Posted on 04/03/2002 12:48:02 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Patrick Buchanan has done it again.
In his latest WorldNetDaily column, he has shown himself to be woefully ignorant of the facts at the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict. With such a poor grasp of the realities of this most important foreign policy issue, one can only be glad that George Bush is sitting in the Oval Office, and not Buchanan.
First of all, there is no such state as Palestine, nor has there ever been a country by that name. It was a purely Roman invention, derived form the ancient Philistines and imposed on the Holy Land in an attempt to erase Jewish claims to the land. This name only emerged after Roman legions physically destroyed Jerusalem and expelled the Jews in the first century of the Christian era. If a state emerges in the coming years called Palestine, it will be an entirely new creation.
Buchanan's errors go downhill from there. He writes of "the terrorism of the suicide bombers of the intifada." The problem with that statement is that the first wave of Palestinian suicide bombers appeared several years before the current intifada violence began in September 2000 (I vividly recall covering the bloody attacks for CBS radio news).
More importantly, indiscriminate Palestinian suicide massacres began a couple years after Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed the preliminary Oslo peace accord in 1993. The heart of that accord was a pledge by Israel to withdraw from contested territory (the final amount to be determined later in the process) in exchange for promises of an end to the Palestinian violence of the first uprising. Arafat would immediately receive most of the trappings of statehood, such as a large, armed paramilitary police force, an independent broadcasting system, an international airport, etc. Although Rabin initially denied it to keep domestic peace, the clear implication was that the final Oslo treaty – to be negotiated five years later – would feature a Palestinian state.
Despite a major terror attack on a civilian bus in April 1994, Israel kept its pledge to pull out of around 80 percent of the Gaza Strip and the town of Jericho that summer. Rabin wanted to give Arafat more chances to reign in the Islamic terrorist groups that had expressed total opposition to the Oslo process. Further terror assaults followed, and then Rabin was assassinated. Still Shimon Peres, his successor, continued with the withdrawal program, handing full control of five major Palestinian towns to Arafat in late 1995.
This controversial action was met with a series of deadly suicide blasts on buses and restaurants in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in early 1996, and the resulting election of the Oslo-skeptic Binyamin Netanyahu. He was greeted by four days of intense Palestinian riots in September, egged on by Arafat after a harmless tourist tunnel was opened up along the Western Wall of the Temple Mount. Urged on by President Clinton to shower the PLO chief with additional grace, the hawkish Likud leader pulled Israeli troops out of most of Hebron in 1997, Judaism second holiest city on earth.
After a period of relative calm (just a few major terror attacks in '97 and '98!), the Israeli public chose Ehud Barak to move the slow peace process back on the fast track. He quickly withdrew his army from southern Lebanon and renewed frozen peace talks with Syria and the Palestinians. Clinton and Barak were shocked when Syrian dictator Hafez Assad rejected Israel's offer to hand over the entire Golan Heights, demanding the northeast shore of the Sea of Galilee as well (which Syria never legally possessed). Arafat topped this by refusing Barak's offer for a pullout from around 90 percent of Judea and Samaria, the dismantling of most Jewish settlements, the return of around 100,000 Palestinian refugees to Israel proper, and most significantly, an effective Palestinian capital in the eastern half of Jerusalem and sole possession of the sacred Temple Mount.
All of this to say, Buchanan's insinuation that Israel will not consider giving the Palestinians a state – the only solution he sees to the conflict – is ridiculous in the extreme. All polls have consistently showed the opposite. Certainly Israelis will not allow a state to emerge that continues to wage jihad war against them, as Arafat's Palestinian Authority has done. Only a country with a severe suicide wish would do that.
Buchanan's most glaring error is the comparison of atrocious Palestinian suicide terror attacks with tactics employed by various "successful liberation movements" in the past. He fails to note that those groups which achieved their goals – in South Africa, Kenya, Ireland, Rhodesia and Algeria – decidedly did not carry out indiscriminate assaults upon purely civilian targets. Their attacks were mainly directed at military or government targets. Even Menachem Begin's bombing of the south wing of the King David hotel was aimed at British government offices housed there, not at English women and children eating in restaurants, attending religious festivals or riding buses. Besides, that action was condemned by the mainstream Jewish underground movement, which confined its attacks to strategic or military targets as is common in modern warfare.
No successful "liberation movement" has ever deliberately aimed the type of horrendous kamikaze violence against innocent civilians as is occurring every day now in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The stated goal of the Islamic terrorist groups that Arafat has repeatedly failed to curb is to wipe the world's only Jewish State off of the map. By actually joining in their outrageously evil deeds via his own Tanzim and Al Aksa Brigades terrorist groups, Yasser Arafat has eliminated himself as a future partner for peace – an enormous pity for his long suffering people, for tiny Israel, and for the world.
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Palestinians are winning
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
"Citizens of Israel, the state of Israel is at war – a war against terror," thundered Ariel Sharon in his Sunday address to the nation.
But Sharon's rage and resolve notwithstanding, Israel is not at war with terror. Israel is at war with Palestine.
The terrorism of the suicide bombers of the intifada – ugly and awful as its manifestations are in Netanya, Haifa, and Jerusalem – is but a tactic in a guerrilla war of national liberation being waged by the Palestinian people against Israeli occupation. It is a tactic with a venerable pedigree in the 20th century, where it was used repeatedly and successfully against the Western empires.
Michael Collins used terror to bring into being an Irish Free State. Menachem Begin blew up the King David Hotel to drive the British out of Palestine. The Mau Mau used terror to run the British out of Kenya. Nelson Mandela's ANC used terror to overthrow white minority rule in South Africa, as did Mugabe in Rhodesia. The FALN used terror to drive the French out of Algeria. Islamists used terror to run the Marines out of Lebanon. And Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the Al Aqsa Brigades are using terror to drive the Israelis off the West Bank and out of Gaza.
Terrorism works, and the terrorists of yesterday often emerge as the statesmen of tomorrow. Begin and Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize, and a third Nobel laureate is now holed up in Ramallah.
Terrorism works best against Western governments inhibited in the weapons they may use to combat it by their Judeo-Christian and just-war moral codes. But, like civil disobedience, terror is far less effective against dictatorships. Gandhi would have been well advised not to lie down in front of the trains in Hitler's Germany.
Indeed, when Lord Halifax droned on to Hitler about his difficult dealings with Gandhi during his tour as Viceroy of India, the Fuhrer impatiently interrupted him, "Shoot Gandhi!" As an astonished Halifax stared in disbelief, Hitler went on: "Shoot Gandhi – and if that does not suffice to reduce them to submission, shoot a dozen leading members of Congress; and if that does not suffice, shoot 200 and so on until order is established."
But the Israelis cannot "shoot" Arafat. To do so would forfeit Israel's support in the West, ignite an explosion in the Arab and Islamic world, and make Arafat a martyr about whom the Palestinian people would rally and rise up for revenge.
And what good would it do? Arafat is not recruiting the terrorists. Israeli tanks and armor rampaging through the cities and refugee camps of the West Bank are doing the recruiting. As for the Palestinian Authority, the Israelis have smashed it. Arafat has nothing left to lose and would surely prefer to die a martyr's death than live as the Arab leader who capitulated to Ariel Sharon.
Whether the Israelis admit it or not, the Palestinians are winning. Hezbollah drove Israel out of Lebanon. The first intifada brought Israel to Oslo to offer land for peace. The second caused Barak to offer 95 percent of the West Bank. Today's suicide bombers die in the knowledge their families face no reprisals but will forever honor their memory. Sharon's reoccupation of the West Bank will no more cause the Palestinians to give up than the black-and-tans could force the Irish to surrender to Lloyd George.
Is there no way out?
The only hope lies in a Palestinian state. A small state of their own would give Palestinians a huge stake in peace and in preventing acts of terror against Israel – i.e., national survival. Syria does not allow acts of terror on the Golan Heights, because Assad knows he has a nation to lose in any war with Israel. And, after independence, the IRA, the Irgun, the Mau Mau and the ANC terminated the terror.
But time may be passing us by. For the Israeli repression has radicalized the Palestinians, and through Al Jazeera's nightly clips of Arabs cut down by Israeli Jews using American weapons, it has radicalized the Arab world. Arabs and Muslims are concluding that the tactics used to drive Israel out of Lebanon and bring her to Oslo may be the tactics that can drive the Israelis out of the Middle East altogether.
And just as Israelis must be asking themselves today, "What price Judea and Samaria?" we should be asking ourselves, "What price empire?" For, in Arab and Islamic eyes, ours is the last of the Western nations and imperial presence in their part of the world.
Over the weekend came reports America is planning to put troops in the Middle East and President Bush backed Sharon to the hilt. If America has decided to abandon the role of honest broker in the Palestinian-Israeli war, in favor of its role as Israel's ally, we would be well advised not to put U.S. troops on the West Bank, or we will likely revisit the lesson of the Marines in Beirut.
It makes sense to me.
For crying out loud, let's just roll back all the damned lines about 1000 years which is what he's suggesting as "justification" for Israel vs. the mere existance of a Palestine. I noticed he mentioned Rabin's assassination but not that it was at the hands of an Israeli extremist.
The rabid pro-Israeli bias is so strong in America--too often thanks to a misplaced superstition that no country can stand against the "Chosen People" and be Right with God, no one bothers to explain why the Palestinians should put up with the refugee camps, Israel's thugish behavior, the Israeli waffling on settlements, why they should tolerate the murder of their rock-throwing children by the armed and armoured IDF--or murder by boobytrap of kids trying to go to school--why should they tolerate the evacuation of 200-300% as many of their own as Israel has lost to suicide bombers.
