DAVID ISAAC: MIXED MESSAGES
By David Isaac
http://shmuelkatz.com/wordpress/?p=371&Source=email
Shmuel Katz had little patience for dissembling, double-talk or mixed messages – especially from Israel’s leaders. There can be little doubt how he would have reacted to a recent speech by Benjamin Netanyahu to a gathering of Knesset members on Nov. 3, in which the prime minister proved himself the master of the mixed message.
First, the prime minister praises “the efforts being made by President Obama’s administration to find a way to advance the political process.” Given that Obama presses for a total ‘freeze’ on construction in Jewish communities and cities and a subsequent Israeli withdrawal to the ’49 borders – what Abba Eban termed the “Auschwitz borders” — Netanyahu’s praise for such a “political process” is itself mind-boggling.
But the warm words for Obama’s policy become still more bizarre when, a few sentences later, Netanyahu reveals the results presented in a Cabinet meeting earlier that day of a nearly six-month survey conducted by Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon to gauge the level of Palestinian Arab incitement.
“I am talking about official schoolbooks, about the media controlled by the Authority,” Netanyahu says. “The most serious characterization that arose from the materials the Minister showed us was not an argument about borders or certain settlements, but rather the negation of the State of Israel’s right to exist in any borders. This is not expressed in one single article or unusual statement, but all the time.”
Indeed, the nature of that incitement – the complete denial of Israel’s right to exist – demonstrates that the Arabs haven’t given up their ultimate aim, which, in Shmuel’s words, is “but a reflection of the Arab consensus; Israel must go back to the deathtrap of the 1949 Armistice Lines — and there gird itself for the final assault on its life.”
Doubling down on his double-talk, Netanyahu continues: “The truth is that there is great willingness on Israel’s part for a genuine peace process. The truth is that there is not a similar willingness on the part of the Palestinian Authority.”
Here we have Netanyahu’s own admission that there has been a constant stream of anti-Israel invective pouring out of the PA, and that the Arabs haven’t shown themselves truly committed to peace – despite 17 years of opportunity. Logic would dictate that Israel halt the process forthwith, as there is no one with whom to deal.
Netanyahu draws the opposite conclusion, that Israel must “enter into the process”. He adds that “there certainly should be no self-flagellation or blame laid on us or about us, because it is simply not appropriate or right.”
Netanyahu may not like unpleasant words directed at him, but Shmuel would have had some choice ones. He would have taken issue with the prime minister’s assertion that Israel must enter a political process with an entity that engages in anti-Jewish incitement.
In “From Ras Burka To Pollard” (The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 6, 1985), following the infamous murders of Israeli tourists in Egypt, Shmuel wrote:
Israel’s elementary right to see the peace treaty honoured, and indeed a proper concern for the nature of future relations with Egypt, dictate a forthright statement that Israel will not hold any intercourse with Egypt until Cairo begins to fulfill the peace treaty in all of its parts; first and foremost by putting a stop to the propaganda war against Israel.
It’s on the larger issue that Shmuel would have most to say, which is the lack of forthrightness in Netanyahu’s approach. Those on the Right who wish to defend Netanyahu may produce some persuasive-sounding arguments for his actions; that he’s forced to play along with Obama in order to win U.S. support for military action against Iran, or that he’s compelled by international pressure, or constrained by prior Israeli commitments.
Whatever the prime minister’s motives, Shmuel would have had none of it. Shmuel ran with a simple message. It resembled the famous anti-drug message, “Just Say No.” When confronted with impossible international demands that endangered Israel’s existence, Shmuel’s solution was straightforward: “No deal.” This honest, open approach he derived from his hero and mentor, Vladimir Jabotinsky.
In “A Few Words About Steadfastness” (The Jerusalem Post, July 20, 2004), Shmuel wrote:
When, not long after the war, the British began to retreat from the purpose of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, it was Jabotinsky who became the outstanding opponent of British policy. As the British retreat gathered momentum, Jabotinsky was indeed the only Zionist leader who stood firm and unbending against accommodation with that retreat.
This theme ran through Shmuel’s writings. Can one imagine Netanyahu making statements such as the following?
“Israel’s bitter experience dictates that there should be no delay and no ambiguity in delivering the message to Washington and, indeed, to the Jewish community in the Diaspora: the Reagan Plan is an invitation to suicide by degrees and must be fought as such.” (“Dumping the Ballast”, The Jerusalem Post, Jan. 27, 1983)
“It is crucial that our government take advantage of the criticism in the U.S., indeed the disgust, aroused by the enormity of Bush’s behavior – by standing up straight and announcing that it has been forced to conclude that Washington is not acceptable in logic or in conscience, as an arbiter.” (“Pawn in the U.S. Elections”, The Jerusalem Post, Nov. 29, 1991)
The decision must be to roll up our national sleeves, do the job, put an end to self-invited humiliations of rejection and restore our national self-respect. (“Sorry We Troubled You, Mr. Bush”, The Jerusalem Post, Feb. 27, 1992)
These words, inspiring in part because they are so seldom spoken, would give new heart to the Israeli people and much satisfaction to Israel’s friends. They also put into stark relief just how weak is the too-clever-by-half, faint-hearted strategy of Netanyahu.
More than inspiring, only this kind of forthright strategy can lead Israel away from the dangers before it. Shmuel understood that the longer Israel takes to find the courage to tell it like it is, the harder it will be down the road.
In “Into the Jaws of Catastrophe” (The Jerusalem Post, April, 3, 1981), he writes:
Those who balk at the idea of Israel halting the peace process and demanding renegotiation of the treaty fear the diplomatic battle. On the contrary, she will be so hounded and harassed by the same international coalition to vacate Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and withdraw into the 1949 Armistice lines.
If she is not to countenance a direct attempt at her annihilation within those lines, she will have to make a stand somewhere. The alternative to a diplomatic struggle now is not diplomatic tranquility — and peace — later.
The choice is between a strong stand now and a postponement of war —and a diplomatic defensive later in straitened military circumstances, with an emasculated southern front and the much more credible threat of war if Israel does not submit to the last Arab demand.
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