The ‘Inevitable Moment’

(Washington, D.C.): As the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates
square off again
tonight, some fundamental truths about U.S. foreign policy are emerging — truths that must be
addressed by whoever seeks to lead not only the United States, but also the community of
democratic and freedom-loving nations throughout the world.

In the Middle East, this moment of truth has come thundering through for both the “doves” in
Israel and the “peace processors” in the Clinton Administration: The Palestinians do not want
peace with Israel; rather they want the Jews gone or dead. In a brilliant column in today’s
Washington Post, Michael Kelly calls this an “inevitable moment” — when the truth
can no
longer be concealed by wishful thinking and high-sounding words unmatched by constructive
deeds.

Kelly’s column parallels an article by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. entitled “The Death of Illusions”
that
appeared on Monday in intellectualcapital.com. The two should be considered
required reading
for the debaters — and all others who wish to make sense of the inevitable moment that has
arrived in the Middle East.

The Washington Post, 11 October 2000

Doves’ Day of Reckoning

By Michael Kelly

In all arguments of policy and politics, there comes sooner or later the inevitable moment
when it
becomes simply undeniable that one side of the argument is true, or mostly so, and the other is
false, or mostly so. Sometimes the moment arrives as a thunderclap, as in the case of American
isolationists on Dec. 7, 1941. More typically, it is reached in cumulative fashion, as a gathering
weight of facts finally passes some tipping point.

The inevitable moment is no petty-minded partisan. It arrived for conservatives on the issues
of
civil rights and the environmental movement; and it arrived for liberals on budget policy and
welfare reform. Inevitable moments are ignored at peril. Political factions that refuse to admit
what the general public no longer accepts as debatable propositions are condemned to
irrelevancy. Thus, the fate of the isolationists after Pearl Harbor, the fate of the segregationists,
the fate of the American left for its decades-long refusal to admit the truth about Russia, China
and communism.

The moment has now arrived for the doves of Israel. The argument over peace in Israel has
been
for many years at its core a simple one. The hawks on the right have argued that the Palestinians
do not, in their hearts, want a peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state; they want no Jewish
state at all. The doves on the left have argued that the Palestinians, if given a measure of land and
autonomy, would support at least a side-by-side peace, where Jews and Arabs would tolerate
each other as neighbors on contested land.

Throughout the “peace process” that began with the Oslo accords in 1993, the doves have
maintained their position, and they have maintained it in the face of a great deal of evidence to
the contrary: the continued killings of Jews, Yasser Arafat’s insistence that what was being
forged was a Palestinian state with Jerusalem its capital, the unchanged hostility of the man in
the Gaza street. They have maintained that Arafat’s Palestinian Authority was something
approaching a state with which a democracy might do mutually honorable business–when any
visitor to Gaza can see that Arafat’s land is a gangster-police state, or more precisely, a
gangster-police non-state.

Meanwhile, all along, the Israeli right has grimly, glumly said: No, you are wrong; the
Palestinians don’t want to be our friends; they want us dead or gone.

On Sept. 28, Ariel Sharon, accompanied by a small army of Israeli troops, visited the spot in
Jerusalem claimed by both Jews and Muslims as a holy land–what the Jews call Temple Mount
and the Muslims call Haram ash-Sharif. Sharon made no attempt to enter an actual Muslim place
of worship. Nevertheless, the visit was clearly a provocation, and it succeeded. The resulting
anti-Jew, anti-Israel, anti-peace riots quickly blossomed into something more like war, with not
only Palestinian civilians throwing rocks but Palestinian Authority troops and police engaging in
firefights with Israeli forces. By Oct. 10, at least 89 were dead, most of them–not surprisingly
given the overwhelming superiority of the Israeli forces–Palestinian.

For a while, the doves and their allies in the international press presented the facts on the
ground
through the usual lens: It was all Sharon’s fault, the resulting venting of Palestinian rage was
regrettable but understandable, the Israeli forces were massively and murderously overreacting.

But then a curious thing happened. Time passed; and the Palestinians were still in the streets,
still
attacking Israeli positions, still insisting on a war that past lessons had taught them could be won
diplomatically by losing militarily. At a certain point, it became impossible to maintain the
fiction that what was happening in the streets did not express not only popular will but the will of
Yasser Arafat. The Palestinians, it seemed, actually did not want peaceful coexistence; they
wanted war, and they wanted the Jews dead or gone.

Things of course will not rest here. Great pressure is being exerted and will be exerted even
more
to paper over what has happened and, as they say, move on. But there is no moving on from the
inevitable moment. One side was right in its fundamental assessment of the Palestinian view of
“peace.” The other was wrong. Maybe this will change over time, but that is the reality now, and
in Israel, everyone knows this.

Intellectual Capital.com, 9 October 2000

The Death of Illusions

By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.

In 1775, revolutionary patriot Patrick Henry urged his compatriots not to shrink from
confronting
truths that, however disagreeable, reveal the threat posed to their lives and liberties. “It is natural
for man to indulge in the illusions of hope,” he said. “We are apt to shut our eyes against a
painful truth and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part
of wise men engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty?”

