| |
Roadmap to perdition
By Gerald A. Honigman
March 11, 2003 (Update: June 18, 2003)
I've been thinking about writing this for a long time. My fears regarding Mr. Bush's recent speech endorsing a so-called "roadmap to peace" for the Middle East has prompted me to do this now.
The roadmap's chief champions, the European Union and the Russians, have millennia-old records of intense, violent Jew-hatred coupled with a supposedly "more acceptable" post-Holocaust (especially post-'67) anti-Zionism and billions of dollars currently invested in the Arab world to make their endorsement of such a plan a worry to any one interested in the long term health of the sole, miniscule, resurrected State of the Jews. There is no difference between the good cop/bad cop team of Arafat's boys and Hamas when it comes to this very same long term picture. The documented evidence is overwhelming. A mere visit to the Palestinian Authority and Hamas' websites easily confirms this. The former are simply more willing, in their own words and for tactical reasons, to play the game for the sake of an all-too-willing-to-believe West. They'll accept any additional land that such a "peace plan" and diplomacy will yield...making their ultimate goal--a purely Arab Palestine from the River to the Sea (in the words of their late model moderate, Faisal Husseini, among others)-- that much easier to later achieve.
That the European Union and Russian kindred spirits among the Arabists in our own State Department have seized upon this roadmap is also of no great surprise. But for President George W. Bush, who many thought knew better, to now apparently be lining up with this anti-Israel coalition is indeed frightening. I fear, however, that I have gotten ahead of myself, so please allow me to backtrack a bit...
I have gradually come to appreciate the leadership that President George W. Bush has shown since tragedy befell our country when America got a taste--big time--of what Israel faces daily. While this wasn't the first time we had been victimized this way, September 11th will be remembered as the day in which we all received an everlasting rude reawakening.
I've debated with myself about how to word this: Should I simply sing praises to our President's name and actions, or should I relay to him the true feelings and anxieties of my heart? Since I am in the process of revising my own thinking, at least to some extent, regarding both my own previous positions and about Mr. Bush himself, I reluctantly opted for the latter. So, here it goes...
I must be honest. I did not vote for Mr. Bush. I worry about our country's continuing addiction to fossil fuels for all sorts of reasons. I remain very nervous about his family and friends' close connections to the oil industry, an industry which, for well over half a century, has been-- putting it nicely-- no friend of Israel, Jews, or, in reality, anyone else but itself.
I remember too vividly George Sr.'s venomous reaction when Israel launched its surgical strike a few decades ago which destroyed Saddam's Osirik nuclear reactor. The late Columbia astronaut, Col. Ilan Ramon, was an important part of that surgical team. Where would Iran, which fought a long and costly war with Iraq, or our own country have been years later in Desert Storm had Israel not done this? And I also remember George Sr.'s demand that Israel allow itself to be repeatedly sucker punched by Saddam and do nothing about it in response. Who knew then that those forty Scuds actually launched-- or other projectiles that he could have launched--against Israel would not be carrying deadly biological or chemical warheads? The Patriot missile batteries we set up proved to be useless...or worse.
So, the senior Bush Administration evidently felt that it was better to risk the lives of tens of thousands of Jews--like what actually happened soon afterwards to the Kurds--than risk upsetting our so-called Arab "allies" by allowing Israel to act in its own defense. We acquiesced to treating Israel as a pariah for the sake of the oil sheikhs. I truly believe that one of the main reasons the Bush team did this was the fear that Israel would have actually "finished the job" back then that, for whatever their reasons, they did not want finished. We're harvesting the fruits of that policy today.
I recall George Sr.'s two best buddies while in office, the "Zionism equals racism" Governor John Sununu and "_ _ _ _ the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway" James Baker. They were instrumental in shaping such above policies. And there were published accounts of some even more disturbing events and situations which I won't get into at this time because of their "delicate" nature. Let's just say that those accounts are detailed, documented, and very troubling. So it's not for nothing that many in the Jewish community were not counted among our President's most enthusiastic supporters. The problem goes beyond just the usual explanations of the Jews' liberal, democratic tendencies.
I remember too well our abandonment of a much abused and brave people, the Kurds. They had been promised independence after World War I. President Wilson himself addressed their cause. But they were sacrificed instead on the altar of British petroleum politics and Arab nationalism. Those same multinational oil interests which worked so hard to try to convince President Truman to not allow the rebirth of Israel succeeded in aborting the one best chance some 30 million native, non-Arab Kurds ever had at achieving independence. Arab Iraq emerged instead.
