Kudos to the great Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, for an excellent article on Ariel Sharon's folly in today's Jewish World Review. Pipes is a great scholar of all things Middle Eastern and is one of the most important writers of our time on the subjects of terrorism, the Arab world and Israel. All his books and articles are valuable reading.
As our readers know, the critique offered by Pipes today echoes the one that I published in The American Spectator on March 9. Pipes and I share in common with most of our readers not only a great love for Israel and concern for its security but also an abiding respect for the late Menachem Begin. Begin founded the wing of Israeli governance (after its seeds had been sown in pre-statehood days by Vladimir Jabotinsky) that Sharon now heads. But Menachem Begin once said: "I cannot count the wounds in my back placed there by Sharon." The back-stabbing continues, albeit posthumously for Begin.
Neither Pipes nor I are Kahanists or some other form of radical. We would agree to return territory for peace, but only AT THE END of a multi-year process that includes significant and consistent moves by the Palestinians, starting from the abandonment of terrorism and continuing through the purging of vitriolic anti-Semitism from textbooks. (When they keep hanging maps of the Middle East that do not include Israel, we skeptical types are hard-pressed to buy into the contention that "uber alles" has given way to uberrima fides.)
2 comments:
All indications are that the Palestinians intend to use the temporary ceasefire to amass arms so that the newly handed-over territories can become a genuine armed country. The only good I see coming out of it is that, perhaps, perhaps, when the Israeli army eventually decimates the Palestinian Military, the press will have a harder time spinning the David v. Goliath garbage that's characterized world debate on the issue, and that has allowed stuff like the false Jenin massacre to thrive as a talking point.
I actually read a Hebrew-language article in an Israeli newspaper, circa 1987, that argued: "Give them a state, let them start a war and then smash 'em."
That reminds me of what my old friend Isaiah Treff once offered as a criticism of my demeanor: "Jay, if you wouldn't be a wise guy you could be a wise man." Too clever by half to create a country with an army and then expect to defeat it.
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