?The Arabs are the same Arabs,? as in former Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir?s maxim, in terms of their violent opposition to any Jewish settlement anywhere in the Land of Israel. Yet that is not all. Arab manipulation of the foreign media, through distortions of the truth and outright fabrications, has also remained the same. The Palestinian Authority press routinely publishes outlandish ?reports? of Israeli tactics, from the Israeli female stripper death squads to the Mossad sale of hormone-laced chewing gum to the IDF use of low-grade uranium weapons. The Gaza houses destroyed not long ago by IDF sappers were used as cover for PLO sniping and smuggling, but the media, Arab and non-Arab, presented the destruction as a malicious act, setting hundreds of poor Arabs into the streets. Most important, of course, is the repetition of the blood libel that Israeli soldiers target Arab youths for death. The Arab press in general is heavy with cartoons and articles insinuating that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has a bloodlust for Arab children.
An editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service?s Arabic news in 1948, Hazen Nusseibeh, once described the way in which the story of the ?Deir Yassin massacre? came to be. In an interview for BBC television, he talked about his meeting with villagers from Deir Yassin, after it was conquered by members of the Irgun Tzvai Leumi (the ?Irgun?) militia, and with Hussein Khalidi, then-Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee.
According to Nusseibeh, after consultation with Khalidi, ?we wrote a press release stating that at Deir Yassin children were murdered, pregnant women were raped. All sorts of atrocities.? When villagers from Deir Yassin protested at the Arab press? portrayal of events, they were told that the lies were necessary to incite Arab armies to help fight the Jews. As Nusseibeh put it, ?We said, ?there was no rape.? Khalidi said, ?We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews.??
?The Arabs are the same Arabs,? but is it true that ?the Jews are the same Jews??
Another repetitive refrain in our altneuland is the ongoing discussion surrounding ?restraint.? Israel is called upon to exercise ?restraint? in its reactions to terrorist outrages on the part of Arabs from the Palestinian Authority. Certain ministers in the Israeli government cite their ability to limit IDF military actions against the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian Authority as a ?success.? Even the actions approved by the government against terrorist targets are always retaliatory and further justified to the press as having defused an immediate threat, under the assumption that offensive actions against the terrorist PLO would be unacceptable. Constant media focus on the efficacy of measures of defense such as by-pass roads, armored buses, barricades and checkpoints is a sign of a widespread acceptance of the policy of ?restraint.?
The latest idea to prevent Arab attacks on (certain) Jewish civilians being floated by the Israeli left and some prominent members of the defense establishment is the construction of a ?wall? between Israeli population centers (in pre-1967 borders only) and areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Such a wall will need to have guard towers, as well, one might suppose. Thus, after 60 years Israel has returned to the age of the ?Wall and Tower? settlements (?homa umigdal?), established to defend Jews from the violence of the 1936-39 nationwide Arab riots. Kibbutz Hanita, in the western Galilee, was the first of 57 such settlements established during that time period. According to the kibbutz website, the founders ?proposed they defend themselves by setting up a protective wall all around the settlement. by digging trenches and erecting towers for look-out posts.? That may have been appropriate when the Jews were not in a position to exercise authority as a sovereign state, but that period was to have ended a long time ago. After all, as Rafael Eitan?s interviewer tried to convince the tough-as-nails former Chief of Staff, ?there have been a few changes since then.? No?
In the pre-State underground, Revisionist Zionists were bitterly opposed to the policy of ?restraint? adopted by the Labor Zionist movement, a precursor to the Labor party and its liberal sisters. Addressing the issue, David Raziel, Commander in Chief of the Irgun from 1937-1941, said, ?If the objective of the war is to break the will of the enemy? we clearly cannot be content with defensive action? Such a method of defense, which enables the enemy to attack as he sees fit and to retreat at will, to reorganize and to attack again - such defense is known as ?passive defense? and ends in defeat and ruin? he who does not wish to be defeated must attack.?
A member of the radical left-wing Rabbis for Human Rights has stated that, while in Lebanon, his unit once failed to fire at suspected terrorists using civilian orchards as cover for attack, for fear that they would hit innocent farmers. As a result, reports the humanitarian, several soldiers were killed and two tanks were destroyed. More recently, the female suicide bomber in Jerusalem is reported to have entered the capital in a Red Crescent ambulance, allowed through for ?humanitarian reasons.? This piece of information was revealed a short time after ?human rights? groups, including Jewish ones, condemned Israeli soldiers for their harsh treatment of Arabs, including pregnant women and emergency medical teams, at IDF checkpoints. The Arab and world media has recently made much of the refusal of a handful of IDF reservists to assume their duties to the country and serve in the army so long as their country is guilty of ?punishing the innocent.?
