Israel’s Desperate Prime Minister Versus Conventional Wisdom

 Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is desperate.   He can hardly contain himself, especially his tongue, which, after all, is pretty much the basis of his reputation.    He desperately wants a “final accord with the Palestinian Authority, and not an interim deal.”  And he wants to negotiate a final accord with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who is having difficulty keeping his Fatah faction united behind him if only because Hamas is opposed to any accord with Israel.

As reported by The Jerusalem Post (November 20, 2009), Netanyahu said in “private meetings that he thinks a final agreement could be reached, but that it would take courageous steps.”  He contends that “Abbas, who has said he would step down because of the stymied diplomatic process, should not be ‘counted out.’” The Post goes on to report: “Netanyahu recalled that in 1971 no one thought that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat would eventually make peace with Israel, and that it was too early to ‘write off’ Abbas.  Sometimes conventional wisdom is wrong,’ he was quoted as saying.”

 Netanyahu is indeed desperate, so much so that he ignores history and makes nonsense of what his own protégé Yuval Steinitz has said about Egypt.  Here I will quote what Middle East expert Daniel Pipes wrote in a New York Sun article of November 21, 2006: “Time to Recognize Failure of [the Egypt-Israel] Treaty”:

“Ninety-two percent of respondents in a recent poll of one thousand Egyptians over 18 years of age called Israel an enemy state. In contrast, a meager 2% saw Israel as ‘a friend to Egypt.’

“These hostile sentiments express themselves in many ways, including a popular song titled ‘I hate Israel,’ venomously anti-Semitic political cartoons, bizarre conspiracy theories, and terrorist attacks against visiting Israelis. Egypt's leading democracy movement, Kifiya, recently launched an initiative to collect a million signatures on a petition demanding the annulment of the March 1979 Egypt-Israel treaty. 

“Also, the Egyptian government has permitted large quantities of weapons to be smuggled into Gaza to use against Israeli border towns. Yuval Steinitz, an Israeli legislator specializing in Egypt-Israel relations, estimates that fully 90% of PLO and Hamas explosives come from Egypt.

“Cairo may have no apparent enemies, but the impoverished Egyptian state sinks massive resources into a military buildup. According to the Congressional Research Service, it purchased $6.5 billion worth of foreign weapons in the years 2001-04, more than any other state in the Middle East. In contrast, the Israeli government bought only $4.4 billion worth during that period and the Saudi one $3.8 billion.”

Pipes goes on to say:

“Egypt ranked as the third largest purchaser of arms in the entire developing world, following only population giants China and India. It has the tenth largest standing army in the world, well over twice of Israel’s

“This long, ugly record of hostility exists despite a peace treaty with Israel. Hailed at the time by both Egypt’s president Anwar el-Sadat and Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin as a ‘historic turning point,’ U.S. president Jimmy Carter hoped it would begin a new era when “violence no longer dominates the M idle East.” I too shared this enthusiasm.

“With the benefit of retrospect, however, we see that the treaty did palpable harm in at least two ways. First, it opened the American arsenal and provided American funding to purchase the latest in weaponry. As a result, for the first time in the Arab-Israeli conflict, an Arab armed force may have reached parity with its Israeli counterpart.

“Second, it spurred anti-Zionism. I lived for nearly three years in Egypt in the 1970s, before Sadat's dramatic trip to Jerusalem in late 1977, and I recall the relatively low interest in Israel at that time. Israel was plastered all over the news but it hardly figured in conversations. Egyptians seemed happy to delegate this issue to their government. Only after the treaty, which many Egyptians saw as a betrayal, did they themselves take direct interest. The result was the emergence of a more personal, intense, and bitter form of anti-Zionism.

“The same pattern was replicated in Jordan, where the 1994 treaty with Israel soured popular attitudes. To a lesser extent, the 1993 Palestinian accords and even the aborted 1983 Lebanon treaty prompted similar responses. In all four of these cases, diplomatic agreements prompted a surge in hostility toward Israel.

“Defenders of the ‘peace process’ answer that, however hostile Egyptians' attitudes and however large their arsenal, the treaty has held; Cairo has in fact not made war on Israel since 1979. However frigid the peace, peace it has been.”

To this Pipes replies:

“If the mere absence of active warfare counts as peace, then peace has also prevailed between Syria and Israel for decades, despite their formal state of war. Damascus lacks a treaty with Jerusalem, but it also lacks modern American weaponry. Does an antique signature on a piece of paper offset Egypt's Abrams tanks, F-16 fighter jets, and Apache attack helicopters?

