Below I comment on one of the most significant articles that has come out of Washington in recent years - if not decades.
It appeared in The Weekly Standard, May 29, 2000/Vol 5, Number 35, titled "The Collapse of Zionism". It was written by Charles Krauthammer, a Jew-in-the-know and a well-known and savvy political commentator.
It is a long, well-written article, and I am making it a five-part gourmet course:
Krauthammer:
The most improbable story of the twentieth century is the return of the Jews to sovereignty in their original homeland. The establishment of a Jewish state after two thousand years of dispersion and powerlessness is an idea that just a hundred years ago, at the founding of the Zionist movement, seemed delusional. The only thing more improbable is this: That after merely fifty years of independence, the Jews of Israel would tire of it, lose faith in the enterprise, and forfeit their redemption. As things are progressing now, the collapse of Zionism may be the story of the twenty-first century.
Zundelsite:
To begin with, Mr. Krauthammer is woefully ignorant when it comes to the history of his own people. Once more, I am sketching the Tale of the Khazars.
82% of the Jews who flooded into Israel during and after the war were descendents of the Khazar Empire. Their forefathers, the Khazars, converted to Babylonian Talmudism, the forerunner of modern-day Judaism, in the 8th and 9th century A.D.
They are ***not*** "Jews" in the biblical sense, even though that's how they call themselves and how the world calls them. They have ***no*** Biblical claim to the land of Palestine, no matter what Jerry Fallwell and his ilk will spout.
The Israeli elite knows this. Their claim to the land of Israel is, historically, a lie. They are historical imposters.
Krauthammer:
For the last twenty years, Israel has been in retreat. One can make reasonable strategic arguments for some or all of the specifics. But the fact of retreat is undeniable. In the south, Israel gave up Sinai, three times the size of Israel, for a cold and hostile peace with Egypt. In the north, Israel is in the midst of a retreat from Lebanon that will leave its northern cities vulnerable to terrorist attack for the first time in a quarter century.
Zundelsite:
They are in retreat all right! The world watched in awe as the Israeli defense forces were routed out of Southern Lebanon by mere guerrilla fighters. They and their allies, the torturers and thugs of Israel's Southern Lebanese vassals, ran with their tails between their legs, leaving their beaten and tortured victims behind, along with their trash and their heavy weapons (like tanks and troop carriers) - in shame and ignominy.
Krauthammer:
Israel has already conceded to Syria the entire Golan Heights. The only thing that keeps Israel from carrying out this withdrawal is Syrian insistence on making it as humiliating as possible. Syria refuses to offer the minimal courtesies in negotiations or the minimal gestures toward real peace. Even Israelis on the left, such as the novelist Amos Oz, have come out against a deal with Syria and against Israel's abject negotiating stance. Assad, said Oz, is "demanding not just peace, and not even just the Golan, but that Ehud Barak should go to meet him dressed only in his underwear, with his hands raised in surrender, and, if at all possible, wearing a bandana on his forehead inscribed with the motto 'Israel sucks.'"
Zundelsite:
The Arabs, like the Jews, have long, long memories. The Arabs have not forgotten the Israeli policy of stripping their defeated soldiers in the Six Day War and in the Yom Kippur War down to their underwear and making them die of thirst by the tens of thousands in the parched sands of the Sinai and elsewhere.
The Arabs will remember the Israeli machine-gun massacres of thousands of these defenseless men, and they will remember Israel's refusal to try their own self-confessed war criminals who bragged on Israeli TV of doing the killing. Mark my word: The Arabs will remember!
Krauthammer:
And on the most important front, on the Palestinian front, Israel has been engaged for seven years in a thinly disguised unilateral withdrawal. The Palestinians have not tempered their demands one iota since 1993. All the while, Israel has been ceding territory, authority, and legitimacy, while violating its own "red lines" on everything from final borders (the Jordan Valley is for the first time on the block) to a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. Just last week, Arafat instigated widespread rioting to remind Israelis that the military option is his to exercise whenever he wants. How did Prime Minister Barak respond? Even as Palestinian police were firing live ammunition at Israeli soldiers, he got his cabinet to approve the transfer of three villages in the Jerusalem area as a show of goodwill.
Zundelsite:
Israel has only been "ceding" some of the territory they took by brutal conquest from their rightful owners, the Palestinians, in the first place - which is like a thief giving some of the stolen goods back to his victim, and expecting gratitude - in this case, American gratitude.
Israel conquered and occupied seven times its own size in Arab-Palestinian land in 1967. Israel could not and cannot permanently occupy this much land area, much less secure it. Israel simply does not have enough military personnel to do it.
Israel's dream of Eretz Israel - "Greater Israel" - was as delusional as the founding of the state itself. Reality has overtaken Israel. Reality has its own rules and laws.
Krauthammer:
Some call such displays of magnanimity a sign of maturity. Another word for it is demoralization. In a recent essay in Commentary, Daniel Pipes pointed out the remarkable asymmetries, moral and material, in the Middle East today. On the surface, Israel has the appearance of a powerful, almost invincible, Middle East presence. It has a vibrant democracy, a highly developed economy, and continued technological superiority. (It is, for example, one of the world's Internet powers.)
Zundelsite:
The same could have been said for the former Soviet Empire, bristling with military hardware - tens of thousands of tanks, thousands of fighter jets, thousands of bombers and more thousands of atomic warhead-tipped missiles. The Soviet Empire collapsed nvertheless from internal contradictions and a basically delusional, flawed ideology.
Similarly, East Germany, riddled with internal "Stasi" spies - much like many Western "democracies" like Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Canada today, by the way...- armed to the teeth, with a seemingly well-entrenched system, collapsed. Within a few weeks, its tanks, planes, ships, missile batteries were given away to Third World countries like so many high tech toys, with its once powerful Army gone, its seemingly invincible "Stasi"-(Mossad?) network neutralized, their headquarters stormed by an angry victim populace. Everything gone - but the bad memories to fester on and on - and a ***documented*** trail of torture, abuse of power, corruption at every level, that will haunt the political criminals for a very long time to come!
Krauthammer:
Israel's Arab neighbors have none of these, but they do have will. Indeed, a half-century into their struggle with Israel, the Arab will to prevail is more powerful than ever. True, paper treaties have been signed. But the animus toward the very existence of the Jewish state has grown deeper, finding religious sanction in fanatic Islamicism and becoming the staple of official propaganda and popular culture. The Israelis, war-weary and desperate for peace, willfully overlook these signs and search endlessly for just the right negotiating formula, just the right territorial concession, just the right dose of placation to bring them an illusive final peace.
Zundelsite:
"Paper is patient", says a German proverb. Most often the treaties signed by Israel were broken by Israel - even while they were being signed. Kol Nidre, the Jewish prayer, recited once a year in the synagogues around the world, decrees and sanctions this kind of oath breaking and duplicity. (Refresh you memory with Benjamin Freedman's exposé in his 1961 speech, archived on the Zundelsite.)
The Palestinians know this. They know their Jewish enemy from bitter past experience. They will not be fooled any longer. Reality is catching up with Israel here, too.
(Tomorrow: The erosion of the Israeli will)
=====
Thought for the Day:
"That's how I'm beginning to view our adversaries: They're becoming too depressed at having to continue being depressed about the Holocaust and are delivering performances with far less edge to them as time goes by."
(Letter to the Zundelsite)
Back to Table of Contents of the July 2000 ZGrams