The Jerusalem Post
September 11th Commandment
Editorial
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon nixed a proposed meeting last night between Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, yet this is not the significant fact. What matters is that Peres himself remains open to a meeting, and seems to be constantly attempting to lower, rather than raise, the standard of what is being expected from Arafat.
For all his talk of the need to formulate a global coalition against terrorism, Peres seems unable to fathom that the post-September 11 world is a different place. In this new world, Arafat's Palestinian Authority not only belongs on the list of regimes that support terror, it is the only regime that directly engages in and justifies terror on a systematic basis.
While it may yet be proven that government agents from Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Syria have directly engaged in terrorist acts, these governments by and large prefer to support proxies - such as Osama bin Laden and Hizbullah - to do their dirty work. Arafat has no such distance from terrorism. Organizations directly loyal to Arafat, such as Force 17, his hand-picked 'presidential guard,' and the Fatah Tanzim, have committed about half the terrorist attacks against Israelis over the past year. And just yesterday, a Fatah representative told Israel Radio that the current 'cease-fire' is being coordinated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and that there is no distinction between these groups when it comes to 'resisting occupation.' The whole point of America's war against terrorism is that there are no 'good terrorists.' Yet the Arab world, led by the Palestinians, is trying to argue exactly that: there is terror and there is terror against Israel.
One of Egypt's most prominent journalists, Ibrahim Nafie of Al-Ahram, just wrote that there must be a 'demarcation between terrorism and national liberation. It is unacceptable, for example, to brand as terrorists -- as Israel has sought to do for its own ends -- members of Palestinian and Lebanese liberation groups exercising their internationally sanctioned right to resist foreign occupation.' Israel has, indeed, been at the forefront of a what was a lonely battle, arguing that gunning down civilians on roads and blowing them up at discos and pizzerias is terrorism, not some exalted form of resistance. Now, tragically, the world is ready to listen, and who should come along but our own foreign minister saying -- Wait a minute, I am ready to meet with the man who practically invented the idea that terrorism is a legitimate form of 'struggle,' and still champions that idea to this day.
If the Bush administration announced that it would meet with Osama bin Laden after 48 hours of 'absolute quiet,' it would be the laughing stock of the world and would be roundly criticized, not least by Israel. We are beyond the point where pathetic, partial, and temporary cease-fires can be held up as a standard for acceptance into the community of nations.
The Peres-Arafat meeting did not take place because Arafat has not produced 48 hours of quiet. On Friday, Israel Radio's 6 p.m. news reported that Peres was pleased that there had been 'a few hours' of quiet, while the same broadcast reported that three firebombs, 15 grenades, and three mortar shells had been thrown and fired at Israelis just that day. Peres's standard of 'quiet,' it seems, is if by dumb luck no one has been killed in the last few minutes.
But let us say that the deadly Palestinian attacks were to stop for two whole days. What reason is there to believe that they would not resume once Arafat had received the stamp of approval he covets from Israel?
We expect the United States to be serious in the fight against terror; we must expect no less from ourselves. For all our exalted reputation as a terror-fighting nation, our foreign minister seems to be determined to set exactly the wrong example for the US and the world.
Israel should be insisting that the Palestinian Authority, as a minimum, scrupulously fulfill the commitments it made to CIA Director George Tenet after the Dolphinarium massacre in May. This means not only a total and unconditional end to terrorism by the Palestinian Authority, but arrests of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists who refuse to abide by a permanent cease-fire.
If Peres had so insisted on September 12, rather than continued to entertain the idea of (and even press for!) a meeting with Arafat, the United States would not be mistakenly pushing Israel toward such a meeting now. Peres has done more than squander an opportunity to hold Arafat to a new, post-September 11 standard - he has created an eminently avoidable rift between Israel and the United States.
When Ehud Barak was trounced in the last election, it seemed that Peres might have internalized the overwhelming message from the public: no more negotiations under fire. September 11 should have established an equally resounding commandment: no more business as usual with regimes that support terrorism. Israel should be the last country in the world to exempt itself from this commandment.
Shimon Peres
An obstacle to peace
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
Tuesday, July 02, 2002
Peres's hoax is up
Prime Minister Sharon must say 'enough is enough'
The Jerusalem Post
July 2, 2002
by Isi Leibler
Woe to the people of Israel if their elected representatives are a true reflection of the electorate.
The public has become so accustomed to the appalling behavior of its politicians that it seems to have become immune to outrage. At present, the problem is principally centered on a group of Labor ministers and MKs who are unable to come to terms with the reality that the Oslo Accords were a cruel hoax and that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is an outstanding con man.
The successors to the great Labor Zionist movement of David Ben-Gurion - which headed 20 out of 29 governments since Israel was established - have marginalized themselves to the fringes of political life. Many lifelong Labor supporters have defected from the party in disgust.
Today, radicals who still occupy the dominant role in the party are behaving almost as though they were members of Matzpen, the loony leftist group which sympathized with Palestinian terrorism in the 1970s. Their behavior is also reminiscent of that of the members of Mapam - the Marxist antecedent to Meretz - which refused to recognize the evil of Stalinism even when Jews were being murdered at the height of the Soviet anti-Semitic purges. When Mordechai Oren, one of their own leaders, was arrested in Czechoslovakia on trumped-up charges of espionage, Mapam still refused to believe that a Communist party could behave in such a manner.
Now the contemporary counterparts to those discredited Marxists of the past are the apologists for Arafat. Former ministers such as Yossi Beilin and Shlomo Ben-Ami have no qualms about making statements which provide encouragement to our enemies and undermine the morale of a people under siege. Beilin, the previous minister of justice, backed by substantial funds provided by European countries opposed to the Israeli government, actually consorts with those who endorse the killing of fellow Israelis, and actively lobbies foreign governments to take up positions against the policies of his own democratically elected government.
In most countries, such scandalous behavior, especially at a time of war, would be considered treasonous. It stands in stark contrast to the behavior of American politicians who, in the wake of September 11, set aside partisan politics and united behind their president. Beilin could also have taken a cue from Menachem Begin, who, as an outspoken leader of the opposition, never criticized the government when abroad, stressing that divisions in Israel were not for export and had to be resolved within the country.
This bizarre political environment was highlighted during U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney's visit to Israel in March. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres argued with Cheney, urging him to avoid publicly humiliating Arafat. Cheney had to terminate the discussion by stating: "I respect the foreign minister, but disagree with him on this situation."
More recently, at last week's Jewish Agency Board of Governors meeting, Peres insisted that we are obliged "to give credit to Arafat for having been courageous enough to endorse the Oslo Accords." That remark was made a few days after the country had endured most horrific casualties from Arafat's Al-Aksa homicide bombers.
Even the "moderate" head of the Labor party, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, feels impelled to make statements and gestures to promote his personal political agenda, irrespective of the damage he may be causing. Immediately following US President George W. Bush's speech last Monday, he released a plan for resolving the ongoing crisis in Israel, using the hostile east Jerusalem Arabic media as the vehicle.
This infuriated Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was aware that the initiative was motivated solely by a desire to score points against Labor MK Haim Ramon, Ben-Eliezer's rival for the party leadership. Sharon rightly observed that it was "not fitting" for a senior government minister at a time of war to unveil his diplomatic vision to Israel's enemies before presenting it to his own people and the government.
Such appalling deviations from rationality and acceptable civic-political behavior pale in comparison, however, to some of the reactions on the part of Labor politicians to the Bush speech. For the first time in Israel's history, the leader of the most powerful country in the world spelled out the truth. Instead of employing the customary rhetoric about "cycles of violence," or other statements creating moral equivalence between perpetrators and victims, Bush clearly stated that Israel is entitled to defend itself against those seeking to destroy it and murder its citizens.
And though he endorsed the Palestinian right to a state, he did so conditionally: demanding that the Palestinian people elect leaders who are not tainted with terrorism and that their governing bodies undergo genuine reform. There is little question that today, the overwhelming majority of Israelis enthusiastically endorse that formulation.
Lo and behold, however, the Peres, Ramon, Ben-Ami, and Beilin people considered the speech "unbalanced." Peres was even "dismayed and frustrated" by Bush's call for the ousting of Arafat, describing it as a "fatal mistake." A few days later, on a BBC program, Peres reiterated his willingness to continue working with Arafat as a partner for peace if he adopted reforms.
When our foreign minister publicly expresses his willingness to cooperate with Arafat after the president of the United States calls for his ouster, the time has arrived for the prime minister of Israel to say enough is enough.
But the prize for the crossing of red lines must go to Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg. It is axiomatic that in Western parliaments, the speaker rises above the political party fray. Indeed, all of Burg's predecessors endeavored to be apolitical, regardless of their affiliation.
From the day of his election, however, Burg created a political fiefdom, using his office to torment former prime minister Ehud Barak on one hand and enthusiastically joining the campaign to demonize Prime Minister Sharon on the other. He felt no constraints in initiating independent political forays.
Despite the fervent opposition of the prime minister and the Knesset majority, he pulled every lever to address the bogus Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah -- even while the killings of Israelis had already become a daily occurrence. When his efforts failed, Burg discovered a new vehicle through which to ingratiate himself with his radical Left colleagues, by assuming the role of promoter of the so-called Saudi Peace Plan. He -- the former chairman of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency -- even tried to sell the Saudi plan to Diaspora Jewish leaders by promoting it at a World Jewish Congress conference in Brussels.
At that meeting, he misled his audience by denying that the Palestinian right of return was a crucial component of the plan. Now, when most Israelis -- and Jews the world over -- are relieved that for the first time an American president has pointed a finger at the man who "traffics with terrorists," Israel's Knesset speaker tells that president that his speech may be nice, but that "you won't be coming to the funerals." He also told Israel Radio that despite his fervent opposition to Sharon, he would have suggested to Bush that he mind his own business should he ever be inclined to tell Israelis to reject their own prime minister.
This hint of an analogy between Arafat the terrorist, and Sharon, the democratically elected prime minister of Israel, is repugnant. For someone whose own election to the Labor Party leadership was disallowed because more Druse voters supported him than were on the electoral rolls, it is perhaps somewhat grotesque for Burg to extol Arafat's virtues as an elected leader. After all, Hitler was also democratically elected. Does that mean that the Allied demands for unconditional surrender and the trials of Nazi war criminals were wrong? Should we be expected to come to terms with a future transparent Palestinian government that reelects Arafat, or new leaders who still believe that the eradication of Jewish sovereignty through the blood of their children is more important than peace?
