On May 4, 1948, the President of Jerusalem?s Hebrew University, Judah Magnes, despite his advanced sickness (he was to die later in September), was received by the Secretary of the United States. He had left Palestine some two weeks earlier. Magnes was one of Zionism?s foremost peace promoters, a pacifist, a Reform rabbi and a behind-the-scenes go-between with the Grand Mufti since 1929. He had come with an idea how to stop the fighting that had broken out when Arabs attacked Jews on the morrow of the Partition Resolution of one half year earlier.
The minutes (published in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 1976, 901-904) show to what extremes peace activists can and will go, and what dangers they trigger in their quest. Magnes? solution for ending the hostilities was incredibly simple: he proposed that America cut off the donations made by the Jewish community to the Zionist movement in Palestine. The record shows him saying: ?the Jewish community in Palestine is an artificial development? if contributions from the United States were cut off, the Jewish war machine in Palestine would come to a halt for lack of financial fuel.? Not content with that plan, Magnes sought to make sure that this ?artificial development? would remain so, when he insisted that a trusteeship be instituted.
Still unsure how the US would act, the minutes read, ?as Dr. Magnes was leaving, he asked permission to direct a very blunt question: ?do you think there is any chance to impose a solution on Palestine??? The Secretary, George C. Marshall, replied, ?Imposition of a regime implied the use of force? I did not think it was wise for the US alone to take the responsibility for military commitments in Palestine.? Marshall, though, facilitated a meeting between Magnes and President Harry S. Truman the very next day.
Over a half century has elapsed and not much has changed. The Arabs are still engaged in terror and violence. Their religious leaders are now promoting suicidal bombings. Supplied by Israel, the European Union and the United States with money, advice, training and other wherewithals, the Palestinian Authority prepared for, and is now waging, a campaign of death against Jews, foreign workers, tourists and others. This campaign includes the brainwashing of schoolchildren through a mobilized curriculum of hate, and the propagandizing of the population through a harnessed media system and press.
To this end, Yasser Arafat and colleagues have subjugated the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, denied them democracy, embezzled the foreign contributions intended to improve their lives, abused their human rights, disallowed their civil liberties and refused all attempts to reform the corruption and lack of administrative transparency that beset the Palestinian Authority. No new ?Palestine? was established, but an old ?Tunisia? was transferred to the shores of Gaza.
The essential venality of the entire enterprise has reached into Israel. Soldiers and others addicted to drugs have been selling weapons to Arabs, Israeli Arabs are participating in the terror, Arab MKs are serving foreign interests and subversively promoting the dismemberment of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and former security agents, such as Yossi Ginossar, have been skimming profits in the many millions of dollars.
Again, the picture is repeating itself. Faced one hundred years ago with the possibility of economic, health and social advancement, Arab nationalists rejected Zionism. Up until 1922, they did so in the name of Southern Syria aspirations and then, chancing on a better idea, they opposed the Jewish National Homeland with Palestine. Political violence began in 1920. In the following years, in addition to the hundreds of Jewish dead, hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of Arab dead were sacrificed. And all through the Mandate years, Jewish peace activists and even peace militants, sought to serve the Arab cause in a messianic self-deluded vision, which sought to weaken Zionism. Their goals included renouncing the very idea of a state, halting Jewish immigration, removing Jewish ?colonies? (as the kibbutzim and moshavot were termed, prior to the current ?settlements?), rewarding Arab violence and, as the Magnes example indicates, the disarming of the Jews. Nothing, it seems, would serve as an obstacle in the path of their peace.
At present, Amram Mitzna is leading the opposition as chairman of the Labor Party in Israel. Not yet elected to the Knesset, and American Ambassador Dan Kurtzer has already paid a call on him, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has invited him for a courtesy visit, and his agent, MK Yossi Katz, was in Cairo. Former Peace Now leaders Tzali Reshef and Yuli Tamir are backing him. The pro-Palestinian B?tselem group is increasingly publishing its reports. A Philadelphia-based group, Shefa, is funding Israeli soldiers to refuse to serve. Mitzna himself has adopted a Magnes-like approach to solving the situation. He will not reject Arafat as a partner and will seek to negotiate a withdrawal, a la Lebanon, from the Gaza district in the first instance. And, if need be, he will retreat unilaterally in any case.
Why Arafat should even consider talking with Mitzna, given the already-promised end result, is beyond logic, it seems. However, all this activity can be understood if one realizes that the supreme value that has mutated into the status of the most-revered goal is peace. Not a Jewish state, not a secure state, not an economical viable state, but peace. If that is the measuring stick, then all becomes clear.
This clarity, however, is an apparition of the blind. It is immoral. The enthusiasm, the passion, the excitement of struggling for peace, for human rights, all lead to a very real possibility of existential danger for Israel, and further death and injury to its citizens, its guests and, in the end, to the Jewish dispersion. Theirs is a peace of broken pieces.
