By MARTIN SHERMAN
The demise of Shimon Peres unleashed a tidal wave of mendacity & hypocrisy that underscores the dominance the delusional dictates of political correctness have over political discourse in (and on) Israel
…on Friday, the world proved that what it really wants is to embrace Israel. Oslo, the disengagement and Peres were enough for the world to carry Israel aloft…But Israel repeatedly bites the outstretched hand, pushes the world to detest it…
Gideon Levy, “Shimon Peres’ funeral proved that anti-Semitism is dead”, Haaretz, October 2, 2016.
…no Israeli government has made any efforts in the past decade to move the peace process forward…
Lior Ackerman, former division head, Shin Bet in “Wanted: Two courageous leaders”, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 3, 2016.
It would be so nice if something would make sense for a change
Alice in “Alice in Wonderland”
In the past two and half decades—almost a quarter-century—truth has always been, at best, incidental to much of the manner in which the political discourse in, and on, Israel has been conducted. More often than not, political truth was surrendered as sacrificial offerings on the altar of the omnipotent deity of political correctness—regardless of how far the precepts of the latter diverged from those of factual correctness.
Appeasement as yardstick for statesmanship
However, in the past ten days, since the sad demise of former President Shimon Peres, it seems the floodgates of falsehood and fabrication have been opened even wider than usual, resulting in a veritable deluge of drivel—distorting the nation’s past, disregarding present perils it faces and dismissing its future prospects with dread prophesies of impending doom.
Every endeavor at appeasing Palestinian-Arab demands, no matter how gruesome the results this precipitated, were applauded as far-sighted statesmanship. Any show of resistance to such demands were disparaged as short-sighted political partisanship; any skepticism as to consequences of complying with them, were denigrated as narrow-minded nationalism, any warning that caution should be exercised before accepting them was disparaged as radical right-wing rejectionism. Any suggestion that risks entailed in acceding to them should be thoroughly assessed were dismissed as extremist scare-mongering.
On the one hand, the discourse has been dominated by an approach that insists on making future Israeli concessions—no matter how fruitless (indeed, counter-productive) past concessions have proven. Moreover, it persists in trivializing all past concessions—no matter how far-reaching these have been—and no matter how calamitous the consequences they have culminated in. On the other hand, the intransigence of the Palestinian-Arabs, and their naked Judeocidal bloodlust, whose lethal consequences have hitherto been constrained only by the physical limitation on their practical capacity to murder and maim Jews, have been met with expansive understanding—even empathy—seldom, if ever, to be mentioned as the cause of conflict.
Indeed, in the dominant political discourse in/ on Israel, it would appear that abject appeasement has become the sole yardstick for statesmanship—at least, where Israel is concerned.
Eulogizing the imaginary
Much of this mindset—of the need for Israeli consideration for its enemies’ positions, coupled with total disregard for their incandescent anti-Israel hatred—was reflected in the eulogies at Peres’s funeral last Friday.
Thus Barack Obama claimed “I don’t believe he was naïve” when it was clear that “naïve” was the most charitable characterization of the policies Peres forged in the last quarter-century of his life, and which proved so disastrously detached from reality.
Obama continued: “… he understood from hard-earned experience that true security comes through making peace with your neighbors”, seemingly totally oblivious of the fact that nearly all previous land-for-peace endeavors have left Israel in a more precarious position than ever before, and its civilian population commensurately more exposed to attack—despite the fact that the prospect of a conventional military threat has receded significantly.
He went on to cite a prime example of latter day “Peresian” pathos. Thus, Obama recalled Peres’s remark regarding Israel’s wars: “We won them all…But we did not win the greatest victory that we aspired to: release from the need to win victories.”
Indeed, this is such an illusionary, rather than visionary, pipedream that even Peres’s protégé and devoted acolyte, former, MK Einat Wilf, a dedicated two-state adherent herself, recognized that Israeli victory, or at least Palestinian defeat, is a precondition for peace.