Bush told the Palestinians that if they want a state, they should replace those of their leaders who are contaminated with terror. If they don't, they get no state. Does the speaker of the Knesset consider such a proposal to be unbalanced, unfair, or undemocratic?
In light of such remarks, it is not surprising that Burg also calls for greater European involvement in the Middle East and an end to the "occupation." Burg's outrageous behavior makes him unfit to hold office. He should resign or be dismissed.
Sharon is heading a country at war. His political and military strategies enjoy the support of the vast majority of the public. Let him therefore now take decisive action by demanding the dismissal of those who undermine his administration from within and thus neutralize the impact of the unrepresentative noisy splinter groups.
If he acts with strength, he will achieve unity and raise the morale of the nation. Perhaps he will even revisit outdated concepts such as patriotism and solidarity, rather than indulging fringe elements whose governmental style is that of a banana republic.
The writer is the senior vice president of the World Jewish Congress.
The Jerusalem Post
July 2, 2002
by Isi Leibler
Woe to the people of Israel if their elected representatives are a true reflection of the electorate.
The public has become so accustomed to the appalling behavior of its politicians that it seems to have become immune to outrage. At present, the problem is principally centered on a group of Labor ministers and MKs who are unable to come to terms with the reality that the Oslo Accords were a cruel hoax and that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is an outstanding con man.
The successors to the great Labor Zionist movement of David Ben-Gurion - which headed 20 out of 29 governments since Israel was established - have marginalized themselves to the fringes of political life. Many lifelong Labor supporters have defected from the party in disgust.
Today, radicals who still occupy the dominant role in the party are behaving almost as though they were members of Matzpen, the loony leftist group which sympathized with Palestinian terrorism in the 1970s. Their behavior is also reminiscent of that of the members of Mapam - the Marxist antecedent to Meretz - which refused to recognize the evil of Stalinism even when Jews were being murdered at the height of the Soviet anti-Semitic purges. When Mordechai Oren, one of their own leaders, was arrested in Czechoslovakia on trumped-up charges of espionage, Mapam still refused to believe that a Communist party could behave in such a manner.
Now the contemporary counterparts to those discredited Marxists of the past are the apologists for Arafat. Former ministers such as Yossi Beilin and Shlomo Ben-Ami have no qualms about making statements which provide encouragement to our enemies and undermine the morale of a people under siege. Beilin, the previous minister of justice, backed by substantial funds provided by European countries opposed to the Israeli government, actually consorts with those who endorse the killing of fellow Israelis, and actively lobbies foreign governments to take up positions against the policies of his own democratically elected government.
In most countries, such scandalous behavior, especially at a time of war, would be considered treasonous. It stands in stark contrast to the behavior of American politicians who, in the wake of September 11, set aside partisan politics and united behind their president. Beilin could also have taken a cue from Menachem Begin, who, as an outspoken leader of the opposition, never criticized the government when abroad, stressing that divisions in Israel were not for export and had to be resolved within the country.
This bizarre political environment was highlighted during U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney's visit to Israel in March. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres argued with Cheney, urging him to avoid publicly humiliating Arafat. Cheney had to terminate the discussion by stating: "I respect the foreign minister, but disagree with him on this situation."
More recently, at last week's Jewish Agency Board of Governors meeting, Peres insisted that we are obliged "to give credit to Arafat for having been courageous enough to endorse the Oslo Accords." That remark was made a few days after the country had endured most horrific casualties from Arafat's Al-Aksa homicide bombers.
Even the "moderate" head of the Labor party, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, feels impelled to make statements and gestures to promote his personal political agenda, irrespective of the damage he may be causing. Immediately following US President George W. Bush's speech last Monday, he released a plan for resolving the ongoing crisis in Israel, using the hostile east Jerusalem Arabic media as the vehicle.
This infuriated Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was aware that the initiative was motivated solely by a desire to score points against Labor MK Haim Ramon, Ben-Eliezer's rival for the party leadership. Sharon rightly observed that it was "not fitting" for a senior government minister at a time of war to unveil his diplomatic vision to Israel's enemies before presenting it to his own people and the government.
Such appalling deviations from rationality and acceptable civic-political behavior pale in comparison, however, to some of the reactions on the part of Labor politicians to the Bush speech. For the first time in Israel's history, the leader of the most powerful country in the world spelled out the truth. Instead of employing the customary rhetoric about "cycles of violence," or other statements creating moral equivalence between perpetrators and victims, Bush clearly stated that Israel is entitled to defend itself against those seeking to destroy it and murder its citizens.
And though he endorsed the Palestinian right to a state, he did so conditionally: demanding that the Palestinian people elect leaders who are not tainted with terrorism and that their governing bodies undergo genuine reform. There is little question that today, the overwhelming majority of Israelis enthusiastically endorse that formulation.
Lo and behold, however, the Peres, Ramon, Ben-Ami, and Beilin people considered the speech "unbalanced." Peres was even "dismayed and frustrated" by Bush's call for the ousting of Arafat, describing it as a "fatal mistake." A few days later, on a BBC program, Peres reiterated his willingness to continue working with Arafat as a partner for peace if he adopted reforms.
When our foreign minister publicly expresses his willingness to cooperate with Arafat after the president of the United States calls for his ouster, the time has arrived for the prime minister of Israel to say enough is enough.
But the prize for the crossing of red lines must go to Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg. It is axiomatic that in Western parliaments, the speaker rises above the political party fray. Indeed, all of Burg's predecessors endeavored to be apolitical, regardless of their affiliation.
From the day of his election, however, Burg created a political fiefdom, using his office to torment former prime minister Ehud Barak on one hand and enthusiastically joining the campaign to demonize Prime Minister Sharon on the other. He felt no constraints in initiating independent political forays.
Despite the fervent opposition of the prime minister and the Knesset majority, he pulled every lever to address the bogus Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah -- even while the killings of Israelis had already become a daily occurrence. When his efforts failed, Burg discovered a new vehicle through which to ingratiate himself with his radical Left colleagues, by assuming the role of promoter of the so-called Saudi Peace Plan. He -- the former chairman of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency -- even tried to sell the Saudi plan to Diaspora Jewish leaders by promoting it at a World Jewish Congress conference in Brussels.
At that meeting, he misled his audience by denying that the Palestinian right of return was a crucial component of the plan. Now, when most Israelis -- and Jews the world over -- are relieved that for the first time an American president has pointed a finger at the man who "traffics with terrorists," Israel's Knesset speaker tells that president that his speech may be nice, but that "you won't be coming to the funerals." He also told Israel Radio that despite his fervent opposition to Sharon, he would have suggested to Bush that he mind his own business should he ever be inclined to tell Israelis to reject their own prime minister.
This hint of an analogy between Arafat the terrorist, and Sharon, the democratically elected prime minister of Israel, is repugnant. For someone whose own election to the Labor Party leadership was disallowed because more Druse voters supported him than were on the electoral rolls, it is perhaps somewhat grotesque for Burg to extol Arafat's virtues as an elected leader. After all, Hitler was also democratically elected. Does that mean that the Allied demands for unconditional surrender and the trials of Nazi war criminals were wrong? Should we be expected to come to terms with a future transparent Palestinian government that reelects Arafat, or new leaders who still believe that the eradication of Jewish sovereignty through the blood of their children is more important than peace?
Bush told the Palestinians that if they want a state, they should replace those of their leaders who are contaminated with terror. If they don't, they get no state. Does the speaker of the Knesset consider such a proposal to be unbalanced, unfair, or undemocratic?
In light of such remarks, it is not surprising that Burg also calls for greater European involvement in the Middle East and an end to the "occupation." Burg's outrageous behavior makes him unfit to hold office. He should resign or be dismissed.
Sharon is heading a country at war. His political and military strategies enjoy the support of the vast majority of the public. Let him therefore now take decisive action by demanding the dismissal of those who undermine his administration from within and thus neutralize the impact of the unrepresentative noisy splinter groups.
If he acts with strength, he will achieve unity and raise the morale of the nation. Perhaps he will even revisit outdated concepts such as patriotism and solidarity, rather than indulging fringe elements whose governmental style is that of a banana republic.
The writer is the senior vice president of the World Jewish Congress.
Friday, June 28, 2002
In spite of the terror, Peres stands by his man
Despite Bush speech, Peres sees Arafat as partner for peace
June 28, 2002
By Reuters, LONDON
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Thursday he could still work with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, days after U.S. President George W. Bush urged Palestinians to dump their longtime leader.
In an interview with the BBC's Newsnight program to be screened in Britain on Thursday, Peres said he could still work with Arafat as head of the Palestinian Authority if he was prepared to adopt sweeping reforms. "If he would do it, yes," he said. "It is not an abstract question. If Arafat would reform, the whole thing would lose its urgency." Arafat has called elections for January and plans to run again despite Bush's call for him to be removed.
Peres said the Palestinians could not escape the need for reform. They had a clear choice -- either stop the terror or accept the cost. "If you make peace, nobody would be talking about democracy but if you don't make peace, then we cannot stop fire unless there is one chain of command for the whole forces. "It is not just an exercise in order to obtain democracy, it is a democratic exercise in order to obtain peace."
Peres said reform was needed not to satisfy the United States or Israel, but to satisfy the Palestinians. "They cannot go on like this. They are the only group of people in the whole world that is dealing with three or four armed groups, each of them shooting in a different direction.
"I talked with Arafat about it a long time ago, I told him 'look, you too have different views in your own cabinet'. He said 'yes we have different views but one rifle. You may have one view but 10 rifles'."
June 28, 2002
By Reuters, LONDON
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Thursday he could still work with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, days after U.S. President George W. Bush urged Palestinians to dump their longtime leader.
In an interview with the BBC's Newsnight program to be screened in Britain on Thursday, Peres said he could still work with Arafat as head of the Palestinian Authority if he was prepared to adopt sweeping reforms. "If he would do it, yes," he said. "It is not an abstract question. If Arafat would reform, the whole thing would lose its urgency." Arafat has called elections for January and plans to run again despite Bush's call for him to be removed.
Peres said the Palestinians could not escape the need for reform. They had a clear choice -- either stop the terror or accept the cost. "If you make peace, nobody would be talking about democracy but if you don't make peace, then we cannot stop fire unless there is one chain of command for the whole forces. "It is not just an exercise in order to obtain democracy, it is a democratic exercise in order to obtain peace."
Peres said reform was needed not to satisfy the United States or Israel, but to satisfy the Palestinians. "They cannot go on like this. They are the only group of people in the whole world that is dealing with three or four armed groups, each of them shooting in a different direction.
