DISENGAGEMENT or DISASTER?

Serena Weil on unpleasant facts and questions about Gaza.

1. GAZA vs. KATIF: A Clearer picture. Historically, the city of Gaza (and its surroundings) is part of Biblical Israel, included in G-d's divine promise to the Jewish People. Jews have resided in Gaza from Biblical times until 1948 when, as the result of Arab violence, they were forced to leave. The city contains ruins of synagogues, a Jewish cemetery, and archeological finds of Jewish origin. A Jewish presence in the Gaza area (known as the Gaza Strip) was re-established in the wake of the Six Day War after 1967. Known as Gush Katif (the Katif Block), it comprises 22 communities and numbers 8,500 inhabitants and comprises only 12% of the Gaza Strip.


2. CAN THE IDF LEAVE GAZA? The IDF already left the Gaza Strip (!) eleven years ago as part of the Oslo agreements. Since then the Strip has been governed by the Palestinian Authority (under Arafat). Israel remained in Gush Katif. The IDF manned points of entry into Katif and at the border-like road blocks. They enter Gaza itself only when terrorist activity makes their entry necessary. Meanwhile, a monstrous terror network of worldwide proportions has surfaced in Gaza. Constant shelling of nearby Israeli settlements and cities, suicide bombers, shootings, and mines have become daily fare. (Many, thank G-d, miss their mark.) The media barely mentions them before going on to more 'interesting' news.

Retreating from Katif would bring the cities of Ashkelon, Netivot, and Ofakim into the range of Arab missiles in the south. As it did in Lebanon, the Hezbollah terrorist organization intends to bring thousands of missiles into Gaza as well. The highly successful results of the terrorist organizations in the recent Palestinian Authority elections in Gaza do not bode well for peaceful intentions or resolutions. With additional, far ranging weapons in Gaza, the long arm of Hezbollah will bringing not only Ashkelon, but the port of Ashdod, Beersheva and the nuclear reactor in Dimona within firing range. Israel has to be utterly insane to allow this to happen.


3. WHOSE WATER IS TASTIER? Israel is presently supplying Gaza with water. After Oslo and the Israeli retreat from Gaza, as a result of total Arab/ Palestinian Authority mismanagement and greed, vast amounts of water were pumped from the wells in the area, the salt level rose drastically, and the water is no longer potable. Humane Israel, unwilling to deny water to thirsty Arabs, now provides for their needs from its own water supply. The IDF also forces the Arabs to treat their sewage and refrain from pouring it into the sea. In addition to severe pollution, the sewage destroys the filters from a large purification plant in nearby Ashkelon.

Sharon speaks of further withdrawals in northern Samaria which sits atop one of Israel's largest aquifers and main sources of water. Once in Arab hands, it is expected that the Arabs will, as they have done throughout the rest of Judea and Samaria, pump water without plan or thought for the future, thus endangering vital water sources in the Jezreel Valley. The oft-bandied solution of treating sea water would cost billions of dollars. Can Israel afford to place her precious and limited water supply in the hands of her Arab neighbors?


4. DEMOGRAPHY & GEOGRAPHY and other fraudulent claims: Gaza, we are told, is the most crowded place in the world. The Arabs, they say, need land, living space! Well, so does Tel Aviv. The population density in the city of Tel Aviv is eleven times higher than in Gaza!

Not only that. The much maligned Katif area, on only twelve percent of the Gaza Strip, covers approximately ninety square miles! Does anyone really think that giving this pittance of the Strip as a gift to the Arabs will solve their demographic problems? (It is highly suggested that the reader open a map of the Middle East to verify the size of Israel, of the Gaza Strip and of Katif. If Israel is infinitesimal, then Katif is infinitely more so!)

Perhaps Egypt, a huge country, would like to contribute a portion of its vast holdings in Sinai to its fellow Arabs. Sinai was never officially part of Egypt (just as Judea and Samaria were never officially part of Jordan). It is devoid of settlements — absolutely empty except for several tourist locations (originally built and set up by Israel) and best of all, it borders Gaza. Could there be a more perfect, fitting, humane solution to lessen the population density in Gaza?

