Community Views
Opinion
Can We Really Trust
Arafat's Handshake?
Beyond A Good
Clinton-Rabin Accord
BERL FALBAUM SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
EARL RAAB SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
Israel is a
democracy and must
not be pressured
from outside.
A
would be heaped on Israel if it
even hints at a change of heart.
The world is much more will-
ing to accept outright lies from
Mr. Arafat than a weakening of
a commitment to peace by Israel.
The result — and irony — is
that Israel will have to be better
prepared militarily now than it
has been in the past, before an
"agreement to peace."
The peace process has created
greater dangers rather than few-
er anxieties.
None of this is intended as crit-
icism of the Rabin-Peres strate-
gy; it is not for the Diaspora to sit
in judgment of Israeli govern-
ments — be they of the Begin
conservatism or Rabin liberalism.
APRON EDMONDS
It has been about riming is that he never wavered
nine months since from his commitment to destroy
the famous hand- Israel while he was "making
shake and what peace" on the White House lawn.
has Israel reaped What is worse is that Palestini-
from it?
ans agree with him on his objec-
Is there a suffi- tives.
cient record to
The point is that the PLO with
make an assess- Mr. Arafat has "conceded" ab-
ment? Indeed solutely nothing and has not im-
there is and it is hardly reassur- plemented any of the actions
ing.
implied — directly or indirectly
Let us take an inventory of the — by the handshake. As Douglas
promises made and kept by PLO J. Feith, former Reagan admin-
Chairman Yassir Arafat.
istration deputy assistant secre-
He promised to revoke the tary of defense and Middle East
PLO covenant which calls for the specialist on the White House
destruction of Israel. It remains National Security Council staff,
intact.
recently pointed out in Com-
He promised to help end ter- mentary, Mr. Arafat is not the
rorism and repu-
diate it if it
occurred. Terror-
ism remains ram-
pant and there is
ample evidence he
has assisted it.
At the signing
of agreements in
Cairo before the
official withdraw-
al from Jericho
and Gaza, Mr.
Arafat tried a
sleight-of-hand by
failing to sign im-
portant maps. We
can only guess
what would have
happened many
years later if Mr.
Rabin had not no-
ticed the omission.
It probably is not
exaggeration to
conclude that nev-
er in world histo-
ry has anyone
tried such a trick
at a peace-signing
ceremony. With
the world watch- The handshake on the White House lawn.
ing, backstage ne-
gotiations were held and Mr. first murderous dictator to par-
Arafat finally signed the docu- ticipate in peace processes only
ments.
to violate them. Mr. Feith names
This is the man we are en- such notables as Lenin, Stalin,
trusting in some geographic ar- Hitler, Saddam Hussein and Slo-
eas with Jewish lives.
bodan Milosevic, all who hood-
What is surprising is not that winked the world with their
Mr. Arafat is untrustworthy; "peaceful" intentions.
what is surprising is that the
world accepts his duplicity.
From the very beginning —
minutes after the handshake —
while proclaiming his peaceful
intentions in English to the West,
he told his Arab critics that the
proposed agreement for autono-
my in Gaza and Jericho was only
one phase of a long-term strate-
Where does that leave Israel?
gy. He reminded them of the oth-
It certainly cannot reverse the
er two phases: statehood and the historic course it set in motion,
destruction of Israel.
although some suggested at the
What he was saying and what time that the present policy was
anxious peacemakers were ig- not irreversible.
But it is, for no other reason
Bed Falbaum is a public-
than
the universal political pres-
relations specialist and free-
sure and condemnation which
lance writer.
Israel is a democracy and it
must not be pressured from out-
side its boundaries on the policies
it should pursue.
But the post-handshake as-
sessment certainly suggests that
Israel needs to be on its guard as
never before and, indeed, instead
of criticism needs greater support
than in previous years.
And, finally, the assessment
leads to the hope that Mr. Rabin
and Mr. Peres, two men who
have dedicated their lives to Zion-
ism and have seen more shed-
ding of Jewish blood than anyone
should in a lifetime, know some-
thing we don't.
