Peace - it's not what might have but what couldn't have been

Soccer Dad
11 November '10

Last week, Former President Clinton wrote an op-ed making the fanciful claim that there would have been peace in the Middle East had Yitzchak Rabin not been murdered. I showed from the historical record that his claim was not accurate.

But there's another assumption that's faulty here. Implicity Clinton is blaming Israel. But by making Yitzchak Rabin the one indispensible person for peace to succeed he ignores that Rabin's positions and those of current Prime Minister Netanyahu are actually pretty close. It's a point that Yaacov Lozowick makes in two recent posts. In one he writes:

Mitchell Plitnick and many of his co-activists seem to accept the Palestinian narrative: the peace process was supposed to end with Israel on the 1967 border, Jerusalem divided, and some Israeli accommodation of the refugee problem. This, however, is counter factual. No Israeli government before 2000 ever accepted those positions (Yitzchak Rabin was openly against them); and while arguably some official Israeli negotiators may have come close since 2000, they were never authorized to do so by the Israeli electorate.

In the other he writes, more generally:

But perhaps it might be reasonable for self-proclaimed Israeli champions of peace to recognize that on Jerusalem, their anointed saint the martyred Rabin held the same position Netanyahu does.

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Clinton on Rabin; Dalia Rabin on Rabin

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
04 November '10

In a New York Times op-ed, Bill Clinton praises Yitzhak Rabin and the Oslo process.

A decade and a half since his death, I continue to believe that, had he lived, within three years we would have had a comprehensive agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Rabin's daughter, Dalia, was less sure:

Interviewed in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot on October 8, Dalia Rabin said, “Many people who were close to father told me that on the eve of the murder he considered stopping the Oslo process because of the terror that was running rampant in the streets and that Arafat wasn't delivering the goods. Father after all wasn't a blind man running forward without thought.

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The forgotten victims of "peace"

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
05 November '10

Yesterday marked the 15th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin's assasination.

As happens every year, the Left marked the day by talking about Rabin's wonderful legacy of peace and how if he had been alive there would be peace today.

Everyone forgets to mention that when he was killed Rabin was reconsidering the entire Oslo process due to the massive increase in terror that Israel suffered after bringing the PLO to the outskirts of Jerusalem.



Every year we remember Rabin, and every year the Left conveniently forgets the real toll of the peace process - more than 1,500 Israelis murdered by Palestinian terrorists who use the Left's obsession with peace as a means of continuing their war of annihilaton against us.

This week Latma, the Hebrew-language satirical website I edit decided that the time has come to give voice to the victims. And so we present to you "Song to a Dream" by the Victims of Peace Band.

May their memory be a blessing and may G-d avenge their blood.

Clinton: nostalgic for a past that never was

Soccer Dad
04 November '10

In the weeks following the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin, Israel handed over control of six cities to the Palestinian Authority. The New York Times reported at the time.

For Mr. Abu-Ghdeib, a local wallpaper dealer who had enlisted in the police, the building carried added significance, for it was there that he had been imprisoned by the Israelis.

"I shook the door of the cell where I was held," he said today. "It made my hair stand on end. I saw the place where they had beaten me. I had dreamt of freedom, and today I feel free."

Mr. Abu-Ghdeib, who had been jailed in Nablus and elsewhere in the 1970's for taking part in weapons training and a grenade attack on Israeli soldiers, joined the several hundred Palestinian police officers, whose arrival today from the self-rule enclave of Jericho was met by ecstatic throngs.

Tens of thousands of people spilled into streets covered with brightly colored banners and pennants in the largest outpouring of jubilation since Israel began withdrawing its troops last month from West Bank cities and villages under an agreement signed in September. Most of the pullout will be complete by January, ending Israeli rule over much of the West Bank.

And two weeks later:

Under a final cascade of stones, Israeli troops withdrew today from Ramallah, completing a pullout from six West Bank cities and their neighboring villages in preparation for Palestinian elections next month.

"Out!," shouted youths as a column of Israeli jeeps moved away from a police station downtown, trailed by scores of cheering Palestinians. As stones pitched by the crowd arched toward the receding vehicles, Palestinian officers entered the station, raised a flag and greeted the throng from the roof, waving their rifles.

