Message From The Rabbi
by
Senior Rabbi, Alan Green (00-Present)
Published in the Shaarey Zedek Shofar in May 2006
My last Shofar
article was written just after former Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon’s catastrophic stroke and just before the Shaarey Zedek Study
Tour of Israel. If a week is a long time in politics, in the
politics of the Middle East, two months must be an eternity. As I
write today, both the Palestinian and Israeli elections have been
held, and the probable tale of both peoples has now been told.
With Sharon
remaining in a coma and his prospects of regaining consciousness
diminishing daily, the Israelis moved on. The election, with one of
the lowest turnouts in Israeli history, was a referendum on Sharon
and Olmert’s plan to separate Israelis and Palestinians once and for
all. The low election turnout, and the weak 29-seat showing of the
Kadima party, may well reflect the grim nature of this solution.
For it is nothing
less than an admission of defeat for both the Israeli Left and
Right. “Love makes fools of us all,” Shakespeare said, and history
has shown the idealistic visions of both Left and Right for the West
Bank and Gaza to be utterly unworkable. The Right was first shaken,
and then rudely awakened from its dream of Greater Israel by the
first and second Intifadas.
In the mean time,
the Left, buoyed by the apparent success of the Oslo Accords signed
in 1993, was able to maintain its dream of a negotiated settlement
with the Palestinians in spite of sporadic terrorist attacks and
Yasir Arafat’s repeated calls for Jihad. However, those inflated
hopes came crashing down to earth when Arafat walked away from the
most generous offer Israel will ever make to the Palestinians at
Camp David in the summer of 2000.
What followed, from
the side of the Palestinians, has been all of a piece: progressive
radicalization by Islamist fanaticism. How rapidly this bad seed
took root in Palestinian consciousness was revealed by the
difference between the two Intifadas. The first Intifada was
characterized mainly by rock-throwing mobs. In the second Intifada,
terror—particularly suicide terror—became the order of the day.
Yasir Arafat’s death
in 2004 provided no respite. His weak successor, Mahmoud Abbas, did
nothing to prevent on-going terrorism or the firing of Kassam
missiles. Building the separation barrier, assassinating terrorist
kingpins, and improved intelligence did much to stymie Palestinian
attacks. However, by the time of Arafat’s death, the damage to
Palestinian society had been done. With the Palestinian media,
summer camps, and educational system all encouraging young people to
wallow in hatred and to pursue shehada (martyrdom), both Oslo
and the so-called Road Map lay in tatters.
Israel’s traumatic
withdrawal from Gaza last summer only made the situation worse.
Hamas was now able to crow that its terror tactics had worked—that
suicide bombers and Kassam missiles had forced the Zionist enemy to
retreat, just as they had been forced to withdraw from Southern
Lebanon years before under the pressure of Hizbollah attacks.
Within hours of
Israel’s departure from the Gaza, detailed agreements that had been
worked out in months of negotiations with Egypt were rendered
obsolete. The border between the Gaza and Egypt proved to be as
porous as Swiss cheese, as fighting men and munitions poured in from
all over the Middle East.
Far from improving
Israel’s security, the Gaza withdrawal increased the likelihood both
of terrorist attacks, and Israeli reprisals. According to reliable
intelligence, al-Qaeda has now established a forward base in Gaza.
Also, a
broad program involving all the armed Palestinian organizations is
close to producing a facsimile of the Russian-made Grad, supplied by
Iran, which can simultaneously fire 10 accurate, well-armed rockets
ranging from eighteen to thirty kilometers. A big step up from the
Kassam missiles of the last few years, this system could enable a
crew of seven to ten Palestinians firing from Gaza to hit the
Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod to the north, and Netivot and
Ofakim to the east.
Is it really any
wonder that Hamas did so well in the Palestinian elections? The fig
leaf so generously supplied by various media outlets—that the
Palestinians voted against the corruption and incompetence of
Fatah, rather than for the explicitly terrorist Hamas—doesn’t
hold water. Hamas’ landslide victory in the last Palestinian
election was the logical outcome of years of Islamist
radicalization.
Otherwise, how could
Palestinians have voted for an organization whose charter explicitly
states that “Israel
will exist, and will continue to exist, until Islam will obliterate
it, just as it obliterated others before it”; that “The Islamic
Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine…should not
be squandered, or any part of it given up”; that “There is no
solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.
Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are all a
waste of time, and vain endeavors”; that
“After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the
Euphrates…Their plan is embodied in the ‘Protocols of the Elders of
Zion’, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are
saying.”
Olmert’s Kadimah party, supported by a majority of Israelis, hopes
that by moving approximately 60,000 Israelis out of the West Bank
and completing the separation barrier, Israel will ultimately become
a safer place to live. And perhaps it will. Israel’s borders with
Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt are, for the most part, quiet.
The difference, in the case of the West Bank, is that Israel will be
forced to maintain a military presence throughout. Israel has
learned the bitter lesson of Oslo, the Road Map, and Gaza well: that
for Palestinians, negotiations are nothing more than a war of
annihilation fought by other means. Small wonder that the Israelis
stayed away from this year’s election in droves.
A joyful Israel Independence Day to one and all! |
