected and upheld. But many Israelis with their Western outlook have lived by a belief that people will do what they say and sign. Only later, the opposite is discovered to show that the peace deals and ceasefires are typically not worth the paper they are written on. This is because, the West remains steadfast in its refusal to understand that the Arab/Islamic issue is not "land for peace" or even a desire to build an additional Arab state.
Due to the refusal to understand the fundamental Arab/Islamic quest, Israeli and world politicians, along with academics continually return to the failed past results of dismal road maps and peace plans, expecting that this time, the results will be different. For some reason, it still is a surprise when the outcome is the same. The only outcome to the repetitive experiment is that more precious Israeli lives are sacrificed for no meaningful let alone legitimate reason
. So it is that Peace Now and the other similar styled organizations refuse to give up their passion for Israel's responsibility to return to the 1949 or even 1948 borders. History and facts on the ground are of little consequence because Peace Now has a fervent"religious" belief that Israel is responsible for all Arab Palestinian hatred and angst. In their opinion, Israel is this immoral and horrific occupier of"Palestinian" land. This is used as a justification of the Arab Palestinian need to blow up buses, restaurants, stores, cafes and discothèques, as well as to shoot thousands of indiscriminately targeted missiles specifically meant to land in Israeli populated neighborhoods.
Peace Now is gravely challenged by the fact that it was in 1964 when the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, was established -- years before there were any "occupied" territories. It's a very big problem for Peace Now to explain the intensions of thePLO/Fatah in 1964 as they crowned Egyptian born Yassir Arafat as the model "Palestinian". To make more effective rhetoric, Arafat's birthplace was changed to Ramallah. After all, what difference does it make where a "national liberator" and the "Father of the Palestinians" is actually born?
Peace Now is further diminished as they try to claim that the Palestinians recognized the State of Israel as a result of the Oslo Agreement which was somewhat short lived. It's a problem for Peace Now's vision that the PLO charter which repeatedly calls for the destruction of the State of Israel has never been revised from its 42 year old original. Peace Now is somewhat cornered into saying that in 1964, if the PLO really wanted their own state, they would have attacked Jordan which controlled the West Bank, and they would be interested in attacking Egypt which controlled the Gaza Strip. Due to this absurdity, and the reality that the PLO was only looking to attack and destroy Israel, this topic is stringently avoided. Israel's 1967 glorious victory became Peace Now's day of darkness. For Peace Now, Israel had become an immoral occupier, and it was their task to right the wrongs of the victorious Israeli Defense Force.
The August 2005 Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip was a remarkable event for Peace Now's glory. Finally, in their mind, Israel was taking the right moral action and peace would begin to fill the world. The actual results of that thinking were "slightly" different unless one considers sixteen months of almost daily rocket firings a definition of peace and honest recognition. Again, results are not important; it's the moral vision that counts, so after the devastating aftermath of the Gaza withdrawal, Peace Now needed the speedyIsraeli withdrawal from the West Bank. The glitch ofo ver 1,000 deadly rockets being launched upon Israel from the "non occupied" Gaza made no difference to Peace Now because "Jewish" morality was being served and protected. But then came glitch number two:Hezbollah shooting some 4,000 rockets and missiles into Israel's northern cities including Haifa, Safed, Naharia, and even threatening Tel Aviv. T
he disgrace and abhorrence of the Hezbollah aggression forced the Israeli government to table its West Bank withdrawal plan. Israelis were now more aware that if they want to remain alive, there was little sense in giving the militarized Hamas control of the West Bank highlands overlooking Tel Aviv and its surrounding population centers. Peace loving Israelis began to realize that the Arab leaders who have been telling the world that they intend to destroy Israel actually plan to fulfill their stated dreams. Disturbed by this sway in the Israeli public opinion away from West Bank withdrawal, Peace Now needed a wayto get the issue back on the table.
