Britannia Radio

LET OUR FREEDOM RING THIS JULY 4TH

LET NO ONE DEPRIVE US OF THAT HARD ONE LIBERTY

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The Waiting for Godot Syndrome

Paul Eidelberg

The "Waiting for Godot Syndrome" (WGS) permeates Israel—opinion-makers and policy-makers, left and right. Enough of this theater of the absurd.

Some politicians and pundits are waiting for America's November elections in the hope that the Democrats will lose control of the House of Representatives and perhaps even the Senate. Fear of this eventuality, they imagine, may induce Obama to slacken his pressure on Israel. So they urge Netanyahu to play for time when he goes to Washington next week. As if Obama will not revert to type.

Netanyahu himself has been infected by the WG syndrome. He is hoping Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas will forsake 1,400 years of Islamic culture and agree that "reciprocity" should be the basis of negotiations between Arabs and "infidels"—whereby the latter yield land and the former recognize (what's left of) Israel as a Jewish state.

Meanwhile, animated by the belief that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's vow to wipe Israel off the map is mere rhetoric, other Waiting for Godot addicts hope economic sanctions will delay Iran's development of nuclear weapons, or that the U.S. will at last step in and save Israel from aHolocaust.

The Waiting for Godot Syndrome recalls the adage that hope springs eternal in the human breast. The Greek philosophers did not deem hope a virtue, and great military leaders deem it a vice.

You have a genocidal enemy, a total enemy. This kind of enemy doesn't compromise; this enemy equates compromise with cowardice. Therefore, one way or another, you take the initiative. You go on the offensive. You go for the kill. You employ every device you have to accomplish this objective, including propaganda, espionage, insurrection, economic warfare, assassination.

Your goal is to destroy the enemy before he attacks you. You don't lose sleep over public opinion. You know public opinion is fickle. You know that for the generality of mankind, success is the ultimate criterion of praise and blame. Besides, you'd rather be feared than loved. You are notwaiting for Godot.

On taking the initiative, consider what journalist Yaakov Katz says of Meir Dagan, who is stepping down from his position after eight years as Mossad chief.

Dagan is credited with orchestrating a string of assassinations around the world.... In February 2008, a car bomb killed Imad Muhjniyeh, Hizbulah military commander in Damascus. Later that year, Gen. Muhammad Suleiman, Syrian President Bashar Assad's liaison to Hamas and Hizbulah and the head of the country's covert nuclear program, was shot dead by a sniper at his vacation home in the port city of Tartus. In January the Mossad reportedly struck again, killing Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the Hamas arch-terrorist in Dubai(Jerusalem Post, July 2, 2010).

In this context, bear in mind the assassination of Israeli cabinet minister and former general Rehavam Ze'evi in October 2001 by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a faction of the PLO. The point is that Israel is at war, declared against Israel by all Arab and Muslim regimes. This is blatantly evident in their state-controlled media, including those of Egypt despite its peace treaty with Israel.

The Arabs will exploit every sign of weakness; and they deem it a profound weakness when Israeli prime ministers are anxious to engage in peace-negotiations.

To counter the appearance of any such weakness, Israel must instill fear in Arab leaders by violent and well-orchestrated covert operations. Moreover, Israel must not retreat from any Jewish territory. It must not release Arab terrorists. And for every attack on a single Jew it must retaliate at least ten-fold against the enemy consistent with the Jewish idea of "proportionality."

We are dealing with a ruthless foe. Against such a foe, liberal humanitarianism is a nauseating obscenity.

Remember the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden, which killed more civilians than the A-Bomb on Hiroshima. Was America then threatened with annihilation as Israel is today? And did American ruthlessness vis-à-vis Germany and Japan persist and corrupt America after the war? Did it prevent America from helping them rebuild their devastated counties?

Israel must adopt a wartime image to teach its own people—especially academics and journalists—that at stake today is their own survival. This image will inform the enemy that the "peace process" charade is over, that Israel is no longer going to play according to anti-Jewish the rules of engagement. Israel is not going to wait for Godot or stall for time waiting for America's November elections.