Henry’s warning about the “illusions of hope” applies in spades to a country whose struggle
for
liberty is far from over: Israel. These illusions have in recent years been epitomized by — and the
driving force behind — the so-called Middle East “peace process.”

The only good news to come out of the bloodletting and mayhem unleashed by Palestinian
Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat’s decision to welcome the Jewish New Year with
an Arab insurrection is that Israelis and their friends are now being forced to confront some
“painful truths.”

Peace is not a goal

Among the most important of these are the following:

The Palestinians do not want peace with Israel. Avraham Berg, the speaker of the Israeli
Knesset
and self-described member of the “peace camp,” made that point eloquently Oct. 4 in a New
York Times commentary titled “I Was for Peace, Now What?” “Suddenly,” he declared, “we
discovered that what we mean by peace — which is mutual reconciliation — is not being met by
the other side in the same spirit.”

Arafat is not a reliable partner for peace. Instead, he is pursuing a personal agenda that is
utterly
inimical to even a tentative peace, to say nothing of a durable, genuine one based on
reconciliation and peaceful coexistence.

As the left-of-center Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported Oct. 3: “There is evidence to support
Israel’s
assessment [that Arafat personally orchestrated the present uprising]: the conversation Arafat had
with the heads of the Tanzim [the militia of his Fatah faction of the PLO] on Friday, in which he
urged them to escalate their demonstrations; the organized transport to demonstration sites; and
the conspicuous involvement of Tanzim leaders and PA security forces in some of the
confrontations.”

Territorial concessions will not satisfy the Palestinians. As syndicated columnist Morris
Amitay
has observed, Israelis are being confronted “with an official Palestinian National Authority
statement on this subject [that] makes it plain that the conflict with Israel will not end even if
Israel gives up everything beyond its pre-67 borders, including Jerusalem, and permits the return
of refugees within these same borders.

“What the Palestinians also require is abandonment by Israel of its Zionist characteristics, an
admission of ‘guilt’ and relinquishment of all of its historic symbols. While even all of this may
not be enough to end the conflict, it would surely mean the end of a Jewish State.”

A farewell to economics

Economic engagement with the Palestinians will not divert them from the goal of
destroying
Israel. According to the Oct. 3 Ha’aretz, dovish Israeli Major General Yaakov Or “fooled himself
about relations [and] understandings with the Palestinian Authority.” The paper reported that:
“The theory that Or marketed to several prime ministers and defense ministers was that economic
development would prevent violence.

“Joint projects, industrial and commercial parks along the border between Israel and the PA,
even
high-tech ventures would increase the cost of violence for the PA and would cause many
Palestinians to think twice before supporting a confrontation with Israel. At the same time, Or
warned Barak several times that without real progress in the talks with the Palestinians, an
explosion could be expected. Barak did offer concessions at Camp David. But this weekend, the
explosion took place anyway.

Arming the Palestinians is a formula for greatly intensified violence. As Ha’aretz put it:
“The
open scorn displayed by ministers for the dangers of arming the Palestinians also appears in a
different light now: If this much damage can be done with a few hundred firearms, how much
damage could 40,000 rifles in the hands of the Palestinian Authority cause?”

Arab Israelis see themselves as Arabs, not Israelis. Many now openly associate themselves
with
the Palestinian aspiration for a homeland — and represent an emerging Fifth Column in the heart
of the Jewish state. As Yoel Marcus, a columnist for Ha’aretz, wrote on Oct. 6 in an article
entitled “The Pessimists Were Right”: “These Israeli Arabs expressed a passionate identification
with their brothers and sisters beyond [Israel’s boundaries], articulating that identification with
the cry ‘Death to the Jews!’ and encouraging the creation of an idependent state of Palestine with
the cry ‘With blood and fire we will redeem Palestine!'”

Israel cannot count on the United States or the United Nations to safeguard its interests in
the
face of the emerging dangers. Under President Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the
premise underpinning the peace process has been that America would compensate the Jewish
state for accepting “risks for peace” and, if all else failed, rescue it from disaster.

The Clinton-Gore administration’s failure even to veto a U.N. resolution that implicitly
condemned Israel for using unwarranted force against the Palestinian insurrection is but a small
reminder of how reckless it is for Israel to rely upon anybody else for its security. The fact that
that resolution was adopted by fourteen votes, moreover, underscores the organization’s abiding
hostility toward Israel and the folly of trying to finesse the issue of who will exercise sovereignty
over the sacred Temple Mount by turning it over to the U.N. Security Council.

Accepting the truth

Welcome as it is, the bursting of these bubbles comes at a perilously late moment. Israel
already
has made a host of concessions that greatly complicate its ability to defend itself. Still more have
been put on the table by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak — and pocketed by Arafat — during
and after the failed Camp David summit.

The most dangerous illusion of all, however, may be that yet another negotiation and
whatever
agreement results from it can bring a lasting peace to this region. In fact, all the foregoing
“painful truths” dictate that Israel’s security, in the end, will depend upon the ability of the Jewish
state to defend herself against enemies, foreign and domestic. They also make it a virtual
certitude that, in the future as in the past, diplomacy dangerously will impinge upon the
maintenance of such an Israeli capability.

Israel fails at her extreme peril, in Patrick Henry’s words, “to know the whole truth; to know
the
worst, and to provide for it.”