"I talked with Arafat about it a long time ago, I told him 'look, you too have different views in your own cabinet'. He said 'yes we have different views but one rifle. You may have one view but 10 rifles'."
Tuesday, June 11, 2002
Peres's lethal messianism
The Jeusalem Post
June 11, 2002
Krauthammer: Israel has abandoned Oslo messianism
by Etgar Lefkovitz
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres's vision of a "new Middle East," as espoused over the last decade, is a lethal form of secular messianism that has led to the worst bloodletting in Israel's history, internationally acclaimed American columnist Charles Krauthammer said last night.
"Israel has at long last awoken from the most devastating messianic reverie the Oslo Agreements," Krauthammer said last night at a Jerusalem lecture, where he was presented with Bar-Ilan University's annual Guardian of Zion Award.
Calling the 1993 Oslo Accords "the most catastrophic and self-inflicted wound by any state in modern history," which was based on "an extreme expression of post-Zionistic messianism," Krauthammer said that the secular messianism espoused by Peres was more dangerous than the religious messianism of Gush Emunim or certain followers of the Lubavitcher Rebbe because of its impact on shaping contemporary Jewish history.
"For the messianic Israeli left, Oslo was more than a deal, it was a ratification [in their minds] of a new era in modern history, a new era in human relations and a radical break in history which they declared was occurring not at some point in the future, but now," he said.
"In the 1990's America slept and Israel dreamed," said the New York-born and Montreal-raised Krauthammer, whose weekly syndicated column for The Washington Post Writers Group which now appears in over 100 newspapers, including The Jerusalem Post won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for distinguished commentary.
"The US awoke [after the terror attacks on America] in September 2001 and Israel awoke [after the start of Palestinian violence] in September 2000," he said. "Like the Israeli Left, the US in the 1990s was intoxicated with the idea that history had changed from military conflict to a world of markets and technology. September 11 abolished that illusion and taught us that there are ideological enemies who care nothing about economics, and like in the old history of war of one God against another, will use all military means to attain their goals," he said.
Krauthammer, one of the few American columnists to warn from the start that the Oslo peace accords were a fraud and deception that were doomed to failure, said that talk of Israeli-Palestinian economic and technological cooperation as espoused in Oslo was an "insane" idea which was based on a "dangerous mirage" of those who sought to transpose the entirely different idea of EU cooperation on the Middle East.
"Israel labored seven long years until reality declared itself with former prime minister Barak's astonishing conciliatory offer at Camp David [in July 2000], which was met by Arafat with suicide bombings and terrorism," he said. Declaring that peace is "not impossible," but contingent on an Arab willingness to live in coexistence with the Jewish state, Krauthammer said: "The idea that one can strike a real peace agreement with [Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser] Arafat without a Sadat-like acceptance of the Jewish state is an illusion."
In contrast to what he saw as the secular messianism espoused by Peres, Krauthammer said Zionism was the very antithesis to messianism, in that it was against Jews waiting in the Diaspora for a last-minute miracle to occur. In contrast to the Oslo Accords, which were dependent on the will of Arafat, Krauthammer said "Zionism was a movement based on self-reliance, self-realization, and a refusal to depend on others. Zionism accepted the world precisely as it is and because of that Jews saw that they had no future in the Diaspora and that they must go and build a state for themselves in Zion."
The full text of Krauthammer's speech can be read on Bar-Ilan University's Web site at http://www.biu.ac.il/
June 11, 2002
Krauthammer: Israel has abandoned Oslo messianism
by Etgar Lefkovitz
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres's vision of a "new Middle East," as espoused over the last decade, is a lethal form of secular messianism that has led to the worst bloodletting in Israel's history, internationally acclaimed American columnist Charles Krauthammer said last night.
"Israel has at long last awoken from the most devastating messianic reverie the Oslo Agreements," Krauthammer said last night at a Jerusalem lecture, where he was presented with Bar-Ilan University's annual Guardian of Zion Award.
Calling the 1993 Oslo Accords "the most catastrophic and self-inflicted wound by any state in modern history," which was based on "an extreme expression of post-Zionistic messianism," Krauthammer said that the secular messianism espoused by Peres was more dangerous than the religious messianism of Gush Emunim or certain followers of the Lubavitcher Rebbe because of its impact on shaping contemporary Jewish history.
"For the messianic Israeli left, Oslo was more than a deal, it was a ratification [in their minds] of a new era in modern history, a new era in human relations and a radical break in history which they declared was occurring not at some point in the future, but now," he said.
"In the 1990's America slept and Israel dreamed," said the New York-born and Montreal-raised Krauthammer, whose weekly syndicated column for The Washington Post Writers Group which now appears in over 100 newspapers, including The Jerusalem Post won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for distinguished commentary.
"The US awoke [after the terror attacks on America] in September 2001 and Israel awoke [after the start of Palestinian violence] in September 2000," he said. "Like the Israeli Left, the US in the 1990s was intoxicated with the idea that history had changed from military conflict to a world of markets and technology. September 11 abolished that illusion and taught us that there are ideological enemies who care nothing about economics, and like in the old history of war of one God against another, will use all military means to attain their goals," he said.
Krauthammer, one of the few American columnists to warn from the start that the Oslo peace accords were a fraud and deception that were doomed to failure, said that talk of Israeli-Palestinian economic and technological cooperation as espoused in Oslo was an "insane" idea which was based on a "dangerous mirage" of those who sought to transpose the entirely different idea of EU cooperation on the Middle East.
"Israel labored seven long years until reality declared itself with former prime minister Barak's astonishing conciliatory offer at Camp David [in July 2000], which was met by Arafat with suicide bombings and terrorism," he said. Declaring that peace is "not impossible," but contingent on an Arab willingness to live in coexistence with the Jewish state, Krauthammer said: "The idea that one can strike a real peace agreement with [Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser] Arafat without a Sadat-like acceptance of the Jewish state is an illusion."
In contrast to what he saw as the secular messianism espoused by Peres, Krauthammer said Zionism was the very antithesis to messianism, in that it was against Jews waiting in the Diaspora for a last-minute miracle to occur. In contrast to the Oslo Accords, which were dependent on the will of Arafat, Krauthammer said "Zionism was a movement based on self-reliance, self-realization, and a refusal to depend on others. Zionism accepted the world precisely as it is and because of that Jews saw that they had no future in the Diaspora and that they must go and build a state for themselves in Zion."
The full text of Krauthammer's speech can be read on Bar-Ilan University's Web site at http://www.biu.ac.il/
Thursday, April 25, 2002
Follow the money
The Jerusalem Post
April 25, 2002
Column One - The Peres Center scandal
by Caroline B. Glick
First came Foreign Minister Shimon Peres's lone defense of Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process who last week insinuated that Israel committed war crimes in the UN-managed Jenin refugee camp. He stated, among other things, that "Israel has lost all moral ground in this conflict."
Then came the Makor Rishon newspaper's revelation that, in 1999, the Shimon Peres Center for Peace gave Larsen and his wife, Norwegian Ambassador Mona Juul, an unprecedented cash payment of $100,000. Larsen sits on the board of governors of the Peres Center. Then, too, the Norwegian government is one of the chief contributors to the multimillion dollar enterprise.
Peres strenuously denied charges whispered by high-ranking members of his own Labor Party, and made public by investigative journalist Yoav Yitzhak on Channel 1 on Tuesday, that the payment to Larsen and Juul was a kickback for their intervention on his behalf with the Nobel Committee in 1994.
In this, he must be given the benefit of the doubt. But it strains the imagination that the fact that Larsen sits on his center's board of governors and his wife represents one of the center's main donors had no impact whatsoever in Peres's unabashed defense of Larsen after he libeled Israel in front of the international community, and did so hours before the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a fact-finding mission about the battle in Jenin.
Just hours after the cabinet meeting at which Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein said Larsen's mendacious remarks were cause for declaring him persona non grata, Peres released a statement rejecting the "horrible calls to declare Larsen persona non grata." "A procedure like this," he added, "would do injustice to a man who has made a special contribution toward peace in our region for years."
Looking over the Peres Center's Web site, one is hard-pressed to understand what the center, whose 1998 budget was almost NIS 30 million, actually does. Its project descriptions, which mainly describe actions the center "promotes" or intends to carry out, have not been updated since the Oslo process disintegrated at Camp David and the Palestinian terrorist war against Israel began.
According to an independent audit conducted for the registrar of non-profit organizations by accountant Boaz Gazit in March 2001, the center's largest outlay is salaries, of which the directors receive a disproportionately large share.
The auditor's report pointed out that in 1997, the center's 35 employees received a total of NIS 2,312,688 in salary payments and that five of the employees received 78 percent of the total amount. In 1998, the center expanded its workforce to 63 and paid close to NIS 5 million in salaries, of which the top eight salaries constituted 54 percent of the total.
In addition to payment of employees, the Peres Center apparently also knows how to throw a good party. A three-day meeting of its full board of governors in 1999 cost NIS 2,328,990. Outlays included footing the bill for the travel and lodging expenses of all board members.
One of the members of the board is Andrei Azulay, president of the Marc Rich Foundation in Israel. The auditor's reports states that "one of the most prominent contributors to the center since its inception is Marc Rich." According to press reports at the time, Andrei Azulay was the main lobbying force for then U.S. president Bill Clinton's 11th-hour pardon of Rich, a fugitive from justice. Peres was one of many Israeli personalities who sent letters to Clinton beseeching him to pardon Rich in the closing months of his presidency.
One cannot help but notice the strong stench of influence-peddling that rises from Peres's defense of both Larsen and Rich, given their intimate connections with his center. But these examples are not isolated.
According to the Peres Center's Web site, among the many projects it promotes, one that actually received funding ($63 million) was the "Peace Technology Fund." The fund's aim, according to the site, is "making equity investments in Palestinian companies and joint ventures." The two Palestinian companies that were invested in by the fund, are "Paltel - the Palestinian telephone operating company - and the Palestinian Mortgage Housing Corporation."
Both of these concerns are infected root and branch by Palestinian Authority corruption. Muhammad Rashid, Arafat's economic adviser, is vice president and one of the principle stockholders in Paltel. In an investigative report from December 1998, The Financial Times reported that Rashid and Paltel were deeply involved in stealing the $160 million Gaza Employees Pension Fund, which was transferred to the PA by Israel in 1994 and emptied of its funds by Rashid between early 1996 and late 1997. Freih Abu Medein, the PA's justice minister told the paper at the time the money had been invested in telecommunications projects.
