There used to be a joke that was funny before September 11 ruined it. A man jumps off the roof of the World Trade Center in Manhattan and, as he passes someone sticking his head out the 20th floor window, he yells, ?So far so good. See, all those people who told me it was dangerous to jump off the roof of the tower were wrong!?
I suppose the updated version of this is ?Palkal Thinking.? Palkal was the flawed construction design method that was responsible for the now-famous collapse of the floor of a wedding hall in Jerusalem two years back. Of course, two days before the floor caved in and the dancing guests were killed, no doubt one could find many people ready to swear that Palkal is a proven method, because after all - to date - no buildings built with it have collapsed. There are, of course, other fine examples of Palkal Thinking. Just days before the Argentinean peso collapsed, government officials there were peacocking about, bragging about how time had proven how successful their economic policy had been since - after all - it had been years since the peso depreciated against the dollar. And it should not be hard to find cases of American officials claiming on September 9, 2001 or thereabouts that bin Laden was all bluff, all talk, no danger at all.
I mention all of these, because at the moment the foremost case of Palkal Thinking involves the sudden obsession of the Israeli Left with the "Lebanon Model" as a precedent for what it thinks Israel needs to
do with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. As you recall, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak "resolved" the bloodshed in southern Lebanon with a unilateral capitulation to the Hizbollah and its Syrian puppet-masters. He just ordered Israeli troops to race out, with their tails between their legs, in a parody of Dunkirk.
Ever since then, Israel's Lunatic Left has been hailing the capitulation in Lebanon as a great success. Yes, the body count dropped significantly after the surrender. There has been no massive saturation shelling of northern Israel. Tranquility of a sort has prevailed. And in op-ed after op-ed, the Left screams, "You see? Just like Doubting Thomases from the Non-Left predicted that the capitulation to the Hizbollah would produce a bloodbath, and it has not, so the same nay-sayers are trying now to scare Israelis away from the idea of a similar unilateral capitulation and withdrawal from the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip. Just like Barak's withdrawal calmed the northern border, so a similar unilateral withdrawal will calm relations with the Palestinians and produce peace in our time." Simple, huh?
The Lebanon-as-Role-Model Doctrine has been the nucleus of the campaign by the Labor Party's contender for Prime Mister, Amram Mitzna. It is repeated at every opportunity by leftist politicians. It is the theme of an Op-Ed in Ha?aretz (December 3, 2002) by Amiram Goldblum, entitled "The Withdrawal from Lebanon as Model" (You may recall that Goldblum, a professor at the Hebrew University and leader of Peace Now, recently demanded that Israel prevent Christian evangelicals from visiting Israel, because they are too pro-Israel, and because some of their leaders denounce Islamist terror).
So what are we to make of all this?
Let us first note that the only tranquility that has prevailed along Israel's border with Lebanon since Barak's capitulation is in the imaginations of Leftists, slouching in their jacuzzis in the yuppie suburbs of Tel Aviv. Hardly a day goes by without the Hizbollah firing at passing Israeli planes, shelling the Mount Dov area, or otherwise attacking Israel, while Israel plays possum and pretends there is tranquility, in Peresian denial of reality. Since the capitulation, the Hizbollah has murdered Israelis, including children, along the border. It is holding four Israelis it has kidnapped and may have murdered them. The Hizbollah has been involved with the PLO and the Hamas in launching suicide bombings in Israel, and is training Palestinian terrorists. It has provided explosives and other war materials to the Palestinians. And it is now diverting water flowing into Israel, an act of war under international law. The only "tranquility" along the northern border is the absence of any Israeli response to the daily acts of war by the Lebanese.
Moreover, to remove any doubts about "tranquility", the Hizbollah almost daily reminds everyone of how it is merely preparing for the showdown with Israel, that it plans to use southern Lebanon to attack Israel until it is annihilated. Hizbollah radio and TV broadcast daily Nazi attacks on Jews. And the Hizbollah now has thousands of rockets aimed at all of northern Israel, just waiting for the button to be pushed. If the Hizbollah has as yet not pushed the button for an all-out attack, it has nothing to do with any relaxation of tensions or de-Nazification of the Hizbollah, but with the strategic calculations of Syria. Especially since September 11, Syria does not want to find itself too clearly a focal point in the sights of an enraged post 9-11 United States hunting down Islamist terrorists.
