Tzipi, concessions and modern messianism at its finest

...Livni is correct. There are things that one does not do, but it is a great shame that she has not adopted this principle herself in her own personal behavior. I do not know of any well-run country in which a top diplomatic negotiator would hold a private meeting with the other side shortly after his or her government decided to suspend negotiations -- a complex decision with highly significant international components.

Dr. Haim Shine..
Israel Hayom..
19 May '14..

On numerous occasions, I have heard Justice Minister Tzipi Livni express in frustration and sadness that Israel has not recognized the principle that means so much in England -- that there are things that one does not do. This is a principle that expresses binding norms of behavior in the personal and public spheres, without a need for legislation or a court decree.

Livni is correct. There are things that one does not do, but it is a great shame that she has not adopted this principle herself in her own personal behavior. I do not know of any well-run country in which a top diplomatic negotiator would hold a private meeting with the other side shortly after his or her government decided to suspend negotiations -- a complex decision with highly significant international components.

Everyone knows that Livni and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did not talk about his doctoral dissertation in which he denied the Holocaust. They certainly did not exchange jokes, as Abbas is not known for his sense of humor (the best joke I heard from him recently was when he said he would be able to convince Hamas to recognize Israel). It is perhaps reasonable to assume that Livni presented Abbas with creative proposals on how to get around the Israeli government's decision to not conduct negotiations with the PA-Hamas terror partnership. U.S. President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and special envoy Martin Indyk undoubtedly saw the Livni-Abbas meeting as further evidence supporting their view that Israel was responsible for the failure of the negotiations, which Livni keeps trying to woo Abbas back to, a kind of fatal attraction.

Livni has become part of a long list of Israeli prime ministers, government ministers, Knesset members and academics who came to believe that they held in their hands the key to achieving peace with the Palestinians, the peace that they think is just around the corner.

This is modern messianism at its finest. Members of this list have searched, at almost every price, for ways to enshrine their names in history by accomplishing the unthinkable. They have competed with each other for how many concessions Israel could offer, including on Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. These knights of concessions have discovered that, at the moment of truth, the Palestinian partner changes direction and disappears. Livni needs to justify remaining in the coalition by trying to save her lost honor that was repeatedly trampled on by Palestinian obstinacy. But why should she do this at the expense of the government's integrity?

So much for pernicious wishful thinking

...Despite all the ill-will and treachery with which each and every one of our existentially risky concessions had been repaid, the Arabs had succeeded in dividing the Jews of Israel into two groups – those destined to suffer and those trusting that they would evade the danger. Doubtless, the above analogy is sure to stir up scorn and righteous indignation. The self-appointed guardians of other people’s consciences cannot but be scandalized to the core. The overbearing priests of our political correctness disdain historical parallels, especially those that hark back to the darkest days of the Jewish past – with the glaring exception of parallels they themselves draw in the service of spiteful taunts.

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
17 January '14..

It was all too easy to engage in wishful thinking and assume that the Germans would stick to the plan they had announced. The Germans had succeeded in dividing the Jews of the ghetto into two groups – those destined for deportation, and those hoping to evade the danger.

Moshe Arens, Flags over the Warsaw Ghetto.

With obvious name changes, the same dichotomy of orientations can be ascribed to the citizens of the sovereign Jewish state, here and now.

There are those among us who serially find it “all too easy to engage in wishful thinking” and assume that the Arabs would honor their announced commitment to peace.

Despite all the ill-will and treachery with which each and every one of our existentially risky concessions had been repaid, the Arabs had succeeded in dividing the Jews of Israel into two groups – those destined to suffer and those trusting that they would evade the danger.

Doubtless, the above analogy is sure to stir up scorn and righteous indignation. The self-appointed guardians of other people’s consciences cannot but be scandalized to the core. The overbearing priests of our political correctness disdain historical parallels, especially those that hark back to the darkest days of the Jewish past – with the glaring exception of parallels they themselves draw in the service of spiteful taunts.

But, as the old adage goes, anyone who doesn’t learn from history is doomed to relive it. Of course, there are no absolute replicas of what was. Circumstances and protagonists inevitably differ. But overall directions, processes and mindsets – as well as their derivatives and consequences – may well be spine-chillingly similar.

In Warsaw of 1942 desperate Jews made concessions in blood. Powerless, they passively sacrificed thousands of lives in hope that they would thereby buy respite. In today’s Israel, hardly desperate Jews clamor to make hazardous territorial concessions in the hope that they’d thereby buy peace or at least a respite.

Reading former defense minister Arens’ detailed account of life inside the Warsaw Ghetto is likely to conjure overwhelming sensations of déjà vu in many readers. The pivotal types are frighteningly like those we encounter among Israel’s own intellectuals, random omniscients and, above all, among our political hacks and functionaries.

Scarier yet, their rationalizations and excuses for timidity are indistinguishable, despite the admitted dissimilarity of conditions and degree of distress. Warsaw Jewry’s internal squabbles, petty political rivalries, pedantic quibbling, harping on incidentals and fixated delusions all thrive here.