The Palestinian Mortgage Housing Corporation was involved in scandal in 1998, when the EU discovered that $20 million it had donated for the construction of low-cost housing in Gaza had been used instead to build luxury apartments for wealthy supporters of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat.
So not only does the Peres Center reward its managers and European friends, it also serves to legitimate PA corruption committed by Arafat's men, who steal money from their own impoverished people.
But this should come as no surprise. Former Shin Bet officer Yossi Ginossar, Rashid's partner in his various business dealings and behind-the-scenes go-between with Arafat for Labor prime ministers, also sits on the board of directors of the Peres Center. Ginossar is himself so intimately involved in the business end of the PA that when Ehud Barak brought him in as a pinch hitter at the Camp David summit, press reports at the time described the participants joking that they didn't know whether he was there to represent Israel or Arafat.
The single largest contributor to Arafat's PA since its inception is the EU. Still today, as the evidence has become overwhelming that the PA is a terrorist entity from head to toe, the EU insists on continuing its financial support. Just last month the EU announced it was donating another 340 million euros to the PA. This week, the Ad-Hoc Liaison Committee, the body responsible for coordinating aid to the PA is meeting in Oslo to put together a new financing package.
The EU also is a major financial backer of Yossi Beilin's Economic Cooperation Foundation. In addition, it funds organizations like Rabbis for Human Rights, which recently participated in organizing delegations of foreign activists who were brought here to stand in front of IDF tanks and attempt to force their way through IDF roadblocks.
Aside from the realpolitik justification for such meddling in Israel's internal politics - that such organizations, through their work provide a source of influence and a launching pad for increased EU power in the Levant - the revelation that the Peres Center paid Larsen and Juul $100,000 provides a fiduciary interest as well. Simply put, keeping Oslo alive is good business.
The victims of all of this inbreeding are, of course, the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. On the Israeli side, having Shimon Peres wearing the twin hats of life force behind the Peres Center enterprise and foreign minister represents an inherent conflict of interest with potentially serious repercussions for the conduct of foreign policy. On the Palestinian side, the continuation of Arafat's mafia-style reign suffocates any prospect for economic growth and development and, of course, destroys any possibility of political settlement.
A few months ago, a senior governmental source said to me, "If you want to understand why Israel isn't fighting Arafat, follow the money." Well here you have it.
April 25, 2002
Column One - The Peres Center scandal
by Caroline B. Glick
First came Foreign Minister Shimon Peres's lone defense of Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process who last week insinuated that Israel committed war crimes in the UN-managed Jenin refugee camp. He stated, among other things, that "Israel has lost all moral ground in this conflict."
Then came the Makor Rishon newspaper's revelation that, in 1999, the Shimon Peres Center for Peace gave Larsen and his wife, Norwegian Ambassador Mona Juul, an unprecedented cash payment of $100,000. Larsen sits on the board of governors of the Peres Center. Then, too, the Norwegian government is one of the chief contributors to the multimillion dollar enterprise.
Peres strenuously denied charges whispered by high-ranking members of his own Labor Party, and made public by investigative journalist Yoav Yitzhak on Channel 1 on Tuesday, that the payment to Larsen and Juul was a kickback for their intervention on his behalf with the Nobel Committee in 1994.
In this, he must be given the benefit of the doubt. But it strains the imagination that the fact that Larsen sits on his center's board of governors and his wife represents one of the center's main donors had no impact whatsoever in Peres's unabashed defense of Larsen after he libeled Israel in front of the international community, and did so hours before the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a fact-finding mission about the battle in Jenin.
Just hours after the cabinet meeting at which Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein said Larsen's mendacious remarks were cause for declaring him persona non grata, Peres released a statement rejecting the "horrible calls to declare Larsen persona non grata." "A procedure like this," he added, "would do injustice to a man who has made a special contribution toward peace in our region for years."
Looking over the Peres Center's Web site, one is hard-pressed to understand what the center, whose 1998 budget was almost NIS 30 million, actually does. Its project descriptions, which mainly describe actions the center "promotes" or intends to carry out, have not been updated since the Oslo process disintegrated at Camp David and the Palestinian terrorist war against Israel began.
According to an independent audit conducted for the registrar of non-profit organizations by accountant Boaz Gazit in March 2001, the center's largest outlay is salaries, of which the directors receive a disproportionately large share.
The auditor's report pointed out that in 1997, the center's 35 employees received a total of NIS 2,312,688 in salary payments and that five of the employees received 78 percent of the total amount. In 1998, the center expanded its workforce to 63 and paid close to NIS 5 million in salaries, of which the top eight salaries constituted 54 percent of the total.
In addition to payment of employees, the Peres Center apparently also knows how to throw a good party. A three-day meeting of its full board of governors in 1999 cost NIS 2,328,990. Outlays included footing the bill for the travel and lodging expenses of all board members.
One of the members of the board is Andrei Azulay, president of the Marc Rich Foundation in Israel. The auditor's reports states that "one of the most prominent contributors to the center since its inception is Marc Rich." According to press reports at the time, Andrei Azulay was the main lobbying force for then U.S. president Bill Clinton's 11th-hour pardon of Rich, a fugitive from justice. Peres was one of many Israeli personalities who sent letters to Clinton beseeching him to pardon Rich in the closing months of his presidency.
One cannot help but notice the strong stench of influence-peddling that rises from Peres's defense of both Larsen and Rich, given their intimate connections with his center. But these examples are not isolated.
According to the Peres Center's Web site, among the many projects it promotes, one that actually received funding ($63 million) was the "Peace Technology Fund." The fund's aim, according to the site, is "making equity investments in Palestinian companies and joint ventures." The two Palestinian companies that were invested in by the fund, are "Paltel - the Palestinian telephone operating company - and the Palestinian Mortgage Housing Corporation."
Both of these concerns are infected root and branch by Palestinian Authority corruption. Muhammad Rashid, Arafat's economic adviser, is vice president and one of the principle stockholders in Paltel. In an investigative report from December 1998, The Financial Times reported that Rashid and Paltel were deeply involved in stealing the $160 million Gaza Employees Pension Fund, which was transferred to the PA by Israel in 1994 and emptied of its funds by Rashid between early 1996 and late 1997. Freih Abu Medein, the PA's justice minister told the paper at the time the money had been invested in telecommunications projects.
The Palestinian Mortgage Housing Corporation was involved in scandal in 1998, when the EU discovered that $20 million it had donated for the construction of low-cost housing in Gaza had been used instead to build luxury apartments for wealthy supporters of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat.
So not only does the Peres Center reward its managers and European friends, it also serves to legitimate PA corruption committed by Arafat's men, who steal money from their own impoverished people.
But this should come as no surprise. Former Shin Bet officer Yossi Ginossar, Rashid's partner in his various business dealings and behind-the-scenes go-between with Arafat for Labor prime ministers, also sits on the board of directors of the Peres Center. Ginossar is himself so intimately involved in the business end of the PA that when Ehud Barak brought him in as a pinch hitter at the Camp David summit, press reports at the time described the participants joking that they didn't know whether he was there to represent Israel or Arafat.
The single largest contributor to Arafat's PA since its inception is the EU. Still today, as the evidence has become overwhelming that the PA is a terrorist entity from head to toe, the EU insists on continuing its financial support. Just last month the EU announced it was donating another 340 million euros to the PA. This week, the Ad-Hoc Liaison Committee, the body responsible for coordinating aid to the PA is meeting in Oslo to put together a new financing package.
The EU also is a major financial backer of Yossi Beilin's Economic Cooperation Foundation. In addition, it funds organizations like Rabbis for Human Rights, which recently participated in organizing delegations of foreign activists who were brought here to stand in front of IDF tanks and attempt to force their way through IDF roadblocks.
Aside from the realpolitik justification for such meddling in Israel's internal politics - that such organizations, through their work provide a source of influence and a launching pad for increased EU power in the Levant - the revelation that the Peres Center paid Larsen and Juul $100,000 provides a fiduciary interest as well. Simply put, keeping Oslo alive is good business.
The victims of all of this inbreeding are, of course, the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. On the Israeli side, having Shimon Peres wearing the twin hats of life force behind the Peres Center enterprise and foreign minister represents an inherent conflict of interest with potentially serious repercussions for the conduct of foreign policy. On the Palestinian side, the continuation of Arafat's mafia-style reign suffocates any prospect for economic growth and development and, of course, destroys any possibility of political settlement.
A few months ago, a senior governmental source said to me, "If you want to understand why Israel isn't fighting Arafat, follow the money." Well here you have it.
Sunday, December 09, 2001
One brave Laborite
Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon (Labor) : Labor quashes critics of Oslo process
Ha'aretz
December 9, 2001
by Yossi Verter
Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon (Labor) complained last week that his party colleagues stifle criticism of the peace process. Anyone in the party who raises questions about Labor's accepted peace process positions since the signing of the Oslo Accords is "depicted either as an incipient right-winger. . . or as a dishrag who sucks up to Sharon in order to keep his seat in the cabinet." Speaking at a policy discussion meeting held for kibbutz and moshav representatives on Thursday in Tel Aviv, Simhon said that "the Labor Party has become tied to one policy path that has not been re-evaluated in view of new realities, and I think that's a mistake."
Ha'aretz
December 9, 2001
by Yossi Verter
Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon (Labor) complained last week that his party colleagues stifle criticism of the peace process. Anyone in the party who raises questions about Labor's accepted peace process positions since the signing of the Oslo Accords is "depicted either as an incipient right-winger. . . or as a dishrag who sucks up to Sharon in order to keep his seat in the cabinet." Speaking at a policy discussion meeting held for kibbutz and moshav representatives on Thursday in Tel Aviv, Simhon said that "the Labor Party has become tied to one policy path that has not been re-evaluated in view of new realities, and I think that's a mistake."
Thursday, November 09, 2000
Peres the appeaser
Unfair to Chamberlain
The Jerusalem Post
November 9, 2000
ANOTHER TACK by Sarah Honig
After the Axis gang began misbehaving with increasing impudence in the late Thirties, Britain's Lord Halifax finally started realizing that this wasn't quite cricket.
Until then, Neville Chamberlain's foreign minister and one of the leading advocates of appeasing the Nazis stolidly kept professing unwavering faith in Hitler's promises of peace. Old attitudes die hard. Once reputations are staked on policies, no matter how misconstrued, it's not easy to admit error.
But Halifax agonized and drew some extremely cogent conclusions. "I often think how much easier the world would have been to manage," he mused, "if Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini had been at Oxford."
