Stop Them with a Clear-Cut Victory Part IV

by Moshe Sharon

4^th  part of 5

"Peace Plans" – methods to reward the Arab aggressors

In short, it is peace on paper for which Israel has paid dearly, foolishly setting a regrettable precedent according to which the aggressor is rewarded by the victim of his aggression. Egypt lost four wars that it initiated against Israel, losing territories from which it committed its acts of aggression as a result. In the 1967 war, it lost the whole of Sinai and the Gaza Strip, both of which it had been holding illegally. However, under the 1979 peace agreement, Israel returned to the Egyptian aggressor everything it had lost (Egypt never demanded the return of Gaza). Such a thing has never happened before in the history of warfare between nations. No aggressor has ever been rewarded for his aggression by the victorious victim of his aggression. However, in the case of Israel and the Arabs, Israel has created the precedent making aggression a "no-lose gamble" for the aggressor. The Israel-Egypt agreement established the model for all the later "peace" negotiations between Israel and the Arab countries (including the Palestinian Arabs) that are actively contemplating its destruction. They are all looking for the same style of "no-lose" treaty. Instead of the Arabs having to pay for the privilege of having peace with Israel, Israel has established the abnormal equation that it pays with vital strategic interests for a piece of merchandise called "peace" which the Arabs do not have in their stores to sell. The latest bid of Syria is the most striking.

The Syrian lost the Golan Heights in two successive wars of aggression against Israel in 1967 and 1973. Only an abnormal country would seriously think of rewarding the Syrian aggressors by showing readiness to return to them the highly strategic territory they lost, knowing full well that the Syrian army is preparing for war. It is as if Germany were to be given back the 44,310 square miles it lost following its aggression in World War II. Regarding this, Professor Lloyd Cohen of the School of Law, George Mason University, remarked:

The Israeli case is even stronger. Unlike belligerent Syria, Germany is now a peaceful country, and an ally to its neighbors. In addition, the land taken from Germany was land of historic German settlement and development (East Prussia, Lower Silesia, Breslau). Under those circumstances were it to be given sovereignty over, let us say, the Kaliningrad Oblast (East Prussia) it would be far more reasonable than granting Syria sovereignty over Jewish villages in the Golan.

Meanwhile Egypt also is preparing for war. It has built an army of one million soldiers; one may ask against whom? Who are the enemies of Egypt that compel her to keep such a huge army backed by many thousand of the best American tanks produced locally by permission of the USA, a huge air force, and a gigantic arsenal of missiles. If the countries bordering on Egypt are all Arab brothers who then is the enemy, against whom are the soldiers urged to fight? Whom are they taught to hate? Which armies are they supposed to defeat? Which country are they supposed to conquer? Is there any doubt concerning the answer to all these, and similar, rhetorical questions? Isn't it clear that Israel, its people, its land, and its army are the targets of these extensive, intensive, and expensive Egyptian preparations. Isn't it rather strange, or rather disloyal, even treacherous that the building, equipping and supporting of this huge Egyptian military buildup against Israel is carried out with the full knowledge, support and encouragement of the United States of America, and financed by the American taxpayer? It is treacherous because while Israel is the most faithful ally of the United States in the whole world, it is impossible that the American government does not realize that this huge Egyptian army could at any moment move on Israel with or without a pretext.

As far as the Palestinian signature on agreements with Israel is concerned, here the picture is just the same. It took Arafat just a few days after he had signed the Oslo agreements before he announced, on May 10, 1994, in front of a cheering Muslim crowd in Johannesburg: "I do not consider this agreement it to be more than the agreement which was signed between our Prophet Muhammad and Quraysh." (See Arafat Johannesburg speech http://www.iris.org.il/quotes/joburg.htm )

There was hardly a Muslim who did not understand the message: the Prophet Muhammad concluded a ten years armistice agreement with the tribe of Quraysh at Hudaybiyah near Mecca in 628. He annulled it unilaterally once he had finished building up a strong army. (See chapter V below) However, at the time of Muhammad, the agreement held for about two years; Arafat sent his bombs to explode in buses and restaurants in Jerusalem, and elsewhere in Israel, within weeks of solemnly signing the document announcing the inauguration of the "era of peace." He never planned to keep the agreement. 'Abd al-Bari 'Atwan the famous editor of al-Quds al-Arabi felt free to report in the Lebanese television an interview which he had conducted with Arafat in Tunisia in 1994. Arafat said:

"By God I shall drive them mad. I shall turn these agreements into a disaster for them. Not in my days, but in your time you shall see the Jews running away from Palestine. Only be patient."