Illusion not vision
In a recent Haaretz op-ed, “When Palestinians acknowledge defeat to Zionism, peace will follow”, just days prior to Peres’s passing, she wrote, somewhat remarkably: “The Zionist left wants to see the defeat of the Palestinian national movement just as badly as the right wing does. Only when it admits that, will the left be able to lead the state of Israel to a peace deal, if and when that becomes feasable. That is because a peace agreement based on dividing the land will be possible only when the Palestinian nationalist movement acknowledges its defeat to the Jewish nationalist movement – Zionism.”
Sadly however, it seems the iron grip of political-correctness can obfuscate the perspective of even the most sober of pundits. Thus, in a piece written on the day of Peres’s demise, Wilf, after crediting Peres for helping ensure “that the Jews fighting a war of annihilation …had the weapons they needed to ultimately prevail”, went on to claim: “…when decades later he recognized that the region might be turning somewhat less hostile, he grabbed the opportunity and brokered careful understandings between former sworn enemies.”
Really??
“…the region … turning somewhat less hostile”? With the Sunni Islamic State, on the one hand; and the Shia Islamic Republic, on the other? True, the conventional threat from several Sunni state-actors has diminished for the time being, only to be replaced by the arguably even more menacing specter of fanatical non-state actors, with quasi-state capabilities and global reach, as well as the Obama-facilitated threat of a nuclear Iran.
“…brokered careful understandings between former sworn enemies”? Hmm, wonder what “careful understandings” those would be. The Oslo Accords? And which “former sworn enemies” ? Hamas? Hezbollah? Arafat?
Eulogies (cont.): Prattle on peace
Of course, in the labyrinth of contorted rhetoric and distorted polemics that comprise the political discourse in/on Israel, “peace” is no more than a code-word for Israeli capitulation to Arab demands, and the “peace process” an encrypted synonym for “Israeli withdrawal”.
Accordingly, when Obama lauded Peres in his eulogy, declaring: “…he understood the practical necessity of peace. Shimon believed that Israel’s exceptionalism was rooted not only in fidelity to the Jewish people, but to…the precepts of his Jewish faith:. ‘The Jewish people weren’t born to rule another people’”, the allusion is clear: To achieve peace Israel must withdraw from the ancient homeland of the Jewish people. As if Arab or Muslim enmity began only in 1967, and the desire to annihilate the Jewish state was fueled only by the “occupation” of Judea-Samaria, and not by an implacable Arab refusal to countenance any expression of Jewish sovereignty in any territorial configuration whatsoever.
Then of course there was famed author, Amos Oz, the ever-eloquent “oracle” of the obsessive dovish-left, who in a 2000 Haaretz interview promised: “The minute we leave south Lebanon we will have to erase the word Hizbullah from our vocabulary, because the whole idea of the State of Israel versus Hizbullah was sheer folly from the outset. It most certainly will no longer be relevant when Israel returns to her internationally recognized northern border”.
Of course, the realities today, long after “Israel return[ed] to her internationally recognized northern border” and the bloody 2006 Lebanon War, demonstrate just how wildly inaccurate Oz’s prognosis was, proving he is far more adept in the world of fanciful fiction than that of cold political realities.
Amos Oz: “Peres a banal hawk”
Past errors have, of course, never swayed Oz’s absolute belief in the infallibility of his political credo, no matter how often, and how incontrovertibly, it has been disproven in the past. This should be kept in mind when assessing Oz’s remembrance of Peres. Just prior to the funeral, Oz disparagingly dismissed Peres’s earlier period: “in the early 70s, he was in my eyes a banal hawk. Supporting settlers, a settler lover, a security man, the more land the better, the more power the better.” Having reduced Peres’s more impressive security successes as a hawk to the “banal”, he then enthusiastically gushed over his later failed fiascos as a dove: “He changed before my eyes …into an enthusiastic and stubborn believer in Israeli-Palestinian peace….”