?Do not dare to punish the innocent... what superficial and hypocritical nonsense,? said Ze?ev Jabotinsky, founder and leader of Betar and Revisionist Zionism, ?In war, any war, each side is innocent? When a war breaks out, we demand unanimously a sea and land blockade of enemy soil, so as to starve the population and the innocent women and children. And after the first air raid on London and Paris, we will expect air reprisals against Stuttgart and Milan, which are full of women and children. There is no war which is not conducted against the innocent, just as there is no war which is not fraternal strife. Therefore every war and the tribulations it brings is accursed, whether offensive or defensive, and if you do not wish to harm the innocent - you will die. And if you do not wish to die - then shoot and stop prattling.?
Jabotinsky further said, ?If we were to begin to calculate what is preferable, then the reckoning would be very simple; if you wish to be ?good?, then please allow yourself to be killed and renounce everything you hoped to defend: home, country, freedom, hope...?
Tragically, the Oslo Accords and the war that has come in its wake has made palpable the truth of Jabotinsky?s words. The PLO was invited to set up a terrorist base in the Jewish heartland, complete with weapons factories, media outlets and international legitimacy, all in the name of being ?good? and recognizing the rights of the ?Palestinian people.? After that first step, when Israel first began to feel the sting of the scorpion it had agreed to carry on its back, as in the famous Middle Eastern parable, Israel chose to continue allowing Arabs from the Palestinian Authority to enter Israeli cities, for to forbid them from doing so would have been ?bad.? The families of suicide bombers were never targeted for retaliation, nor were the cities where they were from, for that, too, would not have been ?good.? The fixed Israeli response to terrorist outrages has been destroying empty buildings, symbols, for to actually kill large numbers of the PLO terrorists would not have been a ?measured response.? The result ? the terrible, tragic result ? is that the Oslo ?peace? has already precipitated the death of more Jews than the 1967 Six Day War, waged on three Arab fronts.
It is 5762, or 2002 in the Gregorian calendar, and the Jews have accomplished a lot since 5702. The Jews have a strong, independent state, the State of Israel. We have ingathered Jews to their ancient homeland on such a scale that the Jewish population of Israel has grown by leaps and bounds since the creation of the state and will constitute the largest concentration of Jews in the world in the not-too-distant future. The rich world of the European yeshivot, all but destroyed in the Holocaust, has been reborn and reinvigorated in the Land of Israel, even exceeding, in some respects, the pre-WWII yeshiva world. A native, Land of Israel Torah culture has also been created and has taken firm root in the ancient soil.
Israel has also accomplished much that any state, Jewish or not, would be proud of. After pioneering farmers made the desert bloom, Israeli businessmen and scientists have created a high technology powerhouse, all within less than 60 years. From a nation of impoverished immigrants, Israel is now among one of the more generous providers of humanitarian assistance in the world. Israeli defense technologies are recognized globally as being among the best and the army of the Jewish state has defeated the combined and separate armed forces of hostile Arab states, time after time.
With all of those impressive accomplishments, how is it that one gets the impression that nothing has really changed?
[Part 2 of 2]
-------------------------------
Nissan Ratzlav-Katz is a Content Editor for Arutz Sheva Israel National News.com.
An editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service?s Arabic news in 1948, Hazen Nusseibeh, once described the way in which the story of the ?Deir Yassin massacre? came to be. In an interview for BBC television, he talked about his meeting with villagers from Deir Yassin, after it was conquered by members of the Irgun Tzvai Leumi (the ?Irgun?) militia, and with Hussein Khalidi, then-Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee.
According to Nusseibeh, after consultation with Khalidi, ?we wrote a press release stating that at Deir Yassin children were murdered, pregnant women were raped. All sorts of atrocities.? When villagers from Deir Yassin protested at the Arab press? portrayal of events, they were told that the lies were necessary to incite Arab armies to help fight the Jews. As Nusseibeh put it, ?We said, ?there was no rape.? Khalidi said, ?We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews.??
?The Arabs are the same Arabs,? but is it true that ?the Jews are the same Jews??
Another repetitive refrain in our altneuland is the ongoing discussion surrounding ?restraint.? Israel is called upon to exercise ?restraint? in its reactions to terrorist outrages on the part of Arabs from the Palestinian Authority. Certain ministers in the Israeli government cite their ability to limit IDF military actions against the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian Authority as a ?success.? Even the actions approved by the government against terrorist targets are always retaliatory and further justified to the press as having defused an immediate threat, under the assumption that offensive actions against the terrorist PLO would be unacceptable. Constant media focus on the efficacy of measures of defense such as by-pass roads, armored buses, barricades and checkpoints is a sign of a widespread acceptance of the policy of ?restraint.?
The latest idea to prevent Arab attacks on (certain) Jewish civilians being floated by the Israeli left and some prominent members of the defense establishment is the construction of a ?wall? between Israeli population centers (in pre-1967 borders only) and areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Such a wall will need to have guard towers, as well, one might suppose. Thus, after 60 years Israel has returned to the age of the ?Wall and Tower? settlements (?homa umigdal?), established to defend Jews from the violence of the 1936-39 nationwide Arab riots. Kibbutz Hanita, in the western Galilee, was the first of 57 such settlements established during that time period. According to the kibbutz website, the founders ?proposed they defend themselves by setting up a protective wall all around the settlement. by digging trenches and erecting towers for look-out posts.? That may have been appropriate when the Jews were not in a position to exercise authority as a sovereign state, but that period was to have ended a long time ago. After all, as Rafael Eitan?s interviewer tried to convince the tough-as-nails former Chief of Staff, ?there have been a few changes since then.? No?