“I think not. In retrospect, it becomes apparent that multiple fallacies and wishful predictions fueled Arab-Israeli diplomacy:

● Once signed, agreements signed by unelected Arab leaders would convince the masses to give up their ambitions to eliminate Israel.

● These agreements would be permanent, with no backsliding, much less duplicity.

●  Other Arab states would inevitably follow suit.

● War can be concluded through negotiations rather than by one side giving up.

“The time has come [Pipes concluded] to recognize the Egypt-Israel treaty—usually portrayed as the glory and ornament of Arab-Israel diplomacy—as the failure it has been, and to draw the appropriate lessons in order not to repeat its mistakes.”

As for Sadat, here is what the present writer said all too many years ago:

● In an interview with al-Anwar on June 22, 1975, Sadat avowed: “The effort of our generation is to return to the 1967 borders.  Afterward the next generation will carry the responsibility.”

● And in a New York Times interview dated October 19, 1980, Sadat boasted: “Poor Menachem [Begin], he has his problems ... After all, I got back ... the Sinai and the Alma oil fields, and what has Menachem got?  A piece of paper.”

● Finally, a year after signing the March 1979 peace treaty with Israel, Sadat ominously declared: “Despite the present differences with the Arab 'rejectionist' rulers over the Egyptian peace initiative, the fact remains that these differences are only tactical not strategic, temporary not permanent.”

So much for Mr. Netanyahu’s desperately glowing view of Sadat and the Egypt-Israel treaty as precedent for a “final agreement” with the Palestinian Authority.  Pity Netanyahu, who voted in the Sharon Government for unilateral disengagement from Gaza, lacks the conventional wisdom he disparages. 

A Lesson from Ben Hecht (1944)

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

A propos of the report of the United Nations Human Rights Council regarding Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” in Gaza, and in view of the  endorsement of this infamous report by the UN General Assembly, whose anti-Semitic or Israel-bashing tendencies are notorious, it behooves Jews to heed these words of Ben Hecht’s Guide for the Bedevilled (1944):

“The Jewish apologists are avidly and pathetically content on stating the case for the Jew by contradicting his enemies….They feel only that anything an anti-Semite says must be contradicted and disproved—and they rush forward with statements that Jews [are humanitarians].

“These denials, contradictions and affirmations are a preposterous waste of time.  Jewish diplomacy has been wasting its time in this fashion for almost twenty centuries, offering alibis and mitigating circumstances—for what?  Is there anything of which a Jew can be guilty that could match the unsavory and contemptible antics of his accusers?  Apologies to whom?  To that judge with blood-caked hands who sits leering from the bench? To that enfeebled and chaotic brain that calls itself an anti-Semite?  Or to that smug and highty-tighty bystander, World Opinion—a gentleman who hasn’t been able to find his buttocks with both hands since he was given an alphabet to play with?

“You would think that the Jews would wake up to this one fact about themselves—that their defensive position is the chief delight and arsenal of the anti-Semite.  But never comes such awakening.  There have been some who have opened their eyes.  Heinrich Heine woke up one day and filled the world with a burst of bitter laughter.  This ‘greatest of their poets’ announced that, whatever the Jew was, the spectacle of the monstrosities who call themselves Germans  setting themselves up as his judges and superiors was one which must see the Devil and all his friends laughing.

“But Heine is only a Jew—not a Jewish spokesman.  The Jewish spokesmen are a little too stunned with calamity to make epigrams.  Their very egoism bids them look to themselves for answers, rather than to their enemies.  And they answer, scientifically, vaingloriously, despairingly.  That they are arguing with lunacy, that they are titillating sadists, but they manage only to inflame their accusers by revealing their wounds—never daunts their propaganda. 

“And in this struggle to disprove the anti-Semite by presenting themselves as a noble, worthy, and even wondrous people, the Jews fall into a trap that leaves their enemies cackling.  For even these have enough cunning to punch holes in such contentions.  The mere fact that the Jews are to be found on this earth is enough to deny their cries that they are noble or remotely wondrous.  No people known to history is that—not even the Americans.

“There are two very unwise things to do in this world.  One is to proclaim the fact that you are in distress—and expect your plight to bring Samaritans rushing to your side.  An occasional Samaritan will arrive—but accompanied always by three hooligan sadists intent on the sport of increasing your misery.  The other is the business of advertising your virtues.  The ‘Jewish propaganda machine’ is more or less devoted to both schemes, and the results continue, century in and out, to be the same. In a world that admits only victors, the Jews have persisted as advertising themselves as victims only.  This the Jews are not. I am not writing of those murdered but those alive.  No man alive is a victim.  It is not only stupid but dangerous to pronounce himself one….

