The Words Netanyahu Didn’t Speak - by David Meir-Levi

[Nannette]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35020

As numerous media outlets have noted, in the affable interchange between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu last week, Obama demanded Israel’s commitment to a two-state solution, and he got it -- sort of. Netanyahu said:

“I want to make it clear that we don’t want to govern the Palestinians. We want to live in peace with them. We want them to govern themselves, absent a handful of powers that could endanger the state of Israel. And for this there has to be a clear goal. The goal has to be an end to conflict. There will have to be compromises by Israelis and Palestinians alike. We’re ready to do our share. We hope the Palestinians will do their share, as well. If we resume negotiations, as we plan to do, then I think that the Palestinians will have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state; will have to also enable Israel to have the means to defend itself. And if those conditions are met, Israel’s security conditions are met, and there’s recognition of Israel’s legitimacy, its permanent legitimacy, then I think we can envision an arrangement where Palestinians and Israelis live side by side in dignity, in security, and in peace.”

All good, all forward-looking, all generally supportive of a two-state solution, but . . .not the words “two state solution.”

So one may chide Netanyahu for begging the question, or one may ask why he refused to utter the words that Obama so desperately wants to hear.

And the answer to that question springs at once from an obvious reality. While past performance is never a guarantee of future performance, it is its statistically best indicator.

A two-state solution sounds good, but what does past performance indicate regarding the future performance of a Palestinian state on the West Bank? To answer that question we must take a look at Palestinian history.

Let's go back to 1929, and recall the chant of all too many of the Arabs who slaughtered 89 Jews in Hebron in 1929, injuring hundreds more and driving thousands from the city: "falastin baladna wa'l yahud kalabna" (Palestine is our land and the Jews are our dogs). Let’s recall as well that the victims were non-Zionist, even anti-Zionist, Jews with whom Hebron's Arabs had lived as neighbors for 1000 years. And let’s recall as well that these Jews had done absolutely nothing to incur the wrath of their Arab neighbors. Not a good omen for future neighborly interaction.

What did many British Mandatory Palestinians do when the Hajj Amin el Husseini called for a grand Muslim Jihad and killing Jews "...with your teeth if you must...because this pleases Allah and our religion," shortly before and during World War II? They flocked to his banner and rallied round him by the tens of thousands. They joined his Muslim forces, the Hanzar division, that annihilated 29,000 Jews of Bosnia. And a few years later they joined the other Arab nations to attack the nascent Israel. Let's recall that the Mufti's long-term plans were well known: he invited the Germans to perpetrate the genocide of Jews in Palestine as soon as they were done with the Jews of Europe. He even had his own architectural drawings of a concentration camp with crematoria and gas chambers, waiting to be built in Nablus, for the Jews of Palestine. Not people with whom any nation would want to share a border.

What did Gaza’s Palestinian Arabs do when Egypt’s President Nasser recruited and trained and funded and sheltered the "fedayyeen" and launched them in thousands of terror attacks against Israel between 1949 and 1956? They flocked to his banner and rallied round him, and perpetrated approximately 9000 terror attacks mostly against civilians, killing c. 600 and wounding thousands more, until Israel’s Sinai Campaign (1956) stopped them.

What did Palestinians all over the world do when Arafat rose to international prominence as the world's top terrorist, and the PLO published its charter (1964) promising to destroy Israel and create a Palestine from the river to the sea? They flocked to his banner and supported him with volunteers and money and political activism to turn him into the "George Washington of the Palestinians". His goal never changed, although, chameleon-like he started as an Islamist, became a Marxist, then went back to Islam....as the political winds changed. His goal was always Palestine ‘from the river to the sea.’

What did Arafat's Palestinian followers and recruits do in 1967-1970 when they were ensconced in Jordan? They tried twice to assassinate King Hussein, created a Palestinians-only enclave in southwestern Jordan, and tried to overthrow the Jordanian government. Jordan did not want to share sovereignty with them, so King Hussein kicked Arafat out in the massacres of Black September, 1970, killing c. 10,000 of his Palestinian terrorist soldiers.

So Arafat ensconced himself in Lebanon, which was too weak to kick him out, and terrorized Israel and the Lebanese for 12 years (1970-1982). And what did Arafat’s PLO do while in Lebanon? They nearly destroyed Lebanon as a nation, killed c. 95,000 Lebanese, massacred Christian villages in south Lebanon, and ultimately brought Beirut to the brink of destruction before finally being forced out by Israel (1982).

Let's recall that the Lebanese Christians greeted the invading Israeli troops with flowers and champagne and gifts.....because they were glad that the Israelis were liberating Lebanon from Arafat's Fatah and PLO. The Lebanese sure did not want to share sovereignty with them. Instead they are sharing sovereignty now with Hezbollah, and Lebanon's Christians are fleeing in droves.

President Reagan saved Arafat’s hide with US intervention during Israel’s siege of Beirut in 1982, and Philip Habib engineered his safe passage to Tunis. But even from his exile in Tunis he orchestrated the murder of dozens of Jews and Israelis in Europe.

What did the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip do when Arafat was invited back from exile by Israel after the Oslo Accords (9.1993), to take over control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and to be able once again to wage his terror war against Israel despite his promises of peace at the Oslo Accords (1993)? They voted him in as the "ra'is" of "Palestine" and cheered him on as he and Hamas killed thousands of Jews. And they joyously offered him subservience even as his thugocracy sucked billions from the foreign aid that was supposed to help those same Palestinian people. And let’s recall that this came after 27 years of Israeli sovereignty in which the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza Strip enjoyed local democracy (for the first time ever in their entire history), the fastest growing economy in the world at the time, and their population more than tripled from 995,000 in 1967 to 3,400,000 in 1994! So, after 27 years of prosperity and calm under Israeli sovereignty, the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip still chose to support the leader who promised them genocidal war and terrorism “..until victory or martyrdom.”