The scene was similar to others played out this month across the West Bank, and it set the stage for Palestinian elections planned for January 20.

Under an Israeli-Palestinian accord signed in September, Israeli forces have left six cities and more than 400 villages and towns in recent weeks, ending 28 years of control over much of the West Bank.

Then a few weeks later the terror started:

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Time to Let Go of Rabin

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
03 November '10

The annual anniversary of Rabin's death had long ago become nothing more than a sad circus. It is a stage for left-wing politicians who have otherwise become completely irrelevant, to posture about peace and a chance for the left wing media to breathlessly dig up scandals about "right wingers" disrespecting the hallowed day of Rabin's death. This is the pathetic way that Israel's degenerating left wing elite wastes its time, on hollow speeches about peace and furious articles bemoaning the lack of recognition for their cult of personality.

Embodying the irrelevance of the left, the now 89 year old Peres dragged himself over to Rabin Square in Tel Aviv to proclaim that, "We are more determined than the enemies of peace, and therefore we will win". In 1996, when the left denounced the "enemies of peace", they meant Netanyahu. Now Netanyahu is back in office, and it's a tossup whether Peres means him, or Lieberman or Hamas. Today few outside the radical left even believe that the only obstacle to peace is Israeli conservatives and nationalists. The pathetic few thousand that trudged into Rabin Square are a testament to that.

18 years after the left illegally thrust the peace boondoggle on Israel, their rhetoric rings pathetically hollow. "They have not succeeded, and they will not succeed, to snatch away our only possession. A possession that is priceless ... This dear possession is called hope, it is called peace," Peres declaimed. There hasn't been peace in the country in a very long time. And for most Israelis, their most precious possession isn't the myth of peace, but their homes and their families in the land of Israel-- which the left has endangered in its frenzied pursuit of peace.

In between denouncing Israeli television channels for refusing to broadcast the event live, for the rational reason that at this point no one wants to watch it, the media threw together another manufactured scandal. This one accuses the Bar Ilan student union of daring to throw a party for the opening of the school year, on the Gregorian Calendar date of the assassination. Clearly those right wingers are throwing a party to mock Rabin's death on a calendar date that isn't even the one used for the anniversary. The next step is to find out what Bar Ilan students are doing on the anniversary of Rabin's death by the Chinese calendar. And then move on to the Aztec calendar.

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Rabin Who?

By Moshe Feiglin
Jewish Leadership
16 Cheshvan, 5771 (Oct. 24, '10)

Translated from Ma'ariv's NRG website.

There is a major discrepancy between the national energies invested in commemorating Yitzchak Rabin and the way the man is perceived by a growing majority of Israel's public. In all the official media, some sort of mourning takes place during the weeks surrounding the date of his assassination. But under the surface, the public is – at best - distancing itself from Rabin.

The assassination of a prime minister is a terrible thing. Its social significance is far broader than its personal aspect. It is certainly appropriate that Rabin Memorial Day should be a meaningful day for all of us. Why hasn't that happened? Why is just the opposite taking place? Because Yitzchak Rabin made a grave mistake when he submitted to the pressure of the Oslo cabal and decided to spearhead this madness.

What does that have to do with Rabin's memorial? Why mix his commemoration with politics? Because Oslo is far beyond a political dispute. Oslo is a menace that perpetually pursues and murders us. Just a few weeks ago, four Jews from Beit Hagai were murdered on the road by terrorists who were released as part of the cursed Oslo process.

The process that began when Yitzchak Rabin shook hands with the head of the Organization to Liberate the Land of Israel from the Jews (PLO) brought us much more than an unending trail of blood. Prior to Rabin, all of Israel's prime ministers - from both Right and Left – understood that it was dangerous to speak with, meet or recognize the PLO in any manner.

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Reclaiming Rabin’s Legacy

Emmanuel Navon
For the Sake of Zion
28 October '10

How did the man who declared that he would “break the bones” of the Palestinians become the Mahatma Gandhi of the Israeli Left? Like every year, the commemoration of Yitzhak Rabin’s murder is an exercise in historical falsification and emotional intimidation. It is time to set the record straight.