In his grave side eulogy, Oz proclaimed that despite naysayers who believe peace is impossible “peace is not only possible—it is imperative and inevitable”. But then he elaborated with a simplistic—the less charitable might say “puerile”—analogy, which revealed that what Oz envisaged was not really a harmonious peace, but (unsurprisingly) Israeli withdrawal and separation from the Palestinian-Arabs. Relating to the Jewish homeland as innate real estate he declared: “Since Israelis and Palestinians cannot suddenly become one happy family, there is no alternative to dividing this house [Israel] into two, and convert it into a duplex building”.
Of course nowhere in this silly, shallow analogy is there any reference to the fact that “their” apartment will abut a hostile Islamist neighborhood, whose belligerent inhabitants are very likely to turn it into a base from which to launch deadly attacks against “our” apartment and its vulnerable tenants.
But hey, why let pesky details impede a noble vision?
Where are Peres’s successors?
Convinced with cult-like conviction—despite all the evidence to the contrary—of the absolute truth of his ideological creed, Oz pontificated dogmatically: “In their heart of hearts, all sides know this simple truth. Where are the brave leaders who will stand up and make these things a reality? Where are Shimon Peres’ successors?” Indeed, one can only marvel, with stunned amazement, at this callous (or is that masochistic?) nostalgia for “successors”, who will lead us back into the horrors of charred buses, mutilated bodies, and bombed cafes that were the hallmark of the Oslowian “peace-process” that Oz perversely yearns for.
This call for “brave leaders” was echoed in a particularly inane and incoherent article by Lior Ackermam, titled “Wanted: Two courageous leaders” in the Jerusalem Post (see introductory excerpt), which since the departure of Steve Linde, seems to have adopted a dramatically more Leftist (and anti-Netanyahu) line.
In it, Ackerman bewails the continued dire conditions under which the Palestinian-Arabs live under the regime of the Abbas-headed Palestinian Authority, suggesting that this has understandably precipitated the latest wave of so-called “Lone-Wolf “terror. He warns that the only thing preventing “total anarchy or a Hamas takeover” is the hard work of the Israeli security forces. But he raises the outrageous claim:“…no Israeli government has made any efforts in the past decade to move the peace process forward.”
From the inane to the insane
I guess he must be unaware of Ehud Olmert’s wildly concessionary offer to Abbas in 2008, which the latter flatly rejected. Or the unreciprocated steps Netanyahu took, cutting sharply across the grain of his political base, to coax the Palestinians back to negotiations: The building freeze in Judea-Samaria; the release of convicted terrorists with “blood-on-their-hands”; the implicit agreement to have the pre-1967 borders serve as a point of departure for negotiations.
I could, of course, go on and elaborate on the array or patently useless, self-contradictory, already-tried-and -failed “remedies’” that Ackerman proposes to ameliorate the situation until such adequately “courageous leaders” emerge, but that would take more that the remaining space in this essay…
Instead, allow me to conclude with the buffoonish comments of Haaretz’s Gideon Levy. In a delusional piece(Oct.2 2016) , titled “Shimon Peres’ funeral proved that anti-Semitism is dead” (see introductory excerpts) he wrote : …on Friday, the world proved that what it really wants is to embrace Israel. Oslo, the disengagement and Peres were enough for the world to carry Israel aloft…But Israel repeatedly bites the outstretched hand, pushes the world to detest it…” He added: “every Israeli could be proud of being Israeli and not have to hide it out of fear and shame. How much Israel’s fate is in its own hands depends on its behavior. If it wants, it can be admired.
The World according to Gideon Levy
So, dear Israelis, there you have it – the world according to Gideon Levy. All you have to do to be admired is to endorse fatally flawed and failed formulae that leave your streets strewn with dead bodies and the world will love you.
Simple, isn’t it?
As Alice in Wonderland sighed: It would be so nice if something would make sense for a change. In Israel too!!