“Such, to a large degree, is the effect of the Virtue-Apologist propaganda of the Jews.  The bystander—not necessarily an anti-Semite—on hearing the overpraise attached to the name Jew, ignores it a little irritably, and bethinks himself at once of Jews he knows he wouldn’t be found dead with.

“My own attitude toward the Jews is that they need no defense—and that defending them is the major disservice I can do to them.  They are and always have been the children of the world—and they look to me as good as the rest of their playmates.  And, now and then, a little better.

“If there is anything special in the Jewish make-up, it lies in the ancient and still undissipated egoism of the Jew.  Here is the quirk of which the anti-Semites make always a great noise.  I wish only that the accusations were true—that Jews are dangerous, that they are a world menace (to the Germans), that they cannot be assimilated by Nordic peoples.  (Is this really a charge or a complaint?)  I wish too that there were complete truth in the accusation that the Jews are an implacable barrier to the philosophy of rampant nationalism.

“There is only one truth in all these charges.  No Jew, were he given a Swastika to wear on his sleeve, could exist in the Hell made by the Germans.  Not even a bad Jew.  There is enough of Elijah left in him to make of him the eternal Underground against tyranny.

“It behooves the Jews to embrace this truth in the charges of his enemies with gratitude and a grin”

The Eidelberg Plan: A Brief Outline

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

1.  By endorsing the establishment of an Arab-Islamic state in Judea and Samaria, Israel’s heartland, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has revealed his intellectual and moral bankruptcy.  Netanyahu simply refuses to take Islam seriously—its implacable hatred of Israel and its undeviating religious-political commitment to Israel’s annihilation. 

That he is anxious to resume negotiations with Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas is further evidence that Netanyahu—who is rich in oratory but poor in deeds—is a politician, not a statesman.  Abbas, extolled by fools as “moderate,” recently selected as his successor Muhammad Ghaneim.  Ghaneim, a founder of Fatah, rejected the 1993 Oslo Accords as “too moderate.” 

2.  Netanyahu has ignored the fact that even a large majority of Israeli Arabs support terrorist attacks against Jews.  This has been established by opinion polls and the following facts:

● Arab Knesset Members have incited Arab citizens to emulate Hezbollah.

● Arab citizens have aided terrorist attacks against Israel.

●Arab citizens held demonstrations in support of Hamas during Operation Cast Lead.

3. In view of these facts, let us recognize,

a. First, that Israel’s Arab citizens constitute a “fifth column” that would support attacks on the Jewish commonwealth. 

b. Second, let us also recognize, however, that no Government of Israel is going to expel Israel’s disloyal Arabs citizens, which may number more than one million.  Even if the Government were so inclined—which can hardly be contemplated—no Middle East state will accept these Arabs.  This obviously applies to the Arabs in Judea and Samaria.  Let us also admit that Jordan is not going to help Israel solve its Arab problem by the old nostrum “Jordan is Palestine.”  Indeed, no external power is going to help Israel remain Jewish.

c. Third, let us also admit that the Obama administration is effectively pursuing a non-violent counterpart to Ahmadinejad’s policy of “wiping Israel off the map” of the Middle East.

d. Finally, let us admit that Israel’s Government does not have a constructive long-term strategy whose goal is to preserve Israel’s territorial integrity and Jewish identity.  Indeed, since Israel’s government or cabinet has ever consisted of a coalition of five or more parties, each with its own political agenda and partisan ambitions, the pursuit of a coherent, resolute, and long-term national strategy is virtually impossible.

4. This last mentioned fact induces Israeli government to respond primarily to immediate issues, to be preoccupied with the utterances of American presidents, to be distracted and unnerved by Israel’s standing in the world, whether in the United Nations or in world public opinion.

5. To propose a constructive policy at this moment in time would appear to be an exercise in futility.  But we need to go beyond political analysis, which has only led us to political paralysis.  We need to be reminded that if we do not address the Jewish problem, or what is required to preserve and enhance Israel as a Jewish commonwealth, we shall be on a ship without a rudder, reacting to currents and waves made by others.

6. This said, I contend that only Israel can solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  This conflict is actually a manifestation the Jewish-Muslim conflict, which in turn involves a life-and-death struggle between Islam and Western civilization, at the heart of which is Israel.  Here I will limit the discussion to Israel’s “Arab” problem.

7. The only way to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to make Israel increasingly Jewish and proud, on the one hand, and to make its government accountable to the Jewish people on the other!  This will result in a steady emigration of Arabs.  How can this be accomplished?

8. Most commentators will say:  “Increase the Jewish content of public education.”   Of course, but no less important, indeed, utterly necessary is basic reform of Israel’s political and judicial institutions.  Here is a brief program, elaborated in some of my books:

● First, Increase the impact of Jewish convictions on those who make the laws and policies of this country. The only way to do this is to make legislators individually accountable to the voters in multi-district elections—the practice of almost every democracy.

a. Translate into geostrategic reality a groundbreaking study conducted by the American-Israel Demographic Research Group. This study revealed that such is the increase of Jewish fertility rates and the decline of Arab fertility that Israel does not need to retreat from Judea and Samaria to secure Jewish demography.  The study shows a solid 67% Jewish majority with Judea and Samaria.

b. The study also advises Israel to scrap its parliamentary system which makes the entire country a single district where party slates compete on the basis of proportional representation. The study recommends a multi-district voting system divided along the lines of the Interior Ministry's administrative partition of the country.  It turns out that with regional elections, Jews will form large majorities in every administrative district in the country except the northern district, where Arabs comprise a bare 52% majority. The internal migration of just 52,000 Jews to the North would overturn that majority.

● Second, replace multi-party cabinet government with a presidential system.

● Third, have the President nominate, and the Knesset confirm, the judges of the Supreme Court, which has become a self-perpetuating oligarchy whose decisions diminish Israel’s Jewish character.

● Fourth, enforce the Foundations of Law Act 1980, which was intended to make Jewish civil and criminal law “first among equals” vis-à-vis the foreign systems of jurisprudence used by the Supreme Court.

● Fifth, enforce Basic Law: The Knesset, which prohibits any party that negates the Jewish character of the State.  (Overbearing Arabs would be humbled while unassertive Jews would be heartened if Arab parties were expelled for violating this law!)  Also, enforce the 1952 Citizenship Law, which empowers the Minister of Interior to nullify the citizenship of any Israel national that commits “an act of disloyalty to the State.”  The term “act” should be clarified to protect freedom of speech and press.)

        ● Sixth, rescind the “grandfather clause” of the Law of Return, which has enabled hundreds of thousands of gentiles to enter Israel.

● Seventh, phase out U.S. military assistance to Israel (now less than 1.5% of the country’s GDP), as well as American participation in Israel-Arab affairs.  Both undermine Israel’s security interests as well as Jewish national pride.

● Eighth, consistent with the Torah, and even with Israel’s Declaration of Independence, enact a Basic Law stipulating that Israel is first and foremost a Jewish commonwealth to which all political principles are subordinate.

9. Although there are various proposals for constitutional reform in Israel, their tendency is to multiply the number of political parties which cannot but undermine national unity, which is best fostered by a unitary executive system of government as the Talmudic sages well understood.

Conclusion

The question arises: What about the so-called Palestinian Arabs, now that Netanyahu has endorsed a Palestinian state?  I do not believe that a Palestinian state bordering Israel will come into existence, and for two reasons.  First, if Abbas or his successor recognizes Israel as a Jewish state, he will be assassinated, as was Anwar Sadat.  Second, a Palestinian state would entail the expulsion of 300,000 Jews from Judea and Samaria.  This will not happen. But making Israel more Jewish will lead to a large emigration of Arabs west of the Jordan River.  This means that what is needed to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the establishment of a Palestinian state, but to transform the State of Israel into an authentic Jewish Republic.

Critics will say my program for constitutional reform is unrealistic.  But those who think Israel can solve its conflict with the Palestinians by economic means, that is, by making them comfortable bourgeois democrats, are living in denial.  Consider Israel’s own Arab citizens, whose standard of living and opportunities far exceed those of their kinsmen in the Arab world.  Yet most of these Arab citizens are committed to Israel’s extinction.

I invite my critics to ponder the experience of the Children of Israel who wandered in the desert for forty years before a generation arose free from Egyptian idolatry.  There is no short-term solution to a civilizational conflict.

________________________

*Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, November 16, 2009.

 Most of this area will be made Judenrein if current US, EU, UN, IL policies are followed

(comment added by Bob Martin)