Of things to come. Taking stock after Gaza operation

By Lee Kaplan, INN

In dealing with US supporters of Israel, it is a fact that unless one talks about the mythical peace of a “two-state-solution” for the Israel-Arab conflict, even pro-Israel Jews will attack, or “shoot the messenger “.

After having the last twelve years doing analysis and writing about the Middle East and US foreign policy vis-à-vis Israel as well as anti-Semitism, I have looked into the future  and it’s not bright. We can sing Bashanah Habaah (“Things will improve next year” – a popular Israeli song, ed.) but events are not going to get any better unless Israel changes its way of dealing with the Arabs, the Iranians and the United States.

In 2006, I wrote about all the hoopla going on about the Iranians getting the bomb and talk of Israel and the US attacking Iran to stop this. I said it would never happen and I was right.

Today, the threat of a nuclear threat from Iran is guaranteed. The ending of economic sanctions bought hungry businessmen from the EU and US to Iran and that influx of money served to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program will continue.

Before the Disengagement from Gaza, I was at a dinner with Ranaan Gissin who was selling a group of American Jews on the then emerging idea. Gissin gave a compelling argument for withdrawing the Israeli population from Gaza. He drew on a chalkboard how it took thousands of Israeli soldiers to protect only a small group of Jews in Gaza. He gave the leftist argument that the Arab’s demographics would mean if Israel didn’t leave Gaza, it would no longer be able to remain a democratic state as Gaza Arabs would be denied the vote. Finally, he told us how if we did withdraw and the Arabs attacked us, the entire world would be on Israel’s side because Israel would have shown enormous efforts to make peace.

Despite his arguments, I told him I was against the Disengagement for two reasons: 1) Israel today cannot find any excuse for doing to Jews what the Germans did to them in World War II. To forcibly deport 8,000 Jews from their homes and businesses to please anti-Semites was a no starter. And 2) as for world opinion, he was kidding himself if he believed the world would side with Israel if the Jewish state was attacked. The same anti-Semitism would always be there. Ten years and 12,000 rockets later, we all know that.

Gaza was a great deal for the Palestinian Arabs. Israel, by international treaty, took on the obligation to supply the civilian Arab population in Gaza with food, electricity and water, and being a law-abiding nation, did so even after being attacked by the Hamas government voted into power by Gazans.

The US State Department, the EU and assorted NGO’s then created the ISM to bring internationals to the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza to stir up the local Arabs against cooperation with Israel and try to mold public opinion onto the side of the Arabs. Few people realize it, but the death of Rachel Corrie was a boon to this goal and had much to do with the recent war in Gaza – as well as previous ones. Israel chose to allow anarchists from abroad to interfere with the IDF in combat zones and never demanded the US State Department rescind their passports or make them leave. Rachel Corrie’s death opened the Rafah border for the Hamas and ultimately led to ISM publicity stunts – like the Flotillas – that Israel also ignored.

Few Israelis realize Corrie died blocking an IDF bulldozer that was destroying the entrance to a tunnel, not protecting an Arab’s home as suggested by the Arab spin.  Given what we see now regarding tunnels in this Gaza war, nobody points out that tunnels were something Corrie and the ISM were acting as human shields to protect.

Not long ago, John Kerry admonished PM Netanyahu that if Israel didn’t play ball with his “peace” plans, the Jewish state could expect “delegitimization on steroids”.  That statement confirmed for me that ISM and its delegitimization, the boycott movement in the US and on campus, the weekly riots against the Security Fence and other forms of de-legitimization were being orchestrated behind the scenes by the US State Department.

American public opinion, especially among Christians, has always been strongly pro-Israel. But the US State Department, back as far as Henry Kissinger in the 1970’s, has always insisted on a Palestinian state.  The American leaders of the ISM were former low level State Department employees working in an Israel that they hated who suddenly found themselves with lots of monetary support to de-legitimize Israel in the minds of the American public.

Kerry, new to the job as Secretary of State, was just stating the department’s policy instead of hiding it, attempting to force Israel to conform by openly threatening delegitimization “on steroids” to Israel’s leaders. The Mavi Marmara had an ISM agent in the White House advising President Obama even though its voyage, the seventh flotilla, was against maritime law. State Department employees in the US consulate in Tel Aviv would spring to the defense of ISM US citizen activists arrested on the ‘West Bank’, despite their open avowal of support for terrorist groups.

