Posted on 05/09/2003 4:51:27 AM PDT by Alouette
Of all the developments in Israel over the past couple of years, I find the very scariest and most dangerous to be the emergence of a new form of historic revisionism that should be called “Oslo Revisionism”. Like Holocaust revisionism, the fashionable term for Holocaust Denial, this is a nefarious attempt to rewrite history and invent a false narrative regarding the history of the Oslo peace process. It is just the latest manifestation of the totalitarian nature of Israel’s Left.
According to the Oslo Revisionism, Israel never in fact pursued a peace process with the PLO. It was little more than false posturing and pretense by Israeli Labor party leaders for purposes of public relations spin. Israel never agreed to rescue the PLO from oblivion in exchange for what it thought was a deal with the PLO. Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin never promised Israelis that the PLO had abandoned terror and genocide as its raison d’etre. The leaders of the Labor party never promised that Oslo would never result in demands upon Israel to abandon eastern Jerusalem or acquiesce with respect to the right of return. They never offered Syria all of the Golan Heights plus slabs of pre-1967 Israel. They never insisted that the PLO would protect Israelis from violence in exchange for its recognition. They never insisted the PLO would pursue economic and social welfare goals instead of aggression and atrocities, once granted their own territories for control. They never insisted it was absurd to suggest that PLO-ruled areas would ever be used to attack Israel or shoot rockets at Israel. They never dismissed all suggestions that the PLO would smuggle in weapons and produce missiles. They never dismissed as absurd the notion that the PLO would plant bombs in Jerusalem or shell its neighborhoods or fire into Jerusalem civilians’ homes. And they never dismissed with a wave of their hands all those dissidents warning that Oslo would produce a bloodbath and debacle without precedent in history.
According to Oslo Revisionism, the Labor party leaders never insisted that anyone questioning the wisdom of Oslo was a criminal and inciter who should be prosecuted. They never dismissed as zealots and criminals those opposing handing arms over to the PLO. They never insisted that all those dissenting from Labor party fantasies were enemies of peace. They never bankrolled Arafat and the PLO leaders. They never insisted that Palestinian violence would decline once Palestinians were liberated from occupation by Israel. They never insisted that Palestinian Authority arms would never be used against Israel. They never insisted that PLO-controlled media and schools would renounce anti-Semitism and would preach coexistence and tranquility. They never insisted there would be an economic peace dividend, with world investments flooding in.
These are all lies invented by the Israeli Right, people who do not want peace and only covet the lands of the Other, insensitive racist people.
You are all mistaken. The revisionists know the truth. Nothing of the sort ever took place. The Labor party and the Left had insisted all along that the PLO would never behave peacefully until Israel had met all its demands. Indeed, continuing PLO violence is justified and understandable. No Justice, No Peace.
Oslo Revisionism insists that Israel never really offered the PLO any offers for peace at all, no serious goodwill gestures, no concessions. Ehud Barak never offered the PLO all of the occupied territories plus eastern Jerusalem, plus parts of pre-1967 Israel, plus tribute, plus limited agreement to the return of 150,000 Palestinian refugees. Like the Holocaust, it just never happened, and it is nothing more than Zionist propaganda to say it did. An invention to serve Zionist aggressive aims and war crimes. In fact, say the totalitarian Leftist revisionists, Barak was just trying to trick the PLO by pretending to offer them everything.
Really, that is what they are now saying.
The Labor party leaders never guaranteed that the PLO would suppress all Palestinian terror. They never insisted that there was no need at all to test PLO intentions, because it was so obvious that the PLO was serious about abandoning terror and war. Peres never said that he was more concerned about the infiltration of cable television into Israel than he was about the infiltration of Palestinian terrorists. He never guaranteed that Oslo would produce moderation and tolerance by Israel’s own Arabs, who would serve as the catalysts for peace.
So, why did Oslo fail utterly? The totalitarian Leftist revisionists insist, naturally, that it is all the fault of the Israeli Right. First, the 1,300 Israelis murdered by the PLO and its affiliates since signing an eternal peace accord are all the understandable response by the PLO to the murder of 29 Arabs, most of them wanted terrorists, by the fanatic Baruch Goldstein in the Hebron mosque in 1994. The PLO was really trying to achieve peace, but it was all because of Goldstein that things failed.
Then along came Bibi Netanyahu and Oslo collapsed because of him. Never mind that he handed Hebron over to the savages and signed the Wye River agreement. Then, of course, the real reason why peace never came about was because Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount in an act almost as provocative and controversial as would have been a visit by an Italian politician to the grounds of the Vatican.
In short, the revisionists insist that the Palestinians and the PLO have always sought nothing but a fair and reasonable permanent peace agreement, based on fairness and justice. If they failed in their jihad for peace, then it is all the fault of the Jews. Those damned Jews just refuse to share their land and water resources with the Palestinians. They still covet Arab lands and place occupying lands-that-do-not-belong-to-them ahead of peace. They refuse to expel the evil settlers, because they do not want peace.
Those who find it incomprehensible that humans in the 21st Century can subscribe to the neo-Nazi Holocaust Denial doctrines should study the lessons of Oslo Revisionism. It is just as much a doctrine based on falsification and lying, motivated by a desire to see Jews humiliated, abused and annihilated. Oslo Revisionism is an attempt to acquit the perpetrators of one of the greatest acts of folly in human history, certainly the greatest act of stupidity in Jewish history since the construction of the Golden Calf. It is a battle to retroactively steal history away from those who know the truth. It is an attempt to prevent future generations from knowing the truth about Israeli leftist stupidity and treason.
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Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa and is author of The Scout (available from Gefen Publishing House:
Bingo.
And this will never stop.
Slightly hyperbolic in spots. The human race has a looong history of bloodbath and debacle. Oslo is middling at best in that context.
Is this true? I've never seen this claim before. I thought the victims were just random Muslims.
I don't know if it is true or not. The point Plaut is trying to make is that this one single episode, 9 years ago, of one Jew "going postal" is supposed to be the equivalent of thousands of suicide bombers specifically targeting innocents. How balanced is that?
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