And what is the situation now? Hamas won the election in 2006, killed hundreds of Palestinians in the coup of 2007, and now rules the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Hamas is powerful enough and popular enough to take over the West Bank if Israel were to pull out the IDF. Hamas declares that it has no intention of sharing sovereignty with the Palestinian Authority, nor does it retreat from its extreme position of an endless war against Israel until Israel is destroyed and every Jew is dead. Would any nation choose such a neighbor on its borders?

And then there is the question of the future.

Germany tried to kill every Jew in the world. Germany lost the war, made amends, and now is at peace with its neighbors and with Israel. Since Israel forgave the Germans for their genocide of 90% of Europe's Jews, cannot today's Israelis forgive the Palestinians their terror history and their genocidal leaders?

Well...not yet.

The post-war German government repented of its past, outlawed Nazism, tried Nazi leaders as war criminals, made incitement to genocide a crime, made Holocaust denial a crime, disarmed and disbanded the Nazi terror groups that proliferated immediately after the war, and paid reparations to the victims of the Holocaust or their surviving heirs. West Germany became a progressive, democratic, transparent state allied with the USA and Israel and the West against communist aggression. Israel and Germany today are close allies, engaging in a variety of economic and other undertakings of mutual benefit.

There is nothing emerging from Palestinian leaders or their followers to indicate an interest in any of the above behaviors for rapprochement with Israel.

The popularly elected Hamas government still declares its genocidal intentions and bombards Israeli cities almost daily. Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, the DFLP, the PFLP-GC, the el-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Ansar al-Islam, el Qaeda, al Gama’a al-Islamiyeh, and a host of other terror groups all call for Israel’s destruction. And just to make sure that the conflict is passed on to the next generation, Palestinian textbooks, classroom songs and essays, Friday sermons, and government pronouncements are still all about destroying Israel.

And lest one suggest that Palestinian odium towards Jews and Israel is the result of Israel’s “brutal occupation,” let’s recall that Israel’s harsh treatment began only in 2000, after almost seven years of low-intensity terror war begun by Arafat before the ink on the Oslo Accords was dry. Before Arafat’s war, there was no oppression, almost no road blocks, no curfews, no lock-downs, no targeted assassinations, and no defensive barrier. These operations were solely Israel’s restrained and defensive response to the terror war which Arafat and Hamas began as soon as they had the autonomy to do so. Israel RE-occupied the West Bank only after those seven years of terrorism, hundreds dead, thousands wounded, and after the gruesome Park Hotel massacre (3.27.2002).

Let's recall too that Jew-hatred begins in the Qur'an and has been a leit-motif of Arab-Jewish symbiosis for the past 1,375 years. [1] The Palestinians’ hatred of Jews and Israel did not begin with Zionism.

And lest one suggest that the Palestinians have been victims of evil leaders (and that is surely true), let’s recall that Arab leaders’ abuse and victimization of Palestinians dates back to the 19th century. And this abuse continues today as Hamas leaders abuse them and misuse them and mislead them. The Palestinian could have had their own state 70 years ago, and many times over since then, had their leaders been willing to make peace with Israel. But their leadership could countenance no state alongside of Israel…only a state instead of Israel. It is important to recall that there are no leaders without followers.

So Netanyahu can be forgiven for his hesitance to utter those four magic words, such music to Obama’s ears: a two-state solution.

Few national leaders get to choose their states’ neighbors. Obama is pressuring Netanyahu to do just that. And Netanyahu is, quite understandably, hesitant to choose as his neighbor on two borders a state all too many of whose people have, for the last 80 years, been the enthusiastically adulating followers of mass murderers, terrorists, and wannabe genociders.

A two-state solution is not something given as a present at the beginning of negotiations, it is a reward for the proper compromises that enable such a peace to succeed.” [2]

In short, a state of their own is something that the Palestinian people must earn.

And how would they do that?

The Palestinian Authority must outlaw terrorism and incitement, and make incitement to genocide a crime. It must similarly bar hate speech and hate teach and hate preach. It must disarm and disband terror organizations. It must make Holocaust Denial a crime…and then enforce those laws.

It must also become a progressive, transparent, democracy run by rule of law, and ally itself with the USA, Israel, and Western Europe in the global struggle against Islamic Jihadist terrorist aggression. And in doing that is must also repudiate el-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah and Hamas, and reject their nefarious goal of “Islam uber Alles.”

But the Palestinian leaders are far from that, and the people follow the leaders. The grim and tragic truth is that today, if the terrorist leaders of the Palestinian people were to put down their weapons, there would be no more violence. But if Israel were to put down her weapons, there would be no more Israel.

Netanyahu is correct in not supporting the creation of such a state, anywhere in the world….not yet.

Notes:

[1] See Andrew Bostom's "Legacy of Muslim Anti-Semitism" and “Legacy of Jihad.” Matthais Kuntzel’s “Jihad and Jew-hatred” surveys Jew-hatred in the Qur'an, the Sunna, the Sira, and Muslim religious legislation all over the Muslim world.

[2] Rubin Report, 5.20.09.

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David Meir-Levi lectures in English, Hebrew, and Spanish and is a contributor to Frontpagemag.com
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He who is merciful with the cruel, will end-up being cruel to the merciful
- Kohelet Rabba 7:16

[Levi]

I can think of a couple of other words I didn't hear Bibi utter during his speech and that he could have uttered. I think he didn't want to sound crude to the world.