Indubitably. Our little bit of the world would have likewise been so much easier to manage had Arafat enrolled at Beit Berl. Not that the comparison is fully valid. Arafat is only a poor Arab wanna-be Hitler, though his heart may be in the same place as the Fuehrer's, and though, like Hitler, he's aided and abetted by the decency of the democracy which deals with him so civilly.
Neither are comparisons between Chamberlain and Ehud Barak fair (not to Chamberlain). The British prime minister never surrendered a single inch of Britain -- nor even a forgotten corner of its then vast empire. Chamberlain sold out someone's else's country. Our prime minister compromises the narrow waistline of his own vulnerable state.
Big difference, regardless of the fact that both autocratic, intolerant and haughty premiers -- ours now and Britain's then -- practiced appeasement and that in both cases their conceptions collapsed calamitously. In the aftermath, though let down by their respective peace partners, both prime ministers conducted themselves with admirable aplomb in face of conflagrations they failed to foresee.
For the first eight months of World War II, Chamberlain continued to lead Britain. He conducted the war reluctantly, as one who wished it would go away. His passivity and incompetence aroused unprecedented public outrage.
In our neighborhood's mini-conflict, Ehud Barak too conducts things reluctantly, as one who wishes the troubles would just go away. He is passive and incompetent. But here public outrage is deemed unpatriotic. Proposing no-confidence during a national emergency is akin to treason. Here the opposition is expected to unite behind the leader (his abilities and record notwithstanding) and prolong his term of office (disastrous though it may be) on his terms (including ongoing appeasement).
Barak hasn't ceased making conciliatory overtures toward Arafat. His goal isn't victory but returning to the process which bred the national emergency in the first place. Here the prime minister's failure doesn't mandate changing course but pigheaded adherence to the same dead-end track. His critics are invariably asked: "what's the alternative?" His boosters, recovering from their initial shock, invariably contend that appeasement wasn't wrong, but that there just wasn't enough of it.
This precisely is what we now hear from the Four Mothers, who helped precipitate the unilateral fiasco that was the flight from Lebanon. Not only haven't they gone into hiding, but one of the ringleaders, Zehava Antebi recently got lots of ITV airtime to argue that Palestinian violence is "unavoidable so long as occupation continues. We need negotiations, not power, or we'll have to wage a war against the whole world." Unrepentant, she vowed to do for Judea and Samaria precisely what she accomplished in Lebanon.
At the rally marking the fifth anniversary of Rabin's assassination, Shimon Peres declared that Oslo isn't dead, that there are no regrets and that efforts to attain Oslo's goals will proceed unrelentingly.
The event was nothing like American memorials for JFK. Its organizers annually orchestrate a cross between pagan idolatry and Communist personality cults, accompanied by an undisguised political agenda in which half the nation is blamed for the crime and its views are delegitimized.
This year the expectation was that a distinction will now be drawn between sorrow about the slaying and support for Rabin's political positions, especially considering that Oslo was just revealed as colossal a chimera as Chamberlain's "peace for our time."
But Oslo's tarnished legacy didn't have much sobering effect. Schools, surrealistically divorced from reality, were still decked with the doves of peace, pupils attended memorial pageants and recited paeons of praise to pretend harmony, nonexistent coexistence and policies kids can't begin to evaluate. Parents were still forced to pay for these extravaganzas and a teacher, Yisrael Shiran, who dared voice dissent was barred from the school system.
Nothing was to mar the elaborate production. Everything was meticulously organized in advance. Bumper stickers for the occasion arrived with the morning papers. Billboards and radio commercials bombarded us with solemn exhortations to "gather at Rabin Square. This year it's more important than ever to continue in his path," regardless, apparently, of where it led us.
Much money and effort were invested to forestall the sort of massive change of heart which occurred in wartime Britain, where even Lord Halifax eventually repudiated his previous policy, advocating instead a vigorous pursuit of war. It's improbable we'll hear Shlomo Ben-Ami do the same. We better not hold our breath for Yossi Beilin's mea culpa.
Least of all should we expect Peres to return his Nobel Peace Prize. After all, he has vowed to redouble his efforts to vindicate his policy of appeasement. Already Barak dispatched him to implore Arafat to hold his fire. There's no way Chamberlain would have obsequiously sent Halifax to Hitler after the outbreak of war to plead for a cessation of hostilities.
This is yet another reason why the comparison to Barak is unfair to Chamberlain. There are more. An uncontrite Barak, for instance, will resort to any ploy to stay in power - be it national unity or a flimsy Shas safety net to protect him from no-confidence motions. Barak must enlist any allies because he doesn't have a parliamentary majority.
Chamberlain had a large one.
Indeed on May 9, 1940, Chamberlain survived a no-confidence motion (which was submitted despite the state of emergency). Nevertheless, because his majority had been reduced, he felt honor-bound to resign and recommend that Winston Churchill succeed him. But Barak is no honorable British gentleman.
The Jerusalem Post
November 9, 2000
ANOTHER TACK by Sarah Honig
After the Axis gang began misbehaving with increasing impudence in the late Thirties, Britain's Lord Halifax finally started realizing that this wasn't quite cricket.
Until then, Neville Chamberlain's foreign minister and one of the leading advocates of appeasing the Nazis stolidly kept professing unwavering faith in Hitler's promises of peace. Old attitudes die hard. Once reputations are staked on policies, no matter how misconstrued, it's not easy to admit error.
But Halifax agonized and drew some extremely cogent conclusions. "I often think how much easier the world would have been to manage," he mused, "if Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini had been at Oxford."
Indubitably. Our little bit of the world would have likewise been so much easier to manage had Arafat enrolled at Beit Berl. Not that the comparison is fully valid. Arafat is only a poor Arab wanna-be Hitler, though his heart may be in the same place as the Fuehrer's, and though, like Hitler, he's aided and abetted by the decency of the democracy which deals with him so civilly.
Neither are comparisons between Chamberlain and Ehud Barak fair (not to Chamberlain). The British prime minister never surrendered a single inch of Britain -- nor even a forgotten corner of its then vast empire. Chamberlain sold out someone's else's country. Our prime minister compromises the narrow waistline of his own vulnerable state.
Big difference, regardless of the fact that both autocratic, intolerant and haughty premiers -- ours now and Britain's then -- practiced appeasement and that in both cases their conceptions collapsed calamitously. In the aftermath, though let down by their respective peace partners, both prime ministers conducted themselves with admirable aplomb in face of conflagrations they failed to foresee.
For the first eight months of World War II, Chamberlain continued to lead Britain. He conducted the war reluctantly, as one who wished it would go away. His passivity and incompetence aroused unprecedented public outrage.
In our neighborhood's mini-conflict, Ehud Barak too conducts things reluctantly, as one who wishes the troubles would just go away. He is passive and incompetent. But here public outrage is deemed unpatriotic. Proposing no-confidence during a national emergency is akin to treason. Here the opposition is expected to unite behind the leader (his abilities and record notwithstanding) and prolong his term of office (disastrous though it may be) on his terms (including ongoing appeasement).
Barak hasn't ceased making conciliatory overtures toward Arafat. His goal isn't victory but returning to the process which bred the national emergency in the first place. Here the prime minister's failure doesn't mandate changing course but pigheaded adherence to the same dead-end track. His critics are invariably asked: "what's the alternative?" His boosters, recovering from their initial shock, invariably contend that appeasement wasn't wrong, but that there just wasn't enough of it.
This precisely is what we now hear from the Four Mothers, who helped precipitate the unilateral fiasco that was the flight from Lebanon. Not only haven't they gone into hiding, but one of the ringleaders, Zehava Antebi recently got lots of ITV airtime to argue that Palestinian violence is "unavoidable so long as occupation continues. We need negotiations, not power, or we'll have to wage a war against the whole world." Unrepentant, she vowed to do for Judea and Samaria precisely what she accomplished in Lebanon.
At the rally marking the fifth anniversary of Rabin's assassination, Shimon Peres declared that Oslo isn't dead, that there are no regrets and that efforts to attain Oslo's goals will proceed unrelentingly.
The event was nothing like American memorials for JFK. Its organizers annually orchestrate a cross between pagan idolatry and Communist personality cults, accompanied by an undisguised political agenda in which half the nation is blamed for the crime and its views are delegitimized.
This year the expectation was that a distinction will now be drawn between sorrow about the slaying and support for Rabin's political positions, especially considering that Oslo was just revealed as colossal a chimera as Chamberlain's "peace for our time."
But Oslo's tarnished legacy didn't have much sobering effect. Schools, surrealistically divorced from reality, were still decked with the doves of peace, pupils attended memorial pageants and recited paeons of praise to pretend harmony, nonexistent coexistence and policies kids can't begin to evaluate. Parents were still forced to pay for these extravaganzas and a teacher, Yisrael Shiran, who dared voice dissent was barred from the school system.
Nothing was to mar the elaborate production. Everything was meticulously organized in advance. Bumper stickers for the occasion arrived with the morning papers. Billboards and radio commercials bombarded us with solemn exhortations to "gather at Rabin Square. This year it's more important than ever to continue in his path," regardless, apparently, of where it led us.
Much money and effort were invested to forestall the sort of massive change of heart which occurred in wartime Britain, where even Lord Halifax eventually repudiated his previous policy, advocating instead a vigorous pursuit of war. It's improbable we'll hear Shlomo Ben-Ami do the same. We better not hold our breath for Yossi Beilin's mea culpa.
Least of all should we expect Peres to return his Nobel Peace Prize. After all, he has vowed to redouble his efforts to vindicate his policy of appeasement. Already Barak dispatched him to implore Arafat to hold his fire. There's no way Chamberlain would have obsequiously sent Halifax to Hitler after the outbreak of war to plead for a cessation of hostilities.
This is yet another reason why the comparison to Barak is unfair to Chamberlain. There are more. An uncontrite Barak, for instance, will resort to any ploy to stay in power - be it national unity or a flimsy Shas safety net to protect him from no-confidence motions. Barak must enlist any allies because he doesn't have a parliamentary majority.
Chamberlain had a large one.
Indeed on May 9, 1940, Chamberlain survived a no-confidence motion (which was submitted despite the state of emergency). Nevertheless, because his majority had been reduced, he felt honor-bound to resign and recommend that Winston Churchill succeed him. But Barak is no honorable British gentleman.
Wednesday, October 11, 2000
Peres: gasping for air
The Washington Post
October 11, 2000
by George F. Will
Although weary from 52 years of nationhood without peace, realistic Israelis understand the causation behind this correlation: Today Israel has the most accommodating diplomacy in its history, and is in the most perilous position in its history.
