A Manifesto for a 180 degree change in strategy

It's time to STOP DEFENDING Israel, as if it's a criminal defendant, accused of crimes it has not committed, forever in the dock of justice. Israel has NOTHING to defend itself against. I myself have been guilty of this, recently defending Israel's territories and settlements under International Law.

This counter-productive strategy has long since passed its Use By date. It's time to undertake a 180 degree sea-change and formulate a radically different pro-Israel Advocacy strategy.

It is time to START OFFENSE against those who aggress upon Israel,

1. to condemn them openly and loudly for their many crimes,
2. their many illegal wars of aggression,
3. their multiple heinous actions such as mutilation and lynching,
4. their unabated terrorism which continues despite Oslo Protocols,
5. their education system of unbridled hatred of Jews and the State of Israel,
6. their cult of death,
7. their suicide bombings of innocents, including women and children,
8. their use of human shields, often using women and children,
9. their refusal to accept the existence of a Jewish State, as most clearly evidenced by their maps,
10. their continued refusal to negotiate fairly,
11. their outrageous demands and preposterous preconditions, doubly preposterous for a side with nothing to offer,  after rejecting a State six (6) times since 1937, offered by the UK, the UN and Israel,
12. their absolute responsibility for the "Palestinian refugee problem", a problem entirely of their own making,
13. and much much more.

It should be remembered the Palestinians and their supporters have absolutely nothing to offer Israel. In war, it is the loser who sues for peace. As Abba Eban so caustically observed "This (1967) is the first war in history which has ended with the victors suing for peace and the vanquished calling for unconditional surrender."

And that sorry situation remains unchanged to this day.

As Ruth Wisse says in the interview below, saying great things about Israel (Start Up Nation, a miracle in the desert, home of cell phones and microprocessors etc..), while all true and "nice", is ultimately ineffective, and does not change the prevailing narrative of Israel remaining in the dock of criminal justice.

This is a huge task, but must be done.

As every sports fan knows, the best defense is offense.

Indeed, Israeli history itself proves this, writ large. It was only in the darkest days of the Civil War of 1947 / 1948 when Israel adopted a policy of offense vs. its previous policy of "defense" did it make spectacular gains on the ground, paving the way to victory and subsequent Declaration of a State.

"No one was more acutely aware of the deteriorating situation for the Zionists than Ben-Gurion, the Yishuv's "defense minister." He was particularly perturbed by the fate of Jewish Jerusalem, whose fall, he knew, would be a mighty blow to the Jewish side. At a nightlong meeting with the Haganah General Staff on March 31–April 1, he decided to mount an operation in the Jerusalem sector that was to inaugurate a general change of strategy—going from the defensive to the offensive." (Morris, 2009)

Israel and its supporters must now do the same. The time has come for effective offensive action against those who have aggressed against it time after time after time.

Israel reconstituted, is today an independent, powerful, sovereign state. Why do people, including its own leaders forget that?

It's time to abandon once and for all the anachronistic and now self-destructive shtetl ethic and mentality of the Jews' historic powerlessness, of endless accommodation to the "others", their host countries, and whoever else those others might have been. What might have worked once is no longer appropriate, or effective. It is utterly ineffective and counter-productive. We all know who the new "others" are today, and they proliferate like rabbits. The Arabs, the left, much of Europe, the EU, the UN, the NGO's, the Academy, the Legal Establishment (in Israel), the mainstream media, pick your favorite. 

And let us not forget the many deluded Jews within Israel itself, who gave us Oslo, whose adherents and architects still live on, like crazed zombies back from the dead, even elevated to the role of the current Presidency for their insanity.  And equally  importantly, the Jews of the Diaspora who also remain as fractious as ever, are also unable to unite on this single most important existential issue. The Islamic world is  - from its inception - ridden by sectarian, ethnic and other fractures and fissures, up in flames as I write these words in September 2013,  but remains steadfastly united on one single issue. I need not point out the obvious here, but will, unrelenting Jew Hatred, with the openly stated goal of genocide and the destruction of Israel. On this, they are all united, and I have not an iota of doubt about this.

Conversely, I have little optimism that Jews  - both within and outside Israel  - can unite on the single most important issue pertaining to the survival of its people. For those who know a little history (from which much can always be learned), in the time of greatest stress and suffering and extermination of thousands daily, in Warsaw 1942/43, the various Jewish factions could not unite, even then,  producing the perhaps unprecedented  phenomenon of two (2)  distinct Armed Resistance groups in the Ghetto Revolt, with neither talking to the other. This is well documented, but little known (the groups were the ZOB and the JMU).

If not then, in the most dire of situations in all of Jewish history, why should they unite now? This disunity can, and inevitably will, lead to a tragedy of potentially genocidal consequences, perhaps even as a result of the current (2013) round of "Peace Talks" into which Israel appears to have been strong-armed by US interests, for less than entirely altruistic motives. It seems that Israel has once again shot itself in the foot (as it does repeatedly), setting the tone for the Arabs, giving them great hope that they can get whatever they want if they just resist hard and long enough. Sinai was given away for what (maybe "peace", but a victor ceding land? This is surely unprecedented in the annals of warfare. What message does it send?). Gaza was released, for what? (Rockets). And the Temple Mount? (So that Jews cannot pray at their holiest site?). 

Surely the Arabs have every reason to believe that Judea and Samaria will be next, and why should they not? And indeed they were offered these territories in 2000 and 2008 - we have to be thankful they were rejected. To cede Judea and Samaria is a recipe for collective national suicide. 