Terrorizing the effeminate infidel enemy

The Arabs, led by the Saudis, have now issued an ultimatum to Israel: either Israel accepts the Arab "peace" plan which means putting her on a direct route to disappearance within a few years, or "bear the consequences." The government of Israel and the Americans are elated: the Arabs are "talking peace." The official reaction of the Israeli government, instead of being a forthright rejection of this impudent Arab deceitful maneuver that has been attempted several times in the past, said that "it was a good basis for negotiations". The Israelis still do not understand that the only peace the Arabs will accept is a peace that comes from victory and the annihilation, or subjugation, of their Jewish enemy. The "peace" diplomatic maneuvers are merely another path to that result. The core point is that the acceptance of Israel as a strong free Jewish state is not on the table for the Arabs, which simply means that no peace as the Israelis would understand it is available.

The frightening part of this Arab plot is that it excited the President of the United States of America so much that he has decided to convene a "peace conference" to promote it. At this conference Israel will be the defendant facing its accusers: the Arab League, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Americans (influenced, to some extent at least, by the traditional pro-Arab views of the State Department), and probably the European Union as well.

What do the Muslims, particularly the perpetrators of the concentrated attacks on the Americans and Israel that began in the early 1990s, make of this development? Wouldn't they think that they are on the way to victory not only over Israel but also over the West in general? The Saudis, who are the largest supporters of Muslim terrorism all over the world, enjoy immunity in the United States, and have a direct influence on shaping the American foreign policy. Does it not mean that the Americans and Israelis are ripe for the next attack?

On 7 March 2007, in a lecture delivered at the annual dinner of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy and Research in Washington D.C, Professor Bernard Lewis remarked that the Muslims believed that they had caused the fall of the Soviet Union which they regarded a truly deadly opponent. "Dealing with the soft, pampered, and effeminate Americans would be an easy matter." (To this it can be added that after what the Arabs regard as the defeat of the Israeli Army in Lebanon by the Hizbullah, Israel looks no less effeminate than the Americans.)

"This belief appeared to be confirmed," says Professor Lewis, "when the world saw one attack after another on American bases and installations with virtually no effective response of any kind – only angry words and expensive missiles dispatched to remote uninhabited places. The lessons of Vietnam and Beirut (1983) were confirmed by Mogadishu (1993). In both Beirut and Mogadishu, a murderous attack on Americans, who were there as part of UN-sponsored missions, was followed by a prompt and complete withdrawal. The message was understood and explained. "Hit them, and they'll run." This was the course of events leading to 9/11. That attack was clearly intended to be the completion of the first sequence and the beginning of the new one, taking the war into the heart of the enemy camp."

Are not these words true for Israel as well, and even more so? Was the war not taken into the heart of the Israeli camp? Bombs exploded in Israeli towns and villages, missiles are repeatedly hitting the south of Israel, an Israeli soldier was kidnapped from inside pre-1967 Israeli territory, endless acts of terror have been carried out by the terrorists who belong to the militias of the Palestinian authority, and this is only a short list. The Israeli reaction has been virtually no reaction: except for words, and not even angry words, in which the Jewish government has announced innumerable times: "the Palestinian Authority is not doing enough to stop terror." The army has been given orders to shoot into open spaces that, in the Israeli laundering of words, were defined as "spaces used for launching missiles." For more than a year now three Israeli soldiers, two in Lebanon and one in Gaza, are kept captive and the only reaction of Israel is an offer to release thousands of terrorists from its prisons to get at least one of them back. What the Arabs understand from this behaviour is that the Israelis have lost the ability to defend themselves let alone to retaliate. When they retaliate as they did in Lebanon it was with so many restrictions that the retaliation ended with the Islamic side stronger, bolder, more daring, and ready for the next encounter, and the Israeli side divided, frightened, and indecisive.

The Muslims are now convinced that terror is the most effective weapon in their arsenal. They have found out that they can kill civilians without being punished, even without being condemned. They have discovered that no matter what they do, the chorus of the Western media will condemn the Israelis and the Americans. They also hear the voices that tell them that terror has become an acceptable phenomenon. Some writers in the West have even defined terror as "the weapon of the weak;" a very understanding, even supportive, definition: since the weak are the under-privileged, according to the false concepts of the Left in the Western world, it follows that its weapon of terror should gain our sympathy. The weak cannot be defeated because they have nothing to lose etc. etc.

Moshe Sharon

Professor Emeritus of Islamic History and Civilization.

 

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