Gush Katif was built on virgin sand dunes which even the Arabs had never exploited. The constantly attacked and bombarded community of Kfar Darom was built on swampy land which was purchased at full price by Jews during the time of the British Mandate. The Jews have turned the entire Katif area into a mini Garden of Eden. Eleven percent of all Israeli agricultural exports come from this tiny spot on the map. No wonder the Arabs living in their squalid cities nearby have dreams of inheriting it!


5. ECONOMICS — What's the Price? According to government assessments, direct costs for disengagement will be upwards of six billion NIS (one and one half billion U.S. dollars). Since this figure was released, the Knesset upped it by offering larger restitution to the settlers. (The previous amounts were rather parsimonious and it was felt that a bit more generosity would make things easier for all concerned.) Add to this related expenses such as additional security for settlements within the Green Line which will now be within Gaza's firing range; unemployment for the several thousand evacuated families; establishing new communities, new schools or classrooms for the thousands of Katif children who will be evacuated; new social services; and the necessary psychological counseling and help for those evacuated (this promises to be a highly traumatic experience, to put it mildly), Etc., etc.

No country, and surely not the U.N. or the E.U., is offering to reimburse or assist Israel with disengagement. The Israeli taxpayer will be expected to foot the entire bill. All the advances Israel has so painfully made in the past ten years on the economic front will be wiped out. And the price of real estate all along the shrunken new border will fall drastically. (Who will want to live next to Gaza?) Disengagement promises to be an economic disaster.


6. THE ARMY — What affect will disengagement have on it? Is the Israel Defense Force here to evacuate Jews from their homes, or to protect them from their enemies? Discomfort at the idea of the army forcefully evacuating peaceful citizens is widespread. So much so that the government changed gears and decided the police would be given the job while the army stood guard to make sure the Arabs don't take advantage of the evacuation and aim their missiles in the direction of the evacuees.

There is also the well founded fear that a large number of soldiers and police will refuse to take part in the disengagement. And if nonetheless it does take place, it is feared that tens of thousands of young people across the country will be so disillusioned that many of them will refuse to serve when they are called up. Huge numbers of youngsters from youth movements and yeshivas, the ones you see at the demonstrations and on street corners passing out flyers, are passionately anti-disengagement. These youths tend to be some of our best soldiers and a high percentage, out of all proportion to their numbers, of officers. Which is why the government is taking such a hard stand against conscientious objectors whom they view as a "threat to democracy". Many older people will refuse to continue to serve in the Reserves as well.


7. DEMOCRACY or DICTATORSHIP? Sharon ran for office on a platform diametrically opposed to this plan. His own Likkud party overwhelmingly rejected the proposal in an internal Likkud referendum. After much political wrangling and the firing of two cabinet ministers, Sharon finally managed to obtain Knesset approval for his plan although the law approving the financial restitution has not yet been passed.

No legitimate government, however, has the right to oust people from their legal homes by means of a highly questionable order and without recourse to due process of law. No government has the moral right to make historic changes and cede parts of its historic homeland with only a slim majority and a highly unstable minority coalition. Just as no government, even with a large majority, has the moral right to legitimize murder, rape or robbery. Years ago, Yossi Sarid, one of Israel's extreme, leading Leftists, proclaimed: The day that an order is given to transfer [Arabs] from their homes, an order which is patently illegal and immoral, will be the Day of Refusing Orders. … We will not fulfill an order to transfer [Arabs], nor will our children or our students fulfill such an order. How, then, can he legitimize transferring Jews?

Democracy does not mean the dictatorship of the many over the few. Democracy is built on a shared set of values; its laws are supposed to give form to these values. Destroying the basic values underpinning democracy, and ripping apart the social fabric and shared values of a nation destroys democracy itself.

Where might all this lead? The papers are rife with reports of detention centers being set up for reluctant settlers, their wives and children; of special, speedy courts of "justice" to deal with resisters; with special police training courses hastily organized to program the police to deal with the expected, traumatic expulsion. (All this while it was just announced that over nine hundred convicted terrorists will be released from Israeli jails as a sign of Israel's "good will").

