Posted on 05/04/2004 6:44:44 PM PDT by yonif
I was not surprised that Likud members decided to reject Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to evacuate Gaza. Israelis have grown tired of retreat, and wiser with every evacuation.
One would be hard-pressed to name a single benefit that has accrued to Israel with its continuingly trading land for war.
They say that the definition of insanity is to repeat the same action but expect a different result. Israel gave up the entire Sinai desert to Egypt, only to receive an ice-cold peace and vitriolic anti-Semitism in return. Israel gave Yasser Arafat control of the major population centers of Gaza and the West Bank, and got a decade of terror in recompense.
And still, with rare exceptions, one Israeli prime minister after another succumbs to the pressure to give away more land – with the notable exception of Yitzhak Shamir, Israel's most underestimated prime minister.
I was a yeshiva student in Jerusalem when Shamir was in office. Israelis complained mightily that he didn't seem to have a plan for solving the Arab-Israeli conflict. But lack of action was his plan. It's called the do-nothing-and-wait-them-out plan. Don't embolden the Arabs by giving in to terror. Don't encourage them by showing weakness.
Don't raise their expectations by talking about unilateral retreat. Get them psychologically used to the idea that Israel is forever. It's a lot better than rushing to make agreements with parties who have no intention of honoring them.
After Yitzhak Rabin signed the catastrophic Oslo accords, I had the pleasure of hosting Shamir for a lecture at Oxford. I asked him whether, had he stayed in office, he would have given away land for peace. "Not one inch," was his response.
History has proven Shamir right and Rabin tragically wrong. If Israel has learned one lesson in its struggle for survival against the Arabs it is that Jewish retreat in the face of provocation only invites further attack.
Across the Arab world it is open season on the Jews. According to the New York Sun, Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN envoy to Iraq, recently bragged that he has never shaken the hand of a Jew.
Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, head of a regime that is the world's foremost supporter of terror, publicly blamed recent terror attacks within Saudi Arabia on "Zionist hands [that] are behind what is going on now – they deceived some of our sons... they are supporters of the devil."
BUT AMERICAN Jews are quickly learning that even in the US anti-Semitism will fester if we don't stand up courageously to fight it. At the Academy Awards this year Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's beloved propagandist, was paid a public tribute while hundreds of Hollywood Jews sat and listened without protest.
In New Jersey, a state filled with Jewish voters, a whole slew of anti-Semitic incidents has erupted, yet the Jewish community does little to hold our elected representatives accountable for failing to combat it. Topping the list of such spineless politicians is New Jersey Governor James McGreevey, from whom we have barely heard a peep as our state sinks into the infamy of being a haven for anti-Semites.
First, there was the lamentable story of New Jersey Poet Laureate Amiri Baraka, appointed by McGreevey in August 2002 even though Baraka had spent 25 years devoting his art to dozens of anti-Jewish diatribes like this: "Now let us face these realities: A nigger wants to put down the Zionists and the Zionists control the radio, the television, the movies, the education, the intellectual life of the United States, the morality of the United States-Judeo-Christian ethics. The minute you condemn them publicly, you die. They will declare a war on you forever."
It was therefore not surprising that just a few months later Baraka published a famously anti-Semitic poem where he alleged that Israel was involved in the 9/11 attacks.
Then in October 2002 a student group that openly supports suicide bombings and calls for the destruction of Israel announced its intention to stage a conference at Rutgers – New Jersey's state-funded university.
McGreevey allowed the conference to go ahead and issued a statement with the president of Rutgers that said: "The best way to counter deplorable arguments is more discussion, not less, and the appropriate place for this kind of discourse is the university."
McGreevey's cowardly behavior reached its apogee two weeks ago week when the Rutgers student newspaper, The Medium, which receives thousands of dollars in student fees, mocked Holocaust memorial week by running a front-page cartoon showing a carnival contestant trying to throw a terrified Jewish man into a burning oven. The caption read: "Throw a Jew into the oven! Three throws for one dollar."
My radio producer and many newspapers called McGreevey's office for a public comment or condemnation, but the good governor has, to date, done nothing to either condemn or withhold funding from The Medium.
It was left to former New York City mayor Ed Koch to write to Rutgers President Richard McCormick, saying, "You have embarrassed, by your inaction, both the university and the State of New Jersey." One is forced to ask oneself: Who is stupider? Nathaniel Berke, the student managing editor of the Medium who approved the cartoon, or the huge number of Jewish donors who continue to throw money at McGreevey's campaigns.
Anyone spewing Jew-hatred, black-hatred, or any other hatred in the West should certainly not be the beneficiaries of public funding, and should preferably have their jobs terminated as well. Which reminds me. James McGreevey is up for reelection in 18 months.
The writer is a syndicated radio host in the US and author of 14 books. His latest is The Private Adam: Becoming a Hero in a Selfish Age.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.