Appeasement And Defeatism
ZOA in the news
September 12, 2004

Appeasement And Defeatism



The Detroit Jewish News,
September 12, 2004

By Jerome S. Kaufman

Finally, I am able to pour out the anguish that has resulted from watching Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dismantle the land of the Jews. Moshe Dann, Detroit Jewish News contributor, living for years in Israel, supplied me with a phrase that opened the emotional floodgates. I had e-mailed him a simple question.
“What is going on?” He replied, “Ehud Olmert’s [Sharon’s deputy prime minister] latest statement says it all: ‘unilateral withdrawal to whatever the international community will allow’”


Moshe calls it “the policy of defeatism and appeasement.” How perfect! Who then is running Israel, the supposed land of the Jews? The “international community?” Certainly not the Jews. Did they leave one ignoble Diaspora existence where their destiny was dictated by others to create another entity, supposedly of their own, wherein these same powers control the lives of the Jews?


Leslie Susser of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency writes of “quick action” by Sharon, averting a “showdown” with the United States over “settlement building in the West Bank [Judea and Samaria].” How did Sharon avert this “showdown?” By a policy of” appeasement and defeatism,” of course. You may remember that Sharon had coerced his cabinet into approving a preposterous Road Map plan in 2003 designed by Israel’s “friends” – the United Nations, the European Union, the Russians and the American Department of State. Sharon, in the document, agreed to dismantle “illegal” settlements and not expand existing ones.


The Israelis are thus to remain in what Abba Eban called the “Auschwitz borders” of the former Green Line – a narrow corridor along the Mediterranean coast in which a much smaller Israeli population existed prior to the 1967 Six-Day War. This is to be the dictated destiny of the Jews while the Arabs expand all over Judea and Samaria and, of course, in so-called Israel proper and Jerusalem itself! What is this garbage about negative demographics in Israel? The Arabs don’t even need demographics. Whole masses of tiny Israel are being given to them by the Israelis themselves in this insane policy of “appeasement and defeatism.


The Arab Role
By the way, what was to have been the Arab obligations under the infamous Road Map, now a companion piece to the disastrous Oslo “peace” accords?
The very first paragraph of the Road Map agreement, just like all the very first paragraphs of all the duplicitous “peace” agreements that the Arabs have signed before and the Israelis have swallowed since, says, “In Phase I, the Palestinians immediately undertake an unconditional cessation of violence according to the steps outlined below; such action should be accompanied by supportive measures undertaken by Israel. “Palestinians and Israelis resume security cooperation based on the Tenet work plan to end violence, terrorism and incitement through restructured and effective Palestinian security services. Palestinians undertake comprehensive political reform in preparation for statehood, including drafting a Palestinian constitution and free, fair and open elections upon the basis of those measures.”


Has any of the above ever happened since the Oslo agreement and the Israeli-orchestrated return from Tunisia of a totally defeated Yasser Arafat in 1993? Of course not. Does any realistic political pundit or historian believe it will ever happen? Nevertheless, Israel marches on with its woeful policy of appeasement and defeatism.
Recently, General Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s chief of staff and another general many of us thought genuinely embraced a policy of strength and containment, and most probably, like Ehud Olmert, acting as point man for Ariel Sharon, declared that Israel could return all of the Golan Heights to Syria without compromising security!
This statement is contrary to an evaluation of a coterie of American military analysts that visited the Golan after the Six-Day War. Syrians for years, with the most modest of weapons, rained terror down upon the Israeli farmers of the Hula Valley beneath the Golan Heights.


Courting Egypt
Equally outrageous is Sharon’s courting of the Egyptians to take over policing of Gaza and the underground tunnels that reach directly from Egyptian land
in the Sinai through Rafuah to Palestinian homes from which the weaponry is dispersed. IMRA, the Independent Media Review and Analysis news agency, reported that the Israeli deputy director-general for information declined to raise the issue of Egypt’s failure to act against the smuggling of weapons from Egypt to Gaza as the focus is currently on explaining the Israel Defense Forces operation in Gaza! Shades of Oslo. The Israelis deliberately turn a blind eye on complete non-compliance and continue on the inane path of appeasement and defeatism in the preposterous hope that their centuries-old enemy will simply change their mind and go away and leave the Jews alone!


Where is this all leading? One can only shudder in contemplation. Perhaps the HaShem of those that truly believe will, once again, save the Jews from their own self-destruction?





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