Remember, we are not speaking of evacuating an enemy. We are speaking of 8,500 Israeli citizens who settled an empty, new area with full government approval and are now being ousted after thirty years because a prime minister, without the necessary democratic sanctions, has decided they must leave.


8. DID YOU SAY DISENGAGEMENT? From what? According to the government's own declarations, Israel will continue to supply the Palestinian Authority in Gaza with 1) water; 2) electricity; 3) communications (a telephone system); 4) food, medical and other supplies, just as we do now. Oh yes, and also employment in Israel. No one expects Gaza to support itself or provide employment for its people. Everyone - the entire world - expects Israel to help the new "fledgling state" along. Israel assumes she will fill all these needs although she insists that in case of trouble or terrorist activity, she will feel free to re-enter Gaza whenever necessary. (Just imagine the world's reaction to that!)

What then will be different? What exactly is being "disengaged"? Only one thing. Jewish communities in one small corner of the Gaza Strip. They are being evacuated, transferred, "resettled" — all the things Israel would never allow to be done to its Arab citizens or neighbors. Judenrein at the hands of the Israeli government.


9. WHAT IS SHARON THINKING? No one seems to know. If the above is an accurate description of the situation, based on true, objective facts (and it is), how could any normal, intelligent person choose this path?

Sharon has led us to a Palestinian state. He gave his approval to the Road Map whose cease-fire cost scores of Jewish lives. He approved the infamous prisoner swaps which put an end to hope for finding or releasing Ron Arad, the missing Israeli pilot. And now he is taking us further along the road to destruction with his new plan. Why?

While there are a few souls who feel that Sharon is taking a brave step forward and has the best interests of the country at heart, there are many more who are doubtful. The rumors are that he is depressed, demented, or wants to go do down in history as the great Man of Peace after having been demonized as Israel's worst war-monger. There are other, even more disturbing theories at large.

Zvi Handel a Knesset member from Gush Katif, and a former friend of Sharon who spent years working in close contact with the Prime Minister, has an different explanation. Both of Sharon's sons were involved in highly publicized, highly questionable, extremely lucrative, international business transactions. There was grave evidence of illegalities and the country was waiting for a judicial decision to indict. Suddenly, when things became exceedingly uncomfortable, Sharon dropped a bombshell and announced his disengagement plan. It immediately replaced the stories of his sons in all the media and has kept them out of the public eye. The indictments are also still on hold.

It is believed by many that this sudden bombastic political decision, which ran counter to Sharon's entire history and career (he was called the "Father of the Settlement Movement" and was a close and constant advocate of settlement activity), which conflicted with all his previous statements, promises and campaign platform, was a way of turning the public attention away from his private troubles. If the settlers had to be the sacrificial lamb, so be it. Better them than Sharon's sons.

Handel's accusations were made publicly and were detailed. The media made mention but chose not to dwell on them and they were "lost" in the governmental tsunami of determination for the disengagement plan.


10. WHAT ELSE IS LOST? Much has been "lost" in the media reports. Not only the legalities of the Sharon family affairs, but many of the above uncomfortable facts and observations. The settlements in Gaza have existed for more than thirty years. Families have four generations in the area. There is rarely a family in Israel which doesn't haveIsraelis all over the country have a a relative, a neighbor's relative or a friend in Katif. Most of the population - truly a silent majority — is distinctly uncomfortable with disengagement although they have few public avenues open to express their discomfort. (The media gives expression primarily to the left.) The more active and vocal section of the populace that supports Katif and the settlements and is thoroughly opposed to "disengaging" is dubbed "the extreme right" by the media. There is never — or very rarely — an "extreme" left. Disengagement ("evacuation" is a more accurate term) of Jews from the area — is not a simple, administrative decision. It is truly a moment of crisis for Israel.

