CONTROVERSY

Jewish World Review August 1, 2002 / 23 Menachem-Av, 5762


Time for Israel to ignore "world opinion" and do what it must



By David Fischer

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | I never backed Rabbi Meir Kahane, may his blood be avenged 3-million-fold, when he called for the removal or expulsion of Arabs from pre-1967 Israel and from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. To this day, when people tell me "you know, he was right, and we should have backed him," I respond: No, he was wrong, and we were right to part ways on the issue. Because that was then. And it was wrong. And he was horribly, horribly wrong. Just as he was horribly, horribly wrong when he advertised and wrote and published that America 1972 was like Germany 1932. Thirty years have passed in America, and none of it has paralleled what happened in Germany between 1932-1962.

Yet Oslo has changed the dynamic of all our realities. With Oslo, we said to the Arabs that they could defeat Israel and get the Land of Israel by applying unyielding pressure. With Oslo, we gave them guns. With Oslo, we gave them a political infrastructure that could control the schools that educate children and teens and college youths. With Oslo, we gave them the power to operate their own media of mass communication: television, radio, newspapers. With Oslo, we abandoned security positions and left our Arab informers and allies as prey to the wolves. With Oslo, while Rabin and Peres were being accoladed for their vision and greatness, and while our Leftists in Israel and America were talking about new horizons and possibilities for a bright new day, the Arabs under Arafat were busily planning the next stage in their methodical plan to take more land from Israel towards the ultimate goal of annihilation of Israel. The Arab extremists said it, and the Arab moderates said it, but we did not listen.

Well, I listened. And thousands and hundreds of thousands of us listened, but the ones in power did not listen.

Oslo was corrupt from the start. Rabin did not have a Jewish Knesset majority for Oslo. So Knesset members were enticed to abandon conscience in return for promotions, fancy government-issue cars, and government perks.

The Arab Knesset members voted for Israel to withdraw from the land. And a majority unfolded that was not the representative majority of the people who had voted for them. In America, to help prevent the feelings we had when the corrupted majority was bartered for Oslo, any important decision entailing a treaty like Oslo requires two-thirds approval in the United States Senate. In the Knesset, that would mean needing 80 Knesset votes rather than 61 out of 120. Five Knesset members could be bribed and corrupted. Maybe ten. Add a few votes from Arab Knesset members elected on a platform endorsing destruction of a Jewish State, and you still may not have 80. To get 80, you would need 61 people honestly voting as they believed.

But Oslo was not honest, and its corruption eroded the moral fabric of Israeli democracy when the Leftist-Marxists who were running the country were boasting of their democracy.

If Oslo had not happened, who knows what movement towards peace could have continued? Maybe nothing and maybe something like the peace with Sadat that really was something. Even if Egypt breaks all its promises tomorrow and declares war, the peace with Sadat really turned out to be something, although Israel paid a crazy high price for it. Maybe the peace with Sadat ultimately could have been replicated in time with the Arabs in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. But Oslo short-circuited the process of reaching a peace of normalcy and instead laid the foundation and framework for the erection of a deeply corrupt government that has created the first true Terror Country. If we speak of terror-supporting countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya, there still is no such terror apparatus in the world that matches Arafat's terror apparatus.

REMOVING THE CANCER

The Palestinian terror is a cancer that has irreversibly metastasized. It is like the untreatable lymphomas and melanomas that seep below the surface, spread throughout the infrastructure, and no longer can be extirpated with precision surgery or focused chemical without destroying the entire organism. The terror is everywhere. It is in the men of fighting age, and also in the women, the mothers, and in the young people, and in the children. It is in the seats of power and on the streets of Ramallah, Jenin, Kalkilya, Tulkarm, Bethlehem, Shechem, and everywhere they are. The terror runs in the sewage that flows along the streets, and it reposes in the seats of power in the heart of the parliament of the Palestinian Authority. It is in the businesses, the colleges, the media, and everything that says Palestine Authority.

