Mackenzie Institute Commentary 1107
PO Box 338, Adelaide Station Toronto, Ontario M5C-2J4 Tel: (416)-686-4063 E-Mail: instit...@mackenzieinstitute.com Web: mackenzieinstitute.com Leave Israel Alone By John Thompson The past two months have not been good for Israel. President Obama tried to strong-arm Prime Minister Netanyahu into a new peace plan, the Syrians tried to divert attention from their regime's brutal crackdown by paying unemployed farmers to rush the Border Fence and another 'Humanitarian Convoy' is assembling. Meanwhile, the UN is planning a 'Durban III' legitimized hate-fest and protests against something called 'Israeli Apartheid' are coming fast and furious. In the past decade I have been in the Middle East several times, starting in 2004 with a trip to Israel and the West Bank. I've talked with all manner of Israelis and Palestinians, Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians and Lebanese in the last decade and I've learned a few simple home truths. Here they are: Hey, Wannabe Statesmen! Stop Fishing for a @%$&* Peace Prize! I don't drive anymore and don't speak Arabic and, in 2004, it took a bit of work to find somebody who wasn't a shill for the Palestinian Authority. Ahmad lived in Arab East Jerusalem and, even in that last year of the Second Intifada he had the clearances to drive both inside Israel and throughout the Western Bank. I had a number of interviews to conduct but also wanted to get the real Palestinian word on the street; and Ahmad made it possible. He translated graffiti, let me talk to shop-keepers and waiters and explained the ins and outs of living in Jericho, Hebron and Ramallah. My questions and interests were educating him about some things he hadn't thought much about either; it was an educational time for both of us. At length, as he drove me off to Tel Aviv, he asked me if I thought there could ever be peace between the Palestinians and the Jews. I said "Maybe, but I think the fence will be necessary first." The fence, by the way was on the edge of his property. He thought for a second then exploded: "Next time, next time we talk peace with the Jews, we just need one negotiator! just one! Somebody we both respect! No more of all these diplomats and others all wanting to interfere!" Then he confided - "We have a saying in Arabic; 'Too many cooks spoil the meal'." I told him of the remarkably similar English expression. There was another rather interesting statement from a Cadi - a religious judge - hiding out from the Palestinian authority because of his anti-Arafat (and anti-Hamas) views. He also had scathing things to say about people meddling in Israeli-Palestinian dealings and I remember his exact quote: "From 1967 to 1994, Arafat wasn't a part of our lives. He was off trying to take over Jordan, then causing a civil war in Lebanon, and then running an international terrorist group. In the meantime, tens of thousands of us worked for good money inside Israel, and now nobody does. I could drive from Rafah to Jenin and nobody would stop me. Now there are 175 checkpoints. We were learning democracy from the ground up in our towns and in the Universities the Israelis built with us and now that's all ended. And we weren't even asked if we wanted Arafat back. oh sure, there was a 'consultative mechanism' tacked on to the Oslo Agreement, but that was like putting lipstick on a pig." A lot of middle aged Palestinians and Israelis remembered that things could have been different and they regretted the lost opportunities. The Israelis and Palestinians have to work out their own entente, not have one imposed on them. There was a widespread resentment about all the meddling and interference by external people. Jerusalem belongs to Israel Israeli appearances can be deceiving. Israeli soldiers don't look impressive with their unshaven faces and rumpled uniforms but then you look at the equipment, and it is invariably in good order. The Israelis don't mark their war-dead and battlefields with marble monuments. It's not their style. But don't think for a moment they do not remember the price they paid in 1948. Jerusalem was utterly unimportant to Islam until somebody else wanted it back. "Jerusalem" is not mentioned once in the Quran but it is mentioned 881 times in the Old Testament and 144 times in the New Testament. The Al Aqsa Mosque is, like so many hundreds of other mosques, not there because the site was important to Islam but because it was important to somebody else - it is perched on the site of the Old Temple. Mosques were in a cultural sense like garrison forts were in a military one - "We own this now" is the statement behind the Al Aqsa Mosque. The original UN mandate division in 1948 envisioned Jerusalem as an international city along the lines of Shanghai or Danzig between the World Wars. When the fighting erupted, West Jerusalem stayed in Jewish hands, but the Old City was cut off by the Arabs and the Orthodox community inside was besieged. The infant state of Israel made determined attempts to lift the siege and retain the Old City. The Latrun Police Fort is just off the highway running from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, just before it enters the long mountain gorge. The Israelis suffered thousands of casualties trying to wrestle it from the Jordanian Arab Legion (the toughest of all their enemies that year) and they failed. The fort remained in Jordanian hands until 1967. Shot holes and shrapnel scars on the walls of Latrun are preserved even the though the building is still much in use today as the home of the Israeli Armoured Museum. Likewise, up the mountain highway to Jerusalem, the wrecks of the vehicles destroyed in the convoys that attempted to get supplies up to the city, are still there - the metal parts carefully coated in preservative paint. In the Old City, the bullet holes from 1967 around the gate where the Israeli paratroopers stormed in are also still there. Jerusalem is a Jewish city. It is important for that reason to Christianity as well, but in the 13 Centuries of Islamic rule, it was never considered it nearly as important as Damascus or Cairo - the true centres of the Arab World. The 'Anti-Zionism' Bit isn't fooling anyone Forget the 'Anti-Zionism' bit or the 'Israeli Apartheid' bit. I'm not even Jewish (being Catholic, Scots and Irish), and even I can recognize the anti-Israeli protests as old fashioned 'Jew-bashing.' I can recognize the Islamic dislike of Israel no matter how disingenuous they act; but it took some reading and thinking to figure out what the self-described 'progressives' are up to and it's quite simple. More than anyone else, the Jews (and arising out of them Christianity) established the ethics and legalism of the Modern World. So, inevitably, anyone who is hoping to instigate some sort of 'transformation' or to create a 'new order,' starts picking on the Jews first. The Nazis and Bolsheviks weren't alone in this. Anybody who wants to do this - even at an unconscious level - begins with the Jews first and at some point they will be coming after me. So my self-defence begins with the defence of the Jews. No matter how self-righteous the 'Anti-Israeli Apartheid' crowd may be themselves, one may note that they avoid going after real abusers of human rights; so the act is an act and it is not hard to smell a rat. The 'Right of Return' Won't Fly There were no 'Palestinian' Arabs until it was necessary to invent them; there were just Arabs in the constant churning motion described by T.E. Lawrence in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom. In the same way, there were no Syrians or Iraqis until the 20th Century. The Jews, by contrast, are an ancient people with a history, language and culture going back over 3,000 years. Other Middle Eastern peoples like the Copts and other Christian communities have long predated Islam. When Israel was created, eight Arab armies moved in to conquer the new Jewish state. The Israelis fought them all off and when they retreated so did between 650,000 and 750,000 Arabs, some evicted and some who moved voluntarily. About 156,000 Arabs stayed behind and another infusion of Arab citizens of Israel came in 1967 when many accepted the offer of Israeli citizenship. At any rate, about 20% of Israel's citizens are Arabs (about 80% Sunni, 10% Christian and 10% Druze). Israel cannot be expected to commit demographic suicide by allowing 4,100,000 Palestinian Arabs to come back to the homes their grandfathers might have left back in 1948. Nor, despite what some of them say publically, are any of their third or fourth cousins in Israel eager to see them. "I've got 600 Hectares to my farm; why would I want four or five sets of cousins there?" Why indeed? Sitting on the beach at Herzliya, it was hard to look at the bronzed lithesome girls in bikinis and tell the Jews apart from the Arabs. An elderly granny waddling along behind some girls, like an old sheepdog escorting a herd of lambs, was the only clue. and a revelation that 63 years under Israeli rule has made some startling changes in the Arabs living there. To be truly fair, one should remember that between 800,000 and 850,000 Jews also had to leave their homes throughout the Muslim world after the creation of Israel - often carrying less than the Palestinian Arabs did. The account on this matter should have been closed long ago. Moreover, one doesn't notice Germans or Hungarians demanding the right of return to family homes from the 1940s that were lost to them in the former Yugoslavia or Hungary or Poland. or Taiwanese demanding the family farm in Szechuan or Honan be returned to them. Why is the Palestinian Arab case so exceptional? A Return to the 1967 Border? One could paraphrase Netanyahu's response about this to President Obama quite neatly like this: "Get real". It might also be amusing for Israelis to start asking the US President when will most of the US Southwest be handed back to Mexico or when will Poland will be restored to its 1939 borders. For that matter, when will most of the Arab Middle East be returned to Turkish rule? For that matter, while Israel returned the Sinai to Egyptian control, Syria is another matter. One cannot stand on the edge of the Golan Heights, look down into the Sea of Galilee and ever see a day when Syrian machineguns and artillery spotters reside there again, taking pot shots at Israelis whenever they felt like it. Nor do the Israelis want a narrow tenuous mountain highway to be their sole link to Jerusalem. Peace with the Palestinians and the neighbours has to rest on a respect for Israel's safety. The Final Advice Here is a magic solution to the Palestinian-Israeli problem: Everybody else stay out. Leave them all alone and let them work things out themselves. Sounds radical? No more than some of the other dumb ideas floating around, and it just might even work. The Mackenzie Institute The Institute was formed in 1986 to provide research and comment on such diverse subjects as terrorism, organized crime, political extremism, propaganda, conflict and other such matters. It does not shy away from controversy. The Institute holds to the proposition that our democratic institutions need to be defended and enhanced, and works to do what it can to protect the stability of Canadian society. Those who support its purposes are invited to become Friends of the Institute, and those who contribute $60 (or more) to it, receive its publications for the next twelve months. 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