Are you fed up with the host of politicians, academics and journalists who expatiate ad nauseum on Israel and its conflict with the Arabs or Muslims who call themselves "Palestinians"? Are you tired of the pundits who believe that the policy of "land for peace" will pacify these adherents of the Quran? And what about the critics of this policy among Israel's political and intellectual elites? Have they been entirely forthright on this issue?
Questions:
1) Are Muslims more humanistic than the nation that produced Kant, Schiller, Heine, Planck and Einstein?
2) Why should you expect peace from Muslims who despise Israel as an outpost of Western civilization that threatens the religio-political power structure of the Islamic world?
3) Why should you expect peace from Arabs who teach their children to hate Jews and exalt suicide bombers - indeed, who use children as human bombs?
4) Why should you expect peace from Arab despots whose regimes are based on the primacy of force and fraud?
Now let me address Israeli politicians and intellectuals who, though skeptical about the land-for-peace policy, have the word "peace" ever on their lips. Suppose you declared:
5) "I do not desire peace with Arab despots who luxuriate in splendor while their people are steeped in abject poverty."
6) "I do not desire peace with Arab states whose rulers deprive their people of liberty and use them as cannon fodder to make war ? and who thereby violate the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
Are you manly enough to proclaim such an attitude? Then let me suggest some other declarations one might make in a world whose democratic leaders are silent about evil:
7) "I do not want peace with tyrannies, that is, with regimes ruled by evil men. I do not want to dignify their regimes and thereby abet the designs of the wicked."
8) "I do not seek peace with liars and murderers like Yasser Arafat lest I confuse, disarm, and foster cynicism among my countrymen. I prefer to arouse in such villains fear rather than allow them to lull us with professions of peace."
9) Do you think such statements will make Arab dictators more bellicose? Has ceaseless professions of peace, nay, has Israel's 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, made that dictatorship less militant? Then why is Egypt, a regime threatened by no one, engaged in an unprecedented military build-up? Why does Egypt's state-controlled media continue to spew anti-Israel and anti-Jewish venom?
I ask all those addicted to peace:
10) What makes you think that people in general are peace-lovers like yourselves? Why is violence the staple of Western entertainment?
Closer to Israel:
11) Why did Muslim and Christian Arabs slaughter each other in Lebanon - perhaps as many as 100,000 in the 1970s?
12) Leaving aside the killing fields in Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Chechnya, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, why should Palestinian Arabs, who supported Saddam Hussein's rape of Kuwait, another Moslem country, live in abiding peace with Israel?
13) If Muslims can't live in peace with each other, why should you expect them to live in abiding peace with Jews?
All this is pathetically obvious, and it should be even more obvious to Israelis. Hence, one can only wonder why Israel's political and intellectual elites can't see that Israel is no closer to genuine peace now than it was fifty-six years ago. Indeed, perceptive critics of Israel' s land-for-peace policy are dumbfounded by their inability to convince these elites that this policy is utterly suicidal.
While most critics explain that policy in terms of American pressure, others emphasize the character faults of Israeli prime ministers, the demise of Zionist idealism, or the prevalence of an Israeli death wish. Let me offer another explanation of Israel's folly, but also of the ineffectiveness of its critics.
Exodus 15:3 states that "God is the Master of war," but, therefore, of peace as well. Since war and peace are in the hands of God, meaning the God of Israel, whether Israel will have peace or war depends on how this country relates itself to God. So long as Israel's government is estranged from God, hence from the way of life portrayed in the Torah, the people of Israel will not have peace. But this is why Israel is beset by the best of enemies: Arabs who will not and cannot be pacified by the policy of "land for peace".
The God of Israel has given His people an enemy that unwittingly compels them to face the ultimate reason why peace eludes the supposed-to-be Jewish state.
Israel's political and intellectual elites have yet to understand this. Peresites aside, they blame Muslims for the absence of peace, just as Muslims blame Israel. The Muslims, despite their jihadi intentions, are right.
Questions:
1) Are Muslims more humanistic than the nation that produced Kant, Schiller, Heine, Planck and Einstein?
2) Why should you expect peace from Muslims who despise Israel as an outpost of Western civilization that threatens the religio-political power structure of the Islamic world?
3) Why should you expect peace from Arabs who teach their children to hate Jews and exalt suicide bombers - indeed, who use children as human bombs?
4) Why should you expect peace from Arab despots whose regimes are based on the primacy of force and fraud?
Now let me address Israeli politicians and intellectuals who, though skeptical about the land-for-peace policy, have the word "peace" ever on their lips. Suppose you declared:
5) "I do not desire peace with Arab despots who luxuriate in splendor while their people are steeped in abject poverty."
6) "I do not desire peace with Arab states whose rulers deprive their people of liberty and use them as cannon fodder to make war ? and who thereby violate the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
Are you manly enough to proclaim such an attitude? Then let me suggest some other declarations one might make in a world whose democratic leaders are silent about evil:
7) "I do not want peace with tyrannies, that is, with regimes ruled by evil men. I do not want to dignify their regimes and thereby abet the designs of the wicked."
8) "I do not seek peace with liars and murderers like Yasser Arafat lest I confuse, disarm, and foster cynicism among my countrymen. I prefer to arouse in such villains fear rather than allow them to lull us with professions of peace."
9) Do you think such statements will make Arab dictators more bellicose? Has ceaseless professions of peace, nay, has Israel's 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, made that dictatorship less militant? Then why is Egypt, a regime threatened by no one, engaged in an unprecedented military build-up? Why does Egypt's state-controlled media continue to spew anti-Israel and anti-Jewish venom?
I ask all those addicted to peace:
10) What makes you think that people in general are peace-lovers like yourselves? Why is violence the staple of Western entertainment?
Closer to Israel:
11) Why did Muslim and Christian Arabs slaughter each other in Lebanon - perhaps as many as 100,000 in the 1970s?
12) Leaving aside the killing fields in Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Chechnya, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, why should Palestinian Arabs, who supported Saddam Hussein's rape of Kuwait, another Moslem country, live in abiding peace with Israel?
13) If Muslims can't live in peace with each other, why should you expect them to live in abiding peace with Jews?
All this is pathetically obvious, and it should be even more obvious to Israelis. Hence, one can only wonder why Israel's political and intellectual elites can't see that Israel is no closer to genuine peace now than it was fifty-six years ago. Indeed, perceptive critics of Israel' s land-for-peace policy are dumbfounded by their inability to convince these elites that this policy is utterly suicidal.
While most critics explain that policy in terms of American pressure, others emphasize the character faults of Israeli prime ministers, the demise of Zionist idealism, or the prevalence of an Israeli death wish. Let me offer another explanation of Israel's folly, but also of the ineffectiveness of its critics.
Exodus 15:3 states that "God is the Master of war," but, therefore, of peace as well. Since war and peace are in the hands of God, meaning the God of Israel, whether Israel will have peace or war depends on how this country relates itself to God. So long as Israel's government is estranged from God, hence from the way of life portrayed in the Torah, the people of Israel will not have peace. But this is why Israel is beset by the best of enemies: Arabs who will not and cannot be pacified by the policy of "land for peace".
The God of Israel has given His people an enemy that unwittingly compels them to face the ultimate reason why peace eludes the supposed-to-be Jewish state.
Israel's political and intellectual elites have yet to understand this. Peresites aside, they blame Muslims for the absence of peace, just as Muslims blame Israel. The Muslims, despite their jihadi intentions, are right.