It cannot be treated, and it cannot be stopped with the tools that Israeli governments have defined as the tools they will use to treat it. To treat cancer with acetaminophen, then to say we are no longer going to use acetaminophen but ibuprofen, then to say we no longer will use ibuprofen but aspirin is a mental gymnastic that solves nothing, that prolongs the slow, painful death that cancer brings when it has irreversibly metastasized.

If Barak had acted strongly two years ago, stronger medicine would not be needed now. If Sharon had acted strongly, stronger medicine would not be needed now. But Sharon was ibuprofen to Barak's acetaminophen. And Netanyahu will be aspirin. It has reached the point that one must stop to think: which Prime Minister presided when this or that terror attack happened. Barak was Prime Minister during the Incident of the Bloody Hands, the burning of Joseph's Tomb, the shooting of the hikers who could not be airlifted before they bled to death because Barak would not order the helicopter gunships to fire on those shooting.

What about Sharon? Was the Dolphinarium disco his? Sbarros Pizza? He certainly was the Prime Minister for Karnei Shomron Pizza and Rehovot Pinball, the Netanya Seder and Central Bus Stations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

With the bombing at Hebrew University, we reap further all of this. If the past two years have wiped out Israel's tourism industry, leaving hotels empty, restaurants empty, and streets emptier, today's bombing now hits another front, and I will not elaborate here. And it will get worse, and it will get worse. And it will get even worse, and it will get even worse. And it will get worse than that, and it will get worse than that.

THE AMERICAN MODEL

And that is why I think it is about time that they stop building that idiotic wall and stop playing their foolish hokey-pokey and start realizing that the country has to confront this thing now. Despite obvious problems with security and allegiances among Arabs living in pre-1967 Israel, I still cannot lend my support to those who would include them in the same category as the Arabs living in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. But, as for those Arabs in Judea and Samaria, I do believe that it is time for mass transfers.

Arguably, mass transfers of the population from Judea and Samaria to Gaza are somewhat more politic than they would be if the destination were Jordan. The "whole world" regards "Palestine" to be a single entity consisting of the "West Bank" and Gaza. So, mass population transfers from Judea and Samaria to Gaza are not really "expulsions" anyway, but population transfers within a country. America transferred people to reservations. Israel would not be doing such a thing as the Americans did; instead, it would be transferring the population to their own land where they have cities where they can live and prosper. Whereas America forced the population to march on foot with deaths along the way, Israel would provide armored transport. The transport should not be trains, instead should be buses.

I believe that, until Israel mass-transfers the Arab population from Judea and Samaria to Gaza (or some other destination like Jordan), this thing will not end. I would love to be proved wrong. I am absolutely convinced that Sharon will not prove me wrong. Only Effie Eitam and Netanyahu have the potential to prove me wrong. But Eitam will not prove me wrong because I got the idea partly from him, so he would do something similar, but never will have the authority or power to rise to be Prime Minister because he is not a member of a major party. That leaves Netanyahu.

I like Bibi again, and I believe that he would not be the same weasel this time as he was when he signed the Wye Agreement last time. But even as he has grown, so has the Arab terror infrastructure metastasized. Maybe Bibi would expel families of suicide bombers. Maybe Bibi would not be the kind of idiot who now runs Israel and who authorized transferring $15 million to Arafat this week. Maybe he would be different. But not enough so.

There are obvious moral and ethical protests to mass-transferring a population. I do not believe we should care anymore. I know that I do not care. I care enough that I would not advocate troubling or inconveniencing a single Arab who resides within Israel's pre-1967 borders. They are called "Arab Israelis" or "Israeli Arabs," and whatever their innermost loyalties, the cancer of terror has not metastasized among them. Rather, there are localized cancer eruptions, and they can be pinpoint-excised. As for the ethic or morality of mass-transferring the Judea-Samaria Arab population, I think it is time to say loud and clear: once someone accepts the morality and ethic of advocating the mass-transferring of the Jewish population from Judea and Samaria -- and the "whole world" accepts and advocates that morality and ethic -- then it is neither more nor less moral, neither more nor less ethical, to mass-transfer the Arab population of Judea and Samaria.

