Raise your hand if
you were shocked at
the breakdown of
the so-called Middle
East "road map." If you are
raising your hand, give
yourself a nice, hard slap
across the chops. Maybe that
will wake you up from your
reverie of self-delusion.
The "road map" was doomed
from the start. The Arab
enmity for Jews and the state
of Israel allows for no peace
process.
The time for half measures
has passed. Bulldozing
houses of homicide bombers
is useless. Instituting ongoing
curfews in Arab-populated
cities is useless. Roadblocks,
touch fences, midnight
negotiations and cease-fires
are useless.
Some have rightly suggested
that Israel be allowed to
decapitate the terrorist
leadership of the Palestinian
Authority. But this too is only
a half measure. The ideology
of the Palestinian population
is indistinguishable from that
of the terrorist leadership.
Half measures merely
postpone our realization that
the Arabs dream of Israel's
destruction. Without drastic
measures, the Arab dream will
come true. In the short term,
the establishment of a
"Palestinian state" based in
Judea, Samaria and Gaza
cuts Israel to the bone. In
some places, Israel would be
an unthinkable 9 miles wide.
In the long term, the growth of
the hostile Israeli-Arab
population within pre-1967
Israel bodes ill for the future
of the Jewish state. As
University of Haifa professor
Arnon Soffer says, "The
trends and indicators all point
to an economic and ecological
catastrophe waiting to happen
and of the death knell of the
ideological dream of a Jewish
state."
Here is the bottom line: If you
believe that the Jewish state
has a right to exist, then you
must allow Israel to transfer
the Palestinians and the
Israeli-Arabs from Judea,
Samaria, Gaza and Israel
proper. It's an ugly solution,
but it is the only solution. And
it is far less ugly than the
prospect of bloody conflict ad
infinitum. When two populations are constantly
enmeshed in conflict, it is insane to suggest that
somehow deep-seated ideological change will
miraculously occur, allowing the two sides to live
together.
Unfortunately, this insanity is generally accepted as
"the only way forward." President Bush accepts it
because it is politically palatable. The Arabs accept
it because for them, it is a Trojan horse. The Israelis
accept it because they are afraid that if they expel
the Arabs, they will be called Nazis.
For anyone who lived through the Holocaust, or who
has relatives who died in it, being called a Nazi is
unspeakably terrible. That is the secret weapon of
the Arabs. Any time the Jews get wise and threaten
mass expulsion of Arabs, the Arabs pull out their
big stick, equating Nazism with Zionism. Their
cartoons merge swastikas with stars of David. Their
newspapers call Ariel Sharon another Adolf Hitler.
Their spokespeople cry "Genocide!" And the Jews
cower in fear that they could be equated with their
parents' murderers.
The Jews don't realize that expelling a hostile
population is a commonly used and generally
effective way of preventing violent entanglements.
There are no gas chambers here. It's not genocide;
it's transfer. It's not Hitler; it's Churchill.
After World War II, Poland was recreated by the
Allied Powers. In doing so, the Allies sliced off a
chunk of Germany and extended Poland west to the
Oder-Neisse line. Anywhere from 3.5 million to 9
million Germans were forcibly expelled from the
new Polish territory and relocated in Germany.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was
pleased with the result. In 1944, he had explained to
the House of Commons that "expulsion is the
method which, so far as we have been able to see,
will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will
be no mixture of populations to cause endless
trouble ... a clean sweep will be made. I am not
alarmed by the prospect of the disentanglement of
populations, nor even by these large transferences,
which are more possible in modern conditions than
they ever were before." Churchill was right. The
Germans accepted the new border, and decades of
conflict between Poles and Germans ended.
Arab-Jewish conflict is exponentially more volatile
than German-Polish conflict ever was. And the
solution is far easier. If there was "room in Germany
for the German populations of East Prussia and of
the other territories," as Churchill stated, there is
certainly room in the spacious Muslim states of the
Middle East for 5 million Palestinians and Israeli
Arabs. If Germans, who had a centuries-old
connection to the newly created Polish territory,
could be expelled, then surely Palestinians, whose
claim to Judea, Samaria and Gaza is dubious at
best, can be expelled.
It's time to stop being squeamish. Jews are not
Nazis. Transfer is not genocide. And anything else
isn't a solution.
3 responses total.
"daddy, you've been drinking again..." /sobs
The article so nice, he posted it twice!
Actually, I would say it is more a backtalk "feature" that could probably be handled more gracefully. (It may be a picospan feature come to think of it.) Basically, posting items are not atomic. re#1: Sorry, did I know your mother?
You have several choices: