“Understanding a Mortal Blow dealt to Israel by Professor Maurer

How did Sharon pull it off. If you look back on this website you will see that we were taking an interest in reputable polls which were showing that a majority of Israelis were against the pullout (really ethnic cleansing) and that this was growing as Hamas rockets continued to rain down.

This is why I found the following article very interesting because it points to much hatred for the Jewish pioneers who some people call “settlers” among some Jews. That is the saddest thing about the whole situation. It is that which has led Sharon to do the dirty work for the enemies of the Jewish people. It is a sad thing, yet…Rather than cover up the differences they have to be brought into the open and fought out in an open political manner...isill editor Felix Quigley.

The religious-nationalist majority of Israel was dealt a crushing blow. In 2001 Ariel Sharon led the religious-nationalist voters to a stunning victory over the left minority that vowed to vacate Gaza. The majority was shocked when Prime Minister Sharon reversed his promise to keep Israel intact He proceeded to harness the governmental machinery to cruelly expel 10,000 Jews from Gaza and the West Bank. He surrendered painfully developed farmland and long established Jewish communities to the Arabs. No conditions were required of the Arabs. This is the first time a democratic state expelled its own citizens to hand over land to avowed terrorists and murderers.

The electoral majority of 2001 was subject to repeated lies. Subsequent party elections and polls showing disfavor with Sharon’s coalition with Peres and other leftists were ignored. Massive rallies of Jews were passed over by the government and a compliant media. Suppression and censorship were utilized. Protestors and settlers had to face government agent provocateurs. The largest concentration of forces (63,000 army and police) since the 1973 war was organi! zed to achieve the expulsion. The bulk of the pro-Israeli media in Israel and in North America demonized the settlers.

Before Sharon or a successor strikes again we have to understand the tactics this anti-Zionist minority utilized. Below are examples from two supposedly pro-Jewish nationalist sources that typified the North American Jewish media efforts on behalf of disengagement.

The Canadian Jewish News (CJN) Of January 20, 2005 initiated an assault on the hundreds of thousands of settlers by demonizing them. The column’s purpose was to separate the settlers from the rest of the Jews. It was typical of the demonization that went on throughout the Jewish media in the United States and Canada. Its purpose was to create a Jew that would be hated, reviled and opposed. The author of the piece contends “settlements are a bad, destructive idea, one that Sharon promoted for too long and one that will cost him and the country dearly.” “Settlers “make us look bad-- they make us look terrible, rapacious and imperialistic.” The settler is stereotyped as “a bearded man with a gun at his hip.... Settlements and the unrealistic messianic theories behind them have brewed a noxious cocktail that will poison us in the future.” The Canadian Jewish News, willfully publishes material to delegitimize hundred of thousands of Jews an! d to separate them from all other Jews. The CJN columnist fails to state why these settlers in the post-1967 territories are different than the Zionist settlement movement that began about 100 years ago. If today’s settlers are vile and noxious then under what claim can the author support the existence of Jewish life in Israel today

How a paper supposedly an organ for all the Jews of Canada can publish swill about Jews under the threat of being expelled by their own state is beyond the boundaries of reporting. This question can be hurled at the hundred of other papers in North America that demonizes fellow Jews whose sons and daughters served in the armed forces and added to the well being of Israel. These peaceful and productive Jewish people have been butchered by Arab suicide murderers...

Yet we are told the “settlers curse and attack Palestinian children on the way to school, and Israel must send soldiers to guard the kids.” Other Jews, they claim, “are involved in attacks on Palestinians and their olive groves in an effort to terrorize the Arabs and drive them away.”

When such calumny is challenged the usual reply is recall “Dr. Baruch Goldstein” or other isolated Jews. How would the CJN back up this claim and protect its author? Even under the extreme duress generated by Sharon’s grossly exa! ggerated statements against those that supported the Jews of Gaza, there was no sign of organized killing on the part of the heroic youth that tried to hold the land and synagogues. These youths were maligned as outsiders and fanatic zealots. Not immune to the assault on the settlers is the one American intellectual publication that once appeared to be concerned primarily with the security and survival of the Jewish state--Commentary.