Nor is disengagement a legitimate legal, democratic decision. Sharon consistently refuses to consider either a referendum on disengagement or new elections, even though two years after the elections he still does not have a stable, dependable coalition to pass . Nor has he been successful in passing the annual budget (which is why he is turning somersaults to put a coalition together. Without an approved budget, new elections are in the offing whether he wants them or not.)which he needs in order to assure funds for the evacuation of Katif. Yet he has engaged the country in a disastrous process. Anti-democratic, anti-Zionistic, militarily and economically incomprehensible.

Add that to the national, emotional and religious issues which have been stirred up and you wonder if the man has not gone mad?

QOTD: David Warren

QOTD:David Warren

So to the question, "Is there a crisis in Islam?" -- the answer might be a droll, "No, it is flourishing." The crisis is developing in Former Christendom. President Bush and Prime Ministers Blair of Britain and Howard of Australia have made a brave start in leading Western response to what is becoming less deniably a "clash of civilizations". They were right to take the battle to the enemy; they remain right in attempting to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan as "beacons". They rightly grasp that the alternative is worse.

What they have done is just a start, however, and I see no one in mainstream Western politics with the glimmering of an idea about what to do next. Plenty of evidence, on the other hand, that our "ruling classes" have been rotted away by moral relativism, and by the cowardice that is the rot below that. And, especially in Canada and western Europe, evidence that "the people" do not have the stomach for any challenge at all.

QOTD: OBL

QOTD:OBL

What's unknown is the level of destructive capacity in al-Qaeda's arsenal. What is known, however, is what bin Laden thinks. "By God's leave", he declared in his February 1998 call for a jihad, "we call on every Muslim who believes in God and hopes for reward to obey God's command to kill the Americans and plunder their possessions wherever he finds them and whenever he can."

The killings on Sept. 11 were "blessed by Allah to destroy America's economic and military landmarks", he explained. "Yes, we kill their innocents and this is legal religiously and logically."

Furthermore, to ratchet up the killing with WMD is fully correct, "religiously". In May 2003, dutiful to the conventions of running a holy war, bin Laden secured a fatwa -- a ruling on a point of Islamic law that is given by a recognized authority -- from a Saudi sheik saying al-Qaeda would be justified in using nuclear weapons against America.

QOTD: On utopians

QOTD

According to Dr. Peter Mezan, a psychoanalyst in New York City, "There is an impulse that is common to perversion and to utopian thinking. The wish is to create a world in which differences make no difference. The great utopian thinkers have been immensely inspiring, but there is a reason that utopian communities have never worked out. In the name of equality of every sort and in the attempt to eliminate the tensions that normally divide us, they propose to create a marvelously unnatural world without the usual boundaries. But then it gets all fucked up."

QOTD: Victor Davis Hanson

QOTD: Victor Davis Hanson

Throughout this war we have an understandable, if ethnocentric, habit of ignoring what our enemies actually say. Instead we chatter on, don't listen, and in self-absorbed fashion impart our own motives for their hatred. We live on the principles of the Enlightenment and so worship our god Reason, thus assuming that even our adversaries accept such rational protocols as their own.

So they talk on and on of beheading, suicide bombing, another holocaust, and blowing thousands of us up, while we snooze, now and again waking in the midst of a war to regurgitate Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, flushed Korans, the abusive Patriot Act, and the latest quip of Donald Rumsfeld.

QOTD: You'll never guess who

Who said this? Pebble to BOTW
The same amendment of the Constitution that forbids the establishment of a State Church affirms my legal right to argue that my religious belief would serve well as an article of our universal public morality. I may use the prescribed processes of government--the legislative and executive and judicial processes--to convince my fellow citizens--Jews and Protestants and Buddhists and non-believers--that what I propose is as beneficial for them as I believe it is for me; that it is not just parochial or narrowly sectarian but fulfills a human desire for order, peace, justice, kindness, love, any of the values most of us agree are desirable even apart from their specific religious base or context. . . .

I can, if I wish, argue that the State should not fund the use of contraceptive devices not because the Pope demands it but because I think that the whole community--for the good of the whole community--should not sever sex from an openness to the creation of life.

