I write this because of our anguish over Prime Minister Sharon’s proposal to remove Jewish settlements from Gaza and from other parts of the Jewish homeland.
When bandits attack a home or a village of law-abiding citizens the police do not evacuate the residents and turn the village over to the bandits; they remove or kill the bandits. Most of us are stunned by what appears to be an appeasement policy that would embolden and encourage the terrorists to greater feats of slaughter. Any proposed withdrawal by Israel cannot be interpreted as anything but an act of surrender to the Arab reign of terror and a de facto recognition of the Arabs’ claim to Eretz Yisrael.
If this ill-conceived plan is ever carried out it would serve as a most dangerous precedent bordering on committing national suicide.
History teaches us that withdrawal may be justified in the face of overwhelming force that threatens defeat. Such an event occurred during the dark days of World War II at Dunkirk (May 27-June 4 1940) when the bulk of British forces and 120 000 Frenchmen were miraculously evacuated from Normandy and the jaws of the German juggernaut saving them to fight another day.
Churchill was quoted in the aftermath: I did not become the first (prime) minister of His Majesty’s Government to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. He added that wars are not won through evacuations.
I am sure that Ariel Sharon does not want to be remembered by history as one who marred his reputation by trying to put other considerations above winning the war against terror. Most of us still remember that he was the symbol of Jewish defiance against the forces and pressures that want to divide Israel. Who would have thought that after Barak’s attempted unilateral surrender (fortunately rejected by Arafat) Arik Sharon the Lion of Judah would assume the role of liquidator of established Jewish settlements?
Is it possible that the man who fought with distinction in all of Israel’s wars and was the guiding spirit of building and expanding the Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael is now tired of the task that he accepted at the time of his election? That election was hailed as a great triumph by those of us who believe that Eretz Yisrael in its entirety is G-d’s patrimony to the Jewish people vouchsafed to them to all eternity and thus not negotiable like a piece of real estate or sliced like a piece of cake.
Those who voted for Sharon did so because they believed in his tenacity not only vis-a-vis the belligerent Arabs but also in response to those who claim to be Israel’s friends but constantly exert pressure on Israel to concede. They claim to be evenhanded but are not. They insist that Israel should act with restraint. The answer to that kind of pressure should be that Israel will respond to the Palestinian terrorist slaughter of Jews the way the U.S. responded to the Arab massacres of 9/11.
Joseph Farah a Lebanese-American journalist has written: Most news sources will tell you that the problems in the Middle East revolve around the Palestinians? desire for a homeland …but those are phony excuses. The truth is that the Arabs want all of the Middle East. No matter how many concessions Israel makes it will never be enough.
Farah described Palestinian claims as the most effective propaganda campaign that the world has ever seen. Sharon no doubt knows this — and yet by his recent pronouncements has lent credence to Arab myths and demands.
Sharon’s recent retort to Likud MKs — You want everything and you will be left with nothing — was reminiscent of what Shimon Peres once said in response to growing discontent about rising casualties of PLO terror: If you want peace with security you will have neither peace nor security.
Just a year ago it would have been difficult to compare Sharon to Peres. Sharon’s vision of a united Israel with its territorial integrity intact set him apart from the defeatists of the Left. But another recent statement of his is highly revealing: Whoever thinks that under the current diplomatic circumstances anyone in the world — including our best friend the United States — will support this position [retention of settlements] is a dreamer mistaken and misleading others.
But it is Sharon who is mistaken not in his assessment of world public opinion which is by and large true but in his assessment of the U.S. as Israel’s best friend. That special status belongs to the One who made the dream of a reborn Israel come true and no power in the world will reverse the post-Holocaust course of history.
All the plans cooked up in Washington to repartition Israel have ended in failure. Presidents who tried to push Israel around as the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan phrased it failed to win a second term of office — notably Jimmy Carter and George Bush Senior. I shall quote an excerpt of an open letter to the first President Bush published in The Jewish Press in June 1991 when the president was still riding high in public opinion polls in the aftermath of the Gulf War:
It is apparent that He who intervenes in the course of events will continue to cause such upheavals in the world that will provide the conspiring nations (against Israel) their leaders and allies with more pressing matters with which to be preoccupied…. We know now that the Titanic was not unsinkable and neither is any system or undertaking which subverts Decency Justice and Truth. Let us not profess a belief in Divine justice while continuing to pursue the amoral discredited realpolitik. No good will ever come from the appeasement of evil.
Prime Minister Sharon should not ignore our history. As Mordechai said to Esther in the megillah when he urged her to intercede on behalf of the Jews: If you hold thy peace at this time then relief and deliverance will arise to the Jews from another place.
Timely advice to Ariel Sharon on the eve of Purim. Let us hope he will act in accordance with the promise and expectation of the overwhelming majority of the voters who once put their trust in his leadership.
Israel’s survival is predicated on maintaining the firm stand that any Israeli obligations and concessions must be predicated on the liquidation of the PLO-PA Arafat’s terror cartel. This may displease the UN or Israel’s friends but Israel makes unrequited compromises at its own peril.
Let us hope that the prime minister will rise to the challenge confronting him and defend the trust the Jews have placed in him — which means not destroying a single settlement without a national referendum and a consensus of the overwhelming majority of those Jews affected by any proposed surrender of any part of Eretz Yisrael.
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