Last week, PeaceNow issued a "secret source" report claiming that up to 40% of the Jewish towns and cities built in the West Bank are illegally built upon private Palestinian owned land. Past president, Jimmy Carter picked this up and publicized the claim on multiple nation wide television interviews. It's somewhat interesting that it took 35 – 40 years for such a “secret report” to be revealed, just at the time when immediate West Bank withdrawal has been determined to be out of the question. Peace Now, claiming to be concerned aboutIsrael losing its moral backbone which to them cannot exist if there are Jews living in the West Bank, has ventured far out on a very flimsy limb with this disclosure. Within hours, a shower of alarming questions fell upon the Peace Now report shredding its claims with a lengthy list of factual errors.
It reveals that the“secret report” lacks credible sources, skips legal land definitions, doesn't produce land deeds from the Ottoman Empire, British Empire or from Jordanian rule,and, in addition, the report indicates that Jewish purchased land with valid existing land deeds, still is counted as Arab lands. Like Holocaust denial, this land denial serves one main purpose, to try to show that 270,000 – 450,000 Jews have no right to their homes and their land which leads to the bottom line Arab claim that Israel's 5.8 million Jews also have no existential legitimacy.
Furthermore, it plays into the anti-Israel propaganda claiming that the Jews stole the land. (This is exactly what biblical scholars know as being the opening concern of Rashi's commentary). If the suspect Peace Now claim was credible, the immediate Peace Now moral correction would be a total Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 borders. Peace Now presents no security concerns or security plans for Israel's protection from its sworn and highly militarized enemies. Peace Now fails miserably by not even expressing a concern for placing the entire Jewish nation at mortal risk. Peace Now 's only concern appears to be extricating themselves from a self imposed moral disease which bloodies their hands and soul as well as it destroys their moral fiber. One can say that the pieces of Peace Now are now falling apart at the seams.
Publishing and publicizing what appears to be a fabricated and anonymously written report will not improve the moral fiber of a country but will only call into question all future attempts for Peace Now to achieve integrity. As the story unfolds, it appears that Peace Now has been caught in an outright deception in their continued attempt to create a national hysteria, nation embarrassment and indignation, as well as national shame. Furthermore, Peace Now, discovered to be mainly financed by anti-Israel European governments, actively works to give the terrorist enemies of Israel legitimate reasons to inflame and fuel their anti-Israel anger.
They enjoy feeding reports of any new Israeli land developments to the proper Palestinian factions all of which control Gazan missile launching sites. Being professional "tattletales", Peace Now feels that they are proudly acting as "moral" agents who just happen to also publish fabricated and highly deceptive reports. How many Israelis are now dead, wounded or maimed for life because of Peace Now's moral agenda? It is often apparent that Peace Now cares less about dead Israelis and more about promoting their pseudo-morality even if its outcome risks destroying the Jewish State.
Peace Now followers live with their own "ardent" religious belief that it is better to be a dead Jew than to live with any type of a moral angst. In the case of Israeli West Bank towns, there will be a thorough published report with revealed sources documenting legal land deeds which will likely leave one with no valid "grounds" for moral angst. We would all like "peace" to come "now". But, we want a peace to be a peace that contains wholeness and not a peace that threatens to leave the world in pieces. _____________________________________________
Daryl Temkin, Ph.D. is the director of the Israel Education Institute which is devoted to teaching history and contemporary issues of Israel to Jews and Non-Jews throughout the world. He can be reached at: DT@Israel-Institute.com. This weekly column is published in Shalom LA, Israel-Jewish Life, and also appears in various North American and European publications, web magazines, and blogs. Requests for publishing this or other writingsby Dr. Temkin can be sent to: Publishing@Israel-Institute.com. For speaking engagements and lecture dates, contact: DarylTemkin@Israel-Institute.com. For Membership and Donor Leadership to the IsraelInstitute, contact: Membership@Israel-Institute.com. Daryl Temkin, Ph.D. Israel Institute ----------------------------------------------------------email: daryltemkinphd@gmail.com phone: 310.508.0950 web: http://israel-institute.org/ Forward emailIsrael Institute 1227 Smithwood Dr Los Angeles CA 90035
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