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Seeing Through The Fog Of War, The Truth...
Bernard J. Shapiro-
Sunday 30th Jul 2006
Israel is at war and you need to know how to separate fantasy from reality. Understanding the meaning of words in such a situation is very difficult for even the best linguist or psychologist. We must go back and remember the classic book by George Orwell, 1984, in which a totalitarian government manipulates the meaning of words to confuse its citizens about reality. He called this new language "newspeak". While Orwell’s book was an attempt to satirize the Soviet communist regime, its meaning extends much more broadly.
A QUICK DECODER
1. Remember that Arabs lie and the figures given for civilian casualties are greatly exaggerated. Since most Hizbollah and Hamas terrorists wear civilian clothes and mix with the local population, it is very easy to distort the true toll on civilians.
2. Damage to Lebanese infrastructure is also greatly exaggerated. Photographers and reporters in Lebanon MUST repeat the Arab terrorist propaganda line or be tortured or executed. No such threat hangs over reporters in Israel. When the media reports from both sides, you can get a very distorted picture. We tend to think that the veracity of the two sides is equal.
3. It is a hoax that there is NO MILITARY solution to Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran and genocidal terrorism. Those that come to kill Jews must be destroyed. There is no other choice. No "Mr. Nice Guy". The most moral position for Israel is to protect its own citizens and soldiers.
4. It is a hoax that the UN can do anything good for Israel. That also goes for Europe, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The usefulness of international forces separating Arab terrorists from Israeli defenders is nil, nada, zero. In fact, it is a negative, inhibiting Israel’s defensive measures.
All diplomacy is also a hoax. Only the power of the IDF allows Israel to survive. Right and justice are nice, but in the final analysis, a nation’s ability to survive depends on raw military power. Treaties, cease fires and negotiations are useless.
5. It is a hoax that public opinion is of great significance to Israel’s survival. A strong aggressive public relations campaign is quite important, but is NO substitute for unflinching resolve to protect Israel’s security and guarantee its survival.
Golda Meir once said: "I would rather have a thousand angry editorials directed at Israel, than one beautiful eulogy."
I would have to use the words of Harry Truman to express my contempt for the world that has murdered, raped, pillaged, expelled, forcibly converted and finally exterminated us. As Truman once said: "They ain’t worth a bucket of warm spit."
6. Another hoax is that Israel depends on American aid and must be willing to sacrifice its security to the interest of its ally. The reality is that Israel and America have a very useful symbiotic relationship. The many ways in which the U.S. benefits from the relationship hardly need enumeration intelligence, technology, counterterrorism techniques and much more. America gets its money’s worth and more. BUT THIS IS NEVER MENTIONED IN POLITE CIRCLES.
For that matter, much or most of the monetary foreign aid to Israel is spent in the U.S. and goes into the American economy. It is Israeli leaders, for their own political purposes, who fail to utilize Israeli power to alter its asymmetric relationship to America.
7. Another hoax of the Left and the Islamists, for the past 13 years, is that when Israel defends itself it hurts its cause. That is, it should try to "win the hearts and minds" of the enemy, and "harming civilians" is counterproductive. Of course, we know that Hamas and Hezbollah barbarically and illegally operate freely within civilian neighborhoods in S. Lebanon and the PA.
A very wise Rabbi Schiff gives the analogy:
"If you and I were neighbors, and I allowed a family to move into my house in my living room and shoot rockets at your house from my yard, and to store their rockets in my basement, and the police do nothing about it for years, and have ‘Peace Now’ on my lawn telling you not to harm me standing in my kitchen - what would you do?"
Orwell Meets Alice - Through The Mid-East Looking Glass
We have been treated to the modern equivalent of Orwellian newspeak, not to mention a harrowing trip through Alice's looking glass. One could not help but notice the extent to which the Arabs were being portrayed as pure and innocent. A casual observer would certainly think that all violence in the Middle East was a product of bloodthirsty Jewish settlers roaming the Judean-Samarian hills looking for Arab prey.
The PLO/PA leadership, its hands dripping with Jewish and Arab blood, demanded protection from the vicious Jewish residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza (YESHA). It refused to return to negotiations until its demands were met. The gullible international media took this whole charade seriously. The United Nations began debating a resolution to give protection to the poor vulnerable Palestinians. The PLO demanded that all Jewish communities of YESHA be ethnically cleansed of those rotten murderous Jews. At the very least they needed to be disarmed, to make them easier targets for Arab terrorists.
The high and the mighty beseeched Arafat to return to the talks with Israel. The late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, obviously anxious to please his PLO friends, began a crackdown on Kach and Kahane Chai and other so-called Israeli extremists. Consider this "logic": Rabin determined that Baruch Goldstein acted alone in his reprisal act. He then decided to outlaw the organizations associated with him. Guilt by association is what made McCarthy big in the 50's. It was wrong then and it is wrong now.