These are battled-scarred war-
riors and sophisticated and
shrewd politicians, diplomats and
strategists.
They came to the proverbial
fork in the road. They made a
choice. Let us pray with them
that they chose the right path. C-_]
t the moment, most Jews
seem to be worrying too
little about Israel and too
much about black anti-
Semitism.
The Wall Street Journal re-
cently had an article about the
American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC), the up-
front lobby for Israel. A graph
showed contributions dropping
slightly in 1993 for the first time
since its founding in 1954. The
reason suggested by the article
was that AIPAC's role was seen
as shrinking.
The main point the article
made was that relations be-
tween Yitzhak Rabin and Bill
Clinton are so good that the in-
tervention of pro-Israel forces
no longer is as critical as in the
past. In addition, many Jews
believe that Palestinian-Israeli
peace is now in the offing.
Such perceptions are way off.
Israel is in greater danger now
than it has been in more than
20 years. Israeli leaders have
launched this peace offensive
for the long run to assure the
future of the next generation of
Israelis. But to achieve that fu-
ture, there is a current gamble,
fraught with risks.
There are still plenty of Arab
leaders — arguably including
Yassir Arafat — who believe
that the only good Israel is a
dead Israel. The "gamble" is
that they might well overwhelm
more far-sighted Arab leaders,
and establish a beachhead for
purposes of an eventual
takeover.
One hedge against such a
possibility is for Israel to retain
its military advantage. But it is
easier to make changes than to
reverse them. In today's faint-
hearted world, attempts by Is-
rael to reverse any newly gained
Palestinian beachheads would
be opposed by the "internation-
al community."
The more important hedge
would be the specific support of
the United States. That would
seem to be a good gamble, giv-
en Mr. Clinton's kindly inclina-
tions toward both Mr. Rabin
and Israel. But in their eupho-
ria, pro-Israel Americans over-
look a basic axiom:
The effectiveness of Ameri=
can support for Israel depends
not so much on good feelings to-
ward that state but on a strong
interventionist American for-
eign policy in general.
Such a strong overall foreign
policy is not exactly now ema-
nating from the White House.
And pro-Israel Americans have
Earl Raab is director of
Brandeis University's
Nathan Perlmutter Institute
for Jewish Advocacy.
learned that when there is a
weak or wrong-headed White
House position, we must de-
pend on Congress. A good Ra-
bin-Clinton relationship will not
suffice.
In short, while pursuing a liv-
able Mideast for Israelis of the
future, Israel is facing serious
perils in the short run. In
the next year or so, Israel
may have to depend on Ameri-
can support for survival as cru-
cially as it did in 1973. And
chances are that it will have to
depend on Congress for that
support to stick.
That's where AIPAC in
Washington and the Jewish
community relations councils
around the country come in.
Their importance is not shrink-
ing.
As for the other top subject
on the Jewish public affairs
agenda — black-Jewish rela-
tions — Spike Lee, the African-
American film producer, came
Spike Lee was right:
To the average
black person,
a Jew is "just
another white
person."
close to the truth with a recent
statement: 'They're blowing the
whole black-Jewish thing up.
There is no conspiracy among
African-Americans against Jew-
ish people ... The average black
person doesn't know who's Jew-
ish. It's just another white per-
son."
The fact that African-Amer-
ican hostility is directed toward
whites in general rather than
toward Jews in particular was
supported by the last national
survey by the Anti-Defamation
League. This determined that
while four out of 10 blacks
thought Jews had too much
power, eight out of 10 blacks
thought whites in general had
too much power.
Jewish security is not a zero-
sum game. Because we should
be more concerned about Israel
today does not mean that we
have to be less concerned about
black anti-Semitism. But nei-
ther should we let headlines dic-
tate our priorities. We need to
pay attention to demagogues
from the Nation of Islam — and
we are doing so. But the biggest
risk to Jewish security today
lies in the severe dangers to Is-
rael as it attempts to forge a
peaceful future. And on those
dangers, our attention seems to
be wandering. ❑