Rabin grew up in the nationalistic Palmah movement. He was a pure sabra: a Jew from Sparta, not Athens, who was told to fight rather than to think. A talented officer, he followed the ideal career of the Ashkenazi ruling class: IDF Officer, Chief of Staff, Ambassador to the US, Labor MK, Prime Minister —a true WASP (White, Ashkenazi, Sabra Paratrooper).

In his two three-year stints as Prime Minister (1974-1977 and 1992-1995), Rabin was maneuvered into foreign policy decisions he had originally opposed, and in both cases he paved the way to the electoral victory of the Right. In 1975, Rabin was basically coerced by Gerald Ford and Henri Kissinger to withdraw from about 20% of the Sinai Peninsula in order for the US to convince Sadat that abandoning the Egyptian-Soviet alliance made sense. And when Rabin came back to power in 1992, he was not a leader who had “seen the light” as some would have us believe, but rather a man who was manipulated into signing a deal he rightly suspected to be risky.

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Sculpting idols, smiting idols

Sarah Honig
Another Tack
21 October '10

Although we gave the world monotheism, we are a nation obsessively searching for idols. We sculpt some, raise them on pedestals, confer sanctity upon them and declare their worship mandatory. In other idols we seek imperfections, poke at them, dig at the surface and deepen the blemishes so we may be justified in smiting the ghastliness.

We make our obsessions personal, even long after the idols’ mortal models are deceased, long after they are really relevant.

Even Bar Kochba isn’t invulnerable, presumably because his fight for liberty and rebellion against ancient Rome was revered by Zionism’s founding fathers. That renders him permissible prey for zealous post-Zionists.

Hence posthumously Bar Kochba – another era’s son – is recurrently judged with arrogant hindsight according to postmodern precepts.

Moshe Dayan is hardly as antiquated, but he too is zealously seized upon by ardent left-wingers, who project the conclusions they purport to draw from his 1973 tactical bungles onto the country’s current predicaments.

Thrashing Dayan presumably buys aspiring scribblers the approval of leftist media and academia overlords. The annual Yom Kippur rite was exacerbated this year with the release of 37-year-old protocols, which contain little previously unknown. Yet the passion of the well-orchestrated “beat Dayan” fest would surely lead a just-landed Martian to assume that said Dayan is still a forceful mover and shaker.

As assiduously as we smite some idols, so we aggrandize others. To underpin compulsory veneration, our thought police scrutinizes calendars to apprehend the firm, publication or school, which – heaven help them – omitted highlighting Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination anniversary as a national day of mourning. Each year the personality cult is revived via public ceremonies, politicized vigils and manipulative melodramatic mantras. We’re all a captive audience of kitschy commissars.

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The message in Palestinian condemnation of terror on grounds of efficacy

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
11 February '10

Compare and contrast:

"A loathsome, criminal act of murder was committed today at a site holy to both Jews and Arabs in Hebron.The Prime Minister and Defense Minister, government ministers and citizens of the State of Israel severely condemn this terrible murder of innocent people, which occurred during Ramadan prayer services."
Statement by Prime Minister Rabin on the Murders in Hebron, 25 February 1994.

'This incident condemned by us, which is incompatible with the Palestinian national interests, and with the efforts of the Palestinian National Authority, as well as with the commitments they have undertaken.. violence that has been proven to cause damage to the higher interests of our people."
Palestinian Prime Minister Dr. Salam Fayyad 10 February 2010

The differences are hardly subtle.

When an Israeli prime minister condemns an attack by a Jew against Palestinians he condemns it because it is in and of itself a "loathsome, criminal act."

When a Palestinian prime minister condemns an attack by a Palestinian against an Israeli, he condemns it because it is "incompatible with the Palestinian national interests."

And this isn't the first time.

In point of fact, official Palestinian condemnations of terror against Israelis consistently condemn it on the basis of its efficacy (does not serve interests) rather than because it is simply wrong.

Look back at the details of the charges that PA prosecutors have filed against the few Palestinian terrorists that they jailed (mostly in order to protect them from Israeli justice) and - that's right - they weren't sentenced for murdering Israelis but instead for acting "against Palestinian interests".

This isn't just a technical matter.

It goes to the very heart of the nature of how the Palestinian leadership relates to Israel.

And it should serve as an important warning for policy makers.

