Over the past several years, a growing number of patriotic Israelis have begun
to despair. We can’t stand up to the whole world, they say. At the end of the
day, we will have to give in and surrender most of the land or all of the land
we took control over in the 1967 Six Day War. The world won’t accept anything
less.
These statements have grown more strident in the wake of the
slaughter of the Fogel family last Friday night in Itamar. For example, on
Thursday
Ha’aretz columnist Ari Shavit called Israeli communities built beyond
the 1949 armistice line the local equivalent of Japan’s nuclear reactors. Like
the reactors, he wrote, they seemed like a good idea at the time. But they have
become our undoing.
The international community’s response to the
Palestinian atrocity in Itamar is pointed to as proof that Israel must
surrender. Instead of considering what the savage murder of an Israeli family
tells us about the nature of Palestinian society, the world media have turned
the massacre of the Fogel family into a story about “settlements.”
Take
The Los Angeles Times for example. From the
Times’ perspective, the Fogels were
not Israeli civilians. They were “Jewish settlers.” They weren’t murdered in
their home. They were killed in their “tightly guarded compound.”
And, in
the end, the Times effectively justified the murder of the Fogel children when
it helpfully added, “Most of the international community... views
Israel’s settlements as illegal.”
The
Times report was actually
comparatively sympathetic. At least it mentioned the murders. Most
European papers began their coverage with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s
announcement that the government would permit Israelis to build 400 homes in
Judea and Samaria.
As for the governments of the world, most were far
swifter and more aggressive in their condemnation of Netanyahu’s announcement of
the building permits than they were in their condemnation of the
murders.
Then there is the US Jewish community.
According to New
York’s
Jewish Week, there is a new consensus in the American Jewish community
that imposing an economic boycott on Israeli communities outside the 1949
armistice lines is a legitimate position. The paper interviewed Martin Raffel,
the head of the new Israel Action Network, a multimillion-dollar effort by the
Jewish Federations of North America and other major Jewish groups to counter the
delegitimization of Israel.
Raffel called the boycott movement misguided,
rather than wrong. Then he justified it by arguing, “Being misguided in one’s
policies doesn’t mean one necessarily has become part of the ranks of the
delegitimizers.”
If that wasn’t enough, Ron Kampeas, the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency’s Washington bureau chief, wrote Tuesday that we shouldn’t
rush to conclude that Palestinians carried out the attack.
Kampeas wrote,
“We do not yet know who committed the awful butchery in Itamar over the
weekend.”
WITH AMERICAN Jews taking a lead role in delegitimizing Israel;
with the international media ignoring the massacre of the Fogel family and
attacking Israel for its response to the event they didn’t cover; and with the
US government united with the nations of the world in condemning the
government’s decision to allow Israelis who are Jewish to build on land they
own, the despair of a growing chorus of Israelis is understandable.
But
while understandable, the notion that Israel has no choice but to surrender
Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to the Palestinians is wrong and
dangerous.
Like his fellow defeatists, Shavit argues that Jewish
communities in these areas are the cause of international moves to delegitimize
Israel. If they were gone, so the argument goes, then neither the Palestinians
nor the international community would have a problem with Israel.
The
first problem with this view is that it confuses the focus of Palestinian and
international attacks on Israel with the rationale behind those attacks. This is
a mistake Israelis have made repeatedly since the establishment of the Fatahled
PA in 1994.
Immediately after the PA was set up and IDF forces
transferred security control over Palestinian cities and towns in Judea and
Samaria to Yasser Arafat’s armies, Palestinian terrorists began attacking
Israeli motorists driving through PA-controlled areas with rocks, pipe bombs and
bullets.
Then-prime minister and defense minister Yitzhak Rabin blamed
the attacks on “friction.” If the Palestinians didn’t have contact with Israeli
motorists, then they wouldn’t attack them. So Israel built the bypass roads
around the Palestinian towns and cities to prevent friction.
For its
efforts, the Palestinians and the international community accused Israel of
building “Jews-only, apartheid roads.” Moreover, Palestinian terrorists left
their towns and cities and stoned, bombed and shot at Israeli motorists on the
bypass roads.
Then there was Gaza. When in 2001 Palestinians first began
shelling the Israeli communities in Gaza and the Western Negev with mortars and
rockets, we were told they were attacking because of Israel’s presence in Gaza.
When the IDF took action to defend the country from mortar and rocket attacks,
Israel was accused of committing war crimes.
The likes of Shavit said
then that if Israel left Gaza, the Palestinian attacks would stop. They said
that if they didn’t stop and the IDF was forced to take action, the world would
support Israel.
Shavit himself engaged in shocking demonization of the
Israelis living in Gaza. In May 2004 he wrote that they were undeserving of IDF
protection and that no soldier should defend them because they weren’t real
Israelis.
