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February 3, 2006
How Israel's Ruling Elites Became Cossacks by Eugene Narrett, Ph.D.
In the spring of 1967, thirty-nine years ago, the Arab states and their hordes surrounded Israel, their snouts in the air quivering at the scent of Jewish blood. Ther gross public incitement, boasting and threats about obliterating Israel, to "kill the Jews wherever you find them; kill them with your hands, with your nails, with your teeth" [King Hussein]; about finishing the Nazis' work are well summarized in Samuel Katz's seminal book, "Battleground," especially chapter 3. But here we are focusing on the logic by which Israel's dominant elites, largely against their will but thanks to Israeli soldiers and civilians, turned away from the glorious opportunities of the victory of June 6-12, 1967, a victory won largely against their will and thanks to Israeli soldiers and civilians. Let's focus on what this turning away did to the elites and what they, as a result have done and are doing more and more to the Jewish people. Remember this: among the main blessings they squandered was peace. They squandered it by running after it, like a female donkey in heat in places where it could never and will never be found: chasing their arab lovers, their would-be American or European 'guarantors.' Back then, after months of intensifying threats of imminent belligerence, with Egypt's, Syria's and Jordan's armies massed at or near its borders (that is, about ten miles from the Mediterranean), with the gates of Auschwitz staring them in the face, Israel struck Egypt. The armed forces did their job, though the politicians held them back as much as they could. The Egyptian army and air force were obliterated but civilian farmers from the Hula valley, under Syrian fire for twenty years, had to plead personally with Levi Eshkol (remember him?) to order the IDF to take the Golan over the resistance of Moshe Dayan, the 'great white hope' of the New York Times who didn't want the attack and liberation to go forward. And who, not incidentally, returned the Temple Mount to the muslims and brought them back to Hebron. During the struggle with Egypt and then Syria, these same elites pleaded with Hussein not to attack, to keep his hold on all Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem including the old city, Temple Mount, plaza and all; but he smelled blood, and he heard Nasser's boasts still resounding on the air waves. So to the chagrin of Israel's ruling caste, "Jordan" attacked and in two days the IDF was on the east bank of the Jordan River and all of Yesha was in the nands of the Jews, sort of. All of the Gilead and Bashan could easily have been reclaimed. Here was a two-fold phenomenon: Victory for the armed forces of the Jewish people, for all the Jewish people everywhere, and consternation for the communist - socialist elites. Having all this land confronted them with what they wanted to forget: that they were Jews and that the Jews had definitively thrown off their dhimmi status and returned triumphantly, from the ashes, to their ancient homeland. The dream was real, just as it states in psalm 126: but they didn't want it. For the first time in 19 centuries, Jews again could be truly and fully Jews, more so than at any time since Solomon since the nation and most of the land was there with all the Torah and new life it supports. THAT WAS THE PROBLEM: THEY DIDN'T WANT TO BE JEWS, THEY WANTED TO BE ISRAELIS, "like Monaco with a University" as Weizman had said, like Sweden, the socialists were fond of saying before that nation found its way back to the source of prosperity, property rights. If they were to incorporate most of ancient Israel into the renewed state Jews would settle it, the holy sites were bound to be rebuilt, and used! To them this meant a "return to the ghetto and its smells," another Weizman chestnut. But to reject the land, to play the part of Esau and spurn the birthright, how could they openly do something so self-negating and treacherous? How could they live with the guilt this would create? Only by alienating the land in the name of what, to them in their little-bit-of-knowledge which is worse-than-total-ignorance was the greatest of all Jewish values: PEACE! That's it, we'll give the land back in the name of PEACE! Haven't Jews always greeted each other , said hello and goodbye by intoning SHALOM! What great p.r. that will make: Israel who only wants PEACE! PEACE NOW! And so they crawled back into the ghetto, feeling very morally superior on the surface; but beneath that surface the guilt of the surrender, of their dishonest motive in surrendering, and their betrayal of Jewish principles was gnawing away. Nothing just disappears but they didn't