The Doctrine of Resistance by David Isaac
http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/the-doctrine-of-resistance-by-david-isaac.html
The Obama administration is receiving a well-deserved hammering for orchestrating the UN’s fresh assault on Israel. Most refreshing is a good deal of that hammering is being delivered by an infuriated Israel, whose representatives haven’t flinched in slamming the U.S. for its betrayal. They are learning for the first time, or perhaps re-learning for the umpteenth time, a doctrine taught by Revisionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky: the principle of resistance.
The Likud Party which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads purports to draw inspiration from Jabotinsky and to faithfully follow his teachings. Banners depicting Jabotinsky fly at every Likud event. Yet, in his many years in office, Netanyahu has seemed less a devotee of Jabotinsky than a disciple of Dale Carnegie, who famously said, “You can’t win an argument.” Netanyahu and his government haven’t won any arguments when it comes to Jewish rights in Israel’s heartland. Indeed, they haven’t tried. Instead, they’ve chosen to manage the problem. We see the fruits of that strategy: Resolution 2334.
Ironically, it was the Prime Minister’s father, Prof. Ben-Zion Netanyahu, who offered one of the best analyses of Jabotinsky’s thinking in a 1981 essay that was reprinted in his last book, The Founding Fathers of Zionism. Ben-Zion points out that Jabotinsky’s greatest contribution to Jewish thinking was this: “He taught the doctrine of resistance to a people who had not known what resistance meant for hundreds of years.”
What did this mean in political terms? “Vigorous resistance to any concession of any rightwhatsoever.” Ben-Zion Netanyahu writes: “After all, if you have a right, and concede that right, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, even if out of supposedly ‘pragmatic calculations,’ then what is taken away from you is, simply, theft. Hence, you have fundamentally surrendered to robbery, even if you pretend to having been magnanimous.”
Think of the prime minister’s approach in light of the above. When facing election, he speaks out against a two-state solution as he did in 2008 and in 2015. Afterwards, he hastily backs down under U.S. and international pressure, reaffirming his support for two states. Instead of vigorous resistance, Netanyahu chooses the path of least resistance.
Although describing himself as a disciple of Jabotinsky, Netanyahu acts more like Jabotinsky’s nemesis, Chaim Weizmann. The strategy of Weizmann and the Laborites was “a dunam and a cow, and then another dunam and another cow”––a dunam being an area of land (4 equaling 1 acre). The idea was to avoid tipping off the Arabs while creating facts on the ground that would make a Jewish state inevitable. Weizmann even denied he wanted a Jewish state. The strategy was disingenuous, fooled no one and cost the Jews dearly politically, as the British, who favored the Arabs from the start, gradually stripped away Jewish rights.
Instead of a dunam and a cow, Netanyahu and the Likud Party build a settlement and another settlement, this while broadcasting their support for a two-state solution which grants Arabs political rights to the land the Jews are building on. It’s a crazy contradiction. Jabotinsky offers a way out. Resist efforts to strip away Jewish rights. Boldly defend Judea and Samaria as Jewish land. Declare that there will never be an Arab state in Israel’s ancient home. The real problem is that Israel’s leaders are too clever by half. If they can’t speak candidly, they should pull down those Jabotinsky pictures at Likud meetings. It’s not his image that’s important but his teachings, and without the one what’s the point of the other? Put up supermodel Bar Rafaeli. Her image will have the same impact on policy—that is to say, none—but she at least is easier on the eyes.
Netanyahu’s vacillation on the Palestinian Arab issue contrasts with his bold approach on Iran. He consistently warns the world of the grave danger. The difference is that he views Iran as an existential threat, whereas the threat of a PLO state he has viewed as manageable. There was a structure in place to deal with it. Unfortunately that structure depended on others, namely the U.S. running interference at the UN. Counting on others is risky business. You say you want a two-state solution, Obama says to Israel. We will ensure you get it, even if it means stabbing you in the name of securing it. Now the rug has been pulled out from under Netanyahu and he finds himself sitting on the floor in stunned disbelief. The hard knock has opened his eyes, however, to see the threat has become more existential than manageable.
The Netanyahu government has been shocked into following Jabotinsky’s counsel and speaking the truth. Netanyahu and his spokesmen finally tell us the Palestinian Authority has no intention of living beside Israel but is determined to replace it. That means the two state solution is a mirage.
For now, the prime minister’s belated backbone is to be applauded. Let’s hope it will be permanent. Perhaps it was brought on not only by the shock of being “stabbed in the front,” to borrow from former UN Ambassador John Bolton, but by the fact that a pro-Israel president is waiting in the wings. To his credit Netanyahu wasted no time in blasting the resolution. And when Kerry tried to defend the anti-Israel resolution as somehow an act of saving Israel, Netanyahu would have none of it, condemning Kerry’s speech the same day as “almost as unbalanced as the anti-Israel resolution passed at the UN.” Netanyahu was Jabotinsky-like.
In fairness to Netanyahu, he is hardly the first Israeli leader to fail to resist the spurious charges thrown at Israel over the decades––charges that have grown in intensity with their mindless, unchallenged repetition. Shmuel Katz, a Jabotinsky disciple who authored the definitive book on his mentor, Lone Wolf, left behind a well-documented trail of Israel’s failure in this regard. Perhaps the most effective spurious charge was that that the settlements are illegal. In his speech Kerry said: “In 1978 the State Department legal advisor advised the Congress of his conclusion, that Israel’s government program establishing civilian settlements in the occupied territory is inconsistent with international law. And we see no change since then to affect that fundamental conclusion.”
Back in 1979 Katz debunked that mockery of an analysis. A State Department lawyer tasked with providing the Carter administration with another stone to throw at Israel came up with it. He based his findings on the Fourth Geneva Convention, a reading of which shows it has zero relevance to Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria. But he twisted it to suit Carter’s purpose, which Katz summed up at the time as the need to find Jewish settlements illegal: “Otherwise the Arabs will be annoyed, oil prices might go up, who knows—Saudi Arabia might initiate an embargo.”
Ben Zion Netanyahu and Shmuel Katz remained faithful to Jabotinsky’s teachings, whose greatest idea was really a very simple one. Ancient Jews knew it well, strongly resisting every attempt to curtail their rights. That healthy spirit was lost over centuries of persecution and exile, giving way to the exact opposite. “The lack of capacity to resist by force, which was originally considered one of the humiliating and detrimental effects of the Exile, became over time a praiseworthy trait,” Ben-Zion Netanyahu writes. “An ideology emerged which justified and praised it.”
Unfortunately, that ideology is alive and well today in the form of J Street and its ilk, parading under the false flag of saving Israel’s soul. But it also manifests itself among Israel’s leaders through their dependence on America––turning an entire country intoSchutzjuden, a once common term that referred to protected Jews. The illusion that they are protected was rudely shattered a week ago, and by a single vote. It could turn into the greatest gift Israel ever received if it snaps Israelis out of their Diaspora-like mentality and if it makes their leaders embark on the “political offensive” Jabotinsky urged. For the moment at least, it has led to a healthy spark of righteous anger. Let’s hope it grows into a perpetual flame.
David Isaac is writer/producer/director of Zionism 101 (http://zionism101.org )
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