The wonderful tranquility in Lebanon will end in an all-out saturation shelling of northern Israel. There is no question of what will happen, only when. It is likely to occur when the attack on Iraq commences, but could occur almost any time. No doubt, Mitzna, Goldblum, and their ilk will all be sighing "Oops!" How could we have been wrong? Things were going so well, all the way down to the 20th floor. That
Palkal sure had proved itself reliable.
More than anything else, however, the "Lebanon Model" is proof of the abysmal stupidity of the Israeli Left and its indifference to seeing Israel destroyed. Every single "withdrawal" and concession by Israel to the Palestinians in the past has produced escalation of terror and increased numbers of atrocities. A unilateral withdrawal by Israel to its 1967 "Green Line" borders in a Barak-style capitulation will only be the signal for the opening of the next all-out Arab-Israeli War. In that war, Tel Aviv and Western Jerusalem will be reduced to rubble by the PLO and northern Israel will be turned into a great killing zone by the Hizbollah. "Palestine" will be the base for attacking Israel, and will host armies and tanks from the rest of the Arab/Moslem world, from Pakistan to Morocco, rushing to defend the Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression. Israel will be sliced in two at its narrowest part, where its width will be less than the length of the San Francisco Bay Bridge with its on-ramps.
In the war that will result from any application of the "Lebanon Model" to the West Bank and Gaza, the Arab world will attempt to exploit Israel's vulnerable, indefensible position to annihilate the Jews of the Middle East, in a second Holocaust. Europe will support them by imposing a total embargo on the Israeli aggressors, and the Americans are likely to use extortion to prevent Israel from defending itself and preventing its own destruction. And, like in the case of the Jewish leaders in Europe circa 1939 - who insisted that Hitler was all bluff, all talk, that, after all, the Nazis had never yet instituted mass extermination of Jews - so Israel's very existence is now being threatened by the abysmally-stupid self-hating people on Israel's Left, who insist Israel test the law of gravity by seeing if the country can make it down to the 20th floor from the top of the tower unscathed.
--------------------------------------------------------
Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa and is author of The Scout (available from Gefen Publishing House: http://161.58.167.199/shop/indi_scout.htm).
I suppose the updated version of this is ?Palkal Thinking.? Palkal was the flawed construction design method that was responsible for the now-famous collapse of the floor of a wedding hall in Jerusalem two years back. Of course, two days before the floor caved in and the dancing guests were killed, no doubt one could find many people ready to swear that Palkal is a proven method, because after all - to date - no buildings built with it have collapsed. There are, of course, other fine examples of Palkal Thinking. Just days before the Argentinean peso collapsed, government officials there were peacocking about, bragging about how time had proven how successful their economic policy had been since - after all - it had been years since the peso depreciated against the dollar. And it should not be hard to find cases of American officials claiming on September 9, 2001 or thereabouts that bin Laden was all bluff, all talk, no danger at all.
I mention all of these, because at the moment the foremost case of Palkal Thinking involves the sudden obsession of the Israeli Left with the "Lebanon Model" as a precedent for what it thinks Israel needs to
do with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. As you recall, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak "resolved" the bloodshed in southern Lebanon with a unilateral capitulation to the Hizbollah and its Syrian puppet-masters. He just ordered Israeli troops to race out, with their tails between their legs, in a parody of Dunkirk.
Ever since then, Israel's Lunatic Left has been hailing the capitulation in Lebanon as a great success. Yes, the body count dropped significantly after the surrender. There has been no massive saturation shelling of northern Israel. Tranquility of a sort has prevailed. And in op-ed after op-ed, the Left screams, "You see? Just like Doubting Thomases from the Non-Left predicted that the capitulation to the Hizbollah would produce a bloodbath, and it has not, so the same nay-sayers are trying now to scare Israelis away from the idea of a similar unilateral capitulation and withdrawal from the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip. Just like Barak's withdrawal calmed the northern border, so a similar unilateral withdrawal will calm relations with the Palestinians and produce peace in our time." Simple, huh?