But then the Palestinians and the international community threw
Shavit and his friends yet another curveball. After Israel expelled every last
so-called settler and removed every last soldier from Gaza in August 2005,
Palestinian rocket attacks increased tenfold. The first Katyusha was fired at
Ashkelon seven months after Israel withdrew. Hamas won the elections and
Gaza became an Iranian proxy. Now it has missiles capable of reaching Tel
Aviv.
As for the international community, not only did it continue
blaming Israel for Palestinian terrorism, it refused to accept that Israel had
ended its so-called occupation of Gaza. It has condemned every step Israel has
taken to defend itself from Palestinian aggression since the withdrawal as a war
crime.
The lesson of these experiences is that Israeli towns and villages
in Judea and Samaria are not castigated as “illegitimate” because there is
anything inherently illegitimate about them. Like the bypass roads and the
Israeli presence in Gaza, they are singled out because those interested in
attacking Israel militarily or politically think are an easy target.
The
Arabs, the UN, the Obama administration, the EU, anti-Israel American and
Israeli Jews, university professors and the legions of self-proclaimed human
rights organizations in Israel and throughout the world allege these Israeli
communities are illegitimate because by doing so they weaken Israel as a
whole.
If Israel is convinced that it has no choice but to bow to these
people’s demands, they will not be appeased. They will simply move on to the
next easy target. Israeli Jewish communities in the Galilee and the Negev, Jaffa
and Lod will be deemed illegitimate.
In a bid to pretend that the
communities in Judea and Samaria are somehow different from communities in the
Galilee, proponents of surrender point to the non-binding 2004 International
Court of Justice opinion that the communities in Judea and Samaria are
illegal.
But Israelis who accept the non-binding opinion as a binding
ruling for Judea and Samaria ignore that the opinion also asserted that Israel
has no right to self defense.
The same people who think that so-called
settlements are illegal also believe that opposition leader Tzipi Livni is a war
criminal. The same people who think the so-called settlements are illegal would
condemn as a war crime any attempt to enforce the law against irredentist
Israeli Arabs.
Israel’s bitter experience proves incontrovertibly that
bowing to international pressure just invites more pressure.
SO WHAT can
Israel do?
The first thing we must do is recognize that legitimacy is
indivisible. In the eyes of Israel’s enemies there is no difference between
Itamar and Ma’aleh Adumim on the one hand and Ramle and Tel Aviv on the other
hand. And so we must make no distinction between them.
Just as law
abiding citizens are permitted to build homes in Ramle and Tel Aviv, so they
must be permitted to build in Itamar and Ma’aleh Adumim. If Israel’s assertion
of its sovereignty is legitimate in Tel Aviv, then it is legitimate in Judea and
Samaria. We cannot accept that one has a different status from the
other.
Likewise, it is an act of economic warfare to boycott Israeli
products, whether they are made in Haifa or Mishor Adumim. Anyone who says it is
permissible to boycott Mishor Adumim is engaging in economic warfare against
Haifa.
Once we understand that Israel’s legitimacy is indivisible, we
need to take actions that will put the Palestinians and their international
supporters on the defensive. There are any number of moves Israel can make in
this vein.
For example, following the Palestinian massacre of the Fogel
family, Netanyahu highlighted the fact that the PA routinely glorifies terrorist
murderers and pays them and their families handsome pensions for their illegal
acts of war. He also highlighted the genocidal anti-Jewish incitement
endemic in Palestinian society.
While all of this is useful, talk is
cheap. It is time to make the Palestinians pay a price for their depravity and
to put their international supporters on the defensive.
Specifically,
Netanyahu should ask the US to cut off all US economic and military assistance
to the PA. Two PA intelligence officers were arrested as part of the Fogel
murder investigation.
The US is training and equipping the Palestinian
intelligence services. This should stop.
Two days after the massacre in
Itamar, the PA dedicated a public square in El-Bireh to terror commander Dalal
Mughrabi. Mughrabi commanded the 1978 bus attack on the coastal highway in which
37 Israelis – including 12 children – were murdered. The PA previously named a
street, a dormitory, a summer camp and a sports tournament after her. Several
popular songs have been written to glorify her crimes.
The US is
underwriting the PA’s budget. This should stop.
Were the government to go
after international aid to the PA, not only would it begin a debate in the US
and perhaps Europe about the nature of Fatah specifically and Palestinian
society generally, it would force the Palestinians’ myriad supporters to justify
their support for a society that is defined by its goal of annihilating
Israel.
It is hard to stand up to the massive pressure being brought to
bear against Israel every day. But it is possible.
And whether
defying our foes is hard or easy, it is our only chance at survival. Either all
of Israel is legitimate, or none of it is.
caroline@carolineglick.com