From Eban to Sharon (Joe Sobran on Israel)

In June 1967 I became a passionate partisan of Israel just when it seemed likely that the Jewish state would be wiped off the map forever. Taking all my impressions from the American news media, I saw it as a valiant little outpost of civilization besieged by hordes of savage Arabs. Its victory in the Six-Day War seemed miraculous.

For me, as for countless others, the noble soul of Israel seemed to be embodied in one man: its UN representative, Abba Eban. Eloquent and mellifluous, exquisitely diplomatic yet very tough, Eban projected the image of Israel as civilized, heroic, and urbane. He spoke our language better than we did, and in the bitter debates with Arab UN representatives he made us feel that Israel’s struggle was our own struggle.

In the ensuing years, even when his Labor Party fell from power, Eban remained America’s favorite Israeli spokesman. The world had been shocked in 1976 when Israel elected the former terrorist Menachem Begin as its prime minister, and it wanted reassurance that Eban still spoke for the Israel we admired.

Today Eban seems an ancient memory. So does the Israel he so seductively described.

Israel’s image changed for good in 1982, when Begin and General Ariel Sharon mounted a murderous invasion of Lebanon. Aerial bombing of Beirut, one of the world’s most beautiful cities, killed thousands of innocent civilians. Thousands more were slaughtered in a pair of refugee camps, with the apparent connivance of Sharon.

Many Israelis protested the war. Israel lost sympathy abroad and was even likened to Nazi Germany. More than a few Diaspora Jews who had loyally supported it now repudiated it. Begin had lied brazenly to President Ronald Reagan about his intentions, [Breaker quote: Keeping
democracy kosher]

[Breaker quote: Keeping
democracy kosher]

but Reagan and the U.S. Government continued to treat Israel as an ally. For me, it was all too much. Israel was making enemies not only for itself, but for us.

Today Sharon is Israel’s prime minister and, more than ever, Israel is America’s problem child. Few in government and the media will admit this, of course. Eric Alterman of The Nation has listed more than 60 pundits in the major media who “reflexively” and “without qualification” support Israel, while he can name only a handful who are critical.

In an interview with William Safire of the New York Times, Sharon inadvertently put his finger on the nub of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Scoffing at the new Saudi peace plan, Sharon said, “And do you imagine, for one minute, we could accept what the Palestinians call the right of return? It would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish democratic state.”

This was a reference to the Saudi proposal that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to their homes. Sharon reckons that they would shift the demographic balance and outvote the Jews. The result might be a democratic state, but not a Jewish democratic state.

Under Israeli law, Jews around the world, most of whom have never even lived in the Middle East, have a right of “return.” But Palestinians in exile do not — and must not — have the right to go back to the very houses they once owned and inhabited. Thus is the Jewish majority maintained in Israel.

Sharon is really admitting that Israel is based not on universal principles of justice, but on the right of Jews to drive the natives of the land from their homes and to banish them forever. At the same time, he wants to keep the occupied territories, but not to let their Arab residents vote. Too many Arab voters would threaten the Jewish democratic state.

Let’s be clear. We aren’t merely talking about Jewish jurisdiction over historic Palestine; the Palestinians have long lived under alien rule and they could endure it while it left daily life pretty much intact. But the Israeli Jews claim outright ownership of the land, including Arab homes. Sharon evidently reserves the right to expel all Arabs from Israel and the territories, and by exasperating the Arabs he hopes to drive the country toward a crisis that will enable him to do this.

As always, Sharon blames the whole conflict on the Arabs. He insists that Yasser Arafat, confined to a dark candle-lit room with only a cell phone, could instantly stop the suicide bombings if he wanted to.

We can thank Ariel Sharon for one thing: he has revealed things about Israel that Abba Eban never told us.

I'm quite certain the suicide bombers aren't motivated by money.

And you are quite the naive one. The greatest mistake in dealing with terrorists is to assume that they live anywhere near the same moral plane we do. The very idea of anyone sacrificing their own children unnecesarily is morally repugnant to the Western mind, but the fact is that they do -- for money, for religious fanaticism, for the pure joy of hating others. By stooping to such moral depths, they believe they prove their superiority to us Westerners, who are all concerned about the sanctity of life and such, and too many of us Western suckers buy into that mythology. The Nazis convinced many Germans to breed as many children as possible, on the same rationale -- that it would lead to the triumph in war. They too produced children in the very expectation that they would be sacrificed in war, to assure the triumph of their cause. How ironic that the Jewish people, having survived one Holocaust, now have to stave off yet another potential Holocaust, and get blamed by so much of the world's opinion for being the aggressors, and for being themselves the ones wishing racial extermination on their tormentors. I remind all here that Israel has never initiated war on any of the Moslem states that surround her, although they have attacked her repeatedly since 1948. Of course, when emotions run high, I guess facts have little relevancy.