In the pre-State underground, Revisionist Zionists were bitterly opposed to the policy of ?restraint? adopted by the Labor Zionist movement, a precursor to the Labor party and its liberal sisters. Addressing the issue, David Raziel, Commander in Chief of the Irgun from 1937-1941, said, ?If the objective of the war is to break the will of the enemy? we clearly cannot be content with defensive action? Such a method of defense, which enables the enemy to attack as he sees fit and to retreat at will, to reorganize and to attack again - such defense is known as ?passive defense? and ends in defeat and ruin? he who does not wish to be defeated must attack.?
A member of the radical left-wing Rabbis for Human Rights has stated that, while in Lebanon, his unit once failed to fire at suspected terrorists using civilian orchards as cover for attack, for fear that they would hit innocent farmers. As a result, reports the humanitarian, several soldiers were killed and two tanks were destroyed. More recently, the female suicide bomber in Jerusalem is reported to have entered the capital in a Red Crescent ambulance, allowed through for ?humanitarian reasons.? This piece of information was revealed a short time after ?human rights? groups, including Jewish ones, condemned Israeli soldiers for their harsh treatment of Arabs, including pregnant women and emergency medical teams, at IDF checkpoints. The Arab and world media has recently made much of the refusal of a handful of IDF reservists to assume their duties to the country and serve in the army so long as their country is guilty of ?punishing the innocent.?
?Do not dare to punish the innocent... what superficial and hypocritical nonsense,? said Ze?ev Jabotinsky, founder and leader of Betar and Revisionist Zionism, ?In war, any war, each side is innocent? When a war breaks out, we demand unanimously a sea and land blockade of enemy soil, so as to starve the population and the innocent women and children. And after the first air raid on London and Paris, we will expect air reprisals against Stuttgart and Milan, which are full of women and children. There is no war which is not conducted against the innocent, just as there is no war which is not fraternal strife. Therefore every war and the tribulations it brings is accursed, whether offensive or defensive, and if you do not wish to harm the innocent - you will die. And if you do not wish to die - then shoot and stop prattling.?
Jabotinsky further said, ?If we were to begin to calculate what is preferable, then the reckoning would be very simple; if you wish to be ?good?, then please allow yourself to be killed and renounce everything you hoped to defend: home, country, freedom, hope...?
Tragically, the Oslo Accords and the war that has come in its wake has made palpable the truth of Jabotinsky?s words. The PLO was invited to set up a terrorist base in the Jewish heartland, complete with weapons factories, media outlets and international legitimacy, all in the name of being ?good? and recognizing the rights of the ?Palestinian people.? After that first step, when Israel first began to feel the sting of the scorpion it had agreed to carry on its back, as in the famous Middle Eastern parable, Israel chose to continue allowing Arabs from the Palestinian Authority to enter Israeli cities, for to forbid them from doing so would have been ?bad.? The families of suicide bombers were never targeted for retaliation, nor were the cities where they were from, for that, too, would not have been ?good.? The fixed Israeli response to terrorist outrages has been destroying empty buildings, symbols, for to actually kill large numbers of the PLO terrorists would not have been a ?measured response.? The result ? the terrible, tragic result ? is that the Oslo ?peace? has already precipitated the death of more Jews than the 1967 Six Day War, waged on three Arab fronts.
It is 5762, or 2002 in the Gregorian calendar, and the Jews have accomplished a lot since 5702. The Jews have a strong, independent state, the State of Israel. We have ingathered Jews to their ancient homeland on such a scale that the Jewish population of Israel has grown by leaps and bounds since the creation of the state and will constitute the largest concentration of Jews in the world in the not-too-distant future. The rich world of the European yeshivot, all but destroyed in the Holocaust, has been reborn and reinvigorated in the Land of Israel, even exceeding, in some respects, the pre-WWII yeshiva world. A native, Land of Israel Torah culture has also been created and has taken firm root in the ancient soil.
Israel has also accomplished much that any state, Jewish or not, would be proud of. After pioneering farmers made the desert bloom, Israeli businessmen and scientists have created a high technology powerhouse, all within less than 60 years. From a nation of impoverished immigrants, Israel is now among one of the more generous providers of humanitarian assistance in the world. Israeli defense technologies are recognized globally as being among the best and the army of the Jewish state has defeated the combined and separate armed forces of hostile Arab states, time after time.
With all of those impressive accomplishments, how is it that one gets the impression that nothing has really changed?
[Part 2 of 2]
-------------------------------
Nissan Ratzlav-Katz is a Content Editor for Arutz Sheva Israel National News.com.