The Jew is Not My Enemy (14 page)

For too long Israel has banked on the utter incompetence of the Arab leadership, while continuing its illegal and immoral occupation. There is a danger in overestimating the capacity of a people to suffer – the Jews should know that better than anyone else. Israelis may not be able to see themselves in that light, but increasingly they are viewed – rightly or wrongly, it does not matter – by the rest of the world as an arrogant, powerful nation that may be surrounded by enemies but is
not making it easy for those enemies to come to terms with its existence. There was a time when support for Israel was almost unanimous in most Western countries, but not any more. Those in Europe who were once hesitant to display their anti-Semitism can today camouflage it by attacking Israel for its occupation of the West Bank. Israelis must reflect on how, within decades, the near-unanimous support in the West for their state has slowly dissipated.

Take the example of the New Democratic Party in Canada.
Toronto Star
reporter John Goddard has vivid memories of attending the annual convention of the federal ndp as a teenager shortly after the Six Day War. “The delegates were solidly behind Israel. I remember David Lewis” – the future leader of the party – “leading the discussion at the Royal York Hotel, the look of steely resolve on his face, and the sense of relief in the room over the defeat of the Arab armies.”

Fast-forward to 2006 and the
NDP
convention in Quebec City, where 90 per cent of the delegates denounced Israel and praised the extremist group Hezbollah. When veteran Winnipeg M.P. Judy Wasylycia-Leis stood up to object, saying Hezbollah was a terrorist organization, she was roundly booed. The
NDP
has today become the bastion of anti-Israel sentiment. One New Democrat M.P. was quoted as fearing that the left-wing party was in danger of being hijacked by extremists. After seventeen years as a loyal
NDPER
, I too had to leave the party as I saw how it was being taken over by Islamists and apologists for the Iranian regime.

The Jewish narrative today faces a more vigorous challenge, one that appeals to the moral and ethical values the Jewish state claims as the basis of its existence.

The erosion of Israel’s international standing is recognized in the country, but most people seem to be ignorant of the root cause of their isolation and blame it on the rise of the Left-Islamist network in the West. In February 2010, the Reut Institute, a security and socioeconomic think tank based in Tel Aviv, issued a report stating that the
Jewish state was facing a global campaign of delegitimization. The government called on its ministers to treat the matter as a strategic threat.

The report cited anti-Israel demonstrations on campuses, protests when Israeli athletes competed abroad, moves in Europe to boycott Israeli products, and threats of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders visiting London. The report further stated that while most of the campaign activists were Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim, they were tightly linked to left-wing groups. It noted that the Western Left had changed its approach to Israel and now saw it as an occupation state.

Instead of seeing the writing on the wall, Israel is making cosmetic changes that will bear no fruit. In television commercials that are part of an initiative called “Making the Case for Israel,” Israelis are being asked by their government to become “citizen-diplomats.” One government ad claims that people around the world believe Israelis use camels as a common form of transportation, while another spot suggests that they mistake Israeli Independence Day fireworks for military action. The commercials ask Israelis, “Are you fed up with the way we are portrayed around the world?” and urge them to teach non-Israelis that their country is modern, sophisticated, and peace loving. In February 2010, the
Globe and Mail
reported, “Brochures that provide helpful examples and statistics are being distributed by airlines.”
⁹
The government of Israel, apparently, is blind to the reasons for ill will towards the Jewish state.

Even at the diplomatic level, the response to the negative image of Israel has failed to address the primary cause. Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to London, reacting to a spate of anti-Israel activity in Britain, concluded, “The combination of a large Muslim community, a radical left, influential, English-language media and an international university centre make London fertile ground for Israel’s delegitimization.”
¹⁰

Long before there were any active Muslim groups in the West advocating the Palestinian cause, Israel’s occupation of Arab lands was damaging its reputation around the world. After the 1973 Yom Kippur
War, when for a few days the very existence of Israel was threatened by the advancing Egyptian army, President Ephraim Katzir of Israel invited Jewish scholars and academics from around the world to a three-day seminar in Jerusalem for a “critical assessment” of Israel and its relations with the rest of the world. One of the speakers was Irwin Cotler, the respected Canadian human rights lawyer who later became the country’s attorney general and justice minister.

