Israelis lost their faith in the fantasy of peace as our people were incinerated at cafes, on buses, at bar mitzvah parties and at Passover seders – while in the background, from Cairo to Tehran to Beirut to Damascus to Amman, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were turned into TV mini-series and the infamous forgeries went into their thousandth printings throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds.
The odd and tragic thing is that just as the fantasy of Oslo was disintegrating against the overwhelming power of the reality of war, it was replaced not with a strategy for victory based on reality, but by a new strategy based on a new fantasy.
Those who for years spoke of the danger of Oslo, and watched in horror as their darkest forecasts came true, did not receive the belated thanks of their people.
They continued to be pilloried, as Israel’s elites and their foreign benefactors replaced one old politician and former military leader with another old politician and former military leader and replaced one fantasy for another.
This new fantasy, propounded by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is the fantasy of disengagement.
According to this fantasy, while it is true that the Arab world in general and the Palestinians in particular have no interest in living at peace with Israel, Israel can deal with their hatred by unilaterally disengaging from the Middle East. We can hold up behind walls and barricades, turn on the Internet and become immediately transported to a world where we will be safe.
The disengagement from geographical and strategic reality that Sharon is advancing is in many ways more dangerous than the fantasy of Oslo.
Oslo endangered Israelis by empowering the PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad and giving them safe bases of operations against Israel in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
Oslo endangered Israelis by sending a clear message to the entire Arab and Muslim world that Israel can be defeated through a strategy of attrition based on terrorism.
The disengagement fantasy does all of this as well.
But it also does something more.
The disengagement fantasy involves Israelis directly in the brutalization of other Israelis.
In August of this year, at the command of Sharon and his yes-man Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Police deployed a force of 50,000 soldiers and policemen to forcibly expel all Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria.
In so doing, Sharon and Mofaz made Israel the first country since the Holocaust to ethnically cleanse land from Jews simply because they are Jews.
The justice system in Israel was subverted to ensure the accomplishment of the goal of making Gaza and northern Samaria Judenrein.
People were denied permits to protest. People’s freedom of movement was restricted as policemen intercepted buses transporting lawful protesters to legal demonstrations.
Thousands of people were arrested en masse and kept behind bars for weeks and months without trial or indictment for the “crime” of opposing their government’s policies. Among these Jewish political prisoners were hundreds of minors.
Children
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And when the Public Defender’s Office put out a report explaining that laws were prejudicially enforced based on the suspects’ political views, Chief Public Defender Inbal Rubinstein was forced to apologize for the report under threat from Justice Minister Tzipi Livni of being fired.
In the meantime, despite the constant demonization by the Hebrew press and the Prime Minister’s Office, the protesters themselves managed to protest aainst this immoral and strategically disastrous policy while maintaining their dignity and reputation as Israeli patriots and democratic opponents of the government.
For the most part, the IDF too maintained its dignity.