What is the moral-ethical difference between effectuating the mass transfer of 200,000 Jewish souls out of Judea-Samaria into a contiguous land mass that also comprises their territorial nation (pre-1967 Israel) -- or effectuating the mass transfer of 2,000,000 Arabs out of Judea-Samaria into a contiguous land mass that also comprises their territorial nation (Gaza Strip) (also Jordan)? I see only two sharp differences: (1) the disparity of numbers, and (2) the question of land ownership.

NO MORE COCKAMAMIE IDEAS

As to the disparity of numbers, it is easier to treat 200,000 people a certain way than 2,000,000 people. The pain is quantitatively greater and the unseemliness quantitatively more unseemly when transferring 2,000,000 instead of 200,000. However, a population mass of 200,000 people is itself so great, so enormous -- more than the population of many serious-sized American cities -- that the morality and ethic should be regarded as the same. Indeed, the 200,000 Jews of Judea-Samaria are typically well established house-owners, but most of the 2,000,000 Arabs claim that they are refugees anyway and want a "right to return" to their "real" Palestine. How else could they be maintaining all those Arab refugee camps throughout Judea and Samaria? Also, the 200,000 Jews came in peace, trade in peace, behave in peace and do not bear metastasized terror in their social fabric, while the 2,000,000 have lost all claim to morality or ethic.

Ultimately, then, the moral-ethical issue comes down to the question of land ownership. The "whole world" says the land belongs to the Arabs. Therefore, the "whole world" believes it moral and ethical to mass-transfer the entire 200,000-strong Jewish population of Judea-Samaria to the contiguous land mass of their nation. We say the land belongs to the Jews. Therefore, it is appropriate under the same morality and ethical code to mass-transfer the entire Arab population of Judea-Samaria to the contiguous land mass of their nation (Gaza or Jordan).

I believe -- I really do -- that Israel ultimately is going to move to this position, and we or our children will yet see mass transfers of the Arab population of Judea and Samaria to Gaza or Jordan. It will happen because, once those fools run out of cockamamie ideas -- let's build a wall; let's give them small arms only; let's supervise the election of a democratically elected parliament; let's transfer tens of millions of dollars to them -- the only solution standing between Israel's termination and her survival will be the mass-transfer of the Judea-Samaria Arab population to Gaza or Jordan. Rabbi Kahane was horribly wrong when he advocated what he did when he did. He also was horribly wrong challenging the primacy of the democracy institution as the proper governing vehicle for Israel. His bunching together the Arabs living within Israel's pre-1967 borders with those in Judea and Samaria remains wrong these many years later, as of this day and this writing.

And his advocacy before Oslo of steps that were not right then was horribly wrong and possibly contributes to this day to a resistance among many to consider the need to begin mass transfers.

I am writing this today, after a hiatus of extended writing, because I believe that the bombing at the Hebrew University campus opens a new front that even the Arab terrorists do not understand. Only when the smoke clears, and they read that Americans are pulling out of the schools and that Christian-fundamentalist tourists are the only ones coming en masse will they divine new targets. It is like Bin Laden hitting the WTC.

With time, with new outrages, and with new heights and abysses of ignominy, terrorists try new things, come up with new ideas. Coke recipes change. Tide changes formulas. And terrorists, like everyone else, also grow. They come up with new ideas. "Hey, look at this! The WTC did not come down the way we thought it would when we bombed the garage pillars. Let's figure out how else we can go about it." "Hey, look at this! A bombing at Hebrew University has set off a panic among foreigners visiting Israel. Why didn't we think of this earlier? There is Tel Aviv University. And there is Haifa University. And there is Ben Gurion University. And, let's see, where else do the Americans come to study?"

But none of this would be happening if they had not hit the central bus stations first, or the bingo parlors before then, or the pizza stores, or the discos. And that is why, if Israel does not act to put this darn thing to an end now, it will yet grow in horror and will not end until the Arab population of Judea and Samaria, poisoned by eight years of Arafat's television, radio, newspapers, schools, camps, and social infrastructure, is transferred to Gaza or Jordan before they transfer the Jews of Judea and Samaria to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as their next step towards eradicating Israel.

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JWR contributor David Fischer is an attorney in Los Angeles. Comment by clicking here.

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© 2002, David Fischer<