If the reason it is wrong to murder Israelis today is that it doesn't serve Palestinian interests and not that it is simply wrong to murder Israelis then what happens if circumstances are such that it does serve Palestinian interests to murder Israelis?

And given that this is the case, what restrictions are necessary for the arming, training, etc. of Palestinian security forces?
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Bill Clinton, I Can Play Those "If" Games, Too

Batya Medad
Shilo Musings
15 November 09

If Hillary had divorced Bill, she would be United States President today!

That's a lot truer than Bill's Rabin worship:

"There would be peace if Rabin were still alive"

Hat tip: IMRA


Considering that Clinton's judgment was lower than his charisma, why should anyone take him seriously? Did Bill use his "Divorce is not an option" line to Hillary when caught in his extra-marital affairs?

As I've written numerous times, peace isn't up to us. We're not at war against our neighbors. The Arabs unabashedly declare that they want us dead and gone. They attack, terrorize etc. Israel just takes it, trying to invent various "defensive shields," and on the rare ocassions when we do fight back, we're condemned by the world.

Yitzchak Rabin's policies were not bringing Israel towards peace, just to a more weakened state when our enemies were (as always) planning our destruction.

There's nothing like death, especially a violent one, to turn a controversial figure into a "saint." Israel's Left, supported by like-minded international figures and organizations, has so efficiently and professionally exploited Rabin's murder; you'd think they had orchestrated it...

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Our day of mourning... and hatred

Yitzhak Klein
JPost
1 November 09

Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room... The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.
- George Orwell, 1984

In George Orwell's dystopia, formal public ceremonies are devoted to the inculcation of hatred. The object of this hatred is the classic "enemy" that is a feature of every totalitarian society, legions of faceless and anonymous traitors who threaten society on all sides and whom it is an obligation to hate.

In totalitarian societies, the cultivation of hatred serves important political objectives. Totalitarian society requires subjects who subordinate their lives to the demands of the regime, who submerge their personalities within its logic. This is achieved by deliberately inflaming their basest passions.

The tragedy of totalitarian culture however is not that it finds the cultivation of hatred useful, but that hatred genuinely reflects the spiritual life of rulers and ruled alike. The true purpose for which hatred is cultivated is to create a society in which the human virtues of pity, compassion and decency are suppressed. This can happen only in a society in which such virtues have already been undermined. Totalitarian societies may pay lip service to the highest ideals, but in practice they dehumanize themselves by dehumanizing their enemies, who possess no rights and to whom no justice is due. Such a society can fall into a barbarism darker than that of any society of primitives.

Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were characterized by public ceremonies devoted, formally or informally, to the cultivation of hatred. By contrast, the State of Israel at its foundation set aside a day for remembering the victims of the Holocaust, and many individuals continue to cherish antipathy for Germany, but nobody ever contemplated a day devoted, formally or informally, to the hatred of Germans. That rightly would have been considered sick, a mark of Cain on the forehead of our society. No day devoted to the deliberate inculcation of hatred was established in Israel until 1996.

SINCE ITS establishment, those who arrogated to themselves the right to determine the nature of Yitzhak Rabin's memorial day have devoted it to inculcating hatred against a particular community within Israeli society. Last year, repeating a frequent theme, President Shimon Peres admonished the national-religious community for not joining in the commemoration of Rabin. How ironic. On this day, members of that community are expected to have no voice, other than the voice that those who despise them would put into their mouths. Like Jews in medieval Europe herded into churches on Christmas, their role is to confess in public the crime of unbelief in Rabin's agenda, and to affirm that unbelief is equivalent to culpability.

This of course serves a particular political agenda. But the real tragedy of Rabin's memorial day is that it has become the occasion for legitimizing a culture of hatred. This culture invokes a community of public enemies, treats them as collectively guilty and makes it easier to rationalize the denial of their fundamental rights. The way Rabin's memorial day is celebrated admits a breath of totalitarian culture into our public life.

Politically motivated hatred has practical political consequences. The hatred which finds its expression on Rabin's memorial day had such consequences four years ago, during disengagement, which violated the fundamental rights of hapless Israeli citizens and traduced Israel's civil compact.