Cotler’s speech gave the first hints of how Canadian views of the Jewish state were changing for the worse because of Israel’s occupation of Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian territories. He spoke of an initiative in Winnipeg in which Jews and non-Jews in academia, politics, business, and public service met to discuss the Yom Kippur War. From these meetings, which he described as “representing a microcosm of the general Canadian community,” emerged a number of attitudes about Israel. Among them were three significant points:

• “The Yom Kippur War was seen as a continuation of the Six Day War. Accordingly, since Israel was the ‘aggressor’ in the Six Day War and unlawfully seized Arab territory, the Arabs had only gone to war to regain their lost territory.”
  
• “The war was not unrelated to the ‘intransigence’ of Israeli policy. Israel should be less inflexible and more conciliatory – including the return of the occupied territories – if Israel genuinely wants peace.”
  
• “The legitimacy – rather than the fact – of Israeli statehood was not understood. Palestinian ‘homeland’ was believed to have been ‘usurped’ in the creation of the state of Israel. A compensatory initiative – such as the creation of a Palestinian state – was now necessary.”
  ¹¹
  

As early as 1973, Irwin Cotler had brought the message to Jerusalem – long before Camp David or Oslo – that Canadians felt the creation of
a Palestinian state was crucial to justify the “legitimacy” of the Jewish state. Nearly forty years later, that Palestinian state seems as elusive as the mythical winged horse Buraq that is said to have transported Prophet Muhammad from Jerusalem to the heavens for a chat with Allah.

Many Israelis may think they have their Palestinian adversaries pinned down and crying for mercy, but I would suggest the opposite is true.

Palestine is to Israel what the Old Man of the Sea was to Sindbad the Sailor. During his fifth voyage, Sindbad was marooned after a shipwreck. He came across an old man, who asked Sindbad to carry him across a river. When Sindbad agreed, the old man jumped onto his back, riding on his shoulders with his legs twisted round Sindbad’s neck, and refused to let go. Sindbad was trapped as the old man just would not let go, riding him both day and night.

If Israel is to survive as a nation state, not a pariah, it will have to get Palestine off its back; otherwise, the prognosis for the two is mutual annihilation. There is no other alternative but to end the occupation, with a complete separation of the two states. For too long, Israel has depended on cheap Palestinian labour to build the very settlements they hate. What is created by this bizarre interaction of profitability and hate is two dysfunctional societies that have put a gun to each other’s heads.

If the most pro-Palestinian president in American history, Jimmy Carter, could not get the Palestinian leadership to drop their “all or nothing” doctrine, it is unlikely Barack Obama will succeed. In the days after 9/11, President Carter wrote an op-ed in the
New York Times
reminding Americans, as well as readers in the Arab world and Israel, about the Camp David Accords that he had negotiated between President Anwar Sadat and Prime Minister Menachem Begin:

“One of the basic elements of this accord was Israel’s agreement to withdraw both political and military forces from the West Bank and
Gaza. The Palestinians were to have full autonomy under a self-governing authority elected freely by the people in the West Bank and Gaza, and were to participate on an equal basis in future negotiations.… In addition, Begin agreed that Israel would cease putting settlements in the occupied territories until a final agreement was reached on how to fulfil the Camp David pledges.”
¹²

For signing the Camp David treaty in 1978 that would have given Palestinians full autonomy in all of the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank and put an end to the building of settlements, President Sadat was condemned in the Arab world as a sell-out and traitor, and later assassinated for the crime of bringing peace between Egypt and Israel.

The longer the Israelis wait for a Palestinian partner, the worse will be Israel’s position in the international community. If the
PLO
rejected Camp David when there were far fewer settlements than there are today, it is unlikely that any Palestinian leader would be willing to appear weak and accept peace today. If Yasser Arafat rejected the peace deal offered by President Clinton and Ehud Barak in 2000 that would have given the Palestinians 95 per cent of the West Bank and all of Gaza, it is unlikely that Mahmoud Abbas would wish to be seen as the weakling in the long list of Palestinian leaders who want to be known as fighters, not statesmen. Few would wish to be labelled a quisling, as Anwar Sadat was made out to be.

