OTHER VIEWS
Tried and True Failure
ome may think that the dias-
were subjected to that sort of savagery?
pora of the Jews that followed
What has gone wrong? The Oslo
their defeat by the Romans in
process that began with the Rabin-
Jerusalem in 70 C.E. is
Peres-Arafat handshake in 1993 has
ancient history, but it is not.
turned out to be a total disaster. The
Professor Ruth Wisse describes in The Israelis took a powerless Arafat from
Brilliant Failure of Jewish Foreign Policy
exile in Tunisia and turned a bunch of
how the diaspora has impinged upon
kids throwing stones into an army of
the Jewish consciousness and
50,000 Arabs armed with
the modus operandi of the
automatic weapons, mortars,
Jewish people ever since.
rockets, antitank weapons
It explains how Jews,
and anything else the Israelis
throughout history, have
have allowed them to smug-
adapted to the nations in
gle into the country.
which they found temporary
The Arabs have been given
shelter and how this apparent-
98 percent of the territory in
ly successful adaptation has
which they live and they are
led ultimately to their own
using it to great advantage —
self-destruction.
killing Israelis at will and simply
JEROME S.
Unfortunately, this adapta-
walking back into their new
KAUFMAN
tion has carried on to the
"homeland" five minutes away.
Community
thinking and modus operandi
In response to these killings,
Views
of Jews in their own State of
the leadership of Israel seems
Israel.
to have taken on the woeful
Since Palestinian leader Yasser
adaptation of the diaspora Jew
Arafat's al-Aqsa intifada (uprising), in
described by Professor Wisse.
nine months there have been 1,346
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has
Israeli casualties and 125 deaths.
ignored the fact that he was elected by
Transposed by population ratios, this
the biggest plurality in the history of
would represent 72,684 American
any democracy. Seventy-nine percent of
casualties and 6,642 American deaths!
the Jews of Israel voted for Sharon
Can you imagine what the retaliation
expecting him to refute the hapless
of the United States if its citizenry
giveaways of predecessor Ehud Barak
and the left wing. He was to be a
Jerome S. Kaufman is a Bloomfield
strong arm against the Arabs, making it
Hills resident.
once more safe for Israelis to leave their
homes, go to market and send their
children to school — not much to ask.
He has failed. Instead of taking
advantage of his charge from the
Israeli people, he immediately formed
a unity government, many believe for
his own political survival, with Labor
and Shimon Peres — and consequent-
ly revitalizing the disasters of Oslo.
The Arabs were immediately rejuve-
nated and are pressing their long-
desired goal to eliminate the Jewish
communities [settlements] in Judea
and Samaria. Beyond understanding is
the fact that community elimination is
also at the forefront of the perverse
thinking of some Jewish organizations
and some Israelis! These Jews are des-
perate enough and confused enough
to believe that if they only turn over
their brethren in these communities to
the Arabs, they themselves will be safe!
Many of these communities are
within five minutes of Israel proper.
Maale Adumin, with a population of
20,000, is a precisely planned suburb
of Jerusalem, as is Gilo, with a popu-
lation of more than 40,000 Jews. Of
course, Arafat wants them, along with
the other 144 communities with
200,000 Israelis out of the Way. How
else will he be able to march directly
to the Mediterranean?
Military experts understand that
these communities are the very lifelines
of Israel defense. Gen. Sharon himself,
after the 1967 Yom Kippur War, delib-
erately placed them on hilltop areas
crucial to Israel's military presence.
Without these communities on the
Judean mountain range, the whole
country is a flat plane ripe for destruc-
tion. Equally important is the fact it is
in this area that Israel must grow and
prosper to insure its own existence.
The killing fields of Israel are now the
direct result of the Oslo disaster and the
ill-advised retreat from Lebanon by
then-Prime Minister Barak. Prime
Minister Sharon's current policies have
caused Israel itself, to become
"Lebanized." He has allowed Israel's
enemies to define the rules of battle.
The Israelis are sitting still for guer-
rilla warfare within their own country.
Terrorists are firing into Jewish civilians
from positions just a few hundred yards
away. Can you imagine that happening
in any other country in the world?
If the Israelis are unable to muster
the courage and resolve to retake nec-
essary defensive territory to destroy
their enemy, if their actions are dictat-
ed by the anti-Semitism of world
opinion, if they continue to beg the
Americans to save them from their
own self-destruction, if they continue
to revert back to the woeful attitude of
the diaspora Jew, Israel's future
remains very much in doubt and we
in the diaspora will also suffer the dire
consequences. ❑
involved in the leadership of all the so-
called "majors," questions of ideology
have divided many Jews on Israel issues.
That said, the current situation in
the Middle East has placed a daunting
task before these Jewish leaders.
The decision of Palestinian Authority
leader Yasser Arafat to opt for war and
violence instead of peace last year has
produced a 10-month-old conflict that
has no end in sight. His object is to
wear Israel down both morally and
physically. Though he has no hope of
military victory, the combined effects
of international propaganda and the
toll of terror may yet yield more Israeli
concessions that will, in turn, only lead
to the next set of Arab demands.
From right to left, the overwhelming
majority of Israelis now realize that
Arafat is uninterested in real peace.
Both those who were skeptical about
the Oslo peace process, and many of
those who were true believers, now
understand that it is finished and fatally
flawed. The old left-right, intra-Jewish
debates on Israel are now irrelevant.
But even as that consensus emerges,
a counter-attack from Arafat's
American allies is beginning to take
shape. The outlines of that riposte
became clear with the publication of a .
remarkable document on the July 8
op-ed page of the New York Times.
Dominating that most influential of
American opinion pages on that day was
a piece by Robert Mallory, who served
as special assistant to former president
Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2001.
In the article, Mallory sought to dis-
abuse Times readers from the idea that
the failure of the Camp David Summit
last year was Arafat's fault. He was also
at pains to correct the assumption,
publicly put forward by Clinton, that
the fantastic concessions offered by
former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Barak were a real offer of peace.
As far as Mallory was concerned, the
Israeli offer of nearly all of the territo-
Who Will Speak For The Jews?
Philadelphia
newspaper shook up some in
the world of Jewish alphabet
f you look in the refer-
soup recently by reporting
ence section of the
on a purported plan to
annual American
reduce the number of Jewish
Jewish Yearbook pub-
groups that belong to the
lished by the American Jewish
Conference of Presidents of
Committee, you will find that
Major Jewish Organizations.
the listings for "National
According to the piece, the
Jewish Organizations" fill up
current number of some 50
more than 60 double-
JONAT HAN S. "major" groups would be
columned pages in small
TOB IN
pared down by forcing some
print. It is a vast array of
Spec ial
small political and Zionist
names and acronyms that
groups to walk the plank.
Comm
entary
insiders routinely refer to as
The Conference was the
"Jewish alphabet soup."
group cooked up in the 1950s
The proliferation of Jewish groups
at the suggestion of then Secretary of
is, in part, an indication of the influ-
State John Foster Dulles, who was aggra-
ence, wealth and varied interests of
vated at the number of Jewish groups
American Jews. It also a measure of the
that were pestering him. What this foe of
incoherence and anarchy that reigns in
Israel wanted was just one group that
the organized Jewish world.
would, in theory, speak for all the Jews.
The New York City-based Forward
Even in its heyday, the idea that such
Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor
a group could speak with one voice,
of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.
even on Israel, was a myth. And even if
E-mail: jtobin@jewish ,,ponent.com
you set aside the rather impressive egos
I
JIT
7/20
2001
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TOBIN
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