Beilin and Abed Rabo in Geneva
Photo: Reuters
The Left’s hallucinations
Celebrations of pullout won't hide the fact that the Left is out of touch with reality
Although the dust cloud from the struggle over the disengagement has not yet settled, and the bulldozers are still destroying homes in Gaza and the West Bank, the triumphant voice of the Left can already be heard.
“Look,” they say, “how the Right’s ideas are collapsing like a house of cards.”
"This is also a defeat for the culture of the Right,” wrote Gideon Samet in Haaretz newspaper, just to make sure we knew how low the rightist camp has sank.
When a Palestinian home is destroyed, a section of the Left never forgets to cite the relevant clauses on war crimes from the Geneva Convention and the Hague, yet when 2,000 Jewish homes are destroyed, the Left is filled with battle-like bravado.
This camp claims to value equality, but proves that its sympathy and understanding are reserved exclusively for those who share its ideological home, and for its Arab and Palestinian friends. Indeed, these are humanists, who are horrified by any threat on Arabs and Palestinians, but freely offer support for anyone who can ‘give it’ to the settlers.
One can also remember the Left’s fondness of waving banners based on universal brotherhood and respect of mankind, ideas taken directly from the schools of thought such as Giovanni Pico.
Hear no evil
But there was often blindness and deafness displayed towards the monsters in the ideological camp. A multi-sensory deficiency was exhibited towards Lenin, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao, and Nacha Guevara. Once it was displayed towards the Palestinians and their leaders, especially Yasser Arafat.
Let us examine some of the Left’s central claims regarding the Palestinians.
“The occupied territories have only worsened Israel’s situation.” This claim was repeated often enough so that in the end a strange situation took hold. Immediately after the 1967 War, the existential threat against the country decreased, and the acceptance of our existence by the Arab world grew significantly. Israel held onto bargaining chips needed to reach agreements with the Arab world, which were a direct result of the same war in which land was obtained. These cards were not held by Israel before the war.
“Peace with the Palestinians is possible.”
We discovered with human lives how tangible that peace really was. With blood, we saw the dream of peace destroyed. If, up to the Oslo peace agreement (1993) and Camp David (2000), we could live with the claim that “we haven’t tried yet,” after those watersheds such a tired claim should ring hollow for all those who have eyes in their head.
"The Palestinians, including Yasser Arafat, are interested in peace with Israel."
Their level of interest in peace was well articulated by someone from the left wing camp: “Camp David did not fail because of territory or because of an offer of a state of bantustans. The summit failed because the Palestinian leadership was unwilling to compromise on its principled opposition to the existence of a Jewish state, and Islamic fundamentalism which rules out all historic Jewish rights to the holy places. It’s not about the end of the occupation,” wrote Shlomo Ben Ami in his book on the Camp David summit.
And just to be clear, the "great hope,: Abu Mazen (PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas), was not a moderating figure during the Camp David summit. On all the major issues – and especially on the right of return – he adopted a hard-line stance just like Arafat.
“They will be satisfied with a return of the territories that were conquered in 1967 and will be willing to give up on the right of return.”
We received the answer to this claim at Camp David and at Taba, and in the Geneva Accord, which calls for the refugee issue to be solved on the basis of U.N. resolution 194. To date, not a single senior Palestinian figure has received the Accord without reservations on this.
“The Oslo Accord is the beginning of the end of the conflict”
Yes, it’s not a mistake. The prophets of peace were widely heard during those happy days, when they thought that local history was coming to an end. “The Middle East will be a new place in another year, an area with open borders and cooperation,” said Yossi Sarid back then. He also said that those agreements were the most significant event in the history of Zionism.
"Operation Defensive Shield won’t stop terrorism.”
Another claim from the Left, arguing that “force doesn’t solve a thing.”
Even though it has been proven that the operation significantly decreased the number of terror attacks, members of the Left continue to repeat the claim.
The victory songs of the Left won’t help to change the fact that the lousy reality tells a different story from the one talked about in the squares at the leftist "stronghold" - Tel Aviv's Shenkin Street.