Reality Check: Now Kach and Kahane Chai have been labeled as terrorist organizations, although they never have committed a single act of terror as a body. The PLO, which is guilty of thousands of murders of Arabs and Jews, continuing still, is labeled a "partner for peace" and will be given arms to kill some more (as "policemen").
Reality Check: Are Arabs in danger from armed Israelis in YESHA? Some research reveals the following figures since the famous handshake on September 13, 1993:
Israelis killed by Arabs = over 1600, plus 10,000 injured and maimed for life
Arabs killed by Arabs = over 500
Arab attacks on Israeli targets = 25,000+
Private Israeli attacks on Arabs = 1 (Goldstein killed 29)
(Of course MANY terrorists were killed in their FAILED attempts to murder Jews. This point is NOT relevant to this discussion).
It is clear that except for the attack by Goldstein, the Arabs have not been threatened by Jews and certainly need no special protection. If you travel to YESHA you will notice that every Jewish village needs a security fence, while every Arab village is open. Doesn't this tell you who is threatened and who isn't? All the talk about disarming the Jews is a cover for the Arab desire to murder them. And if you desire murder, wouldn't it be nice to disarm your victim first?
The media has begun to adopt another tactic which we should protest. In the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Houston Chronicle, CNN and most of the other media, opponents of the suicidal Oslo, Roadmap and Jewish Expulsion Plan are being referred to as rightwing extreme, Arab-hating and anti-peace groups. Do you ever remember the PLO, PA, Hezbollah or Hamas ever being referred to as Jew-hating groups, although their covenants and speeches are filled with hatred of Jews? Arafat and then Abbas often referred to Jews as "filthy, sons of monkeys and pigs", but are still rarely referred to in the media as Jew-haters.
Reality Check: To the best of my knowledge there is a distinct difference between Jewish feelings about Arabs and Arab feelings about Jews. Arabs are taught from the earliest grades to despise Jews, and their clerics preach hatred (Itbach El Yahoud - slaughter the Jews) in many of their services. Jews, on the other hand do not preach hatred, but those who are not brain dead recognize, after 120 years of being attacked, that Arabs mean them harm. The media is totally obfuscating the truth about the conflict by the use of such clichéd phrases as "Arab-hating Jews" or "cycle of violence."
Another problem with media coverage of the Israel-PLO/PA so-called "peace negotiations", is the way their opponents are described. Arabs opposed to the deal because they want to kill or expel all Jews from "Palestine" immediately, are equated with Jews and Israelis who want Israel to survive in secure borders. Opponents of national suicide are called "anti-peace", as opposed to supporters of such suicide being "pro-peace".
Reality Check: Most opponents of the deal with Arafat/Abbas oppose it because it is suicidal for many strategic, historical and objective reasons. None of us are anti-peace. We just recognize that the path chosen by the Rabin/ Peres/Barak/Olmert governments will lead not to the hoped for and advertised peace, but to Israel's destruction.
In another bizarre twist of logic the Los Angeles Times reports that Israel's leading peace group, Shalom Achshav (Peace Now), had urged Sharon to remove 500,000 Jewish inhabitants of YESHA (including Jerusalem) to avert widespread bloodshed under Palestinian self-government, and to forcibly evict all Jews within five years. They said that their continued presence, "fostering violence and bloodshed, endangers peace prospects."
Reality Check: The facts demonstrate that it is the Palestinians and not the Jews that are the cause of 99.9% of the violence. Why not remove the Palestinians? What Peace Now is really admitting is that there is NO PEACE nor any prospect of PEACE.
The liberal Jewish establishment and most of the media were appalled when Rabbi Meir Kahane first began talking about transferring the Arabs from Eretz Yisrael. Most are still appalled at this idea. A new idea has come into fashion, though, among these same righteous Jews: transferring the Jews from YESHA (heartland of Eretz Yisrael). Former Secretary of State James Baker once said it would be a good idea to use the $10 Billion in US loan guarantees to buy out and transfer the Jews from YESHA. US President Bill Clinton seemed to like the idea and so did Rabin's coalition partner Meretz.
Reality Check: There is no moral difference between transferring either Jews or Arabs from YESHA. What Kahane said years ago about the inability of Jews and Arabs to live together is being validated today by the same people who condemned him.
The 120-year war of extermination launched by the Arabs against the Jews of Israel has had many twists and turns. Sadly, it seems headed for Alice's looking glass and the world of 1984, where black is white, war is peace and good is evil.
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Bernard J. Shapiro is the Executive Director of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies. He is also the editor of its publications including THE MACCABEAN ONLINE URL:http://www.freeman.org/online.htm and its daily subscriber list of news and commentary, The Freemanlist and the Freeman Center blog.
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