The goal of the State Department, in contrast to Congress, has always been to mold American public opinion to be anti a Jewish state and pro a Palestinian Arab one. BDS was and is illegal by US law, but the US Commerce Department looks the other way through every administration, through all the Republican and Democratic administrations since the Carter years. While previous people in Kerry’s job followed the delegitimization policy secretly, Kerry decided he was going to be the first to be successful with it.

People have short memories. Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Hillary Clinton, all Kerry’s predecessors, openly used the word “contiguous” to describe a future Palestinian state which is to include Gaza and the ‘West Bank’. Kissinger in the 70’s said Israel would become very small and did his best to try and force that issue during the Yom Kippur War. Kerry, after putting his feet under the desk, saw the long term policy that was not succeeding and decided he would get the job done “on steroids”, hence his unending support for Hamas and the terrorists who run the Palestinian Authority.

Talk of tunnels or elevated trains between the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza in order to creatre a contiguous Palestinian state is arrant nonsense, one need only look at the Danzig Corridor at the end of World War I to see that no such project was ever viable. Like Ranaan Gissin’s pipe dream of world support if the Arabs attacked Israel after the Disengagement, the idea of any Palestinian state next to Israel is never going to work.

Kerry and the State Department hope that through delegitimization of Israel in colleges in America, in the world press and public opinion, enthusiasm for Israel can be drowned out, especially among upcoming generations. This is how the US hopes to make the unworkable work.

The fighting in Gaza isn’t really over. Hamas has been beaten, but they won’t surrender. The world is hysterically attacking Israel despite its logical act of self-defense.

Here is a worst-case scenario:

The delegitimization hysteria in the colleges, the supermarkets, in the Media and labor unions isn’t just business as usual.

The Hamas leadership knows through its intermediaries in Qatar that the US wants Hamas to achieve its goals. Qatar just spent 11 billion dollars in the US for arms, arms that will probably make their way to Gaza.

In essence, the US is helping to fund and arm Hamas through relations with Qatar (it used be Saudi Arabia, but the US is being weaned off Saudi oil and the Saudis are so afraid of Iran they are making overtures to Israel).

Hezbollah in the north also has tunnels to Israel and has plans to attack,backed up by 50,000 rockets, invading the Galilee where thousands of Arabs-Israelis live who are expected to assist Hezbollah troops in time of war.

The only reason Hezbollah did not attack in this war with Gaza is they are facing ISIS on their flank, encroaching on Lebanon. Eventually, the ISIS might be persuaded to not attack Hezbollah, despite Sunni-Shiite animosity, if it would mean conquering the Jews once and for all. There are some ISIS members fighting in Gaza right now.

A spectacular attack would lead an invasion and whatever it is, it’s going to be big. In this next confrontation Israel will be fighting within its own borders against the enemy.

Israel may find itself with its back to the wall. If images of Christians being murdered en masse by ISIS are frightening., imagine what they would do to the Jews if they could. Israel might ask the US for help and the US will give it—at a price. The Sixth Fleet will provide additional air support and marines to fight back Israel’s enemies. But Israel will be told to give up the southern half of the country for a “contiguous” Palestinian state as per State Department plans.

Israel will not be able to use a nuclear option and her leaders will comply. Over the next ten or twenty years the smaller Israel will eventually be eaten up by attrition as the surrounding Arabs eat away at the Jewish state. ‘The US may help Israel acquire the Iron Dome for now, but that puts money back into the US economy.

Sounds incredible? Any more than that Israel would deport an entire Jewish population from Gaza?

In order to prevent this scenario from coming to pass, Israel must do to Gaza what the allies did to Germany in World War II. The Hamas government must be crushed ruthlessly and the population that put them into power must suffer the same as did the Germans who suborned Nazism. If Hamas attacks are renewed, carpet bomb Gaza if needed.

If Israel can deport its own people in total, it can arrange for deportations of non-Hamas Arab civilians from Gaza to Sinai temporarily while the Hamas terrorists in Gaza are eliminated without mercy. This must be done soon. Israel will get world condemnation but that is happening now anyway, and it is a question of survival.

Not to do so leaves the very real possibility of the above-described scenario, threatening Israel’s very survival. The longer Israel waits, the closer it gets to a possibly disastrous outcome.