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Yisrael Medad resides in Shiloh, Samaria, and comments on political, media and cultural issues.
The minutes (published in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, Vol. V, Part 2, 1976, 901-904) show to what extremes peace activists can and will go, and what dangers they trigger in their quest. Magnes? solution for ending the hostilities was incredibly simple: he proposed that America cut off the donations made by the Jewish community to the Zionist movement in Palestine. The record shows him saying: ?the Jewish community in Palestine is an artificial development? if contributions from the United States were cut off, the Jewish war machine in Palestine would come to a halt for lack of financial fuel.? Not content with that plan, Magnes sought to make sure that this ?artificial development? would remain so, when he insisted that a trusteeship be instituted.
Still unsure how the US would act, the minutes read, ?as Dr. Magnes was leaving, he asked permission to direct a very blunt question: ?do you think there is any chance to impose a solution on Palestine??? The Secretary, George C. Marshall, replied, ?Imposition of a regime implied the use of force? I did not think it was wise for the US alone to take the responsibility for military commitments in Palestine.? Marshall, though, facilitated a meeting between Magnes and President Harry S. Truman the very next day.
Over a half century has elapsed and not much has changed. The Arabs are still engaged in terror and violence. Their religious leaders are now promoting suicidal bombings. Supplied by Israel, the European Union and the United States with money, advice, training and other wherewithals, the Palestinian Authority prepared for, and is now waging, a campaign of death against Jews, foreign workers, tourists and others. This campaign includes the brainwashing of schoolchildren through a mobilized curriculum of hate, and the propagandizing of the population through a harnessed media system and press.
To this end, Yasser Arafat and colleagues have subjugated the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, denied them democracy, embezzled the foreign contributions intended to improve their lives, abused their human rights, disallowed their civil liberties and refused all attempts to reform the corruption and lack of administrative transparency that beset the Palestinian Authority. No new ?Palestine? was established, but an old ?Tunisia? was transferred to the shores of Gaza.
The essential venality of the entire enterprise has reached into Israel. Soldiers and others addicted to drugs have been selling weapons to Arabs, Israeli Arabs are participating in the terror, Arab MKs are serving foreign interests and subversively promoting the dismemberment of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and former security agents, such as Yossi Ginossar, have been skimming profits in the many millions of dollars.
Again, the picture is repeating itself. Faced one hundred years ago with the possibility of economic, health and social advancement, Arab nationalists rejected Zionism. Up until 1922, they did so in the name of Southern Syria aspirations and then, chancing on a better idea, they opposed the Jewish National Homeland with Palestine. Political violence began in 1920. In the following years, in addition to the hundreds of Jewish dead, hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of Arab dead were sacrificed. And all through the Mandate years, Jewish peace activists and even peace militants, sought to serve the Arab cause in a messianic self-deluded vision, which sought to weaken Zionism. Their goals included renouncing the very idea of a state, halting Jewish immigration, removing Jewish ?colonies? (as the kibbutzim and moshavot were termed, prior to the current ?settlements?), rewarding Arab violence and, as the Magnes example indicates, the disarming of the Jews. Nothing, it seems, would serve as an obstacle in the path of their peace.
At present, Amram Mitzna is leading the opposition as chairman of the Labor Party in Israel. Not yet elected to the Knesset, and American Ambassador Dan Kurtzer has already paid a call on him, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has invited him for a courtesy visit, and his agent, MK Yossi Katz, was in Cairo. Former Peace Now leaders Tzali Reshef and Yuli Tamir are backing him. The pro-Palestinian B?tselem group is increasingly publishing its reports. A Philadelphia-based group, Shefa, is funding Israeli soldiers to refuse to serve. Mitzna himself has adopted a Magnes-like approach to solving the situation. He will not reject Arafat as a partner and will seek to negotiate a withdrawal, a la Lebanon, from the Gaza district in the first instance. And, if need be, he will retreat unilaterally in any case.
Why Arafat should even consider talking with Mitzna, given the already-promised end result, is beyond logic, it seems. However, all this activity can be understood if one realizes that the supreme value that has mutated into the status of the most-revered goal is peace. Not a Jewish state, not a secure state, not an economical viable state, but peace. If that is the measuring stick, then all becomes clear.
This clarity, however, is an apparition of the blind. It is immoral. The enthusiasm, the passion, the excitement of struggling for peace, for human rights, all lead to a very real possibility of existential danger for Israel, and further death and injury to its citizens, its guests and, in the end, to the Jewish dispersion. Theirs is a peace of broken pieces.
--------------------------------------------------------
Yisrael Medad resides in Shiloh, Samaria, and comments on political, media and cultural issues.