Another Tack: Why not a Galilean nation?

Smaller Israel would be altogether undone when its Galilean portion is excised.

By SARAH HONIG
When Golda Meir sought to underscore the bogus nature of Palestinian claims, she'd bring up the resurgent Galilean nation. No, this isn't an editing error. Golda tried to make the point that to wrest territory from the minuscule Jewish presence contiguous to the Mideast's vast Arab realm, Arabs contrive national entities and demand land on their behalf in the hallowed name of self-determination. It worked when their British Mandatory patrons usurped nearly 80 percent of original Palestine to hand over to London's Arabian Peninsula lackey, Emir Abdullah. Thus was born the never-previously-heard-of Transjordanian nation (later renamed Jordanian, but still every bit as artificial). This ploy seems to be working now as Israel's delusional government acquiesces in the creation of yet another Arab country within the remnant of pre-split Palestine. This second Arab-Palestinian state was what Golda passionately warned against. Most of all she warned that it won't satisfy Arab appetites but would whet them as never before. Once nationalities - like the Palestinian - are concocted, there's no limit to the powers of cynical invention. Indeed, once the world avidly lets itself be hoodwinked, there's no guarantee it won't cheerfully subscribe to another big lie. There's no telling what could come next to justify another voracious bite into the tiny Israeli sliver. "Since Arabs excel at fabricating, and since the world is eager to buy their merchandise, why not a Galilean nation?" Golda asked rhetorically-cum-facetiously in a conversation we had decades ago. "It's not impossible that Israeli-Arabs would achieve a majority in the Galilee," she conjectured with remarkable acumen back then. "Afterward they'd argue that they're a separate nation, making the Galilee a separate territorial tract which should be ripped from Israel regardless of the Green Line." In Ehud Olmert's cognitively-impaired administration, Golda's admonition would be viewed as poppycock. Olmert & Co.'s fundamental assumption is that Israel's own borders (the Green Line, i.e. 1949's armistice demarcations) are challenge-resistant and are as recognized and legitimate as those of any nation. While Judea and Samaria - the indisputable cradle of Jewish history - is regarded as "occupied territory," Green-Line-Israel is presumably inviolable. Thus, though Judea and Samaria were never seized from a Palestinian state, shortsighted Israeli headliners dupe themselves and their electorate into trusting that awarding territorial prizes to outrightly genocidal enemies will somehow secure Israel. All Israel needs do to gain global approval is divest itself of its historical heartland, directly adjoining its densest population centers. Once it's no longer an ogre "occupier," Israel would win world love. THIS IS why what happened to poor Serbia should tug hard and relentlessly at every remaining Israeli alarm bell. Much of the free world just endorsed the carving out of a substantial chunk of bona fide Serbia merely because another ethnic component constitutes a majority within the perimeters of that subsection. Serbia's misfortune belies official Israel's underlying premise that an essentially honorable and fair-minded international community wouldn't countenance the violation of any sovereign state's territorial integrity. This flings the door wide to ethnic gerrymandering of grotesque proportions anywhere the forces of counterfeit political correctness and hard-nosed selfish geopolitical interests deem expedient. Many nation-states contain national/linguistic/religious minorities. If said minorities boast allies bearing enough clout, they can chart out regional swaths in which they form majorities and then clamor that these particular holdings be disconnected and granted self-government. This is an alluring scenario for populations which consider themselves too superior to reside as minorities inside other groups' nation-states. This is precisely the Arab mindset, along the pattern set by the Third Reich when it coveted Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. No way could Nazis abide the notion that Germans be relegated to minority status anywhere. Thus the Sudetenland was redefined as a distinct geonational category and its "rescue" from entirely spurious "Czech atrocities" mandated the violation of Czechoslovakia's territorial integrity. Kosovo should be the wake-up call for those who delude themselves that the treachery of the Munich appeasement - World War II's direct precursor - is yesteryear's irrelevant tale, one that can no longer be repeated in today's reasonable and well-organized environment, under the aegis of sole superpower America. Kosovo is the frightening reminder that treachery and appeasement are as potent as they were in 1938. Thus authentic nations - like the 36 million Kurds - are scornfully denied sovereignty, while hocus-pocus nationalities are coddled to please their influential sponsors. It's a matter of might - not right. It's inadvisable to take on Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria to do justice to suffering Kurds. Nobody would dismember what's left of England's empire, misleadingly dubbed the UK. Ancient Basques and Catalans merit independence incontestably more than newbie Kosovars, but dissecting Spain is a nonstarter. However, it's a whole different issue if the country targeted for mutilation is vulnerable, whereas its ostensibly downtrodden minority yearning to tear free is backed by powers-that-matter. Much of the world has every reason to suck up to numerous Muslim nations - possessors of oil-wealth, scores of UN votes and inestimable strategic importance. This is why yet another Muslim nation was established in Europe. The significant clue is that Kosovo's ethnic Albanians didn't seek co-option to Albania but instituted a second Albanian state in the Balkans. That should delight the Turks, the ashes of whose deceased Ottoman Empire now account for three Muslim European spawns - Albania, Bosnia and Kosovo. Kosovo is imperialism's true heir and not Serbia which overthrew the Ottoman yoke. Bosnians and Kosovars, incidentally, were among the most heinous of Hitler's collaborators, while the Serbians were far-above-average in those dark days. But moral relativist bon ton dictates that only the Third World and its first cousins are worthy of enlightened sympathy and freedom-fighter credentials. Serbians don't fit postmodern criteria. Kosovars do. Israel is in far direr straits than Serbia. Although the Serbs were injured and humiliated, their very survival isn't jeopardized. Serbia's eradication is on nobody's agenda. Israel's is. Smaller Israel, facing unparalleled existential dangers, would be altogether undone when its Galilean portion is excised. This isn't far-fetched. The spine-chilling Serbian precedent confers extra urgency and credibility on Golda's warning.