Part of the problem Israel faces is that Palestinian leaders seem to be judged by their ability to stand up to Israel rather than by their capacity to make peace. Those who talk peace are considered “effeminate,” while those who holler war and indulge in sloganeering end up respected and adored. Thus, when a few brave Palestinians and Israelis worked out the Geneva Accord in 2003, with the backing of Presidents Carter and Clinton, the former Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo was ridiculed by his colleagues as irrelevant and a lightweight.

Both Abed Rabbo and Israeli justice minister Yossi Beilin, once official negotiators for their sides, continued to meet in an unofficial capacity after leaving their respective cabinets. The outcome was a detailed agreement that addressed the tough questions, including the acceptance of final borders, the issue of Jerusalem, and the question of Palestinian refugees.

The accord would force Israel to accept Palestinian sovereignty in East Jerusalem. It states that the Jewish neighbourhoods of Jerusalem would be under Israeli authority, and the Arab neighbourhoods of Jerusalem under Palestinian sovereignty. In addition, both sides agreed that Palestinian Jerusalemites who were permanent residents of Israel would lose this status upon the transfer of authority to Palestine of those areas in which they resided. The accord notes that Israel agreed to the renaming of the Temple Mount as the “Esplanade of the Mosques.”

If the Israelis were willing to accept East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, what they would extract in return was an enormous concession from the Palestinians. The accord called for the Palestinians to renounce their right of return to Israel, restricting them to the territory of the new state of Palestine, and provided for adequate compensation.

The accord went beyond recognizing the simultaneous existence of a viable Palestinian state and an Israel with legitimate, secure borders. It traced, village to village, almost olive tree to olive tree, the line of partition. Although Israel was required to demolish most of the settlements along the border, it would retain some beyond the Green Line, as well as Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, in exchange for an equal amount of territory.

As one commentator said, the Geneva Accord was not a plan by dreamers. It was a concrete plan, precisely negotiated, almost maniacally meticulous. Unfortunately, it was lost in the polemics of the dispute. A lesson in political pragmatism, handed out by the two civil societies to their leaders, was wasted, with hard-liners on both sides
mocking Beilin and Rabbo rather than acknowledging the merits of their proposal.

In the absence of a Palestinian partner willing to negotiate, the challenge for Israel is complex. Conventional wisdom dictates that it take advantage of the situation, gloat over the impotence of its enemy, and keep building settlements. Such a path, which Israel has already embraced, may in the short term give it a stronger hand if the Palestinians return to the table, but it will not earn the Jewish state what it desires most: the security of its citizens and the recognition of its borders by the neighbouring Arab states.

Israel has another option. It can come to the realization that it does not need to prove its armed might and its ability to crush any attempt on its life by any state or terrorist organization. Notwithstanding the rhetorical flourishes of Arab leaders and clerics, the Egyptian dictator Nasser and his two thousand T-55 tanks and eight hundred MiG-21s are part of the scrap heap of history. The histrionics of Iranian president Ahmadinejad cause more panic in Jordan and Saudi Arabia than Israel would like to imagine. Now is the chance for Israel, as a victorious power, to live up to its Jewish heritage and prove the Islamists wrong. It is only Jerusalem that can afford, and has the ability to show, magnanimity. It must offer hope, justice, and dignity to its foes in the spirit of
Tikvah, Anavah
, and
Tikkun olam
, for that is the Jewish inheritance. When the prophet Amos said, “Let justice roll like water, and righteousness as a permanent torrent,” I am sure he meant this justice not just for the Israelites, but also for us Ishmaelites.

Recent history shows us the difference between victors who have earned the friendship of the vanquished and those who have conquered and sown the seeds of hate. Israel still has a chance to choose. It can emulate the example of the United States, which in defeating Japan and Germany made them its allies, or that of Russia, which, even in liberating Poland and Hungary, created revulsion towards Moscow.