Dr. Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.org) is founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (www.strategic-israel.org)
@ ms:
As the Obama-Clinton-Kerry doctrine confirms what we ALL know, you can never fight from weakness!!! This trio has brought back the cold-hot war in Europe, ME and N-Africa!
Furthermore you should always be as close as possible to what is ethically right and fight from that position.
You have to be first strong and then show that U are right REGARDLESS of the corrupted International community. That is where Ethics must be the prevailing argument.
This is far MORE than less the objective situation of Israel. I believe that this is where Bennett, Shaked, Feiglin and perhaps Lieberman stand.
@ SHmuel HaLevi:
Israel’s urgent imperative – A doctrine of the liberal hawk
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Into-the-Fray-Israels-urgent-imperative-A-doctrine-of-the-liberal-hawk-445433
Re-defining the political divide in Israel as “Doves vs Hawks” rather than “Left vs Right” is a matter of far-reaching substantive significance, well beyond mere semantics.
@ stevenl:
I have never defined the chasm here as one between “left” and “right”. I am far into the left side regarding most issues. The clash is between Jew and unJew. At times the later is also known as, the Erev Rav.
Jewish line candidates? Thousands if and when the “combina” utterly brought down. No sane Jewish person would imperil himself or herself attempting the “from within” idiocy.
The “combina” is a tacit entente including power peddlers generally manipulated by foreign governments, certain “families”, political generals, self elected judges and other such excellent flotsam.
@ SHmuel HaLevi:
Most known leaders in IL are to the left of Bibi. Feiglin, Shaked, Lieberman and Bennett are the one best known who are on his right. In any election, I don’t see anyone of them winning enough support to become prime minister and move the country further to the Rt and annex J & S!
Who else has more gravitas on the rt?
Apparently most top brass in the IDF & Security apparatus are on the left of Bibi!
Please enlighten me.
This is also a question to Ted.
I have long ago given up engaging on chats with Netanyahu shills. Peresites in disguise are all over the landscape.
We have clearly identified the gruesome “leadership” (please change the last consonant to a “t” instead of “p”), as the core of our ghastly condition socially and security wise. Mr. Netanyahu is a total disaster and worse will come from that disgrace.
Just moments ago the grotesque speachster activities undermining, torturing, destroying Jewish villages and homes, freezing construction and settlement on his desperation to go to political… bed again with la Livni and her dumb bell associate facilitated another terrorist attack causing so far two murdered and six wounded.
Hey! Say Netanyahu, say Netanyahu, say Netanyahu, that is the person GUILTY in all aspects of the constant attacks against us. He has created the conditions for that.
“Mah ha’alternativahh?
That idiotic question pops from the shills time and time again.
ANYONE normal and Jewish will do a better job than the item in question. Anyone! The people must act to clean up the flotsam in control and elect all NEW people to lead.
Netanyahu has chased after the Arafat hand picked present leader of the Islamic monsters in our Land, Netanyahu has released thousands of islamic beasts from prison, Netanyahu has allowed the castration of the military, and co opted the self elected pretend judges passing as supreme courtiers.
Want to re orient the State to a real Jewish State?
Start by removing the scum up there.
Frank Adam Said:
… as long as IL has the back of the King of Jordan! Not the way BHO has your back!!!
YJ Draiman Said:
… and Rabin!
@ Frank Adam:
As they say in Texas, “even a blind pig sometime finds an acorn”.
Whatever else anybody wants to say about Peres and Oslo just remember that it was Labour optimistic votes that carried the so far successful Egyptian peace in the Knesset and Shimon Peres was a much part of that as anybody. Second even if Oslo was not a success it cleared the PLO threat from Jordan and the Jordanian peace has also been a success for which we could give Peres some credit besides his arms procurement in 1947 – 67. Two wins out of three is the series if not the Oslo match.
@ Austin:
Well said.
