DANGERS FACING ISRAEL

Steven Plaut has carried this analysis well. I read this on FrontpageMagazine and the url is http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20678

It is truthful and vital. Only one point I query. I feel that the writer does not deal with the main enemy of Israel and that is the US governmental elite (not the ordinary American man or woman). Just like the British did with Hajj Amin el Husseini the US is seeking to stir up anti-semitism and is promoting the growth of Islamofascist regimes, a case in point is surely Iraq.

In introducing I would only add this. P. David Hornik is totally correct when he points out at the beginning the length of the Jihad against Israel. This was rooted in Arab and Islamist Jew Hatred which goes right back at least to the 1920 pogrom launched by the (later to be Nazi) war criminal Hajj Amin el Husseini who the British promoted as part of their effort to stimulate anti-Semitism.

The issue with the nature of this Jihad is that in order to even continue to exist the Israeli nation would need to have developed the type of leadership never seen before in the world, a revolutionary and absolutely granite-like leadership. Israel has made wonderful achievements but a tiny country facing such international and universal hostility day in day out…well read on!



Israel’s Malaise
By P. David HornikFrontPageMagazine.com December 27, 2005
Israel's burden is great. Other peoples have suffered genocides in recent history, but only the Jews face both an industry devoted to denying their genocide and a very real threat of a second one. Although the Holocaust denial affects Jews everywhere, the current Iranian threat is directed at the Jews of Israel.

Under this and other stresses, particularly an almost six-decades-long jihadist siege, there are signs that Israel no longer holds up under the burden. Since 1993 it has basically been begging for a reprieve, at one point offering (that is, at least its government) even its most sacred shrine, the Temple Mount, for a signed statement that the siege would stop. More recently, troubling events suggest that Israel may have reached a nadir in its weariness and self-delusion.

* Israeli officialdom, at least, now seems to relate to the Holocaust in a way that is mechanical and pro forma. Last March, Israel opened a new Holocaust History Museum, and to mark the event it invited prime ministers, presidents, and other leaders from forty countries. They were assembled on a mountaintop outside Jerusalem for the museum’s inauguration, then treated to a couple of days of dinners and speechifying. Especially, in a world that deals so roughly with the Jewish state, it seemed mindless and undignified to expect, or require, that these various notables would set aside their busy lives and relate authentically to another people’s catastrophe sixty years ago.

Two months earlier, under Israel’s prodding, the United Nations held its first-ever annual Holocaust commemoration. Given that organization’s ongoing abuse of Israel, this seems an even worse case of dragging a people’s intimate pain through the mud. But Israel’s foreign minister Silvan Shalom has kept lauding it as a breakthrough.

* This month Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service, after over half a century’s exclusion from the International Red Cross, accepted a compromise whereby it joins the organization and in return substitutes a new invention called the “Red Crystal” for the Red Star of David that had offended some members. This capitulation seems directly to negate the very purpose of the Jewish state, signaling that Jewish symbols and presence are to be suppressed and concealed in deference to the feelings of those they might rile. The Israeli government approved the move, with Foreign Minister Shalom saying this time that it “reflects Israel’s improved international standing … This is yet another achievement for Israel’s diplomacy.”

* Amid growing protest over Steven Spielberg’s new film Munich, which draws moral equivalencies between anti-Israeli terrorists and Israeli antiterrorist fighters, it turns out Spielberg has hired the Israeli spin doctor Eyal Arad to help promote the film. This might not be significant if Arad was a private individual; he is, however, the public relations consultant of Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon. A book published this year by two Israeli journalists alleged that it was Arad who dreamed up the disengagement plan as a way of rescuing Sharon from his legal jeopardy. Sharon at least does not seem troubled by the symbolism of Israel’s leading spin doctor being enlisted to whitewash Munich.

* Earlier this month Azmi Bishara, a Member of Knesset from the Arab party Balad, traveled without permission to an enemy state, Lebanon. At a book fair he subjected the country he serves to a two-hour diatribe, saying among other things: “Israel is the 20th century’s greatest robbery, perpetrated in broad daylight.” “I will never recognize Zionism, even if all Arabs do… I will never concede Palestine. The battle will long continue.” (Addressing Israelis:) “We Arabs aren't interested in your democracy. Give us Palestine and take your democracy with you.” “This conflict is possibly endless….We must keep its embers burning…. Some Arabs may want to surrender, but they cannot force us to surrender with them. We shall go on fighting.” So far there is no talk of pressing charges against Bishara or removing him from the Knesset. In 2003, when the Central Election Committee disqualified his party Balad on grounds of supporting the anti-Israeli terror war, Israel’s Supreme Court overturned the ruling.

* Palestinian terrorist leader Marwan Barghouti, serving a life term in Israel for directing attacks that killed and injured civilians, is now running for president of the Palestinian Authority on an independent ticket. Presumably, he is allowed to hold meetings in his cell and be in contact with operatives. One Israeli politician, Oslo architect Yossi Beilin, has even called for his release on grounds that he is a force for peace. I know of no other case of a jailed terrorist being allowed to function actively as a presidential candidate.

Other examples could easily be added. One is the popularity of Sharon’s new Kadima Party even though it is clearly a one-man, autocratic show without ideological coherence, and a haven for opportunists. Another is the apparent distortion of Sharon’s medical condition following his stroke, so that the country, Third World-like, accepts being saddled with a leader in fragile health as it faces the crisis of Iran’s nuclearization. Then there is the ongoing ability of a few thousand Gaza terrorists to shell and terrorize communities within and near Gaza for five years running while Israel steadily refuses to use its vaunted army of hundreds of thousands to defeat them.

Although, on the brighter side, the Israeli army still shows itself an effective, innovative force to the extent the government allows it to act, the situation is worrisome. Friends of Israel should tell Israelis, tactfully and with awareness of the country’s great stresses, that capitulation, acquiescence in abuse, and self-negation are never successful strategies and bring the opposite of the hoped-for results. Also needing to be raised is the question of whether a polity that shows such tendencies is keen on surviving in the first place, and whether it does not at least owe it to its children to try harder.