FLOGGING A DEAD HORSE











How can anyone in the world, politically astute, who looks at the map and the demographics and says it’s within the power of the Jewish people to bring peace?

 There is a chorus around the world which accompanies our peace process which states: “Go on with this peace process. It is good for you. It is the only way. You are morally obliged to continue”. We hear it from everywhere in the whole of enlightened Europe. “The number of Jews killed in terrorist attacks is small, and you are accustomed to death. You have been hounded for generations, and lost six million only three generations ago. With one and a half million children among  those millions, what matters it in the grand scheme of things if another teenager is murdered.”

A nation worn and grief-stricken from the devastation of the Holocaust believed that its victory in war, the final arbiter of international politics, would ensure its ultimate acceptance in the region.

Yet the Arabs refuse to play by the rules. Losing each successive war, they have insisted on maintaining their siege of the Jewish state. Israel’s behavior since the onset of the peace process has been a course of concessions by the stronger party to weaker enemies, who remain committed to the destruction of the Jewish state. The theory behind it is that accommodation by Israel will assuage Arab intransigence and buy the Jews acceptance in the region. On the contrary, Jewish experience has proven that a policy of surrender does not bring you honour in your enemies’ eyes but only whets their appetite.

The Jews, generally a liberal and pacific people – not to mention an exhausted one - can no longer take the strain. No other people in the 20th century has been so subject to the politics of deligitimation and aggression.

If you look at the moral history of the 20th century, to stand up for the Jews has meant standing up to the most aggressive political forces. When the Jews stand up for themselves here in Israel they’re not just protecting the Jews, they are at one and the same time standing up to the most debilitating, aggressive forces of our century. And if they lose this struggle, in a sense they involve the world in a tremendous loss.

As the US ambassador to the United Nations, said only last week: “Peace only has a fighting chance when all sides will be dealing with realities, not fantasies, and when we deal with realities then reasonable negotiated compromises can prevail over absolutist demands.”

Passover and Easter are the harbingers of spring - the season of renewal, and hope for the future. May we all enjoy  a pleasant and peaceful holiday, together with our loved ones.




Comments

  1. Leonie Weiss30 March 2018 at 06:12

    Beautifully written article, succint and REAL. If you look at the map of the Arab world, it resembles a dog, with tiny us, the "dead dog" valiantly clinging on to the back of its neck. We are still hanging in there, but can we bite hard enough to show this animal that we have as much right to inhabit this earth as it does?

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