Israel's position is worse than in 1973, when it was attacked by concerted Arab armies, worse than when Egypt mobilized in 1967, worse than in 1948, when Arabs rejected the U.N. partition of Palestine that Israel accepted, and sent armies to kill Israel. Israel's position is worse today because then the threats were military, manageable by an Israel confident of the legitimacy of its positions. Now just 17 months of Prime Minister Ehud Barak's diplomacy have demoralized Israel by delegitimizing all its previous principles, and destroying the absolute prerequisite for successful negotiations -- the insistence that something is nonnegotiable.
Even a Barak ultimatum is, inevitably, penultimate.
Barak may be the most calamitous leader any democracy has had. He risks forfeiting his nation's existence. Bad leadership during the 1930s caused France to suffer swift defeat and four years of humiliation, but not annihilation. Barak has made territorial concessions no previous government contemplated, including the sparsely populated and strategically vital Jordan valley. He has thrown away longstanding U.S. support for an undivided Jerusalem. Under Barak, Israel's rights in its own capital are negotiable. And what has Barak's policy bought? Only Arafat's promise to reject violence, which is akin to Hitler's promise, after Munich, to make no more territorial claims in Europe.
Barak's attempt to satiate Arafat with a feast of Israeli retreats has even produced the idea of giving the United Nations, that nest of anti-Israeli regimes, control of the Temple Mount. The consequence of all this may be fulfillment of the undisguised aim of Israel's "partner in peace," the Palestinian Authority, whose maps, textbooks, television broadcasts, and public places, treat Israel as nonexistent. Israel's multiplying problems include the Western media. For example, a Los Angeles Times story on a Palestinian officer engaged in the fighting carried this headline: "A militia commander in Nablus, though obedient to Arafat, sees armed struggle as crucial." The word "though" conveys the media's permanent presumption that Arafat eschews violence and desires peace. Yet he constantly promises a jihad against Jerusalem.
At Camp David, Arafat reportedly told President Clinton that he, Arafat, speaks for a billion Muslims. This inaccurate claim accurately casts the issue: This is not a dispute between Israelis and Palestinians about land, it is a clash of civilizations and is not solvable by splitting differences.
The mentality of those Israelis who believe all differences are splittable was displayed on Sunday when former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for the peace currently convulsing Israel, spoke to ABC's "This Week." He said the peace process cannot be dead. Why? "Nobody can kill the peace process because we need it like air." So Arafat can punctuate the "peace process" as often as he likes with as much war as he likes, and Israelis who think as Peres does will always return, gasping gratefully for air.
Besides, Peres explained, Arafat no longer runs "a terroristic organization." Rather, he "is responsible for an administration which is 120,000 people strong . . .
It is one thing to be a head of a revolution, and it is another thing to be a head of a state in being." But what if it is a revolutionary state devoted to devouring Israel?
Peres is puzzled. If Arafat had behaved like a bourgeois politician, Palestinians "could have escaped the poverty" they still suffer, and could have built "a modern life." But Peres is hopeful: "If somebody would tell you in 1944 that within one year you can have a different Europe, that you can have peace, I think everyone would be laughing. But look what happened."
Yes, look. What happened one year after the worst year in Jewish history was the defeat of those vowing to eradicate the Jews.
As the 52-year (so far) war for the destruction of Israel continued last week, a cleric leading prayers in al-Aqsa mosque enjoined the faithful to "eradicate the Jews from Palestine." When Israeli soldiers pulled a wounded policeman away from St. Stephen's Gate in Jerusalem, Palestinians, taught from Holocaust-denying and antisemitic textbooks, publications and broadcasts that the Palestinian Authority falsely promised to eliminate, chanted "Slaughter the Jews." Thousands of Jordanians marched in Amman chanting "Death to the Jews." When Hitler threatened "the destruction of European Jewry," sophisticates, searching, as sophisticates do, for nuances, wondered, What do you suppose he meant?
October 11, 2000
by George F. Will
Although weary from 52 years of nationhood without peace, realistic Israelis understand the causation behind this correlation: Today Israel has the most accommodating diplomacy in its history, and is in the most perilous position in its history.
Israel's position is worse than in 1973, when it was attacked by concerted Arab armies, worse than when Egypt mobilized in 1967, worse than in 1948, when Arabs rejected the U.N. partition of Palestine that Israel accepted, and sent armies to kill Israel. Israel's position is worse today because then the threats were military, manageable by an Israel confident of the legitimacy of its positions. Now just 17 months of Prime Minister Ehud Barak's diplomacy have demoralized Israel by delegitimizing all its previous principles, and destroying the absolute prerequisite for successful negotiations -- the insistence that something is nonnegotiable.
Even a Barak ultimatum is, inevitably, penultimate.
Barak may be the most calamitous leader any democracy has had. He risks forfeiting his nation's existence. Bad leadership during the 1930s caused France to suffer swift defeat and four years of humiliation, but not annihilation. Barak has made territorial concessions no previous government contemplated, including the sparsely populated and strategically vital Jordan valley. He has thrown away longstanding U.S. support for an undivided Jerusalem. Under Barak, Israel's rights in its own capital are negotiable. And what has Barak's policy bought? Only Arafat's promise to reject violence, which is akin to Hitler's promise, after Munich, to make no more territorial claims in Europe.
Barak's attempt to satiate Arafat with a feast of Israeli retreats has even produced the idea of giving the United Nations, that nest of anti-Israeli regimes, control of the Temple Mount. The consequence of all this may be fulfillment of the undisguised aim of Israel's "partner in peace," the Palestinian Authority, whose maps, textbooks, television broadcasts, and public places, treat Israel as nonexistent. Israel's multiplying problems include the Western media. For example, a Los Angeles Times story on a Palestinian officer engaged in the fighting carried this headline: "A militia commander in Nablus, though obedient to Arafat, sees armed struggle as crucial." The word "though" conveys the media's permanent presumption that Arafat eschews violence and desires peace. Yet he constantly promises a jihad against Jerusalem.
At Camp David, Arafat reportedly told President Clinton that he, Arafat, speaks for a billion Muslims. This inaccurate claim accurately casts the issue: This is not a dispute between Israelis and Palestinians about land, it is a clash of civilizations and is not solvable by splitting differences.
The mentality of those Israelis who believe all differences are splittable was displayed on Sunday when former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for the peace currently convulsing Israel, spoke to ABC's "This Week." He said the peace process cannot be dead. Why? "Nobody can kill the peace process because we need it like air." So Arafat can punctuate the "peace process" as often as he likes with as much war as he likes, and Israelis who think as Peres does will always return, gasping gratefully for air.
Besides, Peres explained, Arafat no longer runs "a terroristic organization." Rather, he "is responsible for an administration which is 120,000 people strong . . .
It is one thing to be a head of a revolution, and it is another thing to be a head of a state in being." But what if it is a revolutionary state devoted to devouring Israel?
Peres is puzzled. If Arafat had behaved like a bourgeois politician, Palestinians "could have escaped the poverty" they still suffer, and could have built "a modern life." But Peres is hopeful: "If somebody would tell you in 1944 that within one year you can have a different Europe, that you can have peace, I think everyone would be laughing. But look what happened."
Yes, look. What happened one year after the worst year in Jewish history was the defeat of those vowing to eradicate the Jews.
As the 52-year (so far) war for the destruction of Israel continued last week, a cleric leading prayers in al-Aqsa mosque enjoined the faithful to "eradicate the Jews from Palestine." When Israeli soldiers pulled a wounded policeman away from St. Stephen's Gate in Jerusalem, Palestinians, taught from Holocaust-denying and antisemitic textbooks, publications and broadcasts that the Palestinian Authority falsely promised to eliminate, chanted "Slaughter the Jews." Thousands of Jordanians marched in Amman chanting "Death to the Jews." When Hitler threatened "the destruction of European Jewry," sophisticates, searching, as sophisticates do, for nuances, wondered, What do you suppose he meant?
Monday, June 26, 2000
A former Oslo sympathizer repents
Jaffa Diarist
The New Republic
June 26, 2000
by Martin Peretz
We are ending our three-and-a-half-month stay in Israel, and it is only now that I have the confidence to admit that I think the Oslo agreements were a mistake. Looking out from my rooftop apartment, I see the Mediterranean immediately to the west and the hills of Samaria not at all so remotely to the east. Tel Aviv, at its farthest, is 15 visible miles from the old frontier with the West Bank, and it is somewhere near this old border that the new one with nascent Palestine will be set. Some day soon, I fear and I expect, mortar and missiles will target old Israel from new Palestine, from those hills to here.
Only an idiot can believe that Israel has strategic depth anywhere but on its frontier with Egypt -- and that exception owes to the unique vastness of the Sinai.
The fatal flaw of the Oslo process is process. Israel committed itself to an extended sequence of negotiation and concession, whereby it would make a series of permanent and palpable sacrifices, while what was expected of the Palestinians was mostly that they show up and mutter the empty formulas of reassurance. If they didn't like what and how much Israel was prepared to relinquish, the Palestinian Authority would simply leave the table and go home. Then, to get Arafat's men back to the table and to accommodate pressure from the United States, the Israelis would give away something more -- all without even knowing what the outcome of all these leavings and takings would look like.
What is being expected of Israel is magnanimity in the dark. Surely the friendship of the United States cannot make up for the blindfold that it is asking Israel to wear on the road to peace.
Now we learn that the Israeli government is prepared to relinquish even the Jordan Valley, which until yesterday was considered off-limits by all but the most reckless peace processors. This must send shivers down the spines not only of many Israelis but also of the moderate, friendly (and pro-American) royals in Amman, who know that without an Israeli presence there, the river Jordan will blow chilly and cold, and the Palestinians may begin to feel their old craving for the Hashemite kingdom. Iraq and Syria, too, have ambitions toward Jordan; and Israel can defend the Hashemites (and, of course, itself) only if its forces are strategically positioned to move directly and without interference from Arafat's legions.
The father of this "what's yours is yours and what's mine is yours" process is Shimon Peres, the French intellectual who long ago bought into the great contemporary cliché that territory is no longer important in warfare. The preposterousness of this idea (which has its devotees in Washington, too) has been demonstrated in every modern war, from Vietnam to Iraq to the Balkans. The only certain consequence of the dependence upon air power has been disillusionment with the dependence upon air power. Neither bombs nor missiles will dislodge or disarm the adversary if his forces hold land.
Early in June I heard Peres pronounce on just about everything important to Israel in a muddle of an after-dinner talk in Jerusalem. We will turn bullets into ballots. We will turn terrorists into tourists. Frontiers are of no importance. Science knows no borders. Science knows no language. The science of knowledge and the knowledge of science. One thing we do know is that Peres himself knows no science. If he did, he would know that science by itself makes neither people nor government virtuous.