It matters little what "security" arguments were deployed by those who legitimated this policy, or that the arguments turned out - indeed were known at the time - to be baseless. At root, the policy was motivated by causeless hatred, as some of its advocates have since acknowledged. The victims of disengagement are the objects of sympathy today, but not yet, as they should be, of repentance.

It has become habitual for those who have appropriated Rabin's memorial day to blame the spiritual ills of Israeli society on "the occupation." That is too easy and facile an explanation. Surely these people are inured against that particular source of spiritual contamination. Those who tolerate or encourage an element of totalitarian culture in the celebration of Rabin's memorial day ought to make the day an occasion for what they are ever eager to urge upon others - heshbon nefesh, taking a critical, reflective retrospective of one's soul.

The writer heads the Israel Policy Center.
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Yitzchak Rabin's Legacy, The Altalena

Batya Medad
Shilo Musings
30 October 09

(Excellent piece from Batya Medad that brings perspective of a bigger picture)

The Israeli media is now full of 1984-style programs and statements in memory of their idol, Yitzchak Rabin. In contrast, many of us remember a different Rabin and a different Israeli History.

Yitzchak Rabin was a David Ben Gurion loyalist, a Palmach officer, an IDF (Israel Defense Forces) Chief of Staff, twice Israel's Prime Minister, who was murdered(assassinated) after a public appearance at a Left wing rally, fourteen years ago. Since then Israel's Left, media, politicians, academics etc have used it as the springboard, justification for massive character assassination against anyone who dares to disagree with their opinions and ideology.

If this was literature, instead of history, it would be written as a classic case of poetic justice, "...a literary device in which virtue is ultimately rewarded or vice punished, and often in modern literature by an ironic twist of fate intimately related to the character's own conduct."

That brings us to the Altalena, a tragedy caused by vile hatred of Jew against Jew. It dwarfs the despicablesezon, when Ben Gurion's followers gave names of fellow Jews to the British to have them arrested and worse.

In 1948, Menachem Begin's Irgun had managed to buy much-needed arms for the battle for Israel's Independence. An agreement had been reached with the new provisional government concerning how they were to be used and distributed, with a priority for freeing Jerusalem's Old City. But David Ben Gurion tricked him and ended up sending his soldiers, including Yitzchak Rabin, to attack the ship, sink the weapons and murder Jews.

"Begin had meanwhile boarded the Altalena, which was now heading for Tel Aviv. He hoped that it would be possible to enter into a dialogue with the Provisional Government and to unload the remaining weapons peacefully. But this was not the case. Ben-Gurion ordered Yigael Yadin (acting Chief of Staff) to concentrate large forces on the Tel Aviv beach and to take the ship by force. Heavy guns were transferred to the area and at four in the afternoon, Ben-Gurion ordered the shelling of the Altalena. One of the shells hit the ship, which began to burn. There was danger that the fire would spread to the holds which contained explosives, and the captain ordered all aboard to abandon ship. People jumped into the water, whilst their comrades on shore set out to meet them on rafts. Although the captain flew the white flag of surrender, automatic fire continued to be directed at the unarmed survivors. Begin, who was on deck, agreed to leave the ship only after the last of the wounded had been evacuated."

The late Shmuel Katz, told me that he had always believed that the main goal of the attack was to assassinate Menachem Begin, whom Ben Gurion considered his strongest rival. Menachem Begin, always the noble gentleman, in his naive innocence could never accept such a theory, nor would he demand apologies and cheshbon nefesh, accounting of the soul, from those who attacked him and his followers.

In Psychology there's a principle called projection, "Projection also appears where we see our own traits in other people..." That explains why Menachem Begin and Israel's pro-Jews in the Land of Israel Right wing do not constantly verbalize character assassination and incitement against the Left, but the Left always does it against the Right.

The Israeli Left has a documented history of discrimination and violence, for example the Altalena and Amona, against the Right, though they have no problems constantly proclaiming us as violent and guilty of attacking fellow Jews.

Israeli society is still suffering from pre-State hatreds and the Yitzchak Rabin murder is being utilized as a tool against a large and growing segment of the Israeli public. I don't know if we'll ever really know who was behind that assassination. I just know that the Left has enthusiastically adopted it as their mantra, their weapon of choice against loyal and innocent Jewish citizens.
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