YJ Draiman Said:
Israel has always made agreements with the Arabs which end up-if one can describe something which unravels at the very beginning as “end up”- with Israel keeping it’s legal obligation, and the Arabs completely ignoring it from the very beginning with great loss to Israel in dead and wounded.. One realises that the Arabs only make these agreements so as to stay in the limelight of International warmth and keep the funds pouring in from the ignorant, anti-Semitic Western World as well as a step-by-step implementation of their plan to completely wear down and destroy Jewish Israel forever…..
The equivalent of a bird trying to fly on one wing……
Shimon Peres was responsible for the devastating Oslo Accord
(which Mahmoud Abbas at the U.N. stated that he will not abide by its terms) and many other unauthorized backroom negotiations that put Israel at extreme risk, which has brought more terror and violence and less safety and security for Israel. We really have to distinguish between delusional dreams and irresponsible, unrealistic flights of wishful fancy.
This eulogy and epitaph about Shimon Peres, glorifying his devastating actions and attempts to make the failure to realize Shimon Peres’s delusional and unrealistic dreams the fault of Israel.
“Oh, if Israel had only done more to meet the faulty and delusional aspirations of her Arab-Palestinian neighbors (enemies)!” This are the same Arab-Palestinians who have been murdering Jews in The Land of Israel at least since the 1500’s and are committed to kill the Jews and take over all of Israel. The Arabs do not deny this; they train and educate their children and the masses to hate, commit terror and violence. Mahmoud Abbas is a convicted terrorist murderer and an escapee from justice. Abbas incites his people to violence.
This Shimon Peres’s delusion is not a dream. This is a foolish, dangerous illogical catastrophic fantasy that plays right into the hands of Israel’s enemies.
This is why Obama and many of his ilks attended Shimon Peres’s funeral.
They were not showing respect for Israel’s loss of a formative leader.
They were paying homage to the cynical concept of the delusional “two state solution” that Peres symbolized for them. But there is already an Arab-Palestinian state and its Jordan on Jewish land, since 1922 and they expelled the Jews. They, despite every reality to the contrary, continue to embrace what they call a dream but what it would inevitably might be Israel’s nightmare. That is the Arab-Palestinian’s dream, which will never come to fruition with the Almighty’s help. NEVER AGAIN will we cower to our enemies.
YJ Draiman
Will the Vatican cede its territory to the Muslims?
The answer is absolutely not.
Why is the Vatican pressing Israel to surrender its Jewish holy sites which precedes the Christians sites to the Muslims?
Why the lack of outcry? The Arabs/Muslims after terrorizing and expelling millions of Jews from their countries and now there is very little Jews or no Jews at all. The Arabs/Muslims are persecuting and forcing all Christians to leave the Arab/Muslim countries.
It is amazing the muted outcry by the Christian community for such despicable behavior by the Arabs/Muslims against the millions upon millions of Christians. It seems the Vatican has no power or will to protest vehemently of such treatment. Why are they not taking a much more forceful action to stop such horrific treatment of Christians by the Muslims?
YJ Draiman
The Consequences of Appeasement & Concessions by Israel to the Arabs r2
The decisions made by the government of Israel since The six day war of 1967 leading up to the Gaza war with Hamas July 2014, as well as those of the first ten months or so after the turnover of Gaza in 2004 began, have dumbfounded historians ever since.
The Arab PA leader Mahmoud Abbas aka Abu Mazen makes a speech in the summer of 2015, in front of the UN and announces that the Oslo Accord is no longer applicable and that he and his Arab PA are not going to abide by its terms. Thereafter, Arab terror and violence, car ramming, knifing, stone throwing and every conceivable method of disturbance and destabilization is being applied.
The current Arab terror and violence facing the people of Israel, and the Arab claim to forbid Jews from Temple Mount, is a product of restraint to Arab violence and the concern what world reaction would be, while sacrificing Jewish lives, and diminishing the safety and security of Israel and its people.