Science is neutral. In wicked hands, it is wicked. But the pundits now discern an inclination toward peace in Bashar al-Assad because he is an ophthalmologist.
Edward Said may have fabricated his life as a Palestinian refugee, but he was telling God's honest truth when he asserted in a recent column (reprinted in The Jerusalem Post!) that there is no "new peace between old enemies." The opposite proposition, he writes, "has been disproved by the examples of Egypt, Jordan and the PLO, whose leaders have gone all the way toward Israel without persuading their populations to follow suit.... Resistance to its presence is still strenuously displayed ... the conventional wisdom about peacemaking in the Middle East has essentially been disproved." Said knows whereof he speaks: he is the most prestigious of all tenured rejectionists. But Israelis, mostly eager for peace, have begun to grasp that their neighbors do not reciprocate the eagerness. Whatever happens to Ehud Barak's government, the popular enthusiasm for the Oslo process is fast unraveling. Indeed, it was a stroke of luck for Barak that Hafez Assad stiffed Bill Clinton in Geneva: had the bloody tyrant (now widely treated as a prudent statesman by, among others, the American president and secretary of state) agreed to take back the Golan Heights, leaving only a few symbolic yards on the eastern bank of the Sea of Galilee in Israel's hands, the Israeli electorate would almost certainly have rejected the deal.
Syrian participation in the negotiations over the Golan is not part of the Oslo drama, but it shares with Oslo two salient characteristics. The first is Syria's maximalist presumptions. Neither the Palestinians nor the Syrians are contemplating real compromise: they want nothing less than everything they lost in 1967. The second is the American role. In the negotiations over the Golan there was hardly even a pretense that the parties in conflict were talking to each other. (In Shepherdstown, remember, the Syrian foreign minister refused to shake the Israeli prime minister's hand.) But the legacy-addled American president was frantic for an agreement; and so the only real negotiating was between Washington and Jerusalem. To be sure, teams of Palestinians and Israelis talk to each other endlessly; but the real bargaining took place between the United States and Israel, with the United States always pushing Israel to give more and more and more.
Maybe there will be an agreement with the Palestinians. But it won't cover Jerusalem, and it won't cover the Palestinian refugees (by the third and fourth generation, are they still refugees?). Still, Israel will have turned over to the emerging Palestinian state some 80 to 90 percent of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Then what? Every question left unresolved will become yet another cause for violence. In the eyes of many Palestinians, the imperfections of the deal will justify riot or terror or both.
And what happens when an illegal missile is illegally launched from Palestine? I once asked a dovish Israeli friend what would happen if a post-peace Syria suddenly diverted the waters of the Golan from the Jordan to its own uses. He said that Israel would urgently seek a meeting of the Security Council. Urgently! From my sun-drenched roof I behold the Israeli miracle along the coast and I think: It was not the Security Council that secured this; it was self-reliance. Even people who are not friendless must establish their safety and their felicity for themselves.
The New Republic
June 26, 2000
by Martin Peretz
We are ending our three-and-a-half-month stay in Israel, and it is only now that I have the confidence to admit that I think the Oslo agreements were a mistake. Looking out from my rooftop apartment, I see the Mediterranean immediately to the west and the hills of Samaria not at all so remotely to the east. Tel Aviv, at its farthest, is 15 visible miles from the old frontier with the West Bank, and it is somewhere near this old border that the new one with nascent Palestine will be set. Some day soon, I fear and I expect, mortar and missiles will target old Israel from new Palestine, from those hills to here.
Only an idiot can believe that Israel has strategic depth anywhere but on its frontier with Egypt -- and that exception owes to the unique vastness of the Sinai.
The fatal flaw of the Oslo process is process. Israel committed itself to an extended sequence of negotiation and concession, whereby it would make a series of permanent and palpable sacrifices, while what was expected of the Palestinians was mostly that they show up and mutter the empty formulas of reassurance. If they didn't like what and how much Israel was prepared to relinquish, the Palestinian Authority would simply leave the table and go home. Then, to get Arafat's men back to the table and to accommodate pressure from the United States, the Israelis would give away something more -- all without even knowing what the outcome of all these leavings and takings would look like.
What is being expected of Israel is magnanimity in the dark. Surely the friendship of the United States cannot make up for the blindfold that it is asking Israel to wear on the road to peace.
Now we learn that the Israeli government is prepared to relinquish even the Jordan Valley, which until yesterday was considered off-limits by all but the most reckless peace processors. This must send shivers down the spines not only of many Israelis but also of the moderate, friendly (and pro-American) royals in Amman, who know that without an Israeli presence there, the river Jordan will blow chilly and cold, and the Palestinians may begin to feel their old craving for the Hashemite kingdom. Iraq and Syria, too, have ambitions toward Jordan; and Israel can defend the Hashemites (and, of course, itself) only if its forces are strategically positioned to move directly and without interference from Arafat's legions.
The father of this "what's yours is yours and what's mine is yours" process is Shimon Peres, the French intellectual who long ago bought into the great contemporary cliché that territory is no longer important in warfare. The preposterousness of this idea (which has its devotees in Washington, too) has been demonstrated in every modern war, from Vietnam to Iraq to the Balkans. The only certain consequence of the dependence upon air power has been disillusionment with the dependence upon air power. Neither bombs nor missiles will dislodge or disarm the adversary if his forces hold land.
Early in June I heard Peres pronounce on just about everything important to Israel in a muddle of an after-dinner talk in Jerusalem. We will turn bullets into ballots. We will turn terrorists into tourists. Frontiers are of no importance. Science knows no borders. Science knows no language. The science of knowledge and the knowledge of science. One thing we do know is that Peres himself knows no science. If he did, he would know that science by itself makes neither people nor government virtuous.
Science is neutral. In wicked hands, it is wicked. But the pundits now discern an inclination toward peace in Bashar al-Assad because he is an ophthalmologist.
Edward Said may have fabricated his life as a Palestinian refugee, but he was telling God's honest truth when he asserted in a recent column (reprinted in The Jerusalem Post!) that there is no "new peace between old enemies." The opposite proposition, he writes, "has been disproved by the examples of Egypt, Jordan and the PLO, whose leaders have gone all the way toward Israel without persuading their populations to follow suit.... Resistance to its presence is still strenuously displayed ... the conventional wisdom about peacemaking in the Middle East has essentially been disproved." Said knows whereof he speaks: he is the most prestigious of all tenured rejectionists. But Israelis, mostly eager for peace, have begun to grasp that their neighbors do not reciprocate the eagerness. Whatever happens to Ehud Barak's government, the popular enthusiasm for the Oslo process is fast unraveling. Indeed, it was a stroke of luck for Barak that Hafez Assad stiffed Bill Clinton in Geneva: had the bloody tyrant (now widely treated as a prudent statesman by, among others, the American president and secretary of state) agreed to take back the Golan Heights, leaving only a few symbolic yards on the eastern bank of the Sea of Galilee in Israel's hands, the Israeli electorate would almost certainly have rejected the deal.
Syrian participation in the negotiations over the Golan is not part of the Oslo drama, but it shares with Oslo two salient characteristics. The first is Syria's maximalist presumptions. Neither the Palestinians nor the Syrians are contemplating real compromise: they want nothing less than everything they lost in 1967. The second is the American role. In the negotiations over the Golan there was hardly even a pretense that the parties in conflict were talking to each other. (In Shepherdstown, remember, the Syrian foreign minister refused to shake the Israeli prime minister's hand.) But the legacy-addled American president was frantic for an agreement; and so the only real negotiating was between Washington and Jerusalem. To be sure, teams of Palestinians and Israelis talk to each other endlessly; but the real bargaining took place between the United States and Israel, with the United States always pushing Israel to give more and more and more.
Maybe there will be an agreement with the Palestinians. But it won't cover Jerusalem, and it won't cover the Palestinian refugees (by the third and fourth generation, are they still refugees?). Still, Israel will have turned over to the emerging Palestinian state some 80 to 90 percent of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Then what? Every question left unresolved will become yet another cause for violence. In the eyes of many Palestinians, the imperfections of the deal will justify riot or terror or both.
And what happens when an illegal missile is illegally launched from Palestine? I once asked a dovish Israeli friend what would happen if a post-peace Syria suddenly diverted the waters of the Golan from the Jordan to its own uses. He said that Israel would urgently seek a meeting of the Security Council. Urgently! From my sun-drenched roof I behold the Israeli miracle along the coast and I think: It was not the Security Council that secured this; it was self-reliance. Even people who are not friendless must establish their safety and their felicity for themselves.
Friday, February 24, 1995
Shimon Peres: racist
Shimon Peres told woman with American accent to go back home
The Jerusalem Post
December 24, 1993
by Moshe Kohn
Peres favors the transfer of certain Israeli Jews who oppose the capitulation process he is leading - especially the transfer of those who do not speak Hebrew with his kind of accent, most particularly of those who speak with an "Anglo-Saxon" accent.
On the evening of December 8, Peres came to a Shas banquet at the Jerusalem Ramada Renaissance Hotel. He was greeted by about a dozen demonstrators who blamed him and the government for the murder of the two Lapid men near Kiryat Arba two days earlier, because they [Peres etc.] had branded all the Jews there as anti-Arab provocateurs.
Peres turned to the leader of the group, Ruth Matar, organizer of Women for Israel's Tomorrow, and asked her angrily in Hebrew: "Where are you from?"
The Austrian-born Matar, who is a Holocaust survivor, lived in the US and 18 years ago came with her husband and four children to live in Jerusalem, gave her organization's name in Hebrew. Apparently detecting her Anglo accent, Peres switched to the Polish-accented English in which he defends the "Piss Process" before the foreign news media, and demanded angrily: "No, where do you live?' Matar [in Hebrew]: "Yerushalayim." Peres: "No you don't! You don't belong here! Go back where you came from!"
The Jerusalem Post
February 24, 1995
by Moshe Kohn
He never apologized for that racist remark. At the time, his spokeswoman, Bahira Bardugo, told me he would apologize only after Matar apologized (for a remark she says she never made).
Shortly afterwards Bardugo told a correspondent, Bruce Brill of Tekoa, that (in Brill's paraphrase), "although (Peres) regretted making the remark, he prefers not to make an apology that would attract unwarranted public attention to the incident.
A similar incident in the U.S. would promptly have set off an uproar and brought about an abject apology from the guilty official and/or his resignation, or his dismissal by the president. Here the incident passed virtually unnoticed by the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel or anyone else.