Listening to George Sr.'s call for their revolt against Saddam decades later--and then watching him stand by and do nothing while Kurds were gassed and slaughtered--was a bit too much to bear. The "no fly" zones we later set up as an afterthought won't bring back the tens of thousands of these people who were maimed and killed both immediately and in subsequent years due to the lingering effects of the gassing. And all because they trusted in America and the American President.
Unfortunately, this was not the first time we abandoned them. We pulled the rug out from under Mullah Mustafa Barzani as soon as the Shah made his temporary peace with Iraq in 1975...resulting in tens of thousands of Kurdish deaths then as well. What's even worse, it now looks like we may very well be planning to use (abuse?) these people yet again in our current strategy for the region. I'm hoping that George W. will not repeat the mistakes, if not sins, of his father. Our country is too great to once again be stained by such callous behavior and actions. Arabs had long written that they would view the birth of an independent Kurdistan as that of another Israel. So there was no way that the oil interests in this country and their powerful friends in the State Department and elsewhere (including the White House) would allow this to transpire. This, among other concerns, was most definitely an important part of the picture.
There are other reasons for my feelings of uneasiness as well...but let's just end this part here. I fear that I have disturbed the Bush folks enough with my candor for now.
Having said all of the above, I must confess that I would vote for our current President in a heartbeat if elections were held tomorrow. Sometimes a leader arises at a given time for a specific reason or reasons. And sometimes the acorn can and does fall far enough from the oak tree.
Harry Truman bucked the pressure from Big Oil, its Arabist buddies at the State Department, and elsewhere when he recognized the rebirth of the sole state of the Jews...the phoenix arising from the ashes of Auschwitz and the frightened mellahs of the Middle East. The archives have been open now for decades and show that raw anti-Semitism played its roll here as well. This is the same club that is pushing for the "roadmap" today. But Truman knew that if any people ever needed the protection of its own nation state--regardless of how imperfect all such endeavors are doomed to be--surely it was the Jews.
Perhaps at no time since those days leading up to May 14-15, 1948 were the decisions of an American President regarding the Middle East potentially so important as they are today. President Johnson declared America "neutral" when Israel was blockaded at the Straits of Tiran and Egypt's Nasser expelled the U.N. peacekeeping force and replaced it--right up to Israel's doorstep--with 100,000 troops, tanks, planes, etc. of his own on the eve of the 1967 Six Day War. Hindsight is indeed the best sight. But no one knew then that grossly outmanned, surrounded, and outgunned Israel would pull a rabbit from out of its hat. And there are only so many rabbits that can fit into a hat...even Israel's seemingly magical one.
Eleven years earlier, President Eisenhower simply expected that Israel would continue to tolerate being terrorized by fedayeen using Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere as bases...sort of like what much of the world still expects today. And Israel was also expected to put up with an earlier blockade at the Straits as well. When it struck out in 1956 to end this state of affairs, it faced a very hostile reaction from Ike and the State Department boys led by John Foster Dulles. Read U.S. Justice Department former prosecutor John Loftus' book, The Secret War Against The Jews, for detailed "enlightenment" about the Dulles boys.
Advancing along our time line, one may next, ironically, point to anti-Semitic President Nixon's crucial resupply of Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War as a crucial moment in Jewish history. But this was also not without its down sides...not the least being reports that his Jewish Secretary of State, Kissinger, deliberately delayed that resupply for about two weeks. The expectation was that Israel would have to "bleed a little more" so its victory wouldn't be too similar to 1967 and it would thus, supposedly, be more pliable later on in negotiations.
President Clinton pushed Israel beyond the limits of sanity and reasonable compromise at Camp David 2000 and Taba. A much debated U.N. Resolution #242 declared in the wake of the '67 War that Israel was entitled to "secure and recognized borders" to replace those suicidal armistice lines imposed upon it at the close of hostilities in 1949. Among other things, those lines made Israel a mere 9-miles wide at its waist. And yet, Israel was expected to forsake this at Taba.
While other nations have conquered and taken over territories thousands of miles away from home in the name of their own national security interests, Israel was expected to forsake even minimal territorial adjustments to give it some semblance of a strategic buffer. Israel was pressured to make one-sided concessions to a PLO which was willing to settle for nothing less than its virtual suicide. After returning to its 9-mile wide existence, Israel was next expected to take in millions of real or alleged Arab refugees so that the Jews would be overwhelmed in their sole microscopic state. Forget the fact that one half of Israel's Jews were themselves refugees from Arab/Muslim lands. The current "roadmap" Mr. Bush now endorses smells too much like an attempt to resurrect this whole failed process...a virtual Oslo II. For the sake of nothing more than possible temporary lulls in violence, Israel will be expected to give away the store and further expose its civilian population even more than it is already. Let's face it. Who will be willing to apply real pressure on the Arab side? Now ask the same question vis-a-vis Israel...