I can't help but wonder if Sharon, with his own tainted past just like Arafat, could get away with it, and he just might, they'd be contented to rid the world of the people who call themselves Palestinians.
America *MUST* put it's security and interests ahead of an abused and openly questioned loyalty for the state of Israel. I've extremely concerned the Bush White House is inept and blind when it comes to this region. And, quite frankly, if it were any other location--say Sub-Sahara Africa--it'd barely register a whisper in the American media. Comparatively little was said about the train attack in India which killed far more than the handful in this or that bombing.
I'm sick of hearing about this Israeli/Palestinian conflict to which we apparently have no "exit strategy" nor even a clear goal. The alleged impartial negotiator, we need to put distance between ourselves and the actions of Sharon's government. You can't even compare what Israel goes through with our routing of Al Queda due to Sept 11th. They've never, EVER seen an attack on that level--an single even with so many losses. Seems to me Israel could do some improvements in immigration and border control, borders they obviously have no respect for as they routinely parade into the occupied lands. Unlike with some recent PMs, I really see no indication Sharon's Israel is interested in peace and co-existence with a Palestine. He wants to conquer, humilate and perhaps erradicate. He's only held back by public relations concerns of how much fallout he'll have with the West.
The Palestinians do have NOTHING to lose. There is no state. Keyes and Pat both see this. In campaign 2000, Keyes suggested Jordan could be in a better position to negotiate because there would be an equal playing field of two sovereign states in talks. That's not so with Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In the debates and with all his rambling about a vision for a Palestinian state, Bush seemed to suggest he had a grasp of this but it's sure looking like that's been all but completely forgotten. We need to find the courage to tell Sharon, "No." Until we're able, we'll continue to be plunged into this madness and seen as Israel's enforcer and another western empire trying to tell those people how to live their lives, how to form and keep their governments, how to worship God, etc. Don't tell me that you don't see and hear American's all over, unfortunately most vocally on the Right, wanting to remake the world in America's image. If Saudis are unhappy with the monarchy they can revolt just as we did against King George. We should mind our OWN damned business FIRST. We wouldn't even lift a finger to help Iraqi resistance topple their governemnt which, as we keep hearing, has even gassed it's own people. Talk about a country CRYING out for change in leadership! And yet we go to a place like Bosnia and all but ignore millions dead or enslaved in Africa. It's revolting.
Our media is SO obsessed with Israel that a few weeks back, at least on the front page of the "San Diego Union Tribune", it got banner headlines ABOVE the deaths of American soldiers in our war on terrorism. There's NO excuse for that. It's an example of Media bias of the sickest kind, imho. Clearly there are too many people (whatever the reason...) in the media seeing things through the very same prism, the same coloured glasses, the same built-in prejudices and bias which are clearly different from the mainstream of America. Maybe it's time to get a little "affirmative action" in the newsmedia when it comes to social, cultural reference or political view. They should not just "look" like America but be able to see things like Americans, rather than amoral neo-socialist utopianites, as well.
There were many twists and turns in history, BTW Jews were expelled rather in the SECOND century after suppression of Bar Kochba upprising (132-135). The term Philistia was used for centuries for the coast part of modern Palestine (Jews were not sea faring people and lived in the hinterland). The term Israel is less historical as it was applied to the northern part of Palestine inhabited by Samaritans or northern ten tribes which split from Jews. The today Jews derive from inhabitants of Judea and Edom (Edomites/Idumeans were converted by force to Judaism under the rule of Macchabees, 2nd c. before Christ). So the proper name for the modern Jewish state should be Judea (or maybe Juedo-Idumea).
Here is a nice sample map (pay attention that the key area in the south related to Edom/Idumea is marked as contested). Also remember that there was a lot of changes before and after so it is a snapshot (from the time after king Solomon).
Either way Palestinians do exist now and the Buchanan proposal is the most reasonable. The only three other possible solutions are exterminating Palestinians, forcing them to leave and disperse all over the world or intimidating and enslaving them by extreme terror so harsh that they will submit PERMANENTLY out of fear. (Or maybe mixture of all those three "solutions" implemented over some time)
There was no sovereign nation of Jordan - all of it was controlled by the Ottomans until WWI when it was controlled by the British and then the UN split it up. Sorry but if it claim that somehow borders are fundamental then when is Pat going to call for a withdrawal of the US from the Southwest or most of the continent for that matter. Or it is only Jews who have to "negotiate" with people who openly discuss their desires to destroy them?
I hardly think the is a pro-Israel slant to the news in this Israeli war on terrorism.
The media refuses to call suicide bombers "terrorists." Juan William on the Sunday show with Tony Snow called suicide bombing 'gurilla warfare' and the bombers were 'freedom fighters.' I see lots of bias but it is not in support of Israel.
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