Peres has somewhat similarly avoided giving an unequivocal; reply to a request from the Jewish War Veterans of America that he apologize for equating the "two holocausts -- the Jewish holocaust and the Japanese holocaust [the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]" in a speech in New York last May.
In September Shlomo Gur, deputy chief of mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, sent the JWV national commander the text of a cable from Peres: "In my remarks I quoted an author who stated that nuclear weapons represent a threat to mankind. No Jew, indeed no right-minded individual, can even entertain the thought that two such totally different issues as the Holocaust against the Jews and the events in Hiroshima can be compared to each other."
This and several other "explanations" sent in Peres's name have not satisfied the JWV, which demands "a formal apology . . . to the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust and to the hundreds of thousands of American Gentiles and Jews (who) died fighting the Japanese in the war to save world freedom."
Bardugo's assistant has just told me that Peres stands by the statement conveyed by Gur. She added: "We're sorry if the JWV doesn't understand the spirit" of Peres's statement.
The Jerusalem Post
December 24, 1993
by Moshe Kohn
Peres favors the transfer of certain Israeli Jews who oppose the capitulation process he is leading - especially the transfer of those who do not speak Hebrew with his kind of accent, most particularly of those who speak with an "Anglo-Saxon" accent.
On the evening of December 8, Peres came to a Shas banquet at the Jerusalem Ramada Renaissance Hotel. He was greeted by about a dozen demonstrators who blamed him and the government for the murder of the two Lapid men near Kiryat Arba two days earlier, because they [Peres etc.] had branded all the Jews there as anti-Arab provocateurs.
Peres turned to the leader of the group, Ruth Matar, organizer of Women for Israel's Tomorrow, and asked her angrily in Hebrew: "Where are you from?"
The Austrian-born Matar, who is a Holocaust survivor, lived in the US and 18 years ago came with her husband and four children to live in Jerusalem, gave her organization's name in Hebrew. Apparently detecting her Anglo accent, Peres switched to the Polish-accented English in which he defends the "Piss Process" before the foreign news media, and demanded angrily: "No, where do you live?' Matar [in Hebrew]: "Yerushalayim." Peres: "No you don't! You don't belong here! Go back where you came from!"
The Jerusalem Post
February 24, 1995
by Moshe Kohn
He never apologized for that racist remark. At the time, his spokeswoman, Bahira Bardugo, told me he would apologize only after Matar apologized (for a remark she says she never made).
Shortly afterwards Bardugo told a correspondent, Bruce Brill of Tekoa, that (in Brill's paraphrase), "although (Peres) regretted making the remark, he prefers not to make an apology that would attract unwarranted public attention to the incident.
A similar incident in the U.S. would promptly have set off an uproar and brought about an abject apology from the guilty official and/or his resignation, or his dismissal by the president. Here the incident passed virtually unnoticed by the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel or anyone else.
Peres has somewhat similarly avoided giving an unequivocal; reply to a request from the Jewish War Veterans of America that he apologize for equating the "two holocausts -- the Jewish holocaust and the Japanese holocaust [the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]" in a speech in New York last May.
In September Shlomo Gur, deputy chief of mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, sent the JWV national commander the text of a cable from Peres: "In my remarks I quoted an author who stated that nuclear weapons represent a threat to mankind. No Jew, indeed no right-minded individual, can even entertain the thought that two such totally different issues as the Holocaust against the Jews and the events in Hiroshima can be compared to each other."
This and several other "explanations" sent in Peres's name have not satisfied the JWV, which demands "a formal apology . . . to the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust and to the hundreds of thousands of American Gentiles and Jews (who) died fighting the Japanese in the war to save world freedom."
Bardugo's assistant has just told me that Peres stands by the statement conveyed by Gur. She added: "We're sorry if the JWV doesn't understand the spirit" of Peres's statement.
Saturday, June 04, 1994
Peres: Holocaust denier
The Holocaust According to Shimon Peres
The Jerusalem Post
June 4, 1994
by Steven Plaut
Recently Foreign Minister Shimon Peres expressed a "Two-Holocaust" theory of the events transpiring during World War Two.
According to Peres, the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and the American dropping of atomic bombs on Japan constituted twin Holocausts, and presumably this means they were morally parallel or equivalent to one another.
Such a comparison has by now become fashionable in certain politically-correct circles in Western countries, and it would not represent the first instance in which the thinking of the current government was motivated by a passionate desire to conform with international political fashion. But going beyond political fad, it is intriguing to attempt to reconstruct the thinking of our Foreign Minister, leading up to this remark in his "Shoah Show".
If the Holocaust of the Jews is analogous to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Peres' "mind," then it follows that he views the Holocaust of the Jews as an event that must have occurred in the course of an all-out conflict deliberately launched by the Jews, in which they, like the Japanese, enslaved the better part of an entire continent, pillaging and tormenting the populations while systematically murdering millions. The German actions must have been taken to prevent much greater suffering and far larger numbers of victims, like the American actions.
If the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews is analogous to the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Peres' "mind," then the former must have been a moral imperative and absolutely justifiable. The bombing of Hiroshima brought an end to the War in the Pacific without necessitating the ground invasion of Japan. In such an invasion, tens - and perhaps hundreds - of thousands of allied soldiers would have died. Millions of Japanese would have died.
Shortly before the atomic bombings, 7,000 US soldiers were killed and 18,000 wounded taking a desolate island called Iwo Jima. Then 12,000 US soldiers were killed and 35,000 wounded taking Okinawa, making that a battle on a par with Gettysburg. On Okinawa 100,000 Japanese were killed. (Okinawa was then held by the US as a militarily-governed "occupied territory" for four decades with never a hint of an intifada.) All this is indisputable proof of how severe the carnage would have been on the Japanese main islands from an invasion and conquest.
It is estimated that 55 million people died in World War Two. If the atomic bombs shortened that war by merely a week, the carnage they wrought was one of the greatest "bargains" of human history. The atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved not only many thousands of allied soldiers, but hundreds of thousands and probably millions of Japanese lives, civilians who would have been killed in the Allied conquest of Japan. As such, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ranks as one of the most moral, high-minded, humane, and unambiguously justifiable acts in the history of mankind.
It is true that tens of thousands of Japanese died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that many of these were also "innocents." It is also true that the number killed in both cities dwarfs in comparison with those killed by the Allies with conventional weapons in the bombings of Tokyo and Dresden, to name only the two most notorious examples in World War Two.
In Dresden alone over 135,000 Germans were killed, doubtless many of these "innocents". If the 70-100 thousands killed in Hiroshima justify ranking that event as a "Holocaust", morally equivalent to the destruction of European Jewry in Peres' thinking," then I suggest that Peres should have the courage of his convictions and speak out about the "Triplet-Holocausts", adding Dresden to the cohort. He would just be repeating what certain circles of Europeans have already been suggesting.
Better yet, why not add the 200,000 Republican Guards of Saddam Hussein, mercilessly butchered by Allied weapons in the Gulf War, many of whom were doubtless innocents, and raise the size of the cohort to quadruplets?
Let us have some consistency here. What is much harder to explain is how it could be that the Number Two politician in the Israeli government could voice such a position, 50 years after the real Holocaust.
The Jerusalem Post
June 4, 1994
by Steven Plaut
Recently Foreign Minister Shimon Peres expressed a "Two-Holocaust" theory of the events transpiring during World War Two.
According to Peres, the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and the American dropping of atomic bombs on Japan constituted twin Holocausts, and presumably this means they were morally parallel or equivalent to one another.
Such a comparison has by now become fashionable in certain politically-correct circles in Western countries, and it would not represent the first instance in which the thinking of the current government was motivated by a passionate desire to conform with international political fashion. But going beyond political fad, it is intriguing to attempt to reconstruct the thinking of our Foreign Minister, leading up to this remark in his "Shoah Show".
If the Holocaust of the Jews is analogous to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Peres' "mind," then it follows that he views the Holocaust of the Jews as an event that must have occurred in the course of an all-out conflict deliberately launched by the Jews, in which they, like the Japanese, enslaved the better part of an entire continent, pillaging and tormenting the populations while systematically murdering millions. The German actions must have been taken to prevent much greater suffering and far larger numbers of victims, like the American actions.
If the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews is analogous to the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Peres' "mind," then the former must have been a moral imperative and absolutely justifiable. The bombing of Hiroshima brought an end to the War in the Pacific without necessitating the ground invasion of Japan. In such an invasion, tens - and perhaps hundreds - of thousands of allied soldiers would have died. Millions of Japanese would have died.
Shortly before the atomic bombings, 7,000 US soldiers were killed and 18,000 wounded taking a desolate island called Iwo Jima. Then 12,000 US soldiers were killed and 35,000 wounded taking Okinawa, making that a battle on a par with Gettysburg. On Okinawa 100,000 Japanese were killed. (Okinawa was then held by the US as a militarily-governed "occupied territory" for four decades with never a hint of an intifada.) All this is indisputable proof of how severe the carnage would have been on the Japanese main islands from an invasion and conquest.
It is estimated that 55 million people died in World War Two. If the atomic bombs shortened that war by merely a week, the carnage they wrought was one of the greatest "bargains" of human history. The atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved not only many thousands of allied soldiers, but hundreds of thousands and probably millions of Japanese lives, civilians who would have been killed in the Allied conquest of Japan. As such, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ranks as one of the most moral, high-minded, humane, and unambiguously justifiable acts in the history of mankind.
It is true that tens of thousands of Japanese died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that many of these were also "innocents." It is also true that the number killed in both cities dwarfs in comparison with those killed by the Allies with conventional weapons in the bombings of Tokyo and Dresden, to name only the two most notorious examples in World War Two.
In Dresden alone over 135,000 Germans were killed, doubtless many of these "innocents". If the 70-100 thousands killed in Hiroshima justify ranking that event as a "Holocaust", morally equivalent to the destruction of European Jewry in Peres' thinking," then I suggest that Peres should have the courage of his convictions and speak out about the "Triplet-Holocausts", adding Dresden to the cohort. He would just be repeating what certain circles of Europeans have already been suggesting.
Better yet, why not add the 200,000 Republican Guards of Saddam Hussein, mercilessly butchered by Allied weapons in the Gulf War, many of whom were doubtless innocents, and raise the size of the cohort to quadruplets?
Let us have some consistency here. What is much harder to explain is how it could be that the Number Two politician in the Israeli government could voice such a position, 50 years after the real Holocaust.
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