COUNTRIES THAT LOST LAND IN WARS, LOST IT!!!

That's pretty much a truism, isn't it? And it explains why wars go on and on over such territories as the losing side tries to change the result. It is good that you don't claim there's any justice in this or that the defeated deserved to lose. That would be too much.

Actually, though, if you think about it, the EU has created a de facto right of return. A Frenchman can live in Germany or in France and the same is true of a German. So such questions as Alsace-Lorraine no longer rankle. The price is that neither France nor Germany has the kind of sovereignty it once did, and it's doubtful this would work right now in the Middle East or our Southwest, or even in Northern Ireland or Eastern Europe at this point, but it does provide hope, if that's what one wants.

The Us has a right to ask illegal Mexicans to leave. Why not Israel?

For better or worse their children are Americans and can't be forced to leave. You seem to be arguing that Palestinians whose grandparents might have come to the country seventy years ago are still "illegal," while Jews who arrived in Israel yesterday are "legal." That looks like a very specious argument as regards the Palestinians.

Indeed your arguments cut against what you wish to say, since it can be shown that Arabs were a majority in Israel or Palestine down to about the time of WWII. If you can delegitimize Palestinians for having come in from elsewhere, that is still more true of Israelis. From 1870 to 1940 the Arab population about doubled. The Jewish population increased by something like fifty times. Even if statistics can be disputed, this does point out something that you neglected to mention.

This is not a black and white question that can be settled with a verdict for one side or the other. Certainly rhetorical quibbling can't establish that the Palestinians should have no say in things.

I wrote:
"The Us has a right to ask illegal Mexicans to leave. Why not Israel?"

X responded:
For better or worse their children are Americans and can't be forced to leave. You seem to be arguing that Palestinians whose grandparents might have come to the country seventy years ago are still "illegal," while Jews who arrived in Israel yesterday are "legal." That looks like a very specious argument as regards the Palestinians.

1. I point out that 2/3 those disposesed in 1947-48 were not dispossesed.Therefore the rightof return for these people is specious.
2. The moral claim of the Palestinains that they lived on teh land for 1000 years, only applies to the 1/3 of them whose ancestors actually did so.

The main claim of Palestinian activists and their frieds is that the Arabs have more of a right than the Jews. If their only link to the land was an immigrant of dubuious legality who rented land, I question the validity of the link.

From 1870 to 1940 the Arab population about doubled. The Jewish population increased by something like fifty times. Even if statistics can be disputed, this does point out something that you neglected to mention.

Everyone knows that 90% of the Jews is Israel are immigrants or one or two generations removed. Most people do not understand taht het same applies to 67% of Palestinians. When people make moral claims the facts matter and most people are ignorant.

This is not a black and white question that can be settled with a verdict for one side or the other. Certainly rhetorical quibbling can't establish that the Palestinians should have no say in things.

Things would have been much easier if Jews had been allowed to migrate instead of the greater number of Arabs and if the Arabs had not instituted a policy of murdering those Arabs who sold land to Jews.
The Arabs chose violence and the Jews responded in kind. It has been a real mess for almost 80 years.

I wrote:
"5. The Us has a right to ask illegal Mexicans to leave. Why not Israel?"

E Rocc responded
When we bought the Mexican Cession and the Gadsden Purchase, we did not expel the Mexicans living there.

1. I was talking about the land ceded from the War of Texas Independence and teh Mexican War. This was about 1/2 of Mexico. Some Mexicans left after the war and many now claim a right to this "stolen" land.
2. The US government did institute policies to insure white migration to all these lands and conversely set up policies to prevent Mexican immigration.

I wrote:

Why is it that certain members of the anti-Immigration right begrudge Israel the same right? Nations are built on race and Israel has a right to exist just as Italy or the Ukraine does.

Sick responded
How come the USA doesn't have that right? And, by the way, I thought the Jews weren't a race. Please clarify.

1. The US has that right. If you bothered to do some research, you would know that I am a nationalist. (Of course given your comments on Marx and Anti-Semetism the adage that the ignorant yell the loudest seems true.)
2. All Jews see themselves as B'nei Yisrael or the Children of Israel. We are all Israelites, regardless of our color or the amount of gentile blood we have. Even converts are considered Israelites. Ethiopian, European, Siberia, Chinese, Yemeni or Indian, Jews from all communities are considered part of the race.
This is a pre-modern racial construct, but why would we allpow the Germans to define race for us?

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.