Thursday, May 4, 1995 — THE BULLETIN —
Photo By Avihu Shapira
COi^MANDlNG 0FF8CER Maj.-Gen. Amiram L®vln talks to Ihfm young children in a ECiryat Shamona bomb sholtar aft@r kafiyusba in northern Israel.
Israel — most poJitrcal 'dunces' in the world
By EDWARD ALEXANDER
~h a speech at the University of Pennsylvania in October 1994, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres declared that one of the numerous advantages of a shrunken Israel (after full withdrawal from the Territories. Israel's width, at its narrowest point, wil equal the length of California's Golden Gate Bridge, inclusive of on-ramps) will be the country's ability to boast that it has "more Phds per kilometre" than any country in the wold. Peres failed to note that Israel will then also be able to boast more dunces per square kilometre than any place in the world.
In view of the predictably obtuse reaction of the Israeli government to the carnage perpetrated on Jan. 22 by yet another Arab suicide bomber (or bombers), the latter boast would seem more appropriate. "We shall not play into the hands of the terrorists by stopping the peace process," announced Prime Minister Rabin, as he always does, with the regularity of a steam-engine.
On this occasion, however, Rabin was outdone in obtuse-ness (and recklessness) by his Education Minister Amnon Rubinstein (who passs as an intellectual by Israeli standards). Rubinstein was sent to Yad Vashem in Rabin's place to help commemorate the 50th anniversary of Auschwitz, the prime minister having been called away by the Arab terrorists' unique mode of commemorating this anniversary — which is to say, by blowing up as many Jews as they could. He declared that "1,000 attacks and acts of sabotage" would not deter Israel from pursuing the sacred "peace process."
None of the Israeli officials who repeat this insult after each terrorist bombing — and who have had to do so with increasing frequency ever since the agreement with the PLO
U.S. law requires that h@ must have a parole hearing before the end of hie 10th year, even ^ough he Is serving a life sentence. Jonathan'i is
It Is urgent that every individual as well as every organization at onee contact President Cllnton.Prime Minister Eahin and the U.S.
The ciddrmBm are:
The White Hiiis^
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c/o Ambassi^or Israe 3514
The United States Parole Commission
Edward sity of Aviv
, professor of English at Unlver-, taught for several years at Tel and Hebrew University in Israel.
in 1993 — has attempted to explain just why the terrorists should desire an end to the peace talks.
Do Rabin and company really believe that the terrorists are opposed to Israeli withdrawal from the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, the intended and inevitable result of the talks?
The terrorists, like everybody else in the world who has heard Rabin's and Peres' mindless reiteration of their determination to continue "the peace process" after each act of butchery, have been fully assured that this Israeli government, no matter how high the mountain of Jewish
The incomparable Peres, chief designer of the accord with the PLO, invariably reacts to Arafat's decant calls for Jihad (holy war) by
Nobel Peace Prize-winner is thinking of "a peaceful jihad^'' some-
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corpses, will continue the "process" and that the withdrawal will go on.
The government has made it entirely clear that it is indifferent to the PLO refusal to live up to any of the Declaration of Principles.
And what about Arafat himself? His most notable statement on the serial bombings that have become a regular feature of Israeli life since the government completely shut down its intelligence network in the Gaza Strip (due to the breaking out of "peace") was made even before the bombing happened.
On Jan. 1, in a speech in Gaza, he told his followers (and those he hopes will become his followers): "We are all suicide bombers." This should put his heart-rending denunciation of the Beit Lid massacre (conveyed second-hand to Rabin) in proper perspective.
Arafat, of course, has been working hand in glove with the "Islamic radicals," as the Israeli government invariably labels the perpetrators of terrorist acts (until, as in last year's horrific Afula bombing, police investigation proves the PLO to be responsible). He has neither the ability nor the will to act either against Islamic group or "radical" PLO factions, including his own Fatah Hawks, who have proclaimed their continuing adherence to the "armed struggle." Indeed, his speeches praise the killers and his newspapers list them as martyrs and heroes.
But none of this really matters to the current Israeli government. The incomparable Peres, chief designer of the accord with the PLO, invariably reacts to Arafat's defiant calls iox jihad{hoXy war) by saying that his friend and fellow Nobel Peace Prize-winner is thinking of "a peaceful/7/jfl^," something akin to a powerful desire to save the environment.
How shall we best explain the fumbling incompetence of the Israeli government to protect its own citizens? A refusal to credit the full evil of the world? A collective surrender to the Stockholm syndrome?