Commentary magazine from New York resorts to demonization to support the expulsion. In the March 2005 issue, Hillel Halkin, a frequent contributor describes the “national-religious” bloc as “wild-eyed Jews brandishing pocket Bibles in one hand and assault rifles in the other.” He argues that removal of these fanatics (resting on claims of “unconcealed messianic proclamations) from Gaza is but “a dress rehearsal for what inevitably must come next: similar withdrawal involving more...settlers from the W! est Bank.” (my emphasis) Untold thousands of Jews must be ethnically cleansed for the 23d Arab state. Halkin cites an oft repeated theme that “the drastic deterioration of Israel’s image in the world is due to the prolongation of its military occupation of the territories....” In short Israel can be loved by all once again if the uprooting of Jews would occur thereby inflicting “a theological disaster “for the religious-national bloc.” Most important to Halkin is to break the links between Judaism and Zionism. For many Israeli intellectuals such as Yoran Ezrahi (Rubber Bullets) better no Israel than the commitment to Jewish faith and the Jewish homeland.

Halkin uses highly charged terms such as Communism and its being “founded by the grandson of a Rabbi,” (Karl Marx) to shed light on Zionism. Another name eruditely tossed in to besmirch the settlers is Sabbatai Zevi’s messianic movement. Marxism and Sabbatianism have nothing to do with the issue. If one accepts Halkin’s linkage you must write off the whole Zionism movement in Israel.

As Sharon cancels the Camp David treaty designed to keep Egyptian soldiers out of the Sinai and Gaza by approving the entry of Mubarak’s forces in Gaza,Halkin asserts “Gaza...has little strategic value, and less of a history of Jewish life.” He refers to the 1948-1967 period when all Jews were expelled from Gaza by Nasser’s troops. Israel ha! s to clear the way for a sovereign 23d Arab.

To enhance the point that Israel is slated to comprise a small piece of land next to Palestine, the leading Commentary writer and its Editor-at-Large Norman Podhoretz supports and rationalizes Sharon’s unconditional and unilateral disengagement scheme and gives his support to a new Arab state.

Podhoretz, once a leading intellectual in the forefront of defending the beleaguered Israel, casts the debate in terms of the one he had with his daughter and grandson, serving in the army. (“Bush, Sharon, My Daughter and Me”, (April 2005) He cleverly stereotypes the extremists in his family. He reports his grandson is so radical and extreme that it makes his daughter Ruthie appear moderate. What! do his children want? They seek a viable state of 10,000 square miles. Podhoretz, and Halkin, will be content with a divided land between two sovereign nations. Halkin explains there will be an intermixture of both people. Jews will have to adjust to an admittedly “perfect horror of a map....” (This includes the some 1.5 million Palestinian Arabs who are citizens of Israel.)

Podhoretz neglects to mention one important member of his family--Eliot Abrams. Now director of the U.S. National Security Council Middle East Section. He is quoted as saying “it’s clear to us (the United States) that in the end the settlements on the other side of the partition will be dismantled.” That means the bulk of the 250,000 settlers will have to move.

Podhoretz understands the fears of Jews who mistrust the PA and other Palestinian agencies. He has an answer. He writes that “(a)s an American...there is one thing I know better than any of the Israelis who have been briefing us....” It is George Bush. “...I would be astounded were he (Bush) to renege on the preconditions he has attached to his support for a Palestinian state.” He concludes that this is “one prince...that deserves to be trusted....” Israel will not be pushed to make concessions to a PA that wants to destroy Israel. Podhoretz cites Bush’ statement of 2004 there would be no Palestinian state “unless and until new leaders emerged who would begin building ‘entirely new political and economic institutions, based on democracy...and actions against terrorism.’” Podhoretz concludes “I now am aware of the price many (tens of!!) thousands of Jews will have to pay for the increased security and peace that I still believe Bush and Sharon, working together, will bring...” to Israel. This is the assurance he gives to his extremist daughter and ! even more immoderate grandson. (If I had not read this call for sacrifice on the part of thousands of Jews by Podhoretz in Commentary I would not believe it. How many times have I heard him and his wife Midge Decter speak out for the integrity of Israel.)

If the religious-nationalists, i.e., those Jews who believe in a Jewish state, are ever to recover the majority they had in 2001 they must understand what caused their disengagement from their homes and communities, Not only must a prevaricator like Sharon be retired from public life there must be an understanding of the anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist Israelis. These are led by the intellectuals who call themselves post-Zionists, new historians. secularists and universalists. For these nominal Jews the hatred of a Jewish state is paramount in their priorities. They dominate institutions throughout Israel and enjoy the support of the Jewish establishments in North America and elsewhere. Israel, The Jewish state, has been dealt a serious and near mortal blow with Sharon’s total reversal of the 2001 election. We have an awesome job to rectify this most undemocratic assault on the one Jewish state on earth. We had best heed Menachem Begin who said “We Fight, therefore we are.”