The Lebanon-as-Role-Model Doctrine has been the nucleus of the campaign by the Labor Party's contender for Prime Mister, Amram Mitzna. It is repeated at every opportunity by leftist politicians. It is the theme of an Op-Ed in Ha?aretz (December 3, 2002) by Amiram Goldblum, entitled "The Withdrawal from Lebanon as Model" (You may recall that Goldblum, a professor at the Hebrew University and leader of Peace Now, recently demanded that Israel prevent Christian evangelicals from visiting Israel, because they are too pro-Israel, and because some of their leaders denounce Islamist terror).
So what are we to make of all this?
Let us first note that the only tranquility that has prevailed along Israel's border with Lebanon since Barak's capitulation is in the imaginations of Leftists, slouching in their jacuzzis in the yuppie suburbs of Tel Aviv. Hardly a day goes by without the Hizbollah firing at passing Israeli planes, shelling the Mount Dov area, or otherwise attacking Israel, while Israel plays possum and pretends there is tranquility, in Peresian denial of reality. Since the capitulation, the Hizbollah has murdered Israelis, including children, along the border. It is holding four Israelis it has kidnapped and may have murdered them. The Hizbollah has been involved with the PLO and the Hamas in launching suicide bombings in Israel, and is training Palestinian terrorists. It has provided explosives and other war materials to the Palestinians. And it is now diverting water flowing into Israel, an act of war under international law. The only "tranquility" along the northern border is the absence of any Israeli response to the daily acts of war by the Lebanese.
Moreover, to remove any doubts about "tranquility", the Hizbollah almost daily reminds everyone of how it is merely preparing for the showdown with Israel, that it plans to use southern Lebanon to attack Israel until it is annihilated. Hizbollah radio and TV broadcast daily Nazi attacks on Jews. And the Hizbollah now has thousands of rockets aimed at all of northern Israel, just waiting for the button to be pushed. If the Hizbollah has as yet not pushed the button for an all-out attack, it has nothing to do with any relaxation of tensions or de-Nazification of the Hizbollah, but with the strategic calculations of Syria. Especially since September 11, Syria does not want to find itself too clearly a focal point in the sights of an enraged post 9-11 United States hunting down Islamist terrorists.
The wonderful tranquility in Lebanon will end in an all-out saturation shelling of northern Israel. There is no question of what will happen, only when. It is likely to occur when the attack on Iraq commences, but could occur almost any time. No doubt, Mitzna, Goldblum, and their ilk will all be sighing "Oops!" How could we have been wrong? Things were going so well, all the way down to the 20th floor. That
Palkal sure had proved itself reliable.
More than anything else, however, the "Lebanon Model" is proof of the abysmal stupidity of the Israeli Left and its indifference to seeing Israel destroyed. Every single "withdrawal" and concession by Israel to the Palestinians in the past has produced escalation of terror and increased numbers of atrocities. A unilateral withdrawal by Israel to its 1967 "Green Line" borders in a Barak-style capitulation will only be the signal for the opening of the next all-out Arab-Israeli War. In that war, Tel Aviv and Western Jerusalem will be reduced to rubble by the PLO and northern Israel will be turned into a great killing zone by the Hizbollah. "Palestine" will be the base for attacking Israel, and will host armies and tanks from the rest of the Arab/Moslem world, from Pakistan to Morocco, rushing to defend the Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression. Israel will be sliced in two at its narrowest part, where its width will be less than the length of the San Francisco Bay Bridge with its on-ramps.
In the war that will result from any application of the "Lebanon Model" to the West Bank and Gaza, the Arab world will attempt to exploit Israel's vulnerable, indefensible position to annihilate the Jews of the Middle East, in a second Holocaust. Europe will support them by imposing a total embargo on the Israeli aggressors, and the Americans are likely to use extortion to prevent Israel from defending itself and preventing its own destruction. And, like in the case of the Jewish leaders in Europe circa 1939 - who insisted that Hitler was all bluff, all talk, that, after all, the Nazis had never yet instituted mass extermination of Jews - so Israel's very existence is now being threatened by the abysmally-stupid self-hating people on Israel's Left, who insist Israel test the law of gravity by seeing if the country can make it down to the 20th floor from the top of the tower unscathed.
--------------------------------------------------------
Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa and is author of The Scout (available from Gefen Publishing House: http://161.58.167.199/shop/indi_scout.htm).