The appeasement and concessions of Israel to the Arabs-Palestinians, in particular, has been so often held up as an example of how not to deal with a rising terrorism and violence that it has become a stereotype.
Had Israel stood its ground and responded to terrorism or any violence with utmost force and zero tolerance. Israel would not be facing today’s crisis.
As many have said – appeasement, concessions and lack of proper response to terrorism and violence is detrimental to Israel its people and the Jewish people worldwide.
Israel under International Law has the right to build and live in Judea and Samaria and any other territory formerly within the boundary of the Mandate for Palestine aka The Land of Israel in 1920. As decried by the San Remo agreement, confirmed by the treaty of Sevres and Lausanne; and the 1919 Faisal Weizmann Agreement, of which terms are survived in perpetuity.
Any deviation or prohibition is outright violation of Agreements and blatant discrimination against Israel and the Jewish people. As past history has proven, concessions by Israel have only increased violence and terrorism.
Israel is an independent democratic sovereign country and it must operate and run the country without being dictated how to run the country, and without outside interference; just like the U.S. and other countries.
It is time for Israel to respond with extreme force to quell terrorism, violence and rioting – no holds barred, zero tolerance. Complete safety and security must return to Israel.
Israel should inform all Arab leaders in greater Israel that if terror and violence continues they will hold them responsible and they will bear the consequences.
What the Arabs could not win in loosing four major wars against Israel, they won in playing the deceptive delusional peace game. The Arabs all the while are building up arsenals that commit terror, violence and educating their children to hate, commit terror and violence and to destroy Israel. While enriching; their own personal pockets with the billions contributed by the world to help the impoverished Arab-Palestinian.
The G7 and other nations want Arab Oil and for that, they will do anything! The end result will be that ignoring reality that will destroy them also.
The Muslims are completing the taking over Europe, U.S. and Canada will follow and more.
What a scheme – and the gullible delusional world is buying it hook line and sinker.
When will the World at large learn that the Arab-Muslims cannot be trusted; they consider all non-believers as their enemies.
I hope the world takes of the blinders, before the Arab-Muslims take over Europe completely and than the United States and Canada, etc.
I wonder, how come in the nations of the world; No one is questioning the 21 Arab States established after WWI with over 12 million sq. km. – 5 million square miles of territory, including Jordan’s sovereignty, a country that never existed in history before WWI and which was established in violation of international law and treaties, on land originally allocated to the Jewish people in 1920 to reconstitute the Jewish homeland, which included all of Palestine’s aka The Land of Israel 120,000 sq. km. – 75,000 square miles, of which about 80% was illegally reallocated by the British to the new state of Arab Palestinian which is Jordan on Jewish historical land.
If you question Israel’s rights, territory and sovereignty you might as well question the sovereignty and territory of the other 21 Arab States set up with over 12 million sq. km. of territory allocated at the same time by the same Supreme Allied Powers that set up and reconstituted the Jewish State in all of Palestine after WWI.
It is also a gross injustice ignoring that the Arab countries have terrorized and expelled over a million Jewish families with their children and confiscated all their assets including businesses, homes and over 120,000 sq. km. of Jewish owned land for over 2,200 years. Most of the expelled Jewish families and their children now are resettled in Israel and comprise over half the population.
YJ Draiman
@ Bear Klein:
However Bibi needs “Herzog” as a shield against the International antisemites who desperately try to harm Israel! But for sure Herzog will not be killed like the poor Palestinians used as shield by Hamas and other Islamic fanatics!
Gideon must be affected by AD! A very serious disease indeed!
Israel must make sure that the leftists who are unable to see the plain truth that the Palestinians do not want peace but to destroy Israel never ever regain power to do more damage to Israel.
The saying, it is not how you start the race but how you finish that counts, then Peres lost. He started strong and helped Israel greatly but in the end he took a turn which cost Israel 1000s of lives. It is still trying to get out of this failed two state paradigm as pseudo-friends like Obama keep trying to revive it.