It is the next logical step after bringing the murderer Arafat next door in Ramallah in 1993, to legitimize the terrorist gangster organization, an unprecedented act of lunacy and delusion, "The Oslo Syndrome" as described by Kenneth Levin.
As Caroline Glick has also written recently, Israel must rid itself of this 20 year old nightmare of recognition of the legitimacy of the PLO. What is worse, this catastrophic decision having been given the imprimatur of the US (who can forget the infamous photo-op of the White House Lawn's famous handshake, 9/13/1993), de-legitimizing of the PLO can only alienate the US, itself already distancing itself from its historic alliance with Israel under the present Administration.

But it might be different this time. If offered again - as they were in 2000 and 2008 - they just might take the offer. 
I don't know. What we do know its that there have been six (6) such offers for an Arab State in Palestine, rejected every time. This speaks volumes as to what their real goals are.

So this becomes yet another imperative, a key imperative, and an enormously difficult one based on the Jews' historical experience.  In addition to shifting the agenda from defense to offense, the imperative to unite on at least this single issue, that there simply cannot be yet another Arab State carved out of Mandatory Palestine West of the Jordan river (Jordan being the first).
Personally, I don't see such unity happening. Maybe it will take the Israeli equivalent of a 9/11 for attitudinal change on this matter. 

As best as I am aware, 

The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel (May 14, 1948) does not include a recipe for collective national suicide.

It's is  time to abandon once and for all the galut shtetl Diaspora image of the weak and powerless Jew, with hand outstretched, the trembling hand of a perennial supplicant begging to be liked. We are NOT in the dock of justice. We are NOT criminals. 

We must not go from the role of from Hitler's Eternal Jew to Eternal Defendant.

They did this in Germany in the 1930's, remember?  They did this in the Lodz ghetto, remember?
Where did it get them? A one-way trip to the gas chambers.

By which I mean 1930's Germany and the Lodz ghetto were diverse examples of the Jews' hope that by doing as the other wished they would be saved. i.e ever greater assimilation in Germany, Rumkowski striving to appease the tyrants in Lodz, hoping that Jews would be saved by offering up human sacrifices of young children so that others may live (a "choiceless choice"). In the end, they were all murdered. The  Jews themselves murdered Rumkowski in Auschwitz. Such is the reward for appeasing the tyrant.

This should in no way be construed as downplaying the extraordinary and unprecedented position in which the Jews found themselves under the Nazi tyranny.

Rather, that attempts to please and appease the tyrants will always come to naught.

Jew Hatred is a pathology of the other (existing in lands even where there are no Jews!), and will not go away by Jews deluding themselves into thinking that if they change their behavior they will be liked more (or hated less).

As outsiders in self-governed Kehillot, they were damned for being "different".  As assimilated insiders post 19thC European Emancipation, they were further damned, for trying to be "the same", becoming too entrenched in host societies (a "bacillus"), leading to modern anti-Semitism and the goal of expulsion (we see the formation of the League of Anti-Semites founded 1879, in Austria, let us note).

In passing, we note further, with Wisse, that anti-Zionism is even worse than traditional anti-Semitism. The former retains all the tropes, images, libels  and policies of the latter, while at the same time denying the Jews the right to a national home, national self-determination and self-defense.  The traditional anti-Semites "only" sought the expulsion of the Jews (typically, to Palestine). Today, we hear "Jew, get out of Palestine". 
Apart from being two-faced and inherently contradictory, it is also truly a pathological behavior by those who wish us harm,

Yet despite all of this, Israel, and its Diaspora supporters continue to do it today, to change their behavior, to adapt to the wishes of the "others", to seek to be liked, to give away land for nothing (so much for the Land for Peace madness), to release convicted murderers to enter talks when surely it is the other side which is the one who should be making concessions, like a self-confessed criminal in the dock seeking a lesser sentence by expression of remorse for a crime never committed, to  be just like the other, and we ask, what has been achieved?

Nothing has been achieved by this behavior, nothing but ever greater demonization, vilification, delegitimization and boycotts such as one cannot recall in the post WW2 era, Israel forever in the dock, in the role of defendant, from the Jew as individual outcast,  to the State of Israel as collective pariah,embodying all that the other has come to despise about the Jews over two millenia.

Most importantly, as noted above, the perception is that Israel can be persuaded to give away land for nothing (Sinai, Gaza, Temple Mount), based on erroneous legal interpretations, even by Israel's juridical authorities, forever giving the Palestinians the hope that one day soon, Judea and Samaria will also be theirs, as the last stepping stone to the final removal of the despised "Zionist entity".

The war is fought by he other side on emotion, imagery and fabrication. Israeli advocacy with its tedious and repetitive recitation of historical facts  and dry technicalities (to which I also plead guilty) cannot possibly compete with the Al Dura or Jenin or the many Pallywood fantasies and falsehoods.

This strategy of defense hasn't worked in the past, it isn't working now, it won't work in the future.

A change has got to come, and sooner rather than later. The time is long overdue.

Below is an extraordinarily lucid and incisive interview with Prof. Ruth Wisse - mandatory viewing, which influenced the core proposition of this Note.

***Indeed, if I can say one thing is mandatory viewing for all supporters of Israel, it is this Interview with Ruth Wisse***

http://www.torahcafe.com/professor-ruth-wisse/the-arab-war-against-the-jews-video_26211c28a.html

© George Peters

Melbourne, Australia

August 2013