Trapped
Prof. Paul Eidelberg
Israel is trapped, trapped in lies which no Israeli prime minister and no Knesset Member—indeed, not even aspirants for the dubious honor of becoming an MK—dares expose, without bringing down the political structure of this cockamamie state. Since Israelis are about to form, if I am not mistaken, another government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, allow me to repeat what I have previously revealed about Israel’s political leaders.
Shortly after making aliya to Israel in August 1976, I was asked by my friend General Chaim Laskov (z”l), a former IDF Chief of General Staff, to meet with Shimon Peres, then Minister of Defense under the Labor-led government of Yitzhak Rabin. The American presidential election was two months away, and Laskov wanted me to share my thoughts on the subject with the Defense Minister.
Mr. Peres and I met in his Knesset office. He was accompanied by his confidant, Yehoshafat Harkabi, a Hebrew University professor of political science and former head of military intelligence. Toward the end of a 50-minute meeting, I was asked by Peres: “What do you think will be Israel’s main problem in the United States after the November presidential election?” I replied: “To counter the Arab slogan of ‘self-determination for the Palestinian people.’” To my astonishment, Professor Harkabi responded by saying “That’s irrelevant.”
I was astounded because Harkabi should have known that the Arab slogan of “self-determination for the Palestinian people” provides the government of the United States with a democratic pretext for appeasing Arab dictatorships linked to American corporate interests in the Middle East, especially in the Persian Gulf. Surely Harkabi was aware of the two-fold fraud in that Arab slogan. Inasmuch as he himself had written that Islam is a “combatant,” “expansionist,” and “authoritarian” creed, it should have been obvious to him that Islam, both in theory and in practice, utterly rejects the democratic principle of self-determination.[1] Indeed, at the time of our meeting he was on record as saying that an Arab Palestinian homeland is “a euphemistic equivalent for the liquidation of Israel” (p. 473).[2]
As for the claim that the Arabs residing in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza comprise a distinct “Palestinian people,” this has ever been an Arab hoax.[3] Harkabi, a reputed expert on the Middle East, surely knew that there are no ethnic and religious differences whatever between the Arabs in question and their brethren in Jordan or even in Israel for that matter. [As Newt Romney, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives admitted, the Palestinians are an “invented people” whose purpose, as any candid observer would see, is to annihilate the people of Israel. No Israeli Prime Minister has had the courage to say this, and if he did, it would be tantamount to accusing his predecessors since the 1993 Israel-PLO Agreement of criminal negligence if not treason. Israel is trapped in a litany of lies.
If proof is needed, a few days after meeting with Peres I was asked by the Defense Ministry to speak with his political adviser, Asher Ben Natan, a former ambassador to France and to Germany. During the course of our conversation I asked Mr. Natan: “What do you think is Israel’s main problem?” He answered: “We can’t lie as well as the Arabs.” To this I responded: “Then why not tell the truth?” The answer appears in the previous paragraph.
Israeli politicians persist in this deadly charade. Have you heard any of today’s candidates for Knesset membership say in unambiguous language that peace with the Palestinians is a delusion or a self-serving lie? Here is a related prevarication.
Mr. Netanyahu (like Shimon Peres) believes, or would have us believe, that Israel can buy the Arabs, can make them bourgeois democrats. Just give them the means of enjoying the accoutrements and luxuries of middle class Americans ad peace will follow. This crypto-Marxist panacea infects capitalists well as socialists.
Materialism trumps religion. The mentality of Esav is quite prevalent among Israeli politicians who look upon Islam with contempt.
But these Israelis ignore the fact that the self-styled Palestinians, who lie so well, and who tell Jews ready to believe them that for $5,000 dollars they would leave Eretz Israel—these Arabs are but a minute fraction of a billion and more Muslims whose leaders are committed to Israel’s annihilation, and who thrive by demonizing the Jewish state if only to redirect the hatred and grievances of their own people.
Even some ambitious religionists are trapped in lies.
[1] Y. Harkabi, Arab Attitudes to Israel (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House), p. 133. Page numbers hereafter cited in the text between parentheses.
[2] Harkabi, Arab Strategies and Israel's Response (New York: Free Press, 1977), p. 39. For bizarre reasons, Harkabi became an advocate of a “Palestinian” state. See his Israel's Fateful Hour (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), p. xii, and my critique thereof in Demophrenia: Israel and the Malaise of Democracy (Lafayette, LA: Prescott Press, 1994), ch. 6.
[3] Ibid., ch. 2.
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