This is what foremost makes Arens’ text so hair-raising. It’s not the deliberate deletion from our collective memory of the ghetto’s Betar-based Jewish resistance in favor of its socialist counterpart. That shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with the slanted historiography of the pre-state struggle for Israel’s independence.

On July 23, 1942, as the deportations to Treblinka began, “representatives of the political parties and movements in the ghetto met in an emergency session to discuss the situation and decide on what action to take,” Arens narrates. “Despite the terrible threat hanging over the Jews of Warsaw, the Revisionists were still not invited, were still ostracized. The Revisionist view was well known – they were for active resistance against the Germans.”

”The Revisionists were always hotheads,” ruled acclaimed historian Dr. Ignacy-Yitzhak Schipper, once a Polish parliamentarian. He asserted that “it is impossible to liquidate a population of half a million souls. The Germans will not dare exterminate the largest Jewish community in Europe. They will still have to reckon with world public opinion.”

Denial and defeatism came to be portrayed as unquestionable prudence. Schipper – who himself would perish at Majdanek eleven months later – expressed the prevailing wisdom of the gathering:

Israelis Think No Concession Will Ever Satisfy the West

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
21 December '10

A newly released WikiLeaks cable quotes Ron Dermer, a top adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, telling a U.S. diplomat of Israelis’ frustration with the peace process. Surprisingly, however, Dermer didn’t focus primarily on Palestinian behavior. Rather, he charged, “the Israeli public is skeptical regarding the benefits of returning to negotiations” because “all the GOI [government of Israel] has received in return for its efforts [to date] was a ‘slap-down from the international community.’”

Dermer didn’t offer evidence to support his claim about Israeli frustration with the “international community,” but the data are shocking: according to the August Peace Index poll, fully 77 percent of Jewish Israelis think “it makes no difference what Israel does and how far it may go on the Palestinian issue; the world will continue to be very critical of it.” And in fact, Israelis have good reasons for this belief.

For instance, when Hezbollah continued attacking Israel even after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, the world, far from condemning Hezbollah, excoriated Israel when it finally responded to these attacks in the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Moreover, after having certified the withdrawal as 100 percent complete in 2000, the UN Security Council then rewarded Hezbollah’s aggression in 2006 by voting to remap Lebanon’s borders, “especially in those areas where the border is disputed” by Hezbollah, with an eye toward forcing Israel to quit additional territory.

(Read full "Israelis Think No Concession Will Ever Satisfy the West")

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Why Israel Must Now Move from Concessions-Based Diplomacy to Rights-Based Diplomacy

Dan Diker
JCPA
(Published July 2007)

(While written more than 3 years ago, this article remains highly relevant today.)

Israel faces a painful paradox. Its generous territorial concessions climaxing in the 2005 Gaza withdrawal have not resulted in greater international support or sympathy, but rather a further deterioration in its international standing. Indeed, the very legitimacy of the Jewish state continues to be questioned in international circles including the West.

Israel unilaterally withdrew its forces from southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip expecting both peace and broad international understanding in the event that these areas would be used to attack Israel in the future. However, the condemnations of Israel only seem to be worsening. On May 15, 2007, Amnesty International condemned Israel for "war crimes" in its previous summer's defensive war against Hizbullah. Britain's University and College Union (UCU), the largest academic organization in the United Kingdom, accused Israel of crimes against humanity and apartheid.

Ironically, mounting criticism of Israel has occurred as Israeli civilians have come under repeated attack from Kassam rockets launched from the post-withdrawal Gaza Strip. The concern in Israel over ever-sharpening anti-Israel sentiment even brought the liberal daily Ha'aretz to conclude in its lead editorial of May 27, 2007, that "Britain has become the battlefield in Israel's fight for existence as a Jewish state, and . . . the anti-Zionist winds blowing in Europe strengthen the position [there] that the birth of the Jewish state was a mistake."

For most of the period from 1993 to 2000, Israel's overall diplomatic strategy focused on helping the Palestinians achieve their demands for what Arafat and Palestinian spokesmen had always termed their "legitimate rights," hoping this would result in peace and security for Israelis. Once Israel dropped its past reliance on a diplomacy based on its own rights and adopted a new concessions-based diplomacy instead, its spokesmen essentially acquiesced to the Palestinian historical narrative. The Israelis offered no alternative perspective.


The violent takeover of the Gaza Strip by Iranian-backed Hamas and the group's ongoing Kassam-rocket assaults against southern Israel present a painful paradox for the Jewish state. Israel's generous territorial concessions climaxing in the 2005 Gaza withdrawal have not resulted in either greater security for Israelis or international sympathy for Israel. In fact, the opposite appears to be true. While Israel continues to absorb attacks from Hamas in Gaza and braces for another possible confrontation with Hizbullah in southern Lebanon and possibly with Syria, the very legitimacy of the Jewish state continues to be questioned in international circles including the West.

(Read full article)

Related Article: Israel's Right to the 'Disputed' Territories
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