want to see it. WOE to the people, especially people like them, Jews, that would do anything to remind them that they'd SPURNED THEIR BIRTHRIGHT, that they had become Esau. Many Jews were shocked, confused and bitterly disappointed that all the land was not annexed immediately and that the government did not immediately encourage and facilitate its settlement as had been done with the kibbutzim. But the nightmare persisted: during the "quiet war" (1967-70) and beyond, when peace with the Arabs was exposed as the phantom any sober person knew it would be (weren't the elites conscious before 1967?), still they would not open the land for Jewish settlement. Why? Officially because they saw the Jewish heartland as "bargaining chips" in the peace negotiations the Arabs didn't want. Calling the land "bargaining chips," playing at being 'grown up' diplomats like the 'big' people in London, Washington, Moscow and Paris, helped them forget that it was their rejection of their own souls, history and ancestors, their Judaism and Jewish history that fueled their irrational screaming and searching for peace where none was to be had. When groups of Jewish civilians begin trying, on their own, to reclaim, restore, rebuild and settle the heartland, the socialists and secularists sent the IDF to stop them. Study the story of the re-settlement of Hebron: it epitomizes the struggle and heroism of individual Jewish families, individuals, professionals and just folks to reclaim their land in the face of their own government's hostility, and in the face of the growing hostility of the world. But how could they justify shutting Jews out of Judea and Samaria, from settling anywhere in the territories of the tribes of Yehuda, Binyamin, and Ephraim? They needed to do more than shout PEACE! After all, the settlers were so obviously peaceful, constructive, industrious people. But It helped the game to portray them as extremists, as religious fanatics who would DESTROY THE NATION'S CHANCE FOR PEACE! And so, with the one act, a tactic, that leftists excel at, vilifying their own traditions, a vicious double blind was established. The more the Arabs attacked, the more Israel's own government blamed the Jews, those far-right, extremist, religious fanatics. And the more the settlers were pressed to demonstrate their non-violence no matter what was done to them. The unrelenting, homicidal and uniform hostility of the Arabs to Jews before 1967, before 1948, before 1929, from time immemorial, was buried. And if Israel's ruling elites, and the media they controlled in true bolshevik style said the mitnachlim ("settlers") were to blame, of course Pravda, the NY Times, London Times, Le Monde and every other official diplomatic organ would blame the settlers too. And so on February 01, 2006, the cossacks of Peres--Olmert's Kadima party rode down the teenagers and all Jews they could find at the beautiful Jewish settlement of Amona. They rode them down, whipped and beat them into the ground like Ukrainian beasts because those beautifully simple, honest, unpretentious people remind them of what they have spurned, of the heart they've torn out of themselves, calling the mutilated results "PEACE," blaming the victims of their own cowardice and stupidity. That is the logic of the betrayal whose horrible last pangs we experience today. We are witnessing the insanity and violence of deeply ramified guilt and its reflex, homicidal violence. And since it is a mutilation, not peace, there is no peace and will not be any peace until Israel settles entirely in its land, per the contract. Despite a nightmarish mass media, there are many nice young people in America, and no doubt in other nations. But surrounded by false gods, terrible temptations, bad ideas and examples as they are, nowhere does one see the simple goodness and clarity and strength of the young people, of all the people in the heartland of Israel; -- the most beautiful place in the world that of course a world dying in madness wants to destroy. Like John Claggart, Master of Arms on the HMS Bellipotent, like Edmund in King Lear, all betrayers eventually destroy themselves because the source of the betrayals and violence is hollowness. Only let the good, true and beautiful hold firm, and the mists of nightmare will disperse and the light will shine true. The stone the builders have despised will become the cornerstone. The logic of betrayers will leave them with nothing. Dr. Eugene Narrett is a writer and teacher in Massachusetts and is the author of Gathered Against Jerusalem: Essays on a False Peace (Dec. 2000). His book, Israel Awakened: A Chronicle of the Oslo War (2001), is currently available at www.1stbooks.com/bookview/7421.
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