That brings us up to now and our current President. Clearly, he's still under pressure from those same old oil influences. We really do need to work on alternatives to this--beyond simply raping the last pristine areas of our own country to squeeze out more oil profits. Cars elsewhere have been running on pure ethanol from plants that are grown from the earth for decades, and Henry Ford ran his Model Ts on them as well. Why did I have to purchase my 50 mpg, super low emission, safe and roomy hybrid gas/electric vehicle from Japan?
Admittedly, George W. does now seem to have a deeper grasp of some of the core Middle Eastern issues than I had given him credit for. He has (so far) resisted the hypocrites in Europe, who have incinerated tens of thousands in their own less-than-perfect battles, and I believe that he has come to see that treating Israel like other so-called "friends" treated Czechoslovakia in 1938 will hurt us--not help us...not to mention the moral repugnance of the thought. I believe he understands that Israel truly longs for an honorable peace with its enemies--but one which will allow it to be a viable state on the morrow. What's lacking is a real partner on the other side whose thinking is on the same wavelength.
Our President has also (so far) resisted the perpetual Arabists at Foggy Bottom, although his latest roadmap speech, again, is a concern. And he's done all of this knowing that most Jews did not vote for him. His Dad's buddy, Baker, was right. But I would disagree with the conclusions that he drew from this.
I believe that George W. has also come to realize an unfortunate truism: The enemies Israel is fighting are not ultimately concerned about how big Israel is...but that Israel is.
The Geneva Conventions clearly state that Israel is allowed to go after the deliberate terrorist disembowelers and incinerators of its babes and other innocents who hide among non-combatant populations and that, furthermore, it is those combatants themselves who are to be held accountable in international law for any harm that comes to such civilians because they were used as human shields. While civilian deaths are always regrettable, hearing our own State Department criticizing Israel for this--instead of the cowards hiding behind their own women and children--is sickening. Unlike the massive bombings that we ourselves recently conducted in Afghanistan and elsewhere against our own enemies, Israel has constantly put its own sons at far greater risk by sending them in to get "up close and personal" with the butchers of Jews.
What nation would have had the patience that Israel has already displayed in this regard--at great cost to itself? Gaza would have been leveled by now if those very same countries criticizing Israel had been victimized this way. And forget about any of them going house-to-house with infantry to try to minimize casualties the way Israel has been doing. Had Israel adopted the Arabs' own techniques, a la Assad's "Hama solution" in Syria or King Hussein's "Black September" in Jordan, etc., it arguably could have solved its own problems a long time ago.
Our President's actions in the coming months may indeed prove to be historic. But I am now once again worried.
I'm concerned that after Mr. Bush has done what he feels is needed to be done in the name of our own perceived needs and wishes for Iraq, he'll then expect Israel--in a far more precarious position than our own country--to settle for something far less.
Israel has one sixtieth the population of the United States. You practically need a magnifying glass to find it on a world map, and it is still surrounded by scores of millions of people who would like to destroy it. So when Israel is then handed that "far less offer it can't refuse," I fear that Jews will once again be expected to bare their necks for either a modern day Munich or for the sake of Arafat or an Arafatian protege's oft-quoted "peace of the Quraysh." The Quraysh were the pagan tribe that the Muslim Prophet, Muhammad, made a temporary truce with until he was powerful enough to deal the final blow.
Among other things, I've heard of the new textbooks we have planned for a post-Saddam Iraq. Will we insist that the new Arab State of Palestine make such reforms as well to stop the endless incitement to violence and hatred? While we have learned that America is indeed also vulnerable, what we're talking about here is miniscule Israel's very own backyard. Once again, the country is a mere 9-miles wide at its waist by the old pre-'67 armistice line. Even if this improves a bit after a final settlement, we're still talking about an extremely narrow country with very little wriggle room and no where to go but the sea.
If Mr. Bush indeed has expectations--better yet...makes such demands-- on that eventually emerging 23rd state of the Arabs similar to those he's insisting upon with Iraq-- then true peace may come to that troubled region. But he must make it clear that Israel will not be made the sacrificial offering for better relations with the Arab world after America's second foray into Iraq. Otherwise there will only be more pain and suffering...and more shame brought upon our own heads. Notice the immediate press reports after Mr. Bush's roadmap speech. They all mention Arafat demanding an American full court press on Israel to go along with this.
Finally, while George W. doesn't like to hear this analogy (and reacted angrily when Sharon himself brought it up), his new supporter--me-- must nevertheless restate it yet again: Israel along with Judea and Samaria (alias the "West Bank" courtesy of early 20th century British imperialism) in 2003 or afterwards will not provide a repeat performance of Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland in 1938.
|
|
View previous topic • View next topic 
