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Arik, Go Home!
David Shalom-
Saturday 21st Feb 2004
Ariel Sharon's "Disengagement Plan", which will be presented to the Likud party for referendum on May 2, is a dangerous programme that is surrender to terror and a betrayal of the Israeli electorate and the Jewish Nation. The plan to surrender the land of Israel to the PLO, especially after the ten years of the Oslo disaster and the three-and-a-half years of the Arab revolt, is an obscene insult to the Jewish people and all those who have died defending the land of Israel.
More importantly, if, God-forbid, it is implemented, it will lead to greater bloodshed and war in the region by emboldening the Arabs and handing a victory to the terrorists. Sharon's behaviour has been despicable, treating the Israeli people and the Knesset as poodles to our "taskmasters" in the US and paying homage to the Caesar in Washington.
Such negotiations on the surrender of Eretz Israel, under Sharon's approval, go against the very foundations of the Likud party, its platform and the principles of the National Camp and typify Sharon's bypassing of the democratic process.
Sharon's alleged corruption, regarding the bribes received in the Greek Island affair, pales into insignificance when compared to the real scandal - that an Israeli prime minister from the Likud is negotiating surrender of Israeli land to the PLO and Hamas in a bid to return Israel to the 1949 "Auschwitz" borders. Sharon has abandoned the ideology of his party, has lost hope in the power of the Jewish nation to overcome the Arab enemy and has adopted the failed ideas of the far-left. In fact, the disengagement plan is the same plan that Amram Mitzna presented to the Israeli electorate during the 2003 elections. The same Mitzna was rejected by the Israeli people at the ballot box and the post-Zionist, post-Jewish Labour Party rightly suffered the greatest electoral defeat in its history. Yet Sharon, the shell-shocked commander, the man unable to outmanoeuvre, let alone eliminate, Yasser Arafat, has collapsed and adopted Mitzna's suicidal plan.
Operation Defensive Shield's initial success was turned into a political defeat as the PLO was allowed to remain in control, its leadership untouched and Arafat free to continue to direct its operations. It seems that his failure to win on the battlefield, by withstanding the US and international pressure a little bit longer, has led Sharon to abandon the land of Israel and the great settlement enterprise and adopt the ideology of the extremists on the Left. Indeed, little differentiates Sharon's plan and those espoused by the vile demagogues in Meretz and Peace Now.
Sharon's "promise" to US President George Bush not to harm Arafat is symptomatic of the relationship that he has fostered between Israel and the US. No longer are we allies, rather, we have become totally subservient to the American administration and the anti-Semitic State Department, with its long history of forcing Israel to act against its very survival interests. Sharon's position is weak and lost, choosing to relegate Israeli sovereignty and security to the whims of foreign powers in general and the Americans in particular. Did the Hebrew Nation return to the land of Israel to be ruled by other countries, to be lackeys of the Great Powers, to be tread upon by the nations ?
The American-Israeli agreement implies the proposition that no Arab "refugees" will have a "right of return" into the remnant of the land that will be Israel. The Arabs will be allowed to swamp the parts of Judea, Samaria and Gaza that Sharon surrenders to them with millions of so called "refugees" who currently reside in their own Arab homelands. The Sharon plan will see the destruction of the Jewish towns and villages in the entire Gaza region as well as the destruction of several towns in the Shomron. The plan will see the ethnic cleansing of thousands and thousands of Jews from their homes in the land of Israel. It will leave their houses , their property, their farms, in the hands of Hamas and the goons from the PLO. Is this what the Israeli people voted for when they rejected the Left at the last election?
Perhaps we should reflect on the inherent hypocrisy of these policies for a moment, as it appears there is an asymmetry between Jewish rights and Arab-Moslem rights. Israel was the victorious party in the 1967 war (the second war started by Arab aggression), yet it is the Jews that have to be transferred from their homes. Why? Why don't we relocate the Arabs? They have 22 brother states with 500 times the land of Israel; the same states that have been fighting Israel for the past 56 years. Why do Arabs, or more precisely their descendants, have a "right of return" to Israel, but the Israeli Jews from Arab lands have no rights? Where is the compensation for the Jewish refugees? It was the Arab states that created two groups of refugees at the time, Jewish and Arab, but the world is silent on this issue. The Israeli government is silent. The Israeli government's silence on the issue is not surprising when we have a prime minister ready to commit ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Land of Israel itself.
The enemy conveniently forgets that the Arab states told those Arab civilians to leave so that it would be easier for them to destroy Israel in 1948. They forget that Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion offered them all a right of return in an exchange for an end to all hostilities in 1949, which the Arabs resolutely rejected. Maybe the World is unaware of the one million Jews expelled from the Arab world who today make up 50% of Israelis? Perhaps they are ignorant of the 23,000, Israelis killed by Arab wars and terrorism against Israel over the past 56 years? If there ever was a "right" of return, it simply does not exist now. The Arabs have negated it. It is time to challenge the PLO propaganda and lies that have allowed the mythical "right" of return to develop. This can only be done by a strong Zionist leadership that fights for the fundamental rights of the Jewish people. Such leadership has been sorely lacking in recent times.
Sharon's plan will need to be approved by a referendum within the Likud and it is crucial that he loses, not just for the citizens of Gaza, but for the entire country. The campaign has already started and is headed by worthy leaders including Natan Sharansky and Uzi Landau and it is by no means certain that Sharon will win. However the decision of the anti-disengagement campaign not to attack Sharon personally, while noble, is mistaken, especially considering the tricks that he has already begun to employ, including the conscription of the left-wing TV, radio and press in the demonisation of the Gazan Jews and the false promises of peace in our time. It would be wise to remind the Likud members of the dangers of the plan and the apparent ideological collapse of Ariel Sharon that it represents.
This terrible plan could lead to the return of the Labour party and the Oslo criminals to the corridors of power, seeing key cabinet portfolios return to the hands of such people. This is something that the wavering, undecided members of Likud should bear in mind. It is time to openly call for Arik to go home.
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David Shalom is a member of Betar Tagar UK : All articles/Opinions do not necessarily reflect the official line of Betar-Tagar UK.
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