And surely, I can, if so inclined, demand some kind of law against abortion not because my Bishops say it is wrong but because I think that the whole community, regardless of its religious beliefs, should agree on the importance of protecting life--including life in the womb, which is at the very least potentially human and should not be extinguished casually.

No law prevents us from advocating any of these things: I am free to do so.

So are the Bishops. And so is Reverend [Jerry] Falwell [a 1980s "religious right" figure].



















Mario Cuomo!

QOTD: Jean Francois Revel

QOTD: Jean Francois Revel

A civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.

Thumbs up for Cheznoff

Richard Z. Chesnoff has the right idea for "solving" the problem in Gaza. Two thumbs up.

If I were King of the Hill, I'd have the UN carve out a larger area to the south of the current Gaza Strip -- say along Egypt's largely unpopulated Sinai coast, or Saudi Arabia's vast Red Sea coast, or even Jordan's southern tip -- and declare it "New Gaza." Then with Israeli technical assistance and international financing, I'd build sparkling new cities, irrigated farms and ultramodern industrial zones. Next I'd construct a road and/or railway connecting New Gaza to the Palestinian West Bank.

Finally, I'd seriously grubstake every one of Gaza's Palestinian families and move them from squalid Gaza to this new seaside El Dorado. Old Gaza could then become a recognized part of Israel. Gaza's Jewish settlers could return to the lands they've made green -- and more could join them. As Palestinians flourished in their own new homeland, trade and peaceful ties between Israel and the sovereign Palestinian territories would grow. A 60-year-old thorn could start to be removed from the world's side.

Far-fetched? Of course. Fatah and Hamas would reject it out of hand. Nor would Arab leaders approve. Unlike Israel, which welcomed and absorbed 700,000 Jewish refugees from the Islamic world, most Arab states still refuse to allow Palestinians to settle permanently among them. Besides, the very idea of "population transfer" is politically incorrect. Or is it? During the 1947 partition of British India, more than 5 million Hindus moved from present-day Pakistan into present-day India, and more than 6 million Muslims moved the other way. When all else fails, far-fetched solutions become possibilities.

World Bank: Israeli Gov´t Corruption Among Highest in the West

Arutz Sheva carries this unfortunate but accurate news

Israel is second only to Italy with regard to government corruption in the western world, according to a study released Wednesday by the World Bank.

Business Data Israel's (BDI) government corruption index showed the Israeli government to be inefficient, with high levels of corruption and a low rate of law enforcement. The study was based on indices examined and confirmed by the Bank of Israel.

The rating received by the Israeli government is particularly poor in comparison with most developed countries. Its rating in terms of political stability is the lowest of any other Western country.

Mr. Sharansky, ease my doubts by Martin Kramer (Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy)

Martin Kramer has an interesting response to Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy. He differentiates between freedom of and freedom from. Freedom of being rights like freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

A much larger group is what I would call the 'freedom from' people. Their idea of freedom is somewhat different. It is freedom from oppressive government, not so much for the individual, as for the collective -- the kinship group, the tribe, the religious sect. The quest for this kind of freedom has existed in the Middle East from time immemorial. The late Elie Kedourie put it best. 'The Middle Easterner,' he said, 'is very far from thinking that he has a right to have a say in politics. All he wants is to be left alone and not to be oppressed.' Elsewhere he wrote of the Syrians, as archetypes of the Arabs, that 'they have never been much accustomed to being asked their opinion about their rulers. For them the happy man has always been he who has a beautiful wife, a comfortable house, a lucrative occupation, who does not know government, and whom government does not know; in short, the private man.'

No doubt this is a desire for freedom, but it is freedom from, not freedom of. What is the difference? You may desire freedom from oppressive government, and still deny your beautiful wife the freedom to drive, or get an education, or go about in public. You may fervently wish not to know government, but still expect blasphemers and adulteresses to be punished by law. You may fight for freedom from oppression for yourself, and not much care if your neighbor is oppressed, especially if he is from a different family, or tribe, or sect.

It brings into doubt how much transformation across the Middle East can be achieved in the short-term -- decades.