Whatever its underlying cause, it expresses itself in a policy of endless appeasement, as if none of the Israeli leaders is capable of remembering Churchill's deadly sentence on the arch-appeaser of the century: "Mr. Chamberlain was faced with the choice between war and dishonorable; appeasement; he chose dishonor, and he got war."
By MELVIN FENSON
ERUSALEM — Tel Aviv University has two Strategic Studies Institutes, and Bar-Ilan University has one. The latter, an institution under religious auspices, can always be relied upon to come up with a reaction, forecast or analysis, critical of Rabin's leftist-Labor government. The secular Institutes at Tel Aviv will always support the government and attack the settlers, with minor variations.
Since the academic credentials of both universities are sterling, the rush into print of their directors serves to thoroughly confuse the reading public in Israel.
My solution is to sit down each week over a cup of Turkish coffee, with cardamon seed, with my Arab cleaning person, Ibrahim, and get the facts straight from the source. Like the New York mailman, through rain and snow, sleet and hail, storm and border closing, he manages to get through the checkpoints designed to isolate us from Arabs from the Territories.
Ibrahim holds the keys to many apartments in the neighborhood, enjoys the well-deserved trust of neighbors, and includes in the price of his two-hour cleaning session, a political lesson for me.
A minor cloud passed over our relationship in September when a charge for a telephone call to Jordan appeared on my monthly itemized phone bill. The hour and date coincided with Ibrahim's weekly visit. I took it as a sign of his increasing Israeli acculturation. After all, most Israeli government, university and public agency clerks and secretaries come to work early to complete their daily roster of private longdistance dialing. Besides, Jordan really isn't "overseas."
Then again Ibrahim provides services besides cleaning .. , when I wanted to write to someone in Amman who hosted me on my recent visit there (there being as yet no postal service between the two countries), Ibrahim offered to have the letter delivered by a friend planning to visit Jordan. Besides, Ibrahim doesn't know that telephone bills can now, for a small fee, list details of local or overseas calls, or both.
Ibrahim lives in an Arab village in the Jerusalem corridor, not far from an Arab village I used to hike through in the pTe-intifada days. That village, Kubeiba, has a beautiful church commemorating the spot where Jesus appeared after rising from his tomb. Ibrahim knows the Koran, which he admires, and at least the mythology of Christianity. He smiles as he expresses doubt about Jesus reappearing after death. Ibrahim would make a poor Lubavitcher Chassid.
The lesson this week was jihad and suicide bombings by young Hamas devotees. Ibrahim angrily described how beautifully-gowned Imans from the mosques, with well-trimmed beards and 1995 Mercedes (perhaps an imaginary touch of exaggeration) visit his village to recruit suicide bombers from among the unemployed youth, including his own young sons.
Why are the youth unemployed? Because even in the best of times when there is no closure of the Territories in the aftermath of a bombing incident, only workers over 30 are allowed to enter Israel for employment.
"I always tell them — you go first. You tie explosives about your body and blow yourself up. Maybe 1 shouldn't say such things, but I do. They promise these boys paradise, with beautiful girls. I tell them — if it's so good, why don't you do it? Even this morning, when I got a lift from the village on the way to work, the same subject came up. Maybe what I say is dangerous, but if dying is such a blessing, why don't they volunteer to try it first?"
There are some liberals among the Israelis, Peres for example, who will swallow anything. While Hosni Mubarak is vigorously trying to get Israel to sign a nuclear non-proliferation pact and open her nuclear research facilities to inspection (maybe we do have 200 atom bombs . . .at least I hope to G-d we do), Peres calls Mubarak a great lover of Israel, a friend in times of need, a tried and trusted supporter of Israel's claim to security.
The only one I know who buys Arafat's definition of jihad — a kind of psychological battle within man to conquer his own evil impulses — is my foreign minister. When Arafat is caught inciting Gaza youth to join the jihad to reconquer Jerusalem, he pretends thaty/'/iflc^ is a psychological concept. And Peres and his bleeding heart followers believe him.
When I put this interpretation of jihad to Ibrahim, he laughed. To him it is in the same category as the second coming of Christ.
As a footnote he added that some relatives from Gaza recently visited his village and reported that since Oslo and Arafat's appearance on the scene, conditions have declined, and Gazans now are more envious than ever of the good life Arabs living in or close to Israel enjoy.
Isn't this worth the price of an occasional unauthorized phone call to Jordan?
contributor, in Winnipeg,
Kelvin F@n@on is q reguBar onc@ wa@ editor of Th® J&kh